The Baker's Daughter Volume 1

by Bonny G Smith

  She dried her face, smoothed her dress, and made her way to the king’s rooms.

  “Ah,” he said as she entered. He lifted a tankard and offered it to her. “Drink this, it is warm. Sit here by the fire; you must be chilled to the bone.” Henry regarded her speculatively as he sipped the mulled ale from his own steaming cup. Finally he laid the cup aside and said, “Was your journey tolerable?”

  Mary smiled. “Only just. It is a dreary time of year for travel.”

  Henry steepled his fingers and tapped them on his chin, looking at her with hooded eyes. Was there just the hint of a rebuke there? He had not summoned her, after all; she had come because she was afraid, and rightly so.

  The fire crackled and snapped and the silence became deafening. What did he expect her to say? Mary remained still and quiet, sipping her ale. Best to let him make the first move in what she now suspected was another of his mental games of chess. Only in this game, the chessmen were live people. People who could lose their heads.

  Henry lifted his painful leg and placed it on a footstool, wincing as he did so. He twitched and pulled at the white cloth puffed through the many slashes in his sleeves. Still he said nothing.

  Mary closed her eyes; she had not realized how weary she was. When Henry finally broke the silence, she realized that she had almost been asleep where she sat.

  “I have had offers for your hand,” he said. He eyed her carefully to gauge her response.

  Mary opened her eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but the cold air she had been exposed to all day finally had its way and she began to cough uncontrollably. Henry leaned forward, picked up her tankard and held it out to her, but she waved it away with a hand so white and delicate that it seemed almost transparent in the firelight.

  “It…will…pass,” she said between deep breaths and hacking gasps. Finally, the fit ended, and she lifted the cup in an unsteady hand. She sipped the now tepid liquid. “I am s-sorry, Your Grace,” she said, with almost a laugh. “I confess that that is the last thing I expected to hear you say!”

  Henry watched her carefully through slitted eyes. Genuine? Contrived? “Why so?” he asked.

  Mary snorted inelegantly. “I am sorry, My Lord, but not to put too fine a point on it, who would want me?”

  There was a definite rebuke in that remark. You are the one who has made me a bastard!

  “Yes, well, your cousin Charles has been pressing the suit of Dom Luis for some time now.”

  Chapuys had not told her that! Mary struggled to keep her face impassive. “Indeed,” she said. “I knew nothing of it.”

  Henry toyed with a dish of dried figs that sat on the table next to him, tipping it by its rim and then watching it right itself when he let go. Twice it came perilously close to the edge of the table before he spoke again. “He wants to keep you out of the hands of the French,” he finally said, without looking at her. “What with one thing and another we have as yet no new alliance to replace the old ones.”

  Mary thought quickly. Dom Luis was the brother of the king of Portugal, and another cousin, being the son of Katharine’s older sister Maria, just as Charles was the son of Katharine’s sister Joanna. A dispensation would be needed. But he was Catholic. She shrugged. What game was her father playing? He would never allow her to marry a Catholic prince. Would he?

  When Mary looked up it was to find her father gazing at her intently. It was as though he could see her thoughts written plainly on her face, and she felt a hot blush rising up from her neck to her hairline. In the red glow of the fire, she hoped that her father would not notice it.

  She used a delicate hand to brush back a stray lock of hair that was as red as the fire. “The French? And what have they to do with this?” she asked with a smirk.

  Henry bared his teeth, but what resulted was not a smile. Very quietly he said, “The Duc d’ Orleans is eligible.”

  Another Catholic! Why did he persist in taunting her?

  “Both Charles and François are making your legitimization a condition of marriage,” he said.

