The king raised his one eyebrow. “I have been denounced as wicked ever since I was a lad, since I first came to the throne. There are always purists who denounce sin, no matter how venial. And I am no saint.”
Uncle Thomas paused. When he spoke he sounded unusually tentative.
“It is not your sin they speak of, Your Majesty.”
The king looked at him, frowning. “Whose then?”
He shrugged. “The camp followers, for a start.”
The king threw up his hands. “All armies have whores! If they didn’t, the men would rape all the honest women within reach!”
Uncle Thomas persisted, but in a lower tone.
“Your court is said to be polluted by lust. I am only repeating what is being said. There is wantonness.”
“Who is spreading these lies?”
“Those who fear a return to the old ways, the old teachings. Before you became head of the church. They fear what they call the laxity of the papists. They favor the more extreme teachings of the Genevan, John Calvin. They desire further reform in our church. And, as always, they desire power for themselves. They wish to destroy the influence of my family. The Howard family.”
King Henry slapped the table. “I am no papist! And I will tell anyone who listens that there will be no running back to the pope in this realm! The laxity of the papists indeed! Not while I am sovereign here! And as for the Howards—” His gesture indicated tolerance.
“If I may speak more openly, Your Majesty,” my uncle went on, “it is being said that King James did not come to meet you here in York because he has heard your court is impure. The Scots disliked your putting aside the lady from Cleves. They dislike your present marriage even more—indeed they are bold enough to say that your wife is childless because the Lord has sealed her womb. It is His judgment against the wickedness of your court.”
At his words I gasped and crossed myself. At the same moment my husband gave forth a roar of outrage and tottered to his feet—he had drunk a good deal of ale and was unsteady.
“You dare to repeat such slander in my presence!”
“It is necessary that you should know what is being said. I would be remiss if I did not tell you. None of your other councilors are brave enough, it would seem.”
The others at the table murmured uneasily at this sharp exchange.
The king glared at Uncle Thomas.
“Just who is saying this?”
“It is not only one—there are many. And their numbers are growing. But I have heard the name of a certain man, John Lascelles, a bush preacher. His is an unusually loud voice of disapproval. He denounces your court.”
“John Lascelles, John Lascelles. Who is this John Lascelles? I never heard of him. One moon-mad lunatic preacher!”
“He speaks for many. There are murmurs of criticism even among the most thoughtful and sensible of your subjects. They wonder why you don’t put a stop to the waywardness of your household.”
“Enough!” the king shouted, slapping the table once again and making his flagon of ale bounce. “I will hear no more of this, from you or anyone else! There are always troublemakers spreading tales at court, especially when I am not there to shut their mouths. When I return to London this babble of scandal will cease. As for my nephew, I believe it is the bad weather, and nothing else, that has prevented him from coming to meet me as he promised. There will be other summers, other progresses. Or mayhap he will come to London for a visit. Yes, I think that would be even better.” The king grinned at the thought.
“Let him come south, when the chill winds of Scotland drive him to seek a warmer clime. By then, Lord willing, I will have a new son to show him, and make him envy me even more than he already does!”
* * *
The tents were folded and loaded onto carts, our furnishings packed and our provisions gathered for the journey southward. The great lodging my husband had created for his meeting with King James would soon be deserted. The gardens were already blighted by the nightly frosts and harsh winds, faint cracks had appeared in the newly mended walls—badly mended, as it seemed. The fires had gone out in the hearths and under the immense cauldrons in the renovated kitchens. And in the stables, chaff and straw blew about in the wind, with only the warm yeasty smell of the horses so recently installed there remaining behind.
My women were packing my things. But my cousin Catherine Tylney, I noticed, was hurriedly putting her own clothing and other possessions into a large chest and two smaller baskets.
“Why such a rush?” I asked her. “We will not be starting our journey until noontime tomorrow.”
She looked flustered. “Your Majesty,” she said, “Uncle Thomas has ordered me to leave your household today and go south with him and his party.”
Something told me that this order had to do with the unpleasant talebearing he had disclosed at supper.
“Did he say why? Is it possible he has arranged a match for you?” We both knew that wasn’t likely, but it was the most optimistic possibility.
“He hasn’t said so.”
“But you will be returning to my household as soon as we arrive at Hampton Court, will you not?”
“I cannot say what is in Uncle Thomas’s mind.” It was unlike my cousin to be evasive. Her tone and manner worried me. Her brow was wrinkled in worry.
“Very well then, Cousin Catherine.” I left her to her packing and sent one of my grooms to find another of my Howard relations, Richard Singleton, a more distant cousin who was among my husband’s yeomen of the chamber. The groom had some difficulty finding him, but eventually returned, to report that, like Catherine Tylney, Richard had been ordered by Uncle Thomas to pack his things at once and leave the king’s suite to return to the south with him.
I asked Lady Rochford to take a message to Tom, to tell him I needed to talk to him.
We met just at dusk. The courtyard was full of carts and wagons, carriages and barrows. Men moved briskly among the vehicles, carrying heavy sacks of provisions, coffers and trunks. I heard shouts of irritation, barked orders, as the last of the light waned and torches were being lit so that the work of loading could go on into the late hours.
