Anne of the Fens (3 page)

“All that display distracts us from awareness of Him.”

I had heard this so many times I said it without thought. But there was a niggling echo of her argument in my mind. “Splendor” was a lovely word.

“I won't give you away,” I decided, “but you must tell me everything about the services.”

“With pleasure.”

She began to tell of priests dressed in robes of purple and gold with large gold crosses upon their chests, and velvet hats upon their heads, and the smell of incense in the air. I felt as I had at the fair, torn between the delights of the senses and knowing that such delights were sinful.

I wanted to know about confession.

“If you can gain forgiveness for all your sins, does that mean you can do whatever you want?

“No. You must repent, truly, in your heart, or God will not forgive you.”

Marianne left soon after. I struggled out of bed and went to my little window. The sun was still shining sharp on the red brick of the castle walls. It was my earliest memory, the red brick of the castle glinting in the sun. Beauty. The play about Romeo and Juliet was beautiful. Beautiful things could be sinful but surely they did not have to be.

What to think about Catholicism?

Many people had taught me it was evil — Father, Mother, Simon, Reverend Cotton. Perhaps while the Catholic Church was evil, the people who practiced it were not all evil. Perhaps I could teach Marianne. I realized it was she who had been teaching and I the one learning.

I returned to bed, shivering and sweating, and passed in and out of sleep. In my waking periods, I thought about religion and the play. Shakespeare was not a Catholic, but he was no Puritan. I think he had no religion, and lived in a Godless fashion. There had been lewd puns and rough humor in what I had heard at the fair.

The Earl had a wonderful library, containing hundreds of books. Not all of the books were by Puritan authors, but there were none that spoke against Puritanism.

I would certainly not be able to get back to the fair. To find the ending of the story, I needed to find the book. The only possibility was Simon, but could I manage to persuade him to tell me? And would he tell Father that I had asked?

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

T
HE NEXT DAY,
when the light came through the window, I felt less achy and my forehead no longer burned. I rose with Patience and went with her to morning prayers in the chapel. How small and bare the chapel was, I thought. Four of its size could have fit into St. Botolph's, in Boston, where we attended services. After our breakfast of bread and milk, Mother said that I could spend the day in the library. One advantage of being sickly was that I had fewer chores and could spend more time reading and talking with Simon.

The castle had the same floor plan on each of its four floors, a huge central room, surrounded by smaller rooms, and small round rooms at the corners where the turrets were. The servants lived in the basement. The first floor, the grandest, was where the Earl entertained and held important events, like the wedding of his sister Arbella. The second floor held the chapel, Father's office where he heard complaints from the tenants of the estate, and the library in the large central room. We lived on the third, and the Earl's family lived on the top.

There were not enough books in the world to fill the second floor library entirely, but the whole north side of the room had shelves and shelves of books. There was a broad carved table of dark oak running halfway the width of the room facing the shelves, where Simon — my father's assistant and my tutor — was sitting that morning, his dark head poring over one thick volume, with others opened every which way around him.

“Greetings. Feeling better? You look pale as a dewberry.”

I made a face at him. I had known Simon for four years, since I was eleven and he twenty, almost twice my age. He was handsome, tall, and well built — with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He had fine, dark eyes.

In the past year or so, when I had started noticing men as men, I had thought of Simon in a different way. He was closer to my age now, it seemed, but he still acted only like a tutor. Sometimes I tried to flirt a little, or wear something pretty when I was going to meet him, but he did not notice at all. He knew so much he was always interesting to talk with, though.

“How are the Punic Wars coming?” he asked me, motioning me to the short three-legged stool across the table from him.

I had been reading one of Father's favorite books, Raleigh's
History of the World.
Father said it had taken Raleigh fifteen years in prison to write it, and I could spend a few months on it. I had not finished the pages Simon had assigned me and I wanted to distract him. I also wanted to talk to him about what Marianne had told me, though I knew I had to be careful how I did it.

“Please, Simon, Mother says if we do not pay the King's tax we may be arrested. I think, then, we must pay it. What do you think?”

“It is an unlawful tax. The beetle-headed dwarf wants only to fund his war in Spain.” Simon always called King Charles a dwarf because he was so short, but over time his language had become more and more insulting.

“Could you be arrested for calling the King a beetle-headed dwarf?”

“Possibly. I trust you will not report me.” Simon looked away, slightly embarrassed. I did not usually comment on his foul language toward the King.

“What if we are arrested?”

“Your father, the Earl, and I all believe we must act on our principles. Many, many are refusing to pay, and he cannot arrest us all. It is all because of his silly dream to marry the daughter of the Spanish King. He wants revenge for the rejection he received.”

“Such a romantic story, like a fairy tale, King Charles crossing all of Europe in disguise to find and woo her.” I knew I was making Simon angrier. His face was turning dark.

“Pah. Please, Anne. Don't be a silly, sentimental girl. Sometimes I think it is impossible to teach a girl.”

I wanted to hit him but of course I could not.

He went on, “What if the King had agreed to her conditions? What if he had become Catholic? England could have burst into civil war.”

“Is it so bad to be Catholic?” Now I could raise the question in my mind.

Simon stood up from the table and his voice was loud. “Anne, have you learned nothing from all my teaching, the Reverend Cotton's teaching, your father's teaching? What do you mean, is it so bad to be Catholic? You are a Puritan, pledged to purify the corrupt church. That should be the aim of everything we do. Is it so bad to be Catholic? God's teeth.”

He went on, even louder. “Don't you remember our studies of the reign of Bloody Mary, before Elizabeth? How many Puritans did she kill?”

“At least three hundred.”

“And how, may I ask?”

“Many of them were burned alive, in wicker baskets hung over flames.”

