The Woman in the Shadows: Tudor England through the eyes of an influential woman

by Carol McGrath

  ‘Master Northleach?’

  ‘Aye, Mistress, ‘twas he, Master Northleach, I mean.’

  ‘Then Marcus would have heard my refusal.’

  Marcus could not keep his mouth closed. He burst out, ‘Mistress, I heard him ask you and I saw him give you a gift and I saw you look kindly upon Master Northleach.’

  I drew the chain and cross from my purse and held it up.

  ‘You saw this, Marcus?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And, you will remember that my first husband had died that midsummer?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You see, this is a memento mori. That is all - a cross on a chain that Master Northleach gave me to express his sorrow on the death of my first husband.’ I did not say it had belonged to his dead wife and that this had evoked my sympathy. I had said enough. Still, I could not resist adding, ‘And you will have heard me decline Master Northleach’s attentions.’

  He whispered, ‘I could not hear your words exactly, Mistress.’

  Thomas then said, ‘So, you did not hear my wife’s words of refusal, nor any words of acceptance either. You will return to Southwark, and if you lie again you will be dragged by my men before magistrates before you can spit onto the floor straw.

  ‘You will not speak of this meeting to Master Northleach. If he comes calling, you will let me know immediately. Dicken will be watching you from the Pig and Whistle. Note his name. His is a prize fighter too.’ Thomas looked from one to the other. ‘You have concocted lies and slander. Observe well that I am more powerful than that slanderer Northleach. You won’t have lives worth living if you ever speak of what has been discussed here tonight to anybody. If there are plots yet to be spun and business to be conducted, you are my creatures now.’

  Thomas paused and drew breath before saying, ‘I will leave your miserable lives alone. Report to Dicken when Northleach comes to find you, and I shall protect you.’

  Marcus grovelled. He bowed low, and coming up said through the dirty hair that flopped over his narrow eyes, ‘I am sorry for our mistake, Master Cromwell. He promised us coin if we spoke up. We are fallen on hard times. All we want is to save what we can to get us out into the country where I can work as a shepherd and so Susy here does not have to work as she does.’

  ‘Well we shall see how this goes, shall we?’ Thomas turned to me.

  ‘Susannah, you were greatly mistaken.’ I glared at her pathetic husband. ‘You have perjured yourselves.’

  I hoped that Thomas would get them away from the City once Northleach was silenced. I wanted nothing here to remind me of Northleach’s lies, certainly not two creatures such as these.

  ‘Go,’ I said, glancing over at Smith who leaned back against the window sill, his face expressionless. ‘You can keep the capes we have given you in case you need them again.’ I turned my back, slid the silver cross back into my belt purse and walked away from the closet. Smith and Thomas could get rid of the pair, for I could not feel sympathy for them.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  WE HEARD NO MORE of Edward Northleach during the following fortnight, nor did we hear from Susannah or Marcus. If I thought the problem had gone away though, I was wrong.

  Thomas had acquired a travel pass for the personage he was sheltering at Cousin Robert’s house. He promised that he would deliver it soon. Some days went by, but still Thomas did not deliver it.

  When I asked about it, he said, ‘When the ship is ready to sail.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘This week.’

  A messenger from the Court of Requests hurried breathlessly into our hall on Tuesday morning as we were breaking our fast. Before I had time to say good bye to Tom, he had left his ale cup unfinished and rushed off muttering, ‘They are putting Master Farrar on trial a day early. I left the papers over at the Guildhall. Must fetch them.’ Moments later I heard him trotting out of the yard on his jennet, shouting at the messenger to request a delay on the Farrar hearing until after noon. Moments later the messenger mounted his horse and was off.

  I found the printer’s passport lying on the parlour table, in full view, beside some other bills. Curious, I examined it. The pass was for one William Tyndale of Norfolk, to travel to the Low Countries on the cloth merchant Thomas Cromwell’s behalf, with three dozen ells of stamped woollen goods to be sold in Antwerp. The pass should not wait.

