Montague, trying to be cheerful, orders the servants to bring the food and invites us to table as a merry family party, and then Geoffrey sets the musicians to play loudly in the hall while we step into the private room behind the great table and close the door.
“I have a letter from our Lisle cousins,” Henry Courtenay says. He shows us the seal and then carefully tucks it into the fire, where it blazes and the wax sputters and then it is nothing but ash. “Arthur Plantagenet says that we have to protect the princess. He will hold Calais for her against the king. If we can get her out of England, she will be safe there.”
“Protect her against what?” I ask flatly, as if daring them to say. “The Lisles are safe in Calais. What do they want us to do?”
“Lady Mother, the next Parliament is going to be offered a Bill of Attainder against the queen and the princess,” my son Montague says quietly. “Then they’ll be taken to the Tower. Like More and Fisher. Then they’ll be executed.”
There is a shocked silence, but everyone can see the truth in Montague’s bleak misery.
“You’re sure?” is all I say. I know that he is sure. I don’t need his agonized face to tell me that.
He nods.
“Do we have enough support to deny the bill in Parliament?” Henry Courtenay asks.
Geoffrey knows. “There should be enough men for the queen to vote it down. If they dare to speak their minds, there are enough votes. But they have to stand up and speak.”
“How can we make sure that they speak out?” I ask.
“Someone has to take the risk and speak first,” Gertrude says eagerly. “One of you.”
“You didn’t stand up for so very long,” her husband remarks resentfully.
“I know,” she admits. “I thought I would die in the Tower. I thought that I would die of cold and disease before I was tried and hanged. It’s terrible. I was there for weeks. I would be there still if I had not denied everything and begged forgiveness. I said I was a foolish woman.”
“I am afraid that the king is ready to make war on women now, foolish or otherwise,” Montague says grimly. “Nobody will be allowed that excuse again. But my cousin Gertrude is right. Someone has to speak up. I think it has to be us. I’ll approach every friend that I have and tell him that there can be no attainder against the queen or the princess.”
“Tom Darcy will help you,” I say. “John Hussey too.”
“Yes, but Cromwell will be ahead of us,” Geoffrey warns. “Nobody manages Parliament better than Cromwell. He’ll have been before us, and he has deep pockets, and people are terrified of him. He knows some secret about everybody. He has a hold on everyone.”
“Can’t Reginald persuade the emperor to come?” Henry Courtenay asks me. “The princess is begging to be rescued. Can the emperor at least send a ship and take her away?”
“He says that he will,” Geoffrey replies. “He promised Reginald.”
“But there are guards on both houses. Kimbolton is almost impossible to even get near without being observed,” Montague cautions him. “Would the princess go without the queen? And from the start of this month all the ports will be guarded. The king knows well enough that the Spanish ambassador is plotting with the princess to try to get her away. She’s closely watched, and there’s not a port in England that doesn’t have a Cromwell spy on duty. I really don’t think we can get her out of the country; it will be hard enough to get her out of Hunsdon.”
“Can we take her into hiding in England?” Geoffrey asks. “Or send her to Scotland?”
“I don’t want her sent to Scotland,” I interrupt. “What if they keep her?”
“We may have to,” Montague says and Courtenay and Stafford nod in agreement. “One thing is for certain: we can’t let her be taken to the Tower, and we have to stop Cromwell’s Parliament passing a Bill of Attainder and sending her to her death.”
“Reginald is working for the king’s excommunication to be publicly declared,” I remind them.
“We need it now,” Montague says.
WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, WINTER 1535
Geoffrey goes visiting all the substantial landlords who live around Warblington or around his own house at Lordington, and speaks to them of the Bill of Attainder against the queen and princess and how it must not come to Parliament. In London Montague speaks discreetly to selected friends at court, mentioning that the princess should be allowed to live with her mother, that she should not be so closely guarded. The king’s great friend and companion Sir Francis Bryan agrees with him, suggesting that he speak with Nicholas Carew. These are men at the very heart of Henry’s court, and they are starting to rebel against the king’s malice to his wife and daughter. I begin to think that Cromwell will not dare to propose the arrest of the queen to the Parliament. He will know that there is a growing opposition; he will not want an open challenge.
The autumn progress has done its work and she is with child again. No word from Rome, and the king feels safe. He is in and out of her rooms flirting with her ladies; but she does not care. If she has a boy, she will be untouchable.
WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, JANUARY 1536
Dearest Lady Mother,
I am sorry to tell you that the Dowager Princess is gravely ill. I have asked Lord Cromwell if you may go to her and he says that he is not authorized to allow any visitors. The Spanish ambassador went just after the Christmas feast, and Maria de Salinas is on her way. I don’t think we can do any more?
Your obedient and loving son,
Montague.
L’ERBER, LONDON, JANUARY 1536
I ride up the cold roads to London with my cape over my head and dozens of scarves wound round my face in an effort to keep warm. I fall from the saddle at the doorway of my London house, and Geoffrey catches me in his arms and says kindly: “Here, you’re home now, don’t even think of going on to Kimbolton.”
