EAST ANGLIA / 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐍.

He had taken his sons out on a hunt that day, riding their loaned mares from the King’s own stables to hunt down whatever it was that they could around Hampton Court’s jade coloured, lucious lands. He urged his two, born by his scandalous relationship with perhaps the one woman he had truly loved, to take the first prize - watching with pride as they returned with fattened hares and pheasants. He’d have them roasted that evening, a gift to their step-mother and his wife who had been named as such for ten years.

When finally done for the day, Thomas followed his sons back to their chambers smelling of dew and the stench of blood that had stained itself between the hairs of his coat, pushing aside the heavy oak doors to reveal the very image of a well kept woman, of a wife who worked tirelessly for the Dowager Queen and Thomas’ own old friend. With a grimace hidden by the roll of his neck, the poet covered his mouth to yawn slowly, stretching out the day’s aches before shifting from his coat to instead sit before Cecily in his white linen. With his feet strapped by leather, Thomas finally felt the day’s weight drift from his shoulders, sliding off his toes as he listened to the snap of embers and the flick of Cecily’s pages. 

“Some wine? Yes, yes indeed,” he answered, staring into the bed of the hearth, watching as the colour flickered from the brightest crimson to the palest of oranges. “Well, I certainly would do little for Anne’s mood swings - if anything I would just make it worse,” Thomas mused gesturing for a servant to fetch him the usual set of journals and fountain pens for his work, the books that were full to the brim with sonnets based upon the women and livelihood of court. He didn’t think, of course, to name Anne by her title as Cecily did - informality and intimacy afresh in his mind, for not even a man like Wyatt could forget the whispers shared with thee Anne Boleyn. 

“What are you reading, dear Cecily?

       Out of the corner of her eye, Cecily observes him.  His movements, in the privacy of their shared chamber, are less graceful than a lauded poet’s ought to be.  He reminds Cecily of Grandsire Heydon, that aged, yet magnificent landowner whose wits remained about him all his long life.  Stained with blood and blotted with sweat, Thomas’ bones crackled as he divested of his fur-lined outer coat and crumbled into a seat, weary.  A better wife might have soaked a cloth in an apothecary’s tonic and pressed that cool, dampened linen against her husband’s forehead to soothe him.  But Cecily, who had no natural instinct to dote, merely rose to fetch him a glass of wine, watching as it bubbled against the rim of the chalice like a crimson sea.  ‘I would not wager so.’  She turned to him, briefly.  ‘The Queen is besotted with your work.  And your Frenchness.  And your charm.  It was not King Henry who lavished us with titles and lands, after all.’

𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑻𝑼𝑺.  closed  for  @ladywyatt​ 𝑳𝑶𝑪𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵.  the  gardens  of  hampton  court 𝑫𝑨𝑻𝑬  &  𝑻𝑰𝑴𝑬.  october  1559,  mid-afternoon

there  was  no  avoiding  cecily.  after  all,  alice’s  entire  life  was  simply  wandering  the  path  her  eldest  sister  carved  for  the  younger  ones.  then,  under  the  wing  of  the  dowager  duchess  of  northumberland;  now,  her  very  own  place  at  king  william’s  court.  alice  knew  what  came  next.  she’d  narrowly  avoided  it  once,  but  only  thanks  to  the  kiss  of  death.  had  she  not  been  so  lucky,  she  would  more  than  likely  be  surrounded  by  a  gaggle  of  children  she  was  not  equipped  to  care  for.  but  now  she  was  older  —  more  mature,  perhaps.  there  was  no  escaping  her  fate  now.  not  here,  at  hampton  court,  and  certainly  not  under  cecily’s  careful  eye.

alice  treaded  slowly  along  the  paved  walkway  of  the  gardens.  they  were  a  far  cry  from  the  wily  meadows  that  surrounded  the  heydon  family  home,  but  she  supposed  that  was  the  point.  her  stays  and  her  new  silk  gown,  too,  were  entirely  unlike  the  things  to  she  was  accustomed.  but  there  was  no  use  in  complaining  now.  only  adapting.  alice  reached  out  a  hand  to  graze  the  carefully  trimmed  hedge  before  her,  fingers  somehow  surprised  at  its  harsh  edge.

but  there  was  no  time  to  dwell  on  it;  for  the  sound  of  footsteps  upon  gravel  caught  her  attention.  though  ten  years  separated  them,  alice  would  know  them  anywhere.  "how  did  you  know  where  to  find  me?“

-

        Of all the faces crowding the long hall – slick with a September sweat, with their bellies swelling from the morning’s trenches of quail and wine – Alice Heydon’s was notably absent.  Beside the Countess, the seat reserved for her sister housed only a vacant, velvet cushion, her breakfast untouched.  Cecily’s lip curled as she glanced about the room, glowing with slivers of the dawn’s luster, and clutched the knife in her hand, firm.  Rising, she glides from the hall as though an airborne ghost, rounding corners briskly, treading halls lightly, her hand wafting across the curved, oak-paneled walls of the great gallery until Hampton’s meandering corridors led her to the outdoors: the summery, balmy air clouting her like a slap to the cheek.  And, indeed, her eyes stung with irritation – glazed with the colour of freshly burnt coal.

