The Baker's Daughter Volume 1

by Bonny G Smith

  She was sitting at her brother’s feet, looking up at him as he continued to recite in his beautiful voice. She knew the words to this one, she had heard them many times before. They told of a heart aching for a love that could never be. Surrey wanted Fair Geraldine, but could not have her because he was married; and now he never should, for she was married as well, the king having given the Fair Geraldine to Sir Anthony Browne as his New Year’s gift. Sir Anthony was twenty-seven years older than Lady Elizabeth, who was little more than a child. So now Surrey could not even aspire to make her his mistress; she was lost to him forever. And her beloved brother was as far from her own reach as the moon.

  And just look at poor Margaret! Disgraced and banished twice now to Syon by her uncle, the king, for illicit affairs with Howard men, one Mary’s uncle, Sir Thomas Howard, and the other her cousin Charles, the queen’s own brother! What was this strange, inexplicable fascination that the Howards held for the Tudors? And why must it always end in unhappiness at best, and death at the worst?

  Was no one ever to be happy?

  Richmond Palace, March 1542

  Once an indifferent, perhaps even fearful horsewoman, Anne had come to appreciate a good mount since coming to England. She would never be an adept enough rider to join in the hunt, but she did enjoy a slow walk on a fine day on her favorite mare. She and Mary were a little ahead of the group who had broken their fast early, and then set out to take advantage of the spring-like weather.

  Anne had not seen Mary for several months, and she was disturbed to notice that Mary still looked very thin and pale; if anything even more so than the last time she had seen her. The events of recent months had not been conducive to appetite for anyone in the king’s sphere. Anne thanked God every morning upon awakening that she had been saved from Katherine’s dismal fate. She had no doubt that had she stayed married to the king, she would be dead by now. The Tudor either put away his wives or murdered them, and the only one who had not met that fate had died presenting the king with a son.

  “Hmph!” snorted Anne.

  The unexpected expostulation brought Mary out of her thoughts, a place where she spent a great deal of her time lately. She suspected that Anne did so as well.

  “They say she died well,” said Mary.

  “Mein Gott,” replied Anne vehemently. “She wuss yust a childt. So youngk to die.” She shuddered. The sky above was as blue as a robin’s egg, the clouds were puffy and white, and birds flitted here and there as they sang. The ground was soft under her horse’s hooves, and the grass had turned emerald green from all the rain. It was good to be alive. Katherine, whom she had actually grown quite fond of despite herself, would never see such a day again, she who should have seen thousands of them before she died.

  The path they were riding bordered close to the river every now and then. The water always smelt sweeter in Richmond than nearer the city. Anne turned in her saddle to look back at her palace. Yes, she had come out of the tragedy of her fate better than any of the king’s wives.

  Anne shook her head and exclaimed, “Wie konnte der tolpel auch von so etwas denken!” Seeing Mary’s blank look, she said, “Ach, forgiff me, Marie, mein libeling. I shall alvayss think in German, I am afraidt. Didt you know dat mein brudder, der duke, he write to der kink askingk him to take me back ass his vife now dat der Howardt hass been kilt? He get idea dat der kink kill der Howardt to get ridt off her so dat I can be hiss vife vonce more.”

  “Yes, I had heard that,” Mary replied. The Clevian envoy had approached her father with the duke’s letter, and was firmly put in his place; the king of England had no desire to take back Anne of Cleves.

  “So, yes,” said Anne. “Unt den Oslinger, he talk viss der earl off Southampton, to get him to speak viss der kink. Gott sei, danke, thanks to God, I am meaning, Fitzvilliam, he tell Oslinger dat it shall neffer be. Oh, and I am so relieffed! Mein ladies, dey vant diss to happen, to see me ass der qveen vonce again. I tell them to mindt dere own business! Effen der English people, dey who luff me, vant diss to be. But I say, who vant to be qveen? Mich nicht, Marie! Not I!”

  Mary’s mouth moved in a slight smile; Anne’s English was now completely fluent, but when she was excited or angry she still lapsed into German, and her accent became very thick. Still, Mary understood Anne’s vehemence, and her horror at the thought that she might have to remarry the king; and who could blame her? …such would be tantamount to a death sentence.

