by David Field
Allan shook his head.
‘Can’t you just walk her out of there, pretending as how she’s been set free?’
‘I wouldn’t get past the Middle Tower without release papers signed by the Lieutenant,’ Allan explained, ‘and this is probably not the best time to be admitting that I can’t read or write.’
‘So how can you get them release papers?’ Mary asked, as if they might be conjured up with a wave of the hand.
‘No idea, unless you can persuade that mad bitch of a Queen to sign them,’ Allan replied with a shake of the head.
A gleam appeared in Mary’s eye. ‘She may be mad, but she fears God,’ was her reply as Allan took his weary departure.
Three days later, the usher inside the Audience Chamber at Greenwich Palace approached the Queen warily and stood there silently until she looked up from her prayer book with an irritated expression.
‘Well?’
‘Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but there’s an elderly person been seeking audience with you for two days now. We tried to shoo her away, but she took root in the scullery and she’s threatening to die in there unless she gets to speak with you. By the look of her, that won’t be much longer anyway, so perhaps if you don’t want a dead body in your scullery...’
‘Who is she?’ Mary demanded.
The usher shrugged his head. ‘No idea, except she claims to have met your mother at some time in her life. She said to tell you that she was once “Mother Maria Magdelena” of Knighton Convent and that she has important information regarding a prisoner in the Tower.’
Intrigued, Mary waved her hand in a gesture for the person to be admitted and five minutes later a very feeble looking Mary Calthorpe was ushered into the presence, where she executed a wobbly curtsey as she held on to a vacant chair for support, then asked permission to be allowed to sit in it.
‘What business brings you here?’ the Queen demanded as she nodded for the old lady to sit.
Mary Calthorpe began the speech she had spent three days rehearsing. ‘I’ve come to plead for the release of a harmless girl who hasn’t done anyone any harm in her life, Your Majesty, and whose father was the means by which former holy sisters were allowed to carry on, even after that evil Master Cromwell had done his dirty work.’
‘I’m informed that you were once a nun — is that correct?’ Queen Mary asked, reluctant to believe that this rambling skeletal wreck of a woman was ever so well established in life, but intrigued to learn of the possibility that some holy house had survived the Dissolution that had been so thorough and relentless.
‘Yes indeed, Your Majesty — “Mother Maria Magdelena” I was once, after the previous Holy Mother died and the other nuns chose me. Benedictines we were, in a house founded by your own pious and blessed mother.’
‘She founded so many,’ Mary told her, ‘that I never knew them all.’
‘But you were there once, Your Majesty. You won’t remember, since you were only a wee bubby in your mother’s arms, and I was one of those who gave you a blessing. Your father was mighty pleased, as I recall.’
‘My mother and my father?’ Queen Mary asked, thoroughly absorbed by a glimpse of the distant past, before any of the heartbreak she had seen her mother suffer. ‘Where was this, exactly?’
‘A place called Knighton, Your Majesty — just north of Leicester. The convent was ordered to close, but the wonderful man who was given the estate on which it was placed gave us permission to carry on our good works, and still under our vows, except we weren’t allowed to dress like nuns anymore, in case Cromwell found out.’
‘He sounds like a very worthy man — does he accompany you to Court?’
‘No, Your Majesty, he died a short while ago,’ Mary replied, seeking God’s forgiveness for the white lie involved in not mentioning precisely how he came to die, ‘but it’s his daughter who is still locked up in the Tower, and she’s every bit as virtuous and God-fearing as him, and all she did was serve the Lady Jane.’
‘You mean Jane Grey?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. I were fortunate enough to be nanny to both of them at the same time, and they grew up together on the Grey estate of Bradgate. A right pair of little mischiefs they were and no mistake, but only “little girl” naughtiness and so far as Grace’s concerned, there wasn’t ever a drop of bad in her, honest to God.’
‘How did she come to be in league with Jane Grey?’ Mary demanded suspiciously.
‘She wasn’t “in league” with her, except in the way that little girls can be such good friends, like these two were. They were inseparable and when Jane got made Queen she asked Grace to be one of her ladies-in-waiting and that was all there was in it, so help me God. She doesn’t mean you any badness, Your Majesty, and she just wants to marry her intended and become the wife of a farrier in Nottinghamshire. I’ll take an oath on the Bible on that, if you wish, only you’re the only one I know of who can set her free.’
