“How have you failed her?” he demands, guiding me into the great hall. The fire is lit in the grate; I can feel the flickering heat on my face. My ladies gently lift the heavy cloak from my shoulders and unwind the scarves, take the gloves from my chilled hands, and pull off my riding boots. I am aching from cold and weariness. I feel every one of my sixty-two years.
“She left me in charge of the princess, and I didn’t stay at her side,” I say shortly.
“She knew you did everything that you could.”
“Oh, damn everything to hell!” I suddenly break out in blasphemy. “I have done nothing for her as I meant to do, and we were young women together and it seems just yesterday, and now she is lying near death and her daughter is in danger and we cannot reach her and I . . . I . . . am just a foolish old woman and I am helpless in this world. Helpless!”
Geoffrey kneels at my feet and his sweet face is torn between laughter and sorrowful pity. “No woman I know is less helpless in the world,” he says. “Not one more determined or powerful. And the queen knows that you are thinking of her and praying for her even now.”
“Yes, I can pray,” I say. “I can pray that at least she is in a state of grace and without pain. I can pray for her.”
I heave myself to my feet, leave the temptation of the fire and the glass of mulled ale, and go to my chapel, where I kneel on the stone floor, which is how she always prayed, and I put the soul of my dearest friend Katherine of Aragon into the hands of God in the hopes that He will care for her better in heaven than we have cared for her here on earth.
And that is where Montague finds me when he comes to tell me that she is gone.
She went like a woman of great dignity; this has to be a comfort for me and for her. She prepared for her death, she had a long talk with her ambassador, and she had the company of dearest Maria, who rode through the winter weather to get to her. She wrote to her nephew and to the king. They tell me that she wrote to Henry that she loved him as she had always done and signed herself as his wife. She prayed with her confessor and he anointed her with holy oil, and administered extreme unction, so that she was, according to her unshakable faith, ready for her death. In the early afternoon she slipped away from this life that had been such a hard and thankless task for her, and—I am as certain as if I had seen it—joined her husband Arthur in the next.
I think of her as I first met her, a young woman tremulous with anxiety about being Princess of Wales and illuminated with love, her first love, and I think of her going to heaven like that, with her five little angels following her, one of the finest queens that England has ever had.
“Of course, it changes everything for Princess Mary for the worse,” Geoffrey says tempestuously, bursting into my private chamber, throwing off his winter jacket.
“How for the worse?” I feel calm in my grief. I am wearing a gown of dark blue, the royal color of mourning for my house, though they tell me that the king is in yellow and gold—the mourning color of Spain, and a bright buttercup shade that suits his mood, freed as he is at last from a faithful wife, and safe from invasion by her nephew.
“She has lost a protector and a witness,” Montague agrees. “The king would never have moved against her while her mother was alive, he would have had to order that the queen was attainted before his daughter. Now Princess Mary is the only person left in England who refuses to swear to his oath.”
I take the decision that has been waiting for me. “I know. I know this. We have to get her out of England. Son Montague, the time is now. We have to take the risk. We have to act now. Her life is in danger.”
I stay in London while Montague and Geoffrey handpick a guard who will ride to Hunsdon and seize the princess, plan a route skirting London, and hire a ship that will wait for her and take her out of one of the little Thameside villages like Grays. We decide against telling the Spanish ambassador; he loves the princess and he is in deep grief for her mother, but he is a dainty, fearful man, and if Thomas Cromwell were to arrest him, I think he would squeeze him like a Spanish orange and the man would tell everything within days, perhaps within hours.
Geoffrey goes to Hunsdon and, after waiting patiently, bribing everyone he can, gets the boy who lights the fires in the bedchambers into his service. He comes home beaming with relief.
“She’s safe for the moment,” he says. “Thank God! Because getting her away would have been near to impossible. But her luck has changed—who would have thought it? She has letters from the Boleyn queen saying that they must be friends, that the princess can turn to her in her grief.”
“What?” I ask incredulously. It is so early in the morning that I am not yet dressed, but am still in my nightgown and furred robe. Geoffrey has come to my bedchamber and we are alone as he stirs up the fire.
“I know.” He is almost laughing. “I even saw the princess. She is allowed to walk in the garden, by the order of Anne. Apparently, the Lady has ordered that the princess is given more freedom and treated more kindly. She can receive visitors and the Spanish ambassador can bring her letters.”
“But why? Why would Anne change like this?”
“Because while Queen Katherine was alive, the king had no choice but to stay with the Lady, he was bound to push through the destruction of the Church. You know what he’s like, with everyone saying that it couldn’t be done and shouldn’t be done he grew more and more obstinate. But now that the queen is dead he is free. His quarrel with the emperor is over, he’s safe from invasion, he has no need to quarrel with the Holy Father. He is a widower now; he can legally marry Anne if he wants to, and there is no reason that he should not reconcile with the princess. She is the daughter of his first wife; a son from his second will inherit before her.”
“So that woman is trying to befriend the princess?”
“Says she will intercede with her father, says she will be her friend, says she can come to court and not even be a lady-in-waiting, but have her own rooms.”
“Precedence over the Boleyn bastards?” I ask, sharp as ever.
“She didn’t say that. But why not? If he marries Anne a second time, this time with the blessing of the Church, then both girls will take second place to a legitimate boy.”
I nod slowly. Then as the realization comes to me, I say quietly, and with such satisfaction: “Ah. I see it. She will be afraid.”
“Afraid?” Geoffrey turns from the sideboard with a pastry left from last night in his hand. “Afraid?”
“The king is not married to her. They went through two services, but the Holy Father ruled both of them to be invalid. She is just his concubine. Now the queen is dead and he can marry again. But perhaps he won’t marry her.”
Geoffrey looks at me with his mouth open, as the pastry sheds crumbs on the floor. I don’t even tell him to use a plate. “Not marry her?”
I count on my fingers the triumphant list. “She hasn’t given him a son, she has only managed to carry a girl, he has fallen out of love with her and started his amours with other women. She has brought him no wisdom of her own and no good friends. She has no powerful foreign relations to protect her, her English family are not reliable. Her uncle has turned against her, her sister is banished from court, her sister-in-law has offended the king, and the moment that she is unsteady then Thomas Cromwell will turn on her, as he will only ever serve a favorite. What if she is favorite no more?”
ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, JANUARY 1536
It snows, and the road is very cold out of London, heading north up the great road to Peterborough. The weather is so bad, the snow so blinding and roads so impassable that we are two full days on the journey, rising at dawn and riding all day. In the early dark of the afternoons we stop once at a great house and request hospitality, and once at a good inn. We can no longer count on the monasteries along the way for hospitality and dinner. Some of them are closed altogether, some of the monks are transferred to other houses, some have been turned out of doors. I think that perhaps Thomas Cromwell did not foresee this when he started his great inquiry into religious houses and rifled their fortunes for the king’s profit. He claims that he is stamping out ill doing, but he is destroying a great institution in the country. The abbeys feed the poor, they nurse the sick, they help travelers, and they own more land than anyone else but the king, and farm it well. Now nothing is certain on the road anymore. No one is safe on the road anymore. Even the pilgrim hostels have put up their shutters as the shrines are being stripped of their wealth and their powers denied.