The courtiers are fluttering around a new attraction like midges around a sweaty face. I learn that much from my dressmaker, who comes to Richmond Palace to fit me with a velvet gown in dark red for the winter feasts, telling me proudly that she can barely find the time to make it, as she is fully engaged by all the ladies at Suffolk House in Southwark. I stand on the stool and the dressmaker’s assistant is pinning the hem, as the dressmaker tightens the bodice.
“The ladies at Suffolk House?” I repeat. This is the home of the Dowager Queen of France, Mary, and her utterly worthless husband, Charles Brandon. While she has always been dearly loved by the court, I can’t imagine why they should be so busy and popular all of a sudden.
“Mademoiselle Boleyn is staying there!” she says delightedly. “Holding court, and everyone visits, the king daily, and they dance every night.”
“At Suffolk House?” This can only be Charles Brandon’s doing. The Dowager Queen Mary would never have allowed the Boleyn girl to hold court in her own house.
“Yes, she has quite taken it over.”
“And the queen?” I ask.
“She lives very quietly.”
“And the plans for the Christmas feast?”
The dressmaker notes in silence that I have not received an invitation. Her arched eyebrows rise a little higher and she tweaks a fold at my waist, as if it is hardly worth making an expensive gown that will never be worn before the king. “Well,” she remarks, preparing to share scandal, “I am told that the Lady will have her own set of rooms, right next door to the king, and she will hold court there, to her many, many well-wishers. It will be like two courts in the same palace. But the king and queen will celebrate Christmas together, as always.”
I nod. We exchange one long look and I know that the dressmaker’s expression—a sort of grim smile, the natural expression of a woman who knows that her own best years are past—is mirrored on my face.
“Perfect,” she says, and helps me down from the stool. “You know, there’s not a woman in England over thirty who does not feel the queen’s pain.”
“But the women over thirty will not be asked for their opinions,” I say. “Who cares what we think?”
I am sitting with my ladies listening to Princess Mary practice on the lute and singing. She has composed the song, which is a reworking of an old reapers’ ballad about a merry lad going sowing. I am glad to hear her sing with a lilt in her voice and a smile on her face, and she is looking well; the regular trial of her monthly pains has passed and she has color in her cheeks and an appetite for her dinner. I watch her, bent over the strings, looking up to sing, and I think what a blessedly pretty girl she is and that the king should go down on his knees and thank God for her, and raise her as a princess who will some day rule England, secure in her position, and confident of her future. He owes that to her, he owes that to England. How can it be that Henry, the boy who was the darling of the nursery, cannot see that here is another Tudor heir as precious and as valuable as he was?
The knock at the door startles all of us, and Princess Mary looks up, her fingers still pressed on the strings, as my steward bows, comes into the room, and says: “A gentleman at the gate, your ladyship. Says he is your son.”
“Geoffrey?” I get to my feet with a smile.
“No, I would know the master, of course. He says he is your son from Italy.”
“Reginald?” I ask.
Princess Mary rises and says quietly: “Oh, Lady Margaret!”
“Admit him,” I say.
The steward nods and steps aside and Reginald, tall, handsome, dark-eyed, and dark-haired, comes into the room, takes in everyone in one swift glance, and kneels at my feet for my blessing.
I put my hand on his thick dark hair and whisper the words, and then he stands taller than me and bends down to kiss me on both cheeks.
At once I present him to the princess and he sweeps her a deep bow. The color flushes into her cheeks as she puts out both hands to him. “I have heard so much about you, and your learning,” she says. “I have read much of what you have written with such admiration. Your mother will be so happy you are home.”
He throws me a smile over his shoulder, and I see at once the darling little boy whom I had to give to the Church, and the tall, composed, independent young man that he has become through years of study and exile.
“You will stay here?” I ask him. “We are about to go in to dinner.”
“I was counting on it!” he says easily. To the princess he says: “When I miss England I miss my childhood dinners. Does my mother still order a lamb pie with a thick pastry crust?”
She makes a little face. “I am glad you are here to eat it,” she confides. “For I disappoint her all the time by not being a hearty eater. And I observe all the fast days. She says I am too rigorous.”
“No, you are right,” he says quickly. “The fast days are for our observation, both for the good of man and the glory of God.”
“You mean for our good? That it is good to go hungry?”
“For those who go fishing,” he explains. “If everyone in Christendom ate nothing but fish on Friday, then the fishermen and their children would eat well the rest of the week. God’s will is always for the greater good of men. His laws are the glory both of heaven and earth. I am a great believer in deeds and faith working together.”
Princess Mary shoots a naughty little smile at me as if to score the point. “That’s what I think,” she says.
“And let us talk about filial obedience?” I suggest.
Reginald throws up his hands in joking protest. “Lady Mother, I shall obediently come to dinner and you shall command what I eat and what I say.”
