“All our kinsmen, of course,” Montague says. “Courtenay and the West of England, Arthur Plantagenet in Calais, the Staffords, the Nevilles. Charles Brandon, probably, if we make it clear we are against the advisors and not against the king, all the Church lands and their tenants—that’s nearly a third of England alone. Wales of course, because of the princess and you living there, the North and Kent with my uncle Lord Bergavenny. The Percys would rise to defend the Church, and there would be many who would rise up for the princess, more than have ever ridden out before. Lord Tom Darcy, Lord John Hussey, and the old Warwick affinity for you.”
“You have spoken to our kinsmen?”
“I have taken great care,” Montague assures me. “But I spoke to Arthur Viscount Lisle. He and Courtenay have met with the Maid of Kent and been convinced by her that the king will fall. Everyone else has come to me, to ask what we will do, or spoken to the Spanish ambassador. I am certain that the only lords who would stand with the king are the people he has newly made: the Boleyns and the Howards.”
“How will we know when the emperor is coming?”
Geoffrey beams. “Reginald will send to me,” he says. “He knows he has to give us time enough for everyone to arm their tenants. He understands.”
“We wait?” I confirm.
“We wait for now.” Montague looks warningly at Geoffrey. “And we only speak of it among ourselves. No one outside the family, only those who we know are already sworn to the queen or the princess.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, WINTER 1532–SUMMER 1533
Like the slow tolling of a funeral bell that rings out sorrowfully again and again as a prisoner is brought from the darkness of the Tower, to walk up to the hill where the headsman waits by the ladder to the scaffold, bad news comes beat by slow beat from the court in London.
In December the king and Anne inspect the works to repair the Tower of London and are reported as saying that the work must be hurried. The City is agog, thinking that the queen is to be taken from the More and imprisoned in the Tower.
She says that she is ready for a trial for treason, and instructs that Princess Mary is never to deny her name or her birth. She knows this means they may both be arrested and taken to the Tower. It is her command. Burn this.
Geoffrey comes to tell me that Anne holds great state at court, wearing the queen’s jewels, preceding everyone into dinner. She has come back from Calais holding her head stiffly erect, as if she is bearing the weight of a crown, invisible to everyone but herself. The true ladies of the realm are disregarded, the French dowager queen Mary avoids her own brother’s court altogether and gives out that she is ill. The other ladies of the kingdom—Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk; Gertrude, the Marchioness of Exeter; even I, especially I—are not invited. Anne is guarded by her tight little circle: Norfolk’s daughter Mary Howard, her own sister Mary, and her sister-in-law Jane. She spends all her time with the young men of Henry’s court and her brother George, a wild circle headed by the one-eyed Sir Francis Bryan, whom they call the vicar of hell. It is a feverishly witty, worldly court that the king has allowed to come about that is driven by sexual desire and ambition. There are fearless and bold young men, and women of doubtful virtue, all celebrating their daring in a new world with the new learning. It is a court that is perpetually on tenterhooks for the new fashion, for the new heresy, waiting for the Pope’s ruling, and for the king to decide what he will do. A court that has staked everything on the king being able to force the Pope into consent, knowing that this is the greatest sin in the world and the destruction of the kingdom, believing that this is a leap into freedom and into a new way of thinking.
In January, the king’s envoy to the Pope returns home wreathed in smiles and with the news that the Holy Father has approved the king’s choice for the Archbishop of Canterbury. In place of William Warham, a holy, thoughtful, gentle man, tortured by what the king was doing to his Church, we are to have the Boleyn family chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, whose reading of the Bible so conveniently agrees with the king’s and who is nothing less than a heretic Lutheran, like his mistress.
“It’s the very agreement that Reginald predicted,” Montague says gloomily. “The Pope accepts the Boleyn chaplain but he saves the English Church.”
