The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  “Our clothes?”

  “No,” she says, bewildered. “Someone had sent him some comforts, new things; but they didn’t tell me who.”

  Montague nods and goes from the room without another word, without looking at me.

  Next morning, at a quiet breakfast in my chamber, the two of us close together at the little table before my bedroom fire, Montague tells me that his manservant did not come home last night, and nobody knows where he is.

  “What d’you think?” I ask quietly.

  “I think that Geoffrey has named him as a servant who takes letters and messages for me, and that he has been arrested,” Montague says quietly.

  “Son, I cannot believe that Geoffrey would betray us, or any of our people.”

  “Lady Mother, he promised the king that he would betray us both for warm clothes, firewood, and a good dinner. He was served a good dinner yesterday and they have taken his breakfast in to him today. Right now he is being questioned by William Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Southampton. He is leading the inquiry. It would have been better for Geoffrey, and better for us, if he had put the knife in his heart and driven it home.”

  “Don’t!” I raise my voice to Montague. “Don’t say that! Don’t say that foolish thing. Don’t say that wicked thing. You speak like a child who knows nothing of death. It is never, never better to die. Never think that it is. Son, I know you are afraid. Don’t you think I am too? I saw my brother go into that very Tower and he only came out to his death. My own father died in there, charged with treason. Don’t you think that the Tower is a constant horror to me, and to think that Geoffrey is in there is like the worst of nightmares? And now I think that they might take me? And now I think that they might take you? My son? My heir?” I fall silent at the sight of his face.

  “You know, sometimes I think of it as our family home,” he says very quietly, so quietly that I can hardly hear him. “Our oldest and truest family seat. And that the Tower graveyard is our family tomb, the Plantagenet vault where we are all, in the end, going.”

  Constance visits her husband again but finds him in a haze of fever from his wound. He is well nursed and well served, but when she goes to see him there is a woman in the room—the one who usually comes to lay out the dead—and a guard at the door and he can say nothing to her in private.

  “But he has nothing to say,” she says quietly to me. “He didn’t look at me, he didn’t ask after the children, he didn’t even ask after you. He turned his face to the wall and he wept.”

  Montague’s servant Jerome does not reappear at L’Erber. We have to assume that he is either under arrest or he is held in Cromwell’s house, waiting for the day when he will offer evidence.

  And then, just after Terce, the doors to the street are flung open and the yeomen of the guard march into the entrance hall, to arrest my son Montague.

  We were going to breakfast, and Montague turns as the golden leaves from the vine blow in from the street about the feet of the guards. “Shall I come at once, or take my breakfast first?” he asks, as if it is a small matter of everyone’s convenience.

  “Better come now, sir,” the captain says a little awkwardly. He bows to me and to Constance. “Begging your pardon, your ladyship, my lady.”

  I go to Montague. “I’ll get food and clothing to you,” I promise him. “And I’ll do what I can. I’ll go to the king.”

  “No. Go back to Bisham,” he says quickly. “Keep far away from the Tower. Go today, Lady Mother.”

  His face is very grave; he looks far older than his forty-six years. I think that they took my brother when he was only a little boy, and killed him when he was a young man; and now here is my son, and it has taken all this long time, all these many years, for them to come for him. I am dizzy with fear, I cannot think what I should do. “God bless you, my son,” I say.

  He kneels before me, as he has done a thousand, thousand times, and I put my hand on his head. “God bless us all,” he says simply. “My father lived his life trying to avoid this day. Me too. Perhaps it will end well.”

  And he gets up and goes out of the house without a hat or a cape or gloves.

  I am in the stable yard, watching them pack the wagons for us to leave, when one of the Courtenay men brings me a message from Gertrude, wife to Henry Courtenay, my cousin.

  They have arrested Henry this morning. I will come to you when I can.