It is a talkative and merry meal. Reginald says grace in Greek for the court and listens to the musicians who play as we eat. He talks with the princess’s tutor Richard Fetherston, and they share their enthusiasm for the new learning and their belief that Lutheranism is nothing but heresy. Reginald admires the dancing, and Princess Mary takes Constance’s hand and dances with her ladies before him, as if he were a great visitor. After dinner, I see Mary to her prayers and as she climbs into the big four-poster bed she beams at me.
“Your son is very handsome,” she says. “And very learned.”
“He is,” I say.
“Do you think my father will appoint him to be my tutor when Dr. Fetherston leaves us?”
“He might.”
“Don’t you wish that he would? Don’t you think he would be such a good tutor, so wise and thoughtful?”
“I think he would make you study very hard. He is teaching himself Hebrew right now.”
“I don’t mind study,” she assures me. “It would be an honor to work with a tutor like him.”
“Well, time to go to sleep, anyway,” I say. I am not going to encourage any girlish dreams about Reginald from a young woman who is going to have to marry whoever her father appoints, and who, at the moment, seems to have no prospects at all.
She raises her face for my kiss, and I am moved to deep tenderness by her dainty prettiness and her shy smile.
“God bless you, my little princess,” I say.
Reginald and I go alone to my privy chamber and I tell the servants to set the chairs before the fireside and leave us with a glass of wine, some nuts, and dried fruits to talk alone.
“She’s delightful,” he says.
“I love her as if she were my own.”
“Tell me the family news, my brothers and sister.”
I smile. “All well, thank God, though I miss Arthur more than I thought possible.”
“And how is Montague’s boy?” he asks with a smile, identifying at once the child who will be my favorite as he will carry our name forward.
“He’s well,” I say with a gleam. “Chattering, running around, strong as any Plantagenet prince. Willful, cheeky.” I stop myself from listing his latest sayings. “He’s funny,” I tell him. “He’s the image of Geoffrey at his age.”
Reginald nods. “Well, he has sent for me,” he says without preamble, knowing that I will understand at once that he means the king. “It is time for my expensive education and long learning to be of use.”
“It is of use,” I reply instantly. “He consults your thinking on what is and is not heretical, and I know that you advise Thomas More, and the king relies upon him.”
“You don’t need to encourage me,” he says with a small smile. “I am past the age when I need your approval. I’m not Montague’s heir, hopping up to win your favor. I know that I’ve served the king well at the universities, in my writing to the Pope, and in Padua. But he wants me to come home now. He needs advisors and councillors at court who know the world, who have friends at Rome, who can argue with any of them.”
I draw my shawl around me as if there is a draft in the room to make me shiver, though the logs are banked high and glowing red, and the tapestries are still and warm on the walls. “You won’t advise him to put the queen aside,” I say flatly.
“As far as I know, there are no possible grounds,” he says simply. “But he can command me to study the books that he has assembled to answer this question—you would be surprised at the size of the library he has collected on this. The Lady too brings him books, and it will be my duty to answer them. Some of them are quite heretical. He allows her to read books that More and I would have banned. Some that are banned. She even brings them to him. I shall explain their errors to him, and defend the Church against these dangerous new ideas. I hope to serve both Church and the king in England. He can request me to consult with other theologians, there can be no harm in that. I should read what authorities he has, and advise him if they make a case. He paid for me to be educated so that I can think for him. I will do that.”
“It harms the queen and the princess to have the marriage questioned at all!” I say angrily. “The books that question the queen or those that question the Church should be banned, without discussion.”
He bows his head. “Yes, Lady Mother, I know it is a great harm to a great lady who deserves nothing but respect.”
“She took us out of poverty,” I remind him.
“I know.”
“And I have known her and loved her since she was a girl of sixteen.”
He bows his head. “I shall study and tell the king my opinion, without fear or favor,” he says. “But I will do that. It is my duty to do that.”
“And will you live here?” It is a joy to me to see my son, but we have not lived under the same roof since he was a boy of six years old. I don’t know if I want the daily company of this independent young man who thinks as he pleases, and has no habit of obedience to his mother.
He smiles, as if he knows this very well. “I shall go to the Carthusian Brothers at Sheen,” he says. “I shall live in silence again. And I can visit you. Just as I used to do.”
I make a little gesture with my hand as if to push away the memories of those days. “It’s not like it was,” I say. “We have a good king on the throne now and we are prosperous. You can stay there by choice—not because you have nowhere else to go, not because I can’t afford to house you. These are different times.”
“I know,” he says mildly. “And I thank God that we live in such different times.”
“But don’t listen to gossip there,” I warn him. “It was said that they hold a document with an old prophecy about the family, about us. I suppose it’s been destroyed; but don’t listen to anything about it.”
He smiles and shakes his head at me as if I am an old foolish woman, fretting over shadows. “I need not listen, but the whole country is talking about the Holy Maid of Kent who prophesies the future and warns the king against leaving his wife.”
