The Cardinal's Court

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Goodness! Busy morning at the stables.’

  His eyes came back to me. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Now tell me all your news.’

  ‘You’ve lost your chief cook,’ I said baldly.

  That surprised him. His bushy white eyebrows shot up.

  ‘I didn’t want to see him hanged, and I don’t suppose you did either.’ The cardinal was such a busy man that he tended to lose interest in long-winded stories and return to his never-ending pile of letters. I could see a half-written letter to Dr Knight, Ambassador to France, on his writing pad before him. My tactics worked. He replaced the pen and stared at me.

  I waited for a second. His eyes were completely blank, staring straight ahead, always a sign that his mind was working fast.

  ‘Blackmail,’ he said finally and I bowed my head. You should have paid him what he was worth, I thought, but I said nothing.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said, closing down the lid of his writing bureau.

  ‘Edmund Pace, as well as blackmailing your wards, his pupils, was also blackmailing the cook for selling off various kitchen stores. He came to the kitchen early on Ash Wednesday morning.’

  ‘His ghost presumably. Wasn’t I informed that he was murdered on Shrove Tuesday night?’

  ‘That was a mistake,’ I said. ‘That’s the trouble with science, I find. It can mislead you. The medical men misled us. The corpse, they said, was stiff as a board and so he was murdered during or quite soon after the pageant. Not by an arrow, that was a clumsy effort to mislead; the queen’s physician, Dr Ramirez, proved that to my satisfaction. He believed the man to be murdered by means of a small sharp knife plunged into his heart. But he, too, believed it had to be as early on Shrove Tuesday evening as was feasible because of the stiffness of the corpse.’

  The cardinal shook his head impatiently.

  ‘You’re confusing me, Hugh.’

  ‘If Your Grace would just listen to me patiently …’

  ‘And ask no questions.’

  ‘Your Grace has taken the words from my mouth.’ I pulled up a chair and sat opposite to him sinking my elbows into the soft carpet on the table. I gazed for a moment at the gold engraving of his little portable writing bureau as I tried to put a complex story of fear, hatred and human ingenuity into order within my mind.

  ‘Edmund Pace came into the kitchen, probably to catch the cook out secretly selling off goods; he challenged him, demanded yet more money, from a man who was only paid fourteen sovereigns a year. Your cook, Master Beasley, snatched up a knife from his array by the chopping board and plunged it into the man’s chest. It was, I would think, a crime totally without premeditation, a flash of anger, of desperation and it resulted in a dead body. He didn’t know what to do. In a few moments the boys would be coming into the kitchen to collect the brooms for sweeping the yards, the first task of the day. Hurriedly he put the dead man onto an empty wood barrow, piled up wood on either side of him and placed bundles of faggots on top of the body. And then, and this is significant, Your Grace, he pushed the wood barrow into an alcove very close to the fire. No one would touch this wood without his permission. It was kept hot so that the heat of a fire could be suddenly boosted.’

  ‘And the body stiffened fast in the heat, is that what you are trying to tell me, Hugh?’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to talk to Your Grace.’ I meant it sincerely, though he cocked a sceptical eye at me.

  ‘I remember the bodies at the Battle of Thérouanne in France, in the heat. It was in the month of June. They stiffened fast.’ The cardinal glanced at his letter to the ambassador to France and sighed a little at the recollection of this battle of almost nine years ago. ‘And then I suppose he wheeled it into the hall.’

  ‘When he had sent others off on various errands,’ I confirmed. ‘The boys always have breakfast in the pantry and the other cooks could have been sent to collect the stores.’

  ‘And the arrow that caused such trouble?’

  ‘He found it inside a bundle of faggots. He had some desperate idea of pretending that this was an accident. He didn’t realise that it belonged to James. He’s very short-sighted; he needs eye glasses to read,’ I explained. I took from my pocket the summary of the evidence that I had written out last evening. He read it, twice, and put it carefully in the drawer.

