The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  “Truly, we never wanted to destroy anything, only to make room for ourselves. And to take inventory, of course.”

  “Take inventory?”

  “Of the contents of the house. They will be sold to raise funds for the cause. We pilgrims must eat, after all.”

  “Yet you told me you were opposed to taking what isn’t yours, in the name of God’s work.”

  “I am, of course, but the prior said this house was to be consecrated to Saint Agatha, to be her temporary resting-place. Therefore it belonged to her, and not to those who lived in it.”

  “The prior of St. Mary’s Abbey, Wulfstan?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same man who secretly puts new Saint Agathas in the coffin when the old ones begin to smell?”

  Becca’s face fell. She followed my logic. When she answered me her voice was low. “Yes.”

  “Prior Wulfstan is a deceiver. I imagine he said the treasure of St. Mary’s was to be consecrated to Saint Agatha too. Am I right?”

  Becca nodded.

  “I imagine that if you look in those abbey treasure-chests, you will find that Prior Wulfstan has emptied them of gold.”

  Becca said nothing more to me that day about the condition of Snape Hall or the machinations of Prior Wulfstan, but I could see that she was troubled by what I had said. Meanwhile I turned all my attention to Margaret, who was very weak, her small face flushed, lying restless in her sickbed.

  At John’s insistence an herb woman was sent to me with powders for Margaret. There was a stillness around her as she approached the bed where Margaret lay, put her wrinkled hand on the girl’s sweat-beaded forehead and looked down at her wan little face. She took from around her own neck an amulet on a string, and, lifting Margaret’s head, placed the amulet around Margaret’s neck. Then she made the sign of the cross over her and murmured, “The Father is Uncreated, The Son is Uncreated, The Holy Spirit is Uncreated” three times.

  She turned to Becca. “Find a spider, put it into a nut shell, and dip the nut shell in milk. Bring it here.”

  Becca went out at once to follow the old woman’s instructions.

  “Does she have a rash?” the old woman asked me. “Under her armpits, in her groin?”

  “I did not see one when we bathed her yesterday.”

  “That is good.” She drew a small cloth bag from the basket she carried. “This is powdered myrtle and rose leaves. Mix it in ale, and it will lower the fever. I will also leave you a comfrey posset to help her breathe. But if you see a rash”—she shuddered—“it will mean—”

  “What?”

  “The worst affliction of all. The one only God can cure.”

  I knew at once what she meant. It had come to afflict us twice, once when I was a very little girl and again near the time when Ned and I were married. It was deadlier than the plague. People called it the Sweating Sickness. It swept throughout England, and thousands of people died.

  “I understand. I will watch for the rash.”

  “When the girl returns, tell her to put the spider charm under the bed.” With this final injunction the old woman was gone.

  That night I sat at Margaret’s bedside, asking myself again and again what I could do for Margaret, for John, and for myself. It seemed to me that we were trapped, caught up in the destructive vortex of conflict swirling around us. The more I thought about all that had happened, the more I realized that forces larger than ourselves were compelling events: the deep Catholic faith of the pilgrims, and their veneration of Saint Agatha; the longstanding distrust of all northerners for the king in London; the hatred felt by traditionalists for the king’s religious innovations.

  We were caught up in a drama vaster than ourselves, yes. But the longer I turned everything over in my mind, the more I came to feel that we were not, after all, helpless. The revolt of the pilgrims had been set in motion by one man, Prior Wulfstan of St. Mary’s, with one act—the unearthing of Saint Agatha. All else had resulted from that single action.

  Why couldn’t I, in the same way, reverse the momentum of the revolt and restore harmony?

  At last, toward morning, I dropped off to sleep. I dreamed I was searching for something, but I could not remember what it was. I wandered through the rooms and along the corridors of Snape Hall, then through the royal palace of Whitehall, and finally through the grounds of St. Mary’s Abbey. I mingled with a crowd of people coming to visit Saint Agatha’s shrine, and walked up to the saint’s tomb, as it had been in the past, before the saint’s body was removed.

