A Step Back in Time

I paced my bedchamber backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, my soft embroidered slippers shushing on the sweet scented rushes that covered the bumpy old floorboards, my hands twined together so tightly that my knuckles shone white. I didn’t know what to do with myself. My grief was so deep and so palpable that I suspected I may never recover.

I had thought that the death of baby Henry was hard to bear, and sadly, the recent death of my father. But the execution of my mother, Margaret Pole, had rendered me helpless. My grief ate away at me, just as the worms and the insects devoured my mother’s flesh as she lay in the mud and dust of the earth. The thought of her not being buried whole made me wring my hands with a terrible misery. What havoc King Henry had wrought since he took the throne!

Standing at the large bay window, I saw that once again it was a fine day. Every day had been a beautiful sunny day since my mother died—or should I say since my mother was murdered. I’d never seen the sky so blue, the grass so green, the flowers so bright. It was as if Mother Nature was mocking me, laughing at me, giving the illusion that all was well when it was not. I was trapped in a dark, suffocating tunnel of grief, with no hope of escape. There was no hope. Not anymore.

I heard high pitched laughter like the tinkling of bells, and saw that my children played in the beautiful gardens of Warblington Manor. I had managed to stay there for now in my childhood home, much to my husband’s disgust, but I had a terrible fear that now my mother was no longer there, the house, which was a gift to her from King Henry, would be seized, and where would we go then? Would we go back to London to Henry’s family? My heart ached at the thought of leaving Warblington.

I watched my daughter, my Dorothy, my heart, who was but fifteen years old now, the very age I was when I married Henry Stafford. I hoped that a better husband would be chosen for her, a loving husband, a man like Gregory Walsh, from whom she would receive kisses and hugs and joy. I vowed that I would have a say in the matter regardless of how difficult that may be.

I watched my boys in the garden too. Henry, reminding me of the first Henry, who had died such a long time ago, and Thomas and Edward. Oh, and there was Richard too, and Walter. All of them so young and so vibrant and so free. I had many children, all of whom had given my mother, Margaret Pole, such pleasure. For this I was glad, for sometimes guilt at not being able to prevent her death overcame me, and how I stifled my screams I did not know.

My husband, Henry Stafford, grumbled and whined, and told me that my mother should never have prophesied about the baby that I carried in my belly, and that her gossip about Queen Anne had angered King Henry.

“How did she know you carried a girl?” he hissed at me time and time again. “It was witchcraft,” he whispered close to my ear. “It was witchcraft, Ursula, my dear wife, and she has paid the price.”

“That was idle talk only,” I said hysterically. “A mere guess. And as for gossip about Queen Anne, it was my brother’s gossip, not my mother’s.”

My stomach felt tight as a drum beneath the voluminous folds of my gown, and the suspicion that I may be pregnant again made me cup my rounded belly hard with my hands. I had lost track of my courses, and thought that perhaps it was grief that had made the secret place between my legs so dry and unresisting. But then again, it had never been anything else for my husband, Henry Stafford. Gregory was the only man that could ever make sweet juices run so freely from a body that became supple and pliant at his touch.

Breathless with misery and with an urge for Gregory, I ran from my bedchamber, my gown floating behind me like the sail of a ship and my headdress swaying as I moved. I was careful to leave from the back door so I would not be seen by my children, who played at the front of the house. The heat was thick and sludgy as glue as I tried to walk through it, and sweat broke out under my arms and between my breasts. It trickled from beneath my headdress and into my eyes, where it stung so badly I was almost blinded.

The cottage, Gregory’s cottage, stood empty and still when finally I arrived, the door firmly closed and latched and the windows a terrifying blank. No smoke trailed from the chimney, and in the garden no chickens clucked and scratched at the ground with clawed feet. I peered in the windows and saw nothing but empty rooms. No fire burned in the grate, and no black cat, shiny as a lump of coal, was curled on the hearth.

Gregory was not there. I banged on the door with my fists until they blossomed into ripe yellow, green, and blue bruises, but there was no answer, no opening swing of the door and Gregory’s smiling face. I sank to my knees in the dust and the dirt, my beautiful mourning gown spreading around me like a pool of dark water and my hands covering my face. How could I bear this as well as everything else? How could I live this life now that Gregory had gone?

***

I spent the evening reading about Ursula Pole on Wikipedia, and wondered yet again how she had managed to live so long with all that she had gone through—the fourteen pregnancies, the death of her baby, and the execution of her mother. Even one of her brothers had been executed. I supposed that was what life was like then, and Ursula’s was barely different from anybody else’s.

I googled Gregory Walsh desperately, but could still find no trace of him. I was searching for clues as to why he would disappear without telling Ursula where he was going. I felt sure that he would have tried somehow to get word to her. Smiling to myself, I realized that getting a message to somebody in those days wasn’t easy. How did they manage without a telephone, without text messages and emails? It wasn’t as though Gregory could have just left her a note under the mat. He would have had to find a boy to take her a message, and paid him a penny or whatever the going rate was in those days. Now why hadn’t he done that?

I had a feeling that the whole thing was tied up with the dreaded Henry Stafford. Perhaps he had found out about Ursula’s affair and sought revenge on Gregory. The thought of any harm coming to Gregory was hard to bear, and the feeling that I would never see him again stayed with me for the rest of the evening, an evening where alone for once, as Sarah was staying with Neil, I also did some good hard thinking about my dilemma with Max.

It was pretty obvious now that I would have to speak to him in light of what Sarah had told me about Max really and truly being Gregory Walsh. A sudden thought occurred to me; Max would be able to tell me why Gregory had disappeared without a word. Yes, why didn’t I think of that before? If anybody could tell me, it had to be Max. If, of course, he was who he said he was. And according to Sarah, he was Gregory without a doubt.