“It doesn’t matter what she says.” I deny the truth—there are thousands flocking to hear what she says. I am only determined that Reginald shall not be among them. “Don’t listen to gossip.”
“Lady Mother,” he reminds me, “they are a silent order. There are no gossips there. You are not allowed to say one word.”
I think of the duke, my cousin, beheaded for listening to talk of the end of the Tudors in this very monastery. “Something must have been said there, something dangerous.”
He shakes his head. “That must be a lie.”
“It cost your kinsman his life,” I remark.
“A wicked lie then,” he says.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SPRING 1529
We receive few visitors from London this spring, but one day I look from my window to the view of the river, swollen with the rains, and see a barge approaching. At the bow and stern are the Darcy colors. Lord Thomas Darcy, the old Lord of the North, is coming to pay us the compliments of the season.
I call the princess, and we go out to meet him and watch as he stamps down the gangway of the barge, waves his three guests to follow him, and drops to his knee before her. We both watch with some anxiety the slow creaking down and then the painful rise, but I frown when one of the grooms of the household steps forward to help him. Tom Darcy may be more than sixty years old, but he does not like anyone to remark on it.
“I thought I’d bring you some plover eggs,” he says to the princess. “From my moors. In the north.”
He speaks as if he owns all the moorland in the north of England, and indeed he owns a good share of it. Thomas Lord Darcy is one of the great northern lords whose life is dedicated to keeping the Scots on their side of the border. I first met him when I lived in Middleham Castle with my uncle King Richard, and Tom Darcy was one of the Council of the North. Now I step forward and kiss him on both ruddy cheeks.
He smiles, pleased at the attention, and gives me a wink. “I have brought these gentlemen to see your court,” he says, as the French visitors line up and bow, profering little gifts. Mary’s lady-in-waiting takes them with a curtsey and we lead the way into the palace. The princess takes them into her presence chamber and then, after a brief conversation, leaves us. The Frenchmen stroll about and look at the tapestries and the silver plate, the precious objects on the sideboards, and chat to the ladies-in-waiting. Lord Darcy leans towards me.
“Troubled times,” he says shortly. “I never thought I would live to see them.”
I nod. I lead him to the window so that he can enjoy the view of the knot gardens and the river beyond.
“They asked me what I knew of the wedding night!” he complains. “A wedding night a quarter of a century ago! And I was in the north anyway.”
“Indeed,” I say. “But why are they asking?”
“They’re going to sit in judgment,” he says unhappily. “There’s some cardinal, trailing all the way from Rome, to tell our queen that she wasn’t truly married, telling the king that he’s been a bachelor for the last twenty years and can marry whomever he likes. Amazing what they think of, isn’t it?”
“Amazing,” I agree.
“I’ve got no time for it,” he says abruptly. “Nor for that fat churchman Wolsey.” He looks at me with his shrewd twinkling glare. “I’d have thought you’d have had something to say about it. You and yours.”
“No one has asked me for my opinion,” I say cautiously.
“Well, when they do, if you answer that the queen is his wife and his wife is the queen, you can call on Tom Darcy to support you,” he says. “And others. The king should be advised by his peers. Not by some fat fool in cherry red.”
“I hope that the king will be well advised.”
The old baron puts out his hand. “Give me your pretty brooch,” he says.
I unpin the insignia of my husband’s house, a deep purple enameled pansy, that I wear at my belt. I drop it into Darcy’s calloused hand.
“I’ll send it with a messenger, if I ever need to warn you,” he says. “So you know it’s truly from me.”
I am wary. “I should always be glad to hear from you, my lord. But I hope that we will never need such a sign.”
He nods towards the closed door to the princess?
??s privy chamber. “I hope so too. But for all that, we might as well be prepared. For her,” he says shortly. “Bonny little thing. England’s rose.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, JUNE 1529
Montague comes from Blackfriars to Richmond on our family barge to bring me the news from London, and I order the servants to bring him directly into my own private room and leave my ladies and their sewing and their gossip outside the closed door. Princess Mary is in her rooms and will not come to me unless I send for her; I have told her ladies to keep her busy today and to make sure that she speaks to no one coming from London. We are all trying to protect her from the nightmare that is being enacted just downriver. Her own tutor, Dr. Richard Fetherston, has gone to London to represent the queen but agreed with me that we should keep his mission from her daughter if we can. But, I know that bad news travels fast, and I am expecting bad news. Lord Darcy was not the only lord who was questioned, and now a cardinal has arrived from Rome and set up a court to rule on the royal marriage.
“What’s happened?” I ask the minute the door is closed tightly shut behind us.
“There was a court, a proper hearing, before Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio,” he begins. “The place was packed. It was like a fair, packed so tightly you could hardly breathe. Everyone wanted to be there; it was like a public beheading when everyone is crowding to see the scaffold. Awful.”