“There isn’t.”
“But how do you know you have everything safely?”
“Because I myself take out her jewels when she wants them, and then afterwards I put her things away. She’s not a goldsmith’s shop that has to keep a note of stock. She is a princess. She has jewels as she has gloves. Or lace. I don’t have a glove inventory either. I have no register of lace.”
He looks quite baffled. “I’ll tell him,” he says.
“Do.”
But I don’t expect that to be the last of it, and it is not.
“Thomas Cromwell says that you are to make an inventory of the princess’s jewels,” poor John Hussey says to me a few days later.
His wife, passing us on the stairs, shakes her head with something like disdain and says something under her breath.
“Why?” I ask.
He looks baffled. “He didn’t tell me why. He just said it must be done. And so it must be done.”
“Very well,” I say. “A thorough inventory? Of everything? Or just the best pieces?”
“I don’t know!” he exclaims miserably, but then he gets himself in check. “A thorough inventory. An inventory of everything.”
“If it is to be done thoroughly, as Master Cromwell wishes, then you had better do it with me, and bring a couple of your clerks.”
“Very well,” he says. “Tomorrow morning.”
We go through the princess’s wardrobe and open up all the little leather purses with the ropes of pearls and the pretty brooches.
And all the time Thomas Cromwell is making another inventory. His agents travel up and down the land inquiring into the wealth and practices of the monasteries, discovering what they are worth and where their treasures are kept. Neither here among the princess’s boxes nor in the monasteries does anyone explain the purpose of this. Mr. Cromwell seems to be a man very interested in the exact value of other people’s goods.
I cannot say I am any more helpful than the monasteries who claim their holiness and hide their treasures. Indeed, I spin out the inventory for day after day. We bring out all the little boxes, valueless things that she has kept from childhood, a collection of shells from the beach at Dover, some dried berries threaded on silk. Carefully, we list pressed flowers. The diamond brooch from the Emperor Charles turns up as a little ghost from the time when she was the king’s heiress and two of the greatest princes of Europe were proposed for her. Out of little boxes at the back of cupboards I bring the hasp of a belt, and one buckle missing its fellow. She has beautiful rosaries, her piety is well known, she has dozens of golden crucifixes. I bring them all, and the little toy crowns made of gold wire and glass, and the pins with silver heads, and the hair combs of ivory and a couple of rusting lucky horseshoes. We annotate her hairpins, a set of ivory toothpicks, and a silver lice comb. Everything I find, I list in exact detail and make Lord John see that his clerk copies it down in his inventory that runs to page after page, each initialed by us both. It takes days before we are done and the princess’s treasures, great and small, are spread across all the tables in the treasure room, and every last little pin is recorded.
“Now we have to pack these up and give them to Frances Elmer in the privy chamber,” Lord John says. He sounds exhausted. I’m not surprised. It has been tedious and pointless and long, long drawn out by me.
“Oh no, I can’t do that,” I say simply.
“But that is why we made the inventory!”
“It’s not why I made the inventory. I made the inventory to obey the instruction of the king from Master Cromwell.”
“Well, now, he tells me to tell you to give the jewels to Mistress Elmer.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why!” It comes out as a bellow like a wounded bull.
I look at him steadily. We both know why. The woman who calls herself queen has decided to take the princess’s jewels and give them to her bastard. As if a little coronal of diamonds, small enough to be tied on a baby’s head, will transform a child conceived out of wedlock into a Princess of England.
“I can’t do it without a command from the king,” I say. “He told me to guard his daughter and keep her estate. I can’t hand over her goods just on someone’s say-so.”
“It’s Thomas Cromwell’s say-so!”
“He may seem like a great man to you,” I say condescendingly. “But I have not sworn to obey him. I could not give up the jewels, against the king’s own command, unless I have a command from the king to me, directly. When you give me that, I shall give the jewels to whomever His Grace appoints as worthy of them. But let me ask you, who would that be? Who do you think is worthy of the jewels that were given to our princess?”
Lord John lets rip an oath and flings himself out of the room. The door bangs behind him and we hear his boots stamping down the stairs. We hear the front door bang and his snarl at the sentries as they present arms. Then there is silence.
One of the clerks looks up at me. “All you can do is delay it,” he says with sudden clarity, speaking for the first time in days of silent work, and impertinently speaking directly to me. “You have delayed magnificently, your ladyship. But if a man runs mad and wants to dishonor his wife and rob his daughter, it’s very hard to stop him.”
BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, AUTUMN 1533
I travel to my home with a heavy heart, for Arthur’s boy Henry has died of a feverish throat, and we are to bury him in the family vault. It seems that he was thirsty, out hunting, and that some fool allowed him to drink water from a village well. Almost as soon as he got home he complained of a swelling and a heat in his throat. The loss of a Plantagenet boy, Arthur’s boy, is the result of a moment’s carelessness, and I find that I grieve for Arthur all over again and I blame myself that I failed to keep his boy safe.
If his mother, Jane, had not taken herself into the priory but done her duty by her dead husband and her children, then perhaps little Henry would be alive today. As it is, she flings herself down the stone steps to the family vault and clings to the iron grille and cries that she wants to be there with her son, and her husband.
