The King's Curse Read online

  I think of Tom Darcy, and how he hoped he would die on crusade, fighting for his faith, and when they tell me that he was beheaded as a traitor on Tower Hill in June, as the swallows swooped busily from river to Tower, building their nests for the summer, I know that he died for his faith, just as he wanted.

  A pedlar comes to the back door and says he has a pretty fairing just for me. I go down to the stable yard where he sits on the mounting block with his pack at his feet. He bows when he sees me. “I have something for you,” he says. “I said I would give it to you and leave. So now I’m going on.”

  “How much?”

  He shakes his head and drops a little purse into my hand. “The man who gave it to me said to wish you luck, and that good times will come,” he says, shoulders his pack, and walks from the yard.

  I open the purse and tip the little brooch into my hand. It is the pansy brooch that I gave to old Tom Darcy. He never called on me because he thought that he had won a victory and that the king had given his word of pardon. He never called on me because he thought he was guarded by God. I put the brooch in my pocket and walk away.

  The culling of the North continues. Eight men and one woman come before the juries charged with treason, lords and gentry, two of them distant kinsmen of mine, all of them known to me, all of them good Christians and loyal subjects. And among them is the Yorkshireman, Robert Aske.

  The young man who had the king’s satin coat around his shoulders waits for his trial in the Tower of London with no money and no change of clothes and little food. No one dares to send him anything, and if anyone did, the guards would steal it. He has a full royal pardon for leading the Pilgrimage of Grace, and since then, though there have been uprisings and desperate men fighting for their lives, he neither led nor encouraged them. Ever since he returned to the North from the court, he did nothing but try to persuade men to take the pardon and trust the king’s word. For this, he is in the Tower. Cleverly, Cromwell suggests that since Aske believed that there would be a Parliament in the North, since he swore that the monasteries would be restored, he was assuring people that the pilgrimage had gained its aims, and that this is—must be—treason.

  I walk in the hot sunshine in the fields of my home and look at the ripening wheat. It is going to be a good harvest this year. I think of Tom Darcy sending me a message that good times will come, and that Thomas Cromwell has ruled that such a hope is traitorous. I wonder if the seeds of the wheat are planning to ripen and if this is treason? At sunset, a hare bursts out of the crop and runs in a great half circle before me on the path and then stops, sits on its hinder legs, and looks back at me, its eyes dark and intelligent. “And you?” I say quietly to it. “Are you biding your time? Are you a traitor, waiting for the good times to return?”

  They try everyone whom they bring to London and they find everyone guilty. They accuse churchmen: the prior of Guisborough, the abbot of Jervaulx, the abbot of Fountains Abbey. They arrest Margaret Bulmer for loving her husband so much that she begged him to run away when she thought that the pilgrimage had failed. Her own chaplain gives evidence against her, and her husband, Sir John Bulmer, is hanged and quartered at Tyburn as his wife is burned at Smithfield. Sir John is guilty of treason, she is guilty of loving him.

  They take Robert Aske from the Tower to the courtroom for his trial and back to prison, though when he was last in London he feasted at the court and was embraced by the king. They take him from the Tower to the North of England, so that he can die in full view of the men who had heard him promise their pardon. They take him to York and parade him around the city that is stunned and silent at the fall of its bravest son. They take him to the very top of Clifford Tower on the walls of York and he reads a confession and they put a rope around his neck where the king put his own chain of gold; they wrap him in chains of iron, and they hang him.

  Some of the lords and I spoke to Cromwell for mercy for the northern men. “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!” He has none.

  Montague comes to visit me in midsummer. There are fresh rushes down in every room and the windows wide open to the sweet-smelling air so that the house is filled with the singing of birds.

  He finds me in the garden, harvesting herbs against the plague, for last summer was terrible, especially for the poor, especially for the North. I have used up all the oils in my physic room and have to make more. Montague kneels before me, and I rest my green-stained hand on his head and notice, for the first time, some silver hairs among the bronze.

  “Son Montague, you are going gray,” I say to him severely. “I can’t have a gray-haired son, it will make me feel too old.”

  “Well, your darling Geoffrey is going bald,” he says cheerfully, getting up. “So how will you bear that?”

  “How will he bear it?” I smile. Geoffrey has always been dreadfully vain about his good looks.

  “He’ll wear a cap all the time,” Montague predicts. “And grow a beard like the king.”

  The smile dies from my face. “How are things at court?” I ask shortly.

  “Shall we walk?” He takes my arm and I stroll with him, away from the gardener and the lads, out through the herb garden, through the little wooden gate, and into the meadow that runs down to the river. The mown grass is growing again nearly to our knees; we will take a second crop of hay from this field, rich and green and starred with moon daisies, buttercups, and the bright, blowsy heads of poppies.

  High above us a lark climbs into the cloudless sky, singing louder and louder with each flutter of its wings. We pause and watch the soaring little dot until it is almost invisible, and then the sound abruptly finishes and the bird plunges down to its hidden nest.

  “I’ve been in touch with Reginald,” Montague says. “The king sent Francis Bryan to capture him, and I had to warn him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He was at Cambrai. He was trapped in the town for some time with Bryan waiting for him to set one foot outside. Bryan said that if he had put one foot into France he would have shot him down.”

  “Oh, Montague! Did he get the warning?”

  “Yes, but he knows he has to take care. He knows that the king and Cromwell will stop at nothing to silence him. They know that he was in touch with the pilgrims, and that he writes to the princess. They know that he is raising an army against them. Geoffrey wanted to carry the message. Then he told me that he wanted to join Reginald in exile.”

  “You told him he couldn’t?”

  “Of course he can’t. But he can’t bear this country any longer. The king won’t receive him at court, he’s in debt again, and he can’t bring himself to live under Tudor rule. He was convinced that the pilgrims had won, he thought that the king had seen sense. He doesn’t want to stay in England now.”

  “And what does he think would become of his children? And what about his wife? And what about his lands?”

  Montague smiles. “Oh, you know what he’s like. He flared up and said he would go, and then he thought again and said he would stay and hope for better times. He knows that if another of us were to go into exile it would be even worse for those who stay. He knows he would lose everything if he went.”

  “Who took your message to Reginald?”

  “Hugh Holland, Geoffrey’s old steward. He’s set up in shipping wheat in London.”

  “I know him.” This is the merchant who trades with Flanders and shipped John Helyar to safety.

  “Holland was taking over a load of wheat, and wanted to see Reginald and serve the cause.”

  We walk down the little hill, and arrive at the river. A sharp flash of blue like a winged sapphire skims downriver, faster than an arrow, a kingfisher.

  “I could never leave,” I say. “I never even think of leaving. I feel as if I have to bear witness here. I have to be here even when the monasteries are gone, even when the bones of the saints are taken from the shrines and rolled in the gutters.”

  “I know,” he says sadly. “I feel the same. It’s my country. What