Tombland

‘She was about fifty, to begin with, while most who try that game are young. She had blonde hair turning grey, cut short, against nits no doubt. And, though she was dressed in rags, she spoke in refined tones, not that incomprehensible Norfolk draunt, which showed she came of good stock. So Mistress Blanche brought her to me.’ Parry shook his head. ‘By Jesu, she was a poor-looking creature. She looked half starved. She had a thin face pinched with cold and hunger, hair dirty under her coif, and was wearing a cheap wadmol dress.’

Nicholas observed, ‘A real gentlewoman would surely have had clothes of fine material, even if they were worn with use.’

Parry nodded. ‘Well observed.’ He paused. ‘But this woman’s accent sounded genuine. And she seemed worn out, truly desperate. She said she was sorry to trouble us, she was only distant kin by marriage, but had nowhere else to turn. Those who come here with such claims usually gawp at the house with awe, or at least interest, but this woman hardly seemed to notice anything. So I invited her to sit down and tell me her story. She did so, and it sounded plausible. At first,’ he added grimly.

‘She said her name was Mistress Edith Boleyn, and that until the death of her husband last November she had been mistress of a goodly farm near Blickling, fifteen miles north of Norwich. That’s where Anne Boleyn’s family came from, though there are other Boleyns scattered around Norfolk. I asked for details about the farm and she said it was a large one, but the lease ended with her husband’s death and the lord of the manor would not renew it. He was turning his lands over to sheep. She was given three months to quit.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Just the sort of thing your friends the Commonwealth men rail against, though it can happen to wealthy tenants as well as poor ones.’

‘Did she not have children, relatives?’

‘She said she had no children and both her parents were dead.’ A flicker of compassion crossed his heavy features. The plight of Edith Boleyn had evidently moved Parry, hard man of affairs though he was. ‘If I had known then –’ he said, quietly, then lapsed into uncharacteristic silence.

‘Did she say exactly how her late husband was related to the Lady Elizabeth?’ I asked.

Parry nodded. ‘She said he shared a common great-great-grandfather with Anne Boleyn.’

In my work I dealt often with matters of family descent, and made a quick calculation. ‘Making him third cousin once removed to Elizabeth.’

‘She had the family tree off pat. Wrote it down for me on a sheet of paper, all the way back to Geoffrey Boleyn, who came to London in the 1420s and became Lord Mayor. It was obviously painful for her to write, her fingers were bent and the knuckles of both hands badly swollen. She wrote in a good hand, though, which showed she was educated. I noticed she wore no wedding ring, and asked her about that. She said that when her fingers became swollen she had to have it cut off as it was pressing painfully into the skin. I was starting to believe her.’ Parry raised his bushy eyebrows again, and his voice hardened. ‘But then I asked for some more details, and her story began to fall apart.’

‘How?’

‘When I asked the name of the lord of the manor who had dispossessed her, the details of the tenancy, the name of the nearest town and the local families, she came out with a list of sheer fictions. She had rehearsed them well but had not taken into account that my past experiences have given me, with lawyer Copuldyke’s help, a detailed knowledge of Norfolk geography. When I challenged her she began to stammer and trip over her words. Mistress Blanche and I were both looking at her hard by then, and she saw she was in trouble. In the end she blurted out that her husband was truly kin, and she asked for no more than the humblest place in the household – a maid, a cook’s assistant, anything the Lady Elizabeth could give her. She was red in the face by now. I noticed then that her fingers were calloused as well as swollen. This woman had known hard manual labour.’ Parry shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Well, after her lies about where she came from, there was nothing to do but turn her out. I thought, whoever she is, she came of gentle stock once, and had fallen on bad times, but that can happen to the best of people these days and does not justify telling such lies. I told her to leave.’

‘And did she?’