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Authors: Carolly Erickson
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dressmakers in Cleves? For surely, I surmised, these were Clevan ladies. They had the same stolid look about them as the ambassador, the same blank expressions on their broad white faces, the same lack of animation.
Joan would know. I leaned across the table and asked her who the women were, whether they came from Cleves.
She nodded, and made a face.
“The godmother, the sister, the aunts of Anna of Cleves.”
Anna, I knew, was the woman who was being considered as a bride for King Henry.
“Of course Anna herself remains at home. It would hardly be seemly for her to show herself here, like a prize mount being put up for auction.”
The other girls who were within earshot at our table, overhearing Joan’s words, began to laugh.
“I would not bid on any of those mounts, if I were the king,” I said, making the girls laugh once again. “They have stuffed themselves with too many oats!”
“Such pockmarked skin,” I heard another of the girls say. “Do all the women of Cleves have the pox?”
“Perhaps Anna is the beauty of the family,” Charyn put in. “Perhaps she puts these others to shame.”
We left it at that, for as Charyn was finishing her thought a young man came up to the table where the Clevan women were sitting, and as soon as they saw him they began to smile and gesture and speak animatedly, giggling like young girls and holding their hands before their mouths coquettishly.
He was a very handsome young man indeed, slender, graceful, light on his feet, and with a most charming smile on his pleasing features. The musicians had begun to play and he led one of the older Clevan ladies in a dance. She was clumsy, her long heavy skirts weighed her down. But the young man adroitly kept her balanced, and I could tell that she was enjoying herself. Soon other partners came forward for the rest of the Clevan ladies, and then for Joan and Alice and the others of my cousins, and for me.
I jumped and twirled and hopped with abandon, enjoying the music and the movement. But I could not wait until the dancing was over, so that I could find out who the handsome young man was, and how I might manage to see him again.
* * *
We were taken to London for the first time on the Feast of St. Sylvanus the Martyr and I could not sleep at all the night before, I was so excited.
We rode in covered coaches, Charyn and I and Malyn and another girl I hardly knew, a very pretty girl named Mary Sidford, all together in one coach and the rest of my numerous cousinage in others. Twenty heralds rode before us, all wearing the brilliantly colored Howard livery, and announced our coming with a loud blare of trumpets and an even louder beating of drums. Dogs barked, horses whinnied in terror, and the people in the crowded streets scattered before us as we passed—or rather, as we attempted to pass, for time and again the narrow roadways were blocked by flocks of sheep and cattle being driven to the markets at Smithfield.
From across the river I had seen the soaring tall spire of St. Paul’s, but once we entered the tangled warren of streets and alleyways all I could see were the old wooden buildings on either side of us, many leaning at angles over the street, whose blackened timbers made it plain that fire was an everpresent danger to Londoners.
A great and nauseous stench arose to assault me, growing stronger the deeper into the city we went. We all took out our scented pomanders and held them under our noses, yet the stink was far stronger than their spicy scent. Wide streams of filth ran down the centers of the streets we passed through, I saw people empty waste buckets out of second-story windows onto the heads of passers-by beneath. Mounds of rotting food, dead animals, refuse of all kinds were heaped at street corners, covered with flies and running with sickly-looking liquids. I shuddered at the sight of rats scurrying down the alleys—fat, well-fed rats—in large numbers.
I had coins in my pockets to
Joan would know. I leaned across the table and asked her who the women were, whether they came from Cleves.
She nodded, and made a face.
“The godmother, the sister, the aunts of Anna of Cleves.”
Anna, I knew, was the woman who was being considered as a bride for King Henry.
“Of course Anna herself remains at home. It would hardly be seemly for her to show herself here, like a prize mount being put up for auction.”
The other girls who were within earshot at our table, overhearing Joan’s words, began to laugh.
“I would not bid on any of those mounts, if I were the king,” I said, making the girls laugh once again. “They have stuffed themselves with too many oats!”
“Such pockmarked skin,” I heard another of the girls say. “Do all the women of Cleves have the pox?”
“Perhaps Anna is the beauty of the family,” Charyn put in. “Perhaps she puts these others to shame.”
We left it at that, for as Charyn was finishing her thought a young man came up to the table where the Clevan women were sitting, and as soon as they saw him they began to smile and gesture and speak animatedly, giggling like young girls and holding their hands before their mouths coquettishly.
He was a very handsome young man indeed, slender, graceful, light on his feet, and with a most charming smile on his pleasing features. The musicians had begun to play and he led one of the older Clevan ladies in a dance. She was clumsy, her long heavy skirts weighed her down. But the young man adroitly kept her balanced, and I could tell that she was enjoying herself. Soon other partners came forward for the rest of the Clevan ladies, and then for Joan and Alice and the others of my cousins, and for me.
I jumped and twirled and hopped with abandon, enjoying the music and the movement. But I could not wait until the dancing was over, so that I could find out who the handsome young man was, and how I might manage to see him again.
* * *
We were taken to London for the first time on the Feast of St. Sylvanus the Martyr and I could not sleep at all the night before, I was so excited.
We rode in covered coaches, Charyn and I and Malyn and another girl I hardly knew, a very pretty girl named Mary Sidford, all together in one coach and the rest of my numerous cousinage in others. Twenty heralds rode before us, all wearing the brilliantly colored Howard livery, and announced our coming with a loud blare of trumpets and an even louder beating of drums. Dogs barked, horses whinnied in terror, and the people in the crowded streets scattered before us as we passed—or rather, as we attempted to pass, for time and again the narrow roadways were blocked by flocks of sheep and cattle being driven to the markets at Smithfield.
From across the river I had seen the soaring tall spire of St. Paul’s, but once we entered the tangled warren of streets and alleyways all I could see were the old wooden buildings on either side of us, many leaning at angles over the street, whose blackened timbers made it plain that fire was an everpresent danger to Londoners.
A great and nauseous stench arose to assault me, growing stronger the deeper into the city we went. We all took out our scented pomanders and held them under our noses, yet the stink was far stronger than their spicy scent. Wide streams of filth ran down the centers of the streets we passed through, I saw people empty waste buckets out of second-story windows onto the heads of passers-by beneath. Mounds of rotting food, dead animals, refuse of all kinds were heaped at street corners, covered with flies and running with sickly-looking liquids. I shuddered at the sight of rats scurrying down the alleys—fat, well-fed rats—in large numbers.
I had coins in my pockets to
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