  Anne guffawed inelegantly, a German trait that Mary always found very amusing. “Unt den mein brudder, he tell to Oslinger, he shouldt go to der Archbishop Cranmer unt pleadt hiss case dere. Dumkopf! Ven it vass der Cranmer who make all der reasons for der annulment!” She shook her head in disgust, and waved her hand in dismissal of the subject. She leaned over, for the two were riding very close, and patted Mary’s arm. “I am so gladt you come to see me, Marie.”

  Mary smiled. “There is no place I would rather have spent my birthday,” she replied. Her father was keeping much to himself in this time after Katherine’s execution; he rarely went abroad, held no council, and passed most of his time with his harper and his fool. He had forgotten her birthday, which was not even a week after Katherine’s death, but far from minding, she was relieved. She had taken Elizabeth and gladly gone to Richmond to spend her birthday with Anne.

  The sound of galloping hooves caused both women to turn their horses in the direction of the palace. A rider was approaching quite swiftly. Mary had trouble seeing anything close to her, but her long sight was all the more keen for that handicap; from his garb and the pouches bouncing at his sides, she concluded that he must be a royal messenger.

  The man drew up, dismounted, knelt in deference, then rose and without a word handed Mary a parchment with a red seal. Mary broke the seal and read the letter. She nodded to the messenger, no reply was needed; he remounted and rode swiftly away.

  She sighed heavily. “Anne, I am sorry, but I have to tell you that Lord Lisle has died in the Tower.”

  Anne was silent for a few moments. The only sound was the nickering of the horses, and the muted thud of their hooves on the grassy turf. She raised her hand to wipe her eyes. “Es tut mir leid…I am so sorry. He vass a goodt man, unt so kindt to me ven vee wuss stuck so long time in Calais. Vat happen to him?”

  “Well, as you know,” said Mary, “my great-uncle was accused of treason when some of the men of his garrison made a pact with the French to help them seize Calais from England. All knew he could not be guilty, but my father wanted to show that even though Lord Lisle was his uncle, that due process of law must be seen to be done. A few days ago Lord Lisle was exonerated, and when the news was given him that he was to be freed, he…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “He…he just collapsed and died.”

  “Mein Gott,” said Anne, as she gazed at the green expanse on the other side of the river. There was a meadow there that was awash with the yellow of a thousand daffodils, nodding their golden heads in the breeze. She guffawed again and said, “It seems dat der kink’s mercy iss ass deadly ass hiss justice!” She turned to look at Mary, and for a moment she did not realize that Mary’s mount was riderless.

  Richmond Palace, May 1542

  Chapuys lifted the flagon of wine, but as he did so, he caught the eye of Dr. Butts, who regarded him with a gimlet eye and severely arched brows.

  “I know, I know,” said Chapuys, answering the severe look with a laugh. “But wine is the only thing besides my wife and my money that I am not willing to give up.” He poured them both a measure, lifted his cup in salute and took a long draft. “Ah, that is good.”

  “Good for your spirits, I trow, but alas! Not very good for your gout,” said Dr. Butts.

  Chapuys shrugged, and drank some more. “How is the Lady Mary faring now?” It galled him to refer to Mary as anything other than the royal princess she was, but Dr. Butts was close to the king, and a good friend; he did not wish to make him feel uncomfortable.

  Dr. Butts shifted in his cha
ir. His apartments at Richmond Palace were exceedingly comfortable. Anne of Cleves was an excellent hostess, and whilst he was under her roof, he was provided with the best of everything. He regretted that his stay was coming to an end; the king did not house his first physician nearly so well at court.

  “Her Highness’s condition worries me, Your Excellency, I don’t mind telling you.” Dr. Butts took a sip from his cup, a gilt affair with carved leaves that seemed so real he was astonished that they were metal and not green with life. “Her Highness’s physical condition is cause for the greatest concern; she had a strange fever, and heart palpitations that sent me beside myself with worry. She is out of danger now, but I don’t mind telling you, her recovery was by no means certain.”

  “I understand that you believe Her Highness’s mental state to be the cause of these bouts of illness,” said Chapuys.

