“Forsooth, Mary, if you go on this way, you will make yourself ill, and then what good will you be? My own child is there, too, do not forget. These things are in the hands of God.” Frances had not the strong maternal instinct that Mary possessed, and was pragmatic about the fate of her children; her first two had been brought into the world with a great deal of discomfort to herself, only to die tragically young. Her little Jane was over a year old now, having been born at the same time as the prince; and although small and delicate, the child seemed to thrive. Worry was useless and accomplished nothing; what would be would be.
Still Mary sat wringing her hands. She had only gone the short distance to Romford in Havering, to see to a dispute between two of her tenants. While there, her greyhounds had attacked a flock of sheep, and she had had to arrange to recompense the owner, a Master William Allen. What should have been a journey lasting only a few days had turned into almost two weeks. The uncertain weather made travel difficult, but Master Dodd, her messenger, had managed to meet her on the road to inform her that her brother, Prince Edward, was ill of a fever. Mary had been loath to leave Hampton Court, but her sense of responsibility had overcome her desire to stay with Edward, and she had departed for Havering, never dreaming that getting back would take so long or be so difficult.
“Ahoy!” a voice shouted in the fog. “The pier is washed out, and the landing steps unreachable. Go back!”
The ferryman held his hat in his hands and said, “Your Grace, there’s nowt to be done. Even if we was to land, King’s Field is flooded, and you marn’t take a step but it’s all of a bog.”
Mary fought for control; one must never show fear or agitation before a servant. One must always seem to be in control of one’s emotions. “But where are we to land, then?” she asked calmly.
The ferryman scratched his bald head. “There be summat we could try, My Lady. There be landing steps a mile downriver near the long lake. There be a wall there, and that Your Grace may be able to walk along, as there be a mill there.”
“I know that wall,” said Frances. “If the landing is still there, we can walk beside the wall almost to the palace grounds. The only difficulty may be getting from the landing steps to the wall.”
The ferryman said, “Your Grace, there’s summat else. The tide will be flooding soon. If we start now, we may beat it, but if it floods while we be still on the river, we shall be fighting it all the way to the landing.”
Mary looked the ferryman in the eye and said, “Think you that we can make it?”
“I do,” he replied. “And once I land ye and all ye’re ladies, that flooding tide will nigh fling me back to Kingston!” He smiled his reassurance and his toothless grin cheered Mary in spite of herself. She did not hesitate. “Let us try it,” she said. “And if you win us through, I shall stand a pint for you and all your lads.” At that, a cheer went up, and the ferryman headed back to the rudder, his helpers to their steering poles.
As the little ferry headed south, Frances pulled Mary aside and said, “Mary, it is some little way to the wall from the landing steps. If the ground is flooded, we will be stranded there. What will we do? Should we not just go back to Kingston until the morrow?” It was early afternoon, but the days were drawing in, and already the gloom seemed deeper.
Tears sprang into Mary’s eyes. She remembered her mother telling her one day, when she had finally become old enough to understand, of her anguish when she had been told of the death of her only living son. He was to have been Henry the Ninth, but he had lived only fifty-six days. And Katharine had not been there even to hold his little hand when he died of a childhood fever. It was not the custom for royalty and the nobility to raise their own children; some defied this custom, but they were few. Her mother had never gotten over the death of the New Year’s Boy, as he was called due to the timing of his birth. If only that boy had lived, Mary would gladly have relinquished her place as heir to him, if it meant that she could still have her mother, and that they could have lived as a happy family all these years.
And now here was Edward, ill of a fever at Hampton Court, and she not there to comfort him. And she had promised Jane…the very thought of the delay in getting to his side made her frantic. But there were the others to consider.
“Master Dodd,” said Mary. “What is your opinion?”
“If it please you, My Lady,” he said with a bow, “the Lady Frances is right. If we cannot gain the wall, we should return with the ferry to Kingston, and try again upon the morrow.”
Mary sighed. “Very well,” she said. “But, look!” As they had been making their way down the still sluggish river, Mary had kept her gaze fixed on the west. Now there was a break in the clouds, and the sun sent golden spikes down onto the far horizon. “Oh, what a welcome sight!”