“I cannot be away long,” Tom cautioned me. “The king is pressing us to hurry. He is eager to be back at his southern court.”
I told Tom about my uncle’s disturbing revelations and about the king’s angry response. I confided that I was feeling very uneasy, especially after learning that Uncle Thomas had ordered both my maid of honor and my distant cousin Richard to leave my household and travel with him.
“And two of the king’s chamber gentlemen also,” Tom put in. “Both are Howard relations. Also I overheard that your uncle William is going to be recalled from France.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But it would seem that the Howards are closing ranks.”
“Why would Uncle Thomas do that?”
Tom shrugged. “Fear, most likely. The threat of a challenge to his power. It is the way of the court, is it not? Those who have power must constantly guard it against the assaults of those who would take it from them. It was the same when Lord Cromwell was brought to ruin. Your uncle Thomas withdrew his servants from Lord Cromwell’s household, then the assault on his authority began. Within a month he was in the Tower, awaiting execution.”
He was right. I remembered how, at the time Lord Cromwell was about to be deprived of his offices, a number of my relatives and in-laws who were members of the Lord Privy Seal’s household were ordered to leave and given posts in the royal household. My uncle had been gathering his family around him, as he appeared to be doing now.
And then there was Englebert. Just as we were preparing to leave York and begin our homeward journey, he vanished. No one saw him go, or noticed when he left or in which direction he went. It annoyed me that he would leave my service without a word, especially after he had been such an attentive and reliable servant. It occurred to me that he might not have left at all, but ra
ther that he might have suffered an accident or worse. There were vagabonds and robbers in the countryside, no one could ever be completely safe. And Englebert had enjoyed riding alone, as he had when I had sent him to Hull. He disdained the protection of guardsmen. I wondered, was it possible he had come to harm? I had no way of finding out. I had to let his disappearance remain a mystery—and a disturbing one.
We set out for the south, our long train of carts and wagons moving slowly, hampered by roads in poor repair and windblown trees that fell in our path, by streams that overflowed their banks and turned the roads into quagmires. On we slogged, impatient at the constant delays, fretting at the discomforts we seemed to meet at every turn. My own discontent was greatly increased by the fact that I saw Tom so rarely, and so fleetingly. I watched for him, constantly hoping to see his tall, lithe form riding past or to observe him when he and other gentlemen of the privy chamber accompanied the king to my tent in the evening. I longed to be alone with him, even for an hour—and we did manage to be alone together, twice, thanks to Lady Rochford’s clever arrangements. But we dared not try for more than that.
We dared not try—because Francis was always there, watching what I did and said. His hovering presence made Tom irritable—and the last thing I wanted was for the two men to quarrel, arousing my husband’s suspicions. So I went without Tom’s cherished company for most of our long journey southward, until at last we arrived at Hampton Court in the last week of October, weary and bedraggled, greatly in need of rest and better news.
* * *
But there was to be no rest. For almost at once we learned that once again, Prince Edward was very ill.
“What now!” my husband exclaimed, his face a knot of anxious wrinkles. He had just received word that the citizens of both Lincoln and York, those cheering, pacific subjects who had seemed to welcome us with such good will when we were among them, were once again in revolt. He was still reeling from the shock and deep disappointment that his planned meeting with his royal nephew had not happened. And now, wounded and angry, he was dealt an even more severe blow. For the physicians were saying that the prince lay near death from a quartan fever.
Prince Edward had been brought to Nonsuch, to a newly completed wing of the vast palace which was slowly rising (apart from the collapsed tower) and promising to be a magnificent structure. We set out from Hampton Court at once, traveling the short distance to the new palace quickly. We found Dr. Butts and Dr. Chambers watching over the prince, with his nurses and the others in his household in attendance in an outer chamber. The chief apothecary, Thomas Alsop, occupied a chamber of his own where his assistants were at work preparing potions and syrups.
At my first sight of the boy I realized that he was much more ill than he had been the last time I saw him. He was so still he was almost corpse-like. There was only his rasping cough to indicate that he still lived. Thin and weak-looking, with dark circles under his closed eyes, he lay inert, sweating heavily, in the grip of the fever.
“He has been bled twice,” Dr. Chambers told the king. “But the surgeon would not bleed him a third time because it was the day of the new moon and besides that, the air was too cold. As soon as the moon waxes, and the weather warms, he will be bled again.”
“There is no doubt it is a quartan fever then?” my husband demanded.
“No doubt. The heat rises within him every third day, and lingers through a fourth. See how his nails have no color. How his body swells—and sweats. The crisis comes and goes, but there is no lessening of it, except by bleeding.”
I remembered very well how the prince had looked when ill the previous year. How small and fragile he had seemed. Even now he appeared to be very small, though his fourth birthday had just been celebrated.
“Can you not apply a poultice? I have made many such myself, as you know well, to be used on my legs. They are effective.”
“But not against fever. For fever there is only bleeding—and prayer.”
“Bleeding did not save my wife,” I heard the king say in an undertone, speaking more to himself than to the physician. “My good wife. The one who gave me a son.”
