‘I cannot. You don’t understand. He…’ She hesitated. ‘I promised him I would not.’
‘Is he already wed?’ I asked. It seemed the only reasonable explanation otherwise Cousin Edward would surely find the man and oblige him to marry Alison.
‘No, he is not,’ she said.
‘Then…’ I waited. What barrier could there be then to marriage? It did not make sense to me. What sort of man, for that matter, would take his pleasure and then abandon Alison to the consequence?
‘He is a great man.’ She spoke in a rush. ‘A lord. He cannot marry me. I am not—’ She stopped but it was as though she had said the words aloud.
I am not good enough.
Her defiance returned: ‘It is no matter. I can manage on my own.’
I said nothing. Could she? Alison was clever but she was a gently bred girl. It seemed unthinkable that she could survive alone. However, I had learned not to voice such opinions. They never seemed to find favour even if they were often true.
Alison finished packing the box and slammed down the lid, drawing the buckles on the straps tight. Then she stood looking at me a shade awkwardly.
‘I don’t know if I’ll see you again,’ she said.
‘No,’ I agreed.
She frowned. ‘You’re a strange one, Mary Seymour,’ she blurted out. ‘Do you care for no one and nobody?’
I was taken aback. I’d never really thought about it. I cared for Liz. She had always been a part of my life and it felt impossible not to love her. I cared for Darrell too, with a sweet sharp pang of possessive pride because he was my secret. Yet beyond that I formed no real friendships and made no ties. Because I was rootless somehow I had understood instinctively that it was safer to remain so against the time when everything would change again.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, not sure if it was true but needing to find something to appease her.
She looked scornful. ‘Like a thorn in the side.’
‘Even so,’ I said.
‘Liar,’ she said. All the same, she almost smiled. There was a moment when I thought she might even hug me but in the end she did not.
‘Goodbye, then, Mary Seymour,’ she said, and she walked out of the room without a backward glance.
That night I lay alone in the bed I had shared with her. It felt strange. I did miss her.
I lay awake staring at the ceiling, the cracked plaster and the moving shadows. I wondered about Darrell. I had always thought he must be a cousin of mine, sharing the same gift as I, inherited in some distant past. I wondered if he could be Cousin Edward. It seemed impossible though; that distant, glittering figure, too fine for all of us at Wolf Hall, could surely not be my mysterious companion and friend.
Tentatively I whispered his name and felt the familiar pattern come through in return, the warmth, the love, the friendship.
‘Are you Edward Seymour?’ I asked.
I felt his laughter but he did not answer me.
Alison, 1559
‘Where to, mistress?’ the carter asked.
They were bumping along the rutted track through the forest in the company of turnips and with the stench of manure. Alison drew her cloak closer about her face but it could not block out the smell, only make the world darker.
‘Anywhere,’ she said, ‘as long as it is away from here.’
She hated the forest. She hated Savernake. She hated Wolf Hall. Most of all she hated Edward Seymour with his lies and his hypocrisy.
‘I will always love you,’ he had told her. ‘I will never forsake you.’
What sort of fool was she to be so taken in?
‘Bastard,’ she said aloud, but the words had a desolate edge. She had been taken in because she had allowed herself to be. She had dreamed a dream of marriage and restoration to her place in the world. She had loved. She had hoped.
She saw the carter casting a look at her over his shoulder before he coaxed to horse from walk to amble.
Careful.
He would talk, in his cups, about the pregnant wench from Wolf Hall who had been sent away in disgrace. Likely he knew of her already. She had to follow the plan proscribed for her or word might get back to Edward. Not that he would care. She was off his hands now. The entire Seymour family were good at picking up and discarding their relatives as it suited them.
‘Marlborough,’ she said, with a sigh.
‘The castle?’
‘The White Hart.’
The tavern was the place where the coach sent by her aunt was supposed to be waiting to convey her to Kent. There was no coach, of course, just as there was no aunt, but it had pleased her to pretend to Edward that she did not need his help. He had given her guilt money, enough for the journey and more. She could survive on her own. She had done so after both her parents had died of the pox and her brother and sister with them. Both the manor and the village of Hartmere had been decimated. It had been weeks and weeks before anyone had ventured to look for survivors and found her, foraging for food whilst her family rotted upstairs in the fetid heat of summer. She had been six years old.
Now she was sixteen but the emotions were the same; the fear so great she could only look at it out of the corner of her eye in case it would swallow her whole; the determination that the fear would not win no matter how monstrous. Now she had something else to survive for too: the babe growing inside her. She had to be strong for her child.
At first she had thought she might get work making lace, or pins. There was plenty of industry in Marlborough, though most of it was too crude for her, the tanning of hides and the spinning of coarse cloth. But she had a talent for embroidery and sewing and she had been well taught. Then she had realised that it was too dangerous; someone would see her. Edward would hear of it. But the world was a big place and she should have bigger ambitions. There was Salisbury, or Bath, or London, where she could lose herself amongst the thousands of others. London appealed to her; she had heard that a man—or a woman—could make a fortune in that febrile, exciting society that felt so different from anything she knew.
She would be able to keep the child if she was brave and followed her plan. Her hand strayed to her swollen belly. She had tried to hate the baby for ruining everything but to her surprise she had failed. Accustomed to thinking herself cold, she had found nothing but maternal warmth towards the unwanted child. It was hers and she loved it fiercely. If she were honest with herself, and she had no wish to be, she had loved its father as well. Loving him had been a mistake but perhaps she was not as strong as she liked to imagine herself.
