Lady Mary
Page 15
Mary noiselessly left the warm room, and the sleeping ladies, and crept down the stairs. Then she was moving along the entryway to the churchyard, one hand trailing along the cold stone of the wall to guide her in the dimness.
There was a gleam of moonlight out in the churchyard, and she had almost got as far as the field beyond, when she heard the tread of the guards on the stone flags of the path. She shrank back into the darker shade of a yew tree. She was shivering now, feeling just as vulnerable as when those arrows had come whizzing past her on the roof.
The crunching of feet came nearer, and she could hear low muttering voices. Then they were fading away again. How often did they patrol through the churchyard? she wondered. Were there other eyes watching as well? She also wondered exactly who was waiting for her in the field, waiting to escort her to the coast. She had on her warmest grey gown for travelling, but had brought with her nothing else but a present her mother had once given her: a prayer book.
Mary picked up the hem of her gown, so that it wouldn’t drag on the wet grass, and started forward again. The gleam of the sundial in the moonlight made her jump; for a second she had thought it the blade of a sword. Then she was under the shade of the tall dark hedge between the churchyard and the field. She worked her way along it, again feeling lightly with her hand. Its leaves were cold and wet, and before long the fingertips of her gloves became soaked. Soon she reached the gate and stealthily peered round the edge of the hedge. She hoped that she’d be able to spy out the lie of the land, rather than show herself all at once.
In the field there were horses, yes, dark shapes moving against the sky. And was that a figure coming towards her over the grass? She could see a dark lantern; a lantern with a shade slit to produce just a little sliver of light. It must be in a man’s hand, for now he was lifting it up, to cast a wider glow. Yes, he must be waiting for her. Who else could it be?
Seizing all her courage in both hands, Mary pushed open the gate and launched herself out into the field, half stumbling in the tussocks. The grass was long and deep. The man with the lantern was almost wading, waddling towards her. Was that the long grass or … was he rather a fat man, with short legs?
Mary suddenly stood stock-still. All at once she felt the intense chill of the dark air. This wasn’t Sir Nicholas. It was Master Cromwell.
‘Good evening, my lady,’ he said.
She stood, staring at him, breathing shallow and fast. ‘You are enjoying the beautiful evening, are you, my dear?’
Now there were other men coming forward, surrounding her. No one was violent; no one was rough. They came forward gently, quietly, like shepherds trying to catch a frightened sheep. But still they came. Cromwell held them all in his silky spell. ‘Shall we escort you back into the house?’ he asked. ‘It really is very wet underfoot out here. My shoes are soaked. I hope I don’t catch cold.’
He hitched his fur gown higher on his shoulders.
‘Come on, help the Lady Mary!’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I really can’t manage everything,’ he muttered. ‘I’m too clumsy, an old man like me. Someone take this lantern.’
Someone did, so that Master Cromwell could move unimpeded towards Mary, his hand outstretched. She did her best to ignore it, turning in the wet grass, but the footing was so insecure that she teetered. And so it was with his soft grasp upon her upper arm that she returned through the churchyard gate. Something had gone wrong. A message had miscarried. Or maybe she shouldn’t have trusted Sir Nicholas.
***
An hour later, Mary was back once again in her room. She was staring, dead-eyed, at the wall, lying on her bed with her back towards the room. She was doing and feeling absolutely nothing. She’d finally given up thinking of ways to get a message to the emperor’s men, waiting somewhere out there in the darkness to take her to the coast. There were no options. Without the knowledge of who had betrayed her plans, she had eventually accepted that there was no chance whatsoever of escape.
Master Cromwell was still fussing around somewhere in the room behind her, like an anxious hen. He had insisted upon her being brought hot water, and hot drinks, and more furs. To see and hear him, Mary thought, you’d think him nothing more than an overanxious nursemaid concerned about his charge’s foolish night-time wander in the churchyard when she ought to have been in bed. His solicitude made her want to vomit.