  I cannot wait for her, so I tell the guards and the household wagons to go ahead, down the frozen roads to Warblington, and that I will follow later on my old horse. I take half a dozen men and my granddaughters Katherine and Winifred and ride through the narrow streets to Gertrude’s beautiful London house, the Manor of the Rose. The City is getting ready for Christmas, the chestnut sellers are standing behind glowing braziers stirring the scorching nuts and the evocative scents of the season—mulled wine, cinnamon, woodsmoke, burnt sugar, nutmeg—are hanging in trails of gray smoke on the frosty air.

  I leave the horses at the great street door, and my granddaughters and I walk into the hall and then into Gertrude’s presence chamber. It is oddly quiet and empty. Her steward comes forward to greet me.

  “Countess, I am sorry to see you here.”

  “Why?” I ask. “My cousin Lady Courtenay was coming to see me. I have come to say good-bye to her. I am going into the country.” Little Winifred comes close to me and I take her small hand for comfort.

  “My lord has been arrested.”

  “I knew that. I am certain that he will be released at once. I know that he is innocent of anything.”

  The steward bows. “I know, my lady. There is no more loyal servant to the king than my lord. We all know that. We all said that, when they asked us.”

  “So where is my cousin Gertrude?”

  He hesitates. “I am sorry, your ladyship. But she has been arrested too. She has gone to the Tower.”

  I suddenly understand that the silence of this room is filled with the echoes of a place that has been abruptly cleared. There are pieces of needlework on the window seat, and an open book on the reader in the corner of the room.

  I look around and I realize that this tyranny is like the other Tudor disease, the Sweat. It comes quickly, it takes those you love without warning, and you cannot defend against it. I have come too late, I should have been earlier. I have not defended her, I did not save Montague, or Geoffrey. I did not speak up for Robert Aske, nor for Tom Darcy, John Hussey, Thomas More, nor for John Fisher.

  “I’ll take Edward home with me,” I say, thinking of Gertrude’s son. He is only twelve, he must be frightened. They should have sent him to me at once, the minute his parents were arrested. “Fetch him for me. Tell him that his cousin is here to take him home while his mother and father are detained.”

  Inexplicably, the steward’s eyes fill with tears, and then he tells me why the house is so quiet. “He’s gone,” he says. “They took him too. The little lord. He’s gone to the Tower.”

  WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, AUTUMN 1538

  My steward comes into my private chamber, tapping on the door and then stepping in, closing the door behind him as if to keep something secret. Outside I can hear the buzz of the people who have come to see me. I am alone, trying to find the courage to go out and face the inquiries about rents, boundaries of land, the crops that should be grown next season, the tithe that should be paid, the hundred little worries of a great estate that has been my pride and joy for all my life but now seems like a pretty cage, where I have worked and lived and been happy while outside the country I love has slipped down to hell.

  “What is it?”

  His face is scowling with worry. “The Earl of Southampton and the Bishop of Ely to see you, my lady,” he says.

  I rise to my feet, putting my hand to the small of my back where a nagging pain comes and goes with the weather. I think briefly, cravenly, how very tired I am. “Do they say what they want?”

  He shakes his head. I force myself to stand very straight, a
nd I go out into my presence chamber.

  I have known William Fitzwilliam since he played with Prince Henry in the nursery, and now he is a newly made earl. I know how pleased he will be with his honors. He bows to me but there is no warmth in his face. I smile at him and turn to the Bishop of Ely, Thomas Goodrich.

  “My lords, you are very welcome to Warblington Castle,” I say easily. “I hope that you will dine with us? And will you stay tonight?”

  William Fitzwilliam has the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. “We are here to ask you some questions,” he says. “The king commands that you answer the truth upon your honor.”

  I nod, still smiling.

  “And we will stay until we have a satisfactory answer,” says the bishop.

  “You must stay as long as you wish,” I say insincerely. I nod to my steward. “See that the lords’ people are housed, and their horses stabled,” I say. “And set extra places at dinner, and the best bedchambers for our two honored guests.”

