“Prior Richard has resigned,” Thomas Legh says smoothly, speaking over his stammering partner. “Prior William Barlow will take his place and surrender the priory to Lord Cromwell.”
I don’t know Barlow, except by reputation as a great supporter of reform, which means, as we now all see, stealing from the Church and expelling good men. His brother serves as a Boleyn spy, and he hears George Boleyn’s confession, which must be a pretty tale.
“Prior Richard will not go!” I say hastily. “Certainly not for a Boleyn chaplain!”
“He has gone. And you will not see him again.”
For a moment I think that they mean that they have taken him to the Tower. “Arrested?” I ask with sudden fear.
“Wisely, he chose that it should not come to that.” Richard recovers himself. “Now I will take your daughter-in-law to London.”
“Here,” I say with sudden spite. I reach into my purse and I take a silver sixpence. I toss it straight at him, and Richard catches it without thinking, so that he looks a fool for taking such a little coin from me like a beggar. “For her expenses on the road. Because she has nothing.”
I write to Reginald and I send it to John Helyar in Flanders for him to take to my son.
They have given our priory to a stranger who will dismiss the priests and close the doors. They have taken Jane away to marry a friend of Cromwell’s. The Church cannot survive this treatment. I cannot survive it. Tell the Holy Father that we cannot bear it.
I am still reeling from this attack at the very heart of my home, at the church I love, when I get a note from London:
Lady Mother, please come at once. M.
L’ERBER, LONDON, APRIL 1536
Montague greets me at the door of my house, the vine showing green leaves all around him as if he is a Planta genista in an illuminated manuscript, a plant that grows green, whatever the soil or weather.
He helps me from my horse and holds my arm as we go up the shallow steps to the doorway. He feels the stiffness in my stride. “I am sorry to have made you ride,” he says.
“I’d rather ride to London than hear about it too late in the country,” I say dryly. “Take me to my privy chamber and close the door on the others and tell me what’s going on.”
He does as I ask, and in moments I am seated in my chair by the fireside with a glass of mulled wine in my hand and Montague is standing before the fire, leaning against the stone chimney breast, looking into the flames.
“I need your advice,” he says. “I’ve been invited to dine with Thomas Cromwell.”
“Take a long spoon,” I reply, and earn a wry smile from my son.
“This might be the sign of everything changing.”
I nod.
“I know what it’s about,” he says. “Henry Courtenay is invited with me; he spoke with Thomas Seymour, who had been playing cards with Thomas Cromwell, Nicholas Carew, and Francis Bryan.”
“Carew and Bryan were Boleyn supporters.”
“Yes. But now, as a cousin to the Seymours, Bryan is advising Jane.”
I nod. “So Thomas Cromwell is now befriending those of us who support the princess or are kin to Jane Seymour?”
“Tom Seymour promises me that if Jane were to be queen she would recognize the princess, bring her to court, and see her restored as heir.”
I raise my eyebrows. “How could Jane be queen? How could Cromwell do this?”
Montague lowers his voice though we are behind a closed door in our own house. “Geoffrey spoke to John Stokesley, the Bishop of London, only yesterday. Cromwell had asked him if the king could legally abandon the Boleyn woman.”
“Legally abandon her?” I repeat. “What does that even mean? And what did the bishop reply?”
Montague gives a short laugh. “He’s no fool. He’d like to see the Boleyns thrown down, but he said he would only give his opinion to the king, and then only if he knew what it was he wanted to hear.”
“And do any of us know what he wants to hear?”
Montague shakes his head. “The signs are contradictory. On one hand he’s called Parliament, and a meeting of his council. And Cromwell is clearly plotting against the Boleyns. But the king got the Spanish ambassador to bow to her as queen, for the first time ever—so, no, we don’t know.”
“Then we must wait until we do.”
Thoughtfully I strip off my riding gloves and put them over the arm of my chair. I hold my hands to the warmth of the fire. “So what does Cromwell want from us? For he owes me a priory at the moment, and I am not feeling kindly towards him.”