A weak son, I wanted to say but did not. And of course I did not want the prince to be too weak to survive.
We stayed by the prince’s bedside, sleeping in his bedchamber and taking our meals near him. The king conferred often with the apothecary and his assistants, giving them advice, checking and approving every remedy they concocted. He paced up and down the bedchamber, impatient to see the results of the treatment the prince had been given.
On the third day of our stay the surgeon came. The moon was waxing, he announced, and he could bleed Edward again. He opened a vein and the prince’s blood dripped slowly into a bowl. Yet still the fever increased. Hour by hour his small body grew more red and hot, his cheeks fairly burning to the touch. The physicians were anxious, and the king was fairly beside himself with frustration and worry.
“By all the saints!” he cried out, “Can nothing be done?”
A long silence spread through the room. Then I heard a timid voice say, “There is a wise woman.”
It was one of the prince’s nurses, a gentle young girl.
“Speak up, girl!” the king said irritably. “What wise woman?”
“She comes from Cuddington.” Cuddington I knew to be the village that had been destroyed in order for Nonsuch to rise.
“Yes—and what of her?”
“She—she has the healing power.”
The king looked at the girl, his eyes narrow, his gaze shrewd.
“Have you seen her perform healings?”
“If you please, Your Majesty, she healed many who were stricken of the plague.”
“And you know this for a certainty.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. She healed my mother and my two young sisters.”
“Well, she can do no harm. Bring her here.”
“She is here already, Your Majesty. She has been waiting to be of service.”
My husband looked at Dr. Chambers.
“Why did no one tell me this!”
The physician shook his head. “We put no faith in such witchcraft, sire. Only proven remedies are effective—”
But the king only pushed the old man aside.
“Bring her in!” he said to the girl, who went out of the room and soon returned with a much older woman, stout and grey-haired but vigorous in her movements, and with a face of surprising youthfulness. Her skin was smooth, her forehead unlined. There was a radiance about her. She carried a basket, which she handed to the girl. Then the newcomer curtseyed deeply to the king, and again to me.
“Can you heal my son!” The king’s words were a demand, not a question.
The wise woman smiled, a luminous smile.
“Yes, sire.” Taking her basket, she drew from it an earthen pot. She removed the cap and bent over the prince’s small bed.
At this Dr. Butts stepped forward.
“Your Majesty, you cannot let this—this leech—do harm to your son! I pray you, dismiss her at once!”
King Henry silenced him.
“Go on,” he said to the wise woman, who proceeded to take some of the contents of the pot on her fingers and smear it over the prince’s body. The stench of the substance was terrible. I drew away and put my pomander to my nose.
“What is that you are using?” King Henry asked.
“First I roast a fat cat. Then I stuff it with bear and hedgehog fat and herbs.”
“What herbs?”
She began to reel off a long list of names, from rue and rosemary to other plants unfamiliar to me.
“The compound is from an old herbal that has been in my family since the days of King Henry—the fifth King Henry. I have never known it to fail.”
The physicians began to protest again and this time the king sent them out of the room.
Three times over the next few hours the compound was spread over the prince’s corpse-like body, until he began to wrig
gle and shake himself and then, to our astonishment, he slowly sat up.
The wise woman nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly. “The fever is leaving him.”
Under the direction of his benefactor, the prince was bathed, then dressed in warm flannel, and then given supper.
The physicians were brought in to observe the remarkable change in their patient.
“I would never have believed it,” Dr. Chambers said, shaking his head. “The apothecary must be given the formula for that stinking grease.”
“For that life-giving balm, you mean, don’t you?” was my tart retort. I had not forgiven Dr. Chambers for the way he had treated me when I confided in him, or for telling the entire court that I was barren.
But the physician ignored my remark, and went into the apothecary’s chamber without taking any notice of me.
My husband came over to me and put his arm around me, a gesture he had not made in some time. He was clearly overcome with relief and joy at the prince’s great improvement.
“Ah, Catherine! What a near thing! My boy! My dear boy! He does seem so much better, does he not?”
“Indeed he does,” I said with a smile. “He has his father’s strength.”
We stayed at Nonsuch another day and a night, until it seemed certain that the prince would recover completely. Then, after giving the wise woman a fat purse of gold coins and thanking her with fervent courtesy, my husband and I climbed into our waiting carriage for the return to Hampton Court.
FIFTEEN
IT was the time of autumn that I liked best, that unsure end of the season when the weather varies day by day and the gold and auburn leaves are everywhere underfoot and a few warm days linger on. I was glad to be back in my apartments at Hampton Court, with their view of the river and its mists. I could see the barges coming up from London, discharging their passengers and taking on new ones. I had no wish to be among them. I had had more than enough of traveling, now it was time to settle in and wait in peace for the winter season to come, with its cheering holidays and its cold blasts.
It was as I sat watching out my window, Jonah scampering nearby, that I caught a glimpse of a familiar tall rotund man, coming ashore from a wherry and striding toward the river stairs. It was Uncle William, returned from France. I had not expected him. I was overjoyed to see him.
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