The Baker's Daughter Volume 2

by Bonny G Smith

  There were two factions at court when it came to the subject of the queen’s marriage. One faction wanted her to marry an English subject and was violently opposed to a foreign marriage; the other faction supported an alliance with the Empire and the marriage with Philip of Spain.

  The only thing that troubled her was that both suitors were at least ten years younger than she was. And just look at the havoc that six years on the wrong side had wrought between her mother and father! This thought sent her to her glass more often than she was wont, studying her reflection. But would not a crown cover a multitude of such sins?

  Ah, well, she thought…to get an heir, one must have a husband, and so a husband she would get.

  The thought of what that meant suddenly struck her; an heir…an heir meant not just the assurance of a Catholic succession for England. No, it meant much more; it meant a baby…a child of her very own. An overwhelming feeling swept over her at the thought; she remembered what it had been like to hold Elizabeth when she was born, and Edward; the impossibly soft skin of the infant, the enchanting and peculiar baby smell. Suddenly her arms ached as they used to do for a child of her own, and the smile that had curved her lips at the thought of marriage and a husband deepened.

  On that thought she finally drifted off to sleep, and when Lady Gertrude awoke from her own doze by the blazing fire, and placed her hand on Mary’s brow, it was cool again, and she noticed that Mary’s face looked more peaceful than it had for quite a while.

  Chapter 36

  “Unless God guards her she will always be cheated and misled either by the French or her own subjects.”

  - Simon Renard

  Richmond Palace, October 1553

  Edward Courtenay, the newly made Earl of Devon, sucked the last juices from a mouthful of pomegranate seeds and then spit the denuded seeds into a silver bowl. Hmph! He thought. Pomegranates and silver bowls! And to think that just a few short weeks ago, he had been a prisoner in the Tower with no hope of redemption. For no one had expected his cousin to win the throne, and even if she did, what hopes should he have entertained as a result? Her father, King Henry, had imprisoned him for no other reason than the Plantagenet blood that flowed in his veins. He had wronged no one, indeed, had been just a boy and had no thought of doing so. Should the old tyrant’s whelp secure the crown, he had no reason to believe that she would do otherwise than to keep him where he was. If not worse! It was a valid concern; even in prison, life was still sweet enough to fear death.

  That being the case, he had been pleasantly surprised when he was informed that he was to be pardoned and must make ready to appear on Tower Green to receive the new queen.

  His mother, the Lady Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, had made quite a show of her great gladness to see him on that hot August day. But how hard had she tried to win his release? His father had been executed, and after a mere two years, his mother had been freed. But he had been kept in the Tower for fifteen long years.

  And now, unless he missed his guess, he was about to become the next King of England. His father had been executed for thinking to depose Henry the Eighth. Just let him once get control of the crown and that despot’s daughter...! But he realized that once again his mind had wandered, as it was wont to do, from the issue at hand.

  He laid aside the bowl and sat back in his chair. A merry fire crackled on the hearth, and in his bed was a young girl. Girl! At sixteen, she was as old as Eve. She sat up against the pillows, eyeing him speculatively. She was naked as a jaybird, but seemingly had no modesty. Nor was she much on conversation. But she was amenable, and that was all he asked of his whores. Gazing at her pale, translucent skin and dark, luminous eyes, he decided that no female should be allowed to whore past the age of eighteen. Whores were used hard, and apparently began to show their age early; and there was nothing, he had recently discovered, so disgusting as a whore who was past her prime.

  He had taken to drinking and whoring immediately upon his unexpected release from prison; indeed, like a bear to honey. Whilst he languished in the Tower, he had had no money and no prospects, so there was no reason for anyone to do him any favors, nor could he afford to buy any. He had his books and his lute, and that was all. But he had also had guards outside his door, and had taken to vicariously enjoying their exploits. For hours on end they would talk of their conquests of good girls, girls whom they had ruined without a second thought, and when none was to be had of that ilk, they talked of their whores. While they talked they drank, and the drunker they got the more lurid became the descriptions of their exploits.

  The first thing he had done upon his release, the coins still jingling unfamiliarly in his pocket, was to find a whorehouse where he had gotten mind-numbingly drunk and then, when he was sober again, had attempted to take every girl in the house; he did not make a bad showing. That was how he knew that women over eighteen should not be whores. Disgusting creatures!

  “Does you think to hev another go then, duckie?” said a sweet voice from the bed.

  He rose from his chair, risen to the occasion, as it were, when the door burst open and his mother strode in.

  “Edward!” she hissed, in that cold, quiet voice that had come to annoy him more than her loud, admonishing one. “How many times have I told you? If you must whore, then go to the whorehouse! Pray do not bring your wenches here! What if the queen…”

  “Oh, bother the queen,” he replied. He walked to the sideboard and poured himself another glass of wine. The girl seemed completely unconcerned that a third party had entered the room; she was paid for the afternoon and it was all one to her. One man, two men, a woman…all the same, as long as she left with the promised coins in her reticule.

  Lady Gertrude swung around and addressed her. “Oh, get your gone! And pray do not let anyone see you leave!” She swung the beacon of her anger back onto her son. “Do you want to ruin your prospects? After all we’ve been through?”

