The House Of Allerbrook

Born in London, Valerie Anand knew at the age of six she wanted to be an author. At the age of fifteen, she saw MGM’s film Ivanhoe and walked out of the cinema knowing that historical novels were the kind she most wanted to write.

Over the course of her long and distinguished writing career, Valerie has written many works of historical fiction, most recently The House of Lanyon.

Still living in London, Valerie frequently visits Exmoor, the setting featured in The House of Allerbrook.

THE HOUSE OF ALLERBROOK

VALERIE ANAND

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated, with grateful thanks, to the

Lamacraft family in Somerset, from whom, in bygone years,

I many times hired horses to ride on and around Exmoor.

Without them, this book would probably

never have been written.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would be hard put to list all the books, pamphlets and people I have consulted while preparing this novel.

Books concerning the Tudor age include Elizabeth Jenkins’s excellent work Elizabeth the Great, as well as books by Jane Dunn, Lady Antonia Fraser, Wallace MacCaffrey, Alison Plowden, Jasper Ridley, Anne Somerset and Alison Weir. I must also give special mention to Elizabeth’s Spymaster by Robert Hutchinson and Big Chief Elizabeth by Giles Milton.

Books concerning Exmoor include Living on Exmoor by Hope Bourne, The Old Farm by Robin Stanes, Yesterday’s Exmoor by Hazel Eardley-Wilmot, Devon Families by Rosemary Lauder and Somerset Families by Dr Robert Dunning.

Dr Dunning (County editor for Somerset), David Holt of North Molton, the Reverend Peter Attwood of All Saints Church, North Molton, David Bromwich (Somerset Studies Librarian) and the members of the Exmoor Society also gave me much help in my research.

V.A.

Part One

THE RELUCTANT MAID OF

HONOUR

1535–1540

CHAPTER ONE

New Gowns For Court 1535

Allerbrook House is a charming and unusual manorhouse in the Exmoor district of Somerset. The charm lies in the pleasant pro portions, in the three gables looking out from the slate roof, echoed by the smaller, matching gable over the porch, and the two wings stretching back toward the hillside that sweeps up to the moorland ridge above.

In front, the land drops away gently, but to the west there is a steep plunge into the wooded combe where the Allerbrook River flows noisily down from its moorland source toward the village of Clicket in the valley, a mile or so away.

There is no other house of its type actually on Exmoor. It has other uncommon features, too. These include the beautiful Tudor roses (these days they are painted red and white just as they were originally) carved into the panels and window seats of the great hall, and the striking portrait of Jane Allerbrook which hangs upstairs in the east wing.

The portrait is signed “Spenlove” and is the only known work by this artist. Jane looks as though she is in her early forties. She is sturdily built, clear skinned and firm of feature—not a great beauty, but, like the house, possessed of charm. She is dressed in the Elizabethan style, though without excess, her ruff and farthingale modest in size. Her hair, still brown, is gathered under a silver net. Her gown is of tawny damask, open in front to reveal a cream damask kirtle, and her brown eyes are gentle and smiling.

But the painter knew his business and recorded his sitter’s face in detail. There is a guarded look in those smiling eyes, as though their owner has secrets to keep, and there are little lines of worry around them, too. Well, Jane in her forties already knew the meaning of trouble.

Her original name was Jane Sweetwater. The household didn’t adopt the name of Allerbrook until the 1540s. She was sixteen years of age on that day in 1535, when the family was preparing to send her elder sister, Sybil, to court to serve Queen Anne Boleyn as a maid of honour, and with only a week to go before Sybil’s departure and a celebration dinner planned for the very next day, there was much anxiety in the household, because the new gowns that had been made for her had not yet been delivered.

“Eleanor,” said Jane Sweetwater to her sister-in-law, “Madame La Plage is coming. I’ve just seen her from the parlour window.”

“Thank God,” said Eleanor, brushing back the strand of hair that had escaped from her coif. “I know she sent word that she’d come without fail today, but I was beginning to think that Sybil would have to attend her celebration dinner in one of her old gowns.”