She is beside herself with grief, and they have to take her back to the priory and put her to bed to cry herself to sleep. She never speaks one coherent word to me for the whole length of my visit, so I don’t have to hear that she wishes she had not joined the nunnery and that she wants to break her vows and come out. Perhaps now she wants to stay inside.
We give a family dinner for those who have come to the funeral, and when it is cleared away, Geoffrey and Montague leave their wives in the presence chamber and come to my private room.
“I met with the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, last month,” Montague says without preamble. “Since the Pope has ruled against the king and Henry has ignored him, Chapuys has a suggestion for us.”
Geoffrey brings a chair close to the fireside for me and I sit down and put my feet on the warm fender. Geoffrey rests his hand tenderly on my shoulder, knowing I am feeling the death of Henry like a physical pain.
“Chapuys suggests that Reginald shall come to England in secret, and marry the princess.”
“Reginald?” Geoffrey says blankly. “Why him?”
“He’s unmarried,” Montague says impatiently. “If it’s to be one of our line, it has to be him.”
“Is this the emperor’s idea?” I ask. I am quite stunned at the prospect opening before my scholarly son.
Montague nods. “To make an alliance. You can see his thinking; it’s an unbeatable alliance. Tudors and Plantagenets. It’s the old solution. It’s exactly what the Tudors did when they first came in and married Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York. Now we do it to exclude the Boleyns.”
“It is!” Geoffrey recovers from his jealousy that Reginald would be king consort to think what we would gain from it. “The emperor would land to support an uprising?”
“He has promised to do so. The ambassador thinks the time is now. The Boleyn woman has only produced a girl, and I he
ar that she is sickly. The king has no legitimate heir. And the Boleyn woman has spoken out, threatening the life of the queen and the princess. She may have tried to poison Bishop Fisher again; she may make an attempt on the queen. The ambassador thinks they are both in danger. The emperor would come to a country ready and waiting for him, and he’d bring Reginald.”
“They land, they marry. We raise her standard, and our own. All of our affinity turn out for us, all the Plantagenets. Three suns in the sky again, three sons of York on the battlefield. And the emperor lands for the princess, and every honest Englishman fights for the Church,” Geoffrey says excitedly. “It wouldn’t even come to a battle. Howard would turn his coat the moment that he saw the odds against him, and no one else would fight for the king.”
“Would she agree to marry him?” Montague asks me.
Slowly, I shake my head, knowing that this destroys the plan. “She won’t defy her father. It’s too much to ask of her. She’s only seventeen. She loves her father, I taught her myself that his word is law. Even though she knows he has betrayed and imprisoned her mother, it makes no difference to a daughter’s obedience to her father. He is still king. She would never commit an act of treason against a rightful king, she would never disobey her father.”
“So shall I tell Chapuys no?” Montague asks me. “Is she trapped by her duty?”
“Don’t say no,” Geoffrey says quickly. “Think what we might be, think if we might return to the throne. Their son would be a Plantagenet, the white rose on the throne of England once again. And we would be the royal family once more.”
“Tell him it’s not possible yet,” I temporize. “I won’t even speak to her of it yet.” For a moment only, I think of my son coming home at last, coming home in triumph, a hero of the Church, ready to defend the Church in England, the princess, and the queen. “I agree, it is a good proposal. It is a great opportunity for the country and, quite unbelievably, a great restoration for us. But the time is not now, not yet. Not until we are released from our obedience to the king. We have to wait for the Pope to enforce his word. Not until Henry is excommunicated—then we are free to act. Then the princess is freed from her duty as a subject and a daughter.”
“That day must come,” Geoffrey declares. “I’ll write to Reginald and tell him to press the Pope. The Pope has to declare that no one shall obey the king.”
Montague nods. “He has to be excommunicated. It’s our only way ahead.”
BEAULIEU, ESSEX, AUTUMN 1533
John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Henry’s man through and through, a despised Lancastrian loyalist for generations, rides down the long avenue of trees, through the beautiful great gateway, and into the inner courtyard of Beaulieu with two hundred horsemen in light armor trotting behind his standard.
Princess Mary, beside me at the window that overlooks the courtyard, sees the armed men halting and dismounting. “Does he fear trouble on the road, that he rides with so many?”
“Generally, a de Vere brings trouble rather than meets it,” I say sourly, but I know that the roads are dangerous for the king’s officers. The people are sulky and suspicious, they fear the tax collectors, they fear the new officials who come to inspect the churches and the monasteries, they don’t cheer when they see the Tudor rose anymore, and if they see Anne’s badge—she is now showing a falcon pecking at a pomegranate to flaunt her victory over Queen Katherine—they spit on the road before her horses.
“I’ll go down to greet him,” I say. “You wait in your rooms.” I close the door and go slowly down the great stone stairs to the entrance hall, where John is tossing his hat on a table and pulling off his leather gloves.
“Lord John.”
“Countess,” he says, pleasantly enough. “Can I turn my horses out in your fields for the day? We won’t stay long.”
“Of course,” I say. “You’ll dine with us?”