Standing at the mouth of the garden’s lush arbor, there is Alice up ahead, bending to draw the roseate air deeply into her lungs.  The countess’ fists unclench at her sides.  ‘Alice.’  Her voice is calm as it swirls in the light breeze, fluttering the ends of Alice’s malt-brown hair.  ‘Tell me, is the Earl of Shrewsbury’s eldest son too good for a Heydon?’  Her skirts create a rustling sound as she strolls toward her sister, the smile affixed to her lips belying her askance glare.  ‘For he asked after you at breakfast this morning, and I was forced to let his lordship know you were feeling unwell.’  Her brow arching imperiously, Cecily’s eyes swiveled to the blossom her sister was admiring, and, suddenly, the tension to her countenance relented, and her features arranged themselves warmly.   She could not, after all, stay cross with Alice long.

        It was warm by the fireside, the countess’ fingertips slick as she flipped the pages of a religious volume that rested neatly upon her lap, splayed open like a cadaver.  One of the Dowager’s irreconcilable tempers had given Cecily leave to her own apartments early that evening, those lush, spacious rooms that granted her both quiet and solitude.  It would not be long before the Wyatt brood, their bellies rounded by feasting and drinking, plowed into their chambers, their fleet slapping against the floors, their laughter rattling the windows.  Yet for a few hours, it had simply been Cecily, and the mound of linens needing mending heaped at her side, growing taller by the day.  

At the sound of keys chiming, the countess turns her coin-white face to the darkened figure that slips through the doorframe.  Tall, dark-haired, light-eyed.  Appearing a little portly, perhaps in preparation of the impending autumn.  Thomas.  Cecily resumes, just as briskly as she had been diverted, to her reading, not sparing a glance to him as she remarks: ‘it surprises me to see you, Thomas.  The Dowager is in one of her moods, so I thought no one better but you or the king to relieve her of it.’  

Alice, for her part, kept her eyes quite firmly focused on her needlework. It was often like her to keep her head down and lips sealed while the other women around her chattered. She had no intention of coming across as cold or unwelcoming, but she was singleminded, perhaps too serious for the playfulness that court encouraged.

But at the Countess’s words, her eyes lifted from her work and she smiled, only just. “I fear I will not be participating. I think my days of performance and theatrics are behind me.” At 35, she was hardly a wizened old woman, but she was no longer the youthful girl she had been when she entered the Queen’s service. “I find that as of late I prefer to spectate, though I think it will be a delightful evening to attend.” Smoothing out the fabric in her hands carefully, she inclined toward the Countess. “And you, Lady Allington? You have always been a graceful dancer. I’ve no doubt you could charm any number of the attendees.”

       Alice’s diffidence caused the countess to grin, wily at first - and then amiably.  Christian women ought to behave meekly, but Englishwomen were known to comport themselves with such swagger as to scandalize any of the king’s foreign retinues at court.  The Dowager had set a vibrant example for the ladies of court to follow, but for her own women of honour, inflexible decorum was expected and maintained.  With a purse of her lips, Cecily nodded to Lady Holland; her diffidence, she decided, must have been part of her appeal to the magnetic, magnificent Anne. ‘There would be no shortage of virtues for you to embody, dear Lady Holland.  Piety, perhaps, foremost?  Followed by...’  She tapped her finger to her lip in thought. ‘Restraint.  If that is to be considered a virtue at all.’

Her voice was both balm and bane, but her smile still more so.  He was not blind to the quiet ache that rested just behind the gentle upsweep of her mouth, nor the familiar glint in her dark eyes that seemed to brand him – half mischief, half reverie.  She was not memory: she was all flesh and blood, yet she was all that he recalled, unspooling before him like the pages of a book – memorized, beloved, each swelling letters a stroke his finger had traced, and each word a sound his lips had formed.  Yet, she was more than that, too, leaping from the tried truths of memory into the uncertainty of a future that swirled with confused momentum before them.  