She wiped her forehead, which was damp. The March day was chilly enough, but she had been pulling extra benches around the table in the great hall, and the whole house seemed to be full of the steam from the kitchen. Preparations were under way for the feast tomorrow, when notable guests would gather to congratulate Sybil on her appointment to court, a great honour for the daughter of a Somerset yeoman.

Now everything that could possibly be prepared in advance was being so prepared, with much rolling and whisking and chopping by energetic maidservants, and pots and cauldrons simmering over a lively fire.

“Let me help you,” said Jane contritely, looking at her harassed sister-in-law. “I should have come down before. I was doing some mending. Where are we going to seat people?”

“There’ll be Sir William Carew and Lady Joan just here…and Master Thomas Stone and Mary Stone had better go opposite and they’ll want their daughter, Dorothy, beside them, I expect. Then there’s Ralph Palmer. He’ll probably have his father with him. Now, they’re family, though I’ve never got the relationship clear….”

“Distant cousins. I’ve never quite worked it out myself,” Jane remarked.

“Well, we’ll seat them on that side,” said Eleanor, pointing. “Then there’s the Lanyons from Lynmouth….”

“They’re distant relations, too,” Jane said.

“Yes. All from Francis’s side. I’m almost relieved that my own family can’t come, but my father’s not in good health…. If I put Owen and Katherine Lanyon here, they can talk to the Carews and the Stones quite easily and…”

Outside in the courtyard, dogs were barking and geese had begun a noisy cackling.

“That’s surely Madame La Plage at last,” said Jane. “I’d better go and tell Sybil.”

“I bring my most sincere regrets for the delay,” Madame La Plage said, leading her laden pack mule into the yard and descending from her pony into the midst of the cackling geese and barking dogs, just as Eleanor hastened out to greet her. “But I will do any needful adjustments immédiatement.”

Madame La Plage affected a French name and a French accent, but she was actually a local woman who had married one Will Beach of Porlock, a few miles west of the port of Minehead. After his death she had taken over his tailoring and dressmaking business. However, since Anne Boleyn, who’d spent many years in France, had captivated King Henry VIII, French food and styles of dress were in fashion. Mistress Beach had therefore moved herself and her business to Minehead and, with an appropriate accent, made a new start as Madame La Plage.

Most of her customers knew perfectly well that she was no more French than they were, but her work was good and she had prospered, acquiring clientele not only in Minehead but in the nearby port of Dunster, at the mouth of the River Avill, and even in Dunster Castle itself. Later she had become known more widely, even as far as Dulverton, in the very centre of the moor, and other places deep in the moorland, such as Allerbrook House, the home of the Sweetwater family, and the village of Clicket, which belonged to them.

The commission to make Sybil’s new gowns was a very good one, and she had worried because she had been too busy hitherto to ride the fourteen miles (as the crow flew; ponies had to take a longer route) from Minehead. She dismounted now with a flustered air, flapping her cloak at the livestock. “I…go away, you brute…cease flapping your wings! Be quiet, you noisy barking animals! Mistress Sweetwater, can you not…?”

Eleanor seized the two dogs by their respective collars and said “Shoo!” loudly to the geese just as two grooms appeared from the stable to take charge of pony and mule and unload the hampers. She sighed a little as she did so. Eleanor’s family in Dorset were dignified folk who lived in an elegant manorhouse, and she was often pained by the way her husband’s home had never quite shaken off its humble farming history.

Only a few generations ago it had been a simple farm, rented from a local landowner. Nowadays the Sweetwaters owned it as well as other land and had a family tomb in the church of St. Anne’s in Clicket, and neither Eleanor nor her husband’s two sisters had ever been asked to help spread muck on the fields or make black pudding from pig’s blood and innards or go out at harvest time to stock corn behind the reapers.

But the old atmosphere still lingered. The front windows of the otherwise beautiful house overlooked a farmyard surrounded by a confused array of stables, byres, poultry houses and sheds, and infested by aggressive geese, led by a gander with such a savage peck that even the huge black tomcat, Claws, who kept the mice in order, was terrified of him.