  Of course, thought Mary. In the eyes of all of Catholic Europe she was thoroughly and indisputably legitimate. But in England she was not, and until she was made legitimate, which Henry, as Supreme Head of the Church in England could do with the stroke of well-sharpened quill any time he chose, she would never be able to inherit her father’s throne, even if no other heirs stood in her way. Suddenly she saw the whole thing very clearly. The Portuguese prince and the French duke both had their eyes on the English throne; Henry was playing them off against each other to keep the eternal tug-of-war between the Holy Roman Empire and France alive and well. Her father had no intention of making her legitimate. He certainly had no intention of keeping his promise to do so to Aske and the hapless north men, now dying by the dozens at Norfolk’s pitiless hands. He likely had no intention of ever letting her marry at all, least of all to a Catholic prince who would promptly raise an army and try to claim her throne. It was as if the last pieces of a puzzle one had struggled with all fell into place at once.

  “And then there is Reginald,” he said, so softly that she almost didn’t hear him.

  At this she felt her blood run cold.

  “It was a clever plan,” he said, pulling at the puffs in his slashed sleeves again, seeking to get each one just right. “Hussey was your Lord Chamberlain. It explains why Lady Hussey was so eager to entertain our erstwhile pilgrims.” He practically spat out the word. “Yes, Hussey thought to raise an army, depose me, place you on the throne and rule in your stead. But his plans would have come to naught very quickly. Do you know why?”

  Mary’s mouth had gone dry and she had begun to shake uncontrollably. “I knew nothing of such a plan, Your Grace. You must believe me.”

  “Oh, forsooth, I believe you, Daughter. Hah!” he expostulated. “Why, do you think that any of them would have asked your permission?”

  Mary was unsure whether to be relieved or not. She looked at him quizzically.

  Henry stopped toying with the bowl of figs, which had been making the most annoying noise as it leapt about the table, and threw one of the wizened pieces up into the air, catching it in his mouth. It was such a boyish thing to do; Mary wished the moment had been different so that she could have congratulated him on his clever catch. As it was, she sat stiff in her chair, clutching at the arms as if to keep herself upright.

  “They would not,” he said. “I know that. You would have been nothing but a pawn in their schemes for power. And if any of them thought that our Lord Cardinal Pole would have just stood by and let others rule in his stead, then they are the exact fools I have always taken them for. But no matter. They will all pay with their heads.”

  Mary’s stomach gave a dangerous lurch as her father’s words brought to mind the mouldering heads on the pikes at London Bridge.

  Her father smiled suddenly. “But all of it is now of no account in any wise,” he said. “None whatever, for you see, the queen is with child.”

  Chapter 12

  “Despite the magnificent [baptismal] ceremony, the celebrations were muted. This was not the longed-for male heir, but a girl.”

  – Anna Whitelock, “Mary Tudor, Princess Bastard, Queen”

  Greenwich Palace, August 1537

  Up and up, from out of the comfort of the darkness she rose. Then there was that blessed moment between sleeping and waking when the mind has not yet remembered its woes. For that instant, one seems poised on the edge of something fine, perhaps wonderful, and then like the rush of the incoming tide, memory floods the brain and one is back on the desolate shore of consciousness, stranded, shipwrecked, lost, alone. The pain returns and one realizes that there is nothing left but to carry on…or give up.

  Mary was not certain what had ripped open that soothing curtain between the calming oblivion of unconsciousness and the waking world, and then she heard it again. It was the booming of the Tower cannon. Muted, because of the distance, but still there, shredding the peac
eful somnolence of a summer afternoon. The silent tears welled up and fell from her closed eyes; she had not the strength to open them, nor did she wish to open them to the blinding light of a hot June afternoon.

  She lay there, sweltering in a bed that felt like a seething cauldron of heat and humidity. She had not meant to sleep, but she could not help herself. For over a week now she had been sick unto death with a malady that none could name. The last time she had seen Juan de Soto, her apothecary, he had been decked out in black velvet and satin, riding a fine bay stallion with a silver bridle. She could always tell how sick she had been by how prosperous her servants were. And John Potecary had been made most free of her privy purse all this summer.