  In my dream I heard a voice from the tomb. “Find my mother,” it said. “Find my mother.”

  When I awoke I could still hear the voice, and the memory of the dream lingered. What did it mean? Who was Saint Agatha’s mother? I didn’t remember ever hearing any legends or stories about her. Was she too a holy woman, revered by the local people for her healing gifts?

  Becca brought us a loaf and a wedge of cheese, though Margaret turned her head away when offered the food. She took a mouthful or two of broth, nothing more. After I had eaten, Becca went out and returned with a dark-haired young man, her fiancé Jacob, dressed, as she was, in a gray pilgrim robe. He had soft brown eyes in an open, trusting face. He reminded me a little of Ned, though he showed no sign of Ned’s intensity or excessive tenacity.

  “Becca has told me everything, milady,” he said. “About the different bodies for Saint Agatha, and about Emma Hauser’s body being in her tomb now. I knew Emma. Everyone in Grundleford did. She was a pious girl. She wouldn’t want to be used like this, to deceive other good sons and daughters of the church.”

  “I told Jacob what you said about Prior Wulfstan, and the chests of treasures from the abbey,” Becca told me. “He knows where the chests are kept. We can go and see them whenever you like.”

  At my urging Jacob led us to a storage room filled with tuns of cider and barrels of flour, bins of onions and turnips, empty sacks and baskets that had lately held greens, bits of the leaves still clinging to their insides.

  “These are from the St. Mary’s vault.” He pointed out several large wooden chests, securely padlocked. “Should I break one of the locks?”

  “In the name of the king, and under my husband’s protection, yes.”

  Jacob lifted a heavy stone and dashed it against the padlock, which gave way after several blows. Eagerly we lifted the lid. The chest was full of rocks.

  “Where is the abbey gold?” Greatly dismayed, even distraught by what we saw, Jacob went on to break another padlock. The second chest too was full of rocks.

  Swearing, weeping, beside himself with fury, Jacob began ranting that he would find Prior Wulfstan and kill him.

  “No, Jacob, no!” I caught hold of his tunic and held him back. “You would only be torn apart by the other pilgrims. There is a better way to expose the villainy. Come, let us go to Grundleford.”

  15

  WITH THE OCCUPANTS OF SNAPE HALL ENGAGED IN PREPARING FOR the march to York, I found it less difficult than I had thought to leave the castle. Becca provided me with a pilgrim gown, and Jacob brought us horses for the half-hour ride to Grundleford, a small cluster of houses and cottages in the shadow of a hillock. An expanse of fields, bare now in early winter, spread out from the houses, with rock walls separating them one from another. There was a sheep-washing pool, frozen at its edges, and as we passed it a gritty wind blew in our faces, making our eyes water. In the distance, a curlew cried.

  When we came to the first of the houses we heard the lively sound of a fiddle playing.

  “It’s market day,” Becca told me with pride. “Everyone comes to Grundleford Market.”

  It was true—or at least it seemed true. Hundreds of people were wandering among the colorful booths and tents spread out along Grundleford’s one street. They seemed to care little that the day was raw and the air cold. We left our mounts in the shed behind Becca’s house and mingled with the fairgoers.

  A second fiddler joined the first and so
on young couples were dancing. Jacob, his fury tempered by the long ride and the festive atmosphere in the village, swept Becca up in his arms and they joined in the intricate steps of a country dance, stamping their feet and shouting, while around them people gathered to clap and hum the tune. I walked past tables where gooseberry tarts were spread out for sale, along with crisp late apples and bunches of dried blue graegles, cooking pots and lengths of homespun cloth and ribbon. A grizzled old man sat beneath a house porch selling small bags filled with toads’ legs, which he said were certain to cure scrofula.

  “Here, milady, feel this,” he said, handing me one of the bags. I took it and, holding it, felt a twitching of the legs inside.

  “If they twitch they work twice as well.”

