Birthright

by David Hingley

  Yet as she continued to walk, and a soft rain began to fall, she stopped dwelling on what her father might have done. No doubt Cromwell was involved, whatever Fell said, and those were brutal times, by God she knew that. She glanced over her shoulder to see Nicholas following at a tactful distance. She halted beside a thin jet of water that was shooting from a hole in the ground, of the sort enterprising householders created by boring into the underground elm pipes to save themselves a long walk to the public conduit for their water. Pretending she wanted to freshen her face, she stooped towards the spray to give him chance to draw level.

  ‘So,’ she said, beads of water dripping from her ringlets, ‘I will visit the Tower tomorrow to deliver your petition. Will you meet me later on so I can give you the answer?’

  ‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘Though that’s Saturday, and I said I’d shoe the horses at the local inn over the weekend. They don’t pay much but it’s something.’ He considered. ‘How about Sunday evening? Or will you be resting?’

  ‘No. Come to my lodgings at seven. I will order food.’ She surprised herself at her boldness, but Bethany would be in the house, and right now she was too tired to think of an alternative. Nicholas just raised an eyebrow.

  She gave him the address as he walked her to a hackney, then he left, back to odd jobs so he said, but when she looked from the carriage window he was disappearing towards the wherry stand from where gambling men took a boat to Southwark for the prize fights. She was surprised to realise she didn’t care, that she just liked the man. But as the horses set off, a caution developed within, a more sensible voice reminding her he was a stranger, an inappropriate companion for this personal search. But she had promised she would help him, and she would.

  Chapter Eight

  Thankfully, the Lieutenant of the Tower had agreed to Mercia’s request to visit Lady Markstone. Once more back at the gates, she nodded to the familiar guard on duty and passed within the cloud-framed Lion Tower that formed the barbican entrance of the ancient fortress. A strange feeling came over her as she realised she was walking into the place where her father had lived his final weeks. Whatever he had done to Stephen Fell, he was still her father. The injustice he had suffered seemed to ooze from the very air.

  The tension dissipated in an instant as a sound akin to a muffled trumpet tore her from her sorry reflections. Staring through a window slot she was amazed to see a huge grey beast with a ridiculously elongated nose, two massive tooth-like rods protruding from its wrinkled cheeks. This must be one of the wondrous creatures the King kept at the entrance to his London fortress, but seeing the elephant up close startled her. What else must exist in the lands beyond our island, she thought.

  She knew there would be lions, of course. Her father had brought her to see them when she was a girl. She remembered the largest cat she had ever seen, a magnificent golden animal with a tangled mane that was nothing like the thin beasts adorning the royal coat of arms. It had looked at her and she had run behind her father, peering out from behind his legs. Today a pang of nostalgia struck her as she continued across the viewing platforms, wondering if the same lion she had been scared of then was still here. Crowly, was that his name? Probably dead by now.

  Exiting the Lion Tower, she traversed a drawbridge to meet two velvet-uniformed guards manning the twin-towered gatehouse to the main complex beyond. They stepped aside to let her pass, banging their fearsome partisans on the ground in a posturing attempt to impress. She passed through the gatehouse and across the water-filled moat to reach the Byward Tower, taking in its raised portcullises and numerous defensive slits before she emerged into the Outer Ward, a wide, open walkway that snaked around the entire inner fortress.

  Directly opposite rose the imposing Bell Tower, where a century before the great Elizabeth had been imprisoned by her own sister before becoming queen. Normally, Mercia would have been fascinated by the history, but today she was more concerned with the squat-faced guard waiting for her at the tower’s base, a light bruise fading from his cheek. She cursed, for this was Dicken, the same warder she had struck when she had been denied access to her father. No doubt he had contrived to be on escort duty today.

  She pulled her black hood over her face. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I am here to see Lady Markstone.’

  Dicken folded his arms. ‘No use trying to hide your face, my lady. Although not such a lady, the way you acted, screaming as you were pulled away.’

  ‘I wanted to see my father.’ She pulled back her hood in defiance. ‘To prevent it was cruel.’

