“No! No! No! Don’t you hear me? He’s not trying the marriage, he’s putting the woman on trial. He’s going to try her for adultery. And her brother, and some other men, God knows who, God knows how many. God knows if they are even our friends or our cousins. Surely only God knows why!”
“Any of us?” I demand urgently. “Not any of our family or those who are working with us? None of the princess’s supporters?”
“No. Not as far as I know. Not arrested yet. That’s what’s so strange. All those who are missing are those of the Boleyn party who are in and out of her rooms all day.” Montague makes a little face. “You know the ones. Norris, Brereton . . .”
“Men that Cromwell doesn’t like,” I remark. “But why the lute boy?”
“I don’t know!” Montague rubs his face with his hands. “They took him first. Perhaps because Cromwell can torture him till he confesses? Cromwell can torture him till he names others? Till he gives the names that Cromwell wants?”
“Torture?” I repeat. “Torture him? The king is using torture? Against a boy? The little musician?”
Montague looks at me as if the country we know and love, our heritage, is tumbling to hell under our feet. “And I have agreed to be on the jury,” he says.
Not just my son Montague but twenty-five other peers of the realm have to sit in judgment on the woman whom they called queen. The panel is chaired by her uncle, grim-faced at the fall of the woman whom he pushed onto the throne, who became the queen whom he hated. Near him is her former lover, Henry Percy, trembling with ague, muttering that he is too sick to attend, that he should not be forced to attend.
All the lords of my family are there. A good quarter of the jury are of our affinity or party, who support the Princess Mary and have hated the Boleyn woman ever since she usurped the throne. For us, though the accounts of kissing and seduction are shocking enough, the accusation that she poisoned the queen and was planning to poison the princess is a bitter confirmation of our worst fears. The rest of the panel are Henry’s men who can be relied on to hate or love as he commands. She made no friends while she was queen, no one says one word in her defense. There is no possibility of justice for her, as they study the evidence that Thomas Cromwell has so persuasively prepared.
Elizabeth Somerset, the Countess of Worcester, who attended the queen’s funeral with me at Peterborough, has turned against her friend Anne and provides a report of flirtations and worse in the queen’s bedchamber. Someone speaks of something that someone said on their deathbed. It is a mess of petty gossip and grotesque scandal.
Montague comes home, his face dark and angry. “The shame of it,” he says shortly. “The king says that he believes that up to a hundred men have had her. The disgrace.”
I hand him a glass of mulled ale, while I watch him. “Did you say ‘guilty’?” I ask him.
“I did,” he says. “The evidence was inarguable. Lord Cromwell had every detail that one might question. For some reason, which is beyond me, he allowed George Boleyn himself to tell the court out loud that the king was incapable of fathering a child. He announced the king’s impotency.”
“Did they prove that she murdered our queen?”
“They accused her of it. Seems that’s enough.”
“Will he imprison her? Or send her to a nunnery?”
Montague turns to me and his face is filled with a dark pity. “No. He’s going to kill her.”
BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, MAY 1536
I leave London. I cannot bear to hear the speculation and the gossip, the constant retelling of the obscene details of the trial, the unending wondering what will happen next. Even the people who have hated the Boleyn woman cannot understand why the king does not call his marriage invalid, name his daughter Elizabeth a bastard, and put the mother away in some distant cold castle where she can die of neglect.
Some of this is done: the marriage is annulled, the child Elizabeth declared a bastard. And yet still the woman is kept in the Tower and the plans for an execution go on.
I am glad to be away from the city but I cannot put the woman in the Tower out of my mind. In the closed and derelict priory I go into the cold chapel and kneel on the stone floor facing east, though the beautiful cross and altar silverware have been taken away. I find myself praying to an empty altar for the woman whom I have hated, whose agent stole my holy things.