  He bows and goes out. I look around my crowded presence chamber. There is a murmur, nothing clear, nothing stated, just a sense that the tenants and petitioners in the room do not like the sight of these great gentlemen riding down from London to question me in my own house. Nobody speaks a disloyal word but there is a rustle of whispers like a low growl.

  William looks uneasy. “Shall we go to a more convenient room?” he asks.

  I look around and smile at my people. “I cannot talk with you today,” I say clearly, so that the poorest widow at the back can hear. “I am sorry for that. I have to answer some questions for these great lords. I will tell them, as I tell you, as you know, that neither I nor my sons have ever thought, done, or dreamed anything which was disloyal to the king. And that none of you has ever done anything either. And none of us ever will.”

  “Easily said,” the bishop says unpleasantly.

  “Because true,” I overrule him, and lead the way into my private room.

  Under the oriel window there is a table where I sometimes sit to write, and four chairs. I gesture that they may sit where they please, and take a chair myself, my back to the wintry light, facing the room.

  William Fitzwilliam tells me, as if it were a matter of mild interest, that he has been questioning my sons Geoffrey and Montague. I nod at the information, and I ignore the swift pang of murderous rage at the thought of this upstart interrogating my boys, my Plantagenet boys. He says that they have both spoken freely to him; he implies he knows everything about us, and then he presses me to admit that I have heard them speak against the king.

  I absolutely deny it, and I say that I have never said a word against His Majesty either. I say that my boys have never said that they wanted to join Reginald, and that I have written no secret letters to my most disappointing son. I know nothing of Geoffrey’s steward Hugh Holland except that he left Geoffrey’s service and went into business, London, I think, a merchant, I think. He may have carried family letters with family news to Flanders for us. I know that Geoffrey went to Lord Cromwell and explained everything to his satisfaction, that Holland’s goods were returned to him. I am glad of that. Lord Cromwell has the keeping of the safety of the king, we all owe him our thanks while he does that great duty. My son was glad to be accountable to him. I have never received secret letters, and so I have never burned secret letters.

  Again and again they ask me the same things, and again and again I tell them simply what I have told them already: I have done nothing, my sons have done nothing, and they can prove nothing against us.

  Then I rise from the table and tell them that I am accustomed to praying at this time, in my family chapel. We pray here in the new way, and there is a Bible in English for anyone to read. After prayers, we will dine. If they lack anything in their rooms, they must ask, and I shall be delighted to ensure their comfort.

  A pedlar with Christmas fairings coming from the London goose fair tells the maids at the kitchen door that my cousin Sir Edward Neville has been arrested and so has Montague’s chaplain John Collins, the Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral, George Croftes, a priest, and several of their servants. I tell the maid who whispers this to me to buy whatever fairings she likes and not to listen to gossip. This is nothing to do with us.

  We serve a good dinner to our guests, and after the dinner we have carol singing and my ladies and maids dance, then I excuse myself and go outside as the sky is turning gray, to walk around the ricks. It comforts me, when my precious sons are in danger, to see that the straw and the hay are battened down against the winds, and that everything is dry and safe. I step into the barn, the cows shifting quietly among the straw at one end and my valuable handsome tup at the other, and I smell the scent of warm animals safely penned up against cold weather. I wish I could stay here, all night, in the light of the little horn lantern with the quiet breathing of animals, and perhaps on Christmas Eve at midnight I would see them kneel in memory of that other stable, where the animals knelt at the crib and the Light of the World founded the Church which I have honored all my life and which is not, and has never been, under the command of any king.

  Next day, William and the bishop come to my room again and ask me the same questions. I give them the same answers, and they carefully write them down and send them to London. We can do this every day until the end of the world and the harrowing of hell. I am never going to say anything that would throw suspicion on either of my imprisoned sons. It is true that I am weary of my inquisitors and their repeated questions, but I will not fail because of weariness. I will not be putting my head on the block and desiring eternal rest. They can ask me until the dead step out of their graves, they will find me as mute as my headless brother. I am an old woman, sixty-five years old now, but I am not ready for the grave, and I am not so weak as to be bullied by men whom I knew as toddlers. I will say nothing.