When he had bustled Mary through the chamber door about an hour ago, the sound had clearly woken up her ladies. Mary saw them stirring, and stretching themselves, shifting around on their chairs and benches; beginning to ask questions about what had happened, then realising that perhaps it was better not to.
Mary was very careful to avoid the gaze of Lady Shelton. She thought that through timidity, through not wanting to injure the ladies, she probably hadn’t given them enough henbane. And yet it hadn’t mattered. Someone, somewhere had revealed the plot.
But still, the henbane. Mary realised that there was one final way left to escape from this stuffy, overheated room, this gloomy, run-down house, these watchful, sleepless eyes. Take enough of the henbane and she would sleep for good …
She began to imagine the wicked Queen Anne’s anger. What would she do if Mary slipped from her grasp, almost from right between her fingers? What if she died before she ever submitted? The thought of Anne’s wrath actually made Mary smile at the wall.
She plucked out the paper packet from where she had hidden it under her pillows. She lifted it up close to her eyes, and stared at it intently.
‘NO!’
It was Lady Shelton, seizing the packet from between Mary’s fingers and hissing out the word. Mary squinted at her. She could hear Master Cromwell talking his way out of the room, taking leave of the other ladies and maintaining his constant, jovial burble. She was glad to hear it fading away as he moved off down the stairs.
‘I want only to be one of God’s martyrs,’ Mary said, curling herself back into an even tighter ball. ‘Give it back to me.’
But Lady Shelton was shaking her by the shoulders, vigorously, almost violently.
‘There are to be no deaths,’ she said, almost spitting out the words. ‘I could kill your mother with my own hands, for what she has done to you.’
Lady Shelton’s anger shocked Mary out of her despairing, trance-like state. She was so surprised that she dropped the henbane on to the coverlet. Lady Shelton’s face, she saw, had real wrath upon it.
‘She may wish to die, to please herself,’ Lady Shelton said, ‘but your mother should wish to live, and to live for you. It is a sin to die before God commands it, Mary, a deep and terrible sin. Do not commit that sin. Never even think about it. Not even to escape evil is it worth having that sin upon your soul. Yes, the world looks dark, but remember, the tide will turn.’
Mary leaned back on the pillows.
She found herself shocked at Lady Shelton’s words. Lady Shelton was her friend, surely. But her friends always praised, never criticised Mary’s mother. Was it even possible that God didn’t want her to become one of his martyrs? In that case, she had had a near miss.
‘Yes,’ Lady Shelton said savagely, somehow reading Mary’s face. ‘Yes, your mother may want to die. But only because it would hurt and anger your father. They should not use you this way in their quarrels. You are a girl. They must let you be a girl!’
‘But,’ Mary whispered, ‘I’m not just a girl. I’m a princess.’
Lady Shelton wasn’t listening. She was over at the fireplace, burning the paper with the remains of the henbane in it.
‘Never, never will I credit it,’ Lady Shelton was muttering to herself, while she angrily poked at the logs to make the flames leap up. ‘They may be a king and a queen, but never was there such a terrible pair of parents.’
The word made Mary think. She didn’t miss the king and queen at all, she realised. She was sad, she had been so sad, because she missed her father and mother.
Chapter 24
January 1536, Hunsdon
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br /> Lady Shelton was right; things did get better. But first they had to get worse. It was a dark day when news came of Mary’s mother’s death, but it was hardly surprising. She would never forget how kindly, how gently, Lady Shelton broke it to her.
‘Her last words were of the king, your father,’ Lady Shelton said. ‘But you know what she was thinking? She was thinking of you and your position. Everyone knows that her last words would be reported back to him. And that it would be best for you if her last words were that she was still loyal to him, despite … everything.’
Mary did know what Lady Shelton meant. Her mother had explained to her, in her own words, about the importance of doing things for show, for politics. But still it gave her a stabbing pain in the stomach to think that her mother had spoken of her father in her last breath, and not of Mary herself. Still playing the game, then, to the very end.