Thomas Cranmer does not look like much of a savior. With the sacred cope of Archbishop of Canterbury around his shoulders he uses his first ever sermon to tell the court that the king’s marriage to the queen is sinful, and that he must make a new and better union.
I cannot keep this from the princess, and anyway, she has to be prepared for bad news from London. It is as if the slow ringing of the bell in my mind has become so loud that I think she must hear it too.
“What does it mean?” she asks me. Her blue eyes have violet shadows under them. She cannot sleep for the pain in her belly, and nothing I can do seems to cure it. When she has her monthly courses, she has to go to bed, and she bleeds heavily, as if from a deep wound. Other times she does not bleed at all, and I fear for her future. If grief has made her sterile, then the king has enacted his own curse. “What does it mean?”
“I think your father the king must have secretly obtained the permission of the Holy Father to leave your mother, and Thomas Cranmer is announcing this. Perhaps he will make the marquess his wife but not crown her as queen. But it makes no difference to your estate, Your Grace. You were conceived in good faith, you are still his only legitimate child.”
I do not say, your mother requires you to swear this, whatever the cost. I cannot bring myself to repeat the order. I know that I should, but I fail in my duty. I cannot tell a young woman of seventeen years that to say her name may cost her life; but she must take that risk.
“I know,” she says, in a very small voice. “I know who I am, and my mother knows that she never did a dishonorable act in her life. Everyone knows that. The only unknown thing is the marquess.”
We learn a little more in spring, when I get a series of notes from Montague in London. They are unsigned, unsealed. They appear at my plate, or pinned to my saddle, or tucked in my jewel box.
The new archbishop has ruled that the marriage of the king to the queen is, and always has been, invalid. Bishop John Fisher argued all day against it, and at the end of the day they arrested him. Burn this.
The king is to send the Duke of Norfolk to the queen to tell her that she is now to be known as the Dowager Princess, and that the king is married to Lady Anne, now called Queen Anne. Burn this.
I know what must happen next. I wait for the arrival of the king’s herald, and when he arrives I take him to the princess’s rooms. She is seated at a table with the bright spring sunshine pouring over her bent head, transcribing some music for the lute. She looks up as I come in, and then I see her smile die as she sees the liveried messenger behind me. At once she ages, from a happy young woman to a bitterly suspicious diplomat. She rises to her feet and observes his bow. He bows as low as a herald should bow to a princess. Cautiously, she inspects the name on the front of the sealed letter. She is correctly addressed as Princess Mary. Only then, when she is sure that he is not attempting some trickery of disrespect, does she break the royal seal and impassively read the king’s brief scrawl.
From my place at the door I can see it is a few words, signed with a swirling H. She turns and smiles broadly at me, and hands me the letter. “How very good His Grace is to tell me of his happiness,” she says, and her voice is perfectly steady. “After dinner I shall write to congratulate him.”
“He is married?” I ask, copying her tone of pleased surprise for the benefit of the herald and the ladies-in-waiting.
“Indeed, yes. To Her Grace the Marquess of Pembroke.” She recites the newly invented title without a quaver.
June—I saw her crowned, it’s done. Geoffrey was her servitor, I followed the king. I carved at her coronation dinner. The meat choked me. There was not one cheer along the whole procession route. The women cried out for the true que
en. Burn this.
Geoffrey comes upriver in a hired boat, wearing a dark cape of worsted and a hat pulled down over his face. He sends my granddaughter Katherine to bring me to him and waits for me by the little pier that the townspeople use.
“I’ve seen the queen,” he says shortly. “She gave me this for the princess.”
Silently, I take the letter, sealed with wax, but the beloved insignia of the pomegranate is missing. “She’s forbidden to write,” he says. “She’s not allowed to visit. She’s almost kept as a prisoner. He’s going to reduce her household. The Boleyn woman won’t tolerate a rival court and a rival queen.”
“Is Anne with child?”
“She carries herself leaning backwards, as if she had twins in there. Yes.”