  “We?” replied Edward, in a mocking tone. “Who is this “we”? You have been free these many years! I am the one who has suffered!” With that he flung himself back into his chair and stared angrily into the fire. Why had the bitch always to come and rail at him at the most awkward moments? He had had plans for the rest of his time with his slut, and now she was gathering up her clothes.

  “You must cease this absurd affectation of insisting that your minions kneel when speaking to you,” said Lady Gertrude. “You are not king yet, nor will you be if the queen gets wind of your bad behavior! I am doing all I can to forward your expectations, Edward, but we must move slowly, cautiously!”

  Edward threw back his wine and poured himself another glassful.

  “And all this wine-bibbing!” railed Lady Gertrude, throwing her arms into the air and her voice now rising above the tenor of her cold greeting. “You are drunk from dawn to dusk, and into the night. Can you think of no better way to spend your time? If you were to become king, you would have to…”

  Edward regarded his mother through narrowed eyes. “Not “if” dearest Mother, but when! I shall be king! The Tudors owe me as much! And I will not go cautiously. I have the support of many influential people. The queen cannot say me nay. I am, as the Imperial ambassador so eloquently put it, the ‘last spring of the White Rose’. And my cousin promised that if she won the crown, that she would marry an Englishman. Very well, I am an Englishman, one grievously wronged by the Tudors, and no one is better placed by blood or position to be king of this country!”

  For the first time since Mary’s accession and her son’s release, Lady Gertrude began to entertain doubts. All had seemed fair fit to succeed, and now this. The last thing she had expected was that her son should be so fatally flawed…and, she must own it, unfit to be king. He had been wronged, yes, but so had many others; it was best to let the past go and look to one’s present, and future, prospects. Edward was right when he said that no one was better placed to marry the queen than he. He was of the blood royal; both he and Mary were great-grandch
ildren of King Edward the Fourth. She would continue to press his suit, and could only hope that after the novelty of his unexpected freedom had worn off that he would settle down and do what was needful to woo the queen. He had been such a good child; he should be a good man, if only he would let his anger go. She hoped he would not leave it too late.

  Brussels, Belgium, October 1553

  Philip drew his fur-lined cloak tighter about himself as unobtrusively as possible. Brussels, to him, was a dreary place at the best of times, but in October it was unspeakably cold and nasty. His father, the emperor, could not abide fires; their smoke irritated his lungs and caused the catarrhs which plagued him to inflame. He waited patiently while Charles hacked and coughed, and finally expectorated a greenish mucus into a golden cup. A physician hovered at the emperor’s elbow, waiting ghoulishly to see what the monarch had brought forth; he inspected the contents of the cup with a satisfied air, bowed, and retreated back to his cave of a laboratory to study his prize.

  Apropos of nothing Charles said, “It has been eight years.” He wiped his mouth on a linen square that had already seen hard duty that day. Philip averted his eyes.

  And there was another thing about visiting his father at the horrid court at Brussels. His father believed in large quantities of fresh air, regardless of the weather. With nothing to stop it, the rain that pelted the castle walls came in through the arrow slits of the turret room in which they sat and made little puddles on the uneven stones of the floor. He would have given five years of his life at that moment to be back in sunny Spain. Instead, here he was in Brussels, and he knew exactly why, although his father had not yet deigned to broach the subject. He had a feeling that he was about to do so now. Some response to the emperor’s statement was needed.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Charles regarded his son. Philip was a handsome man, with his blonde hair, which he got from the Burgundian side of the family. His grandfather, Charles’ own father, had been known as Philip the Handsome, for good reason. All of his female forebears had been possessed of extraordinary beauty. His son’s large blue-grey eyes he got from his Trastamara lineage. Yes, Philip had got the best of every ancestor; in fact, he had only one flaw, and that he had got from his own father; the sloping, jutting Hapsburg jaw. Except on Philip it was not as pronounced as on himself, so even that imperfection was not enough to detract from the whole man. His son was young, handsome, well-educated, and at the age of twenty-seven had years of experience ruling Spain on the emperor’s behalf. He had been married once before and so had his heir. All things considered he was the most eligible prince in the civilized world. He was also a man of few words, who kept his own counsel. The reports Charles received from his spies at the Spanish court had nothing but good things to say about the emperor’s dutiful son.

  “I was betrothed to her once, you know, when she was just a child,” said Charles. He closed his eyes and tried to recall those days, when he himself had been young, and except for his jaw, rather handsome. It was true that he had been betrothed to Mary Tudor when she just a child; but before that he had been betrothed to another Mary Tudor, the girl’s aunt, and the sister of King Henry the Eighth. It was she of whom he dreamed still, she whose portrait he kept still hidden inside his doublet, even though she had married another and had been dead these twenty years past. He had eventually married a wife, his cousin Isabella; he had loved her in his way, she had been a good wife, she had given him Philip. But he had never stopped thinking about his first love.

  Philip knew to whom his father referred; but it was best to stay silent and listen.

  “I would marry her myself, but in my current state, that is out of the question,” said Charles, regarding the disgusting contents of his linen square.

