The King's Curse Read online

  “My home?” I ask. “You are seizing Warblington Castle?”

  “Yes,” William says. “Please be ready to leave at once.”

  I think of Hugh Holland’s white face as his horse was dragged from Bockmer to London with him strapped to the saddle. “I shall need a litter,” I say. “I cannot ride all that way.”

  “You can ride pillion behind my commander,” William says coldly.

  “William Fitzwilliam, I am old enough to be your mother, you should not treat me so harshly,” I suddenly burst out, and then I see the quickening of interest in his face.

  “Your sons are far worse than me,” he says. “For they are confessing that they are rebels against the king. That is harsh treatment to a mother for they will be your undoing.”

  I draw back, smooth my gown, and bite back my temper. “They are not saying any such thing,” I say quietly. “And I know nothing against them.”

  It takes us two days to ride south to Midhurst, the roads are so bad with mud and flooding, and we lose our way half a dozen times. Only last year we would have been able to stay in comfort at one of the great monasteries on the way, and the monks would have sent a lad with us to put us on the right road, but now we ride past a great abbey church and it is dark, with the stained-glass windows smashed for the lead, and the slates stolen from the roof.

  There is nowhere to stay at night but a dirty old inn at Petersfield, and the beggars at the kitchen door and in the street bear witness with their hunger and their despair to the closure of the abbey kitchens and the abbey hospital, and the abbey charities.

  COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX, WINTER 1538

  It is a beautiful frosty evening as we reach the broad fields before Cowdray and ride beneath the leafless trees. The sky is palest pink as the sun sinks behind the thick forested folds of the Rother valley. I miss my own fields as I see the resting pastures of Cowdray. I have to trust that I will see them again, that I will get home, that my sons will come home to me, that this cold sunset will pass into darkness and then a dawn and tomorrow will be a better day for me and mine.

  This is Fitzwilliam’s new house, and he has all the pride of a man who has entered into a new property. We dismount stiffly before the open door which leads into a dark paneled hall and there is Mabel Clifford, his wife, with her ladies around her, in her best gown, an English hood crushed low on her head, her face dark with bad temper.

  I give her the slightest of curtseys and I watch her begrudgingly reply. Clearly, she knows that there is no need for her best manners; but she does not know exactly how she is to behave.

  “I have made the tower rooms ready,” she says, speaking past me to her husband as he comes into the hall, throwing off his cape and pulling off his gloves.

  “Good,” he says. He turns to me. “You will dine in your rooms and you will be served by your people. You can walk in the gardens or by the river if you wish, as long as two of my men are with you. You are not allowed to ride.”

  “Ride where?” I ask insolently.

  He checks. “Ride anywhere.”

  “Obviously, I don’t wish to ride anywhere but to my home,” I say. “If I had wanted to go overseas, as you seem to suggest, I would have done so long ago. I have lived at my home for many years.” I let my gaze go to his wife’s flushed, angry face and the new gilding on their woodwork. “Many years. My family have been there for centuries. And I hope to live there for many years yet. I’m no rebel, and I don’t have rebel blood.”

  This enrages Mabel, as I knew it would, since her father was in hiding for most of his life as a traitor to my family, the Plantagenets. “So please show me to my rooms at once, for I’m tired.”

  William turns and gives an order and a server of the household leads the way to the side of the building, where the tower rooms are set one above the other around a circular stair. I mount it wearily, slowly, every bone in my body aching. But still, I am not allowed to go alone, and I will not hold the handrail and haul myself upward when someone is watching. William comes with me, and when I am longing to sit before a fire and eat my dinner, he asks me again what I know of Reginald, and whether Geoffrey was planning to run away to him.

  Next morning, before breakfast, while I am saying my prayers, he comes to me again, and this time he has papers in his hand. As soon as we left my home at Warblington, they searched my rooms, turning them upside down for anything that might be used against me. They found a letter that I was in the middle of writing to my son Montague; but it says nothing but that he should be loyal to the king and trust in God. They have questioned the clerk of my kitchen, poor Thomas Standish, and made him say that he thought that Geoffrey might slip away. William makes much of this, but I remember the conversation and interrupt him: “You are mistaken, my lord. This was after Geoffrey had hurt himself while held in the Tower. We were afraid that he might die, that was why Master Standish said that he feared Geoffrey might slip away.”

  “I see you chop and change words, my lady,” William says angrily.

  “Indeed, I don’t,” I say simply. “And I would rather have no words at all with you.”

  I am ready for him to come to me again after breakfast but it is Mabel who comes to my privy chamber where I am listening to Katherine reading the collect for the day, and she says: “My lord has gone to London and will not question you today, madam.”

  “I am glad of it,” I say quietly. “For it is weary work telling the truth over and over.”

  “You won’t be glad of it when I tell you where he has gone,” she says in spiteful triumph.

  I wait. I take Katherine’s hand.

  “He has gone to give evidence against your sons at their trials. They will be charged with treason and sentenced to death,” she says.

  This is Katherine’s father; but I keep her hand in a steady grip and the two of us look straight at Mabel Fitzwilliam. I am not going to weep in front of such a woman, and I am proud of my granddaughter’s composure. “Lady Fitzwilliam, you should be ashamed of yourself,” I say quietly. “No woman should be so heartless towards another woman’s grief. No woman should torment a man’s daughter as you are doing. No wonder that you cannot give your lord a child, for since you have no heart you probably have no womb either.”

  Her cheeks flame red with temper. “I may have no sons, but very soon, neither will you,” she shouts, and whirls out of the room.

  My son Montague goes before his friends and kinsmen sitting as his jury and is charged with speaking against the king, approving Reginald’s doings, and dreaming that the king was dead. It seems that now Cromwell may inquire into a man’s sleep. His confessor reported to Cromwell that one morning Montague said to him that he dreamed that his brother had come home and was happy. They have interrogated Montague’s sleep and found his dreams guilty. He pleads his innocence but is not allowed to speak in his own defense. Nobody is allowed to speak for him.

  Geoffrey, the child whom I kept at my side when I sent his brothers away, my favorite child, my spoiled son, my baby, gives evidence against his brother Montague, and against his cousins Henry and Edward, and against us all. God forgive him. He says that his first choice was to kill himself rather than bear witness against his brother but that God so wrought on him that if he had ten brothers, or ten sons, he would bring them all to the peril of death rather than leave his country, his sovereign lord, and his own soul in danger. Geoffrey addresses his friends and kinsmen with tears in his eyes. “Let us die, we be but few, according to our deserts rather than our whole country be brought to ruin.”

  What Montague thinks when Geoffrey argues in favor of his death, and for the death of our cousins and friends, I don’t know. I don’t think at all. I try very hard not to hear of his trial, and I try not to think what it means. I am on my knees in the little room at Cowdray where I have put my crucifix and my Bible, my clasped hands against my face, praying and praying that God will move the king to pity and that he will let my innocent son go, and send my poor witless son home to his