The King's Curse Read online

“We’ll have to deny him,” I say unhappily. “I know we will.”

  Montague flings himself into a chair and runs his hands through his hair. “Doesn’t he realize what life is like in England today?”

  “He knows very well,” I say. “Probably nobody knows better. He’s warning the king that if he goes on with the destruction of the monasteries, the people will rise against him and the emperor will invade. And already the North is up.”

  “The commons turned on the bishop’s chancellor at Horncastle,” Montague tells me, his voice low. “They’re burning beacons as far as Yorkshire. But Reginald declares against the king too soon. His letter is treason.”

  “I don’t see what else he could write,” I say. “The king asked for his opinion. He has given it. He says that the princess should have her title, and the Pope should have the headship of the Church. Would you say any different?”

  “Yes! Dear God, I’d never tell the truth to this king.”

  “But if you were far away, and ordered to write your honest opinion?”

  Montague gets out of his chair and kneels beside mine so that he can whisper into my ear. “Lady Mother, he is far away; but we are not. I am afraid for you, and for me, and for my son Harry, all my children, and for all our kin. It doesn’t matter that Reginald is right—I know he is! It doesn’t matter that most of England would agree with him—almost every lord of the land would agree with him. It’s not just the commons who are marching in Lincolnshire, they’re taking the gentry with them and calling on the lords to turn out for them. Every day someone seeks me out or sends me a message or asks me what we are going to do. But telling this truth has put all of us into terrible danger. The king is no longer a thoughtful scholar, he is no longer a devout son of the Church. He has become a man quite out of the control of his teachers, of the priests, perhaps of himself. There is no point giving the king an honest opinion, he wants nothing but praise of himself. He cannot bear one word of criticism. He is merciless against those who speak against him. It is death to speak the truth in England now. Reginald is far away and enjoying the luxury of speaking out, but we are here; it is our lives he is risking.”

  I am silent. “I know,” I say. “I don’t think that he could have done differently, he had to speak out. But I know that he has put us in danger.”

  “Geoffrey too,” Montague says. “Think of your precious Geoffrey. Reginald’s letter has endangered us all.”

  “What can we do to make ourselves safe?”

  “There’s no safety for us. We are the royal family, whether we publicly proclaim it as Reginald does, or not. All we can do is draw a line between Reginald and ourselves. All we can say is that he does not speak for us, that we deny what he says, that we urge him to be silent. And we can beg him not to publish, and you can order him not to go to Rome.”

  “But what if he publishes this letter, and what if he goes to Rome and persuades the Pope to publish the excommunication and order a crusade against England?”

  Montague puts his head in his hands. “Then I am ready,” he says very quietly. “When the emperor invades, I will raise the tenants and we will march with the commons of England, defend the Church, overthrow the king, and put the princess on her throne.”

  “We will do it?” I ask, as if I don’t know that the answer is yes.

  “We have to,” Montague says grimly. Then he looks up at me, and I see my own fear in his face. “But I am afraid,” he admits honestly.

  Both Montague and I write to Reginald. Geoffrey writes too and we send the letters by Thomas Cromwell’s messengers, so that he can see how loudly we condemn Reginald for his folly, for the abuse of his position as the king’s own scholar, and how clearly we call on him to withdraw everything he has said.

  Take another way and serve our master as thy bounden duty is to do, unless thou wilt be the confusion of thy mother.

  I leave the letter unsealed, but I kiss my signature and hope that he will know. He will not withdraw one word of what he has written, and I know that he has written nothing but the truth. He will know that I wouldn’t have him deny the truth. But he can never come to England while the king lives, and I cannot see him. Perhaps, given my great age, I will never see him again. The only way that my family can be together again will be if Reginald comes with an army from Spain to rouse the commons, restore the Church, and put the princess on the throne. “Come the day!” I whisper, and then I take my letter to Thomas Cromwell for his spies to study for a hidden code of treason.

  The great man, Lord Secretary and Vicegerent of the Church, invites me into his privy chamber where three men are bowed over letters and accounts books. The work of the world revolves around Thomas Cromwell, just as it did around his old master, Thomas Wolsey. He takes care of everything.

  “The king requests that your son come to court and explain his letter,” he says to me. Out of the corner of my eye I see one of the clerks pause with his pen raised, waiting to copy down my reply.

  “I pray that he will come,” I say. “I will tell him, as his mother, that he should come. He should show every obedience to His Gracious Majesty, as we all do, as he was raised to do.”

  “His Majesty is not angry now with his cousin Reginald,” Cromwell says gently. “He wants to understand the arguments, he wants Reginald to talk with other scholars so that they can agree.”

  “What a very good idea.” I look directly into his smiling face. “I shall tell Reginald to come at once. I will add a note to my letter.”

  Cromwell, the great liar, the great heretic, the great pander to his master, bows his head as if he is impressed with my loyalty. I, as bad as he is, bow back.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, OCTOBER 1536

  Montague comes to see me at my home early in the morning, while the court is at Mass. He comes into my chapel and kneels beside me on the stone flags while the priest, half hidden by the rood screen, his back turned towards us, performs the mysteries of the Mass and brings the blessing of God to me and my silently kneeling household.

  At the back, untouched and unread, is the Bible that the king has ordered shall be placed in every church. Everyone of my household believes that God speaks in Latin to his Church. English is the language of everyday mortals, of the market, of the midden. How can anything that is of God be written down in the language of sheep farming and money? God is the Word, he is the Pope, the priest, the bread and the wine, the mysterious Latin of the litany, the unreadable Bible. But we do not defy the king on this, we don’t defy him on anything.

  “Queen Jane went down on her knees to the king and begged him to restore the abbeys and not steal them from the people.” Montague bows his head as if in prayer and mutters the news to me over his rosary. “Lincolnshire is up to defend the abbeys, there’s not a village that is not marching.”

  “Is it our time?”

  Montague bows his head farther so that no one can see him smile. “Soon,” he says. “The king is sending Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, to put down the commons. He thinks it will be readily done.”

  “Do you?”

  “I pray.” Cautiously, Montague does not even say what he prays for. “And the princess sent you her love. The king has brought her and little Lady Elizabeth to court. For a man who says that the commons will be easily put down, it’s telling that he should have his daughters brought to him for safety.”

  Montague leaves as soon as the service is over, but I don’t need him to bring me news. Soon all of London is buzzing. The cook’s boy, sent to market to get some nutmeg, comes home with the claim that forty thousand men, armed and horsed, are marching in Boston.

  My London steward comes to me to tell me that two lads from Lincolnshire have run away, gone home to join with the commons. “What did they think they were going to do?” I ask.

  “They take an oath,” he says, his voice carefully bland. “Apparently, they swear that the church shall have its fees and funds, that the monasteries shall not be thrown down, but shall be restored, and that the fa