The Baker's Daughter Volume 1

by Bonny G Smith

  “If what you say is true, Cousin, she will have powerful enemies at court,” said Mary. Like Mary herself, Margaret was unshakably Catholic. They had no choice but to accept the king’s decision to break with Rome and the pope; neither agreed with such a policy, but it was wiser to stay silent on such matters. But Reform…that doctrine took one very far afield from orthodoxy. This revelation, if indeed it were true, greatly disturbed Mary; for already she had come to sincerely love the new queen.

  “Of a certainty, she already has,” Margaret replied. “I am convinced in myself that the burnings at Windsor were deliberately planned to coincide with the king’s hunting party. And whoever heard of burning heretics in Windsor Great Park? The king has been much preoccupied with the queen, and when Bishop Gardiner asked permission to carry the sentences out there, the king shrugged and waved a careless hand. Recall you not the smoke that rose over the park? I tell you, the bishop was watching the queen very closely to assess her reaction.”

  Mary was feeling decidedly dizzy; she was having great difficulty focusing on the path, her ears were ringing, and her head ached abominably. She made a conscious effort to straighten her back and focus her eyes. “Margaret,” she said, “how do you know all of this? Have you been listening at doors?”

  Margaret, who had little sense of humor, took the jibe seriously and replied, “Indeed, no. People often talk of weighty matters in my presence, thinking me too flibbertigibbet to understand them.”

  A shrewd observation for a scatterbrain, thought Mary.

  “Queen Catherine is too clever to give herself away,” Margaret continued. “I’ll wager that the queen knew that the burning of the heretics whilst she was there was meant to be a warning to her. I observed her fingering her crossbow more than once whilst eyeing Bishop Gardiner during the hunt. The queen is quite a good shot, I understand.”

  Mary laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, Margaret, really,” she said. The effort to make sense of what Margaret was saying suddenly became overwhelming. She did not even remember falling from her horse.

  # # #

  When she awakened, it was to the sensation of a swaying motion that immediately caused the bile to rise in her throat. She quickly raised her hand to mouth.

  “Oh, thank the saints!” cried Lady Kempe. “You are awake!”

  Mary tried to sit up and found that she could not; her mouth was dry and gummy and her head still ached. “Where...?” she managed to croak.

  “In the queen’s litter,” said Lady Kempe. “On our way to Ampthill.” Lady Kempe had been working the cork from a bottle of wine, which finally gave way, and she poured Mary a half-mugful and held it to her lips. “There now,” she said. “Just a sip, my lady. And another.” Mary finally drained the mug, so thirsty was she.

  Mary’s head felt as if one of the Duchess of Richmond’s beechwood bowling balls had somehow gotten inside of it and was rolling around, hitting the backs of her eyes, her forehead, the back of her neck.

  She moved her lips but no sound issued forth; she cleared her throat, which was now quite raw, and tried again. “Why…?” she managed to say.

  “There was quite a row, I can tell you,” said Lady Kempe, shaking her head. “Well, not a row so much as a difference of opinion. Your lady step-mother, the queen, was adamant that you should be taken with herself and the king to Woodstock. But His Grace would not hear of it. He was certain that you had the Sweating Sickness. There have been reports of such from London, you know. Nonetheless, without further ado, right there in the middle of the road, my lady, he ordered Dr. Wendey to take the royal children, that is, His Grace, Prince Edward and the Lady Elizabeth, directly back to Ashridge, to which they objected mightily, I can tell you. But His Grace would hear none of it, so off they went. Lady Margaret assured His Grace that you had not been confused or confounded, or otherwise afraid or anxious, which as you know, my lady, is the first symptom of the Sweat. But you were shivering, and that was sufficient for His Grace.” Lady Kempe stopped to take a sip of her own wine, and then continued on. “Well, His Grace did not even stay to see you tucked into the queen’s litter. He bade Her Grace mount one of the spare horses, and anyone who had been near you was told to stand by the roadside and not come near to His Grace or the queen. The cavalcade was split between your servants and the king’s and off towards Woodstock all the king’s went. Master Dodd had to call out to the king to ask whence you, my lady, should be taken, as if in the confusion the king clean forgot, so eager was he to put the miles between you, if indeed it was the Sweat that ailed you. I tried to tell him, my lady, truly I did, that it was naught but a summer fever, but he would have none of it.” She drained her mug, set the cup down on the floor of the litter, and sought to wipe the sweat from her neck with a limp linen square. “So then, my lady, the king shouted to Dodd to make for Ampthill, and with that, the king’s party disappeared down the road and we were left to make our way as best we can to Ampthill.”