“He wants us to promise that Reginald will not write against him, will cease urging the Pope to act against the king.”
I frown. “Why does he care so much for Reginald’s good opinion?’
“Because Reginald speaks for the Pope. And Cromwell is in living terror and the king is in living terror that the Pope will excommunicate them both, and then nobody will obey their commands. Cromwell needs our support for his own safety,” Montague goes on. “The king says one thing at breakfast and contradicts himself at dinner. Cromwell doesn’t want to go the way of Wolsey. If he pulls down Anne, as Wolsey pulled down Katherine, he wants to know that everyone will advise the king that it is a godly thing.”
“If he pulls down Anne and saves our princess, then we support him,” I say grudgingly. “But he must advise the king to return to obedience to Rome. He must restore the Church. We can’t live in England without our monasteries.”
“Once Anne is gone then the king will make an alliance with Spain and return the Church to the headship of Rome,” Montague predicts.
“And Cromwell will advise this?” I ask skeptically. “He has become a faithful papist all at once?”
“He doesn’t want the bull of excommunication published,” Montague says quietly. “He knows that would ruin the king. He wants us to keep it silent, and pave the way for the king to return to Rome.”
For a moment I have a sense of the joy that comes with having, at last, some stake in the game, some power. Ever since Thomas Cromwell started to advise the king to betray our queen, to destroy our princess, we have been shouting against the wind. Now it seems the weather is changing.
“He has to have our friendship against the Boleyns,” Montague says. “And the Seymours want us to support Jane.”
“Is she the king’s new sweetheart?” I ask. “Do they really think he will marry her?”
“She must be soothing, after Anne,” Montague points out.
“And is it love again?”
He nods. “He is besotted with her. He thinks she is a quiet country girl, shy, ignorant. He thinks she has no interest in matters that concern men. He looks at her family and thinks she will be fertile.”
The young woman has five brothers. “But he cannot think that she is the finest woman at court,” I object. “He has always wanted the very best. He cannot think that Jane outshines all the others.”
“No, he’s changed. She is not the best—not by a long way—but she admires him much more than anyone else,” Montague says. “That’s his new benchmark. He likes the way she looks at him.”
“How does she look at him?”
“She’s awestruck.”
I take this in. I can see that for the king, shaken by his own mortality after hours of unconsciousness, facing the prospect of his own death without a male heir, the adoration of a pure country girl might be a relief. “And so?”
“I dine with Cromwell and Henry Courtenay tonight. Shall I tell him that we will join with them against Anne?”
I remember the huge newly accreted power of the Boleyns and the vast wealth of the Howards and I think that, even so, we can face them down. “Yes,” I say. “But tell him that our price for this is the restoration of the princess and the abbeys. We will keep the excommunication secret, but the king must return to Rome.”
Montague comes back from his dinner with Cromwell with his feet weaving under him, so drunk that he can hardly stand. I ha
ve gone to bed as he raps on my door and asks may he come in, and when I open the door, he stands at the threshold and says that he won’t intrude.
“Son!” I say, smiling. “You’re drunk as a stable boy.”
“Thomas Cromwell has a head of iron,” he says regretfully.
“I hope you said nothing more than we agreed.”
Montague leans against the doorjamb and sighs heavily. A warm gust of ale, wine, and I think brandy, for Cromwell has exotic tastes, blows gently into my face. “Go to bed,” I say. “You will be sick as a dog in the morning.”
He shakes his head in wonderment. “He has a head of iron,” he repeats. “A head of iron and a heart like an anvil. You know what he is doing?”
“No.”
“He is setting her own uncle, her own uncle, Thomas Howard, to gather evidence against her. Thomas Howard is going to find evidence against the marriage. He is going to ask for witnesses against his niece.”
“Men of iron with hearts of stone. And the Princess Mary?”