“I have to go,” I say. “I have to say good-bye to her. I have to beg her forgiveness.”
“How have you failed her?” he demands, guiding me into the great hall. The fire is lit in the grate; I can feel the flickering heat on my face. My ladies gently lift the heavy cloak from my shoulders and unwind the scarves, take the gloves from my chilled hands, and pull off my riding boots. I am aching from cold and weariness. I feel every one of my sixty-two years.
“She left me in charge of the princess, and I didn’t stay at her side,” I say shortly.
“She knew you did everything that you could.”
“Oh, damn everything to hell!” I suddenly break out in blasphemy. “I have done nothing for her as I meant to do, and we were young women together and it seems just yesterday, and now she is lying near death and her daughter is in danger and we cannot reach her and I . . . I . . . am just a foolish old woman and I am helpless in this world. Helpless!”
Geoffrey kneels at my feet and his sweet face is torn between laughter and sorrowful pity. “No woman I know is less helpless in the world,” he says. “Not one more determined or powerful. And the queen knows that you are thinking of her and praying for her even now.”
“Yes, I can pray,” I say. “I can pray that at least she is in a state of grace and without pain. I can pray for her.”
I heave myself to my feet, leave the temptation of the fire and the glass of mulled ale, and go to my chapel, where I kneel on the stone floor, which is how she always prayed, and I put the soul of my dearest friend Katherine of Aragon into the hands of God in the hopes that He will care for her better in heaven than we have cared for her here on earth.
And that is where Montague finds me when he comes to tell me that she is gone.
She went like a woman of great dignity; this has to be a comfort for me and for her. She prepared for her death, she had a long talk with her ambassador, and she had the company of dearest Maria, who rode through the winter weather to get to her. She wrote to her nephew and to the king. They tell me that she wrote to Henry that she loved him as she had always done and
signed herself as his wife. She prayed with her confessor and he anointed her with holy oil, and administered extreme unction, so that she was, according to her unshakable faith, ready for her death. In the early afternoon she slipped away from this life that had been such a hard and thankless task for her, and—I am as certain as if I had seen it—joined her husband Arthur in the next.
I think of her as I first met her, a young woman tremulous with anxiety about being Princess of Wales and illuminated with love, her first love, and I think of her going to heaven like that, with her five little angels following her, one of the finest queens that England has ever had.
“Of course, it changes everything for Princess Mary for the worse,” Geoffrey says tempestuously, bursting into my private chamber, throwing off his winter jacket.
“How for the worse?” I feel calm in my grief. I am wearing a gown of dark blue, the royal color of mourning for my house, though they tell me that the king is in yellow and gold—the mourning color of Spain, and a bright buttercup shade that suits his mood, freed as he is at last from a faithful wife, and safe from invasion by her nephew.
“She has lost a protector and a witness,” Montague agrees. “The king would never have moved against her while her mother was alive, he would have had to order that the queen was attainted before his daughter. Now Princess Mary is the only person left in England who refuses to swear to his oath.”
I take the decision that has been waiting for me. “I know. I know this. We have to get her out of England. Son Montague, the time is now. We have to take the risk. We have to act now. Her life is in danger.”
I stay in London while Montague and Geoffrey handpick a guard who will ride to Hunsdon and seize the princess, plan a route skirting London, and hire a ship that will wait for her and take her out of one of the little Thameside villages like Grays. We decide against telling the Spanish ambassador; he loves the princess and he is in deep grief for her mother, but he is a dainty, fearful man, and if Thomas Cromwell were to arrest him, I think he would squeeze him like a Spanish orange and the man would tell everything within days, perhaps within hours.
Geoffrey goes to Hunsdon and, after waiting patiently, bribing everyone he can, gets the boy who lights the fires in the bedchambers into his service. He comes home beaming with relief.
“She’s safe for the moment,” he says. “Thank God! Because getting her away would have been near to impossible. But her luck has changed—who would have thought it? She has letters from the Boleyn queen saying that they must be friends, that the princess can turn to her in her grief.”
“What?” I ask incredulously. It is so early in the morning that I am not yet dressed, but am still in my nightgown and furred robe. Geoffrey has come to my bedchamber and we are alone as he stirs up the fire.
“I know.” He is almost laughing. “I even saw the princess. She is allowed to walk in the garden, by the order of Anne. Apparently, the Lady has ordered that the princess is given more freedom and treated more kindly. She can receive visitors and the Spanish ambassador can bring her letters.”
“But why? Why would Anne change like this?”
“Because while Queen Katherine was alive, the king had no choice but to stay with the Lady, he was bound to push through the destruction of the Church. You know what he’s like, with everyone saying that it couldn’t be done and shouldn’t be done he grew more and more obstinate. But now that the queen is dead he is free. His quarrel with the emperor is over, he’s safe from invasion, he has no need to quarrel with the Holy Father. He is a widower now; he can legally marry Anne if he wants to, and there is no reason that he should not reconcile with the princess. She is the daughter of his first wife; a son from his second will inherit before her.”
“So that woman is trying to befriend the princess?”
