the stable, and the carter complained that in the old days this had been a generous house of good monks where any traveller might be sure of a good dinner and a comfortable bed, and a prayer to help him on his way. He had stayed here once when his son had been sick nearly to death and the monks had taken him into their care and nursed him back to health with their own herbs and skills. They had charged him not a penny, but said that they were doing the work of God by serving poor men. The same story could have been told up and down the country at every great monastery or abbey on the roads. But now all the religious houses were in the possession of the great lords, the men of court who had made their fortunes by advising that the world would be a better place if wealth was stripped from the English church and poured into their own pockets. Now the feeding of the poor at the monastery gates, the making of free medicines in the nunnery hospitals, the teaching of the children and the care of the old people of the village had gone the way of the beautiful statues, the illuminated manuscripts, and the great libraries.
The carter muttered to me that this was the case all around the country. The great religious houses, which had been the very backbone of England, had been emptied of the men and women who had been called by God to serve in them. The public good had been turned to private profit and there would never be public good again.
‘If the poor king dies then Lady Mary will come to the throne and turn it all back,’ he said. ‘She will be a queen for the people. A queen who returns us to the old ways.’
I reined back my pony. We were on the high road and there was no-one within earshot but I was always fearful of anything that smacked of intrigue.
‘And look at these roads,’ he went on, turning on the box of the cart to complain over his shoulder. ‘Dust in summer and mud in winter, never a pot hole filled in, never a highwayman pursued. D’you know why not?’
‘I’ll ride ahead, you’re right, the dust is dreadful,’ I said.
He nodded and motioned me forward. I could hear his litany of complaint receding in the distance behind me:
‘Because once the shrines are closed there are no pilgrims, and if there are no pilgrims then there is no-one on the roads but the worst sort of people, and those that prey on them. Never a kind word, never a good house, never a decent road …’
I let the mare scramble up a little bank where the ground was softer beneath her small hooves and we ranged ahead of the cart.
Since I had not known the England that he said was lost, I could not feel, as he did, that the country was a lesser place. On that morning in early summer it seemed very fine to me, the roses twining through the hedgerows and a dozen butterflies hovering around the honeysuckle and the beanflowers. The fields were cultivated in prim little stripes, like the bound spine of a book, the sheep ranging on the upper hills, little fluffy dots against the rich damp green. It was a countryside so unlike my own that I could not stop marvelling at it, the open villages with the black-and-white beamed buildings, and the roofs thatched with golden reeds, the rivers that seemed to melt into the roads in glassy slow-moving fords at every corner. It was a country so damp that it was no wonder that every cottage garden was bright green with growth, even the dung hills were topped with waving daisies, even the roofs of the older houses were as green as limes with moss. Compared to my own country, this was a land as sodden as a printer’s sponge, damp with life.
At first I noticed the things that were missing. There were no twisted rows of vines, no bent and bowed olive trees. There were no orchards of orange trees, or lemons or limes. The hills were rounded and green, not high and hot and rocky, and above them the sky was dappled with cloud, not the hot unrelieved blue of my home, and there were larks rising, and no circling eagles.
I rode in a state of wonder that a country could be so lush and so green; but even among this fertile wealth there was hunger. I saw it in the faces of some of the villagers, and in the fresh mounds of the graveyards. The carter was right, the balance that had been England at peace for a brief generation had been overthrown under the last king, and the new one continued the work of setting the country into turmoil. The great religious houses had closed and thrown the men and women who served and laboured in them on to the roads. The great libraries were spilled and gone to waste – I had seen enough torn manuscripts at my father’s shop to know that centuries of scholarship had been thrown aside in the fear of heresy. The great golden vessels of the wealthy church had been taken by private men and melted down, the beautiful statues and works of art, some with their feet or hands worn smooth by a million kisses of the faithful, had been thrown down and smashed. There had been a great voyage of destruction through a wealthy peaceful country and it would take years before the church could be a safe haven again for the spiritual pilgrim or the weary traveller. If it ever could be made safe again.
It was such an adventure to travel so freely in a strange country that I was sorry when the carter whistled to me and called out, ‘Here’s Hunsdon now,’ and I realised that these carefree days were over, that I had to return to work, and that now I had two tasks: one as a holy fool in a household where belief and faith were key concerns, and the other as a spy in a household where treason and tale-bearing were the greatest occupations.
I swallowed on a throat which was dry from the dust of the road and also from fear, I pulled my horse alongside the cart and we went in through the lodge gates together, as if I would shelter behind the bulk of the four turning wheels, and hide from the scrutiny of those blank windows that stared out over the lane and seemed to watch for our arrival.
Lady Mary was in her chamber sewing blackwork, the famous Spanish embroidery of black thread on white linen, while one of her ladies, standing at a lectern, read aloud to her. The first thing I heard, on reaching her presence, was a Spanish word, mispronounced, and she gave a merry laugh when she saw me wince.
‘Ah, at last! A girl who can speak Spanish!’ she exclaimed and gave me her hand to kiss. ‘If you could only read it!’
I thought for a moment. ‘I can read it,’ I said, considering it reasonable that the daughter of a bookseller should be able to read her native tongue.
‘Oh, can you? And Latin?’
‘Not Latin,’ I said, having learned of the danger of pride in my education from my encounter with John Dee. ‘Just Spanish and now I am learning to read English too.’
Lady Mary turned to her maid in waiting. ‘You will be pleased to hear that, Susan! Now you will not need to read to me in the afternoons.’
Susan did not look at all pleased to hear that she was to be supplanted by a fool in livery, but she took a seat on a stool like the other women and took up some sewing.
‘You shall tell me all the news of the court,’ the Lady Mary invited me. ‘Perhaps we should talk alone.’
One nod to the ladies and they took themselves off to the bay window and seated themselves in a circle in the brighter light, talking quietly as if to give us the illusion of privacy. I imagined every one of them was straining to hear what I might say.
‘My brother the king?’ she asked me, gesturing that I should sit on a cushion at her feet. ‘Do you have any messages from him?’
‘No, Lady Mary,’ I said, and saw her disappointment.
‘I was hoping he would have thought of me more kindly, now he is so ill,’ she said. ‘When he was a little boy I nursed him through half a dozen illnesses, I hoped he would remember that and think that we …’
I waited for her to say more but then she tapped her fingertips together as if to draw herself back from memories. ‘No matter,’ she said. ‘Any other messages?’
‘The duke sends you some game and some early salad leaves,’ I said. ‘They came in the cart with the furniture, and have been taken round to your kitchens. And he asked me to give you this letter.’
She took it and broke the seal and smoothed it out. I saw her smile and then I heard her warm chuckle. ‘You bring me very good news, Hannah the