Читать книгу A Court Affair - Emily Purdy - Страница 14

Cumnor Place, Berkshire, near Oxford Sunday, September 8, 1560

I have no illusions now that, if I were to do the same today, I wouldn’t end up alone, crying in the bedroom all night, and the crab would be flung into a pot of boiling water, then onto Robert’s plate. He would have no compassion, no tenderness, no mercy for either of us.

It seems a whole lifetime ago now, as if I am a withered and ancient crone looking back on the fond days of her girlhood, not a mere ten years. It breaks my heart all over again to look back over the years and see it all gone so wrong, all the honey sweetness of our love turned to vile and sour vinegar, and so soon; I often marvel at how little a time our love—the time when we were both in love—lasted.

Hemsby seems little more than a dream now, a fairy tale, a magical time like King Arthur’s Camelot; all that is left of it now are memories and the ornamental box the deed was gifted to us in. All the pretty shells were packed away in a box; I’ve moved so often since, I don’t know where they are now—like our love, they got lost along the way. As for the castle itself, Robert sold it, to pay off his gambling debts, or buy gifts for Elizabeth, or help pay her expenses when she was in disfavour, or perhaps to pay his tailor when he declared he would not make another garment for Robert until the bill was settled, or buy yet more horses; the money came and went so fast, it was there and gone again, like a flash of silver white lightning, vivid and bright against the night sky. My mind was never quick enough to keep up with it and follow where it went. And that was the way Robert liked it; he preferred that on this subject my mind should always remain a darkened muddle, a dingy mud puddle rather than a crystal clear spring. “You have your pretties and a roof over your head, my angel,” he would say, kissing my cheek. “Best to leave it at that; I have men in my pay to balance the books and dole out the coins. No need for you to spend your days squinting and wrinkling your pretty brow over the ledgers when you could be embroidering roses on the hems of your petticoats instead. And you know how much I like that, knowing that I am the only man to see them, and these rosy buds,” he would add, then bend his head to nuzzle and kiss my nipples and fly all facts and figures right out of my head on passion’s wings.