“Then Charles of Spain must invade before the birth. If it is a son . . .”
“He’ll never have a son,” Geoffrey says contemptuously. “The Tudors aren’t like us. There’s my sister Ursula with another boy in the cradle, me with another baby on the way. Any Tudor child will be stillborn for sure. The Maid of Kent has sworn it won’t happen, there’s a curse on the Tudors. Everyone knows it.”
“Do they?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1533
The Duke of Norfolk himself writes to tell me that the princess’s household is to move to Beaulieu, and that we will not be returning to Richmond Palace.
“This is to diminish me,” she says bluntly. “A princess should live in a palace. I have always lived in a palace or a castle.”
“Beaulieu is a great house,” I remind her. “In beautiful countryside, it is one of your father’s favorite—”
“Hunting lodges,” she finishes for me. “Yes, exactly.”
“Your mother is to move as well,” I tell her.
She starts up, her face filled with hope. “Is she coming to Beaulieu?”
“No,” I say hurriedly. “No, I’m very sorry. No, my dear, she isn’t.”
“He’s not sending her back to Spain?”
I had not known that she had feared this.
“No, he’s not. He’s sending her to Buckden.”
“Where’s that?”
“Near Cambridge. I am sorry to say it’s not an adequate house for her, and he has dismissed her court.”
“Not all of them!” she exclaims. “Who will serve her?”
“Only a few,” I say. “And her friends, like Maria de Salinas, Lady Willoughby, are not allowed to visit. Even Ambassador Chapuys is not allowed to see her. And she can only walk in the gardens.”
“She is imprisoned?”
I answer her honestly, but it is a terrible thing to say to a girl who loves her mother and honors her father. “I am afraid so. I am afraid so.”
She turns her head away. “We had better pack our things then,” she says quietly. “For if I don’t obey him, perhaps he will imprison me too.”
BEAULIEU, ESSEX, AUGUST 1533
Geoffrey and Montague come openly together to visit me, apparently for a day’s hunting in the great park around Beaulieu. As soon as they are announced, the princess comes down to greet them in the walled garden.
It is a beautiful day. The brick walls hold the heat and not a leaf stirs in the windless air. Montague goes down on one knee as the princess comes towards him and smiles up at her. “I have great news for you,” he says. “Praise God that I can bring you good news at last. The Pope has ruled in favor of your mother. He has commanded the king to put aside all others and take her back to court.”
She gives a little gasp and the color comes to her cheeks. “I am so glad,” she replies. “God be praised for His mercy, and for speaking to the Pope. God bless the Pope for having the courage to say what he should.” She crosses herself and turns away from my sons, as I put my arms around her thin shoulders and hold her for a moment. Her eyes are filled with tears. “I’m all right,” she says. “I am so relieved. I am so glad. At last. At last the Holy Father has spoken, and my father will hear him.”
“If only . . .” I start, and then I trail into silence. It is pointless to wish: if only the Pope had ruled earlier. But at least he has ruled now. The Boleyn woman is with child and has gone through a form of marriage with the king, but this need not prevent the king’s return to his wife. We have had pregnant whores at court before; for years the queen lived alongside a favorite mistress and a bastard son.
“My father will return to his obedience to the Holy Father, won’t he?” She turns back to Montague, her voice carefully steady.
“I think that he will negotiate,” Montague says shrewdly. “He will have to come to terms with Rome, and your mother’s freedom and position as queen must be restored. The Pope’s ruling makes this the business of all Christian kings. Your father is not going to risk France and Spain allying against him.”
She looks as if a great burden has been lifted from her little shoulders. “This is very good news you bring me, Lord Montague,” she says. “And you, Sir Geoffrey.” She turns to me. “You must be glad to see your sons when they bring us such happiness.”
“I am,” I say.
BEAULIEU, ESSEX, SEPTEMBER 1533
It’s a girl. All this trouble for a bastard Boleyn girl. They all say it proves that God has turned his face from the king. They’re calling her Elizabeth.
