“Oh, sweet Mary,” she groaned, hurrying to her side. “My poor, lovely girl.” Her hands smoothed the red gold hair that identified Mary as her father’s child in an effort to soothe her bruised heart, but nothing could repair her shattered dreams.
“He will send me into exile, as he did my mother,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “She was stubborn, but it did her no good,” Mary argued, shaking her head back and forth against Margaret’s skirts. “He will disown me for his bastard child! How could he?”
Margaret had never seen her so out of control and did not know what to say, so she said nothing but continued the consoling patting and rubbing of Mary’s head and back.
“Will you stay with me?” Mary tilted her head back to peer up at her governess. Her heart was bare and her face was splotched from crying. Torn from her mother and abandoned by her father, she clung to the one constant in her life, and suddenly Margaret knew why men fought battles for causes that they knew to be lost.
“I will never leave you,” she vowed passionately. “Never.”
~~~~
Mary wrote a letter to her mother, offering the consolation that few others would give her. If she hoped that the action would inspire pity or a change of heart in the king, she misjudged him. Lord Hussey, who continued to serve as Mary’s chamberlain, was ordered to reduce the household of “the king’s daughter, Mary,” in a missive sent by the man in charge of seeing her father’s will fulfilled in all things, Thomas Cromwell.
“She is to keep her ladies-in-waiting as they are?” Margaret asked Hussey as they met to discuss the ordered reduction of the household.
“Yes, your grace,” he said, lowering his head respectfully.
Despite their clash over following the king’s orders regarding Princess Mary’s jewels, Margaret recognized that Hussey had a great love for the king’s daughter. Not everyone had the courage to stand up to King Henry. Sometimes Margaret wondered if she were being brave or foolish. What did she hope to achieve? Then she would see Mary or receive a letter from Catherine, who Chapuys whispered was dying, and her zeal would be renewed.
“Very well, we can manage,” she announced, closing her household account book. “Give the servants leave to address the princess as the king requires of them. I will not be responsible for anyone’s treason but my own.”
Hussey regarded her with shock evident on his face. “Lady Salisbury, what do you intend?”
Margaret picked up her things and turned to leave him. “That will depend upon the king.”
Hussey watched her shuffle from the room, her arms loaded with books and parchment and grey overtaking the auburn of her hair but her head held high and her back straight as an expertly honed sword.
November 1533
“Did you read Princess Mary’s letter to her father?” Hussey demanded of Margaret with uncharacteristic boldness.
Margaret set aside the needlework she had been attempting to concentrate on and rubbed her eyes. It became more difficult to see the tiny stitches and she felt weary of pretending it was not. She blinked to clear her vision and squinted at the chamberlain.
“I did not. The princess does not require my approval for her communications.”
“Maybe she should,” Hussey replied, stepping close enough to hold a parchment out to her.
She closed her eyes and sighed, preparing herself for the struggle of making out the elaborate script that was sure to accompany the wax seal that was cracked and broken from Hussey’s prior examination. The bottom of the letter bore the king’s signature, and Margaret’s breath caught in her throat. This was more serious than another order from Cromwell or other sycophant of the king.
“She has said too much!” Hussey was almost shouting. “Patience must be practiced to bear this trial, but Princess Mary refuses to recognize her father’s wife and goads him by referring to her mother as queen.” He threw his hands up in the air as one who has given up on a lost cause. “She tells her father that she will obey him in all things before going on to list the areas in which she cannot obey him. He is the king for heaven’s sake!” Now he was shouting, and all tiredness flew from Margaret’s mind as she realized the seriousness of the situation.
“Just tell me what it says,” she insisted in frustration at her failing vision and Hussey’s reprimand. The royal letter was thrust back toward him in distaste.
Hussey took it with a wild look in his eyes. “He has dismissed you, Lady Salisbury.” His voice was quieted and tinged with compassion as his face relaxed from anger to sympathy.
For a moment, Margaret’s expression did not change. She remembered Henry greeting her as cousin when he first became king. He had made her countess of Salisbury and ensured that each of her children had a position worthy of her family’s name. She had been made governess of his heir, but now she was released. Mary was no longer his princess and she was not needed to care for her.
Fortune’s wheel turned so cruelly and interminably.
“I will write to him myself,” she said confidently, not willing to accept the hand she had been dealt. Placing her needlework in the waiting basket, she stood as though to attend to the task immediately.
“Is that wise?” Hussey questioned, failing to remove his bulk from the doorway she was attempting to pass through.
“Of course it is,” she insisted as she stepped closer, threatening to push her way by. “The king is my cousin, and Princess Mary is just a girl. His temper was roused by her disobedience, and it is my duty as her governess to offer apology and correction.”
~~~~
After her first letter was met by cold rebuff, Margaret frantically wrote again. Through tears that made it almost impossible for her to compose the words, she offered to cover the expenses of Mary’s household herself if she would just be allowed to stay at her side.