  Thomas had intended to take it to him. I pondered it for a moment and reasoned that I could deliver the pass myself for Thomas, who had clearly forgotten it. A consignment of our wool was to sail from London to Antwerp with the Juniper on Thursday morning. Today was Tuesday, and if this Tyndale was a heretic, I wanted to make sure that he was on that ship and out of our lives by Thursday. I bit my lip. The difficulty was that I was still supposed to stay at home for my own protection. The pass should not wait. I wickedly smiled to myself. Surely Thomas would be pleased to be rid of this man’s pass. If I was careful, he might be glad of my help.

  Yet, taking the pass smelled of deceit. I bit my lip hard again and tasted blood. I am not by nature deceitful, though surely my husband, who had left me to watch over affairs in his absence in the past, would thank me for my foresight. I would be careful and, after all, Thomas was busy.

  It was Thomas’ carelessness, a most unusual occurrence, which finally drove me on to deceit. Simply, we must remove the reformist from our lives. He could not miss the ship. I would make this right and Tom would thank me for it. I was caught between the devil and the angel, and, that day, the devil won.

  Breathing deeply, I made my decision. I needed threads. That would be my excuse. I was no inexperienced simpering maid who should be kept behind closed doors for her own protection. I had a secret pocket in my kirtle where I kept household notes. Without further thought, I slipped the pass into the lining of my overskirt. I would go alone. No one must know. I could not trust anybody.

  * * *

  Annie was with her nurse. Meg was making simples in the still room. I told the servants that I was spending the morning making up a pattern book and that until the dinner hour, on no account, was I to be disturbed.

  Cousin Robert’s house by the Walbrook had several respectable lodgers, looked after by one of Cousin Robert’s distant relatives, a widow who took in washing. Threadneedle Street was close to the Walbrook. I would have an hour to purchase threads and plenty of time to deliver the passport.

  I secured my purse onto my belt and stole down the empty stairs and through the quiet garden hardly daring to breath. My heart was rushing faster than an incoming river tide. When I reached the pear tree without encountering our many servants, I glanced down at my feet. In my haste, I had not changed my footwear and was wearing my favourite thin leather shoes. Too late. I could not risk returning. A scatter of puffed up little clouds breezily floated through a deep blue sky. If the day remained sunny, there would be no mud to ruin them. I shrugged and, without further hesitation, unlatched the back door into the alley that ran behind our house into Lyme Street. Moments later, I stood by the graveyard gate into St Dionis Back Church. There would be no retreat.

  ‘Good morning, Mistress Cromwell.’

  Mistress Watt was advancing on me from the churchyard, the last person I expected to see that morning. Habitually, she was to be discovered at St Gabriel, not in St Dionis’s churchyard.

  ‘Why the haste?’ She looked at me curiously. It was unusual for me to leave our house by the garden gate, and, without doubt, Mistress Watt, who was a source of all knowledge concerning the habits of others, would know this fact.

  ‘Good morning to you, Mistress Watt. It is an urgent matter of gold thread since I am working a new embroidery for Saint Elizabeth’s altar. It must be finished by Christ’s Mass.’ I asked her how her son, Master Robert, fared, though I knew that all was not well with him. He was gambling. We thought he could not afford a servant any more, for the man with the scarred face was never in Master Robert’s company.

  ‘He is purchasing
wool in the country, Mistress Cromwell.’ She took an abrupt step away from me. Clearly, I had touched a defensive spot in her prickly sensitivity and for a moment I regretted my hasty words. She would, however, now leave me in peace, in case I asked more pertinent questions.

  ‘I wish him success,’ I said.

  ‘God does not like the idle. I must be on my way,’ she snapped back, angry as a hissing adder. My regret lessened. ‘I have a dinner to cook,’ she added. ‘Not all of us can afford a kitchen staff. I am surprised to see you without your guard to protect you.’

  My regret flew off. ‘My servants are busy this morning, Mistress Watt. May the Virgin Mary watch over you and bring Master Robert safely home,’ I said quickly and hurried on along the church wall, glad to escape.