  The thoughts she was avoiding came flooding back and soon her mind returned to the meaning of that far-off explosion. It meant that her former Lord Chamberlain had just lost his head. Poor Lady Hussey, she who had been kept prisoner in the Tower for months simply for addressing her as princess! And now she had lost her husband. Many more had died in this mean, cruel spring, and more deaths were soon to follow. It was too horrible to contemplate.

  She dared not move lest Mistress Knight, who was sitting vigil at her bedside, should begin to fuss. But she would have paid the Devil himself for a sup of water at that moment. She kept her eyes closed, lay still, and tried to think of something pleasant, something beautiful…

  It was just a month since Jane had looked so radiantly happy on Trinity Sunday, appearing in public for the first time in the open-laced gown and stomacher of a pregnant woman. A Te Deum had been sung in every church in the land to celebrate the queen’s quickening. When her father had so gloatingly informed her in February that Jane was with child, it had by no means been a certainty. But as March slipped into April, and finally the child began to move in the queen’s womb, uncertainty was banished and a great burst of joy exploded across the land. The timing could not have been better; a dark pall had seemed to descend over the realm as the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace were hunted down, imprisoned, tried and executed. Hundreds of men, high and low, had been put to death to assuage the angry king’s wrath. None had been spared, lay and cleric, man and master alike, they had been hanged, beheaded, burnt, and drawn and quartered as befitted their station. None had been spared.

  Mary suppressed a sigh, lest Frideswide, Mistress Knight, stir and begin to minister cold cloths and wine sops. It was far better to lie still. But even pleasant thoughts, such as Jane’s brilliant happiness at finally conceiving, turned quickly into the bleak thoughts she had just been thinking. Try again.

  During Mary’s late winter visit to Greenwich Palace, the king had been so pleased with Jane that he had presented her with an elaborate cup made of rare Welsh gold, studded with diamonds and pearls. This was followed by an emerald and pearl pendant that he had designed himself, with help from Master Holbein, and had commissioned to be made especially for her by the finest goldsmith in London. The emeralds were so rare that when they arrived, the ship that brought them had also carried a pair of leopards from the same land for the Tower bestiary. The leopards were a nine days’ wonder but Jane had eyes for nothing but her trinkets.

  In the midst of the joyous celebrations, Mary was continually troubled by thoughts of Aske, who had been tried and convicted of treason, and who now languished in the Tower. Mary pondered anew the duplicity with which the entire debacle had been managed; it was staggering. A man is only as good as his word, after all, and how much more so a king’s word? And yet her father had broken his sworn word to Aske, and justified his betrayal with Bigod’s misbegotten rebellion. For Bigod, she had nothing but contempt; but for Aske…she worried constantly about what was to become of him. He had been tried and convicted, but not yet executed. To a condemned man that may seem a hopeful sign, but to Mary, who knew her father well, it was ominous.

  Lord Darcy was to be executed on the morrow, and the executions being carried out in the north by Norfolk were now a daily occurrence. No one was spared, not even the women, and boys as young as twelve were being hung and left to rot as a warning to others.

  All this worry and uncertainty had served to make her very ill indeed. Was there no means of diverting her mind from this terrible situation? Once again she directed her thoughts to Jane. It was hard not to be happy for her stepmother. On the face of it, Jane was a gentle and biddable creature, but Mary recognized the steely determination behind her placid demeanor. And Mary’s own feelings about being supplanted by Jane’s child were far from settled. Men wanted a strong man to lead them. The idea of a woman in such a position of power and authority was inconceivable to most. Chapuys and the lords of the north could bandy about the name of Queen Isabella all they liked, but this was not Spain. If Jane bore a son, her own hopes were doomed. She would never be allowed to marry while her father lived, and a brother would be no less unsympathetic to her plight. The future, when viewed in such a manner, stretched out long and lonely before her.

  Suddenly a thought struck her and she stirred. Instantly Mistress Knight was on her feet. “My lady?” she said tentatively.

  “Yes, yes,” said Mary, her throbbing head threatening to make her temper short. “I am wakeful. Tell me, for I am forgetful of it, were the quails sent to the queen?”