  I had expected him to demand an explanation as to why I had not come to him to or the serjeant about this matter, but I underestimated him. The Cardinal of York always got his facts straight before passing judgement. He got up from behind his desk, walked across to the fire, and pulled out a chair for me before taking his usual comfortable place between the burning coals and the thick draught-screen.

  ‘Tell me how you worked out all of this, Hugh,’ he invited.

  I thought about that for a while as I stretched my hands out to the heat. ‘I didn’t think it was a very clever crime,’ I said slowly after a minute. ‘Not the sort of murder that I would expect from a man with a trained mind, or a woman with sharp wits. There was something very naïve about this business of pretending that an arrow, a whole arrow, had gone through a small hole in the tapestry and then pierced the man’s heart. That could only have been the thought of a man, or woman, who knew nothing about archery. The feathers at the back of the arrow would surely have been wedged into the tapestry and the tapestry itself would have been soaked in blood and probably been pulled down when the body fell. I don’t suppose anyone would have believed it for a second if it hadn’t suited the king’s serjeant, Master Gibson, to throw the blame onto James. He was already hand-in-glove with Sir George St Leger, as you know. And there was something else: when the cook lent his knives to Dr Ramirez, the small one was missing – so that it wouldn’t be identified, I suppose. Well the idea did enter my mind when I remembered that. And when I realised that there was a way of secretly conveying goods from the kitchen back to London, well I began to be pretty sure that the cook had something to conceal, something that laid him open to blackmail. I didn’t want to believe it, but eventually I knew it had to be him.’

  The cardinal’s eyes were still fixed on the fire and I could read nothing from his face. A silence is always difficult to interpret and I began to realise that I might be putting my own life in danger. I could be accused of conspiracy, aiding and abetting a murderer to escape justice. Still there was nothing to be done now, but to trust to him.

  I took the confession from my pocket and handed it to him. ‘I think that the signature will be well known in the kitchen clerks’ offices.’

  He read it through carefully and then thought for a moment. Carefully, he folded it and held it in his hand for a moment and then walked back to his desk, held a stick of wax to a candle for a moment and then dropped a blob on the fold of the letter. I had seen him do this on innumerable occasions, but now he did not press his own seal down on the hot wax, but left it as it was. Then he rang his bell twice as was his usual summons for his gentleman usher.

  When George appeared the cardinal was once more busy with his correspondence.

  ‘Oh, George, good news. Hugh decided that it was not necessary for him to go to Ireland after all. And so we will have the benefit of his company for some time longer.’

  George turned a beaming face on me and said how pleased everyone would be, and then reverted to his worried expression.

  ‘No news of them yet, Your Grace. I’ve sent off the best riders and with the best horses. With luck we will catch them before they reach Hever.’

  ‘With the help of God.’ The cardinal crossed himself solemnly. ‘Oh, and George, Hugh was given this letter. I want the clerk of the kitchens to see it. Send for him, will you?’

  ‘The great thing about George is that he never asks questions.’ The cardinal made the remark as soon as the door was closed. ‘Well, I’m glad to see you back, Hugh. We’ve lost another guest. Sir George St Leger has returned to London, bearing a message for the king from Her Grace, Queen Katherine.’ The cardinal did not look at me when
he said this, but returned to his work on his letter to the ambassador, filling the page with his small, spikey handwriting. I sat opposite to him and neither of us spoke until the clerk arrived back with George, both of them panting.

  ‘Apparently a message from our cook, Master Beasley.’ The cardinal smiled benignly at the clerk and George looked bewildered. I handed over the sealed sheet of paper.

  Nervously the clerk broke the seal and scanned the few short lines.

  ‘Read it aloud,’ commanded the cardinal.

  The clerk read the confession tonelessly. George gasped and the cardinal sighed gently. I preserved a solemn legal countenance.

  ‘And the signature?’

  ‘Master Beasley’s certainly, Your Grace.’ He did not, interestingly, look too astounded and I wondered how much he might have suspected. He did not comment either on my signature, just below the cook’s, verifying that this confession had been signed in my presence.