  It was a radical theory, but Dr. Butts had known Mary all of her life, since before she was even born, he liked to say, having treated Katharine of Aragon during her pregnancy. “I know that many spurn such a notion, and dismiss it out of hand,” he replied. “But I have observed the prin…the Lady Mary all of her life, and I can tell you that until the tragedy of the first queen being put away, she was a normal, healthy child. It was indeed unfortunate that the whole affair began just at the onset of womanhood. Such a dangerous time for a female to be upset and subject to so much distress!” Dr. Butts had loved Katharine of Aragon, esteeming her as the most virtuous of queens; but he was also one of the few people who had greatly admired Anne Boleyn. He was a doctor, it was not his place to judge his king. But to him, it was no coincidence that Queen Anne’s disappointments in childbed mostly coincided with extreme unpleasantness from the king at her failures. To his way of thinking, there was an observable link, in some people, between mental distress and physical illness. “I have always held that the Lady Mary’s bleak outlook contributes to her poor health. Her attitude is dark and bitter, and her future seems hopeless. For someone born to such a high destiny, her current state causes her much anguish. The lady is not the sort of person to take kindly to what she considers to be a useless existence.”

  “I am afraid, then, that we have an insoluble problem,” said Chapuys. “One of the reasons the French marriage negotiations will never come to anything is the fear that the Lady Mary’s chronic health problems will affect her ability to bear a child. Such a risk cannot be taken. It seems that if my lady’s health is one of the reasons that the king cannot get her married, and if her…” How to put it delicately? “…maidenly state is a cause of much of her anxiety, and such breeds sickness in her, it is a vicious cycle that cannot be broken.”

  Dr. Butts looked out of the window across the fields that were red with wild poppies. If only there were something he could give Mary, some cure, even a palliative, that would ease her mind. But he dared not give her poppy syrup; it was addictive and often caused more problems than it solved.

  “Ah, well,” said Chapuys. “Thank you, Sir William, for the excellent wine. Where may I find Her Highness?”

  # # #

  Dr. Butts sent a page to show the Imperial ambassador to the rear of the palace, across an expanse of finely clipped lawn, and down a hill through an apple orchard to the river, where Anne had created a pleasant area for sitting and watching the river flow, which she loved to do on evenings when the weather was fine.

  Chapuys spotted Mary with her back to him, sitting on a chaise facing the river. His footsteps were muffled by the soft turf he trod, making very slow time with his walking stick. Almost as if with a sixth sense, Mary turned.

  “Dear Chapuys!” she exclaimed. She was warmly wrapped in a blanket and had a brazier at her feet, even though it was May and the day was quite warm. Anne’s garden was a riot of color. A bed of tall lupines in every color of the rainbow stood guard over a huge expanse of small white flowers. Chapuys was unsure what they were; Anne had been experimenting with a number of plants native to Germany. These reminded him of cerastium, a species he remembered from his childhood in the Alps.

  Mary raised a pale hand, which he took and brushed with his lips. Chapuys was disturbed to observe that Mary’s complexion was as white as the blossoms he had just been admiring. “I am sorry to hear that Your Grace has been ill,” he said.

  Anne, Elizabeth and several of their ladies were gathering flowers in a basket to take indoors; seeing Chapuys, they had wandered even further away.

  “I am much better now,” said Mary. “But I fear me that I gave poor Anne a fright! I must have fallen from my horse like a sack of potatoes. I remember it not.”

  Chapuys laughed, shaking his head. He searched the ground around him for a few twigs, and finding some, thrust them into the brazier at Mary’s feet. “The king has released the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk from the Tower.”

  “Yes, so I heard,” said Mary dryly. Her face took on a certain hardness of expression and her eyes narrowed. Lady Agnes’s Plantagenet blood was too watered down to be a cause for concern to her father the king, so he had stripped her bare, metaphorically speaking, and set her free. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “If only he had been so lenient with Mother Pole!”