Peggy Ames, the chief cook and housekeeper, came out in her stained working apron, brandishing a rolling pin and laughing all over her plain, cheery face, to help chase the geese away, and Madame La Plage, along with her hampers, was taken into the hall. Eleanor sent Jane to call her sister, and offered refreshments which Madame said she would welcome after her long ride. The wind had been chilly, she said. She kept her mind on her business, though, and while sipping wine, began to talk of Sybil and the new gowns.

“You will like the tawny especially, I think. It will look charming over the pale yellow kirtle. It is ideal for a girl with fair hair. Ah, she is such a pretty girl, your sister-in-law Sybil. The fashion now is all for dark ladies, of course, but such blond hair is rare, above all with brown eyes.”

“Sybil is pretty enough,” conceded Eleanor, just a little sourly. Her own hair was mousy and her eyes an indeterminate grey. She had never been handsome. Her dowry had got her safely married and Francis had grown fond of her, but she didn’t have the looks to turn anyone’s head, and she knew it. Sybil, at court, would probably have every young man in sight dedicating sonnets to her. One could only hope that she would behave herself. “She’s a little greedy, I fear,” Eleanor said. “She eats too much cream. I have warned her that she will grow fat, but she takes no notice.”

“Perhaps her brother Master Francis should tell her, and maybe she will take notice of him. He is not here just now?”

“No, he’s out exercising his horse and riding round the farms. He takes good care of his estate,” Eleanor said.

Madame La Plage beamed. “Ah, his horse! He is known for his love of fine horses. He has good taste in all ways, has he not? I hope he will approve my work. Well, Mistress Sweetwater, shall we call Mistress Sybil and fit the gowns? Where is she? Most young ladies come running when new clothes are delivered!”

She and Eleanor both turned as a door opened at the end of the hall, but it was only Jane, on her own.

“Where has Sybil got to? I asked you to fetch her,” said Eleanor.

“She’s in her bedchamber,” said Jane, sounding puzzled. “She seems upset about something.”

“She’s been very quiet for a while now,” Eleanor said. “Can she be nervous about going to court? It’s not like Sybil to be nervous. She isn’t ill, is she?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jane. “But I think she has been crying.”

“Well,” said Madame La Plage, “let us see what pretty new gowns can do for her, shall we?”

“May I come, too?” asked Jane.

“Yes, of course.” Eleanor had dutifully tried to love and be a mother to both her husband’s young sisters, but she had never quite managed to become really fond of Sybil. Sturdy brown-haired kindhearted Jane, on the other hand, who always had a smile in her eyes, was easy to love. Sybil was affectionate enough, but she was careless. If you sent her to fetch something from another room, she’d probably bring you the wrong thing or get distracted on the way and forget her errand altogether. Now she had apparently found a new way of being difficult. What on earth was she crying about? “We’ll all go,” said Eleanor. “Come along.”

They found Sybil reading on the window seat in her chamber. She put down her book of poems when they entered, slipped from the seat and curtsied politely to the older women. Her little pointed face was very pale, however, and her eyes were certainly red. She looked at the hampers, which Jane and Madame La Plage were carrying between them, as though they were instruments of torture, or possibly execution.

“Now, why this sad face?” said Eleanor briskly. “Come. It’s an adventure, to be going to court to wait on the queen of England! Jane will help you off with what you’re wearing and we will see how these fit. Madame, shall we start with the tawny gown?”

“Has the young lady no tirewoman?” Madame La Plage enquired. “Surely, at court…”

“Yes, we have found a maid for her, but she lives in Taunton. We shall pass through Taunton on the way to London and the woman will join us there. We live simply here at Allerbrook, and assist each other instead of employing tiring maids,” said Eleanor with regret. She had had a maid in Dorset, but Francis had seen no need for one here. He had a parsimonious streak, except when it came to buying the fine horses he so loved.

“I’ll help you,” said Jane, going to her sister.

“No. No, I can do it myself,” said Sybil.

At Allerbrook they mostly wore clothes of simple design except on feast days. Sybil’s light yellow gown was loose and comfortable and she could draw it over her head without aid. Slowly, and it seemed with reluctance, she pulled it off and removed her kirtle and undergarments, leaving only her stays.

