by David Field
‘That was indeed my father’s doing,’ said a slightly built young lady who’d emerged from the front door of the adjoining house, ‘but now he’s dead. My mother could tell you more about that, since Mary Calthorpe’s her aunt and she grew up near the convent. I’m Grace, by the way. But your mother says it’s time for dinner,’ she added as she looked up at Allan with a smile.
Allan looked sideways at Cecil. ‘If you’re content with pork broth and fresh baked bread, you’re welcome to join us and I promise that father’ll leave his hammer in the forge. Won’t you, Father?’ he called behind him.
The grizzled older man nodded to Cecil with an embarrassed grin. ‘Yer can’t be too careful these days and I were only lookin’ out fer me own flesh an’ blood.’
An hour later Cecil was complimenting Martha Bestwick on the best broth he had tasted since his own childhood and getting to know, from Edward Bestwick, how best to bring down the bruising on his horse’s leg
‘But yer still can’t ride ’er fer a day or two, so yer’d best bide ’ere a while,’ Edward told him. He looked across the table at Allan and added, ‘Since yer’ve got the roof on yer new place, you an’ Grace could move in there, an’ give Master Cecil ’ere yer room.’
‘I couldn’t possibly presume on your hospitality like that,’ Cecil objected.
Edward grinned. ‘Please yerself, but mek sure as ’ow yer finishes yer business ’ere afore yer spends a night in the “Rose”, ’cos it may be yer last.’
Grace rose from the table and beckoned to the large lad at the end of it who Cecil had been advised was Allan’s brother Amos. ‘Amos and Allan can get the bed moved over in no time and Nell and I can carry the bedding over. We’d be glad of an excuse to move into our new home at last, if a little earlier than we planned. Please be our guest, Master Cecil, and once you’ve finished your meal I’ll take you over to meet Nanny Calthorpe.’
‘She doesn’t live here?’ Cecil asked.
Grace shook her head. ‘Not any longer. It looks as if she’s not long for this world and the Reverend Morley very kindly took her in to live with him and his housekeeper, except she isn’t, if you see what I mean. I suppose all that will stop, now that Mary’s Queen.’
‘We haven’t yet been advised of how she intends to bring back the old Church,’ Cecil told the company, ‘although she seems determined to burn Cranmer, once the Pope dismisses him as Archbishop of Canterbury. Then it begins to look as if he’ll be replaced by the Pope’s Cardinal Legate, Reginald Pole. Anyway, enough of that. I couldn’t force down another morsel, so if you’d be so kind, I’d like to meet this Mistress Calthorpe.’
Across the road, in the side bedchamber that overlooked the churchyard of St Mary’s parish church, Cecil took the mottled bony hand that was held out to him and smiled down into the aged-spotted face that was deeply etched with weeks of pain.
‘She sent ’er best ter me — she ’onestly did?’ Mary Calthorpe asked in a croak that seemed to come from another plane of existence.
Cecil nodded and broadened his smile. ‘And I shall convey yours in return, shall I? I shall also reassure her that you didn’t play her false when you told her how Grace’s father preserved the work of your convent.’
‘Is it true that both masters is dead?’ Mary asked sadly.
Cecil nodded. ‘I’m afraid so, but Sir Richard left behind two children you can both be proud of. Him for siring them and you for bringing them up so well.’
‘Grace isn’t Kate’s daughter, you know that?’
Cecil nodded again. ‘Yes, your niece told me. But the boy, Thomas, is?’
‘Indeed,’ Mary replied as her face clouded somewhat. ‘’E’s a little wild at times and now that his father’s dead I fear that ’e’ll get inter all sorts o’ trouble. He wants ter be a soldier or somethin’, but he’s no idea what that involves. Could you do a service fer an old lady who’ll soon be meeting ’er God and try ter talk him out of it?’
‘I’m not sure that he’ll listen to me,’ Cecil cautioned, ‘but I’ll see what I can do. And now I must let you rest.’