‘What was her name again?’ Mary asked. ‘It was “Grace” something or other, was it not?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty — “Grace Ashton”.’
‘Very well.’ Mary rang the small handbell on the table beside her and when the attendant responded to her call she demanded vellum, quill and ink.
Ten minutes later, Mary Calthorpe left the Palace clutching a small document under the safety of her borrowed cloak and with a broad grin on her weathered face as she muttered in triumph, ‘You may be all growed up now, Grace Ashton, but you still need your old Nanny Calthorpe.’
XXX
Ten days later, a small group of weary travellers appeared on the road from Leicester and an excited shout did the rounds of the retainers on the Knighton estate. Domestic staff hurried to sweep clean the almost abandoned kitchen, while fires were lit in all the rooms and windows were thrown open to provide an exit for the dust that rose from the old rushes that were being hastily replaced.
‘Welcome back, Mistress!’ was the universal welcome as Kate Ashton led the way indoors and introduced the visitors to the family Steward.
‘This is Lady Frances, from the Grey estate further north, James, and the lady on her left is Jane Dudley, Dowager Duchess of Northumberland. They will be residing here until further notice and they may share my old chambers on the next level. I’ll have Mistress Grace’s old room, and where exactly has Master Thomas got to?’
‘He’s out riding somewhere, Mistress. Might I enquire after Mistress Grace and Mistress Mary Calthorpe?’
‘They took the direct road to Nottingham, rather than divert to call in here. Mistress Grace is to be married near there and she’s accompanied by Mary Calthorpe and her husband to be.’
‘Very good, Mistress. Might I say again how good it is to have you back here? I hope as how you intend to stay for good, now you’re back?’
‘I most certainly do, James, although there may come a time when I have to journey north for christenings.’
‘Let me guess,’ Grace bubbled with happiness as she was introduced to the rest of the Bestwick family, ‘you must be Amy.’
The older of the two girls nodded from above the bulging stomach that housed her eagerly anticipated firstborn.
‘Then that makes you Amos, doesn’t it?’ she asked the towering lump who was almost Allan’s double, if twice his width. When Amos nodded, Grace looked down with mock seriousness at the tiny girl who was gazing up at her with wide brown eyes. ‘Nell?’
The little girl nodded, then giggled and hid her face in her mother’s apron.
Grace looked studiously at the remaining two boys. ‘I can’t tell Tom from Jack, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m Tom,’ said the more forward of the two, ‘an’ the daft lookin’ wun’s Jack.’
They took to their customary wrestling, until their father pulled them apart and apologised.
‘Sorry, Mistress, but they gets a bit lively wi’ strangers. ’Cept yer ain’t gunner be a stranger much longer, is yer?’
‘Indeed not,’ Allan confi
rmed and Grace was suddenly aware that somehow, somewhere, Allan had lost the rough local dialect that must have been his during his childhood, to judge by the way his brothers and sisters spoke. ‘Say “hello” to the next Mrs Bestwick, once the Reverend Morley has a spare day,’ he added.
‘Hello,’ they chimed in unison.
Allan’s father Edward nodded towards Mary Calthorpe. ‘Is this lady your intended mother-in-law, son?’
‘No, she’s my nanny,’ Grace explained. ‘It’s a long story,’ she added when she saw the puzzled looks from her new family.
A month after their arrival, Allan and Grace slipped outside to avoid the rising din of fiddle playing and dancing as the celebrations following the wedding feast climbed to an ear-threatening level. At the far end of the rambling garden they sat down once again on the crude bench on which they’d spent hours planning their immediate future. Now their future had arrived and earlier that day they had tied the knot in the parish church of St Mary’s, three doors up from the Bestwick forge.
‘What will happen to you if they catch you?’ Grace asked fearfully.
Allan smiled as he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. ‘I wouldn’t be the first Yeoman to desert,’ he told her, ‘and at the rate that they’re conducting executions inside there, they won’t have time to search for me in Attenborough.’
‘I still can’t believe that Nanny Calthorpe had that much influence over the Queen.’
‘She was once the head of a convent, wasn’t she?’ Allan reminded her. ‘They say that Queen Mary’s terrified of going to Hell.’
‘And yet she commits so many sins, executing innocent people,’ Grace shuddered. ‘Is it true that Archbishop Cranmer and two others are to be burned at the stake?’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Allan urged her. ‘Like whether or not you’re going to be bored living here when we’ve finished building our own house.’