Henry was quite insistent. Lady Mary’s household was to be dismantled. She would serve her sister, Princess Elizabeth, as a member of her household.
Margaret’s sons, Henry and Geoffrey, came to assist her in relocating to the Bisham estate. Both offered their sympathy and promises of future support to Mary, but no one offered any alternative to accepting the king’s plan for the time being.
“You will see in time,” Montague encouraged Mary. “The king will see that an intelligent young woman makes a far superior heir than a squalling infant.”
“If the brat even survives,” Geoffrey added from behind his mug of ale.
“Mind your tongue,” Margaret snapped. “It is the king’s daughter that you speak of. Loose speech is not worth the consequences.”
He tilted his head to his mother in unspoken apology. Henry glared at his brother before turning his attention back to Mary, who listened in rapt attention. Montague was exactly what she needed, a man mature and intelligent who was on good terms with the king yet supportive of her. She hung on his every word.
“Patience will see you achieve your destiny, but God may ask that you humble yourself for a time,” Henry continued.
Mary examined her hands in her lap and whispered, “Nothing could be more humbling than serving in my bastard sister’s household.”
“You think not?” Henry asked. He held up a hand to silence his mother’s objection and carried on. “Your father is the king and few stand up to him. No one besides your mother understands why better than you.” He leaned closer to her as his words gained intensity. “He could make you a chambermaid or marry you to a merchant. Do not give him a reason to.”
Mary’s grey eyes had widened as Montague spoke to her as nobody else in her life had dared to. He held her gaze until she broke it then nodded in satisfaction. Margaret swallowed her objection, seeing that her son was right. The time for fine words had passed. Mary was being put in her place and the best thing to do for the moment was to accept it.
“Do not lose heart,” Henry followed his instructions with encouragement. “There are many who are prepared to support you when the right time arrives. Bide y
our time until then.”
Until the king dies, he meant. Margaret considered whether the inference alone was treason. She was no longer certain. Edward Stafford had died for similar words.
Mary’s eyes filled with tears but she nodded her acceptance. “I will follow your wise counsel, Lord Montague,” she said. “God give me strength because it will take more than my own to humble myself before the concubine’s daughter.”
“Your father will not allow me to be there for you in person, but rest assured that I will be in constant prayer for you before our heavenly father,” Margaret said, her words filled with fervency as she held Mary’s hands in a tight grip. It was nothing like the vise gripping her heart as she realized that she must soon leave Mary’s side. Would she ever see her again, or would they be kept apart as the girl and her mother were? She gulped, not daring to consider the answer.
“I thank you,” Mary said, her eyes moving between them as if memorizing faces she would never see again.
Geoffrey stood and bowed casually, as if he had already altered Mary’s status in his mind. Henry, however, knelt before her in a fashion that somehow made him seem more dignified though he prostrated himself before a young woman.
“I would have your blessing, Princess Mary, before we go on our ways that shall be separate, but only for a while,” he requested quietly in a voice that deeply resonated through the dimly lit room.
Mary’s training served her well, and she crossed Montague as though noblemen requested her blessing on a daily basis.
“Go in peace and serve the Lord with all your heart,” she said in a barely audible whisper.
Margaret embraced Mary for what she prayed was not the last time before allowing her sons to bundle her off to Bisham.
December 1533
Having arrived at Bisham in time for Christmas revelries but completely unprepared for them, Margaret spent a quiet season, praying for Mary and Catherine. And England.
Henry and Geoffrey had stayed with her for a time before returning to their own families. One of the last conversations she had shared with Henry had taken her back into parts of her past that she kept deeply buried.
“Is this what it was like when your cousins were bastardized?” he had asked as they sipped his favorite wine before a welcoming hearth.
Margaret’s breath had caught in her throat. She had not considered the similarities between King Richard disinheriting Edward’s children and Henry delegitimizing his own. Was this the way of kings, to simply write off children whose existence had become inconvenient?
“I was so young,” she had tried to evade him.
“Not so young,” he countered.
A wry smile lifted one side of her mouth. “I had been in the household of my cousins since the execution of my father,” she admitted quietly, as if afraid to disturb the rest of the ghosts she spoke about.
Henry leaned forward, appearing young and boyish in the firelight. He had never heard his mother speak of her father’s execution.
“I was devastated, though my memories of my father were vague. He was a knight in shining armor who lit up a room when he entered. That was my impression of him as a little girl, anyhow.” Her eyes took on a dreamlike quality as she attempted to travel through the years to a time when she was considered a princess rather than a difficult noblewoman with an excess of royal blood.
“He was handsome and charismatic, but impetuous and discontent. I did not know all that at the time of course, but have come to understand it. Geoffrey reminds me of him.” Returning to the present and focusing her yes on her oldest son, she demanded, “You must be your brother’s keeper. He will be in need of your wise counsel and prudence.”
Caught off guard, Henry frowned and cocked his head questioningly to the side. “Do not speak as if you will not be here to knock sense into him yourself, mother.”