Owlishly, Montague nods at me. “I don’t forget your love of her, I never forget, Lady Mother. I raised it at once. I reminded him at once.”
“And what did he say?” I ask, curbing my impatience to dunk my drunken son’s head in a bucket of icy water.
“He said that she will get a proper household, and be honored in her new house. She will be declared legitimate. She will be restored. She will come to court, Queen Jane will be her friend.”
I nearly choke at the new name. “Queen Jane?”
He nods. “ ’Mazing, isn’t it?”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Cromwell is certain.”
I reach up to him, ignoring the odor of wine and brandy and mulled ale. I pat his cheek, as he beams at me. “Well done. That’s good,” I say. “Perhaps this will end well. And this is not just Cromwell casting bread on the waters? This is the king’s will?”
“Cromwell only ever does the king’s will,” Montague says confidently. “You can be sure of that. And now the king wants the princess restored and the Boleyn woman gone.”
“Amen,” I say, and gently push Montague out of the door of my privy chamber, where his men are waiting for him. “Put him to bed,” I say. “And leave him to sleep in the morning.”
MANOR OF THE ROSE, ST. LAWRENCE POUNTNEY, LONDON, APRIL 1536
Hugging this secret, and suddenly filled with hope, I go to visit my cousin Gertrude Courtenay at her house in St. Lawrence Pountney, London. Her husband, Henry, is at court, preparing for the May Day joust, and Montague must stay with the court too. After the joust they are all going on to a great feast to be held in France, with King Francis as the host. Whatever Cromwell is planning against the Boleyn woman, he is taking his time, and this is no way to further the friendship with Spain or the return to Rome. Since I don’t trust Thomas Cromwell any more than I would trust any mercenary soldier from the stews of Putney, I think it very likely that he is playing both sides at once, Boleyn and France against my Princess Mary and Spain, until he can be sure which side will win.
Cousin Gertrude is bursting with gossip. She gets hold of me the moment I am off my horse and walking into the hall. “Come,” she says. “Come into the garden, I want to talk to you and we can’t be overheard.”
Laughing, I follow her. “What is it that’s so urgent?”
As soon as she turns to speak my laughter dies, she looks so serious. “Gertrude?”
“The king spoke in private to my husband,” she says. “I did not dare write it to you. He spoke to him after the concubine lost her child. He said that now he sees that God will not give him a son with her.”
“I know,” I say. “I heard it too. Even in the country I heard it. Everyone at court must know, and since everyone knows, it can only be that the king and Cromwell must want everyone to know.”
“You won’t have heard this: he says that she seduced him with witchcraft, and that this is why they will never have a son together.”
I am stunned. “Witchcraft?” I drop my voice to repeat the dangerous word. To accuse a woman of witchcraft is tantamount to sentencing her to death, for what woman can prove that a disaster was not of her making? If someone says that they have been overlooked or bewitched, how can one prove that it was not so? If a king says that he has been bewitched, who is going to tell him that he is mistaken?
“God save her! What did my cousin Henry say?”
“He said nothing. He was too amazed to speak. Besides, what could he say? We all thought she had driven him mad, we all thought that she was driving everyone mad, he was clearly besotted, he was beside himself, who’s to say that it wasn’t witchcraft?”
“Because we saw her play him like a fish,” I say irritably. “There was no mystery, there was no magic. Don’t you see Jane Seymour being advised on the same game? Coming forward, going back, half seduced and then withdrawing? Haven’t we seen the king madly in love with half a dozen women? It’s not magic, it’s what any slut does if she has her wits about her. The difference with Boleyn was that she was quicker-witted than all the others, she had a family who backed her—and the queen, God bless her, was getting old and could have no more children.”
“Yes.” Gertrude steadies herself. “Yes, you’re right. But there again, if the king thinks he was enchanted, and the king thinks she was a witch, and the king thinks that this explains her miscarriages—then that’s all that matters.”