‘Not at all,’ Grace assured him, finally feeling at peace.
***
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A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for joining me through the maelstrom of the most turbulent period of the Tudor era, during which England had four monarchs in the space of seven years, including the hapless Jane Grey who is a central figure in this novel and whose throne life barely exceeded a week.
Historians have argued ever since over the extent to which she was a victim of the ambitions of others, and I opted to underline the inevitability of her downfall by comparing her actual life with the life that might have been, by creating her fictitious lifelong friend, the even more naive Grace Ashton. The tragedy of Jane’s life leaps out from the page by contrasting Grace’s ‘ordinary’ life with that of the hapless Jane, thrust unwillingly into Court politics as the pawn of others.
From two little girls rolling and giggling in the muddy grass of Bradgate, we follow their fortunes to the heart-wrenching spectacle of Grace standing, broken-hearted, alongside Jane in the final moment before the executioner’s axe falls.
As usual, I have made full use of the known facts from this period and most notably the arrogant stupidity of the Seymour brothers, Thomas and Edward. Following the death of Henry VIII, the English crown lay in a vacuum, with a nine-year-old boy ruling through a Council during the upheavals of religious reform, agricultural revolution, troubled relationships with France and Spain and the ever-present threat from the Scottish border. Edward VI relied — too heavily — on his two Seymour uncles, both of whom fell spectacularly from grace due to over-weaning ambition.
Thomas recovered from the disgrace of marrying Henry’s last Queen, Catherine Parr, but really did expose himself to the ire of not only the boy King, but also his straight-laced half-sister Mary, by engaging in bedroom romps with the remaining half-sister, the fourteen-year-old Elizabeth. He also really did go one step too far when, for reasons of his own, he was caught, armed to the teeth, in an apparent attempt on the life of King Edward, during the course of which he shot dead the favourite royal dog.
As if determined to prove that lack of brainpower was a Seymour legacy, his brother Edward really did make a virtual prisoner of King Edward at Windsor Castle. His downfall was the cue for the rise to royal preferment of another whose ambitions were to be the rock upon which Jane Grey would be shipwrecked, the devious John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who appears to have been privy to King Edward’s wish to devolve the crown on Jane and took steps to ensure that when this happened, his son Guildford would be the Queen’s Consort, if not actually King.
Another arguing point for historians has been why the fifteen-year-old Edward left the crown in his will to a distant relative from Leicestershire, in defiance of the progression legislation enacted during the reign of his father, which prescribed that Mary and her heirs should succeed, followed by Elizabeth and hers. Was it simply because Edward saw in Jane the best prospect for continuing the Protestant religious reform begun by Henry and ardently pursued by Edward? If so, then surely Elizabeth would have been a safer bet, since — as she went on to prove, despite the risks that she thereby ran — the younger sister was also determined that the ‘old’ Catholic observances would be a thing of the past.
Or could it have been more personal? It does not stretch the known facts too far to suggest that Edward had conceived a pubescent fancy for his refreshingly open and naive second cousin and saw in her a reflection of what he might have been, had it not been for the circumstances of his birth. Likewise, Jane herself would discover to her cost that being born to a royal niece came with a massive price tag in terms of being allowed to live life as one chose.
There are certainly enough dramatic incidents to be observed during this period to make the task of an historical novelist seeking to recreate it an easy one, without bending the truth to breaking point. I hope that you found the end product satisfying to read, but I have not yet finished with either the Ashton family or the other young lady caught up in this Courtly whirlwind, young Elizabeth Tudor. In the next novel in the series, The Queen in Waiting, we watch from the safety of the side-lines as Elizabeth struggles to maintain both her reputation and her head.
As ever, I look forward to receiving feedback from you, whether in the form of a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Or, of course, you can try the more personal approach on my website and my Facebook page: DavidFieldAuthor.
Happy reading!
David
davidfieldauthor.com
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
The Tudor Saga Series:
Tudor Dawn
The King's Commoner
Justice For The Cardinal
The Queen In Waiting
The Heart of a King
Esther & Jack Enright Series:
The Gaslight Stalker
The Night Caller
The Prodigal Sister
The Slum Reaper
The Posing Playwright
The Mercy Killings
The Jubilee Plot
The Lost Boys
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Copyright © David Field, 2019
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public do
main, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
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eBook ISBN: 9781913335229