Chapter 13 #3
‘I cannot accept your offer of giving Richard your name,’ she said carefully.
She smiled then, through the tears that were starting to run down her cheeks.
‘When our own baby is born in four months’ time,’ she said, ‘people will count the months and see that it would not be mathematically possible—’ She stopped as his arms closed tightly about her, shock and joy blazing in his face.
‘Marris?’ he said. ‘Can it be true? You are with child?’
‘Yes,’ Marris said. She held him as tightly as she could, relishing the beat of his heart and the strength of his arms about her.
‘It must have been that night when we were together in July,’ she murmured, ‘before we parted…’ She stopped, not wanting to say anything that would further hurt either of them.
He pressed his lips to her hair. ‘We shall not speak of it again,’ he said roughly.
‘You are here now and we must forgive one another, for we have been given another chance and a wonderful gift.’ He tilted her chin up to kiss her.
‘Damnation, I have missed you so,’ he whispered against her mouth.
‘I did not want another woman whilst you were gone. I thought I did and I even thought to go looking for one, but it was no good, Marris. I could not. You are all to me.’
Marris raised her hand to touch the roughness of his unshaven cheek. ‘That makes me so happy, William,’ she said gravely, but with laughter in her voice. ‘Indeed, I am sorry for your deprivation but so very glad for your constancy.’
A half hour later, when Mrs Wood knocked softly at the door of the library to announce that dinner was ready, she discovered Sir William Sharington seated in his big leather armchair with his wife curled up, most improperly, on his lap.
They were entwined in each other’s arms for all the world, she told the coachman later, like a couple of young lovers.
It was all the more surprising, she said, since all through the summer, Sir William had thrown each of his wife’s letters in the fire unread, then had become drunk on brandy, swearing that women were devils and he never wanted to see another one as long as he lived.
‘He was looking at her as though she were the moon and stars to him,’ Mrs Wood said, shaking her head, ‘and after everything he had said. Why, when she arrived tonight with the bairn, I thought he would run her from the house, but no, they are cosy together as dormice.’ She pushed the plate of cheese towards him.
‘More biscuits, Mr Coachman? There is plenty of butter too.’
* * *
Christmas that year was merry. They brought in a yule log from the woods and decorated it with ribbons, keeping it burning in the Great Hall throughout the twelve days of Christmas.
They hung branches of yew and laurel from the new beams of the ceiling and decorated them with ivy, the bright sprigs of holly with its berries, and the mistletoe kissing bow.
There were carols and mince pies and a great deal of feasting, as Sir William was in great good humour and wanted to show off his wife and his new house to their neighbours.
In the nursery little Richard Swan thrived, even as Marris grew larger each day with her own pregnancy.
The story that they put about, that Richard was Marris’s orphaned godchild, was accepted without comment in the neighbourhood.
The closure of the religious houses had led to a number of former nuns and monks being thrown into poverty.
If a nun had given birth to an illegitimate child and subsequently died, then that was surely the fault of the wickedness of those in power whose behaviour had led to this parlous state of the world.
Many of the ordinary folk still thought of Marris as Winterhill’s prioress and saw no conflict in the fact that she was now Lady Sharington.
Her kindness in taking in the orphaned baby was what they expected from a former nun.
Meanwhile, Bridget wrote from Hampton Court:
We are all impossibly merry all of the time.
The King is in such spirits that there is naught but games, music and dancing.
He showers his beloved Queen Catherine with gifts – the most extraordinary jewels that I have ever seen!
And the Queen herself is most generous to her friends.
She gave me a present of some beautiful fur-lined gloves…
I hope that you are keeping well. Their Majesties send their best wishes to you and to Sir William for the birth of your child in the spring…
How old you are to be enceinte! We shall drink a toast to you all when it is born, and with good fortune, the Queen also may soon be pregnant for the King is most anxious for another son…
Rose did not write, despite the parcel of cinnamon and saffron spice that Marris had sent her along with a bolt of cloth for a new, most expensive gown, and toys for her new daughter.
The fact that Rose’s baby was a girl had apparently grieved her husband deeply and he had sworn to get her with child again soon to provide the heir he so urgently wanted.
‘The man’s an oaf,’ Will observed to Marris as they sat alone together before the fire on the feast of St Egwin. He smiled at her. ‘If I have a daughter as beautiful and gracious as her mother, I shall be well content.’
‘You are a flatterer, sir.’ Marris reached out to touch his cheek.
There was a contentment about Will now as he built his home in preparation for his new family.
Sometimes it felt so fragile to Marris that she was afraid the happiness, if not the house, might all come tumbling down, but she kept her fears to herself.
The King was merry, which meant that his subjects could breathe a little more easily.
Even Queen Anna, who was celebrating Christmas at Richmond, seemed content; she sent a gift of rich food and wine to Marris and William, and a gloriously soft, embroidered blanket ‘for little R’ as she referred to him.
Marris, resting a hand on her belly where her own child grew, wondered how Anna survived.
A day could not pass, she thought, without the former Queen thinking of her son.
‘I will endure because I must,’ Anna had said to Marris, dry-eyed, when they had parted.
‘I know you will care for him well and that he will thrive. Keep him safe and keep my secrets.’ And yet Marris had felt Anna’s heart breaking.
Her loneliness was terrifying and surely unbearable, and yet somehow, Marris thought, she would have to bear it.
They had found a suitable home for Richard some ten miles hence at Woolstone, with a farmer called Samuel Welland who had served as a labourer at the priory before the Dissolution.
He was a dour man and kept himself to himself, which Will pointed out was all to the good in keeping Richard’s birth a secret, since no one would dare ask Sam any questions and he would never offer any answers.
With him lived his equally dour sister Alison who, like Sam, was a kindly soul underneath her layers of silence.
Sam would need an heir to the farm one day – it was rich land and would set Richard up well, and in the meantime there was money for his education and he would want for nothing.
Richard Swan would be of good yeoman stock which, Will pointed out caustically, was a great deal safer than being the son of the King of England.
Marris’s son was born on a stormy day in late March when the wind roared through the woods and sent the ripples cascading across Sir William’s newly dug lake.
Despite Bridget’s dire predictions of a difficult birth for an aged mother, young Tom Sharington came into the world relatively easily, helped by Mrs Wood and an experienced midwife.
It was Sir William who needed copious pain relief in the form of a good brandy, but as Mrs Wood later said, to see him quiet as a lamb with a look of wonder on his face as he viewed his wife and son would have made his late mother’s heart glad.