“Stays, too,” said Madame La Plage. “New stays are included in the price and I have them here. You must have strong new stays to wear under the gowns I have made for you.”

Miserably Sybil removed her stays, as well.

“But…that is not the result of too much cream!” gasped Madame La Plage.

Jane said, “Oh, Sybil, Sybil!”

Eleanor said, “Oh, my God!” and then clapped her hands to her mouth and burst into tears.

CHAPTER TWO

Breaking the News 1535

Afterward, what Jane remembered most vividly about that dreadful day was the fear: fear on behalf of Sybil, and another, more amorphous dread that this awful discovery heralded awful changes; that nothing in their lives would ever be the same again.

It was near dusk before Francis rode in on his handsome dark chestnut horse Copper. He had been pleased with the condition of his land and stock and he came into the farmyard whistling. In the kitchen, Peggy Ames looked at the other maids, Beth and Susie, and said grimly, “Just listen to ’un! He won’t be that merry for long!”

Up in the parlour in the little tower above the family chapel, Jane and Eleanor, who had been watching for Francis and had also heard the whistling, looked at each other in anguish.

“I can’t imagine what he’ll say!” said Eleanor. She was a cool, sensible woman as a rule, but just now she looked terrified. “He’ll be so angry, and he has all the Lanyon temperament! Will he think it was my fault? That I haven’t watched over the two of you as I ought?”

“But you have,” said Jane unhappily. “You can’t be everywhere, all the time.”

“No, I can’t! God’s teeth, Sybil is the silliest little girl in Christendom! I’ll go down and meet him…oh, I don’t know how to tell him!”

Pale with anxiety, she descended the spiral stairs to the hall. Madame La Plage had long since left to go back to Minehead, and Sybil had been locked in her chamber. Francis, stepping into the hall, pulling off his red velvet hat and stripping off his gloves, greeted her and asked if his sister’s gowns had come. “I’ll have something to say to Madame La Plage if they haven’t!”

“They’re here,” said Eleanor, “but…”

“Good. I hope they’re suitable,” Francis said. “Where’s Sybil now? I want to see her in her new finery.” Then he saw Peggy looking at him from the kitchen door, and must have recognized the fear in her face and Eleanor’s. “God’s death, what’s the matter?”

“Please come up to the parlour, Francis,” Eleanor said. “I have terrible news. Peggy, bring wine. Your master will need it.”

“For the love of heaven, what’s happened? Is Sybil all right?”

“It’s worse than that. We must be private when I explain. Not that we can keep it secret for long—well, it isn’t now. All the household knows, and Madame La Plage. Jane is in the parlour, but she knows, too. She was there when…”

“Will you stop dithering, woman!” shouted Francis as Eleanor turned and led the way back up the staircase. “Tell me!”

In the parlour she turned to face him, and while Jane sat shivering in her seat by the window, Eleanor said the words that had to be said. “Sybil can’t go to court. She is expecting a child. Probably in August.”

Francis collapsed onto the nearest settle. “What was that? Repeat it, if you please.”

“Sybil can’t take up her post at court. She’s with child.”

Francis bore the name of Sweetwater, but another family, the Cornish Lanyons, also formed part of his ancestry. His blue eyes were inherited from his mother but otherwise he was a Lanyon—tall, handsome, strongly made and dark haired. He also possessed what was known as the Lanyon temperament. This was thoroughly Celtic, as passionate and explosive as gunpowder. Eleanor and Jane, observing Francis now, could almost hear the fuse fizzing toward the barrel, almost see the travelling flame.

The explosion came. Francis shot to his feet and crashed a fist on the back of the settle. “This is beyond belief! Who’s the man? Who did it? And where’s Sybil now?”

“She’s locked in her chamber. I have the key,” said Eleanor. “The man is Andrew Shearer.”

“Andrew Shearer? Of Shearers Farm? My tenant? He’s married!”