“That would be excellent,” he says. The de Veres have always been great trenchermen. The family was in exile with Henry Tudor and came back at Bosworth to devour England. “I’ve come to see Lady Mary,” he says flatly.
I find that I am quite chilled to hear him call her that. As if by denying her name, he is announcing the death of the princess. I pause for a moment and give him a long, slow stare. “I will take you to Her Grace the Princess Mary,” I say steadily.
He puts a hand on my arm. I don’t shake it off, I just look at him in silence. He moves his hand awkwardly. “A word of advice,” he says. “To a very well-regarded, well-respected, beloved kinswoman of the King of England. One word of advice . . .”
I wait in icy silence.
“The king’s will is that she is known as Lady Mary. That is going to happen. It will be the worse for her if she defies him. I am here to tell her that she must obey. She is a bastard. He will guide her and care for her as his bastard daughter, and she will take the name Lady Mary Tudor.”
I feel the blood rush to my face. “She is no bastard and Queen Katherine was no whore. And any man who says so is a liar.”
He cannot face me with the lie on his lips and my face burning with anger. He turns away from me as if he is ashamed of himself, and he goes up to the presence chamber. I run after him; I have some mad thought of throwing myself in front of the door and barring him from saying the terrible words to our princess.
He enters without announcement. He gives her the smallest bow, and I rush in behind him too late to prevent him delivering his shameful message.
She hears him out. She does not respond when he addresses her as Lady Mary. She looks at him steadily, she looks through him with a dark blue gaze that in the end reduces him to repeating himself, to losing his thread, and then to silence.
“I shall write to my father, His Grace,” she says shortly. “You can carry the letter.”
She rises from her chair and sweeps past him, not waiting to see whether or not he bows. John de Vere, caught between the old habit of respect and the new rules, bobs down, bobs up, and finally stands awkwardly, like a fool.
I follow her to her privy chamber and see her take her seat at the table and draw a piece of paper towards her. She inspects the nib of a quill, dips it in the ink, wipes it carefully, and starts to write in her confident, elegant hand.
“Your Grace, think carefully before you write. What will you say?”
She glances up at me, chillingly calm, as if she had prepared herself for this, the worst thing that could happen. “I will tell him that I will never disobey his commands but that I cannot renounce the rights which God, Nature, and my own parents have given me.” She gives a little shrug. “Even if I wanted to step aside from my duty, I cannot do so. I was born a Tudor princess. I will die a Tudor princess. Nobody can say differently.”
BEAULIEU, ESSEX, NOVEMBER 1533
Montague comes to Beaulieu, riding through a dark day of mist and freezing rain, with half a dozen men around him and no standard showing.
I greet him in the stable yard when they clatter in. “You come disguised?”
“Not exactly disguised, but I don’t mind being obscure,” he says. “I don’t think I’m spied on, or followed, and I’d like it to stay that way. But I had to see you, Lady Mother. It’s urgent.”
“Come in,” I say. I leave the grooms to take the horses and Montague’s men to find their own way into the hall, where they can get mulled ale against the cold weather. I lead my son up the small stairs to my privy chamber. Katherine and Winifred, my granddaughters, and two other ladies are seated in the window, trying to catch the last of the light on their sewing, and I tell them they can leave it aside and go and practice their dance in the presence chamber. They curtsey and leave, very pleased to be sent to dance, and I turn to my son.
“What is it?”
“Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent, has disappeared from Syon Abbey. I’m afraid she may have been taken by Cromwell. He’s certain to ask her to name those friends of the queen that she has met. He’s certain to try to make it look like a pl
ot. Have you seen her at all since the time that I brought her to you?”
“Once,” I say. “She came with Cousin Henry’s wife, Gertrude Courtenay, and we prayed together.”
“Did anyone see you together?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“We were in the chapel at Richmond. The priest was there. But he would never give evidence against me.”
“He would now. Cromwell is using torture to get the confessions that he wants. Did she speak of the king?”
“Torture? He is torturing priests?”
“Yes. Did the Maid speak of the king?”
“She spoke as she always does. That if he tried to set the queen aside, his days would be numbered. But she said nothing more than she has said to the king himself.”
“Did she ever say that we would take the throne? Did she ever say that?”
I am not going to tell my son that she foresaw his marrying the princess and becoming king consort. I’m not going to tell him that she predicted that the Plantagenet line would be the royal family of England once again. “I won’t say. Not even to you, my dear.”
“Lady Mother, Thomas More himself warned her against predicting greatness for a family like ours. He reminded her of what happened to the Buckingham chaplain who knew a prophecy and whispered it to Buckingham. He warned her that the false prophet led our cousin on to dream of greatness, and then the king was led on to cut him down. The king cut down both prophet and the hero of his prophecy, and now the duke’s confessor and the duke are dead.”
“So I don’t ever speak of prophecies.” Silently, I add: “Or curses.”
Montague nods, as if he is reassured. “Half of the court have met with her to have their fortunes told or to pray with her,” he says. “We’ve done no more than this. You’re sure, aren’t you? That we have done no more than this?”
“I don’t know what she might have said to Cousin Gertrude. And are you sure of Geoffrey?”