  Frideswide Knight had served Katharine of Aragon as a maid of honor, and now that she was allowed to do so by Mary’s return to favor, served her daughter. “Yes, My Lady,” she replied. “And I believe that Her Grace has been said to prefer them over the birds sent by Lord Lisle from Calais.”

  That did make Mary smile; she and the king’s uncle were in a friendly rivalry over the quails which the queen had begun craving at the onset of her pregnancy. Mary herself had never been partial to the birds; she found them overly greasy and with not enough to them to sate the appetite. The thought of food at that moment made her unaccountably nauseous and she swallowed. “Mistress Knight,” said Mary, “some wine, if you please, and water it well…”

  Mistress Knight parted the gauzy bed curtains that had sheltered Mary from the late afternoon glare, but the day was on the wane and the sun had crept behind the palace, leaving Mary’s chamber in shadow. She handed Mary a cup.

  All of a sudden Mary said, “I want to go home. I want to go back to Beaulieu. Pray, Mistress Knight, give the order. Make all ready. I want go home.”

  Hampton Court Palace, September 1537

  Lady Jane Rochford stole up on quiet, slippered feet to the great, elaborate bed that used to belong to her sister-in-law. No one, not even her enemies, could have accused Anne of lack of taste; there was nothing gaudy about the bed. It was, if one were willing to admit that it was so, a work of art. Graceful carvings were gilt in a color slightly more muted than gold; an alloy, perhaps. It was a light metallic color that seemed as if it were not of this world. The carvings included vines so delicate and finely wrought that one would have thought they lived; that if you were to be very still and wait, you might actually be able to observe them growing. The hangings were of delicate silks and gauzes in varying shades of blue and green, as befitted the summer; when the weather turned, the heavier, more richly coloured velvet hangings would be brought out.

  The air was still and very hot. It was dank in the room, and dim. It was full day outside, but the shutters were pulled, and not a breath of air stirred. Lady Rochford extended a silent hand and lifted the gauzy stuff of the curtains. In the light that stole in through the cracks in the shutters, which was mingled subtly with the more immediate glow of a single candle, the slumbering queen looked very young. But the truth was she was old to be having a first child. Almost thirty! What on earth was the king thinking, she wondered? If Henry had been bewitched by Anne, which he evidently had been, one could forgive him. Men were stupid and blind where someone of Anne’s siren-like nature was concerned, and were to be pitied for their folly…even a king. Perhaps especially a king. But why had he not learnt his lesson? Anne was gone and it was the king’s duty to make an alliance with Fr
ance or the Empire, with a marriage of state to a suitable princess. If it was an heir he sought, what had possessed him to marry a plain spinster, and his own subject, who was approaching the end of her child bearing days, and had never proven herself?

  Lady Rochford had a stake in Jane’s safe delivery, male or female. She had done the king a signal favor by providing him with the single piece of evidence against Anne that could seal her fate. If one were a true Christian or had a strong enough political motive, one could forgive an infidelity or two. But incest was anathema and an unforgivable sin. She had rid herself of a selfish, despicable husband and her hated sister-in-law with the same swift, deadly stroke of the sword. After an absurdly short period of time, Lady Rochford, who had been banished from court with the rest of the Boleyns after Anne’s arrest, was not only reinstated in the royal favor, but was made Mistress of the Queen’s Bedchamber. There was no higher position, and she was in charge of all the queen’s ladies. She had also been allowed to retain a surprising number of her husband’s estates. Such favor had not gone unnoticed, but few dared to speculate on its meaning. Anne’s ship had sailed; it was time to move on.

  Move on indeed, thought Lady Rochford. It was almost more difficult to think of Jane Seymour as queen than it had been to have to treat Anne as queen. Anne had been despicable; Jane was sly and underhand. Neither woman possessed an ounce of royalty in her opinion, despite being able to trace their pedigrees back to the early Plantagenets. Probably half the realm could do so if one included all the illegitimate children.