  In the Tower, the prisoners wait too. The newly arrested churchmen break down and acknowledge that although they swore the king’s oath they never believed in their hearts that Henry was supreme head of the Church. They promise that they did nothing more than break their own hearts over their false swearing; they raised neither money nor men, they did not plot nor speak. Silently, they wished for the restoration of the monasteries and the return of the old ways. Innocently, they prayed for better times.

  Edward Neville, my cousin, did only a little more than they. Once, only once, he told Geoffrey that he wished the princess could come to the throne and Reginald could come home. Geoffrey tells the inquisitors of this exchange. God forgive him, my beloved, false-hearted, fainthearted son tells them what his cousin once said, in confidence, years ago, speaking to a man whom he trusted as a brother.

  My cousin Henry Courtenay cannot be charged for they can find nothing against him. He may have spoken with Neville, or with my son Montague; but neither of them says anything about any conversation, and they confess nothing themselves. They remain true to each other, as kinsmen should. Neither one says anything about the other, nor confesses anything on his own account. Not even when they are told that the other has betrayed him. They smile like the true chivalric lords they are, they know a lie when it is told against the honor of their family. They keep their silence.

  Of course, my cousin Henry’s wife Gertrude was well known to have visited the Holy Maid of Kent and to pity Queen Katherine; but she has already been pardoned for this. Still, they keep her a prisoner and question her every day as to what the Maid of Kent told her about the death of the king and the failure of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Her son Edward lives in a little room beside hers and is allowed a tutor and to take exercise in the gardens. I think this is a good sign that they plan to release him soon, for surely they would not keep him at his lessons if they did not think he would someday go to university?

  All that they have against Henry Courtenay is one sentence; he is recorded as saying: “I trust to see a merry world one day.” When I hear this, I go to my chapel and put my head in my hands to think of my c
ousin Henry hoping for a merry world one day, and that this commonplace optimism should be cited as evidence against him.

  As I kneel before the altar, I think, God bless you, Henry Courtenay; and I cannot disagree. God bless you, Henry, and all prisoners who are held for their faith and for their beliefs, wherever they are tonight. God bless you, Henry Courtenay, for I think as you did, and Tom Darcy did. Like you, I still hope for a merry world one day.

  Even before my son and his cousin Henry Courtenay come to trial they put Lord Delaware into the Tower for refusing to sit on a jury to try them. There is nothing against him, not even a whisper, nothing that Thomas Cromwell can invent; Delaware simply shows his distaste for these trials. He swore he would not try another old friend after sending Tom Darcy to the scaffold, and now he refuses to sit in judgment on my son. They hold him as a prisoner for a day or two, scouring London for gossip against him, and then they have to release him to his house and command him to stay indoors.

  Of course I cannot go to him, I cannot even send a message to thank him while my own inquisitors sit with me between breakfast and dinner and ask me over and over again if I remember eighteen years ago, when Montague said something while walking in the garden with Henry Courtenay, if the clerk of my kitchens Thomas Standish sang songs of hope and rebellion. If anybody mentioned Maytime. If anyone said that May would never come. But my stable boy runs an errand for me to L’Erber, and when Lord Delaware is walking in his garden the next day, he finds, flung over the garden wall and lying in his path, a white rosebud made of silk, and he knows that I am grateful to him.

  “I am afraid, Countess, that you are to be my guest,” William says to me at dinner.

  “No,” I say. “I have to stay here. There is much work to be done on an estate this large, and my presence here keeps the country calm.”

  “We’ll have to take that risk,” the bishop says, smiling at his own humor. “For you are to be imprisoned at Cowdray. You can keep them calm in Sussex. And please, do not be troubled about your estate and your goods, for we are seizing them.”