  He shrugged. ‘I do what the chief yeoman tells me, my lady.’

  Riled, she held his fierce gaze. ‘Presumably he would now say take Mrs Blakewood to Lady Markstone.’

  ‘Don’t you want to make up for last time first?’ He leered. ‘We could have an hour in the guardroom. The lads’ll clear out.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘You could last an hour? I would have thought minutes.’

  Dicken clenched his right fist. She could tell he would like nothing better than to lash out with it. She stood her ground, waiting.

  ‘Come then,’ he growled, brushing past. ‘The lady poisoner’s in Beauchamp, quite cosy. But you better have something for me.’

  She followed him down the cobbled walkway, still slippery from yesterday’s rain, the sun casting faint shadows across the ground. After a few yards they turned through a gate under the Bloody Tower and came into the Inner Ward. A stone wall muffled the clanging of workmen constructing the King’s new weapons store to their right, but Dicken led her left towards a striking crenelated tower in the middle of the surrounding wall: the Beauchamp Tower, ironically named after one of her own mother’s ancestors from centuries before.

  Storming past a bemused guard, Dicken clunked up a circular staircase to the tower’s middle floor, where a hefty wooden door confronted them. He took two large keys from a chain around his belt and waited. Despite her acrimony, Mercia passed him a newly minted half-crown, the King’s silver face shining on the front.

  Dicken looked at it. ‘These coins are much better without Cromwell’s ugly head.’ He gave her a malicious smile. ‘But then I can see his rotting face at Westminster whenever I like. Do you know it took eight blows of the axe to cut that bastard’s head from his body when they dug it up?’

  She knew. Her father had told her how the crowds had rejoiced when the corpse of the King’s arch enemy Cromwell had been dragged through the streets to be decapitated in death. She looked at Dicken in revulsion, but he merely smirked and turned the weighty keys in the door, holding it open for her to enter. Once she was through he locked it behind her, his footsteps disappearing back down the stairs.

  She found herself in a spacious room full of elaborate furniture, sunlight falling through a large window onto a red-carpeted floor, the orange glow of a homely fire burning in the stone grate. It could have been the parlour of a happy country house, but the imposing view of the White Tower at the heart of the fortress belied that untruth in an instant.

  Lady Markstone had been writing at a desk under the window, but when Mercia came in she set down her quill pen and stood. Like Mercia, she was wearing a simple black dress, an undecorated black petticoat showing through the fashionable front slit.

  ‘Mercia,’ she smiled. ‘It is wonderful to see you. Please forgive my surroundings. ’Tis not how I would like to receive guests but I am kept comfortable enough. Life leads us to strange destinations, does it not?’ She pointed to an oaken table. ‘At least I can offer you wine and some fruit.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Mercia filled a goblet and took a sip, accepting her host’s invitation to sit in an upholstered green chair by the table. Realising she was hungry she took a small bite of an apple from the platter Lady Markstone pushed across.

  ‘I am indebted to you for coming.’ Lady Markstone brushed down her dress as she sat. ‘I am kept here all the hours of the day, with none but my Bible for succour. Which is good company, and sustains me i
n my grief, but I do miss the pleasure of female companionship.’

  Mercia nodded, understanding. She couldn’t remember when she had last spent significant time with female friends herself, other than the cousin she visited once a year around her birthday. Somehow her old friends had all drifted away, whether to husbands and children, or like Nathan’s wife Jane, to death.

  ‘This is a fine chamber,’ she said, recalling her foul Newgate cell. The difference between the rooms could not have been more pronounced.

  ‘But still a prison. Nor am I the first.’ Lady Markstone indicated the stony walls with a gloved hand. ‘The one over the fireplace is my favourite.’

  Mercia peered at the walls. A multitude of names and messages were scratched all over the stone, hewn out to surprising depths by previous occupants. She read above the fireplace:

  quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo

  tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro

  ‘Something about glory in Christ?’ she guessed. ‘I’m afraid the pleasures of Latin were denied me.’