“Says she will intercede with her father, says she will be her friend, says she can come to court and not even be a lady-in-waiting, but have her own rooms.”
“Precedence over the Boleyn bastards?” I ask, sharp as ever.
“She didn’t say that. But why not? If he marries Anne a second time, this time with the blessing of the Church, then both girls will take second place to a legitimate boy.”
I nod slowly. Then as the realization comes to me, I say quietly, and with such satisfaction: “Ah. I see it. She will be afraid.”
“Afraid?” Geoffrey turns from the sideboard with a pastry left from last night in his hand. “Afraid?”
“The king is not married to her. They went through two services, but the Holy Father ruled both of them to be invalid. She is just his concubine. Now the queen is dead and he can marry again. But perhaps he won’t marry her.”
Geoffrey looks at me with his mouth open, as the pastry sheds crumbs on the floor. I don’t even tell him to use a plate. “Not marry her?”
I count on my fingers the triumphant list. “She hasn’t given him a son, she has only managed to carry a girl, he has fallen out of love with her and started his amours with other women. She has brought him no wisdom of her own and no good friends. She has no powerful foreign relations to protect her, her English family are not reliable. Her uncle has turned against her, her sister is banished from court, her sister-in-law has offended the king, and the moment that she is unsteady then Thomas Cromwell will turn on her, as he will only ever serve a favorite. What if she is favorite no more?”
ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, JANUARY 1536
It snows, and the road is very cold out of London, heading north up the great road to Peterborough. The weather is so bad, the snow so blinding and roads so impassable that we are two full days on the journey, rising at dawn and riding all day. In the early dark of the afternoons we stop once at a great house and request hospitality, and once at a good inn. We can no longer count on the monasteries along the way for hospitality and dinner. Some of them are closed altogether, some of the monks are transferred to other houses, some have been turned out of doors. I think that perhaps Thomas Cromwell did not foresee this when he started his great inquiry into religious houses and rifled their fortunes for the king’s profit. He claims that he is stamping out ill doing, but he is destroying a great institution in the country. The abbeys feed the poor, they nurse the sick, they help travelers, and they own more land than anyone else but the king, and farm it well. Now nothing is certain on the road anymore. No one is safe on the road anymore. Even the pilgrim hostels have put up their shutters as the shrines are being stripped of their wealth and their powers denied.
PETERBOROUGH, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, JANUARY 1536
On the afternoon of the third day I can see the spire of Peterborough Abbey ahead of me, pointing up to an iron gray sky, as my horse dips his head against the cold wind and trudges steadily onward, his big hooves scuffing the snow. I have a dozen men at arms around me and as we enter the gates of the city, the bell tolling for curfew, they close up against the people of the streets who watch resentfully, until they see my banner and start to shout.
For a moment I am afraid that they will shout out against me, seeing me as one of the court, one of the many new lords who have grown rich on the goodwill of the Tudors, even if I have that goodwill no more. But a woman leaning out of an overhanging window shrieks down at me: “God bless the white rose! God bless the white rose!”
Startled, I glance up and see her beam at me. “God bless Queen Katherine! God bless the princess! God bless the white rose!”
The urchin children and beggars clearing out of the way ahead of the soldiers turn and cheer, though they know nothing of who I am. But out of the little roadside shops, stepping out of workhouses and tumbling out of church and alehouse alike come men pulling off their hats and one or two even kneeling down in the freezing mud as I go by, and they call out blessings on the late queen, on her daughter, and on me and my house.
Someone even sets up the old cry “À Warwick!” and I know that they have not forgotten, any more than I have, that there was once an England with a York king on the throne who w
as content to be king and did not pretend to be Pope, who had a mistress who did not pretend to be queen, who had bastards who did not pretend to be heirs.
I understand, as we ride through the little city, why the king commanded that the queen should not be buried, as befits her dignity, in the abbey at Westminster. It is because the City would have risen up to mourn her. Henry was right to be afraid; I think all of London would have rioted against him. The people of England have turned against the Tudors. They loved this young king when he came to the throne to make everything right again, but now he has taken their Church, and taken their monasteries, and taken their best men, put aside his queen, and death has taken her. They cheer for her still, they mutter and call her martyred, a saint, and they cheer for me as one of the old royal family who would never have led them so badly astray.
We arrive at the guesthouse of the abbey, and find it overcrowded with the retinues of other great ladies from London. Maria de Salinas, Countess Willoughby, the queen’s faithful friend, is here already, and she comes running down the stairs as if she were still a lady-in-waiting to a Spanish princess and I were mere Lady Pole of Stourton. We hold each other tightly, and I can feel her shake with her sobs. When we pull back to look at each other, I know that there are tears in my eyes too.
“She was at peace,” is the first thing she says. “She was at peace at the end.”
“I knew it.”
“She sent you her love.”
“I tried . . .”
“She knew that you would be thinking of her, and she knew that you would continue to guard her daughter. She wanted to give you . . .” She breaks off, unable to speak, her Spanish accent still strong after years in England and her marriage to an English nobleman. “I am sorry. She wanted to give you one of her rosaries, but the king has ordered that everything be taken into his keeping.”