Read Online Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn by Malyn Bromfield - Free Book Online

gardens, weeding.’
    ‘In the summer, yes. In the winter you are hanging around and it is not fitting, not now that you are growing into a woman. Your father is concerned that you will be noticed by some unworthy scoundrel.’
    The outer courtyard servants were mostly young and male. The previous day father had noticed the carpenter’s apprentice whistling to attract my attention when I made my way towards the great kitchen for dinner.
    ‘There are very few women servants at court,’ Mother said, ‘only those who are strong enough for heavy work. You are small and thin. Work in the confectionary is lighter and will suit you well.’ Mother reached across to where I lay on my pallet and squeezed my hand. ‘It is what I have wished for since the day of your birth, to have my own daughter working with me, helping to make the King’s sweetmeats. And perhaps, in good time, your daughter too. It is settled. Tomorrow, the goodwife who makes King Henry’s puddings will travel from her home in London especially to begin your training in the confectionary.’
    I wanted to tell Mother that this conversation was a waste of time, that very soon, Queen Anne would send for me. Instead, I said that it was still summer, that I liked being outdoors in the garden. Please would she ask the pudding wife to wait until September.
    ‘It is all arranged. The goodwife expects you tomorrow.’
    Mother let go my hand. ‘Why has God seen fit to give me such an ungrateful daughter?’ she whispered into the silence.
    *
    ‘Prithee stop fussing, Mother, I can tie my coif myself. I’m not a child.’
    ‘Show me your hands. Mistress Pudding will have none at her braziers with black nails.’
    My fingers were dimpled and dry after a good soaking in slimy green soapwort sap, and my nails and cuticles were sore from scraping out garden soil with a twig.
    ‘Your hands will do well enough,’ Mother said, straightening my coif for the third time. ‘This will be a good opportunity for you, daughter, and you should try hard to please the goodwife so that she will ask you to help out often.’
    ‘Your mother is right, Avis. Work in the confectionary is highly coveted and you should be proud to attend your mother,’ Aunt Bess said. She had arrived at our lodging before dawn with my newly laundered kirtle, apron and coif.
    ‘There’s not a washerwoman along the Thames up or downstream who can provide a crisply laundered apron such as this, Bess. Avis is in your debt,’ Mother said, dutifully returning my aunt’s compliment. ‘I wonder the King hasn’t requested your services.’
    ‘T’would take hours to press all the ruffles on King Henry’s shirts and a quantity of overflowing piss pots, to bleach his shirts pure white as he wants. I’ll make my way with lowly poor folks and I like to think the good Lord knows I do well by ‘em,’ Aunt Bess said, with the same mixture of humility and vanity with which she greeted grateful fathers after a birthing.
    Very soon, I thought, if the Queen keeps her promise, I will live in the royal apartments and will not need these working clothes.
    ‘What colour has Queen Anne chosen for her servants’ liveries?’
    ‘Lord bless us, Avis, I don’t know,’ Bess said. ‘Violet is the colour of kings, perhaps she’ll choose violet to show she’s royal.’
    ‘The whore doesn’t have the royal blood so King Henry shouldn’t have gone and put a crown upon her head. Aye, and he shouldn’t have put a baby in her belly when he has a wife already,’ Mother whispered to me as we passed by the sergeant guarding the confectionary.
    ‘So, this is little Avis I’ve heard so much off.’
    Mistress Pudding was plump and pretty and, I guessed, a little younger than mother.
    ‘Show me your hands, dear.’
    She turned my hands over to inspect the palms. ‘Well-scrubbed, I see. Just as I would have expected from a daughter of yours, Joan.’ She lifted my fingers to her nose and giggled. ‘I can smell the