The Lady and the Duke

Part I

The sun was coming down. She had survived another long day of suffocating boredom; she was supposed to be whiling away the day with sober and modest activities. She certainly wasn’t supposed to be outside, but the dark rooms of the manor were stifling. She had been trying to occupy herself with needlework, but couldn’t concentrate. The embroidery rested in her lap as she toyed with her wedding ring and gazed out across the grounds of her parents’ home.

She was a blemish on the beautifully landscaped gardens: a sad, pale shadow in a black damask gown. She reclined against an apple tree beside the little stream that ran the length of the garden, trying not to think of the scolding she would get when her mother found she had dirtied her best mourning dress. She kept her back to the grey stone manor as she contemplated the perfection of the creation before her. The low sun highlighted the treetops and bushes with its gentle orange glow and made the sighing stream glitter as it kept up its constant flow. She picked up a nearby stone and tossed it into the water. The wound was healed as soon as it opened. She felt foolish, but she envied the stream.  Her mother kept telling her that time and prayer would mend all hurts, but the last week had been an eternity spent in mourning and mass, and she still wept hourly for her husband and their newborn son.

A gardener emerged from a cluster of trees and stared in surprise, not knowing how to react to this tender, serene widow, as still and sedate as a marble statue. The young ladies of the house weren’t usually to be found sitting alone in the gardens.

She heard his footsteps and turned her head to see who it was. She was relieved to see it wasn’t her parents coming to intrude yet again. They disapproved of her being unchaperoned at any time, it was one of the reasons they had cited to bring her home so swiftly after her bereavement. She knew their main motive was to make a new match for her as quickly as possible. A fertile, wealthy baroness was a valuable asset on the marriage market. Her first had been an impressive union for the daughter of a mere knight, and her parents no doubt sought to press for an even more influential husband this time.

When the gardener didn’t move, she inclined her head pleasantly. He jumped, remembering himself, and made a little bow, “my lady Mary.”

She nodded blankly in reply and turned back to the stream. She would never have gone so long without seeing a servant at the grand house she had shared with her husband; he was often at court, battling dozens of other courtiers to ingratiate himself with the increasingly volatile King Henry in order to secure lands and favours; in his absence he entrusted the running and organising of his estate to Mary, his ‘best beloved’.

Her blank facade broke momentarily as the image of him formed in her mind. She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky, feeling him in everything around her; as quiet and gentle as he had always been. The cool breeze caressed her face and neck and toyed with the loose tendrils of hair that had come loose from her hood. The stream whispered in a language she couldn’t understand, at once strangely familiar and distantly near. Tears welled up behind her eyelids and seeped through the cracks, purging the acute grief she couldn’t acknowledge. Her arms yearned for her Edward and the son she had named for him. Her breasts no longer ached in their bindings, still emptied of milk for the baby who had no need for earthly nourishment now.

They had gone so swiftly. Dizzy, thirsty and aching in the morning, feverish in the afternoon and dead by nightfall. The doctor had diagnosed sweating sickness and bade her make haste away from the house, lest the disease should take her into its clutches and take her life with its deadly efficiency. She stayed with her young family, praying to God that if he took one, he would take them all, but by some miracle, or curse, she had been spared.

The tears flowed freely, the intangible caresses of the wind doing little to fill her bereft arms.

Darkness was fast encroaching when Mary’s mother came searching for her. She intended to scold her daughter for being outside for so long, for being out unchaperoned, for the sullied dress, for the unfinished embroidery... yet, Mary’s tear-streaked and grief-stricken face kindled Lady Margaret’s maternal spirit and she couldn’t find it in her heart to upbraid her eldest child about anything. Instead, she helped her daughter to her feet and brushed the lingering tears from her face.

Mary met her mother’s eyes, and her voice was cracked as she forced out a single word: “Why?”

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, Mary. We must accept His will.”

She fought to take the verse to heart and compose herself as her mother led her towards the family chapel to hear evening mass.

The word of God was comforting to Mary; the soothing, alien Latin washed over her in the cool of the candle-lit chapel and her rosary flowed through her fingers as she repeated the rubric back to the priest. A trinity of ghosts swirled around her as she fixed her eyes on the sumptuously bejewelled Host of the altar.