I still felt as though I should look for other work though, and spent some time googling job vacancies on the Indeed website and looking at other branches of Reynolds & Rhodes, wondering if I would be able to get a transfer if I needed to.

Feeling somewhat lighter hearted at my decision to speak to Max, but still shaky from my recent trip back and the shock of Gregory not being there when I needed him, I poured myself a glass of wine and, taking a sip, went upstairs to prepare myself for bed.

In my bedroom I gazed from between the curtains at the back garden, which seemed to stretch into infinity in the darkness. The pond gleamed in the dusk, and I could hear faint splashing sounds as goldfish curved through the water. The occasional flutter and hoot could be heard from the inky sky as owls scoured the garden and the allotments for tasty mice.

Stars twinkled in the blackness and, gazing up at them, I wondered if Ursula was up there, and Margaret and baby Henry, all of them swinging from the stars, taking a well earned rest after living such traumatic lives. I took another sip of wine when, to my shock, a fanfare echoed throughout the still air. Shaking my head, thinking I must be hearing things, and knowing that I certainly hadn’t had enough wine to be drunk, I pulled back slightly from the window. But my eye was caught by something strange, something so strange that I moved nearer again because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The fanfare rang out again, and a great army of men came into view, unkempt bloodthirsty men that marched over the allotments, annihilating all our carefully planted vegetables. Their big heavy boots tramped over the lawns and the flower beds, flattening all the beautiful flowers and churning the borders into sticky slimy mud.

The noise was so loud, a terrible din of marching boots and raucous voices, neighing horses and pounding hoof beats, that at first I worried what the neighbors would think. But coming to my senses, I realized that I wasn’t in my bedroom at Mitchell Road any longer, that this house and garden didn’t exist yet, and that all this colossal uproar was happening in another time and another place. King Henry’s men didn’t know that they were ruining my garden and my allotment, but in their time were marching across the drawbridge and into the grounds of Warblington Manor.

The royal standards fluttered ahead in a chilly breeze, and a black carriage, jolting and jerking, the king’s arms emblazoned on the side, brought up the rear. A bedraggled looking lackey, a young boy not much older than young Henry Stafford, walked alongside, struggling to pull its thin wheels out of the thick mud. I could hear a harsh voice shouting at him from within. It wasn’t night time any more, but day, and it was cold. The sky was grey dotted, with black angry looking clouds that spat rain as if from a great gaping mouth.

Looking down at myself, I saw that wore my mourning gown again, and not the jeans and T-shirt that I had dressed in that morning. When I turned from the window I realized that I was in my bedchamber and a fire burned in the grate, belching out smoke so grey and noxious that an unbearable tickle in my throat made me cough. I knew with a sinking heart that this was King Henry’s retinue, and that he had come to claim Warblington Manor—had come to turn me from my childhood home, to banish me and my husband, Henry Stafford, and my great brood of children, back to the hustle and bustle of London and to the home of Henry’s family. My heart ached at the thought of leaving, for I felt closer to my mother here than anywhere else in the world.

I ran downstairs and to the great heavy front door and, flinging it open, went into the garden pursued by my husband, Henry, his skinny legs moving in a blur, faster than I’d ever seen before. He glared at me, his bulbous eyes bulging from his high domed forehead. “Ah, this is it then, Ursula.” He pointed at the house with a long skinny finger. “Warblington Manor will be your home no more.”

Our attention was diverted by the royal carriage coming to an abrupt halt in front of us, its two gleaming black horses neighing and prancing. The army of men marched forward and began to enter the house, taking off their swords and flinging them with almighty clashes into an untidy heap on the tiled entrance way floor. The window of the carriage rattled down and King Henry peered out, showing his face which, since the last time I’d seen him, was as pink and puffy as a bloated pig’s bladder.

As befitted the king I curtseyed deeply, alongside Henry Stafford, who bowed his head so low, his bulbous forehead almost touched his knees. Inside the carriage I saw that one of King Henry’s legs rested on the seat opposite to him, and I noticed that a bloody bandage covered a suppurating wound on his thigh which stank worse than the muddy beaches at Langstone Shore. I took several deep breaths of the fresh salty air to fortify myself.

“Ah, Ursula, my belle Ursula. I wish to reside here this evening. Have you food and ale aplenty?”

“Oh yes, sire, food and ale enough for many men.”

His multitude of chins wobbled with glee and, clapping his thick hands together to alert his man servant, he made to get out of the carriage. As if from nowhere his retinue gathered around him like seagulls spying a dead fish. As he alighted from the carriage, he fixed me with a penetrating gaze, the clear blue eyes of his younger handsomer self now rheumy grey slits.

I gazed back, my face a mask, not showing the turmoil that was inside, not showing the grief at the murder of my mother. King Henry stated, “Two days, Ursula Pole. You have two days to pack your possessions and take your husband….” Here he eyed a genuflecting Henry Stafford with disdain, “And your children back to London. This is at the order of the king!”

Leaning heavily on his man servant, he walked slowly into Warblington Manor, without once looking back. And then my eyesight began to waver and King Henry’s retreating back began to blur, the splendid colors of his clothes becoming muted. I awoke still standing at the window in Mitchell Road, gripping the window sill while looking out at the garden. I felt dizzy and sick, and more so than ever because of the strong smell of fruit emanating from the half-drank glass of wine at my side.

Lying on my bed, worrying now about having to pack so quickly for the trip to London and the grim look on King Henry’s overfed face when he had given me such a strict order, I took several deep breaths and, trying to put such problems from my mind, closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep.