“Then we’ll have to buy more somehow,” I say grimly. “We have to have a good crop or there will be no bread next winter.”
As the evenings get lighter I give up using wax candles altogether, and tell the children they must do all their studying before dusk. We live in the guttering shadows and stink of the rush lights and the tallow drips on the floors. I think that I will have to marry again, but no man of any wealth or position would consider me, and My Lady will not order one of her relations to the task this time. I am a widow of thirty-one years with five young children and growing debts. When I remarry, I will lose all rights over the estates, as they will all go to the king as Henry’s guardian, so I would come to a new husband as a pauper. Very few men would see me as a desirable wife. No man who wants to prosper at the Tudor court would marry a widow with five children of Plantagenet blood. If My Lady the King’s Mother will not make a marriage for me with someone whom she can command, then I cannot see how to raise my children and feed myself.
STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SUMMER 1505
It all comes back to her. It all comes back to her favor and her influence. In the summer I realize that however good the harvest, however high the price of wheat, we will not make enough to get through another winter. I am going to have to raise the money to go to London and ask her for help.
“We could sell Sir Richard’s warhorse?” my steward John Little suggests.
“He’s so old!” I exclaim. “Who would want him? And he served Sir Richard so well for so long!”
“He’s no use to us,” he says. “We can’t use him on the plow, he won’t go between the shafts. I might get a good price for him in Stourbridge. He’s well known as Sir Richard’s horse; people know he’s a good horse.”
“Then everyone will know that I can’t afford to keep him,” I protest. “That I can’t afford to keep him for Henry to ride.”
The steward nods, his eyes on his boots, not looking at me. “Everyone knows that already, my lady.”
I bow my head at this new humiliation. “Take him then,” I say.
I watch the big horse being saddled up. He lowers his proud head for the bridle and stands still while they tighten the girth. He may be old, but his ears come forward when the steward steps off the mounting block to swing a leg over his back and sit in the saddle. The old warhorse thinks he is riding out to battle once more. His neck arches, and he paws the ground as if he is eager to go to work. For a moment I nearly cry out: “No! Keep him! He’s our horse, he’s served my husband well. Keep him for Henry.”
But then I remember that there is nothing to feed him unless I can get help from My Lady the King’s Mother in London, and that the price of the horse will pay for my journey.
We take our own horses and we stay in the guesthouses of the nunneries or abbeys along the way. They are positioned along the road to help pilgrims and wayfarers, and I am comforted every time I see a bell tower on the horizon and know there is a place of refuge, every time I step into a clean lime-washed room and feel the sense of holy peace. One night there is nowhere to go but an inn, and I have to pay for myself, for my lady companion, and for the four men-at-arms. I have spent nearly all my money by the time we see the spires of London coming out of the afternoon mist and hear the dozens of bells tolling for None.
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1505
The court is at Westminster, which is a blessing for me because there are always extra rooms in the huge rambling palace. Once I used to sleep in the best room, in the bed of the queen to keep her company through the night; now I am allotted a small room, far away from the great hall. I note how quickly and accurately the steward of the household observes the fall in my fortunes.
This palace is like an enclosed village, set inside its own great walls inside the city of London. I know all the twisting alleyways and the little walled gardens, the backstairs and the hidden doorways. This has been my home since childhood. I wash my face and hands and pin on my hood. I brush the dust from my gown and hold my head high as I walk through the little cobbled streets to the great hall and the queen’s rooms.
I am just about to cross the queen’s gardens when I hear someone call my name, and I turn to see Bishop John Fisher, confessor to My Lady, and an old acquaintance of mine. When I was a little girl, he used to come to Middleham Castle to teach us our catechism and hear our confessions. He knew my brother, Teddy, as a small boy, as the heir to the throne; he taught me the psalms when the name in my psalter was Margaret Plantagenet, and I was niece to the King of England.
“My lord bishop!” I exclaim, and I drop a little curtsey, for he has become a great man under the pious rule of My Lady.
He makes the sign of the cross over my head, and bows as low to me as if I were still the heiress to the royal house. “Lady Pole! I am sorry for your loss. Your husband was a fine man.”
“He was indeed,” I say.
Bishop Fisher offers me his arm and we walk side by side on the little path. “It is rare that we see you at court, my daughter?”
I am about to say something lighthearted about wanting to buy new gloves when something in his friendly, smiling face makes me want to confide in him.
“I have come for help,” I say honestly. “I am hoping that My Lady will advise me. My husband left me with next to nothing, and I cannot manage on my dower rents.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” he says simply. “But I am sure she will hear you kindly. She has many worries and much work, God bless her; but she would never neglect one of her family.”
“I hope so,” I say. I am wondering if there is any way in which I can ask him to plead my case with her, when he gestures towards the open doors of the gallery before her presence chamber. “Come on,” he urges me. “I’ll go in with you. There’s no time like the present, and there are always many people waiting to see her.”
We walk together. “You will have heard that your former charge, the Dowager Princess of Wales, is to go home to Spain?” he asks me quietly.
I am shocked at the news. “No! I thought she was betrothed to marry Prince Harry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not widely known, but they cannot agree on the terms,” he says. “Poor child, I think she is very lonely in her big palace with no one but her confessor and her ladies. Better for her to go to her home than live alone here, and My Lady does not wish her to come to court. But this is between the two of us. I don’t know that they have even told her yet. Will you go to see her while you are in London? I know she loves you very much. You might advise her to accept her destiny gladly and with grace. I truly think that she would be happier at home than waiting and hoping here.”
“I will. I am so sorry!”
He nods. “It’s a hard life she has had. Widowed so young and now having to go home again a widow. But My Lady is guided by her prayers. She thinks it is God’s will that Prince Harry should marry another bride. The dowager princess is not for him.”
The guards stand aside for the bishop and open the doors to the presence chamber. It is crowded with petitioners; everyone wants to meet My Lady and ask her for one favor or another. All of the business of being the queen has fallen on her shoulders, and she has her own great lands to manage too. She is one of the kingdom’s wealthiest landowners, by far the wealthiest woman in England. She has endowed colleges, and chantries and built hospitals, churches, colleges, and schools, and all of them send representatives to report to her or to ask for her favor. I look around the room and calculate that there are about two hundred people waiting to see her. I am one of very, very many.