Mary sat silent and bereft. Her mother had died as a queen, not as Mary’s mother. She felt a great big mother-shaped hole in her heart.
‘And there’s more.’
Mary couldn’t believe that there was ‘more’. More what? More accusations? She sat utterly still, staring into the flaming heart of the fire.
She knew that some people would think that she had caused her own mother’s death by her refusal to sign the Act of Succession. Should she have signed? Should she have had her mother released from that dangerous prison in the marshes? Had Master Cromwell been right after all?
‘No,’ said Lady Shelton fiercely. ‘I can see what you are thinking. It was not your fault, it was never your fault. She … it’s almost as if she wanted to die.’
‘But that means she wanted to leave me behind,’ Mary said blankly.
‘To leave you behind to continue the fight, for her rights, and for your own. And that’s why you can’t give up now. Do you understand what your mother’s death means, for your own position?’
What a stupid question, Mary cried inside her heart. It means I am all alone in the world! She almost wanted to plunge her hand into the flames, so that they would eat her up and she could travel to Heaven, where her mother would be waiting for her.
But Lady Shelton was gently snapping her fingers in Mary’s face, even cradling her cheek, bringing her back to reality.
‘This is what I believe,’ Lady Shelton was saying. ‘I believe that your mother did not, perhaps … resist death, as much as a Christian should have. But I also believe that she did it for a reason, which is to set you free, Mary.’
Mary could not bear this foolishness.
‘How does this set me free, Lady Shelton?’ she said. Indeed, she half shouted the words. ‘Am I not still practically in prison?’
Lady Shelton sat down beside Mary’s chair, crouching on the floor-rushes. They had long got past being gaoler and prisoner, even mistress and servant. They were a team. She clutched Mary’s hand and squeezed it to get her full attention. Slowly, Mary’s mind returned from Kimbolton and the marshes, and back to her bedchamber here at Hunsdon.
Lady Shelton was waiting for her to be ready. Well, Mary thought, perhaps I had better listen, at least, to what she has to say.
‘Now,’ Lady Shelton began. ‘You understand that your father … cast aside your mother to marry my niece Anne?’ Mary nodded. She didn’t like to think about it, but it was true. It had been her father’s strange desire for that woman, a desire she couldn’t fully comprehend, that had destroyed her family.
‘It was a big thing to do,’ Lady Shelton continued, ‘very difficult, very expensive. And, as a result, my niece was very secure in her position as queen. If the king gave her up, why then, it would all have been a waste of time. Offending the Pope, offending the emperor, offending all right-thinking people.’
Mary nodded. Yes, he could be as obstinate as her mother, in his own way. Once her father had set his heart on the lady, it would have hurt his pride to have changed his mind.
‘Pig,’ she whispered. ‘He is a pig.’
‘He’s a pig,’ Lady Shelton agreed, ‘but a pig caught in a trap. Because my niece the queen –’ here she glanced round to make absolutely sure the room was entirely empty – ‘has not been able to make him happy in recent months. He is tired of her. Everyone at court is saying that now your mother is dead, he will set her aside.’
‘Set her aside?’ Mary must have looked as surprised as she felt. Surely this miserable blight upon her life, her stepmother, would never lift. Surely not.
‘Yes!’ whispered Lady Shelton, her voice low. ‘Not even I love my niece any longer,’ she admitted. She was speaking very, very softly. ‘She has turned proud, and cruel. It could be that she will not be queen for much longer. The people support you, Mary. The guards have told me that they have intercepted, oh, more letters and messages and gifts than ever, this last week.’ Lady Shelton’s voice grew warm, and full of consolation. ‘Your time is coming,’ she continued. ‘The tide will turn. Remember I told you that before?’
Mary did remember – it had been the night of her failed escape. If Master Cromwell hadn’t prevented her from leaving that night, she would perhaps have had the chance to see her mother one last time to say goodbye.
