“You are to go to court to serve the Princess Elizabeth,” he says, his voice clear above the noise of the horses and the hounds, and the swelling discontented murmur from the princess’s household.
The joy dies from her face at once. She shakes her head. “I cannot serve a princess, I am the princess,” she says.
“It’s not possible,” I start to say.
Howard turns on me and thrusts into my hands an open sheet of paper with the king’s scrawled H at the foot and his seal. “Read it,” he says rudely.
He dismounts and throws the reins to one of his men and walks without invitation through the open double doors into the great hall beyond.
“I’ll see him,” I say quickly to the princess. “You go riding. I’ll see what we have to do.”
She is shaking with rage. I glance at her Master of Horse. “Take care of her,” I say warningly.
“I am a princess,” she spits. “I serve no one but the queen, my mother, and the king, my father. Tell him that.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” I promise her, and I jump down from the mounting block, wave my hunter away, and follow Thomas Howard into the darkness of the hall.
“I’ve not come to dispute the rights and wrongs, I’ve come to accomplish the king’s will,” he says the moment I step into the great room.
I doubt that the duke could dispute the rights and wrongs of anything. He’s no great philosopher. He’s certainly no Reginald.
I bow my head. “What is the king’s will?”
“There’s a new law.”
“Another new law?”
“A new law that determines the heirs of the king.”
“It’s not enough that we all know the firstborn son takes the throne?”
“God has told the king that his marriage to Queen Anne is his only valid marriage, and that her children will be his heirs.”
“But Princess Mary can still be a princess,” I point out. “Just one of two. The senior of two, the oldest of two.”
“No,” the duke says flatly. I can see this puzzles him and immediately he is irritated that I have raised it. “That’s not how it’s going to be. I am not here to argue with you, but to do the king’s will. I’m to take her to Hatfield Palace. She’s to live there, under the supervision of Sir John and Lady Anne Shelton. She’s to take a lady’s maid, a lady-in-waiting, a groom for her horses. That’s all.”
The Sheltons are kin to the Boleyns. He is taking my girl and putting her in a house run by her enemies.
“But her ladies-in-waiting? Her chamberlain? Her Master of Horse? Her tutor?”
“She’s to take none of them. Her household is to be dismissed.”
“But I’ll have to go with her,” I say, startled.
“You won’t,” he says flatly.
“The king himself put her in my keeping when she was a baby!”
“That’s over. The king says that she’s to go and serve Princess Elizabeth. There’s not to be anyone to serve her. You’re dismissed. Her household is dismissed.”
I look at his hard face, and think of his armed men in our Christmas courtyard. I think of Princess Mary coming back from her ride, for me to tell her that she has to go and live in the old palace at Hatfield, with none of the entourage or household of a princess, with none of the companions of her childhood. She has to go into service to the Boleyn bastard in a household supervised by Boleyn cousins. “My God, Thomas Howard, how can you bring yourself to do this?”
“I’m not going to say no to the king,” he says gratingly. “And neither are you. Any of you.”
She is sick with pain and white-faced. She is too ill to ride, and I have to help her into a litter. I put a hot brick under her feet and one wrapped in silk in her lap. She puts out her little hands through the curtains, and I cling to her as if I cannot bear to let her go.
“I will send for you as soon as I can,” she says quietly. “He cannot keep you from me. Everyone knows that we have always been together.”
“I asked them if I could come with you, I said I would come at my own expense, that I will serve you for nothing. I will pay for your household to serve you.” I am gabbling in my anxiety as from the corner of my eye I see Thomas Howard mount up. The litter rocks as the mules move restlessly, and I grab her hands even more tightly.
“I know. But they want to get me alone, like my mother, without a friend in the house.”
“I’ll come,” I swear. “I’ll write to you.”
“They won’t let me have letters. And I won’t read anything that is not addressed to me as princess.”
“I’ll write in secret.” I am desperate that she does not see me crying, that I help her to keep her own dignity, as we are dragged apart, in this awful moment.
“Tell my mother I’m well, and that I am not at all frightened,” she says, white as the curtains of the litter and trembling with fear. “Tell her I never forget that I am her daughter and that she is Queen of England. Tell her that I love her and I will never betray her.”
“Come on!” Thomas Howard shouts from the head of the troop, and at once they move off, the litter jerking and rolling as her grip tightens on my hand.
“You may have to obey the king, I can’t tell what he will ask of you,” I say quickly, walking alongside, breaking into a run. “Don’t stand against him. Don’t anger him.”
“I love you, Margaret!” she calls. “Give me your blessing!”
My lips form the words but I am choking and cannot speak. “God bless,” I whisper. “God bless you, little princess, I love you.”
I step back and I all but fall into a curtsey, my head down so she can’t see my face contorted with grief. Behind me, I feel the whole household sink down into the lowest of bows, and the country people lining the avenue, come to see the princess kidnapped from her own house, disobey every shouted order they have heard all day and pull off their caps and drop to their knees to honor the only princess in England as she goes by.
WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, SPRING 1534
I should be glad to be at my own home and pleased to rest. I should be glad to wake with the sun shining through my window panes of clear Venetian glass making the lime-washed room bright and light. I should be glad of the fire in the grate and my clean linen airing before it. I am a wealthy woman, I have a great name and a great title, and now that I am released from my service at court I can stay at home and visit my grandchildren, run my lands, pray in my priory, and know that I am safe.
I am not a young woman, my brother dead, my husband dead, my cousin the queen dead. I look in the mirror and see the deep lines in my face and the weariness in my dark eyes. Under my gable hood my hair has gone silver and gray and white like an old dappled mare. I think it is time that I was put out to grass, it is time for me to rest, and I smile at the thought of it and know that I will never prepare myself for death: I am a survivor, I doubt I will ever be ready to quietly turn my face to the wall.
I am glad of my hard-won safety. They charged Thomas More with talking treason to Elizabeth Barton, and he had to find a letter he had written warning her not to speak to prove his innocence so that he could stay at his quiet home. My friend John Fisher could not defend himself against the charge and now sleeps in a stone cell in the Tower in these damp spring days. Elizabeth Barton, and those who were her friends, are in the Tower too, and certain to die.
I should be glad to be safe and free, but I have little joy, for John Fisher has neither safety nor liberty and somewhere out in the flat, cold lands of Huntingdonshire is the Queen of England, ill served by people who are set about only to guard her. Even worse, at Hatfield Palace Princess Mary is cooking her breakfast over her bedroom fire, afraid to eat at the high table because there are Boleyn cooks in the kitchen poisoning the soup.