  Mary found that she still could not sit up, her head was swimming and she was dizzy; the litter was cramped and stiflingly hot. The flaps were up but there was no wind and not a breath of air stirred to relieve the oppressive heat. Sweat was trickling down her back. She longed to shift her position but had not the strength. She found that she could not bear to look out of the litter, for the glare of the light hurt her eyes. And along with the wooden ball that crashed about inside her skull, she noted that the cicadas had also taken up residence there. Between the buffeting of the balls and the noise of the insects in her head, and the stifling heat, she had seldom felt more ill.

  “Almost there now, my lady,” said Lady Kempe cheerfully, but then she was always a cheerful soul. Upon that thought, Mary lapsed once more into unconsciousness.

  There followed a nightmare time of oppressive heat, pain, the feeling of somehow being at the bottom of a deep well. She lost all perception of time; it might have lasted a week, it might have been a year. All the time she remembered hearing voices, soothing at first, then concerned, then overwrought. And then there was nothing.

  # # #

  Mary awakened and for the first time in as long as she could remember, there was no light to hurt her eyes. Also, it was quiet, so still and quiet. There were no more cicadas in her head. In fact, there was no sound at all. And then she did hear something, a terrific rumbling noise. She almost laughed aloud when she realized that it was her stomach. She could not recall when she had last eaten, but she did recall Margaret and Lady Kempe’s voices, crying as they sought to hold her head over a basin, apparently without success.

  There was none of that now. There was not even a candle burning at her bedside, which she now realized must have been the light she mistook for the sun that hurt her eyes while she was delirious.

  Mary sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and waited. Her head swam and she was still shaky, but she no longer felt ill; only weak and hungry. And thirsty. Where were her women?

  As she sat there she realized that the two oblongs to her left that were her windows were beginning to take on definite shape. It must be near dawn. She arose, carefully, a little unsteady on her feet, which were bare. The room was stiflingly hot, and even the floor felt warm to the touch.

  It was getting light enough to see, and looking about the room, Mary confirmed what she had suspected in the dark; there was no one there. It was most unusual. She walked, a little wobbly at first, but becoming steadier. Margaret’s rooms were next to hers; perhaps her women were taking their ease there.

  Mary pushed the door open. She could see a lump in the bed that must be Margaret, but otherwise the room was empty.

  “Margaret?” she said, tentatively. She approached the bed, but Margaret did not answer or stir. Mary touched her cousin’s face, which was still in shadow, and gave a stifled cry. Her skin was hot with fever. So even though the malady which had ailed Mary on the road from Grafton to Woodstock was not the dreaded Sweating Sickness, it was still an infectious fever, and a nasty one. Margaret
had no candle either, and not so much as a sup of ale at her bedside. Something was very wrong.

  A stifled groan startled Mary so badly that she almost fell onto the bed. She steadied herself by clasping the bedpost.

  “Lady Kempe!” cried Mary. “What is…”

  But the room was full light now and Mary could see that Lady Kempe was slumped in her chair, her eyes were glazed slits, and she did not even know Mary was there. Mary pulled a spare counterpane from an open trunk, spread it over her, and felt her forehead. She was in like case as Margaret.

  Mary, her fear now overcoming her weakness, left the room closing the door behind her. Ampthill had been bereft of all but the caretakers when they arrived, and Mary vaguely remembered seeing them when she was brought into the castle. She was too weak to walk, and so Dodd had carried her in. After that she had none but the vaguest recollections.

