She is only twenty years old. Only twenty years old and her mother has not been buried a year. She is separated from her friends and held under arrest like a sinner, like a criminal. She has nothing but her belief in God to support her, and she is afraid that it is God’s will that she die a martyr for her faith.
A panel of judges, convened to inquire into her treasonous disobedience to the king, struggle briefly with their consciences, and agree to send one more time to Hunsdon where she is now held as a prisoner with no attempt at concealing her disgrace. They prepare a document called “The Lady Mary’s Submission,” and tell her that she must sign it or they will charge her with treason. The charge of treason carries a death sentence and she knows that half a dozen men are held in the Tower accused of trying to rescue her, and that their lives depend on what she does next. She believes that her mother was poisoned by her father’s wife, she believes that her father will have her beheaded if she does not obey him. No one can rescue her, no one can even reach her.
Poor child, poor darling child. She signs the three clauses. First she signs that she accepts her father as King of England and that she will obey all his laws. Then she signs that she recognizes him as supreme head on earth of the Church of England; then she signs the last clause:
I do freely and frankly recognize and acknowledge that the marriage between His Majesty and my mother was by God’s law and Man’s law incestuous and unlawful.
“She signed it?” Geoffrey asks me on a brief visit to London, come to borrow money from me, and horrified at the news.
I nod. “God only knows what it cost her to swear on His holy name that her mother was an incestuous whore. But she signed it, and she accepts that she is Lady Mary and no princess, and a bastard.”
“We should have taken her away long before this!” Geoffrey exclaims furiously. “We should have gone in before the lawyers got there and snatched her away!”
“We couldn’t,” I say. “You know that we couldn’t. We delayed when she was ill, then we delayed because we thought she was safe after the death of Anne, and then the plot was broken wide open. We’re lucky not to be in the Tower with the others as it is.”
Lord Cromwell now puts an act before the houses of Parliament that rules the king shall nominate his own heir. His heir shall be of his choosing, from Jane, or—as it cheerfully declares—any subsequent wife.
“He’s planning to marry again?” Geoffrey demands.
“He’s not ruling it out,” Montague says. “Our princess is denied, and the bastard Elizabeth loses her title. It clearly says that if he has no children with Queen Jane, then he can choose his heir. Now he has three children all declared bastards of his own begetting to choose from: the true princess, the bastard princess, and the bastard duke.”
“Everyone keeps asking who he means to name,” Geoffrey says. “In Parliament, as they were reading the bill, men kept asking me who the king intended as his heir. Someone even asked me if I thought the king would name our cousin Henry Courtenay as heir and restore our family.”
Montague laughs shortly. “Does he destroy his children so that he has to turn to cousins?”
“Does no one think he will get a child from Jane?” I ask. “Does this act show that he is doubting his own potency?”
Ever since Anne Boleyn went to the scaffold for laughing with her brother that the king could not do the act, we are all well aware that it is illegal to say such a thing. I see Montague glance at the closed door and the barred windows.
“No. He’s going to name Fitzroy,” Geoffrey says certainly. “Fitzroy walked before him at the opening of Parliament carrying the king’s cap in full sight of everyone. He could not have been more conspicuous. He’s been given half of poor Henry Norris’s lands and places, and the king is going to set him up at Baynard’s Castle with his wife, Mary Howard.”
“That’s where Henry Tudor stayed when he first came to London,” I point out. “Before his coronation as Henry VII, before he moved to Westminster.”
Geoffrey nods. “It’s a signal to everyone. Princess Mary and the bastard Elizabeth and the bastard Fitzroy are all equal bastards, but Princess Mary is only now released from prison and Elizabeth is a weak baby. Fitzroy is the only one with his own castle and his own lands, and now a palace in the heart of London.”
“The king could still get a son from Jane,” Montague points out. “That’s what he’ll be hoping for. If this marriage is good in the sight of God, why should he not have a son now? She’s a young woman of twenty-eight, from good, fertile stock.”
