“Do you write everything as he bids, or do you tell him your own opinions?” I ask curiously.
He gives me a small, wary smile. “I choose my words carefully, Lady Margaret, both when I write as he commands, and when I tell him what I think.”
“And do you and Reginald still agree?” I ask him, thinking of Reginald traveling in France, consulting with churchmen, asking them for the advice that Thomas More avoids offering in England.
More smiles. “Reginald and I love to differ over detail,” he says. “But in general, we agree, my lady. And as long as he agrees with me, I am bound to think your son a very brilliant man.”
I am to take a new young woman into my care in the princess’s household. Lady Margaret Douglas, the commoner daughter of the king’s sister the Dowager Queen of Scotland. She was Cardinal Wolsey’s ward and now has to live somewhere. The king chooses to put her in our household, living with our princess, under my care.
I welcome her with pleasure. She is a pretty girl, sixteen this year, desperate to be at court, eager to grow up. I think she will make a charming companion for our princess, who is naturally serious and sometimes, in these hard days, troubled. But I hope that her wardship is not a sign to me that the importance of the princess is being diminished. I take my worries to the queen’s chapel, kneeling at her altar and looking at the golden crucifix gleaming with rubies, and I pray, wordlessly, that the king has not sent one girl who is half Tudor and half commoner into the house of a princess because he may one day argue she is the same: half Tudor, half Spanish, and no royal heir.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SPRING 1531
Geoffrey rides out to see me, in the twilight, as if he does not want to be observed. I see him from my window that faces over the London road and I go down to meet him. He is handing over his horse in the stable yard and he kneels for my blessing on the cobbles and then draws me into the cold gray garden, as if he dare not speak to me indoors.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” I ask him urgently.
His face is pale in the gloom. “I have to tell you something terrible.”
“The queen?”
“Safe, thank God. But someone has tried to kill Bishop Fisher, with poison.”
I grip his arm as I stagger in shock. “Who would do such a thing? He cannot have an enemy in the world.”
“The Lady,” Geoffrey says grimly. “He defends the queen from her, and he defends his faith from her, and he is the only man who dares to oppose the king. She, or her family, must be behind this.”
“It can’t be! How do you know?”
“Because two men died eating from the bishop’s bowl of porridge. God Himself saved John Fisher. He was fasting that day and didn’t touch it.”
“I can hardly believe it. I cannot believe it! Are we Italians now?”
“No one can believe it. But someone is prepared to kill a bishop to make the way easy for the Boleyn woman.”
“He is unharmed, God bless him?”
“Unhurt for now. But Lady Mother, if she would kill a bishop, would she dare attempt a queen? Or a princess?”
I feel myself grow cold in the cold garden; my hands begin to shake. “She would not. She would not attempt the life of the queen or the princess.”
“Someone poisoned the bishop’s porridge. Someone was prepared to do that.”
“You must warn the queen.”
“I have done so, and I told the Spanish ambassador, and Lord Darcy had the same idea and came to me.”
“We can’t be seen to plot with Spain. More so now than ever.”
“You mean, now that we know it is so dangerous to oppose Anne Boleyn? Now that we know that the king uses the axe and she uses poison?”
Numbly, I nod.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1531
Reginald comes home from Paris, in the furred robe of a scholar, with an entourage of clerks and learned advisors, bringing the opinions of the French churchmen and universities, after months of debate, research, and discussion. He sends me a brief note to tell me that he will see the king to make his report, and then come to visit me and the princess.
Montague brings him, traveling by our barge on an inflowing tide, with the sound of the drum keeping the rowers to their stroke echoing over the cool water at the gray time of the evening. I am waiting for them on the pier at Richmond, Princess Mary and her ladies with me, her hand in the crook of my elbow, both of us smiling a welcome.
As soon as the barge is close enough for me to see Montague’s white face and grimly set jaw I know that something is terribly wrong. “Go inside,” I say to the princess. I nod to Lady Margaret Douglas. “You go too.”
“I wanted to greet Lord Montague, and—”
“Not today. Go.”
She does as she is told, and the two of them make their way slowly and unwillingly towards the palace, so I can turn my attention to the barge, to Montague’s stiff figure and the crumpled heap of his brother, my son Reginald, in the seat at the rear. On the pier the sentries present arms and snap to attention. The drum rolls, the rowers ship their oars and hold them upward in salute as Montague hauls Reginald to his feet and helps him down the gangway.
My scholarly son staggers as if he is sick; he can hardly stand. The captain of the barge has to take his other arm and the two of them half lift him towards me as I stand on the pier.
Reginald’s legs give way, he collapses to his knees at my feet, his head bowed. “Forgive me,” he says.
I exchange one aghast look with Montague. “What’s happened?”
The face that Reginald turns up to me is as white as if he were dying of the Sweat. His hands that grip mine are damp and shaking. “Are you sick?” I demand in sudden fear. I turn on Montague. “How could you bring him here with a disease? The princess . . .”
Grimly, Montague shakes his head. “He’s not ill,” he says. “He’s been in a fight. He was knocked down.”
I clutch Reginald’s shaking hands. “Who dared to hurt him?”
“The king struck him,” Montague says shortly. “The king drew a dagger on him.”
I am wordless. I look from Montague to Reginald. “What did you say?” I whisper. “What have you done?”
He bows his head, his shoulders convulse, and he gives a sob like a dry choking heave. “I am sorry, Lady Mother. I offended him.”
“How?”
“I told him that there could be no reason in God’s law, in the Bible, or in common justice, for him to put the queen aside,” he said. “I told him that was the opinion of everyone. And he pounded his fist in my face, and snatched up a dagger from his table. If Thomas Howard had not caught him, he would have run me through.”
“But you were only to report what the French theologians believe!”
“That’s what they believe,” he says. He sits back on his heels and looks up at me, and now I see a great bruise slowly forming on the side of his pale handsome face. My son’s delicate cheek bears the mark of the Tudor fist. Anger curdles in my belly like vomit.
“He had a dagger? He drew on you?”
The only man allowed to bear arms at court is the king. He knows that if he ever draws a sword, he will be attacking a defenseless man. And so no king has ever drawn sword or dagger in court. It is against every tenet of chivalry that Henry learned as a boy. It is not in his nature to take up a blade against an unarmed opponent; it is not in his nature to bully with his fists. He is strong, he is big, but he has always managed his temper and controlled his strength. I can’t believe he would have been violent, not to a younger, slighter man, not to a scholar, not to one of his own. I can’t believe that he would have pulled out a blade on Reginald, of all people. This is not one of his wenching, fighting, drinking cronies; this is Reginald, his scholar.