The King's Curse Read online

  I smile, but I take care to say nothing.

  “And is your son Reginald coming soon with a holy army?” he says in the lowest whisper. “It would make the commons glad to know it.”

  “Soon,” I say, and he bows and leaves.

  We have eaten the venison, and made pasties, and made soup from the bones, and given the bones to the hounds before we get news from Doncaster where the lords, gentry, and commons of the North drew up in battle order against the king’s army, my two sons on the wrong side, biding their time, ready to cross over. Montague sends a messenger to me.

  The pilgrims brought their demands to Thomas Howard. He was lucky that they agreed to parlay; if they had fought he would have been destroyed. There must have been more than thirty thousand of them, and led by every gentleman and lord in Yorkshire. The king’s army is hungry and cold, the countryside around here being very poor and no man wishing us well. I have been given no money to pay my men, and the others are marching for even less than I have promised. The weather is bad too, and they say there is pestilence in the town.

  The pilgrims have won this war and now present their demands. They want the faith of our fathers to be restored, that the law should be restored, that the noble advisors to the king should be restored, and that Cromwell, Richard Riche, and the heretic bishops be banished. There is not a man in the king’s army, including Thomas Howard, who does not agree. Charles Brandon encourages them also. It’s what we’ve all been thinking since the king first turned against the queen and took Cromwell as his advisor. So Thomas Howard is to ride to the king with the pilgrims’ request for general pardon, and an agreement to restore the old ways.

  Lady Mother, I am so hopeful.

  Burn this.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1536

  I should be preparing Bisham Manor for Christmas, but I cannot settle to anything when I think of my two sons, the king’s army behind them and the pilgrims before them, waiting for the king’s agreement to the truce. In the end I take Montague’s children—Katherine, Winifred, and Harry—and go to London, hoping for news.

  I do not promise them the treat of attending a full coronation, but they know that the king has promised to crown his wife, and the ceremony should take place on All Hallows’ Day. My own belief is that he will not be able to afford a great coronation while he is sending men and arms north, and he will be furious and frightened all at once. He will not be able to stride out in confidence before a crowd, and let everyone admire him and his beautiful new wife. This rebellion has shaken him, and while he is like this, thrown back into his childhood fears that he is not good enough, he simply will not be able to plan a great ceremony.

  As soon as I have arrived and prayed in my chapel I go to my presence chamber, to meet with all the tenants and petitioners who want to see me, bid me a merry Christmas, make their requests, and pay their seasonal fines and rents. Among them is a man I recognize, a priest and friend of my exiled chaplain, John Helyar.

  “You can leave me,” I say to my grandson Harry.

  He looks up at me, his face bright and willing. “I can stay with you, Lady Grandmother, I can be your page. I’m not tired of standing.”

  “No,” I say. “But I could be here all day. You can go down to the stables and you can go out into the streets; you can have a look around.”

  He gives a little bow and shoots from the room like a loosed arrow, and only then do I nod to Helyar’s friend in greeting and indicate to my steward that he can step forward and speak with me.

  “Father Richard Langgrische of Havant,” he reminds me.

  “Of course,” I smile.

  “I have greetings from your son, Geoffrey. I have been with him in the king’s army in the North,” he says.

  “I am glad to hear of it,” I say clearly. “I am glad that my son is prospering in the king’s service. Is my son well?”

  “Both your sons are well,” he says. “And confident that these troubles will soon be over.”

  I nod. “You can dine in hall tonight, if you wish.”

  He bows. “I thank you.”

  Someone else steps forward with some complaint about the cost of ale in one of my tenant alehouses and the steward steps to my side and takes a note of the problem.

  “Get that man to my chamber before dinner,” I say quietly. “Make sure no one sees him.”

  He does not blink. He merely writes down the claim that the ale has been watered and that the jugs are not full measure and waves the next petitioner forward.

  Langgrische is waiting for me by the little fire in my bedroom, concealed like a secret lover. I can’t restrain a smile. It’s been a long time since there was a man waiting for me in my bedroom; I have been a widow now for thirty-two years.

  “What’s the news?” I sit in my chair at the fireside and he stands before me.

  Silently, he shows me a small piece of cloth, a token like a man might sew to his collar. It is the match of the badge that Tom Darcy gave me, the five wounds of Christ and a white rose above it. Silently, I touch it as if it were a relic of faith, and return it to him.

  “The pilgrims have dispersed most of their force, waiting for the king to agree to their terms. The king sent a dishonorable command to Tom Darcy, to meet with the pilgrim leader Robert Aske as if to talk in honor, kidnap him, and hand him over to Cromwell’s men.”

  “What did Tom say?”

  “He said that his coat should never have such a spot on it.”

  I nod. “That’s Tom. And my sons?”

  “Both well, both releasing men from their force to the pilgrim army every day, but both sworn to the king’s force and no one suspecting different. The king has asked for more details of the pilgrim demands and they have explained them.”

  “Do Montague and Geoffrey think that the king will grant the demands?”

  “He’ll have to,” the man said simply. “The pilgrims could overwhelm the royal army in a moment, they’re only waiting for an answer because they don’t want to make war on the king.”

  “How can they call themselves loyal subjects? In battle array? When they hang his servants?”

  “There have been remarkably few deaths,” he says. “Because hardly anyone disagrees with them.”

  “Thomas Legh? Well worth hanging, I agree.”

  He laughs. “They would have hanged him if they had caught him but he got away. He sent out his cook in his place like a coward, and they hanged him instead. The pilgrims don’t attack the lords or the king. They blame only his advisors. Cromwell must be banished, the destruction of monasteries reversed, and you and your family restored to the king’s council.”

  He looks at me almost slyly and smiles. “I have news of your other son, Reginald, too.”

  “Is he in Rome?” I ask eagerly.

  He nods. “He is to be made a cardinal,” he says, awestruck. “He is to come to England as a cardinal and restore the Church to its glory, as soon as the king agrees to the pilgrims’ demands.”

  “The Pope will send my son home to restore the Church?”

  “To save us all,” Langgrische says devoutly.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, DECEMBER 1536

  This year we will keep the twelve days of Christmas in the old ways. The priory at Bisham may still be closed, but here in London I open up my chapel and set Advent lights in the window and keep the door open so that anyone can come in and see the altar dressed with cloth of gold, the chalice and the crucifix gleaming in the incense-scented darkness, the shine of the crystal monstrance holding the mystery of the Host, the chapel lined with the smiling, confident painted faces of saints and draped in the banners of the Church and my family. In the darkness of the corner of the chapel the banner of the white rose palely gleams; opposite is the rich pansy of the Pole family in papal imperial purple. And I kneel and bury my face in my hands and think that there is no reason that Reginald should not become Pope.

  This Christmas is a great one, for our family and for England. Perhaps this will