“Yes. We all went to the christening of his little son last November, if you recall,” said Eleanor, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “That’s when it happened, it seems. We went to Shearers for the celebration dinner, and stayed on after dark—do you remember? There was dancing, by candlelight. Sybil and Andrew danced together. I never noticed that they disappeared for a while, but it seems that they did. He somehow enticed her into another part of the house and…she says she hasn’t seen him since, but that he’d paid her compliments before, when they met during the harvesting. We sent her out with cider for the harvesters. She says she didn’t mind when he…I mean, she wasn’t forced. She admits that.”

“He’s married. I can’t make him wed her. I can order the Shearers off my land, of course, though they’ll only get a tenancy somewhere else, and thumb their noses at me, I suppose. I can think of three Exmoor farms straightaway in need of new tenants, since we had that outbreak of smallpox last year. The trouble that brought us! Killed our chaplain and two of our farmhands! But it’ll no doubt make life easier for the Shearers. I’ll be throwing them out on principle, that’s all. But…dear God!” shouted Francis. “Sybil’s farewell dinner is tomorrow! It’s too late to cancel it! The Carews have probably set off from Devon already!”

The fury in his voice was so intense that Eleanor visibly trembled and Jane began to cry. Francis swept on.

“The Stones from Clicket Hall are coming, and bringing their girl Dorothy—they want to get her to court in a year or two, when she’s older! Owen Lanyon and his wife from Lynmouth, they’re coming…”

His voice faded somewhat. The one branch of the family that still bore the name of Lanyon wasn’t actually entitled to it. Many years ago there had been another unsanctioned baby in the clan. That child’s descendants, though, still called themselves Lanyons. Francis resumed, however, as the enormity of the present situation grew larger and larger in his mind.

“Luke and Ralph Palmer are coming! They’re very likely on their way by now, too. Bideford’s only twenty-five miles off, but Luke’s at least sixty and they’ll have to take it slowly.” Francis was literally clutching at his hair. “They’re only distant connections but, God’s elbow, it was their wealthy London cousin who pulled the strings to get Sybil her place at court! And now this! What am I to say to them? I…we’ll say Sybil’s ill! And I’ll give her such a beating that with luck she’ll miscarry and then she can go to court after all! Yes, that’s the best thing to do. I’ll—”

“No!” sobbed Jane. “No, you can’t! Francis, you mustn’t! It could kill her. She’s past four months gone.”

“And no one noticed anything?” Francis spluttered. “She never told anyone?”

“She said—” Eleanor gulped “—that she kept hoping it wasn’t true. She’s just gone on from day to day, hoping …there are so many women in this house, Sybil and Jane and me, and the maids…no one noticed that she hasn’t been using her usual cloths. She didn’t have much sickness, it seems. Oh, Sybil can be so silly!”

“She certainly can,” said Francis. “A fault I propose to cure. Give me her key, Eleanor. At once!”

“Francis, no, you mustn’t.” Jane was frightened but determined. “If you hurt Sybil too much, yes, she might lose the child, but if that happened she really could die! You can’t want that!”

“I don’t need to be told my business by a little girl of sixteen!”

“She might not lose the child,” Eleanor pointed out. “And if she did, and survived and went to court, how could we trust her, after this! She might create a scandal there, and what good would that do us?”

“It’s a complete disaster!” Francis groaned. “It’s been trouble enough, planning for portions for my sisters. We were well-off when I was a boy, but that was before Father sold our stone quarry so as to rebuild the east wing. We’ve lost income without it. Letting Clicket Hall doesn’t make up for it. I’ve worried! Getting one of the girls to court would help—there’d be all sorts of opportunities. Good contacts are worth having in a dozen ways and they can smooth the path to marriage even for a girl with a modest dowry.”

“We have good contacts already,” said Eleanor weakly.

“I want to do better! But now…! We can’t keep it secret. You said yourself, the whole household knows—Peggy, the maidservants… Susie’s courting Tim Snowe and I saw them as I came in, talking in the yard. By tomorrow all the farmhands will know and the whole lot of them have families roundabout. And Madame La Plage will have taken the news back to Minehead!”

“Yes,” agreed Eleanor dismally.

There was a dreadful silence.