  Philip nodded. “Yes,” he said. If his cousin the queen of England remembered his father as a young man, and agreed to marry him now, she would certainly be in for a most unpleasant shock!

  “There are many advantages to a match with England,” said Charles. His eyes also plagued him and began to weep of their own accord. The emperor used the mucus-stained linen cloth to wipe his eyes. “It would make you a king.”

  Philip regarded his father. I will be that soon anyway, he thought. How could anyone who suffered from so many ailments survive? But even survival was not the issue; his father spoke constantly of abdicating his vast domains to his brother and his son, that he might retreat from the world to enjoy a religious life for the few years left to him. Many men would have done unspeakable things to gain such kingdoms; but the Hapsburgs seemed more to tolerate the responsibilities of rule rather than relish them.

  “Yes,” said Philip. “It would.” But marriage to an aging virgin eleven years his senior…it was not worth it in his estimation. It was a heavy price to pay for a kingdom.

  “And there are other benefits to such a match,” said Charles. “It would give the Empire an advantage over France.” The fact that Mary was now queen of England, a completely unexpected event, Charles viewed as a golden opportunity and a gift from God, not to be squandered, or wasted. The girl had always looked to him, her first cousin, for help and advice; she now viewed him, her closest male relative now that her brother was dead, as a father and said that she would be guided by him in all things, especially her choice of husband. Opportunity indeed, with so much trade between England and the Low Countries! There was no viable French candidate for Mary’s hand, much to Henri’s chagrin, and the only English candidate, if the reports could be believed, was a dissolute sot who spent his time and newly-gained fortune on wine and whores. Had he wished for England’s ruin, what could have been better? But he did not. A strong, vital England would be an asset to the Empire, and the best way to assure that was to marry his amenable cousin to his son.

  “It has been eight years,” said Charles.

  Philip tried to keep his face impassive. He knew his father well enough to know that he was not repeating himself; he expected a response to the unspoken question. He had loved little cousin, Maria Manuela, the wife who had given him a son and then promptly died in childbed at the age of seventeen. He had a son; he had a mistress. He had no desire to marry again. But his father was not asking.

  Charles shifted in his chair. He had no misgivings about his son accepting his decision. But still he felt compelled to explain. “It gladdens me to see our cousin in the place that is hers by right; and I hope her prudence will soon enable her to restore religious matters. But she must proceed slowly; should she attempt to rush the thing her people might revolt and she could be overthrown. I wonder, indeed, if in her zealousness she realizes just how tenuous a hold she has on the English throne. And if that were to happen, this miraculous opportunity might be lost. I can only counsel her so much from afar. Renard is a good man, but Mary, by all accounts, is a stubborn woman.”

  Mary had expressed to him through Renard that she would not consider marrying anyone whom she had not met; this conviction seemed firm and probably stemmed from her father’s debacle with Anne of Cleves. This gave a decided advantage to the English candidate, even if he was a whoremongering sot. Still, no prince, and he certainly would not expect it of Philip, would be willing to take the bait even of a kingdom on offer if it meant the possibility of suffering the public humiliation of rejection.

  Charles wiped his weeping eyes. “You must sit for a portrait while you are here.”

  Philip sighed. “As you say, Father.”

  “Still,” continued Charles. “Her discretion and tact may render it possible for me to propose the match which was talked of so many years ago. I am certain that if the English made up their minds to accept a foreigner they would more readily accept me than any other, for they have always shown a liking for me.” He laughed, but the sound came out more as a series of wheezes. “You should have seen the reception accorded me by the English people when I went to visit my aunt all those years ago!”

  Philip nodded politely at this reminiscence. If his father thought to w
orry him with the threat of marrying their cousin himself, he would not succeed. All would come to him in time in any case, and he had no desire to marry his aging cousin, queen or no, and abide in cold, wet England. If he thought Brussels was bad…!

  “Still,” said Charles once again. “I do not know…marriage! The very last thing I want.” He lifted his rheumy eyes to his son’s face.

  The moment could be delayed no longer.

  “Yes,” said Philip softly. “You are right. It has been eight years since my wife perished bearing me a son. And I see very well the advantages which might accrue from my marriage with Her Grace of England. I also rejoice to hear that my cousin has gained her throne. If Her Grace should suggest a match with your illustrious self and Your Majesty were disposed to it, that would be the very best thing possible.” Charles began to look uncomfortable; Philip quickly went on to say, “But in the circumstances…that is, since Your Majesty feels as you say about the match for me instead, you know that I am so obedient a son that I have no other will but yours. Especially in a matter of such high import.”

  The emperor smiled and gave an inward sigh of relief. It was always so much easier when his desires were anticipated and quietly accepted.

  He had expected no less from his dutiful son.

  Syon Monastery, October 1553

  Had she but known it, Dame Agnes was experiencing much the same feeling of disorientation and deja vu that Mary had experienced when she had been called back to Syon by the Duke of Somerset after the nuns were turned out and he had converted the place into a sumptuous palace. Here she was, in the same apartments that she had occupied as abbess so many years ago. But it was like a dream; she knew that she was standing in the same place and yet things were very different. The only familiar thing was her bed, and even on that the hangings had been changed.