There is no precedent for the execution of a Queen of England. It is not possible for a queen to be beheaded. No woman has ever walked from the Tower to the little patch of grass before the chapel to her death. I cannot imagine it. I cannot bear to imagine it. And I cannot believe that Henry Tudor, the prince whom I knew, could turn against a woman he had loved like this. He is a king whose courtly lovemaking is a byword at his court. He cannot be brutal; it is always love, true love, for Henry. Surely, he cannot sentence his wife, and the mother of his child, to death. I know that he turned against his own good queen, that he sent her away and neglected her. But it is a different thing, a different thing altogether, to ride away from a disappointing woman and ignore her, than to change overnight and command a lover’s death.
I pray for Anne, but I find my thoughts turning again and again to the king. I think he must be in a fury of jealous rage, shamed at what men are saying about him, exposed by the spiteful wit of the Boleyns, feeling his age, feeling the good looks of his youth blurred by the fatness of his face. Every day he must look in his mirror and see the young, handsome prince disappearing behind the bloated face of an old, laughable king, the golden child becoming the Moldwarp. Everyone adored Henry when he was a young king; he cannot understand that his court, the wife whom he raised from nothing, could have turned against him and—worse—laughed at him as a fat old cuckold.
But I am mistaken in this. While I think of the sensitive man recoiling with shame, raging at the loss of the woman for whom he destroyed so much, Henry is repairing his pride, courting the Seymour girl. He is not looking in the mirror and mourning his youth. He is going upriver in his barge with lute players twanging away, to dine with her every night. He is sending her little gifts and planning their future as if they are a bride and groom betrothed in May. He is not mourning his youth, he is reclaiming it; and just a few days after the cannon shot from the Tower tells all of London that the king has committed one of the worst crimes a man can do—killed his wife—the king marries again and we have a new queen: Jane.
“The Spanish ambassador told me that Jane will bring the princess to court, and see her honored,” Geoffrey tells me. We are walking in the fields towards Home Farm, looking at the greening crop. Somewhere among the white hawthorn of the hedgerow there is a blackbird singing defiance to the world, lilting notes, filled with hope.
“Really?”
Geoffrey is beaming. “Our enemy is dead, and we have survived. The king himself called Henry Fitzroy to him, took him in his arms, and said that the Boleyn woman would have killed him and our princess, and that he was lucky to still have them.”
“He’ll send for the princess?”
“As soon as Jane is proclaimed queen, and sets up her household. Our princess will live with her new mother, the queen—within days.”
I tuck my hand in the crook of my favorite son’s arm and rest my head briefly on his shoulder. “You know, in a life of such reverses, I find I am almost surprised to still be here. I am very surprised to see it all coming right again.”
He pats my hand. “Who knows? You might yet see your beloved princess crowned.”
“Shh, shh,” I say, though the fields are empty but for a distant laborer digging out a blocked ditch. It is now treason even to speak of the death of the king. Every day Cromwell makes a new law to protect the king’s reputation.
I can hear the sound of hooves on the road and we turn back to the house. I see Montague’s standard rippling above the hedgerows and when we walk into the stable yard he is dismounting from his horse. He comes quickly towards the two of us, smiling, drops to his knee for m
y blessing, and then rises. “I have news from Greenwich,” he says. “Good news.”
“The princess is to return to court?” Geoffrey guesses. “Didn’t I say so?”
“Even better than that,” Montague says. He turns to me. “It is you who are invited to return to court,” he says. “Lady Mother, I am here with the king’s own invitation. The exile is over, you are to return.”
I don’t know what to say. I look at his smiling face, and I struggle for words. “A restoration?”
“A complete restoration. It will be as it was before. The princess in her palace, you at her side.”
“God be praised,” Geoffrey exclaims. “You will command Princess Mary’s household again, just as you used to do. You will be where you should be, where we all should be, at court, and places and fees will come your way again, will come to all of us.”
“In debt, Geoffrey?” Montague asks with a slight mocking smile.
“I doubt you could manage on a small estate, constantly going to law with the neighbors,” Geoffrey says irritably. “All I want is for us to have our own again. Our Lady Mother should be at the head of the court, and we should all be there too. We are Plantagenets; we were born to rule, the least we can do is advise.”
