Frances and Mary approached a little alcove that had been screened off for privacy. Instead of a cot, there was a real bed with gauzy curtains. Frances pulled aside one of the panels, and there lay their cousin Margaret.
“Jesu,” expostulated Frances. The last time she had seen Lady Margaret Douglas was before her recent imprisonment in the Tower. The girl had been plump, sleek, pink-cheeked and happy when last she saw her. The wraith that lay before them here, with her pale face and sunken, dark-ringed eyes, looked even whiter than the linen sheets upon which she lay.
Mary had not seen her cousin Margaret for a long time, so she was less shocked by her appearance than Frances, but it was obvious that the girl was very ill. “What ails her?” whispered Mary.
Frances grunted. “Dame Agnes says she languishes of a broken heart. The doctors say she is ill of a fever and have bled her almost to death. If she had the sense of a rabbit, which she evidently does not, she would die of shame for being in such disgrace. In any wise, she looks not long for this world.”
Mary said nothing. It was obvious that the pragmatic Frances did not believe in the power of the heart to kill. But Mary knew otherwise. Her own dear mother had not died of poison, as so many believed, but of a broken heart. Had not her heart been found to be black and corroded when the chandler at Kimbolton had removed it from her body?
“I can hear you, you know,” said a high, thin, childish voice.
“If you can, then it is a miracle,” retorted Frances. “I never saw anyone look so close to death. Take heart, girl! He is not dead yet!”
“I know. But they have attainted him and taken everything from him, and now he is to lose his head.” Tears welled up in Margaret’s great dark eyes, making them look even larger in the wasted face. “Dame Agnes is right,” she said. “I shall die of a broken heart and my dear Tom shall die of shame, and the headsman’s axe. What have we done that is so wrong?” she wailed, but her voice was so weak it sounded like the mewing of a kitten.
“God’s eyeballs, Margaret!” cried Frances. “How can you even ask such a question, with the succession in the state that it is in? But since you ask, let me see…” She placed an index finger to her cheek and raised her eyes to the ceiling in a mockery of thought. “The king has made bastards of his daughters, excluding them from the succession, Fitzroy rots in an obscure grave in Norfolk, and you, the daughter of the king’s eldest sister, indulge in a love affair with a highly unsuitable candidate. Whereas I…”
Margaret frowned. “There is no need to mock me, Frances. It is true that I am the king’s niece and the daughter of his elder sister. But my mother is the queen mother of Scotland. For that reason alone the English people would never accept me as their queen.”
“Nor would they willingly accept me,” snorted Frances. “I am the king’s niece and the daughter of his beloved younger sister, but my father is a commoner and for that reason alone,” she mimicked Margaret’s words with a dramatic wave of her hands, “I would never be accepted as queen by the English people. But if all else should fail, we are still in the line of succession, and if there were no one else, the people,” again that mocking voice! “…would have no choice. Therefore, we must be circumspect in our behavior at all times.” The word “commoner” hung on the air for a few moments; Jane was also a commoner. But she was queen and the wife of the king. And it was true that she had Plantagenet blood, albeit so watered down as to be meaningless. But Cranmer had still gone through the motions of granting Henry and Jane a formal dispensation to marry.
Margaret sniffed. “That is easy for you to say, cousin, you are married to the man you love!” And with that she began to cry quietly.
“God’s blood, Margaret, must you snivel so?” snapped Frances. “And husbands are not for loving. I did not love Henry Grey when I married him. I was told to marry him and I did so. A daughter’s duty, with the consent of the king.” She folded her hands and leaned back against the wall, tipping her stool backwards onto two legs as she did so.
Mary sighed. “Forsooth, Frances, must you always swear like a sailor? And you love your husband now, do you not?”
Frances jerked her chin forward. “My dear cousin, it would intrigue me to know to what depths you have sunk in order that you should know what sailors’ oaths sound like!” No reply to this sally being forthcoming from Mary, Frances said, “What matters it if I do love him? I would have learnt to love whomever I married. That is a wife’s duty, is it not?”
