Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  My aunt said Observants had been noted entering Katherine’s house. They preached and their sermons hardened Katherine’s resolve. The King could not punish them by taking away their money and property, for they had none. Unlike others, they kept their vows of poverty.

  “Cromwell is sending men to investigate the order and other religious houses, to attest to their practices and spiritual worth. The investigations are informal, for now, but the King has an eye on the clergy. He thinks they mean to follow the Q… the Dowager…” my aunt caught herself just before making a mistake fatal in some quarters “… and will stop them before they do.”

  I could tell my grandmother was uneasy. She would defend and uphold Anne with pride and acclaim, but she had a great deal of respect for the religious orders the King was investigating.

  A week later, we heard Katherine had been moved to Kimbolton, a fortified manor house in Huntingdonshire. It was a gloomy, old-fashioned dwelling, but Kimbolton was farther from the fens. Katherine had been suffering from a cough, exasperated by the mists and damp of the marshes. People had been whispering the King meant to murder his former wife, leaving her to waste away in the wet, unwholesome fens, but were cheered when he sent her to another house. Women weaving wool in the barns said the King would set aside my cousin and bring Katherine, the true Queen, back.

  “At least it shows he has an eye of sympathy on her,” said one.

  “Who could not? Poor lady,” was the answer of another. “Imagine bearing so many children for a husband, then being cast off for a younger woman.”

  “And your one daughter kept from you,” said another. “And the true Princess forced to wait upon her bastard Boleyn sister like a servant! ’Tis an evil thing, and all dreamed up by the concubine, not by the King.”

  They stopped talking when they saw me, but their words echoed in my mind.

  Chapter Ten

  Chesworth House

  Summer - Autumn 1534

  I listened to the zing and thump of the arrow as it left Ned’s bow, thwacking into the hay-stuffed butt. It was Sunday and we were watching the young men practise with their bows in the wide, open meadows. The habit of practising archery on a Sunday was dying out about the country, but my grandmother honoured the old ways. War and rebellion could come at any time in life, she said. Young men should know all warlike skills.

  We maids shot too, practising for the days of hunting that often followed, but the men liked us to watch and admire, so we did. I watched Ned, but my eyes were captured by a tree stump, bent like a crooked finger, rising from the earth. I felt it calling me away.

  “The Queen no more has a great belly,” said Joan to the other girls, grabbing my thoughts. “It is said she was mistaken.”

  I tried not to hear. I sorrowed for my cousin. Her belly had been her friend, an ally against enemies, and now it was spoken of no more… at court. Everyone else talked about it. People were saying she was cursed. She only had one daughter and now her second child had disappeared. Some said she had miscarried, others claimed she had lied about being with child. The King was ignoring her, it was said. He, like many people, suspected God did not favour their marriage, or so whispered women in the barns.

  Trying to ignore the ugliness of people, I set my eyes and mind to the prettiness of the countryside. Long grass, tangled as falsehoods, grew near the edge of the trees and thrushes warbled merrily, winging into the air. To one side, a stream chortled softly, sharing jests with trailing willows and their green-silver leaves.

  “Come,” said Joan, “a storm is coming.”

  I looked at the skies, radiant and clear. “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Thrushes are flying,” she said. “They know much we do not.”

  *

  “I think she miscarried,” said my grandmother later that day, her tone sorrowful.

  “Sometimes women desperate enough make phantoms in their belly,” said my aunt Katherine.

  Wind lashed the panes with a splatter of rain. The thrushes had been correct. A sudden storm bearing fat raindrops and gusting warm wind had fallen not an hour after we left the park.

  “You and I are experienced in the ways of the body,” said Agnes. “We both know how rare that condition is. I think she miscarried, and the King does not want to admit it.”

  The Queen was keeping to her rooms, some said because she needed to recover from her miscarriage. Others said she was hiding from the King, as he was furious she had lied to him.

  “This is a falsehood put about to conceal they lost a child,” said my grandmother. “If the people think the Queen was mistaken, then there is no fault with the King’s seed, and his pride remains intact. But if she lost the babe, people will say their marriage is cursed, like his last.”

  Much had been going on of late. My grandmother was worried by a new tax, called the Subsidy Act. The King was now able to demand taxes from his subjects at any time. Before, only in times of war could the King do this. Agnes worried what it would mean for our family and the people on her estates. She had no wish to see hordes of beggars at her gates. Charity was part of her duty as a noblewoman, but she could not feed all people in the world, she said.

  But another event had set all tongues afire. The Ambassador of Spain, Katherine’s good friend Chapuys, had done something extraordinary. Proclaiming he was taking a pilgrimage to Walsingham, Chapuys had made a scene most embarrassing for the King.