“And I will care for the princess,” I say—the only thing that matters to me.
“Lady Governess to the princess again.” Montague takes my hand and smiles at me. “Congratulations.”
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, JUNE 1536
I return to London with Montague, his standard going before us, the white rose over my head, his guards beautifully mounted and dressed around me, and almost as soon as we are in the city, heading for our barge at the river, I see that people are pointing and running ahead of us, and starting to cheer. By the time we get close to the river there are thousands of people in the streets, shouting my name, shouting blessings, asking for the princess, and finally calling out “À Warwick! À Warwick!”.
“That’s enough.” Montague nods to one of the guards who rides into the crowd, crushing people with his big horse, and takes the flat of his sword and delivers a thudding blow to the young loyalist.
“Montague!” I say, shocked. “He was just cheering for us.”
“He can’t,” Montague says grimly. “You’re back at court, Lady Mother, and we are restored, but it’s not all just as it was. The king is not as he was. I think he will never be the same again.”
“I thought he was so happy with Jane Seymour?” I ask. “I thought she was the only woman he has ever loved?”
Montague hides a grim smile at my sarcasm. “He’s happy with her,” he says cautiously. “But he’s not so much in love that he can bear even one word of criticism, one word of doubt. And someone shouting for you, or for the princess, or for the Church, is the sort of criticism that he cannot bear to hear.”
My rooms at court are the ones I had before, so long ago, when I was here as lady-in-waiting to Katherine and she was a queen of only twenty-three years old, pulled out of poverty and despair by a seventeen-year-old king, and we thought that nothing would ever go wrong again.
I go to pay my respects to the new queen in her rooms, and make my curtsey to Jane Seymour, a girl I first met as a shy, rather incompetent maid-in-waiting to Katherine. From her blanched hauteur, I assume that she remembers being scolded by me for clumsiness, and I make sure I curtsey low, and stay down until she invites me to rise.
I show not the slightest hint of my amusement as I survey her room and her ladies. Every wooden boss that used to bear a falcon or a bold A has been lathed clean and sanded down, and now there is a J or a rising phoenix. Her unctuous motto, “Bound to Obey and Serve,” is being embroidered by her ladies on a banner of Tudor green. They greet me pleasantly. Some of them are old friends. Elizabeth Darrell served Katherine with me, Frances Grey’s half sister Mary Brandon is here and, most surprisingly of all, Jane Boleyn, the widow of George Boleyn, who provided fatal evidence against her own husband and her sister-in-law Anne. She seems to have recovered with remarkable swiftness from her grief and the disaster in her family, and she curtseys to me very politely.
Queen Jane’s court amazes me. To appoint Jane Boleyn as your lady-in-waiting is to knowingly welcome a spy who will stoop to anything. Surely, she must know that since Jane Boleyn sent her own husband and sister-in-law to the gallows she will hardly flinch from entrapping a stranger. But then I understand. These are not ladies of Jane’s choosing, these are women placed here by their kinsmen to scoop up patronage and fees and to catch the king’s eye; these are vile place servers inserted here for their reward. This is not an English queen’s court in any sense that I would understand it. This is a rat pit.
I am allowed to write to the princess, though I may not visit her yet. I am patient under this ban, certain that the king will bring her to court. Queen Jane speaks kindly of her, and asks my advice about sending her new clothes and a riding cape. Together we choose a new gown and some sleeves of deep red velvet that I know will suit her, and send them by royal messenger north, only thirty miles to Hunsdon, where she is preparing to come to court.
I write to ask of her health, of her happiness. I write telling her that I will see her soon, that we will be happy together again, that I hope the king will let me run her household and it will be as it was before. I say that the court is calm and merry again, and that she will find in Jane a queen and a friend. I don’t remark that they have much in common, being only eight years apart in age, except of course that Mary was born and bred a princess and Jane the uninteresting daughter of a country knight, and I wait for a reply.
