The Dandelion Seed by Lena Kennedy Page B

curls on her shoulders. Annabelle ran to greet her and the two women embraced as if they were sisters.
    ‘Oh, my dear!’ burst out Frances. ‘It is getting terrible. It is more than I can stand.’
    Suddenly she realized that they were not alone. Her face went cold as she stared at Marcelle.
    ‘It’s all right,’ said Annabelle, noticing her hostility to the girl, ‘Marcelle is my companion.’
    ‘Dismiss her!’ ordered the Countess in a hard voice.
    ‘Leave us for a while, dear,’ said Annabelle kindly.
    Marcelle got to her feet, inclined a quick curtsy towards the countess and obediently left the room. Outside she shuddered. For some reason the fair, beautifully-dressed gentlewoman gave her the cold shivers, as if a grey goose were walking on her grave.
    Inside the parlour, Frances unburdened her unhappy soul to Annabelle whose china-blue eyes filled with tears as she listened sympathetically to this well-to-do madam, whose family was one of the most ill-starred of England. Their greed and ambition were always their downfall and every generation sent a lamb to the slaughter. Under Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had gone to the block, followed by Katherine Howard. Now members of the younger generation were being thrown like dice around the political court in an effort to regain prestige and power behind the throne.
    At first the target had been the Crown Prince, who had had eyes for no one but Frances ever since they had played together as children in the gardens of Greenwich, and then later became secret lovers. But the Protestant King James was no fool and he did not intend to be over-run by a Catholic family like the Howards. So his first step had been to lure the two rival families, the Essex and Howard families into a marriage settlement.
    ‘They will be too busy doing battle with each other to worry over me,’ the canny Scot had thought as he blessed the union between Robert, son of Lord Essex, and Frances Howard. Both were very young – Frances not yet thirteen and Robert not fourteen, and from the beginning the marriage had been disastrous. The newly-weds hated each other and fought like cats every time they met. So they parted, Robert to the war in France and his child bride to the fabulous home of the Howards at Audley End.
    It was here earlier that Annabelle had become the first real friend and confidante of little Frances. Annabelle had been first maid to Frances, having been promoted from the nursery when the children had grown up. There were not many secrets in the great house that Annabelle did not know about, what with her husband in the coachhouse and Annabelle in her lady’s chamber. She had helped dress Frances in her bridal clothes and had comforted her when Frances’ irate parents brought her sobbing and screaming back from court. Once Frances was married, it was made very difficult for her to meet her lover, the Crown Prince. And young Henry was too proud to dishonour his royal house, now that his father’s feelings were clear, so each young heart moped and pined for the other, Henry at Whitehall and Frances at her ancestral home.
    Robert of Essex, a hulking, ill-mannered youth of nineteen, had returned from the wars in France and claimed his bride, but now rumour had it that the marriage had never been consummated and, after two years of a terrible married existence, his hard-faced child bride was asking to be divorced. She sat in Annabelle’s little parlour with tears of misery streaming down her cheeks and Annabelle wiped them away gently, just as she did when Frances was a spoilt little girl in the nursery.
    ‘It will all come right. Did not your uncle promise to see the Bishop this very month?’
    ‘But it will be useless,’ sniffed Frances, hanging her head. ‘They will not allow a divorce. You know, Annabelle, that I have not been a virgin since I was twelve.’
    Annabelle bit her lip. In some way she felt responsible for Frances’ affair with young Henry; she always knew she