“Tom Darcy has surrendered his castle to the rebels,” he says. “The pilgrims have taken Pontefract and everyone under Tom Darcy’s command in the castle and in the town has sworn the pilgrim oath. The Archbishop of York is with them.”
He sees my face. “Old Tom is on his last crusade,” he says wryly. “He’ll be wearing his badge of the five wounds.”
“Tom is wearing his badge?” I ask.
“He had the crusader badges at his castle,” he says. “He issued it to the pilgrims. They are marching for God against heresy and wearing the five wounds of Christ. No Christian can fire on them under that sacred banner.”
“What should we do?” I ask him.
“You go to the country,” Montague decides. “If the South rises for the pilgrims, they’ll need leadership and money and supplies. You can lead them in Berkshire. I’ll send to you so you know what’s happening in the North. Geoffrey and I will go north with our force, and join the pilgrims when the time is right. I’ll send a message to Reginald to come right away.”
“He’ll come home?”
“At the head of a Spanish army, please God.”
BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, OCTOBER 1536
I can get no news in the country, but I hear extraordinary stories of thousands of men marching on the destroyed abbeys and rebuilding them while singing the great psalms that were always sung there. People talk of a comet in the sky over Yorkshire, and say that the rising has gone underground in Lincolnshire and King Moldwarp will have to chase through the earth to find the pilgrims but they are already in the Yorkshire hills and dales and he will never impose his muddy will on them again.
I get a letter from Gertrude who tells me that her husband, my cousin Henry Courtenay, has been commanded by the king to muster an army and put himself under the command of Lord Talbot and march north as soon as possible. The king had said that he would lead his army, but the news from the North is so terrifying that he is sending my kinsmen instead.
It’s little and late. The king has not given the commanders money enough to pay the men, and they are so badly shod and there are so few on horses that they can’t get north fast enough. Anyway, they all know that when the king’s army sees the pilgrim badge they’ll desert, taking their weapons with them. And Thomas Howard is complaining that he is supposed to hold down Yorkshire with nothing, while all the money and troops go to George Talbot and the credit will go to Charles Brandon. The king does not know who his friends are, or how to keep them; how should he face his enemies?
Best of all, Norfolk has authority to treat with the rebels and he is bound to grant them the saving of the abbeys. If we can make the princess safe too in this moment, then this will be a great victory.
I’ll send you news as soon as I have it. The royal army and the pilgrims are bound to meet in battle and the pilgrims outnumber them by many thousands. And all the hosts of heaven are on our side too.
Burn this.
I am in the flesh kitchen at Bisham watching the hunt bring in the deer. They had two great buck and a hind and they dressed the meat in the field to stop it spoiling and now hang it in the cool stone-floored room to drip blood in the gutters.
“They hung our friend Legh just like that,” the Master of the Hounds remarks quietly to me.
Carefully, I don’t turn my head. It looks as if the two of us are inspecting the flayed carcass.
“Did they?” I ask. “Thomas Legh who came here, to close the priory?”
“Yes,” he said with quiet satisfaction. “On the gates of Lincoln. And the Bishop of Lincoln’s chancellor. He that gave evidence against the sainted queen. It’s like it’s all coming to rights, isn’t it, your ladyship?”
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?”