Dearest Lady Margaret,
I am so sorry, and so sad, that I cannot come to court and be with you again. I have had the misfortune to offend my father the king, and though I would do anything to obey and honor him, I cannot disobey and dishonor my sainted mother or my God. Pray for me.
Mary
I don’t understand this at all, so I go at once to the king’s rooms to find Montague. He is playing cards with one of the Seymour brothers, who are now great men, and I wait for the game to finish and laugh at Montague’s carefully judged losses. Henry Seymour scoops up his winnings, bows to me, and strolls away down the gallery.
“What has happened with the princess?” I ask tersely, my hands gripping her letter, hidden deep in my pocket.
“The king won’t bring her to court until she takes the oath,” he says shortly. “He sent Norfolk to her, who cursed her to her face and called her a traitor.”
I shake my head in bewilderment. “Why? Why would the king insist that she take the oath now? Queen Katherine is dead, Anne is dead, Elizabeth declared a bastard, he has a new queen and—please God—she will give him a son and heir. Why would he insist that she take the oath now? What’s the point of it?”
Montague turns away from my anxious face and takes a few steps. “I don’t know,” he says simply. “It makes no sense. I thought that when the Boleyn woman was dead all our troubles would be over. I thought that the king would reconcile with Rome. I don’t see why he would persist. Especially, I don’t see why he would persist against his daughter. You wouldn’t speak to a dog the way that Norfolk spoke to her.”
I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a cry. “He threatened her?”
“He said that if she were his daughter he would knock her head against the wall till it was as soft as a baked apple.”
“No!” I cannot believe that even Thomas Howard would dare to speak to a princess like this. I cannot believe that any father would allow such a man to threaten his daughter with violence. “My God, Montague, what are we going to do?”
My son looks like a man being driven gradually, and inexorably, towards danger, a warhorse going reluctantly towards the sound of the cannons. “I thought that our troubles were over, but they have begun anew,” he says slowly. “I think we have to get her away. Queen Jane speaks for her, even Cromwell advises that she should come to court, but the king shouted at Jane
that the princess should be tried for treason, and that Jane was a fool to be her advocate. I think that the king has turned against her, I think he has decided that she is his enemy. Her very presence, even at a distance, is a reproach to him. He can’t see her and forget how he treated her mother. He can’t think of her and pretend there was no Anne. He can’t pretend that he is not old enough to have fathered her. He can’t bear the thought of her defiance. We have to get her away. I don’t think she’s safe in his kingdom.”
Geoffrey rides once again to the secretive riverside village of Grays and reports back that the boatman is ready to leave at our bidding, and he remains loyal to the princess. Our kinsman in Calais, Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, writes to me and says that he can receive the consignment of goods that I am preparing to send him, and that a message to his steward in London will warn him when it is due to be delivered. Montague brings half a dozen strong riding horses to court, saying that he is training them for the hunting season. Our cousin Henry Courtenay pays a stable boy at Hunsdon for news, and understands that the princess is now allowed to walk in the garden every morning, for her health.
I am following Queen Jane to chapel before breakfast when I see Montague in the king’s train. He comes over to me, kneels for my blessing, and when my hand is on his head he whispers: “Norfolk has denounced his half brother to the king and Tom is arrested for treason.”
I keep the shock from my face as Montague rises and gives me his arm. “Come,” I say quickly.
“No.” He leads me towards the chapel and bows to the queen and steps back. “Do nothing out of the ordinary,” he reminds me.
While the priest serves Mass, his back to the congregation, the quiet mutter of Latin drifting over us, I find I am gripping my rosary beads and telling them over and over. It surely isn’t possible that a Howard has done anything against the king. Tom Howard has risen with his family by doing anything the king asked of them. There are no more loyal, bull-necked henchmen in the country. I can barely hear the Mass, I cannot say a prayer. I glance at the queen’s bowed head and I wonder if she knows.
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