To Obey and Serve
Page 31
It is strange to think of them all now, a lifetime and a continent away. Names I have not pronounced since I could see this page clearly: Russell. Carew. Rochford. Cromwell. Howard. Gone, all gone, and in many cases their titles as well; thus the name dies out twice. Englishmen have a remarkable habit of plotting and treason, and the Tudors have an extraordinary ability for seeing it everywhere.
No, I did not name my daughter Jane; that would be a bit too much. Jane herself would have agreed; Maria Nicola is a pious enough name, given for two saints.
Gone too are monasteries she sought to protect, together with their relics and shrines and faithful servants. So many of them were revealed to be false: hollow statues miraculously “bleeding” tinted oil, chicken bones in reliquaries. I put more faith in an Infidel’s medicine. Bin Rahmat died many years ago, but I keep a vial of the stuff in my silver chest. I have not used it these many years, and perhaps never will again. When the next time comes, I may well lie back upon my bed and open my eyes wide to see the vision shown me.
It is safer here, after all. The Low Countries are no quieter since Luther died, and the devil knows he left others to carry on his work. Munich is little changed since I knew it many years ago, however briefly; there are the same city sounds, and smells, the same grunts and squeals of farmers driving livestock on market days. There are the Alps, and the mirror-smooth lakes. And church bells, and the chanting of monks from the Andechs monastery atop the holy mountain. Even if you don’t believe, it can be a soothing sound.
There’s a full moon tonight, with clouds drifting across its hazy light like smoke. A good omen. It too has stayed with me, followed me back to safety. It is the heavens that follow us, not the other way round.
The one thing I miss from time to time, besides Nicholas, is Jane. I missed her even while she was alive, and during her own short reign, swift as a cloud passing across the moon. I do not know why I should feel closer to her now, as the day of my death draws ever nearer, but there are days I feel her with me, waiting to meet me in the gallery, and that we have much to talk of together.
I have written of both of us, so you may know and remember. But upon reading this again, for the first time since I put it away during the chaos of those dark days, I realized something.
There is one more thing I must tell you:
My name is Christiana.
NOTE
So many novels and nonfiction books end with the death of Anne Boleyn. Nevertheless, the Reformation in England certainly did not end with the execution that took place on May 19, 1536. The closing of the monasteries gained speed after the Pilgrimage of Grace, ending in 1541 with the Crown immensely richer as a result. Cromwell, the mastermind behind this feat, did not live to see the end result of his efforts: he was executed for treason in 1540, on the very day the king married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. All six of Henry’s queens are featured in this book.
With the exceptions of Dr. bin Rahmat, the narrator’s Austrian friend Maria, and Anne Boleyn’s chambermaid, all characters portrayed or referenced in the novel are actual historical persons. The letters, books, poems, and ballads given are taken from the original texts wherever possible, except for the ballad about the king and Jane Seymour. Posterity has lost track of it, so I had to commission my husband to invent one.
Historian John North says in his mini-biography of Nicholas Kratzer that “he married one Christiana when he was about fifty [circa 1537] and had at least one child” by 1538. After 1550 nothing more known of him.
Jean du Bellay also served as French ambassador periodically during the novel’s timeframe, but I found it easier to conflate him with Dinteville. As for the whole Madge/Mary Shelton question, I have left it alone for the same reason I imagine so many other novelists do: there are already quite a few Marys in this story, and to add another would cause needless confusion.