Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  ‘It’s not my opinion,’ she gasped. She was on the floor kneeling at his feet in one smooth movement, hammered down by his anger. ‘I do not despise you. It is not my opinion, I love you, Robert, and I trust you …’

  ‘You taunted me with the death of my brother,’ he said coldly. ‘Amy, I do not want to quarrel with you. Indeed, I will not. You must excuse me now, I have to see about something in the stables before I go to dinner.’

  He swept her a shallow bow and went from the room. Amy scrambled up from her subservient crouch on the floor and ran to the door. She would have torn it open and gone after him but when she heard the brisk stride of his boots on the wooden floor she did not dare. Instead she pressed her hot forehead to the cool panelling of the door and wrapped her hands around the handle, where his hand had been.

  Dinner was a meal where good manners overlaid discomfort. Amy sat in stunned silence, eating nothing, William Hyde and Robert maintained a pleasant flow of conversation about horses and hunting and the prospect of war with the French. Alice Hyde kept her head down, and Lizzie watched Amy as if she feared she would faint at the table. The ladies withdrew as soon as they could after dinner and Robert, pleading an early start, left soon after. William Hyde took himself into his privy chamber, poured himself a generous tumbler of wine, turned his big wooden chair to the fire, put his feet up on the chimney breast and fell to considering the day.

  His wife Alice put her head round the door and came quietly into the room, followed by her sister-in-law. ‘Has he gone?’ she asked, determined not to meet with Sir Robert again, if she could avoid him.

  ‘Aye. You can take a chair, Alice, sister, and pour yourselves your wine if you please.’

  They served themselves and drew up their chairs beside his, in a conspiratorial semi-circle around the fire.

  ‘Is that the end of his plans to build here?’ William asked Lizzie Oddingsell.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘All she told me was that he is very angry with her, and that we’re to stay here another month.’

  A quick glance between William and Alice showed that this had been a matter of some discussion. ‘I think he won’t build,’ he said. ‘I think all she showed him today was how far apart they have become. Poor, silly woman. I think she has dug her own grave.’

  Lizzie quickly crossed herself. ‘God’s sake, brother! What do you mean? They had a quarrel. You show me a man and wife who have not had cross words.’

  ‘This is not an ordinary man,’ he said emphatically. ‘You heard him, just as she heard him, but neither of you have the wit to learn. He told her to her face: he is the greatest man in the kingdom. He stands to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. He has the full attention of the queen, she is always in his company. He is indispensable to the first spinster queen this country has ever known. What d’you think that might mean? Think it out for yourself.’

  ‘It means he will want a country estate,’ Lizzie Oddingsell pursued. ‘As he rises at court. He will want a great estate for his wife and for his children, when they come, please God.’

  ‘Not for this wife,’ Alice said shrewdly. ‘What has she ever done but be a burden to him? She does not want what he wants: not the house, not the life. She accuses him of ambition when that is his very nature, his blood and his bone.’

  Lizzie would have argued to defend Amy, but William hawked and spat into the fire. ‘It does not matter if she pleases him or fails him,’ he said flatly. ‘He has other plans now.’

  ‘Do you think he means to put her aside?’ Alice asked her husband.

  Lizzie looked from the one grave face to the other. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard him,’ William said to her patiently. ‘Like her, you hear him; but you don’t attend. He is a man rising far from her.’

  ‘But they are married,’ she insisted uncomprehendingly. ‘Married in the sight of God. He cannot put her aside. He has no reason.’

  ‘The king put two wives aside for no reason,’ William Hyde said grimly. ‘And half the nobility have divorced their wives. Every Roman Catholic priest in England who married during the Protestant years had to put his wife aside when Queen Mary came to the throne, and now perhaps the Protestant clergy will have to do the same. The old laws do not stand. Everything can be re-made. Marriage does not mean marriage now.’

  ‘The church …’

  ‘The head of the church is the queen. Act of parliament. No denying it. What if the head of the church wants Sir Robert to be a single man once more?’

  Lizzie Oddingsell’s face was bleached with shock. ‘Why ever would she?’ She dared him to name the reason.

  ‘To marry him herself.’ Mr Hyde’s voice dropped to a low whisper.

  Lizzie put down her wine glass, very slowly, and clasped her hands in her lap to stop them shaking. When she looked up she saw that her brother’s face was not drawn like hers, but bright with suppressed excitement.

  ‘What if our lord were to be the King of England?’ he whispered. ‘Forget Amy for a moment, she has signed the warrant for her own exile, he will give up on her now, she is no use to him. But think about Sir Robert! Think about us! What if he were to be King of England! What would that mean for us? What of that, sister?’

  Amy waited in the porch of the church in the early hours of the morning for Father Wilson to come and unlock the great wooden doors. When he came up the churchyard path and saw her, pale in her white dress against the silvery wood door, he said nothing but gave her a slow, sweet smile and opened the door to her in silence.

  ‘Father?’ she said softly.

  ‘Tell it to God and then to me,’ he said gently, and let her go in before him.

  He waited at the back of the church, busying himself quietly until she rose from her knees and sat in the pew seat, and only then did he go to her. ‘Trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘I have angered my husband on another matter,’ she said simply. ‘And so I failed to plead for our bishop.’

  He nodded. ‘Don’t reproach yourself for that,’ he said. ‘I think there is nothing any of us can do. The queen is to be called supreme governor of the church. All the bishops have to bow down to her.’

  ‘Supreme governor?’ Amy repeated. ‘But how can she?’

  ‘They say that she does no more than claim the title of her brother and her father,’ he said. ‘They don’t say that she is a woman and filled with a woman’s frailties. They don’t say how a woman, bound by God to be the handmaiden to her husband, cursed by God for the first sin, can be supreme governor.’

  ‘What will happen?’ Amy asked in a little thread of sound.

  ‘I am afraid she will burn the bishops,’ he said steadily. ‘Already Bishop Bonner is arrested, and one by one, as they refuse to kneel to her, the others will be taken.’

  ‘And our bishop? Bishop Thomas?’

  ‘He will go like the others, like a lamb to the slaughter,’ the priest said. ‘A great darkness is going to come over this country and you and I, daughter, can do nothing more than pray.’

  ‘If I can speak to Robert, I will,’ she promised. She hesitated, remembering his rapid departure, and the rage in his voice. ‘He is a great man now, but he knows what it is to be a prisoner, in fear of your life. He is merciful. He will not advise the queen to destroy these holy men.’

  ‘God bless you,’ the priest said. ‘There will be few who dare to speak.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘Will you have to take an oath as well?’

  ‘Once they have finished with the bishops they will come for men like me,’ he said certainly. ‘And I shall have to be ready. If I can stay, I will. I am sworn to serve these people, this is my parish, this is my flock. The good shepherd does not leave his sheep. But if they want me to take an oath which says that she is Pope then I don’t see how I can do it. The words would choke me. I will have to take my punishment as better men than me are doing now.’

  ‘They will murder you for your faith?’

  He spread ou