Geoffrey looks at me as if I know why not. “He’ll not get a live son. He never will. There’s a curse, isn’t there, Lady Mother?”
I say what I always say: “I don’t know.”
“If there ever was such a curse that the king should have no son and heir, then it means nothing because he has Fitzroy,” Montague says irritably. “This talk of curses is a waste of time, for there is the duke, on the brink of being named the king’s heir and displacing the princess, living proof that there is no curse.”
Geoffrey ignores his brother and turns to me. “Was there a curse?”
“I don’t know.”
KING’S PLACE, HACKNEY, LONDON, JUNE 1536
I am almost singing with hope as we ride out through the city walls into the fields and go north and east to the village of Hackney. It’s a summer day, promising good weather and gilded with sunshine, and Geoffrey rides on my right with Montague on my left, and for a moment, between my boys, riding away from London and the looming Tower, I have a moment of intense joy.
As soon as Princess Mary denied her mother and denied her faith the king sent for her and gave her his beautiful hunting lodge, only a few miles from Westminster, and promised her a return to court. She is allowed to see her friends, she is allowed to walk and ride as she wishes; she is free. She sends for me at once, and she is allowed to see me.
“You’ll be shocked when you see her,” Geoffrey warns me. “It’s been more than two years since you saw her last, and she has been ill and very unhappy.”
“We have both been ill and very unhappy,” I say. “She will be beautiful to me. My only regret is that I couldn’t spare her unhappiness.”
“Mine is that we couldn’t get her away,” Geoffrey says grimly.
“Enough of that.” Montague cuts him short. “Those days are over, thank God, and we have all survived them, one way or another. Never mention them again.”
“Any news of Carew?” Geoffrey asks Montague, keeping his voice low, though there is no one near us but half a dozen of our own guards, riding before and behind, too distant to eavesdrop.
Grimly, Montague shakes his head.
“Nothing to link us to him?” Geoffrey presses him.
“Everyone knows that our Lady Mother loves the princess like a daughter,” Montague says irritably. “Everyone knows that I talked with the plotters. We all dined with Cromwell and plotted the fall of Anne. You don’t have to be a Cromwell to make a case against us. We just have to hope that Cromwell doesn’t want to make a case against us.”
“Half the Privy Council opposed the king disinheriting the princess,” Geoffrey complains. “Most of them spoke against it to me.”
“And if Cromwell wants to bring half the Privy Council down, then you can be sure he’ll have evidence.” Montague looks across me to his younger brother. “And by the sound of it, you’ll be the first one he’ll come to.”
“Because I am the first to speak up for her!” Geoffrey bursts out. “I defend her!”
“Hush, boys,” I say. “Nobody doubts either of you. Montague, don’t tease your brother, you’re like children again.”
Montague ducks his head in a half apology and I look ahead, where the old hunting lodge sits on a little rise of ground, the turrets just visible above the trees.
“She is expecting us?” I ask. I find I am nervous.
“Of course,” Montague confirms. “As soon as she had greeted the king she a
sked if she could see you. And he agreed. He said that he knew that she loved you and that you had always been a good guardian to her.”
From the edge of the wood we can see the lane leading to the castle, and there are riders coming towards us at a leisurely canter. I think I can see, I shade my eyes against the bright morning sunshine, I can see that there are ladies riding among the men, I can see the flicker of their gowns. I think that they have come out to meet us, and I give a little laugh and press my horse forward into a trot and then into a canter.
“Halloo! Awaaay!” Geoffrey cries out the hunting call and follows me as I ride forward and then I am almost certain, and then I am completely certain, that at the center of the riders is the princess herself and that she is feeling, just as I am, that she cannot wait for another moment, and she has ridden out to meet me.
“Your Grace!” I call to her, forgetting all about her changed title. “Mary!”