  Country girls with round, plump faces passed me pushing carts, grinning boys pelted each other with acorns and clods of frozen earth. There were snakes in cages and pigeons and larks for sale, to be taken home and made into pies. I marveled at the freaks on display, especially the Grundleford Giant, a man seven feet tall who had served in the king’s guard in his youth and still had his halberd painted with the royal arms.

  While I walked along I listened to the buzz of talk around me, eager to know the thoughts of the villagers and how they could enjoy themselves and put themselves into a carefree mood while the region was in such an upheaval and so many in their village had died of plague.

  I overheard a good deal of gossip. The wife of an elderly farmer was pregnant—and not (so it was whispered) by her feeble husband. One of Jacob’s cousins had been caught poaching rabbits and was to be sentenced by the Justice of the Peace—only the justice had been kidnapped by the pilgrims of Saint Agatha and no one had seen him for months. Two farmers, brothers living in a cottage in the dale, had hanged themselves. No one knew why.

  Much of the talk was about the weather.

  “We knew a bad winter was coming. We knew by the shrew-mice. They dug their holes deep this year, and on the east side of the ditches and furrows instead of the west. As soon as we saw that, we said, it’ll be a bad one this year.”

  “Frogs too. Stronger legs, bigger eyes.”

  “Rowan leaves off the trees earlier. Spindly rowans. Not like last year.”

  Amid the talk of immorality and crime, weather and crops, I detected an undercurrent of nervousness. The people of Grundleford were on edge. Beneath their surface gaiety they were apprehensive.

  I went into a tent where cider was being served, and sat down at the far end of one of the long tables. The tent was crowded, warmed by a log fire, and the men and women sitting at the tables had lingered to enjoy the warmth and had drunk a good deal of the rich and potent cider. It made them talkative.

  I sat drinking my cider, a woman alone in a gray pilgrim gown, and I drew attention.

  “Are you off to kill the king then?” one of the rough farm laborers asked me, his rural accent thick. “That’s what those pilgrims of Saint Agatha want, isn’t it? They want the king dead, and no mistake.”

  Before I could answer another voice rose above the noise of the general conversation, a woman’s voice. She was a hard-eyed, dirty-aproned matron of forty, her manner brazen and her face and neck lined and worn.

  “He deserves to die, the old Mouldwarp! He’s cruel and he’s a sinner many times over. He brings bad luck on us all! Why do you think the plague came to Grundleford last summer? Because God was angry at the king, that’s why! I say kill him, let the pilgrims kill him!”

  Angry voices rose, some vehemently agreeing that the king should die, others defending him.

  “God has put him on his throne as our anointed sovereign lord,” came a man’s voice. “God alone can punish a king, not the villagers of Grundleford, or the pilgrims of Saint Agatha!”

  While the others were arguing another man came up to me and took off his cap.

  “It’s Lady Latimer,” he said, and as he spoke the noise in the room began to abate. “Have you joined the pilgrim army then, milady?”

  “I have always venerated Saint Agatha,” I answered, aware of how keenly the others were listening, now that they had taken notice of me. “But this talk of killing the king, and all the beatings and murders that have gone on—I don’t hold with that. It’s un-Christian.”

  A chorus of aye, aye, it’s un-Christian greeted my words.

  “But milady, what of the miracle of Saint Agatha? Her pilgrims are being led by God, who has shown his favor in the preservation of her holy body. The pilgrims can do no wrong!”

  “Yes! Saint Agatha cured many of the plague—before she was kept from us by the king’s soldiers, when they captured St. Mary’s Abbey!”

  I stood. “I have come to Grundleford to bring you the good news that Saint Agatha is no longer being kept from you. She is at Snape Hall, where she sleeps within a new shrine. I urge you all to come and worship there, and bring those who are sick and dying. Surely by the saint’s power many will be healed!”

  My words sent a surge of energy and hope through those gathered in the tent. Several people rose.

  “Will you lead us there?” someone asked.

  “Of course. As soon as you are ready.”

