Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn by Malyn Bromfield Page A

me, the way he used to do in Edward’s reign when we hid the wandering priest with his chalice and his vestments.
    The two men are sitting at table gulping ale when my husband descends cap in hand as if he is in a hurry to be about his business and their visit is a trivial thing of no matter except that it delays him. They address him as ‘Master Waterman’ and thank him for the ale. The ruddy-faced man is at great pains to explain that they have a duty to do and wish to do it with as little inconvenience to householders as is possible.
    My husband examines White Boy’s swollen ear.
    ‘Does that duty entail striking a man’s family?’
    He speaks quietly. Estuary waves hide inside the sea and rise from nowhere to bring the tide. Thus does my husband’s voice rise to a roar.
    ‘How inconvenient do you think it be to a householder to cuff the ear of his blind servant?’
    The lanky young man leans over his pot and his slimy hair brushes the board. While he sips he glances towards the door, hungrily, as a prisoner might. The ruddy-faced, greedy man drains his pot, lifts his chubby thighs heavily across the bench and pulls the other up by his hair.
    My husband attends the men while they search our sleeping chambers in less time than it takes for me to let the lampreys’ blood into a pot. I check the contents of my mother’s casket and sigh with relief. Nothing is missing.
    ‘These are dread times, remember the burnings. Look to the locks at day as at night,’ my husband says after the searchers have departed and he has donned his working clothes again. I ask him how he discovered that the searchers had come to our house and managed to be home so promptly.
    ‘My wife, you know I am a waterman,’ is all the explanation I get.
    Always, always, even when he was a ragged boy, he must have his secrets.
    I give White Boy a drop of Aunt Bess’s drowsy poppy mixture to calm him and attend to the lampreys.
    ‘Whoever sent that pair of rakehells to our house, and upon what information, they would not tell,’ my husband says.
    ‘Perhaps because you did not attend Mass on Sunday, master.’
    My husband starts at the accusatory tone of our servant.
    ‘It is fear that makes him so bold,’ I say hurriedly.
    ‘Ring out the bells from every steeple, it makes no difference to the river people,’ quoths my husband sharply.
    ‘You think you are above Queen Mary’s laws, you and your watermen friends, now that you have established a company?’ I say.
    ‘The Thames and the tides are the watermen’s laws and thus it has always been since before the Magna Carta.’
    ‘I’ve warned you, husband, waterman or no, to be seen at church at least once a week on the Lord’s day.’
    ‘Who is to say I did not attend Mass elsewhere, my good wife, either upstream or downstream or across the water?’
    ‘And that is another matter. You should not be working upon the river on the Lord’s Day, or at night; it is against Queen Mary’s laws.’
    ‘A man’s trade is not his wife’s affair. Do not think to tell me how to conduct my business.’
    ‘Perchance someone has made it known that you did not attend Mass here in our parish last Sunday.’
    ‘We do not know that this is so. The three of us did not attend the mass two weeks ago and there were no reprisals.’
    ‘Our neighbours and our priest know that we kept away for fear that my sudden burning ague was the wasting sickness although, by God’s grace, it turned out to be just a summer fever that vanished as quickly as it came.’
    My husband goes to the coffer and closes the Bible that the greasy haired man had opened. He wrings out a cloth from the water barrel and rubs scraps of paper from the wall where the ballad was torn away.
    ‘Who sent these searchers to our house and what benefit they hoped to gain we know not. I’ll wager they seek for payment one way or another, either from the Papists for bringing them to the law or from the families themselves to buy their