Mary smiled. It was well-known that Henry Grey was a biddable fool and that Frances ruled the roost; but it was equally obvious to all that she loved him dearly.
Margaret ran a finger under her runny nose from knuckle to wrist in an inelegant gesture, and made an effort to rise on her pillow. Mary quickly rose to help her, and smoothed the straying red curls from her brow in a loving gesture. She loved both of her cousins, but Margaret had always been her favorite. Frances was so strong and self-willed that she did not inspire the sort of protective love that Mary felt for poor Margaret. Frances had said that Margaret had not the sense of a rabbit, and her secret love affair and betrothal to an uncle of Anne Boleyn could be said to be proof of that. But Mary did so envy her cousin the experience of a love that she herself had never known, and things being what they were, was not likely to.
“What has happened to Fitzroy?” asked Margaret. “In the Tower one receives no news, and now I have been ill here for so long. And I verily believe that not a bit of news from the outside world has penetrated these walls since they were built!” She waved an expansive hand at the vast stone hall that was the monastery’s infirmary. “What has happened?”
Frances rocked back and forth on her stool, using the wall as a buttress. “As you know, Fitzroy has always been in somewhat delicate health,” she said. “As lately as Uncle’s visit to Parliament in June, it was expected that His Grace would name Fitzroy as his heir. But it was obvious even then that Cousin Henry was very ill.”
The lively discussion made Margaret seem more animated, and a bit of colour returned to her wan cheeks. “Name a bastard as heir to the throne! Never!” she expostulated. There was an awkward silence and then Margaret looked at Mary and said, “But has not the king…?”
“Named me bastard as well?” asked Mary, with arched brows. “So he has. But there is a vast difference between being born a bastard and being declared one on a whim!”
“Just so,” said Frances. “But now the point where Fitzroy is concerned is moot. Just after the king so ostentatiously displayed him in front of Parliament for all and sundry to speculate upon him as a possible heir to the throne, he began coughing blood. Inside of three weeks he was dead. Being of no further use, and if the truth be known, a bit of an embarrassment, Norfolk was instructed to trundle the body off and bury it without ceremony in the hinterland, to be forgotten as soon as possible. Our grandfather died of consumption as well, you know. But no one expected Fitzroy to give up the ghost quite so soon.”
Mary shook her head. There had never been any love lost between her and her bastard half-brother, but still… “Frances,” she said, “you are incorrigible!”
“I am a realist,” said Frances, with a shrug. “Fitzroy’s death means nothing, as he meant nothing in himself. Mary, you are now heir apparent whether Uncle declares it to be so or not. Fitzroy was always viewed as a last resort, when he was considered at all, and now he is not even that.”
Margaret shuddered. “Enough of this morbid talk,” she said. “I am tired. My poor Tom…” The tears welled up again and with that she turned her face to the wall once again and began to cry.
Mary and Frances exchanged glances. They both arose, kissed their cousin and left her to her grief. They both knew that nothing could save her lover now.
Once outside again, the violent storm having blown itself out, Frances raised her arm to her forehead to shield it from the golden light, where the sun would soon dip below the horizon. The bells would soon be ringing for Vespers. “Let
us to the stillroom, Mary. I would speak with Dame Agnes.”
Mary shuddered; had it not been for her desire to see Margaret, she would not have set foot into Syon; this was the house of Richard Reynolds, one of the four religious men who had been murdered by her father for their refusal to swear their oath to the Act of Supremacy. She had felt the ghost of Brother Richard at her heels during this entire visit, and she was keen now to depart the place. But it would be penance to stay when it made her feel so uncomfortable to do so. “All right,” Mary replied.
They found Dame Agnes, the formidable abbess of the Syon nunnery, boiling feathers in the stillroom. The monastery housed both men and women, in different parts of the complex of buildings. Under Dame Agnes’ aegis, the Syon nunnery was the richest in all of England. This was due in part to her head for business and her administrative skills, but owed just as much to her thrift. The nunnery raised geese on the ponds, and used them for food; but nothing here was ever wasted, and all the down from the geese was plucked, boiled, dried and packed into sacks for sale to the various shops in London that made beds and pillows for the wealthy. The Dame never required her sisters to do any task that she herself was not prepared to perform, and so Frances and Mary found the redoubtable lady with her sleeves rolled up, sweating over a vat of boiling water, which she stirred with a great wooden pole.