  ‘Perhaps, Master Lynsey won’t mind signing to that effect, Your Grace,’ I said and received a gracious nod from the cardinal. George brought me an inkstand and I penned a few words, thinking that if I were to stay in England I should follow the queen’s advice and study English law at the Inns.

  ‘I attest that the above signature is known to me and that it is the signature of Master Beasley, chief cook to His Grace, Thomas Cardinalis,’ I wrote and then read the words aloud. Master Lynsey signed it with the rapidity of a man who normally signs forty pieces of paper before he has his morning dinner.

  ‘Thank you, Master Lynsey, we won’t keep you any longer. Master Cavendish, you are busy, I know, but perhaps you could send the king’s serjeant, Master Gibson, to me.’ With that the cardinal dismissed them and then turned to me.

  ‘You may leave this other matter in my hands, Hugh,’ he said. ‘I won’t delay you now. I know that you will want to fetch James back to Hampton Court in time for supper.’

  Author’s Note

  James Butler and Anne Boleyn, did not, as everyone knows, marry. Ironically, James, who married a cousin, Lady Joan Fitzgerald, had seven sons who all lived to adulthood.

  The match between them would have been good for both sides of the family because there was a disputed inheritance. Both James’s father, Piers Rua, and Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn, laid claim to the title of Earl of Ormond and to the Ormond lands in Ireland.

  When Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, died, he left only two daughters (both quite elderly women), one of whom was the mother of Thomas Boleyn and the other the mother of Sir George St Leger. Under English law the inheritance was to be divided between the two daughters, but his nephew, Piers Rua, claimed the earldom in Ireland under Brehon (Irish) law which states that women were only allowed to inherit ‘land sufficient to graze seven cows’, and also because he was the choice of the Butlers in Ireland. Piers Rua’s mother (Saibh Cavanagh) was from a Gaelic clan and he had been fostered by a Gaelic family. As an adult Piers Rua lived by Brehon laws and employed members of the Mac Egans, the largest legal family in Ireland, as his Brehons or lawyers. Cardinal Wolsey sorted out the matter by getting Thomas Boleyn to agree that the earldom would go to James Butler on condition that he married Thomas’s daughter, Anne Boleyn. James was described by Wolsey’s biographer, George Cavendish, as ‘my lord’s favourite page’ and Wolsey spoke highly of him as: ‘right active, discreet and wise.’

  Harry Percy & Anne Boleyn:

  It may look as though I am tampering with history by describing a possible elopement, but I do think that Anne Boleyn’s possible prolonged stay at Hever and absence from the court, two years according to some (and with no marriage contract for a girl who was definitely ‘getting on’), must have resulted from something a little more serious than just a boy/girl flirtation. In any case, there is a strange gap in the history of Anne Boleyn from 1522 to the mid 1520s. Professor Eric Ives, in his definitive biography, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, has an interesting few pages about this puzzle and confesses himself baffled. He says that it would have been unlikely that her parents would have missed two years or so of opportunity to find her a husband. After all if she were born in 1501, and that seems to be the consensus of opinion now, time was getting on for her in an era when marriage contracts were normally made for girls under twenty. I even wonder whether Anne had a baby. Henry VIII seems to have been notoriously bad at discerning virgins!

  And, of course, no one, not even Professor Ives, has ever found a sensible explanation for why the marriage with James Butler, so good for both families, did not take place after all. Nor for why Anne Boleyn, at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, was still unmarried.

  True & Not True:

  Untrue: I’ve taken some liberties with the historical record by transferring the Shrove Tuesday pageant of Château Vert from York Place (which no longer exists) to Hampton Court, where the reader can make a good effort at imagining the scene. Most people seem to think that it was the young choristers who played the parts of the unpleasant women (Malbouche, Disdain, Jealousy etc.), but I have used the cardinal’s wards and this may be untrue – though plausible, I think.