  On entering Gracechurch Street I paused, with an uncanny premonition that I was being followed. I glanced over my shoulder. There was no one behind me so I hurried on. The street was busy so I wound my way around two beggars with cups by a lane that led into All Hallows, Green Church. One was missing a leg, the other a hand. Both cried out with toneless synchronicity, ‘Have mercy, for the sake of God, have pity, Mistress.’ I tossed them two farthings, which they immediately descended upon, scrabbling about their three feet with stiff, awkward hands trying hard to scoop their treasure up from the dirt.

  I thought how sad it was that they were so poor while we were wealthy. The Church should provide alms for them. It was, as they leaned back against their wall, that I caught sight of a saffron-cloaked goblin-like figure ducking into the churchyard behind me. He was too small of stature to be Edward Northleach, but his quick action unsettled me because I was sure that this little creature was watching me.

  Considering my next move, I looked carefully around the street that was crowded with rumbling carts and travelling personages coming up into the City from the river. It should be possible to lose him on such a busy route way. I was small. I was also adept at concealment, though as I glanced down at the bump that stretched my kirtle I was not so sure that I could be very fleet of foot.

  I decided to deliver the passport first because there were several streets on the way to Cousin Robert’s houses with shops, stalls and small alleys amongst which I could hide if I saw the creature again. After I had made my delivery, I would continue to the haberdasher’s which lay on Threadneedle Street, beside the Merchant Tailors’ Hall. I thanked God that the Broad Street Ward was a hectic place, always occupied with traders and traffic.

  I hurried on up Gracechurch Street, winding through carts and horses, and pushing through a band of white nuns who were tripping down the centre of the street towards the great city bridge. I wondered absurdly if they were from St Helen’s Priory and clad in our wool. When I moved into their midst, their wimples aided my ploy and concealed me. It was a great relief when I veered to the left of them and turned the corner at Lombard Street. I could not see anyone following me and was able to gain Poultry Street without further misadventure. Marion, the elderly widow whom Cousin Robert supported, did the washing in a huge copper kettle in an outhouse. On fine days her washing was draped over the hawthorns between her house and the stream. I suspected today was one such day since the sun was hot and the breeze gentle and warm.

  It was only a matter of moments before I was by the Walbrook stream, where washing dried on the hedges and Marion was exiting the green door with a basket laden with wet linen. She set it down by a bramble bush.

  ‘Marion,’ I called, not thinking about any who might happen past us. ‘Is Master Tyndale at home today?’

  Her response was to spin around and to look startled. Placing a finger on her lips, she gestured with her other hand towards the house’s overhanging top storey. I shook my head and approached the basket of washing.

  She folded her arms. ‘Elizabeth, dear, why are you here?’

  ‘I have something for him.’ I glanced to the house. ‘It’s from my husband.’

  ‘Deliver whatever it is quickly and be gone.’ Marion lowered her voice. ‘If Robert knew that your Thomas had asked me to shelter a travelling preacher he would be furious and so would the Cardinal.’

  Marion was frightened, as if the inquisition was about to descend on us that day. Her wide kirtle flared out to match her anger. Her apron stiffened as she stood beside me. ‘He said it was only for a few days. It is a few days over long. There are spies everywhere looking out for preachers with peculiar notions.’

  ‘Did he say he was a preacher?’ I said, feeling my nerves rattling like bones shaken up in a knacker’s cart. ‘I thought he was a college man who only wanted to learn printing. I thought Thomas is helping him to travel abroad to learn more about the craft.’ I lied, for did I not know that Tyndale was an evangelical.

  ‘He is a preacher, Elizabeth, and one of the dangerous sort. When I took him his supper, he told me things I would not repeat near a priest, not even in the confessional.’

  ‘Such as?’ I was frightened now, and curious.

  ‘He says God will not forgive us our sin if we purchase an indulgence. That is buying forgiveness. God would not like that, he says. We have to accept the Lord into our hearts. If we do, only then He will forgive us wrongdoing. Only God, himself, can forgive us with his Divine Grace. The preacher says God’s word should be taken from the Latin and put into English and that we should all read it for ourselves.’ She laughed. ‘If we could read, indeed. I cannot read, nor can I write. He speaks heresy, I say. There is no comfort in this world without relics and indulgences.’