Upon seeing the two royal ladies, she ceased her stirring and climbed down from the stool on which she had been standing. “Your Graces,” she said. “We are honored.”
Mary did not correct her; Frances, not having been attainted with the stain of bastardy, was still Your Grace, whereas she was now only Your Highness. But as long as she was with Frances, she felt that being addressed so was safe enough. She had a fleeting thought of poor Lady Hussey, still languishing in the Tower for nothing more than the casual words that had just escaped Dame Agnes’ lips. What a strange world it was.
“How now, Dame Agnes,” said Frances. “What ails our cousin in truth? She does indeed look quite ill.”
Dame Agnes pursed her lips. “The child will not eat,” she replied. “Nothing more ails her than that. Her heart is broken, and she means to starve herself to death.”
“Cannot she be forced to eat?” Frances went always directly to the point of any matter; she was impatient with those who minced words.
Dame Agnes, a rather tall, slender woman with somewhat blunt features that belied her willowy figure, pursed her ample lips. “The girl has great courage, but when the pain becomes too great to bear, we are able to persuade her to take a little broth. She does not have the will to die, in my opinion, and so she will not. She is young and has much to live for. As much as she loves, she still has the will to live. We will nurse her past this great heartbreak, never fear. It will not be an easy thing to do, but rest assured, we will succeed.”
Frances regarded Dame Agnes and recognized her strength. She was a woman with power in a man’s world, in a man’s church, a down-to-earth woman with great good sense, and obviously, many talents. Like recognized like. “If she takes a turn for the worse, my lady, please send for me. I will hold her nose and force her to eat!”
Dame Agnes smiled. “I have no doubt of it, Your Grace. But do not worry. I have had in my charge many broken-hearted young girls. I have lost none yet!”
They thanked the abbess, who nodded, climbed her stool, and began stirring the vat of feathers once more.
Mary shivered. It was twilight and the bells were ringing for Vespers. A feeling of great uneasiness set upon her as the darkness began to close in. “Frances, please, let us leave this place.”
Frances put her arm around her cousin. “Yes, let us go. Margaret is in good hands, methinks, and we need not worry for her. I am certain that Uncle will not send her back to the Tower. What good would it do, after all? They are separated now forever. Time will pass, she will forget. Mark my words. Uncle will find her a suitable match and she will put out of her mind this unfortunate episode. And God send that she had learnt some sense from it!”
Mary was not so sure. Margaret had not shown the best judgment, but she obviously loved Lord Howard, one of the many brothers of the Duke of Norfolk. She wondered how his death would affect her cousin. For die he must; and if there was one thing she had learnt, it was that her father would not stop at murder and call it justice.
Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, September 1536
The day was fine and clear as the hawking party made its way up the last rise. The Lady Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, found that she was not able to keep up on her little gray palfrey. But that was all right with her. She disapproved of hawking as a sport and was always slightly sickened by its bloody results. She would have been pleased to lag behind all day, if such had been allowed. But for now, she would content herself with keeping at a distance and using her mount as the excuse.
Farther up the hill her father, the Duke of Norfolk, and her brother, the Earl of Surrey, were engaged in an intense discussion as their mounts labored up the steep slope. She regarded her father’s back on his great bay stallion. The Duke of Norfolk indulged in little leisure time, but that little was usually occupied by the blood sports of hunting and hawking. How like him, she mused. Any opportunity to kill something!
Her brother stole a look back to see where she was. In her gray riding habit, on her gray palfrey, and moving as slowly as she was, he at first was not able to see her clearly. But soon he made out her dainty little figure, mounted on the palfrey, which was carefully picking its way up the hill. He did not wave, but as always, the connection between them was made. She knew he was looking for her, and he knew that she had seen him.