  ‘It means, the more suffering for Christ in this world, the more glory with Christ in the next. I think that must be true. By God this life has brought me suffering enough.’ Lady Markstone sighed. ‘But enough selfish indulgence. You are no doubt wondering whether the accusations against me are true. The lady poisoner, I know that is what they call me. Did she kill her husband, or not?’

  Mercia was curious, but she was not about to admit it. ‘Please, there is no need to speak of it.’ She looked up. ‘Unless it will help you in your need.’

  Lady Markstone stood, gazing through the window. ‘They say Anne Boleyn was beheaded down there, and Catherine Howard, for daring to be themselves in the face of a powerful man. I cannot claim such elevation, but the principle is the same.’ She rolled up her sleeve, revealing a badly healed scar. ‘Look.’

  Mercia stared at the wound, appalled. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘’Tis a lasting reminder of my husband’s power. He was a great man, oh yes, a strong fighter and a patriot, and I respected him for it. But his temper – it became too much to bear, however I prayed God to allow me to suffer it.’

  ‘Sir Edward beat you?’ Her mother had suggested as such in Warwick, but the news was still a shock.

  ‘Nothing so brutal. It was always a subtle trick he played, with his mind as well as his fist. Although this was a dinner knife, one evening when wine inflamed him.’

  Her eyes remained fixed on the wound. ‘Did my father know?’

  ‘Sometimes others noticed things were amiss, but I never let on. Somehow I still loved him.’ She shook her head. ‘Then one day the Devil came, told me Edward was old enough to die without suspicion. I acquired the means to hasten his end.’ She scoffed. ‘A poison, can you believe? But the Lord works His will in ways we do not understand. I overcame my brief weakness and repented my sinful thoughts, but He allowed Edward to die nonetheless, struck down by an affliction of the body. The arsenic was discovered, and I was blamed.’

  ‘But if you did not kill him?’

  ‘It matters not. Either I killed him or I intended to, and I am judged the same, a murderer in deed or in thought. I have enemies at court. You know how it works.’ She rolled her sleeve back down and sat. ‘’Tis treason for a woman to kill her husband. They say ’tis against the order of nature.’ She took a slow breath. ‘But I do have a plan to save my head. I will ask for exile to America.’

  The idea seemed fantastic. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘I can enjoy some freedom across the ocean. I have acquaintances in New England who will help me procure land and build a house. I am told the King is receptive to the proposal. And the alternative is not attractive.’ She smiled weakly, drawing a line across her neck. ‘You understand this, Mercia. We may be women, but we are as clever as any man if we have the liberty to act.’

  Mercia reached out her hand; the older woman took it in a firm grip.

  ‘I shall miss my son, of course.’ She sighed. ‘But Leonard no longer needs me, and I will not disabuse him of his love for his father by telling him the truth about his ways. But enough of me. You have your own troubles. I am told Sir Francis has claimed Halescott.’

  The change of topic briefly took her aback; she realised for a short moment she had forgotten her own plight. ‘He purports to,’ she said, recovering her wits. ‘But his claim is dubious. I will get the manor back.’

  Lady Markstone lightly stroked her hand. ‘Sir Francis grows in influence. He will be a difficult opponent.’

  ‘Unless I can secure the help of someone more influential still.’ She paused. ‘Indeed, I wanted to ask you a question that may help. But it is – sensitive. It concerns your husband.’

  ‘How so?’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Before his death my father wrote me a message. It was about the Oxford Section.’

  Lady Markstone’s hand twitched. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said the paintings were not burnt, but stolen. I am hoping Sir Edward told you the same.’

  Lady Markstone slowly nodded. ‘If your father told you the story, you know everyone was ordered to keep the truth quiet for the sake of stability. To save Cromwell’s face, more like.’ She roved her old eyes across Mercia’s face. ‘What do you intend?’

  ‘I hope to discover the truth, then use it to earn the King’s favour.’ Withdrawing her hand, Mercia sat back in her seat. ‘Does the name James North mean anything to you?’