‘I’ll be resting fer all time in just a few more days,’ Mary smiled weakly, then winced as more pain shot through her bony frame. ‘At least, I ’ope it’s just a few days and not weeks. I’ve lived a good life under God’s holy ordinance, so ’opefully He’ll free me o’ this pain afore too much longer. Will yer stay and say a prayer wi’ me?’
Although Protestant by persuasion, Cecil was moved by the old lady’s obvious sincerity as she whispered her way through some Latin that was largely unknown to him and there were unaccustomed tears in his eyes as he lowered his head to leave the minister’s house and stand for a moment in the warm sunlight, thanking God for his continued life and health. Then the old lady’s words came back to him and he crossed the lane to the forge, where Grace had just delivered fresh water to her sweating father-in-law as he took a brief rest from hammering out what looked like a ploughshare.
‘Your horse will probably be fit to ride tomorrow,’ young Thomas smiled towards him as he looked up from working the bellows attached to the furnace.
Cecil thanked him, then turned to Grace. ‘Your brother’s been put to good use, anyway.’
‘He has too much energy,’ Grace replied with a half-smile, ‘and he drives us to distraction some days. At least we can exhaust him this way.’
‘He’s obviously good with horses and, it would seem, at working a furnace bellows, but what else is he good at?’ Cecil asked, as if Thomas were not merely a few feet away.
‘I can fight every boy in this village!’ Thomas announced proudly.
Cecil smiled. ‘But what about other villages, where there may be boys bigger than you? Can you read and write by any chance?’
‘Yes, but what need will I have of that when I’m a soldier?’ Thomas asked.
Cecil ignored the question and turned back to speak to Grace in a lowered tone. ‘Where is your mother at this moment?’
Grace nodded towards the house. ‘She’s in the back garden, sharing the laundry duties with Martha.’
Cecil thanked her and stooped his head in order to enter the rear garden under the lattice arch around which a fruit vine of some sort was entwined. The two mothers were standing in the garden, at either end of a length of bedding, twisting and turning an end each in order to wring the excess water from it.
Martha called out to him. ‘If yer lookin’ fer work, there’s three more sheets ter wring, an’ Kate ’ere looks as if she’s fair buggered.’
Cecil smiled and shook his head. ‘I didn’t attend Cambridge University in order to earn my keep as a laundress. But if Mistress Ashton needs to rest for a moment, I’d like to put a proposition to her.’
Kate looked puzzled as she sat on a levelled tree stump, breathing heavily after her labours, while Cecil stood alongside her and explained what he had in mind.
‘Your son Thomas is — what — thirteen years old?’
‘Yes, in a few months. Why do you need to know?’
‘And in a few years you would wish him to begin managing the estate at Knighton, rather than hazarding his life on some remote battlefield?’
‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, it just so happens that my life’s work has been the management of estates and much larger ones than Knighton. The Lady Elizabeth’s estate at Hatfield, for example, and various other royal residences such as Hever, in Kent. I’d be more than happy to take Thomas along with me, as my new clerk and teach him all I know.’
He saw the hesitation in Kate’s face and hastened to reassure her.
‘I have a son, called Robert, who is almost exactly the same age as your Thomas and who is currently being privately tutored in our townhouse in Westminster. I was much impressed by your former nanny, Mary Calthorpe, and I made her a promise that I would do what I could to ensure that your son is properly tutored in the art of managing an estate. I will be departing tomorrow for the Lady Elizabeth’s cou
ntry estate of Hatfield, where the Queen desires that I conduct the most detailed inventory I have ever conducted. I could use your son’s talents and will swear before God that I will use him well, see that he is fed, properly clothed and kept from unsavoury company. I will also return him to you in due course, suitably quietened, educated, civilised and ready to take over the management of Knighton.’