My neck hurt from looking up at him, and I moved my stool back further from the table.

“I am not an idiot,” I said, trying to sound dignified. “I know what it is to be a Puritan. I know what you are afraid of, that Charles will go back to Catholicism and then Puritans will be burned alive again. I am asking you something different. What I want to know is how about the person who is a Catholic. Is every Catholic a bad person? I don't think so.”

“You have found a person who is Catholic and whom you like!” He scowled down at me. “Who is it?”

I blushed. Simon was so intelligent. I would have to be careful not to give Marianne away. I began to trace the grain of the wood in the oak table with my finger. I gathered my courage and looked up at him. “What if I have? Do you want to send her to the gallows? Is that how good Puritans act towards others? I certainly shall not tell you who it is.”

He began to pace back and forth. “You are becoming impudent, young woman. Have you been listening to my conversations with your father?”

“No,” I said honestly.

“I think we should try to convert Catholics and the King's Church of Englanders also. Your father feels that is impossible, and we might as well hang them or expel them. Or go somewhere we could leave them all behind.”

“The New World?” I asked, feeling anxiety in my stomach.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or Holland.”

I did not want to think about leaving my country. “I believe that this person is a good person.”

Simon's dark eyebrows rose, and his eyes seemed bigger than ever, as he stopped pacing and looked into mine.

“You must tell me who it is.”

“I shall not.” I rose to my feet as well. “You don't trust me enough. I know what is good and bad in people.” As I said it, I knew it was true. “You tutor me, but only to Puritan ideas. I want to read other things. I want to read Shakespeare.” My voice was loud and shrill. I had meant to persuade Simon to help me find Shakespeare, not to challenge him like this.

“If you are so adult, then see if you can find Shakespeare. You will need the luck of the rabbit to do so.” He looked at me hard, and I thought there was something significant about the rabbit. I knew that the servants said, “White rabbit, white rabbit, white rabbit,” the first day of each month for luck. Did he mean that?

“What do you mean?”

“I have said too much already.” He was still angry, and so was I.

I
LEFT THE
room, breathing hard and a little red in the face myself. A silly, sentimental girl. Ha! Just because I was interested in men did not mean that I was silly or stupid. I climbed the circular stairs in the corner of the castle, up three flights to the roof. I thought of it as my place. Unless the Earl posted a guard because of some kind of danger, which hardly ever happened, I could be alone there.

The fens stretched away for miles in all directions. I could see the reeds and grasses close by, with the channels cut through them by men and nature. The distant view was flat as a rich green pancake, with some pieces of forest and farm lands sticking out. Watery places glimmered in the sun, and flocks of birds settled and rose from them. It was a fair day, with clouds scuttling across the sky. The steeple of the church in Boston shimmered faintly, far in the distance. The argument and the three flights had taken their toll, and it took a while for the peace of the setting to still my pounding heart.

I thought about what Simon might have meant, and how I could search for the book. I watched a small puff of dust move toward the castle along the Boston Way.

The road curved along the Witham River in several places, and trees lined it, so it was hard to make out who was coming. The puff grew larger. It had to be horses or a carriage to raise that much dust. It could be one of the castle villagers coming back from the market, but it was moving too quickly. As far as I knew, the Earl and his family were in the castle. There was also another little puff of dust further behind.

As I watched, I could make out fast-moving horses and red jackets. I knew what they were. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, slipping on the turns of the stone stairs, to the second floor and Father's office.

“Father, the Sheriff's men are coming,” I gasped.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

F
ATHER WAS ALWAYS
organized, which he related to the military background he was always telling us about.

“Quick, run to the guard house and tell Erik to raise the drawbridge. Then hurry to Simon and tell him to burn any of our papers that could cause trouble. Then go to your mother and tell her to slow them down at the moat. I'll find the Earl.”

I ran down the stairs and out the door and across the castle grounds to the moat.

“Raise the drawbridge,” I said, my voice hoarse to my own ears. Erik, the fat guardsman, lounging, a smell of ale on his breath, looked at me as though I had lost my senses. The moat had not been closed for months, and I was not a person to give him orders.

“Damnation. By command of the Earl. The Sheriff is coming.”

He turned pale, and began to work the ropes that raised the bridge.

I ran back up to find Simon and passed my mother coming down the stairs. Father had already told her about the moat. Simon was no longer in the library, but I found him in his own small office on the second floor. He grasped the problem instantly and began flinging papers every which way. Since it was May, there was no fire in the fireplace. He thrust a pile of papers and a book into my arms and told me to run to Cook's fire. Again, I sped down the stairs, heading toward the kitchen. It was about a hundred feet from the castle in a building made of gray stone instead of brick. The kitchen was outside the castle, of course, to protect against a fire from the ovens spreading and burning everything down.

“Where are you going in such a speed, young Anne?” Cook has always treated me like I was her child, and saved special treats for me.

“No time to talk, just let me throw these things on the fire. The Sheriff is coming.”

Her smooth broad face crumpled into worry.

“Ah, what will happen now?”

Everyone knew of the tax, and that the Earl had not paid it.

I pushed past Cook and placed Simon's papers and the book on top of the fire. I hated to burn a precious book, but there was no choice. The flames licked the very top of the hearth, the fire so big it was suspicious in itself. I hoped it would die down before the lawmen came. I left the kitchen and went outside to watch.

Patience had come out as well. We could hear the Sheriff's men shouting angrily around the guard house.

“Open, open, in the name of the law!”

Patience grabbed my hand and we stood. “Mother has sent Erik away and is managing the ropes herself,” Patience said.

We could hear Mother crying out to the Sheriff's men. “It has caught. I cannot loosen it.” She looked helpless.

“She is magnificent,” Patience said.