We receive few visitors from London this spring, but one day I look from my window to the view of the river, swollen with the rains, and see a barge approaching. At the bow and stern are the Darcy colors. Lord Thomas Darcy, the old Lord of the North, is coming to pay us the compliments of the season.
I call the princess, and we go out to meet him and watch as he stamps down the gangway of the barge, waves his three guests to follow him, and drops to his knee before her. We both watch with some anxiety the slow creaking down and then the painful rise, but I frown when one of the grooms of the household steps forward to help him. Tom Darcy may be more than sixty years old, but he does not like anyone to remark on it.
“I thought I’d bring you some plover eggs,” he says to the princess. “From my moors. In the north.”
He speaks as if he owns all the moorland in the north of England, and indeed he owns a good share of it. Thomas Lord Darcy is one of the great northern lords whose life is dedicated to keeping the Scots on their side of the border. I first met him when I lived in Middleham Castle with my uncle King Richard, and Tom Darcy was one of the Council of the North. Now I step forward and kiss him on both ruddy cheeks.
He smiles, pleased at the attention, and gives me a wink. “I have brought these gentlemen to see your court,” he says, as the French visitors line up and bow, profering little gifts. Mary’s lady-in-waiting takes them with a curtsey and we lead the way into the palace. The princess takes them into her presence chamber and then, after a brief conversation, leaves us. The Frenchmen stroll about and look at the tapestries and the silver plate, the precious objects on the sideboards, and chat to the ladies-in-waiting. Lord Darcy leans towards me.
“Troubled times,” he says shortly. “I never thought I would live to see them.”
I nod. I lead him to the window so that he can enjoy the view of the knot gardens and the river beyond.
“They asked me what I knew of the wedding night!” he complains. “A wedding night a quarter of a century ago! And I was in the north anyway.”
“Indeed,” I say. “But why are they asking?”
“They’re going to sit in judgment,” he says unhappily. “There’s some cardinal, trailing all the way from Rome, to tell our queen that she wasn’t truly married, telling the king that he’s been a bachelor for the last twenty years and can marry whomever he likes. Amazing what they think of, isn’t it?”
“Amazing,” I agree.
“I’ve got no time for it,” he says abruptly. “Nor for that fat churchman Wolsey.” He looks at me with his shrewd twinkling glare. “I’d have thought you’d have had something to say about it. You and yours.”
“No one has asked me for my opinion,” I say cautiously.
“Well, when they do, if you answer that the queen is his wife and his wife is the queen, you can call on Tom Darcy to support you,” he says. “And others. The king should be advised by his peers. Not by some fat fool in cherry red.”
“I hope that the king will be well advised.”
The old baron puts out his hand. “Give me your pretty brooch,” he says.
I unpin the insignia of my husband’s house, a deep purple enameled pansy, that I wear at my belt. I drop it into Darcy’s calloused hand.
“I’ll send it with a messenger, if I ever need to warn you,” he says. “So you know it’s truly from me.”
I am wary. “I should always be glad to hear from you, my lord. But I hope that we will never need such a sign.”
He nods towards the closed door to the princess’s privy chamber. “I hope so too. But for all that, we might as well be prepared. For her,” he says shortly. “Bonny little thing. England’s rose.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, JUNE 1529
Montague comes from Blackfriars to Richmond on our family barge to bring me the news from London, and I order the servants to bring him directly into my own private room and leave my ladies and their sewing and their gossip outside the closed door. Princess Mary is in her rooms and will not come to me unless I send for her; I have told her ladies to keep her busy today and to make sure that she speaks to no one coming from London. We are all trying to protect her from the nightmare that is being enacted just downriver. Her own tutor, Dr. Richard Fetherston, has gone to London to represent the queen but agreed with me that we should keep his mission from her daughter if we can. But, I know that bad news travels fast, and I am expecting bad news. Lord Darcy was not the only lord who was questioned, and now a cardinal has arrived from Rome and set up a court to rule on the royal marriage.
“What’s happened?” I ask the minute the door is closed tightly shut behind us.
“There was a court, a proper hearing, before Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio,” he begins. “The place was packed. It was like a fair, packed so tightly you could hardly breathe. Everyone wanted to be there; it was like a public beheading when everyone is crowding to see the scaffold. Awful.”
I see he is genuinely distressed. I pour him a glass of wine and press him into a chair at the fireside. “Sit. Sit, my son. Take a breath.”
“They called the queen into court and she was magnificent. She completely ignored the cardinals sitting in judgment and she walked past them and knelt before the king—”
“She did?”
“Knelt and asked him in what way she had displeased him. Said that she had greeted his friends as her own, done whatever he wanted, and if she had not given him a son it wasn’t her fault.”
“My God—she said that in public?”
“Clear as a tolling bell. She said that he had found her an untouched virgin, as she was when she came from Spain. He said nothing. She asked him in what way she had ever failed him as a wife. He said nothing. What could he say? She has been everything to him for twenty years.”
I find I am smiling at the thought of Katherine speaking the truth to a king who has become accustomed to a diet of flattering lies.
“She asked if she could appeal to Rome, and then she rose to her feet and walked out, and left him silenced.”
“She just walked out?”
“They shouted her name to call her back into court, but she walked out and went back to her rooms as if she thought nothing of them. It was the greatest moment. Lady Mother, she has been a great queen all her life but that was her finest moment. And everyone outside the court, all the common people, were cheering and blessing her name and cursing the Lady for a whore who has brought nothing but trouble. And all the people inside the court were just stunned, or longing to laugh, or wanting to cheer too—but not daring while the king sat there, looking like a fool.”
“Hush,” I say at once.
“I know,” he says, snapping his fingers as if irritated at his own indiscretion. “Sorry. This has shaken me more than I thought. I felt . . .”
“What?” I ask. Montague is not Geoffrey; he is not ready with his feelings, quick to tears, quick to anger. If Montague is distressed, then he has witnessed something very great indeed. If Montague is distressed, then the whole court will be rocked with emotion. The queen has let them see her sorrow, she has shown them her heartbreak, and now they will be as troubled as children who see their mother cry for the first time.
“I feel as if something terrible is happening,” he says wonderingly. “As if nothing will ever be the same again. For the king to try to end his marriage to a faultless wife is somehow . . . if the king loses her he will lose . . .” He breaks off. “How will he be without her? How will he behave without her advice? Even when he does not consult her, we all know what she thinks. Even when she doesn’t speak, there is still the sense of her at court, we know she is there. She is his conscience, she is his exemplar.” He pauses again. “She’s his soul.”