  I found the titles of officials in the cardinal’s household from the gentleman usher George Cavendish’s Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey written after the death of Henry VIII, but, apart from George, I have invented their names. There is no record of an Irish lawyer coming over to the cardinal to draft a marriage treaty and Hugh Mac Egan is my creation, though it is true that Piers Rua Butler employed the Mac Egan family as legal advisors and judges.

  True: George Cavendish in his Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey (George joined the cardinal’s household in 1522) talks about the cardinal’s wards – eight of them. The only three he mentions by name are James Butler, Harry Percy and the ‘little earl’, fourteen-year-old Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby, but I have, I think, with a lot of effort, discovered the others. Very often one name led to another. For example, I saw mention that Francis Bigod was a friend of Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby, when they were adults, and when I looked him up I found that they were the same age and that he, too, had been a ward of the cardinal. A letter from Queen Katherine of Aragon to Cardinal Wolsey about a match for one of her ladies-in-waiting to his ward led me to Thomas Arundel. The only one that I am not quite sure of is Thomas Seymour, who would later marry Catherine Parr and would be involved in a scandal concerning the young Princess Elizabeth, but his older brother Edward had been in the care of the cardinal so I thought it was feasible. Gilbert Tailboys’ father was a lunatic in the care of Cardinal Wolsey, and Bessie Blount, mother of King Henry’s illegitimate son, was married off to him.

  True: The details about Anne Boleyn’s upbringing in France.

  True: Leather mâché, mixed with glue, was used for a lot of the medallions that decorated the great hall at Hampton Court. Apparently they were always thought to be made from wood – such was their appearance – until taken down for repainting etc. It’s my own idea to use it for mock arrows, but I think it is feasible.

  Controversial: It is often said that Henry VIII built the ‘real’ tennis court, or ‘play’ at Hampton Court when he took possession of it in 1529, but when I was looking through the workmen’s accounts I saw that not only was it referred to as the ‘new’ tennis play, but also that new ‘lodgings’ for the tennis play (changing rooms?) had been built prior to building the new tennis court itself. It seems to me very likely that the cardinal, knowing how much Henry liked the sport, had one built at around the same time as the royal rooms for the king and his court.

  Controversial: It has been generally thought, that Henry VIII designed and had built the 50ft-high oriel window in the great hall at Hampton Court, but recently archaeologists, on closer inspection of the window, realised that is untrue and now believe that it was part of Wolsey’s Hampton Court. The accounts bear this out as they only list, in the royal expenditure on the great hall, a sum for new stained glass.

  True: Wolsey owned two of the four Pe
trarch’s Triumphs tapestries in 1522. He acquired the set of four around 1523.

  Helpful Books

  I have a couple of shelves filled with books about this era, but the ones below have been the most useful and most often consulted.

  Brears, Peter, All the King’s Cooks: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace

  Cavendish, George, The life & Death of Cardinal Wolsey

  Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea, translated by D. Thompson, The Craftsman’s Handbook

  Ives, Eric, The Life & Death of Anne Boleyn

  Krznaric, Roman, The First Beautiful Game: Stories of Obsession in Real Tennis

  Law, Ernest, The History of Hampton Court in Tudor Times

  Matusiak, John, Wolsey: The Life of King Henry VIII’s Cardinal

  Weir, Alison, Henry VIII: King & Court

  Worsley, Lucy, Hampton Court Palace

  Acknowledgements

  Many, many thanks to my erudite and indefatigable agent, Peter Buckman, who is always able to sprinkle wholesome criticism with the sugar of his wit. Thanks also to the workers at the History Press: Mark Beynon, who has been encouraging and enthusiastic, and Lauren Newby for her meticulous and knowledgeable editing. My husband Frank shared pleasurable hours in the second-hand bookshops at Hay-on-Wye, uncomplainingly carrying large bags of long-forgotten books to the car, and my medical engineering son, William, was very useful in solving computer problems and matters to do with dead bodies. I am, as always, so very grateful to both.