The horses slow as the two parties come together and I pull up my hunter, who snorts excitedly. One of the guards runs to his head and helps me down from the saddle, and my darling princess tumbles from her horse as if she were a child again, jumping down to me, and she dives into my arms and I hold her tightly.
She cries, of course she cries, and I bend my head and put her wet cheek against mine and feel my own grief and sense of loss and fear for her rise up until I am ready to cry too.
“Come,” Montague says gently behind me. “Come, Lady Mother, come, Lady Mary.” He nods his head as he says this, as if to apologize for the false title. “Let’s all go back to the house and you can talk all day long.”
“You’re safe,” Mary says, looking up at me. Now I can see the dark shadows under her eyes and the weariness in her face. She’s never going to have the shining look of a lucky child again. The loss of her mother and the sudden cruelty from her father have scarred her, and her pale skin and pinched mouth show a woman who has learned to bear pain with a deep determination too young.
“I am safe, but I have been so afraid for you.”
She shakes her head as if to say that she will never be able to tell me what she has endured. “You went to my mother’s funeral,” she says, handing the reins of her horse to the groom and linking her arm through mine so we walk back to the house in step.
“It was very solemn, very beautifully done, and a number of those of us who loved her were allowed to attend.”
“They wouldn’t let me go. They wouldn’t even let me pay for her prayers. Besides, they took everything from me.”
“I know.”
“But it’s better now,” she says with a brave little smile. “My father has forgiven my obstinacy and nobody could be kinder than Queen Jane. She has given me a diamond ring and my father gave me a thousand crowns.”
“And you have a proper steward to take care of things for you?” I ask anxiously. “A chamberlain of your household?”
A shadow crosses her face. “Sir John Shelton is my chamberlain; Lady Anne, his wife, runs the household.”
I nod. So the jailers become the servants. I imagine they still report to Lord Cromwell.
“Lord John Hussey is not allowed to serve me, nor his wife,” Mary says.
“His wife is arrested,” I say very quietly. “In the Tower.”
“And my tutor Richard Fetherston?”
“In the tower.”
“But you are safe?”
“I am,” I say. “And so happy to be with you again.”
We talk together all day; we close the door on everyone and speak freely. She asks after my children. I tell her of my little ladies-in-waiting, my granddaughters Katherine and Winifred. I tell her of my pride and love for Montague’s son Henry, who is nine years old. “We call him Harry,” I tell her. “You should see him on a horse, he can ride anything. He terrifies me!” I tell her of the loss of Arthur’s boy, but his two girls are well. Ursula has given the Staffords a great brood of three boys and a girl, and Geoffrey, my baby, has babies of his own: Arthur who is five years old, Margaret who is four, Elizabeth who is three, and our new baby, little Thomas.
She volunteers little stories about her half sister Elizabeth, smiling at the things that the child says, and praising her quickness and her charm. She asks about the ladies who have come to serve Jane, and laughs when I tell her that they are all Seymour appointments, or Cromwell choices, however unsuitable for the work, and that Jane looks around them sometimes quite dazed that they should all find themselves in the queen’s rooms.
“And the Church?” she asks me quietly. “And the monasteries?”
“Going one by one. We have lost Bisham Priory,” I say. “Cromwell’s men inspected it and found it wanting, and handed it over to a prior who is never there, and whose intention is to declare it corrupt and surrender it to them.”
“It can’t be true that so many houses have failed in their faith,” she says. “Bisham was a good house of prayer, I know it was.”
“None of the inquiries is honest, only a way of persuading the abbess or the prior to resign their living and go. Cromwell’s visitors have gone to almost every small monastery. I believe they will go on to inquire at the great houses too. They accuse them of terrible crimes, and then find against them. There have been some places that were trading in relics—you know the sort of thing—and some places where they lived too comfortably for their souls, but this is not a reformation, though that is what they want to call it—it’s a destruction.”
“For profit?”