  Lady Markstone frowned. ‘North was the thief, a vicious and dangerous man. Neither my husband nor your father could find him.’

  ‘But how did he just vanish? It makes no sense.’

  She shook her head. ‘Cromwell came to see Edward not long after Worcester. I heard the shouting from two floors up. But Edward never spoke of it with me.’

  ‘Not once?’

  ‘Not really.’ Shuffling in her chair, she straightened out her dress. ‘The only thing I know is that North was suspected of fleeing abroad. But surely the paintings were disposed of, into some private collection perhaps?’ She sucked in her lips. ‘Mercia, take an old woman’s advice. Do not resurrect past dangers. Think of your son.’

  Mercia lowered her gaze. ‘I appreciate what you say, but I am lost just now. Those paintings could be the very means I need to help Daniel. With the King’s patronage I might be able to right some of the tragedies that have afflicted us.’

  Lady Markstone leant forward, setting her hand on Mercia’s knee. ‘Yes child. It is unfair what befalls us women betimes, but we must be strong for those who depend on us.’ She looked at Mercia through searching hazel eyes. ‘There are other ways to look after yourself and your son. Ways you may not like, but which might provide more comfort. William Calde, for example.’ She smiled. ‘No, I am not devoid of courtly gossip in here.’

  ‘I do not wish—’

  ‘I know. But consider the alternatives, and choose what is surest and best. You have no master to guide you now, save yourself.’ She reached for a flask of wine. ‘Now let us discuss more pleasant matters.’

  ‘That would be welcome. And – oh.’ She paused, recalling her promise. ‘Before I forget, you had a farrier in your employ, a man named Wildmoor. It seems a minor thing with all else, but for him ’tis a lot.’

  ‘Wildmoor?’ She laughed as she poured out two goblets. ‘An unusual acquaintance for you, Mercia. How have you met him?’

  She waved an embarrassed hand. ‘We crossed paths after I came to arrange a visit with you. He had come about – well …’

  ‘He has not been paid, is that it?’

  ‘Yes. And he suffers for want of money, I think, although he is too proud to say. He was not paid when he left the ships.’

  ‘That is not my concern. But as to what Edward owes him, tell him to petition my son.’ She sipped at her wine, looking at Mercia over the rim. ‘I seem to recall my husband was very pleased with Wildmoor, thought him trustworthy. If you are considering him yours
elf, I believe he would be of good service.’

  Mercia smiled. ‘Thank you. But a farrier would be an excess right now.’

  For the next half-hour they lapsed into more cheerful conversation of a sort Mercia could never share with her mother, chatting of women they both knew and discussing current events. Then all too soon Dicken’s gruff voice barked from behind the door that it was time to leave. Lady Markstone took Mercia in her arms, looking wistfully into her eyes.

  ‘How I wished for a girl. Had my Robert been a daughter, he would not have marched to his death in our ridiculous wars.’ She let her go. ‘But that is the past and we must take care of our futures. I wish you luck, my child, in your life. Marry again. That is the solution for you, I think.’

  The keys turned and the door swung inwards, Dicken’s pudgy face protruding round the side. With a final farewell, Mercia followed the warder down the stairs. As she crossed the courtyard outside, once more in the rain, she looked up to see Lady Markstone standing at her window. It could have been the raindrops on the glass, but she seemed to have tears rolling down her face.

  Chapter Nine

  Mercia was perusing a volume of George Herbert’s poetry the next evening when Bethany knocked on the parlour door to show Nicholas in. He was wearing smarter clothes than on Friday, a clean white shirt hooked into the top of close-fitting breeches beneath a brown waistcoat, and she could see his hair had been trimmed as he removed his hat. It made her feel guilty for what she was about to say, even more so when he presented her with a small bunch of yellow primroses, which Bethany arranged in a vase she found tucked away in the top shelf of a fine court cupboard. He was neither pleased nor disappointed with the news she brought about petitioning Lady Markstone’s son, merely grunting a resigned acknowledgment.