She spoke his name – first the true one that belonged to himself, cut off and snuffed out: then, the one that would belong in formal settings; in, perhaps, the pages of history: doubtless as a footnote appended to the reign of the glorious King William III, but still – present.  By accident within those lauded volumes, somewhere perhaps his name and hers might appear upon the same page, but never again together, never again within the same breath.  

He almost laughed, a bitter sound: this was the future he had wrought when he had wed for advancement, and not for something far more precious which, now, he did not dare to name.  But even if that was lost to them – the gestures of courtly love remained, and he meant to seize every opportunity which showed itself.  Yet his teeth set against this new title, ivory on ivory, a pearly wall through which no voice could sound.  He’d been greedy of titles, he could admit, but this was one which did not sit easy upon his shoulders and he glanced quickly away as if to dash it from his mind.

Chuckling, he arched a brow.  “I am glad to hear it, my lady.  What gentleman could not help but savor such kind words upon the lips of so fair and gracious a lady?  But it is a compliment which must meet its like, for you, too, look well, my lady, and I daresay Wyatt is the most fortunate of the king’s men, for what fool,” he began, stepping a touch closer.  “Having once held so precious a pearl in his hand, could ever truly esteem another?”

His lips quirked as his heart gave a little jab, and he laughed softly, stepping back again.  Her invitation warmed him and his smile lost some of its irony, brimming into something sweeter.  “I should like nothing more,” he said, offering his arm as, together, they began to stroll towards the beatific gardens which surrounded the palace.

The sound of her question riled him, and glancing discreetly to ensure that they were not overheard, his eyes twinkled with memory, his lips drawing into a kind of line at its ache.  “Yes,” he replied, his dark eyes landing upon her own.  “Yes, I was there.  I took some time, too, to explore our old haunts.  Do you recall the carvings we left in the small, eastern stone corridor behind the tapestries?”  His smile was fond.  “I found them again, traced the lines with my fingertip.  Do you know, they are as chiseled and clear as they were upon the day we left them there.  It is, I think, a sweet thing to know that the walls, at least, shall not let us be forgot.”

        Cecily’s dark eyes twinkled with amusement as Walsingham studied her.  Honing in on each quirk of her mouth, each furrow of her brow, Thomas appeared to reacquaint himself with the arrangement of her face, the fine tilt of her aquiline nose, the aristocratic arch of her forehead, the subtle creases that now cantered about her temples.  In turn, his presence brought with it both a radiance and warmth, seeping into the memories she possessed of him – those that had since faded, like a tapestry left in the broad sunlight, in which each thread now bloomed with a vibrant luster.  

She took graciously his arm, around which she looped her own, and began to promenade by his side through the sumptuous halls of Hampton Court.  His laughter encouraged a sinful self-satisfaction to bottle within her, spilling like an exquisite whiskey from betwixt her own lips.  She had not, after all, forgotten how to bring him joy?  Cecily rejoiced at the mere thought.  ‘My husband is many things, Sir Walsingham, but he is not one to leave art unappreciated.  Or that is at least what he tells me, when I bemoan the great quantity of ladies he sets his sights upon.’  A rueful titter sounded within the delicate column of her throat.  Wyatt’s nature was by now no secret to the court, and to Cecily especially, it was simply a way of living that she fast accustomed to.  ‘But he has seized royal favor,’ the countess whispered, leaning into Thomas’ embrace, ‘and he has kept it.  I am well provided for – better than we once hoped, yes?’

A pair of attendants at either side of the oak-paneled passageway swept aside, and bade the pair a courteous ‘good morning’ as they together trekked outdoors, the sun and its heat blazing upon them.  An avenue of wide, elegant yew trees paved before them, Cecily sighed into the fresh air:  ‘I could not forget, sir, not on my life.’  A crafty smile touched her mouth.  ‘Not when the punishment was a humble meal of broth and ale for the next week.  I maintain that the Dowager Duchess took undue delight in punishing us children.  For we were surely that, children?’  Twisting her lips, she looked to Thomas, squinting in the sunlight.  ‘I had heard that your wife passed, Thomas. I am… sorry, for your loss, and I hope my letters to you were of a comfort, meagre as they might have been.’  

        The Dowager’s household was in a flurry with preparations for the pageant, for all throughout Hampton Court there was a sense of organized chaos and tumult, overlorded by a growing swell of anticipation.  In the calm before the storm, Queen Anne’s gowns were being finely mended and her correspondences overseen by her ladies whilst Anne herself attended to the king, no doubt dictating and directing how each moment of the evening’s revelries should ensue.  It was, after all, not Anne’s first crush at the Château Vert.  She had been made there, smelted and born anew - her star firmly on the rise - and could both make and unmake those who chose to attend. 