  But one woman in the group was sobbing, and her anguished cries could not be ignored. I went to her side. Her shoulders shook, she seemed utterly broken in spirit.

  “I can’t bring my daughter,” she managed to say, her tears still flowing. “She is dead. My Emma is dead. And I don’t even know where she is. Her body has been spirited away.”

  It must be Emma Hauser’s mother, I thought. The woman whose daughter lay in Saint Agatha’s coffin.

  I remembered the voice from my dream. Find my mother, the voice had said. Find my mother.

  Now I had found her. Not the true Agatha’s mother, but the mother of the girl who lay in Agatha’s tomb. And if I could manage to bring mother and daughter together, Prior Wulfstan’s fraud would be revealed.

  “Come with us!” I said to the distraught woman beside me. “Saint Agatha will help you find your daughter’s body. I’m certain of it.”

  Half an hour later a group of villagers left Grundleford and began making their way along the road toward Snape Hall. They came in twos and threes, some leading sick animals, some riding on carts carrying men or women afflicted with plague. Sick children were trundled in barrows or carried on broad backs.

  The fair was all but deserted, everyone was going to the hall where the saint now lay enshrined, their gait slow but their faces hopeful, worshipful, as the sun sank low in the western sky and the chill wind rose around them.

  With Becca and Jacob and Emma Hauser’s mother at my side, I led the way, grateful for the warmth of my pilgrim robe, praying that I was doing the right thing, determined to confront the dark fraud that lay at the heart of the rebellion and bring it out into the light.

  16

  THROUGH THE TALL WINDOWS OF THE IMMENSE BANQUETING CHAMBER in Snape Hall came the dull gray light of late afternoon. The chamber had been transformed into a chapel, with a raised platform at one end where Prior Wulfstan in his clerical robes was preparing to serve mass. Behind him was a large carved marble statue of Saint Agatha, nearly lifesize, brought from the abbey, and beside him, lying deep in her flower-draped coffin, was the body which I knew to be that of Emma Hauser.

  The pilgrims were gathering to attend the mass, and to pray for the success of the campaign against York. With our arrival the room became very crowded, as one by one the villagers from Grundleford brought their sick relatives and animals to lay before the makeshift altar, the beasts lowing and bleating restlessly and the invalids groaning weakly and crying out, some reaching out their hands toward the holy coffin in mute appeal.

  I saw Johnny come in, and my heart sank, for behind him came two men carrying a pallet bed on which Margaret lay. Gently they placed the bed near the saint’s coffin, but Margaret did not stir. She lay as if asleep, her features calm in repose, her skin as alabaster white as the statue of Saint Agatha th
at smiled benignly down upon the entire gathering.

  In the few hours that I had been away in Grundleford, Margaret had weakened further. I went up to her bed and, looking down at her, saw the marks of the dreaded red rash on her arms. As the herb woman had feared, she had the Sweating Sickness. Clearly she lay near death.

  I returned to stand with the others, Becca and Jacob and Emma’s mother, and was soon joined by John, looking stronger and more fit though in evident sorrow over Margaret’s decline. He put his arm around me and I leaned against his bony shoulder, glad to inhale his familiar musky stale scent and glad too to close my own eyes, for a moment, within the safety of his embrace.

  Wulfstan began to chant the opening prayers and the celebration of the mass began. I looked over at Becca and Jacob, with whom I had shared my hope that, once Emma’s mother saw her daughter and recognized her, the fraud surrounding Saint Agatha would be revealed and the plans of the pilgrims disrupted. Stay close to me, I had said. Whatever happens, let us stay close together. They had readily agreed.

  Wulfstan chanted the Kyrie and Gloria and the lengthy Credo, the Latin statement of belief. Long accustomed to hearing the endless unintelligible words—unintelligible to all but a tiny few of those present—the congregation stood patiently, not distracted by the human and animal noises or by the discomfort of the overcrowded room. A hymn was sung, Wulfstan chanted more words and prepared to serve the congregants, lifting the chalice of wine high over his head.