“Any news of Carew?” Geoffrey asks Montague, keeping his voice low, though there is no one near us but half a dozen of our own guards, riding before and behind, too distant to eavesdrop.
Grimly, Montague shakes his head.
“Nothing to link us to him?” Geoffrey presses him.
“Everyone knows that our Lady Mother loves the princess like a daughter,” Montague says irritably. “Everyone knows that I talked with the plotters. We all dined with Cromwell and plotted the fall of Anne. You don’t have to be a Cromwell to make a case against us. We just have to hope that Cromwell doesn’t want to make a case against us.”
“Half the Privy Council opposed the king disinheriting the princess,” Geoffrey complains. “Most of them spoke against it to me.”
“And if Cromwell wants to bring half the Privy Council down, then you can be sure he’ll have evidence.” Montague looks across me to his younger brother. “And by the sound of it, you’ll be the first one he’ll come to.”
“Because I am the first to speak up for her!” Geoffrey bursts out. “I defend her!”
“Hush, boys,” I say. “Nobody doubts either of you. Montague, don’t tease your brother, you’re like children again.”
Montague ducks his head in a half apology and I look ahead, where the old hunting lodge sits on a little rise of ground, the turrets just visible above the trees.
“She is expecting us?” I ask. I find I am nervous.
“Of course,” Montague confirms. “As soon as she had greeted the king she asked if she could see you. And he agreed. He said that he knew that she loved you and that you had always been a good guardian to her.”
From the edge of the wood we can see the lane leading to the castle, and there are riders coming towards us at a leisurely canter. I think I can see, I shade my eyes against the bright morning sunshine, I can see that there are ladies riding among the men, I can see the flicker of their gowns. I think that they have come out to meet us, and I give a little laugh and press my horse forward into a trot and then into a canter.
“Halloo! Awaaay!” Geoffrey cries out the hunting call and follows me as I ride forward and then I am almost certain, and then I am completely certain, that at the center of the riders is the princess herself and that she is feeling, just as I am, that she cannot wait for another moment, and she has ridden out to meet me.
“Your Grace!” I call to her, forgetting all about her changed title. “Mary!”
The horses slow as the two parties come together and I pull up my hunter, who snorts excitedly. One of the guards runs to his head and helps me down from the saddle, and my darling princess tumbles from her horse as if she were a child again, jumping down to me, and she dives into my arms and I hold her tightly.
She cries, of course she cries, and I bend my head and put her wet cheek against mine and feel my own grief and sense of loss and fear for her rise up until I am ready to cry too.
“Come,” Montague says gently behind me. “Come, Lady Mother, come, Lady Mary.” He nods his head as he says this, as if to apologize for the false title. “Let’s all go back to the house and you can talk all day long.”
“You’re safe,” Mary says, looking up at me. Now I can see the dark shadows under her eyes and the weariness in her face. She’s never going to have the shining look of a lucky child again. The loss of her mother and the sudden cruelty from her father have scarred her, and her pale skin and pinched mouth show a woman who has learned to bear pain with a deep determination too young.
“I am safe, but I have been so afraid for you.”
She shakes her head as if to say that she will never be able to tell me what she has endured. “You went to my mother’s funeral,” she says, handing the reins of her horse to the groom and linking her arm through mine so we walk back to the house in step.
“It was very solemn, very beautifully done, and a number of those of us who loved her were allowed to attend.”
“They wouldn’t let me go. They wouldn’t even let me pay for her prayers. Besides, they took everything from me.”
“I know.”
“But it’s better now,” she says with a brave little smile. “My father has forgiven my obstinacy and nobody could be kinder than Queen Jane. She has given me a diamond ring and my father gave me a thousand crowns.”
“And you have a proper steward to take care of things for you?” I ask anxiously. “A chamberlain of your household?”
A shadow crosses her face. “Sir John Shelton is my chamberlain; Lady Anne, his wife, runs the household.”
I nod. So the jailers become the servants. I imagine they still report to Lord Cromwell.
“Lord John Hussey is not allowed to serve me, nor his wife,” Mary says.
“His wife is arrested,” I say very quietly. “In the Tower.”
“And my tutor Richard Fetherston?”
“In the tower.”
“But you are safe?”
“I am,” I say. “And so happy to be with you again.”
We talk together all day; we close the door on everyone and speak freely. She asks after my children. I tell her of my little ladies-in-waiting, my granddaughters Katherine and Winifred. I tell her of my pride and love for Montague’s son Henry, who is nine years old. “We call him Harry,” I tell her. “You should see him on a horse, he can ride anything. He terrifies me!” I tell her of the loss of Arthur’s boy, but his two girls are well. Ursula has given the Staffords a great brood of three boys and a girl, and Geoffrey, my baby, has babies of his own: Arthur who is five years old, Margaret who is four, Elizabeth who is three, and our new baby, little Thomas.
She volunteers little stories about her half sister Elizabeth, smiling at the things that the child says, and praising her quickness and her charm. She asks about the ladies who have come to serve Jane, and laughs when I tell her that they are all Seymour appointments, or Cromwell choices, however unsuitable for the work, and that Jane looks around them sometimes quite dazed that they should all find themselves in the queen’s rooms.
“And the Church?” she asks me quietly. “And the monasteries?”
“Going one by one. We have lost Bisham Priory,” I say. “Cromwell’s men inspected it and found it wanting, and handed it over to a prior who is never there, and whose intention is to declare it corrupt and surrender it to them.”
“It can’t be true that so many houses have failed in their faith,” she says. “Bisham was a good house of prayer, I know it was.”
“None of the inquiries is honest, only a way of persuading the abbess or the prior to resign their living and go. Cromwell’s visitors have gone to almost every small monastery. I believe they will go on to inquire at the great houses too. They accuse them of terrible crimes, and then find against them. There have been some places that were trading in relics—you know the sort of thing—and some places where they lived too comfortably for their souls, but this is not a reformation, though that is what they want to call it—it’s a destruction.”
“For profit?”
“Yes, only for profit,” I say. “God knows how much treasure has gone from the altars into the treasury, and the rich farmland, and the buildings have been bought by their neighbors. Cromwell had to create a whole new court to manage the wealth. If you ever inherit, my dear, you will not recognize your kingdom; it has been stripped bare.”
“If I ever inherit, I shall put it right,” she says very quietly. “I swear it. I will put it right again.”
SITTINGBOURNE, KENT, JULY 1536
The court is on progress to Dover to inspect the new fortifications, then the newlyweds will go hunting. The suspected courtiers have been released from the Tower, and my kinsman Henry Courtenay returns to court but not yet to the Privy Council.