Nor was it the funeral that she had requested in her will. But I do believe that though she wished to be buried in a church of the Observant Friars and have their devout congregation say memorial Masses for her, she has a place in heaven even without their prayers. The king denied her title, and closed the houses of the friars, but even if they are vagrants on the empty roads tonight, they will still pray for her; and all those of us who loved her will never think of her as anything other than Katherine, Queen of England.
We dine late and are quiet at dinner. Maria and Frances and I talk about her mother, and the old days when Queen Katherine ruled the court and the dowager queen Mary came home from France, so pretty and determined, and disobedient.
“It can’t always have been summer, can it?” Maria asks longingly. “I seem to remember those years as always summer. Can it really have been sunny every day?”
Frances raises her head. “Someone at the door.”
I can hear too the clatter of a small group of riders, and the door opening, and Frances’s steward in the doorway saying apologetically: “Message from the court.”
“Let him in,” Frances says.
I glance at Maria and wonder if she had permission to be here, or if the king has sent someone to arrest her. I fear for myself. I wonder if information has been laid against me, against my boys, against any one of our family. I wonder if Thomas Cromwell, who pays so many informants, who knows so much, has found out about the ship’s master at Grays who is available to hire, who was approached some nights ago and asked if he would sail a lady to France.
“Do you know who this is?” I ask Frances, my voice very low. “Were you expecting a message?”
“No, I don’t know.”
The man walks into the room, brushing the snow from his cape, puts back his hood, and bows to us. I recognize the livery of the Marquess of Dorset, Henry Grey, Frances’s husband.
“Your Grace, Lady Dorset, Lady Salisbury, Lady Surrey, Lady Somerset, Lady Worcester.” He bows to each of us. “I have grave news from Greenwich. I am sorry that it took me so long to get here. We had an accident on the road and had to take a man back to Enfield.” He turns his attention to Frances. “I am commanded by your lord and husband to bring you to court. Your uncle the king has been gravely wounded. When I left five days ago, he was unconscious.”
She stands as if to greet tremendous news. I see her lean on the table as if to steady herself.
“Unconscious?” I repeat.
The man nods. “The king took a terrible blow and fell from his horse. The horse stumbled and fell on him as he lay. He was running a course in the joust, the blow threw him back, he went down, and his horse on top of him. They were both fully armored, so the weight . . .” He breaks off and shakes his head. “When we got the horse off His Grace, he did not speak or move, he was like a dead man. We didn’t even know that he was breathing until we carried him into the palace, and sent for physicians. My lord sent me at once to fetch her ladyship.” He thumps his fist into his palm. “And then we couldn’t get through the drifts of snow.”
I look at Frances, who is trembling, a blush rising up into her cheeks. “A terrible accident,” she observes breathlessly.
The man nods. “We should leave at first light.” He looks at us. “The king’s condition is a secret.”
“He held a joust after the queen’s death, before she was even laid to rest?” Maria remarks coldly.
The messenger bows slightly, as if he does not want to comment on the king and the woman who calls herself queen celebrating the death of her rival. But I don’t attend to this, I am looking at Frances. She has been keenly ambitious all her life and hungry for position at court. Now I can almost read what she is thinking as her dark eyes flick, unseeing, from the table to the messenger and back again. If the king dies from this fall, then he leaves a baby girl who no one thinks is legitimate, a baby in the belly of a woman whose chance of ever being accepted as queen dies with him, a bastard boy acknowledged and honored, and a princess under house arrest. Who would dare to predict which of these claimants will take the throne?
The Boleyn party including Elizabeth Somerset, here at this table, will support the woman who calls herself queen and her baby Elizabeth, but the Howards, with Frances, Countess of Surrey, will split apart from their junior branch and press for the male heir, even if he is Bessie Blount’s bastard, for he is married into their family. Maria, and all my family, all my affinity, all the old nobility of England, would lay down our lives to put Princess Mary on the throne. Here at this dinner table, at the funeral of the queen, are gathered the parties who will make war against each other if the king is dead tonight. And I, who have seen a country at war, know very well that during the battles, other heirs will emerge. My cousin Henry Courtenay, cousin to the king? My son Montague, cousin to the king? My son Reginald, if he married the princess and brought with him the blessing of the Holy Father and the armies of Spain? Or even Frances herself, who will certainly be thinking of this, as she stands here wide-eyed and glazed with ambition, the daughter of the Dowager Queen of France, the king’s niece?
In a moment she recovers. “At first light,” she agrees.
“I have this for you.” He hands her a letter on which I can see her husband’s seal, a standing unicorn. I would give a lot to know what he writes to her privately. She holds the letter in her hand and turns to me. “Please excuse me,” she says. Carefully, we trade measured bobs, and then she hurries from her room to tell her attendants to pack up, and to read her letter.
Maria and I watch her go. “If His Grace does not recover . . .” Maria says very quietly.
“I think we had better travel with Lady Frances,” I say. “I think we all need to get back to London. We can travel with her escort.”
“She’ll want to hurry.”
“So will I.”
ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, JANUARY 1536
We spend one night on the road, riding as fast as we can to London, asking along the way for news but strictly forbidding our servants to say why we are in such haste to get back to court.
“If the people know that the king is gravely injured, I fear that they will rise up,” Frances says quietly to me.
“There’s no doubt of it,” I reply grimly.
“And your affinity would be . . .”
“Loyal,” I say shortly, without explaining what that might mean.
“There will have to be a regency,” she says. “A terribly long regency for the Princess Elizabeth. Unless . . .”
I wait to see if she has the courage to finish the sentence.
“Unless,” she says with finality.
“Pray God that His Grace is recovered,” I say simply.
“It is impossible to imagine the country without him,” Frances concurs.
I nod in agreement as I glance around at my companions, and think that clearly it is not impossible; for it is what each and every one of them are thinking.
We halt for the night at an inn which can house the ladies and women servants of our big party but the men will have to go to outlying farms and the guards will have to sleep in barns. So we know we are not fully guarded when we hear the noise of approaching horsemen and then see them cantering down the road at dusk, half a dozen horses ridden hard.
The ladies step back behind the big taproom table but I go out to face whatever is coming. I would rather greet fear than have it come stamping into my hall. Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, usually so anxious to be first, lets me take the precedence for danger, and I stand alone, waiting for the horses to halt before the doorway. In the light spilling out from the door and then in the sudden flicker from a torch held by one of the stable boys running forward I see the royal livery of green and white and my heart skips a beat for fear.