After the months of waiting it is an intense relief that the Boleyn woman could not give birth to a boy. A son and heir would have proved to the king that he was right all along, that God had smiled on him whatever the Holy Father said. Now there is nothing to prevent him reconciling with the queen and confirming Princess Mary as his heir. Why should he not do so? He has no legitimate son to put in her place. The Boleyns’ great gamble has failed. Their Anne proved to be of no more use than their Mary. The king can return to his wife, she can return to court.
Finally, I think, the wheel of fortune has turned for the princess, and for the queen, her mother. The Pope has declared that the Aragon marriage is lawful, that the Boleyn marriage is a charade. The Boleyn child is a bastard and a girl. The shine is taken off the Boleyn woman and the crown will be taken off her too.
I am confident. We are all waiting for Henry to obey the Pope and restore his wife to her throne, but nothing happens. The bastard Elizabeth is to be christened; the whore, her mother, keeps her place at court.
The princess’s chamberlain, Lord John Hussey, returns to Beaulieu, riding up the great road from London. “He’s been at the christening,” his wife Anne sourly remarks. “He carried the canopy because he was commanded to do so. Don’t think his heart was in it. Don’t think he doesn’t love our princess.”
“My cousin’s wife Gertrude stood as godmother,” I reply. “And nobody loves the queen more than her. We all have to take our places and play our parts.”
She glances at me, as if uncertain how much she should say. “He’s met with a northern lord,” she says. “Better that I don’t say who. He says that the North is ready to rise to defend the queen, if the king does not obey the Pope. Shall I tell him that he can come to you?”
I grit my teeth on my fear. In my pocket wrapped around my rosary is Lord Tom Darcy’s badge of the five wounds of Christ embroidered with the white rose of my house. “With great care,” I say, “tell him that he can come to me with care.”
The boy who brings in the wood for the fire goes past us carrying his basket and we are immediately silent for a moment.
“Anyway, it’s a blessing that the king’s sister was not there to see it, poor princess,” Lady Anne remarks. “She’d never have curtseyed to a Boleyn baby!”
The dowager queen Mary Brandon died at her home in the summer; some people said it was heartbreak that her brother had married his mistress in secret. Both the queen and the princess have lost a good friend, and the king has lost one of the very few people who would tell him the truth about the England he is making.
“The king loved his sister and would have forgiven her a
lmost anything,” I say. “The rest of us have to take the greatest care not to offend him.”
We watch John Hussey from the upper window as the troop of horses ride up the long avenue of trees and halts at the front of the house. He dismounts and throws his reins to a groom and then walks slowly and heavily to the front door like a man on a wearisome errand.
“He can’t be bringing orders that we have to move again, or to take anything from us,” I say uneasily, watching his heavy stride. “He won’t ask for anything. The queen refused to give them the princess’s christening gown for Elizabeth; there’s nothing they can want from us.”
“I’m very sure he’d better not ask anything from me,” she says shortly, and turns away from the window to go to the princess’s rooms.
I wait on the gallery as I hear Lord John come slowly up the stairs. He almost flinches when he sees me, waiting for him. “Your ladyship.” He bows.
“Lord John.”
“I have just come from London. From the christening of the Princess Elizabeth.”
I nod, neither confirming nor denying the name, and I think that he cannot have wined and dined very well at the christening feast, for he looks sluggish and unhappy.
“The king’s secretary, Thomas Cromwell, Cromwell himself, instructs me to get the inventory of the princess’s jewels.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Why would Thomas Cromwell want an inventory of the princess’s jewels?”
He stops for a moment. “He’s the Master of the Jewel House, and it is the king’s command. He asked me himself. And you can’t question that.”
“I can’t,” I agree. “I would not. And so I am sorry to tell you that there is no inventory.”
He takes in the fact that I am going to be difficult. “There must be.”