A few hours later, Thomas was advised that he had just become clerk to William Cecil, Surveyor of Royal Estates, whether he liked it or not. The following morning, after tearful hugs, heartfelt wishes for good fortune and stern admonitions to Thomas to behave himself, Cecil and Thomas turned their backs on the rapidly rising sun and headed west for the river ford at Wilden.
IX
‘Why does my intended not speak more to me of love and devotion?’ Mary asked peevishly as Ambassador Renard read the latest despatch from Philip, written in Spanish and therefore requiring an interpreter. ‘Must I learn more Spanish in order that he may speak to me in terms more endearing than this?’
It was a constant obstacle that the betrothed couple had to surmount, since Philip spoke no English and was reluctant to add one more language to the several that he had been required to master in order to be understood in the various countries that were now encompassed within the Holy Roman Empire ruled over by his father Carlos. Mary, for her part, was fearful that by being seen to learn more Spanish she would further alienate those of her Council who were convinced that her forthcoming marriage was a thinly veiled conquest by England’s old enemy. The consequence, for each of them, was that their letters to each other had to be read by translators at each end of the communication chain, which was hardly conducive to the outpouring of endearments by two intended marriage partners who had yet to meet.
This latest dispatch from Philip was all the more irritating for appearing to dictate to Mary how she should rule her own country. Of particular annoyance was Philip’s strong insistence that Mary release Elizabeth from the Tower. This suggestion, which Mary believed within herself was a condition that would determine whether or not Philip ever crossed the Channel to claim her hand, placed Mary in an almost impossible position, given the contrary urgings of Ambassador Renard and the determination of her Council to do things its way. Both Renard and the Council, led by Gardiner under the influence of Norfolk, were demanding that Elizabeth be executed on the strength of the evidence supplied to them of her encouragement of the Wyatt Rebellion. They were equally insistent that the English Church be brought back from the brink of eternal damnation and that the ‘old Church’ be restored in order to convince the people that the ongoing poor harvests were not God’s punishment of the nation.
Mary had begun in what, for her, seemed like a mild way, by declaring at her coronation that she would not compel any of her subjects to embrace the Catholic faith. At the same time she had, through Renard and later Reginald Pole, begun a series of overtures to the Pope regarding the terms upon which England might be accepted back into the Roman flock. At his urging she had imprisoned several leading Anglican clergymen, including Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer and was awaiting the Pope’s formal dismissal from office of this most persistent of Reformists. Once this was completed, she could have them all charged, not only with the treason allegations that had led to their imprisonment, but also heresy, in a dire warning to anyone else who might be tardy in reversing their opinion of how God should be worshipped in England.
Once she deemed it safe to do so, she persuaded first Council, then Parliament, to repeal the various laws that had tolerated Lutheran observances and reinstate the Heresy Acts that prescribed a horrible form of death to heretics, designed to burn the heresy from their souls as it melted the flesh from their material bodies. In order to achieve this, Mary had been obliged to concede that those nobles who had benefitted enormously from the acquisition of former Church lands and estates — including Hatfield House, in which she and Elizabeth had been raised — could retain their properties. This was the only concession for which her Council held out, for reasons of pure self-interest and when the Pope gave his grudging approval, the way was open for the final act of suppression of the Reformed Church and those who had promoted it.
Cecil sighed with inward relief as he and Thomas pointed their horses south towards Leicester and passed through the boundary gate of the Knighton estate without Thomas having any second thoughts about becoming a clerk to his newfound master. As they trotted sedately through the woodland that lay between Knighton and the ancient town, Cecil was wondering how best to employ his new assistant once they reached Hatfield, while Thomas was daydreaming about his first step on the road to becoming a wealthy warrior and Courtier.
It was eventually Cecil who broke the contented silence. ‘I wish you to reveal a grave injustice and one that threatens the life of a great lady.’
‘Will she reward me greatly if I succeed?’
‘You really are a most avaricious young man, are you not?’
‘What does that word mean?’
‘It is apt to describe someone who desires great wealth.’