It was barely a mile from the landing at King’s Field to that near the mill at the long lake, and as they approached, they found the mist lifted and the entire expanse visible from the little craft upon which Mary’s women now sat huddled together.
Suddenly, Lady Margaret, who was far-sighted, cried, “Mary, look! Look and see!” She was pointing excitedly towards the landing steps, but Mary, who was short-sighted, could make out nothing beyond the lighter sky.
“Your Grace, it is the miller and his men,” explained Lady Margaret. “They have cleared the path of the trees that came down in the storm, and have used them to make a path over the bog! We will be able to get to the wall after all!”
It was with great relief that the little party debarked the ferry onto the road of tree trunks, and each was picking her way carefully as Mary, on Dodd’s arm, paid the ferryman his fee, and his bonus of a shiny shilling to go with it.
“God save Your Grace!” he cried, and all his men. “Be chary, Your Grace, and God be with you.”
“And you,” said Mary. “God speed you on the flooding tide and I hope to see you well at Kingston next time I cross the river there.” And with that, she picked up her skirts and practically ran down to the path of tree trunks, and to the wall. As she made her way, the cloud cover continued to blow east and in the west was revealed a blue sky and a golden sun. “Oh, Dodd,” she said. “May our extraordinary good fortune be a good omen!”
“Indeed, Ma’am,” Dodd replied.
# # #
Mary sat with tears in her eyes, watching Edward make his way to her across the room. Wolsey had built his palace well; the solar was a bright room with many windows, and the sun shone brilliantly through all of them. Wolsey had held no truck with rushes, so that all the floors of the palace were spread with colorful, silky carpets, some almost surely from forbidden heretic lands. But they provided a smooth surface for the peregrinations of the royal prince as he made his way to Mary’s outstretched arms. A single ray of light rested on Edward’s golden head as he paused, looking for his next hand-hold, touching his curls and giving him the illusion of having a halo. He did indeed look like a little angel, with his periwinkle eyes, pink cheeks and sturdy arms and legs, rolling with baby fat.
Mistress Jack, the prince’s wet-nurse, was ahead of her time in that she did not believe in swaddling. Due to her insistence, both babies had left their swaddling clothes behind them as soon as they tried to stand on their own. She had managed to convince Lady Bryan of this, so that both Edward, and his little cousin, Jane Grey, were allowed to roam the room as far as their tiny feet would take them. In addition to the desired outcome of taking such exercise making them hungry, it also made them tired, so that once they had suckled, they would sleep, another remedy in which Mistress Jack had great faith.
Mistress Jack was French, and all knew that the French had some very odd ideas; but she had yet to be proved wrong about anything, and both children thrived. At seventy, Lady Bryan was beginning to feel her years; she was nothing loath if Mistress Jack wanted to take over the lion’s share of the work it took to raise the royal prince. She herself was responsible and accountable, but as she said at least twenty times a day, Mis
tress Jack’s legs were younger than hers, and frankly, keeping up with two one-year old babies was getting beyond her capabilities. Still, her eyes shone bright with love and affection, just as Mary’s did, as she watched her young charges hand themselves from chair to table, table to chair, in an effort to reach the ladies, who were cheering them on from across the room.
Finally, Edward staggered the last few steps and fell laughing and gurgling into Mary’s welcome embrace. She held him so tightly that he began to struggle, so she lifted him onto her lap and bounced him on her knee, which made him laugh all the more.
What a relief it had been to discover, when they had finally arrived at the palace at dusk the night before, that Edward’s fever had left him almost as quickly as it had manifested itself, and that all her worry had been for naught. Despite her anxiety, Mary had gone directly to the chapel to pray as soon as she had reached the palace. None had dared to say her nay or to disturb here there, so that she was the last to know that far from being in danger of his life, Edward was completely recovered. When Mary had finally made her way to the royal nursery, it was to see Edward and Jane curled up together like puppies, sleeping soundly. Until that moment Mary had not realized how exhausted she was, both physically and mentally. Her women put her to bed with a draught of henbane and black poppy, and she slept a sound, dreamless sleep, to awaken to a bright, blue and white, perfect fall day.