They laughed gratefully, the tension of the moment broken. But as the laughter died, Margaret was sure that she felt the presence of her old ghosts crowding in around them.
~~~~
With her sons gone, Bisham felt cavernous and lonely. Margaret had never before had the opportunity to realize how little she enjoyed being alone. Though the duties of governess to the princess had seemed arduous for one her age, she missed the bustle of activity and presence of friends now that the household was broken up.
She had been so proud of her position as countess of Salisbury and eager to complete the construction work at Bisham and her other estates to demonstrate to onlookers that her star was once again ascending. Her family was not plagued by the name of traitor, and the king had favored her. Yet, somehow, as she walked down the beautiful but empty corridors, that did not seem to matter.
The sound of footsteps reached her long before the servant was visible. The hurried pace informed Margaret that they were on an important mission, and she prayed that they would be looking for her.
“Lady Salisbury,” a wheezing voice reached her, and Margaret sent up a silent prayer of thanks that someone required her attention. She needed to be needed.
Margaret turned and recognized her granddaughter, Katherine, whose voice had been disguised by her breathlessness. The lessons of Princess Mary’s household had been ingrained into her, and she rarely referred to her grandmother by anything less formal than her title. Margaret embraced the girl, encouraging familial closeness now that they were at her own estate, but Katherine remained stiff and Margaret wondered if she had disciplined her too well.
“What is it, Katherine?” she asked, infusing as much kindness into her voice as she could.
“Baron Hussey awaits you in the hall,” she said, still gulping breath. “He indicated that he wished urgently to see you.”
“Then I will not keep him waiting.”
Margaret strode with renewed purpose to discover what Mary’s chamberlain might need to discuss with her. The passageway already seemed full of life now that Margaret was called to action. Instead of being vacant, she noticed scurrying chambermaids and dogs sniffing for dropped crumbs. Had they been there before, she wondered. Curious.
Entering the hall that was freshly decorated to her specifications, Margaret did not even notice the tapestries and stonework that she had spent lavishly upon. Her eyes found only Hussey, standing still but seeming to vibrate with energy. He, too, had a look that exuded a desire to be at his work. His face was lively and appeared younger than the last time they had seen each other, parting company along with the rest of Mary’s household.
When he caught sight of her, he rushed forward and reached out in eagerness, rather than bowing as he typically would. She no longer minded. There were greater concerns than precise manners now that she was not ordering the household of a princess.
“It delights me to see you,” she said when they almost collided in their mutual enthusiasm. The smile he treated her with was one that she felt certain was seen by few people besides his beloved wife, Anne.
“And I, you,” he replied, the words coming in a rush. “I would speak to you about a shared interest in a private place.”
He spoke far less discreetly than he believed, but Margaret did not mind. The few members of her household who were near were those she trusted implicitly. Without another word, she gestured for him to follow her. Soon, they enjoyed the privacy of her sitting room, where Katherine had laid out refreshments, foreseeing that they would retire to that spot. Clever girl, Margaret thought, mentally noting that she must thank her granddaughter and find a way to bring her under her wing more intimately.
They each took a small plate of bread and cheese as well as a welcome cup of wine before settling in conspiratorially.
“Tell me about Princess Mary,” Margaret demanded. “Is she treated well in her sister’s household?”
Hussey sighed. He had hoped to delay Margaret’s temper by discussing Catherine first. “The new queen’s aunt serves as governess to Princess Elizabeth, so you can be sure that she offers Princess Mary no more respect than she fe
els necessary. Probably does so upon the queen’s orders, possibly the king’s.”
“Surely not!” Margaret tilted her chin up defiantly at the idea that Henry would order his daughter taken down a notch by his concubine’s family.
With a shake of his head, Hussey insisted, “I’m afraid it is true, Lady Salisbury. Mary is treated as a bastard sister serving a legitimate one. The position would not be untenable if it were the one she had been raised for, but…” he let his voice trail off. They both understood that Mary had been raised for a very different position indeed. “She does give as well as she gets though,” he added with a wry smile. “She is as stubborn as her former governess and fights Lady Shelton at every turn.”
A sharp bark of laughter escaped Margaret, but she immediately sobered. “Will the king punish her further if she does not submit?”
Shrugging, Hussey exhaled a heavy breath, “That, I cannot know any better than the next man. Henry has become unpredictable and his temper increases with his age.” He lifted his shoulders in a hopeless gesture once more before filling his mouth with soft Leicester cheese.
Wheels of thought were turning in Margaret’s brain, but she could conceive no path for Mary to follow for the time being besides following her father’s orders.
“I have also spoken to Catherine,” Hussey said through the bread that had followed the cheese.
The wheels grinded to a halt, and Margaret eyed him curiously. Very few people managed to gain access to Catherine these days. Henry seemed to be hoping she would die of loneliness.
“She would like for you to visit her.”
Faithful Traitor: The Story of Margaret Pole (Plantagenet Embers Book 2) Page 20