‘My mother also said that,’ Mary admitted. ‘She said that the Wheel of Fortune may take me high but also cast me low.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Shelton, almost tartly. ‘I think you have been about as low as is possible. I think that God will decide that the tide in your fortunes must change. And what else would your mother say?’
Mary had told Lady Shelton often enough, since they had become confidantes, about what her mother was like.
‘She would tell me to be a bloody stubborn blood-drinker,’ she said begrudgingly. ‘And to wait for better days.’
***
It was a few weeks later that Lady Shelton’s prediction took solid form. Mary was still at Hunsdon, sitting at the high table in the hall, pretending to eat. She had lost the gains she had made since her release from the Hatfield attics, and could feel herself growing thin and gaunt again. With her mother dead, she hardly cared.
This particular dinner hour, there was a commotion in the courtyard. Just like the time the Duke of Norfolk came to take me away to Hatfield, Mary thought warily. The idea led to Nan Hussey, who back then had been sitting at the table with Mary. Mary had no idea where Nan was now. She prayed that Nan had been allowed to retire quietly to the Husseys’ country estates, to recover her health after her incarceration in the Tower.
The door burst open, just as before.
This time it was two gentlemen who came in, bristling slightly, and shooting each other glances out of the corners of their eyes. Clearly they were at odds. There was an elaborate pantomime of courtesy about who should approach her first.
Mary was surprised to realise that they were Sir Nicholas Carew and Master Cromwell, two people she had never thought to see together.
Master Cromwell stretched out his arms as he approached the table with his usual waddling gait. He pushed his fists into his arched back, stiff as usual from the ride.
‘Yes, we are odd travelling fellows, are we not?’
Sir Nicholas merely glowered at him. He paced in with grace, like a cat. A few hours on horseback from London presented him with no challenge.
‘Yes, we are here together,’ Sir Nicholas said, in response to the question that Mary was looking at him with. ‘We come in common cause. But first things first. I am deeply, deeply sorry for the death of your mother, the queen.’
His hat was off his head, and he dipped his chin so low that his beard touched his chest. Although his gesture almost hid his face, Mary could tell that he was sincerely moved.
She inclined her head, willing herself to remain glacially calm and not to give way to her grief. She needed her wits about her. She had an overwhelming need to question Sir Nicholas. What could he tell her? When had he last seen her mother? But she did not want to ask him anything in the presence of that cruel slug Master Cromwell.
All three of them stood there, uncertain. Eventually, Mary’s curiosity overcame her.
‘So, why are you here?’ she asked bluntly, sitting down again.
She knew that there must be two serving men standing just outside the door. ‘Have you been offered ale?’ she asked, loud enough for them to hear. The enquiring face of one of the men appeared round the door frame, ready to take an order.
‘No, no,’ said Master Cromwell irritably. ‘We don’t need refreshments. Now shut the door, my good man, and leave us alone.’
As the door banged shut, Mary thought warily that maybe she should have requested a witness for what might follow. She imagined the way that Lady Shelton would raise her eyebrows and look coolly down her nose at Cromwell’s squat figure. She drew herself up to do the same thing.
‘To business,’ Cromwell said.
He splatted his palm down heartily on the table near to her. Sir Nicholas slowly turned his gaze upon Cromwell, as if to signal distaste, but not his entire dismissal of what Cromwell was about to say.
‘It’s the death of your mother, the late dowager princess,’ Cromwell began, ‘that changes everything. As you know, your father, the king, is growing a little tired of your stepmother, the queen.’
Mary gasped. She had heard these rumours, but to have such treasonable matters spelled out, aloud! It was unthinkable.
‘I thought you were a good friend to the Lady Anne Boleyn,’ she said distantly. ‘Do you now betray her, as you betrayed my mother, and me?’
‘I serve the king,’ said Master Cromwell pointedly. ‘Not the queen. I have no agenda other than to serve the needs of my royal master. He knows this, and has rewarded me well for it. My master now requires me to … rid him of a marriage that has become an encumbrance and a chore to him. He endured it as long as your mother endured, out of, well, propriety and dignity.’