27
The cold air makes pale phantoms of their breath as John Lumley and Fulke Vaesy cross the courtyard towards the Nonsuch kitchens. Above them an owl hunts, gliding silently over the roof-tiles.
‘I thought the kitchens were the best place to put her,’ Lumley explains. ‘You can’t keep up the pretence of silence for long in a kitchen – if, indeed, that is what it is.’
‘Pretence, I assure you, John. And I shall delight in proving it,’ counters Vaesy.
As they reach the open door a scullion darts out. She’s carrying a haunch of meat over one shoulder, yet still contrives a passable curtsey. At Nonsuch the servants are adept. When the queen and her court are here and two hundred mouths need feeding, they display the fleetness of swifts on the wing at sunset. ‘Have you come to see Betony, sir?’ the girl asks.
‘Betony?’ echoes John Lumley, raising a quizzical brow.
‘Seeing as how she won’t tell us her name, sir, we’ve decided to call her Betony.’
It takes Lumley a moment to catch on. ‘Betony – Lizzy planted it in the kitchen yard one spring,’ he explains to Vaesy. ‘It’s run rampant ever since.’
He leads Vaesy into a plaster-walled cavern the size of a stableblock, lit by the glow from one of four huge fireplaces and a score of tallow candles set in heavy iron sconces. Before each hearth is a spit-iron for turning whole beasts. There are broad benches for preparing food, towering shelves laden with china, pewter and stoneware, smaller ovens set into one wall for baking bread. At the far end a door gives onto the pastry room and boiling house. Vaesy thinks to himself: I could fit my town house on Thames Street into this space and still have room for the garden.
Sprint, the head cook, is waiting for them, alerted by a servant sent in advance. He is a ruddy-faced fellow with a barrel chest and a good belly, as sound a testimonial to what flows from the Nonsuch kitchens as you could wish for. Unusually for one of England’s great houses, he’s not French.
‘Has she spoken yet, Master Sprint?’ asks Lumley.
‘Not a word, my lord. At first it was like having a trapped starling in the place – flapping her arms like a proper Tom-o’-Bedlam. She’s calmed now. I don’t think she fears us any longer. But I keep young Will busy by the door, just in case she tries to flee.’ He nods towards a tousle-haired lad in a woollen jerkin, who sits by the door salting stockfish.
‘Does she respond to instruction, Master Sprint?’
‘Most diligently, my lord.’
‘Have you looked to see if she has a tongue?’ Vaesy asks. ‘Sometimes a deformity can occur–’
Sprint laughs. ‘It appears she has a fine, strong tongue, sir. She’s all but emptied the scullions’ pottage bowl.’
‘If she does indeed have a tongue, I could lay some irritant upon it – sting the organ back into function,’ Vaesy suggests. ‘I don’t suppose there are nettles in your privy garden at this time of the year, my lord.’
‘We’ll have no need of nettles, thank you, Fulke,’ says Lumley, appalled. ‘We shall examine her with all gentleness. I suspect the child has known great suffering in her life. Let us not add to it.’
A breathless Francis Deniker arrives, a cloak thrown over his nightshirt. ‘I understand you wish me to make a record, my lord,’ he says, half-disbelieving the reason for the summons. ‘It seems an odd time to study the child, if I may say so. Could it not wait until morning?’
‘Sir Fulke and I have had a goodly supper. Fine food and Rhenish tend to put men of physic in an inquisitive frame of mind. Now is as good a time as any.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ the clerk replies, wishing that Gabriel Quigley was here to do the job instead.
‘Well, Master Sprint,’ says Lumley cheerfully, ‘lead us to her.’
Washed in a tub of water scented with camomile and marjoram, dressed in a clean linen kirtle, the girl who scrubs the bread-ovens looks an altogether different creature from the wildcat they dragged out of a hedge only yesterday. Her skin still carries the marks made by thorn and bramble, red wheals against skin that still bears the tan of a summer spent on the road. Her hair is not yet fit to be seen outside the Nonsuch kitchen yard, but the terror in her eyes has subsided to a tired wariness, like that of an exhausted bird caught in a net. She scrubs with a distant look on her face, pausing every now and then to look around her, as though she can’t quite believe where she is.
‘I’ve set Joanna to keep charge of her, my lord,’ says Sprint, glancing at the plump woman in a freeze-smock who guides Betony at her labour. ‘Shall I have her brought to you?’
‘This gentleman is one of the finest physicians in all England,’ Lumley says when the girl stands in front of him. ‘I have asked him to examine you, so that together we might better understand the nature of your silence. Do you consent?’
The girl they have named Betony neither consents nor refuses. Instead she looks at Lumley the way a dog may look at a master it has not yet learned to trust.
‘You’re quite safe, lass,’ says Sprint gently. ‘This gentleman is the lord of Nonsuch Palace, which, as I’ve already told you, is where you find yourself. It is a goodly palace, and we in it are goodly people – at least we like to think so. Is that not so, my lord?’
‘Indeed it is, Master Sprint,’ says Lumley in what he hopes is his most reassuring tone.
‘And just as our master, Lord Lumley, is obedient to God, so must we be obedient to him,’ says Sprint. This causes John Lumley to smile. Sprint and his assistant, Joanna, are the least biddable servants in Nonsuch.
‘Two stools, placed by the fire, please – just there,’ orders Vaesy, indicating the great hearth with its spit-iron and the logs burning merrily behind. ‘One for me, one for the child.’
It is uncomfortably hot in front of the fire. No sooner has Vaesy taken his place than he begins to sweat. He unlaces the topmost points of his shirt. He leans across the space between the stools and takes the girl by the arm, catching her off-guard. He does his best to make his face gentle, but he is a big man and his beard is impressive.
‘Now then, my daughter, you have nothing whatsoever to fear from me,’ he says with a forced smile, wiping his brow with the back of his free hand.
For a moment the anatomist and the vagrant girl simply stare at each other. Then, as Vaesy tells Betony that nothing she might say will get her into harm, he gently slides his hand down to her wrist, forcing her hand against the stool and effectively pinning her there.
‘Tell us, child, what is your real name?’
Betony does not answer.
This surprises no one except Sir Fulke Vaesy, who is accustomed to being answered promptly and with reverence. He raises his voice. ‘Child – your name?’
Silence.
Francis Deniker makes his first entry on the paper he has brought with him.
‘Come now, Mistress Betony, did you not hear Master Sprint say we must all be obedient to those set over us?’ Vaesy asks. ‘We know you are not deaf. I am told you have taken instructions from that good lady yonder,’ he says, glancing in the direction of Joanna. ‘So I know you understand me when I say “obedient”. Are you obedient, Betony – obedient to God and His ordained natural order?’
The girl nods. But she says nothing.
Sweating profusely now, Vaesy blusters on. He asks her where she came from, how she got to Cheam church. He tells her that she should feel honoured to be here. The queen comes to Nonsuch often, he explains. The queen eats food prepared in these very kitchens. Does Betony know the name of our sovereign majesty, the queen?