  “Chapuys’ sixty horsemen were supposed to be nobles,” said my aunt Katherine, “but really they were Chapuys’ servants dressed up to pass as lords. They rode through London, apparently making for Walsingham, but it soon became clear they were heading for Kimbolton Castle.”

  The idea was, my aunt said, to draw public attention to the abandoned former Queen and her plight. Chapuys and his band set off, their numbers bulging with trumpeters and minstrels, and processed through London making as much noise as possible.

  “The King sent men after him,” she said. “But it was far too late, so they rode ahead to Kimbolton, and brought back a message from Katherine’s steward saying the party were not permitted to visit.”

  But Chapuys did not listen. He went on the next day. Another messenger was sent saying His Majesty expressly denied permission for him to see Katherine. But someone else was not listening to the King; Katherine. When the Ambassador reached her, she sent servants out to welcome him with gifts of game, venison, and fine wine. Katherine told them to make good cheer, for she was happy to see him.

  My grandmother groaned. “Does the King not see? If he continues to deny the ambassador access to Katherine it will prove the Dowager is a prisoner.”

  “Chapuys was eager to make that very point,” said Katherine. “He had brought along a fool who had a padlock hanging from his hood, to make it clear that Katherine was being held captive. Chapuys reached the moat and loudly declared he was not permitted to enter, so all of Katherine’s ladies and the Dowager herself hung from the windows talking to their guests. That way, they declared, they were not flouting the King’s orders, for no one had left the house, and none entered.”

  Another groan from my grandmother.

  “The fool led a mock assault on the castle, pretending he intended to rescue them. He was dragged back by Katherine’s guards, but as they pulled him away he threw the padlock across the moat, shouting, ‘next time I bring the key!’ and Chapuys’ men fell about laughing. A crowd of local people who had gathered cheered the fool on.”

  “And now everyone has heard of this,” said my grandmother.

  They had. It was all over the maidens’ chamber and people were laughing about it in the fields.

  “The King is enraged,” said Katherine.

  “He was badly advised. My granddaughter needs to return to court. She would have told him this was lunacy.”

  But when my cousin went back to her husband, there was another woman in her way.

  “Her name is Mary Perrot,” said my aunt a few weeks later. “She was his mis
tress some years ago, and has a son by him. The King now adores her again.”

  “I know that name, do I not?” asked my grandmother.

  “The parrot was once one of Katherine’s ladies.”

  “The parrot?”

  Katherine smiled. “That is what ladies loyal to the Queen are calling her. She dresses gaudily and gabbles a great deal, like one of the birds in the King’s menagerie.”

  My grandmother laughed. “At least my granddaughter has some who are loyal about her.”

  “Plenty she will need. This new mistress is not alone, nor is she the Queen’s only trial.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The King’s former mistress, Joanna Dingley, is not gone from court either. She is quieter than the parrot, less trouble, and many say Cromwell put her in the King’s bed for that reason, so the King’s needs were taken care of whilst the Queen was with child, but with a woman who would pose no true challenge to the Queen.”

  “The brash mistress is the one to get rid of,” said my grandmother. “Especially if she is Katherine’s supporter. But what other trials do you speak of?”

  “Fisher and More,” said Katherine. “They are standing up against questioning in the Tower, and the Queen is being blamed by the common people for their arrests.”

  “The King ordered it.”

  “The people care not, you know that, my lady. Anne Boleyn is to blame for any ill the King does. And although only a handful of people can understand More at the best of times, many agree with him. More is careful to say nothing against the King’s title, but everyone knows he thinks the Pope Head of the Church. More claims the King accepted him as Lord Chancellor in full knowledge that he was opposed to the annulment. More claims the King swore many times he would never seek to force him to act against his conscience, which is why he cannot swear the Oath. ”

  “And Fisher?”

  “Says much the same; the King is not and never can be Head of the Church. Fisher adds that the King’s first marriage is valid. His Majesty is furious. There is word he may execute them.”

  “Even the King would not dare… Fisher is a bishop.”

  “The King calls them traitors, and enough laws have been passed lately to prove that they are,” said Katherine. “His legs do not help his temper.” She dropped her voice. “The King is suffering, so say his men. His veins are swollen and painful. His men were commanded to keep this quiet, but everyone knows.”

  If the King was finding rebels amongst old friends, there were also ones of his blood in uproar against him.

  “She floated on an open barge, so all of London could see her!” Joan told us that night. “There were crowds cheering, people waving. People say she looked frail, but beautiful. The King is angry, they say, as is the Queen, for it was done without permission.”

  Lady Mary was indeed becoming like her quietly rebellious mother. She had taken a trip down the Thames to Greenwich, and it seemed she had done this to flout her father. Mary was also, like her mother, refusing to answer people unless they addressed her by her old titles.

  “Many fear she will be punished,” said Joan.