As the Countess of Allington’s needle looped through the Dowager’s silk chemise, she casted a sidelong glance to Lady Holland, who was engaged in a similar task, and reached out to gain Alice’s attention. Cecily may have been lavished with the title of Countess, but it was no secret that Alice was the better favored of the Dowager’s ladies, having been by her side for many years.  Cecily’s privilege came from her husband’s closeness to Anne, though no one could otherwise suspect her of being disloyal.  She glanced to Alice and tilted her head, curious. 

𝖈𝖑𝖔𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖗 for @ladywyatt​

It was inevitable, this.  Had he been able to think rationally upon it, he might have said so, himself, but that counted as nothing.  It was inevitable, but he’d not wanted it.  Oh, it wasn’t he actual seeing of her that was the problem – he saw her often enough in his memories, in his dreams, but meeting with Lady Allington, the slick new replacement to little Cecily was something else, altogether.  It might not have been so awful, indeed, were it not for the foolish letter, but that article left him too exposed.  It was far, far too late, however, to retract or even to wish that he had.  Now, it was simply to bear with the consequence.

He spotted her, first, strolling amidst a gaggle of ladies – gorgeously apparelled, bearing themselves with the carriage of importance.  He thought them all built to be admired, but he remembered her another way, too, all gawky limbs and unstudied laughter: once, they’d been innocent together.  Now…Yet, it was the anticipation which gave him pain, now, and the thing could no longer be avoided.  He strode forward, stepped into her path, intercepting her.

“Good day, my ladies,” he greeted, eying each in turn with civility before, at last, his eye landed upon hers.

He could not blame her for anything.  After all, he’d been the first to wed – he could not blame her for doing the same, though the timing of it had been tragic in its way: that must was beyond denial.  For her, however, he could see the marriage suited her.  Her eyes were brilliant, her skin luminous.  He was glad to see her so well – it was, after all, what he’d always hoped for her.

“Lady Allington,” he began, softly.  “I regret it has been sometime, but please allow me, now, to congratulate you upon your marriage.  His Lordship is, indeed, a lucky man.”  He paused, swallowed.  “But you are well, I trust?  The season ahead promises much, does it not?”

        Cecily Heydon was not often overcome.  With jealousies and rage, occasionally; but never with shock and a remarkable hold of gladness.  She felt a smile smart at the corners of her lips as she drank in Thomas’ countenance, the rugged charm he donned, the amber warmth of his eyes, the nick perched at the tail end of his brow – the result of a scuffle in the Duchess’ dwellings – and stole herself into a moment of reflection.  ‘To- Sir Walsingham.’  The countess bit down upon her words.  Thomas may not have been the boy she knew at fifteen, but he possessed all of his allure, and ogled at her with an utter lack of guile that conveyed her thoughts, unbidden, to years past.  

‘I believe you are also the subject of praise. You are as we always suspected you to be, at the heart of England and the right hand of his majesty.  Royal favor…’  Cecily quirked her brow and her mouth in thought, as if gingerly rooting her mind for an apt word, ‘suits you, old friend.’  

Old friend.  Her heart tightened at the appellation, as superficial as it might have sounded in the impassive tone of her voice.  ‘I have some time before the Dowager will be needing me.  Will you take a walk?’  She rang her bejeweled hands together – the precious jewels that graced her fingers a staple of her new position, a mark of her husband’s unusual closeness with Queen Anne – and gave a cock of her dark head, expectant.

Isabel had decided to stay in Hampton Court during the Progress through the North. She very well could have gone, but she decided against it. For one thing, there were far too many memories up North and she wanted to prove to England that though she was born and raised in Scotland and had ventured through the North to get where she is now, at heart she was and still is an English Lady of Tudor lineage. So, thusly she had stayed behind.

She walked into court and bowed her head to her fellow nobles as she walked past. Isabel turned around and saw a familiar face.

"Aye. It is wonderful to see you again. Tell me, did you take part in the Progress of the North?" She asked after she bowed deeply.

        The Douglas lady was scarcely an unknown entity at Hampton.  Cecily had served in court long enough to be able to name the guests that swirled about the Dowager’s periphery at the drop of a hat - all whilst making an inventory of their scandals and political pitfalls.  Though the pompous smirk glued to Isabel’s lips belabored royal breeding, Cecily declined to demonstrate to the Scotswoman any deference she thought to be unduly.  The Dowager would, after all, rage fury at the late King Henry’s kin if their impertinence encouraged them to meddle in English affairs.  Humility compelled Cecily into a fleeting curtsy, with the faintest air of amusement clinging to her mouth.  ‘Lady Douglas. My eyes are delighted to see you are in good health.’