The King's Curse Read online

  Montague smiles ruefully. “Well, at any rate, I’m sure that Geoffrey would never betray us,” he says. “I think he’s been to Syon and traveled with her to Canterbury. But so have many others. Fisher and More among them.”

  “Thousands have heard her preach,” I point out. “Thousands have met with her privately. If Thomas Cromwell wants to arrest everyone who has prayed with the Maid of Kent, then he will have to arrest most of the kingdom. If he wants to arrest those who think the queen is wrongly put aside, he will have to arrest everyone in the kingdom but the Duke of Norfolk, the Boleyns, and the king himself. Surely we would be safe, my son? We’d be lost in the crowd.”

  But Thomas Cromwell is a bolder man than I realized. A more ambitious man than I realized. He arrests the Maid of Kent, he arrests seven holy men with her, and once again, he arrests John Fisher, the bishop, and Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor, as if they were nobodies whom he could pick up from the street and fling in the Tower for nothing more than disagreeing with him.

  “He can’t arrest a bishop for speaking with a nun!” Princess Mary says. “He simply cannot.”

  “They say that he has,” I reply.

  BEAULIEU, ESSEX, WINTER 1533

  I don’t expect us to be invited to court for Christmas, though I hear that they are keeping very great estate and celebrating another pregnancy. They say that the woman who calls herself queen is walking with her head stiffly high, and her hand forever clasped to her belly, where they are letting out the laces on her stomacher. They say that she is confident it will be a boy this time. I imagine she is on her knees every night, praying for him.

  Under these circumstances I doubt that they will want my assistance. I have attended so many royal lyings-in that disappointment hangs around me like a dark cloak. I doubt that they will want the princess at court either, so I order the household to prepare for the feast at Beaulieu. I don’t expect the princess to be very merry—she is not even allowed to send her mother a gift or the good wishes of the season. I suspect that the woman who calls herself queen has warned people not to visit or send gifts; but the princess is a princess to us, and her state demands that we hold a Christmas feast.

  Although they are forbidden to pay their respects it’s touching to see how the country people send her their love and support. There is a constant stream of apples and cheeses and even smoked hams coming to the door with the good wishes of the local farmers’ wives. All my family, even the most distant cousins, send her a little Christmas gift. The churches for miles around pray for her by name and for her mother, and every servant in the house and every visitor refers to her as “Her Grace the Princess” and serves her on bended knee.

  I don’t order them to honor her state and defy the king; but in our house at Beaulieu it is as if he never spoke. Many of the people in her service have been with her since she was a little girl. She has always been “Her Grace” to us; even if we wanted to rename her, we would not be able to remember it. Lady Anne Hussey boldly calls her by her true title and when anyone remarks on it says that she’s forty-three and too old to change her ways.

  The princess and I are mounting up to go hunting on a bright winter morning. We are in the central courtyard with her little court on their horses and ready to trot out, passing around the stirrup cup with some hot wine to keep out the cold, the hounds running everywhere, sniffing everything, sometimes bursting into excited yelping. The princess’s Master of Horse helps her into the saddle as I stand at the horse’s head, patting his neck. Without thinking, I ease my finger under the girth of her horse to check that it is as tight as it can be. The Master of Horse smiles at me and ducks his head in a little bow. “I wouldn’t leave Her Grace’s girth loose,” he said. “Never.”

  I have a shamefaced blush. “I know you wouldn’t,” I say. “But I can’t let her mount without checking it.”

  Princess Mary laughs. “She’d have me on a pillion saddle behind you, if she could,” she says naughtily. “She’d have me ride a donkey.”

  “I’m supposed to keep you safe,” I say. “In the saddle or out of it.”

  “She’ll be safe enough on Blackie,” he says, and then something at the gate catches his eye and he turns and says quietly to me, “Soldiers!”

  I scramble up onto the mounting block so I can see over the tossing heads of the horses that there are soldiers running into the yard, and behind them a man on a great horse with a standard unfurling.

  “Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.”

  Princess Mary moves, as if she would dismount, but I nod to her to stay in the saddle and I stand tall, like a statue on a pedestal, waiting for the Duke of Norfolk to ride up to me.

  “Your Grace,” I say coldly. I loved his father, the old duke, who was a loyal adherent to the queen. I am fond of his wife, my cousin, and he makes her quite miserable. There is nothing I like about him, this man who has stepped into the shoes of a greater father, and inherited all of the ambition and none of the wisdom.

  “My Lady Countess,” he says. He looks past me at the princess. “Lady Mary,” he says very loudly.

  There is a stirring as everyone hears him, and everyone wants to contradict him. I see the head of his guard look quickly around, as if to count our numbers and assess his danger. I see him note that we are going hunting and that many of the men have a dagger at their side or a knife in a scabbard. But Howard is safe enough, he has commanded his guard to come fully armed, ready for a fight.

  Coolly I count their number, and their weapons, and I look at the hard-faced duke and wonder what he hopes to achieve. The Princess Mary’s face is turned slightly away, as if she cannot hear him, as if she does not know that he is there.

  “I have brought you news of changes to the household,” he says, loudly enough for her to hear. Still, she does not deign to look at him. “His Grace the King commands that you are to come to court.”

  That catches her; she turns, her face alight, smiling. “To court?” she asks.

  Grimly, he goes on. I realize that this is no pleasure to him. This is dirty work that he will have to do, and probably worse than this, if he is going to serve the king and the woman who now calls herself queen.

  “You are to go to court to serve the Princess Elizabeth,” he says, his voice clear above the noise of the horses and the hounds, and the swelling discontented murmur from the princess’s household.

  The joy dies from her face at once. She shakes her head. “I cannot serve a princess, I am the princess,” she says.

  “It’s not possible,” I start to say.

  Howard turns on me and thrusts into my hands an open sheet of paper with the king’s scrawled H at the foot and his seal. “Read it,” he says rudely.

  He dismounts and throws the reins to one of his men and walks without invitation through the open double doors into the great hall beyond.

  “I’ll see him,” I say quickly to the princess. “You go riding. I’ll see what we have to do.”

  She is shaking with rage. I glance at her Master of Horse. “Take care of her,” I say warningly.

  “I am a princess,” she spits. “I serve no one but the queen, my mother, and the king, my father. Tell him that.”

  “I’ll see what we can do,” I promise her, and I jump down from the mounting block, wave my hunter away, and follow Thomas Howard into the darkness of the hall.

  “I’ve not come to dispute the rights and wrongs, I’ve come to accomplish the king’s will,” he says the moment I step into the great room.

  I doubt that the duke could dispute the rights and wrongs of anything. He’s no great philosopher. He’s certainly no Reginald.

  I bow my head. “What is the king’s will?”

  “There’s a new law.”

  “Another new law?”

  “A new law that determines the heirs of the king.”

  “It’s not enough that we all know the firstborn son takes the throne?”

  “God has told the king that his marriage to Queen Ann