  Dodd! She made her way to the servant’s quarters. He was in his bed, but unattended, and he burned with fever.

  Mary made her way to the kitchens; surely there must be someone there. But she found the kitchens deserted, the fires out, and barely a crumb in the larder. This will not do, she thought. She must find help; she must find food. She must see to the needs of her kinsmen and her very sick servants, for there was no one else to do it.

  She walked out of the kitchen door; the day was hot and muggy already and it was just past daybreak. The profound silence made her uneasy. And then she realized that which she was not hearing, and that she missed. Always in the English countryside, especially near any sort of dwelling, one should always hear, whether near or far, the lowing of cows in the meadows, the bleating of sheep on the hillsides, the almost human cries of goats, the cackling of chickens. But there was none.

  Mary strained to think back. It had been raining quite a lot, far too much, said some. There was concern about the murrain. She remembered hearing some of the stockmen at Grafton talking about it. Perhaps the same fever, or something akin to it, that had had her in its mighty grip, had seized the livestock as well. It would explain the absence of food in the kitchens. And it would explain her terrible nausea…that she remembered vividly. What had they been feeding her?

  She heard a muffled sound from across the yard and made her way slowly in that direction. Behind a tall hedge, hidden from the view of the castle, but close to the kitchens, was a dovecote. She peered inside. There were very few birds and those that were there eyed her apathetically. Doves had never agreed with her delicate stomach; if they had been feeding her doves that would explain her nausea as well as her hunger.

  She withdrew and made her way around to the gatehouse. There were two canvas sacks there, tied at the neck with thick rope-like drawstrings. She opened the first one; it held some very hard loaves, two jars of honey sealed with thick beeswax, some dried fruit, and some green apples. Her first instinct was to fall on the bread there and then, but that would have been churlish. She must see to the needs of her sick servants first.

  The second sack held clay pitchers sealed with stretched pig’s bladders. She was unsure of what was in the pitchers. So the servants who had fled for fear of the Sweat had not deserted them after all! Good people, she would find out who they were and reward them.

  The walk had exhausted her small store of strength, and she decided that she must rest before attempting to carry the sacks inside. When she awoke, the shadows were long, and she realized that she must have been asleep for hours in the empty gatehouse, where she had withdrawn to escape the heat of the sun.

  In the end she had to make many trips from the gate to the kitchens to bring all of the offerings inside. But it was worth the effort; there was wine, milk, cream, chicken stock, bread…all she needed to make a syllabub, wine sops, and a thick broth. Mary stifled a laugh when she recalled that this was very much like the days at Hatfield when she had been forced to cook her own meals over a charcoal brazier in her rooms.

  Once she had eaten, her strength began to return. She put all her charges in fresh linen, mopped their brows, made them as comfortable as she could. Frideswide had cried and said it wasn’t right for her to be taking care of them, but Mary was so profoundly grateful that she was awake and coherent that she had cried, too, and hugged her. Beatrice ap Rhys, her washerwoman, had tried to rise to help Mary with the others, but Mary would not hear of it; all of them were given royal orders to remain abed, and so remain abed they did.

  The last thing Mary remembered before she fell into an exhausted sleep was feeding poor old Dodd, who was feeling his years, with winesops and spoonfuls of a honey-flavored syllabub. When she awakened, the old dear’s head was in her lap. She gently shifted out from under him, tucked the counterpane around his wasted frame, and went to her own bed, exhausted, but knowing that she had done her best.

  # # #

  When Edward was four, Mary had once taken him to the Tower to see the king’s odd collection of animals there. Knowing of the king’s keen interest in the unusual, foreign diplomats often sent him, as a token of their esteem, or for favors in return, exotic animals and birds. The zookeeper was a very strange old man, so twisted and gnarled that he could almost have been one of the oddities it was his charge to look after.

