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
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,