Lady Lisle, who had come to Hampton Court to visit and found Mary not yet returned from Havering, had joined the group of women in the solar. “Lord Lisle asked me to commend him unto you, My Lady, and to remember you of the quails he used to send to the queen, may God assoil her. I swear that the prince lacks only wings to be an angel, though I would not be surprised if they did indeed begin to sprout!”
Mary’s laughter subsided at the thought of Jane, and that Edward would grow up motherless. There was no lack of women to love and spoil him, but it was not the same, as well she knew. Tears welled up in her eyes and she held him close to her once more.
Seeing that her words had cast Mary down, Lady Lisle said cheerfully, “Ah, it is a sweet child! And a goodly, more bonny lad I have never seen!”
Mary was overwhelmed at that moment by the feeling of lack and loss that she tried so hard to beat down every day. Her arms ached for a child of her own, and she felt the lack of a husband, a companion, very deeply. The tears began to fall silently down her face.
“Oh, Your Grace,” said Lady Lisle in some distress, “I did not mean to make you sad.”
Lady Margaret, having known a great passion with her beloved Lord Thomas, felt sorry for her cousin, who had never known love of that kind. “Dearest Cousin,” she said. “I pray you, do not weep! The kings seeks for a husband for you, I trow.”
But Mary knew otherwise; Cromwell had forced her to send a scathing letter to her cousin Charles berating him for not pursuing the match with Dom Luis to the satisfaction of the king, her father, and abjuring further negotiations unless the marriage settlement was made more attractive. She had then promptly sought out Chapuys, so that he may assure the emperor that the words were not her own, but the king’s. Chapuys confided that it was unlikely that the king would agree to any match for her with a Catholic prince, lest she become the impetus for a Catholic rising in his name. He also warned her of what she already knew, that matches for her were being considered with Protestant princes, and that she must resist such a match with all her might. So even had she been amenable to such a union, there was little hope there. And the idea of running afoul of her royal father a second time was too terrible to contemplate.
Suddenly Mary arose, handed Edward to Mistress Jack, and covered her face with her hands.
“It is hopeless!” she cried in utter despair. “Hopeless! It is folly to think that I will be allowed to marry out of England, or even in England! I will be, while my father lives, only the Lady Mary, the most unhappy lady in Christendom!”
The women in the room were all of the most intimate friends. Still, Mary’s words bordered on treason. Lady Bryant blanched, Lady Margaret stared, her mouth a round “O” of astonishment at Mary’s outburst. Lady Lisle was sobbing loudly, thinking that her careless words had provoked Mary’s misery. Only Frances, practical Frances, had the situation in hand. She took Mary in her arms and held her until the racking sobs subsided into gentle hiccoughs.
Mistress Jack, who was actually Madame Jacques, (these English, their language had no finesse, no beauty!), wordlessly took the children each by the hand and led them away. She was no spy, but she did now and again share a juicy bit of gossip with Marillac, the French ambassador. And what harm if he sometimes slipped her a coin or two for such? It did no harm, it was simply a way to turn a coin in a hard world, and it added to that secret hoard that she was amassing that would one day get her back to her beloved France.
Chapter 14
“Never had the kingdom desired anything so passionately as it did a prince.”
- Sebastian Guistinian, Venetian Ambassador to the court of Henry VIII
Dover, Kent, December 1538
The parchment had been tightly scrolled, and if laid out on the captain’s map table and left to itself, it would curl up again. Henry smoothed it out, and searched about the cabin for some sturdy items with which to weight down its corners. Everything in the captain’s quarters was both useful and heavy. The items kept on a ship had to be depended upon to keep their place in rough seas. He appropriated a substantial inkpot, a small lantern, a brass bell, and a hunk of chalk from the White Cliffs, light in itself, but large enough to do the job.
The Bull of Excommunication was smaller than he had expected, and its wax seal much less imposing. In his estimation, a document representing eternal damnation should have been more impressive.
