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 wife. Behind me, Katherine and Winifred pray for their father, their faces dazed and fearful.
I live in silence in my rooms, looking out over the river meadows towards the high green of the South Downs, wishing I was at my home, wishing my sons were with me, wishing I was a young woman again and my life was constrained and my hopes were defined by my dull, safe husband, Sir Richard. I love him now as I failed to love him before. I think now that he set himself his life’s task to keep me safe, to keep all of us safe, and that I should have been more grateful. But I am old enough and wise enough to know that all regrets are futile, so I bend my head in my prayers and hope he hears that I acknowledge what he did, when he married a young woman from a family too close to the throne, and that I know what he did when he spent all his time moving us further and further away from its dangerous glamour. I too tried to keep us hidden; but we are the white rose—the bloom shines even in the darkest, thickest hedgerow; it can be seen even in the dark of night like a fallen moon, palely gleaming among thrusting leaves.
COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX, DECEMBER 1538
In my room in the tower at Cowdray, I hear the household start to prepare for Christmas, just as we do at Bisham, just as the king will be doing at Greenwich. They fast for Advent; they cut the boughs from the holly and the ivy, the brambles and the gorse, and weave a green Christmas crown; they drag in a mighty log that will burn in the grate until the end of the Christmas feast, they rehearse their carols and they practice dances. They order special spices and they start the long preparation of the seasonal dishes for the twelve days of feasting. I listen to the household bustling outside my door and I dream that I am at home, until I wake and remember that I am far from home, waiting for William Fitzwilliam to come from London and tell me that my sons are dead and my hopes are ended.
He comes in early December. I hear the clatter of his troop of horse on the track and their shouts for the stable lads, and I crack open the shutter of my bedroom window and look down to see William and his men around him, the bustle of his arrival, and his wife going out to greet him, the horses’ breaths smoking in the cold air, the frost crackling on the grass under their feet.
I watch him as he dismounts, his bright cape, his embroidered hat, the way he thumps his fists one against the other as his hands are cold. His absentminded kiss for his wife, his shouted commands at his men. This is the man who is going to bring me heartbreak. This is the man who is going to tell me that it was all for nothing, that my whole life has been worthless, that my sons are dead.
He comes straight to my room, as if he cannot wait to relish his triumph. His face is solemn, but his eyes are bright.
“Your ladyship, I am sorry to tell you, but your son Lord Montague is dead.”
I face him, dry-eyed. “I am sorry to hear it,” I say steadily. “On what charge?”
“Treason,” he says easily. “Your son and his cousins Henry Courtenay and Edward Neville were brought before their peers and tried and found guilty of treason against the king.”
“Oh, did they plead guilty?” I ask, my voice sharp between my cold lips.
“They were found guilty,” he says, as if this were an answer, as if this could ever be a just answer. “The king showed them mercy.”
I can feel my heart leap. “Mercy?”
“He allowed them to be executed on Tower Hill, not at Tyburn.”
“I know that my son and his cousins were innocent of any treason to our most beloved king,” I say. “Where is Henry’s wife, Lady Courtenay, and her son, Edward?”
He checks at this. Fool that he is, he had almost forgotten them. “Still in the Tower of London,” he says sullenly.
“And my son Geoffrey?”
He does not like questions. He blusters. “Madam, it is not for you to interrogate me. Your son is a dead traitor and you are suspect.”