Mary smiled to herself every time she recalled the reason why she was wearing the gray of mourning. Her husband was dead. She did not dare let on how happy that made her; only her brother knew how she really felt, although many others surmised. Her mother, the Duchess, her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, and her brother had all been incensed when her father had proposed to the king that he marry her to the Duke of Richmond. Duke indeed! The brat was the bastard son of the king, nothing more. Her beloved father had not hesitated to sacrifice his legitimate daughter on the altar of his great ambition. And it had all been for nothing. When Richmond had died, she was not even allowed to keep her dower lands, because the marriage had never been consummated. But she thanked heaven that this was so, as she surely would have gained nothing but the French Pox from such a liaison. The king’s insistence that the marriage not be consummated due to his fears for Fitzroy’s health was utter bosh; her husband’s exploits in France were well known. Ah, well, she thought, it is all over now! Perhaps now her father would arrange a true marriage for her.
She regarded her brother’s back as he sat his horse so elegantly. He had one hand on the pommel and on his other wrist, perched on a splendid leather gauntlet, sat his favorite gyrfalcon. The gyrfalcon was a royal bird; her brother, so conscious of his lineage and pedigree, would fly no other bird. Henry, Earl of Surrey, was broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, and so handsome that his mistresses were legion. He was a renowned poet. He was in every way, in her opinion, more qualified to be king of England than that buffoon who now sat on the throne.
The Howards were descended, in the legitimate line, from Edward the First and had Plantagenet blood; she and her brother were twice descended from the Plantagenets, being descendants of Edward the Third on their mother’s side. Although the king was descended in the legitimate line on his mother’s side, he was descended from an illegitimate line on his father’s. Henry the Seventh had won the crown by right of battle, but he and all his descendants bore the taint of bastardy. Had there been any justice, her grandfather, the Duke of Buckingham, would have been king, not Henry, the eighth of that name. But he had been beheaded by the king and would never now rule the land.
What a king her brother would have made! She lifted her arm to shade her eyes as she topped the rise, regarding him once again in all his splendid glory, and
a rush of feelings assailed her. Pride, desire, wistfulness, excitement…If only she could have married her brother! It was a blasphemous thought, she knew, but she cared not. She could only hope that she did not die, because she was constantly in a state of mortal sin, not wishing to share her incestuous thoughts with her confessor. Treasonous thoughts and incestuous ones…either way one looked at it, she was doomed. She smiled her wry little smile again.
They were on the downward slope now. She was gaining on the rest of the party despite her efforts to hold the palfrey back as gravity pulled it more quickly down the hill. The party was approaching the second of the two meres on the Framlingham estate, where the hawking was at its best this time of year. The mere lay below them like an oval mirror, reflecting the perfect sky. Her father, as usual, had brought three birds, two peregrines and a goshawk. These were tended for him by his hawk master, who had perched the birds, hooded and jessed, onto a platform carried on a dray.
The duke looked back impatiently at her. He knew that his daughter disliked the sight of blood, and this was why he had insisted on her joining them for the day’s hawking. She was a Howard, and should show some backbone.
“Catch us up, girl!” he bellowed. “If you cannot keep up on that ridiculous animal, perhaps we should get you a stouter beast!” He also knew that the girl was afraid of horses unless they were no bigger than herself. He would have to look into getting her a decent mare, now that she was back in his control. The marriage to Fitzroy had served its purpose at the time. But the boy was dead and buried, and now he must use his daughter to make a profitable new alliance with some other likely family. Thomas Howard was a king’s man, and as Duke of Norfolk, the most powerful man after the king in the realm. But it was not the king he loved; it was the king’s power.
“I am weary of these jumped-up, common lickspittles!” he roared, apropos of nothing.
There was an indefinable connection between these Howards; his son knew exactly the threads of thought that his father must have been entertaining to expostulate such an idea. At court such a notion would have been better left unsaid; but Surrey knew that they were safe here in Suffolk, on their own lands, and could speak their minds.
The Baker's Daughter Volume 1 Page 29