“Yes, only for profit,” I say. “God knows how much treasure has gone from the altars into the treasury, and the rich farmland, and the buildings have been bought by their neighbors. Cromwell had to create a whole new court to manage the wealth. If you ever inherit, my dear, you will not recognize your kingdom; it has been stripped bare.”
“If I ever inherit, I shall put it right,” she says very quietly. “I swear it. I will put it right again.”
SITTINGBOURNE, KENT, JULY 1536
The court is on progress to Dover to inspect the new fortifications, then the newlyweds will go hunting. The suspected courtiers have been released from the Tower, and my kinsman Henry Courtenay returns to court but not yet to the Privy Council.
“Did you prove your innocence?” I ask him very quietly as we mount up and prepare to ride out.
“Nothing was proved or disproved,” he says as he helps me into the saddle and looks up at me, scowling against the bright sunshine. “I think it was not to test our guilt but to frighten us and throw us into disarray. And,” he says with a wry smile, “it surely did that.”
This used to be the happiest time of the year for the king, but not this summer. He glances at Jane’s plate when she is eating her breakfast, as if he were wishing that she felt queasy, he watches her—his head tipped slightly to the side—as she dances with her ladies, as though he would be better pleased if she were tired. I am not the only person who thinks that he is looking for a fault, wondering why she is not with child, considering that there may be some flaw in her that makes her unworthy to bear a Tudor heir, or even to be crowned as queen. They have been married less than eight weeks, but the king is quick to identify failure in others. He demands perfection—and this is the woman he married because he was certain that she was the perfect contrast to Anne Boleyn.
Sittingbourne is a great town of inns, built on Watling Street, the road from Dover to London, the main pilgrimage route to the Becket shrine at Canterbury. We stay at the Lyon, and their banqueting hall is so large and their rooms so many that they can house most of the court on the premises and only the hangers-on and the lower servants have to stay in inns nearby.
For the first time in my life I see that although the pilgrims push back their hoods to uncover their heads for the royal standard, they turn their faces away from the king. They dare do no more, but they do not call out blessings on him, or smile as he rides by. They blame him for closing the smaller monasteries and nunneries, they fear he will go on to destroy
the bigger ones. These are devout people, accustomed to praying in an abbey church in their little towns, who now find that the abbey is closed and some hard-faced new Tudor lord is taking the lead from the roof and the glass from the windows. These are people who believe in the saints of little roadside shrines, whose fathers and grandfathers were saved from purgatory by the family chantries that are now destroyed. Who is going to say a Mass for them? These are people who were brought up to revere the local churches, who rented lands from the monasteries, who went to the nunnery hospital when they were sick, who went to the abbey kitchen in hungry times. When the king ordered the visitation and then the closure of the small monasteries and nunneries, he tore the heart out of the small communities and handed their treasures over to strangers.
Now these pilgrims are traveling to the shrine of a churchman who was killed by a king, another Henry. They believe that Thomas Becket stood for the Church against the king and the miracles that constantly occur at his celebrated shrine go to prove that the churchman was right and the king was wrong. As the royal guards trot into the village and jump off their big horses and line the village street, the pilgrims whisper of John Fisher, who died for his faith on the royal scaffold; of Thomas More, who could not bring himself to say that the king was the rightful head of the Church, and laid down his life rather than sign his name. As the royal party ride in, nodding to right and left with the usual Tudor charm, there are no beaming faces or excited shouts in reply. Instead, they turn their heads away, or they look down, and there is a discontented murmur like a deep embanked stream.
Henry hears it; his head goes up and he looks coldly around at the pilgrims who stand at the doorways of the inns or lean out of the windows to see the man who is destroying their Church. The yeomen of the guard hear it, looking round uneasily, sensing divided loyalties, even in their own ranks.
Many, many people, knowing that I am the princess’s governess and head of her household, call out to me: “God bless her! God bless her!,” afraid even to say her true name and her title as they have sworn to deny her, but still wanting to send their love and loyalty.