Chapter 17 #2
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They buried Queen Anna’s box and the scroll recording Richard’s birth at the start of March.
Bridget joined Marris in the lady chapel at Winterhill Priory as the sun was going down and the long shadows hid their secrets.
Will had offered to open up the grave for them but in the end, Marris had decided it would be more fitting to ask Sam Welland.
‘I want Sam to know where the box is,’ she told Will. ‘He has care and custody of Richard; it is only fair that he should know where to find the proof of the boy’s birth should he need it.’
Will had thought about it for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.
‘He is a sound man and can be trusted,’ he said.
‘He will not tell the boy of his ancestry unless he judges that he needs to know.’ It was also Will who had suggested that the key to the box should be hidden separately, at the hall, as a precaution against anyone finding and opening the box.
‘It will not keep them out if they are intent of forcing the lock,’ he said, ‘but it may act as a further deterrent.’
Marris made a fulsome prayer of apology first to the saint, before they placed the box, tightly wrapped in oilcloth, in the southern corner of the tomb.
Sam lowered the slab once more and tucked the grass in about the stone whilst Marris said more prayers to ask God and Father Nicholas to protect little Richard Swan and his family into the future.
‘We may not always be here to watch over them,’ Bridget said, squeezing Marris’s arm as they walked back to the hall together, ‘but I know that Father Nicholas will. I know Richard will prosper and thrive.’
Bridget seemed to have recovered some of her liveliness, though she was a paler version of the high-spirited girl who had danced at court only a couple of seasons before.
Queen Catherine had been executed in February and it was said that the King, a self-inflicted widower, had sunk even deeper into moroseness and ill temper.
As Anna had prophesied, Duke William of Cleves had pressed Henry to re-marry her, but had been roundly rebuffed.
‘There is something I must tell you,’ Bridget said as she slid her arm into Marris’s and they walked back across the lawns towards Winterhill Hall. ‘Before the fall of the priory, when it was just you, me and Rose who lived there and I would disappear all the time, did you ever wonder where I was?’
Marris looked at her, startled. ‘I thought… I assumed you were in the library. You were always reading.’
‘That’s true,’ Bridget conceded. ‘I did go there a lot. But some of the time, I was with Sam. Sam Welland.’ She waited, but when Marris did not speak, she continued: ‘You are not shocked?’
‘No,’ Marris said. She was thinking of the afternoon that she had met Will by the pool and they had made love. Why should Bridget not have had the same hopes and longings as she had had? ‘Should I be?’ she asked.
‘I imagine so,’ Bridget said frankly, ‘as a former prioress.’
Marris smiled ruefully. ‘I think I was quite good at the managing part of the role but less so on the strict morality of it.’ She sighed. ‘But we are all human, all flesh and blood.’
‘Sam wanted to marry me,’ Bridget continued, glancing back over her shoulder to watch the farmer, spade over his shoulder, walking in the other direction, towards the woods and the Downs beyond.
‘But I was too young, and proud and, oh—’ she gave an exasperated huff ‘—full of my own importance, I suppose. And then I went to court and had my head properly turned by all those handsome men, even though I pretended to scorn their attentions. And now it is too late for us.’
‘Is it?’ Marris asked. ‘Are you sure? You are still young and perhaps Sam still has feelings for you?’
Bridget shook her head decisively. ‘It cannot be. Sam and his sister Alison have Richard to care for now. Can you imagine the talk were I to wed Sam? Everyone would believe Richard to be my by-blow and it would draw too much attention and raise too many questions. Besides, in truth I do not think I am cut out to be a farmer’s wife.
I have too restless a spirit and I wish to be mistress of my own life – to paint, to read, to follow my own inclination. I doubt I shall ever wed.’
Marris sighed. ‘I thought I was doing the best for you and for Rose by taking you to court,’ she said, ‘but now I wonder. Rose is unhappily married and has become full of ambition and envy. As for you… why, you almost lost your life.’
‘I behaved foolishly,’ Bridget said. ‘You should not blame yourself.’ She sighed.
‘I think I was dazzled for a while, but no longer. Rose, though, I cannot forgive for what she did. We are sisters yet she was prepared to sacrifice us both for her own advancement. She and Sir Geoffrey are well-matched in that respect.’ She gave a sudden giggle.
‘In other ways, however, I think they will drive each other mad, like wasps stinging one another incessantly. Which is fair punishment.’
The priory was swallowed in shadow now, whilst ahead of them the windows of the hall glowed with candlelight and warmth.
‘It is strange, is it not, being here at the priory again,’ Bridget said. ‘It is familiar and yet so different.’ She looked at Marris. ‘I hope it is not too painful for you?’
‘It was in the beginning, but I am accustomed to it now,’ Marris said.
‘To begin with I did not wish to be here, to be forced to see the ruins of my previous life. I blamed Will, even though I loved him, and that was painful and difficult for both of us. But times must change.’ She smiled at Bridget.
‘Now I have a new life and a new home, carved from the remnants of the past. A home that will carry us into the future.’
‘I wonder what will become of the Lady Anna,’ Bridget said softly. ‘What will her future hold?’
Marris thought of the former Queen, of her courage and her indomitable spirit.
She suspected that no matter what happened, for all of her life Anna would be followed by the quicksilver shadow of a child she had loved with all her heart, whom she had given up for his own protection and so that he could live in peace and safety.
The pain would catch her every so often, stealing her breath with a rawness that could not fade.
But they could not go back, and one day perhaps, Richard Swan or his descendants would know what sacrifice that remarkable woman had made for him.