This document, and what it represented, had been an abiding fear of his for many years. During the time when he had been determined to marry Anne, the threat of excommunication had lain very heavily on his conscience. He should be cut off from Christ; no child of the church would succor him; should he die, his body would lie without burial; as king, no Christian would be further bound to obey him and he should be vulnerable to all his enemies…
But thanks to Cromwell, good, dependable Cromwell, he had been led to see the light; a king was anointed of God and needed no pope to approve his actions. The words of John and Matthew, in his opinion, were open to interpretation. And who was better qualified to make such an interpretation than the Supreme Head of the Church of England? Certainly, in the beginning, the Lord Jesus had needed a man to build his church. But once the job was done and the church established, was that man still needed? Or was he simply the bishop of Rome, one of many bishops and cardinals who saw to the administration of the Catholic Church? In short, would such a man wish to relinquish such awesome power? Henry grunted. I think not! Hence, when Simon Peter had finished building the Church, the role of pope was created, by men, for men, to perpetuate the power of the bishop of Rome, and few since had dared to say him nay.
What many did not seem to grasp, and misunderstood to their peril, was that Henry of England was no heretic; he was a good Catholic and expected his subjects to be the same. If they did not adhere to the orthodoxy, if they forgot this or ignored it, they diverged at their own very great risk. He desired only to free England from the tremendous financial burden of ties to Rome. The Vatican had suckled at England’s tit long enough. No more would he allow the substance of his realm to be snatched away by the greedy hands of foreigners.
His eyes strayed back to the Bull of Excommunication. The ostensible reason for his exclusion from the Church of Rome was his despoiling of Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. “…having dug up and burned the bones of Saint Thomas of Canterbury and scattered the ashes to the winds…” Hah! That was a convenient excuse. He knew what really lay behind it all. The dissolution of the monasteries in general had appropriated enormous wealth back to England; money was at the root of Pope Paul’s chagrin, n
ot the rotten bones of a saint dead these four hundred years. Add to that his defiance of Clement’s bull declaring his marriage to Katharine legal, after all the years of papal shilly-shallying; his harsh management of the Pilgrimage of Grace; and his recent forays into a possible alliance with the Protestants, and the pope had adequate cause to finally promulgate the bull that His Holiness had been hesitating over for nigh on three years.
But what had really sealed his fate was the executions of his Catholic enemies.
It had been so easy. Cromwell had arrested Sir Geoffrey Pole and left him languishing in the Tower for weeks without explanation. For all his cool, calculating ways, Henry knew that Cromwell was, in fact, quite squeamish, and preferred the subtle to the overt when it came to extracting vital information. By the time Sir Geoffrey had been brought up for questioning, it was not even necessary to show him the rack; he had cried like a little girl and chattered for hours, giving up all his friends and relatives without so much as a moment’s hesitation.
The conspirators were all arrested, questioned, and tried. Henry’s cousins, Montague and Courtenay, were found guilty of treason and executed, along with Montague’s brother-in-law, Sir Edward Neville. These men, although they were his relatives, had been his enemies for years; and now, thanks to Cromwell, they were no more. All except for Geoffrey Pole. Henry had a more interesting fate in store for him.
He had not been able to resist witnessing the executions. From a small window in the Tower on a dark, dreary December morning just a few days since, he had watched in utter fascination as his cousins were beheaded.
Henry laid his hand on the parchment once more and felt nothing. No fear. No trepidation. After all, was he not the Supreme Head of the Church in England, answerable only to God? Pope Paul the Third and his Bull of Excommunication had no more effect on him than the bleating of a sheep caught in a thorn bush. He was his own man, his own king, as he had never been before. One by one he removed the weights from the corners of the document. He watched it roll itself back up again, almost as though it were a living thing. He knew an impulse to destroy it, to toss it out of the window, but thought better of it. He would keep it with him always, to remind him that he was his own man, an anointed king, a man who needed neither the help nor the support of the Bishop of Rome, and who need not fear his censure. He was free.
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