  “Poor girl!” cried Alice and swiftly blushed. “I know it is the place of daughters to obey fathers… yet I cannot help but feel for the Princess. It must be hard to be banished from court and her mother, to lose her jewels, her plate, her titles and the chance of marriage to a king.”

  “She is not a princess and never was,” I said boldly. It was rare for me to speak up. I was in awe of the older girls, but I felt I had to defend my cousin. Alice had said nothing against her, but censure was there by implication. “The King’s first marriage was evil, his second is godly. Princess Elizabeth is the true Princess of England, as her mother is Queen. To say otherwise is treason.”

  “Of course,” said Alice. She looked a little frightened. “Of course she is acting wrongly.”

  “Catherine is right, we should not feel sorry for her,” said Joan. “We obey the King as loyal subjects, and should remember Lady Mary is insulting him and the kinswoman of our mistress.”

  That night, before bed, I looked from the window. A silvered kingdom of moon and stars, shimmering light and faded darkness stretched before me, as though the world were at peace. Yet it was not.

  *

  “Rue and savin,” my grandmother said, pointing to a juniper tree and a plant with bluish leaves on a high, warm patch of ground, “are useful for women who lack regular bleeding. It is necessary for women to bleed each month, to release heated humours that inflame the passions. Without monthly courses, women become overheated and strange of mind.” She nodded to Joan. “Pennyroyal, mint, honeysuckle and sea onion are also effective, and nutmeg… but that is rather expensive.”

  We all knew what my grandmother was really saying. Joan had told us.

  It was illegal to get rid of a child, but sometimes women needed to. If there had been no gap between one babe and another, birth could kill the mother, so if she wanted to preserve her life, and could not persuade her husband to let her alone at night, bringing on the courses was the only way. Women promised to obey their husbands, and were to be buxom, another word for compliant, in bed whenever their husbands wished. There was not the option to say no, even if a woman had birthed many children and feared for her life. Clever women took precautions. Babies did not have a soul until they quickened in the third or fourth month, so there was no sin in taking herbs to stop a child growing. The Church did not see it that way, of course, which was why it was referred to as bringing on the courses. The Church said if a man and woman did not want children they should not have sex, but if a man commanded his wife, she had no choice. If a woman was caught eating herbs to bring on the courses or took more dangerous routes to end pregnancy and was successful, she would be saved, then hanged for murder of the child and attempted murder of herself.

  As we moved to another plant, I understood what Joan had said was right. My grandmother knew about the gentlemen. This was her way of making sure no scandal touched her house. If there was no evidence of sin, there was no sin.

  *

  Late that summer, as we gathered herbs and learned our lessons, plenty of people were whispering that the King’s mind had come unhinged. That summer the punishment of monks and other men who disobeyed the King began. That summer, blood started to flow.

  Observant Friars were expelled from their monasteries. Many were arrested, sent to the Tower for refusing to swear the Oath of Succession. Others, those the King thought could be reformed, were bundled into carts, separated, and sent to orders that had submitted to the King. No one was to speak to these imprisoned men for a year, and they were to attend four sermons a week, preached by reformist men.

  “The King will have obedience, or they will die,” said Uncle William.

  People everywhere were talking of it. Although many monasteries were not as godly or charitable as they might be, the Greyfriars were and even if a religious house was not generous, they were men of God. Turning them from their order was, to many, an act that would bring the wrath of the Almighty down upon us all.

  People spoke of the Greyfriars and cast an eye to the skies, as though merely speaking of this would bring a thunderbolt upon their heads. People expected a sign from Heaven every day, and when none came it was claimed God had turned His back on England. One hundred and forty-three monks were locked up in the Tower. Others were all but imprisoned by their fellow clergymen in other orders. Some became beggars in the street.

  “Katherine of Aragon blames the Pope,” said Uncle William. “She says his dithering forced the King into abominable action.”

  “Let us hope the people listen and blame the Pope too,” said my grandmother. “I can see rebellion igniting.”

  My grandmother was no happier about this than the people of England. In her whispered prayers I heard her ask God to influence the King into mercy. She, like many people, was scared the King had become lost to God, and goodness.

  Not long aft
er, Lady Mary became seriously ill. She had become isolated as her father had sent away many of her servants as punishment. Some said she was close to death.

  “She is affected by the sins of the King and his whore,” whispered one of the kitchen maids to another. “This shows how godly the Princess is. She is connected to God, like her mother the true Queen.”

  “Hush!” said the other.

  “It is the truth,” said the maid. “Queen Katherine is the true Queen and her daughter our Princess. All this wickedness is brought upon England because of that whore, Anne Boleyn and her little red-haired bastard.”

  There was a strange feeling to the world then. A savage feeling. Fear was in the air we breathed. People thought the King wrong, but many were terrified to say a word. Others blamed Cromwell and my cousin. The King had once been the defender of the true faith, it was said. Others must be leading him astray.