‘Then it describes me. What must I do?’
‘When we reach Hatfield, you will, by day, work with me in the compiling of a lengthy inventory of all that remains in there. Plate, goblets, furnishings, bedding — and jewellery. But as an additional task you will be making yourself agreeable to the servants still left in the house, to discover whether or not, when the lady in question left that house in order to be conveyed to the Tower, a certain document was found to be in the jewel case that she left behind.’
‘Did she not take her jewels with her to the Tower?’ Thomas asked naively.
Cecil smiled to himself before replying, ‘Believe me, boy, the Tower is not somewhere that one requires one’s jewels.’
‘So her jewel case will still be in the house,’ Thomas pointed out. ‘Will it not therefore be a simple matter of looking in it for this document of which you speak?’
‘No, because it was said to have been taken from the case and conveyed to London at the same time that she was.’
‘If that was the case, why are we now intending to search for it?’
Cecil sighed. ‘Let me explain it in more simple terms. It was said to have been found in her jewel case at the time when her property was searched as she was being conveyed to the Tower. It is my belief that no such document was found at that time.’
It fell briefly silent as Thomas absorbed this latest information, then he asked, ‘How can we discover if a document was found at a certain time, when — if it exists at all — it is no longer there, but in London?’
‘By being sneaky,’ Cecil said. ‘I wish you to earn the confidence of the servants who remain within Hatfield and learn from them whether or not, when the Lady Elizabeth was taken from there to the Tower, a document was discovered inside her jewel case.’
‘And if it was not?’
‘Then she has been falsely imprisoned within the Tower. If Mary dies without bearing children, then Elizabeth becomes our new Queen. Then she may give you great reward.’
‘That sounds like a long time to be awaiting payment,’ Thomas complained.
Cecil nodded. ‘The best rewards are those that are long in the earning. But should you be able to prove that the document in question was not in the jewel case when Elizabeth left Hatfield, I will reward you myself. Would that be agreeable?’
‘How much?’ Thomas asked eagerly.
‘Perhaps five pounds.’
‘That is a great sum,’ Thomas replied eagerly. ‘But what if I fail?’
‘A clip around the ear. Now pay attention to the track ahead, since we need to bear eastwards if we are to take the London road that will lead us past Hatfield.’
A week later Cecil was seated at a long table in the Main Hall of Hatfield while servants came in and out with assorted items of tableware which Thomas was sorting into groups and counting. As he called out the numbers in each group, Cecil was record
ing them on a long sheet of vellum, while being carefully watched from the side of the chamber by his cousin Blanche Parry.
After an hour or so Cecil put down his pen and called out to Blanche. ‘I am bound to observe that while there is enough pewter here for half the Court to feed off, the household would seem to be mightily deficient in silverware. Goblets, for example and candle holders.’
Blanche nodded. ‘You must speak with Richard Blount, the Chamberlain, or perhaps the Steward Charles Mellows. It was Blount who caught the Under-Steward Edmund Blake stealing from the household after my mistress was removed to the Tower and Mellows who dismissed him on my authority. I must make answer to my mistress for that, since she left me in charge of the entire household and it would seem that I was lax in the performance of my duties.’
‘So the Under-Steward — this man called Edmund Blake — was caught in the act of stealing silverware?’ Cecil asked, and when Blanche nodded, he further asked as to whether or not the man had been taken in charge by the local constables.
‘We acted too late,’ Blanche replied. ‘I was with the mistress in London while this was happening and when I returned and it was reported to me — while we were discussing what best to do — he left the house and has not been seen since. He could be anywhere and in any case we were too occupied in our minds regarding the transfer of the mistress to the Tower.’
‘So what did he steal?’
‘Mainly silverware from the table — goblets and suchlike.’
‘Jewellery?’
Blanche shook her head. ‘There were certainly some items missing from the jewel case when I returned from London and inspected it. It had remained here when the mistress was taken to London.’
