The story so far…
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
She turns up at Austin Friars in 1533. Her husband beat her, deserted her, and left her with two children and no home. She doesn’t know whether he is still alive. She was stitching for a sailmaker before she came to London. She was taught about the Gospels in a cellar in Broadgate and washed bed linen at the convent near St Paul’s Cathedral. Now she’s at Austin Friars with Thomas Cromwell. “You must come here. I am sure you will be useful.”
Cromwell promises to find her husband if he is alive. If not, she can marry again. Either way, she will wear figured velvet and kid gloves from now on.
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
At Austin Friars, Cromwell disturbs Helen with Rafe Sadler. They both look a little ruffled. Cromwell sends Helen Barre to look after Cranmer’s secret wife.
“You can’t just drag her off into the night,” says Rafe.
”Oh, I can,” Cromwell says mildly.
Week 15: Supremacy
Rafe tells Cromwell he has married Helen. “A lovely nobody”, Cromwell calls her. But now he remembers her meaningful look when she asked him, “So I could marry again?” and he considers a version of the present where he is hers. “If I had wanted her for myself, and taken her, who would have reproached me for marrying a penniless laundress, even a beggar off the street?”
Week 23: The Black Book (Part 2)
When Rafe is promoted to the privy chamber, Helen bursts into tears. ‘He will be away at court for weeks at a time.’
Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)
Helen is put in charge of preparing the new house at Hackney for the meeting between the king and his daughter. She asks Cromwell about the story behind the tapestries, Atalanta in Arcadia.
The king calls her a ‘beggar’ and when he sees her he seems to understand why Rafe married her. ‘I think if she had come a beggar to my gate, I would have married her too. I see it was no charity. Such eyes! Such lips!’
Later, at her house, they hear her son Thomas cry out. Her husband tells her not to worry herself. ‘He has attendance enough.’ But her breasts ache. She had fed her daughters but now she is a lady and she must let others care for her children.