“And what matters next is what he will do about it,” I say.
“He’ll put her aside,” Gertrude says triumphantly. “He will blame her for everything, and put her aside. And we and Cromwell and all our affinity will help him to do it.”
“How?” I say. “For this is the very thing that Montague is working on with Cromwell, and Carew and Seymour.”
She beams at me. “Not just them,” she points out. “Dozens of others. And we don’t even have to do it. That devil Cromwell will do it for us.”
I stay to dine with Gertrude and I would stay longer but one of Montague’s men comes for me in the afternoon and asks me will I return to L’Erber.
“What’s happened?” Gertrude comes with me to the stable yard, where my horse is saddled and ready.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“But we can be in no danger?” she confirms, thinking of our secret toast at dinner that Anne will fall and the king come to his senses and Princess Mary be named as his one true heir.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Montague would have warned me. I think he has work for me to do. Perhaps we are on the winning side, at last.”
L’ERBER, LONDON, MAY 1536
Montague strides up and down our private chapel as if he wishes he were running to the coast to the helpful ship’s master at Grays and sailing off to his brother Reginald.
“He’s gone mad,” he says in a low whisper. “I really think he has gone mad now. No one is safe, nobody knows what he is going to do next.”
I am stunned by this sudden reverse. I put my cape to one side and I take my son’s hands in my own. “Be calm. Tell me.”
“Did you hear nothing in the streets?”
“Nothing. A few people cheered for me as I went by, but they were mostly quiet . . .”
“Because it is beyond belief!” He claps his hand over his mouth and looks around. There is no one in the chapel but us, the candle flames bob up and down, there is no quietly closing door to make them flicker. We are alone.
Montague turns on his heel and drops on his knees before me. I see that he is white and shaking, deeply distressed. “He has arrested Anne Boleyn for adultery,” he breathes. “And men of her court with her, for keeping her secrets. We still don’t know how many. We still don’t know who.”
“ ‘How many’?” I repeat incredulously. “What do you mean, ‘how many’?”
He throws out his hands. “I know! Why would he charge more than one man, even if she had bedded dozens? Why would he let such a thing be known? And what an
extraordinary lie for him to tell when he can just put her aside without a word! They’ve arrested Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Norris, but also the lad who sings in her chamber, and her own brother.” He looks at me. “You know him! What is he thinking? Why would he do this?”
“Wait,” I say. “I don’t understand.”
I take the priest’s chair and I sink down, as my knees go weak underneath me. I think, I am getting too old for this, I am not quick enough to leap to suspicion or conclusions. Henry the king goes too fast for me in a way that Henry the prince never did. For Henry the prince was quick and clever, but Henry the king is as fast and as cunning as a madman: wildly decisive.
Slowly, Montague repeats the names to me, adds the names of a couple more men who seem to be missing from court.
“Cromwell is saying that she gave birth to a monster,” my son says. “As if that proves everything.”
“A monster?” I repeat stupidly.
“Not a stillborn child. Some sort of reptile.”
I look at my son in blank horror. “My God, how Thomas Cromwell does find sin and sodomy everywhere he looks! In my own priory, in the queen’s bedroom! What a mind that man has. What voice does he hear in his prayers?”
“It’s the king’s mind that matters.” Montague puts his hands on my knees and looks up at me as if I was still his all-powerful mother and could make this better. “Cromwell only does what the king says that he wants. He’s going to try her for adultery.”
“He’s going to try her for adultery? His own wife?”
“God help me, I’m going to be on the jury.”
“You’re on the jury?”
“We agreed!” he leaps to his feet and bellows. “All of us who met with Cromwell, who said that we would help him get the marriage annulled, are summoned to judge. We thought we were talking about releasing the king from his false marriage vows. We thought we would inquire into the validity of the marriage and find it wanting. Not this! Not this!”
“He’s trying the marriage? He will annul it?” I ask. “Like he tried to do with the queen?”
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