  There was nothing much Chapuys could say to that; Lady Salisbury and her sons were a threat to the Tudor crown as long as Reginald, Cardinal Pole, persisted in his diatribe against Henry’s split with Rome. Neither man would ever back down. Reginald was safe on the Continent, but he must have known what the possible consequences of his outspokenness were likely to be; his mother had paid the price of his arrogance and pride. But still, to any good Catholic, Cardinal Pole was in the right and his mother was a martyr. Chapuys sat back in his chair, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze.

  “What of the others?” asked Mary.

  Chapuys shrugged. “Oh, eventually all the Howard aunts, uncles and cousins will be released from the Tower. The king has no need of them now. They will all be ruined, but they will still be alive, and thankful for that, I suppose.”

  Mary snorted inelegantly. “What I would like to know,” she said, sitting up higher on her chaise, “is how the duke always manages to slip out of every dangerous situation, just like an eel!” Mary had never forgiven the Duke of Norfolk for his harsh treatment of her when his niece, Anne Boleyn, was queen.

  Chapuys shifted in his chair, considering Mary’s words. “What you say is true. Norfolk’s ability to survive unscathed from this second Howard marriage debacle could not have pleased his enemies. But you must understand, Your Grace, that although the duke has proved himself to be an unpleasant personage in many ways, to the king he is a steadfast, dependable and loyal royal servant. Much is forgiven him for that. Also, it is my belief that the king is not grieving for Katherine Howard, or what she did to him; he is grieving for himself, for his lost youth, for his shattered dreams.”

  Yes, thought Mary; that made sense. She knew a lot about shattered dreams.

  “The duke is also,” said Chapuys quietly, “a good Catholic.”

  Mary crossed her arms. “Yes, there is that. But does that not beg the question as to why my father tolerates the likes of Archbishop Cranmer? To me, that makes no sense at all. The man is a known Reformer. My father has burned heretics for less than Cranmer does every day.” Mary threw off her blanket and swung her legs over the side of the chaise, the better to engage in conversation. “It surpasses my understanding.”

  A sudden breeze gusted, sending a shower of pink petals from the nearby apple trees over them like a cascade of snowflakes.

  Chapuys absentmindedly picked the petals from his doublet. “Cranmer has always been a favorite of the king,” he said. “He is not grasping or power-hungry; he is, in fact, somewhat other-worldly. He is a religious zealot; but the king dismisses this as open-mindedness. Also, Cranmer is willing to accept the king as Supreme Head of the Church, which goes far towards disposing His Grace to turn a blind eye to the archbishop’s radical religious views.”

  “
Hmph!” said Mary. “So much for the Six Articles, then!”

  “Do not be fooled by that,” Chapuys replied, picking the last of the delicate petals from his clothing. “Our good Archbishop of Canterbury knows well which side his bread is buttered on. As soon as the Six Articles became law in England, he sent his wife back to the Continent. This makes it easier for His Grace to ignore Cranmer’s married state.”

  Even while Chapuys was still talking, Mary was shaking her head firmly. “But I have it on good authority that Cranmer corresponds with Lutherans and even misses Council meetings, and still the king protects him! If he were anyone else, he would have been thrown into the Tower by now.”

  Chapuys noted with satisfaction that the vehemence of Mary’s arguments had succeeded in putting some color into her wan cheeks.

  “There was a time, and that not long past, when Cranmer was afraid that Bishop Gardiner was going to succeed in doing just that,” said Chapuys. “Gardiner would have been pleased to see Cranmer follow Cromwell to the scaffold. In the meantime, Cranmer is determined to bring down the entire Catholic faction, under the king’s very nose. Norfolk knows this, and so does Gardiner. Cranmer must have deemed it Divine Providence when John Lassells fell into his lap.”

  Mary bounded up off the chaise and began to pace, holding an elbow in each hand. “And still the king protects the archbishop! Why, in heaven’s name?”

  Chapuys reached down and tugged at a few blades of grass, which he then threw one by one into the air to see which way the wind took them. “I can think of no other reason than profound gratitude.”

  Mary stopped. “Gratitude? For what?”

  “Have you forgotten how Cranmer first came to the notice of the king of England? He was nothing more than chaplain to the Boleyn family, an obscure, unknown cleric. It was he who first suggested the canvassing of the European universities on the question of the legality of the marriage of the king to Her Grace, your mother.”