  ‘Listen, he will sail on the Juniper to the Low Countries on Thursday. I have his pass for him. I want him gone too.’

  ‘A good riddance. You go on up those stairs over there and be quick about it,’ she insisted. There was no offer of a glass of ale to quench my thirst, nor a finger of her fine ginger cake. She turned her broad back on me and commenced to layer her washing over the hawthorn bush. I was dismissed.

  I hurried through the opened door and flew up the staircase; my nerve weakening as I stood outside Master Tyndale’s chamber. I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath and knocked twice.

  ‘Who is there? Friend or foe?’

  ‘Friend.’

  ‘A woman alone,’ he said, opening the door with a dramatic flourish. He did not look like a man who was frightened of authority. He did not look like a travelling preacher either, and he certainly did not look like a devil heretic, though I did not, in truth, know what a real heretic was supposed to look like; perhaps they were like the devils painted on the wall of St Gabriel’s Church. This man had the appearance of a scholar recently come down from Oxford. William Tyndale was young, in his early twenties, with a high brow and a long face that possessed a healthy colour. His hair and wisp of a beard were brown. His eyes were penetrative and dark as chimney soot. He wore a plain black cap that covered his ears and long, flowing dark gown of good worsted wool.

  ‘Well then, who are you?’ He glanced down at my thin shoes. My eyes followed his. My feet were very dusty. ‘You wear a lady’s slippers and, in truth, should not be abroad alone. This is my suspicion.’

  ‘No, I should not. May I enter a moment since I have something for you? I must be gone with haste.’

  He raised an eyebrow and stood to one side, his hand lingering on the door knob. There was a table and a chair in the chamber and a door that led to his second chamber. Glancing through, I observed an unmade cot and a pile of books resting on a plain wooden stool. I pulled the passport from my belt and placed it on the table. ‘You have a pass to travel to Antwerp, Master Tyndale. You are on cloth business there and before you attend to what business you have of your own in Antwerp, I ask that you see my cloth is placed safely with my representatives who will meet the Juniper – that is the ship. You will lodge at Master Vaughan’s house in Antwerp. It is on Grosmarketstrete.’

  He turned the document over in his hands and studied it for a moment with intensity. Looking up and laughing, he said, ‘Your cloth business. So you are M
istress Cromwell. Why has your husband sent you and not come himself?’

  ‘My husband is away on other business. We ask you not to speak of religious matters, while you are on board the Juniper, because if you do, you will put us all in danger.’ I lifted my hand. ‘I do not want to know your persuasions for I have no interest in them.’

  I turned on my heel and fled downstairs. He called after me, ‘When on Thursday?’

  I stopped. Of course he needed to know this. ‘By noon, be at Deptford. The ship docks there. Take a river boat and at Trinity House ask for Master Peter of the Juniper. A pilot will take you to the ship.’

  I felt him laughing at me again when he said, ‘My grateful thanks, Mistress. Take a care for those shoes and please, in your haste to be away, do not trip on the stairs.’

  I looked back and said, ‘Take a good care of yourself, Master Tyndale. I think you must be a brave and clever man, but think carefully about the words you speak lest they talk heresy. These are dangerous times for one who thinks differently to others.’ I meant my words, for I could not help but like him, and I knew what it was to live fearful of heretical accusation. I understood now why Thomas had cared about his safety.

  ‘I am indeed warned. I am travelling to Antwerp to see for myself the business of printing. Christ be with you, Mistress Cromwell. May he dwell in your heart and in that of the innocent child you carry.’

  ‘I am guided by my priest as to where God may dwell,’ I said, feeling prickly, and left him standing looking a little puzzled at the head of the staircase.

  * * *

  Marion was not in sight and I thought it best not to seek her out. As I hurried away, feeling unsettled by my encounter with Tyndale, who flew close to an ill wind. I did think in my heart that it could not be sinful to read God’s word in our own language and I pondered on this as I walked towards the Taylors Hall. If this were the young man’s reason for learning printing abroad rather than here in London, I could understand his reasoning and even hoped that one day I could read the Bible in English.