  There was a pair of lions, a tiger, a giraffe, various sorts of monkeys, and at one time even an elephant; and such a peculiar array of colorful birds as to defy the imagination. The zookeeper had explained that the animals came from many different places, but most of them came from a place called Africa, the Dark Continent, where strange black men lived. When Edward, who was very precocious, expressed his skepticism on this point, Master Spivey, that was the zookeeper’s name, assured His Grace that it was so; he had been there himself as a young man, he had seen them, and that was why he had been hired to look after the Tower zoo.

  Master Spivey had regaled them with many tales of the peculiar people of Africa. But one of the stories that had truly captured Edward’s lively imagination was the tale of how the black men were able to communicate with drums, even over vast distances.

  Mary, who was still too weak to ride her mare, was in the queen’s litter with Lady Margaret and Lady Kempe. The servants, who were too frightened of the horses to ride, walked alongside, and the little cavalcade made its slow way the thirteen miles from Ampthill to Dunstable. The mysterious manner in which the villagers near Ampthill had known that the danger was past and that it was safe to approach the castle had put Mary in mind of Master Spivey’s enigmatic jungle drums. No message had even been attempted from her father and the queen from Woodstock; neither had Mary been able to send any. But somehow the countryside knew when the peril that was the infectious summer fever that had laid Mary and all her people so low had abated, and had arrived with offers of help. It was they who had left the foodstuffs at the gate, for they had dared come no closer.

  Dodd was far too weak from his bout of fever to ride as messenger to the king, so Mary had dispatched a young village boy, who was much excited at the prospect of playing the role of royal messenger, to enquire of the king as to his pleasure as it regarded the Lady Mary and her party, who were still at Ampthill. The word had come back that she was to proceed to Dunstable and The Manor of The More, her final destination of which was to be Ashridge.

  Mary raised an eyebrow when she read the message; if the king were advising her to go to Edward and Elizabeth, he must be convinced that the danger was past. But it was October, and already the first frosts had killed the Sweat even as far south as London.

  And so on this fine fall day, with Margaret and Lady Kempe dozing in the litter and Dodd riding alongside protectively (having refused absolutely to ride in the litter with the ladies), the little group made its slow way along the road to Dunstable. The trees boasted leaves that reflected the colors of countless jewels, and the people, the women with their skirts tucked up and with colorful kerchiefs on the heads, gleaned in the stubble fields, which would soon be burned off to await next year’s crop.

  No one saw Mary das
h the tears from her eyes; there had been no news from anyone about anything, so naturally, she had had no word of Philip, who was, as far as she knew, still fighting in the Low Countries. The only saving grace of her sojourn at Ampthill had been the knowledge that, once upon a time, her mother had stayed there as well; it was one of the many places to which Katharine of Aragon had been banished during the dark, uncertain days when her father had been under the spell of Anne Boleyn. The More was another such place; and even though Mary feared for Philip and hungered for news of him, she could not help but feel comforted in the knowledge that her mother had lived in these places, seen the same things Mary was now seeing. Mary sent a prayer up to God to take care of her mother in Heaven, and to watch over Philip in the Low Countries.

  Chapter 23

  “She is small, fragile, and of singularly beautiful complexion.”

  – An Italian diplomat at the court of King Henry the Eighth

  Hever Castle, July 1544

  The waters of the moat, which was decorative rather than functional, were as smooth as glass and reflected a tranquil blue sky. Water lilies floated on its surface, adding a fairy tale quality to the pretty little castle. Flowering shrubs in a profusion of colors only added to its charm.

  The view of the castle from the rose garden was all the more agreeable to Mary in that this pleasant place had once belonged to her mortal enemies, the Boleyns; but now it belonged to another Anne, Anne of Cleves, whose delight in it never failed to amuse Mary. Anne of Cleves had been young when the tragedy of the love triangle between Katharine of Aragon, Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn had been playing out its sordid saga. And she had led a sheltered, protected existence. She was not as aware as Mary of the enormity of the fact that the Boleyns, all of them, were now dead and gone, for even Mary Boleyn, who had been the king’s mistress before her sister Anne, was now dead; she had succumbed to the Sweat that had ravaged England the summer before.