Heartstone (90 page)

I did not know how to reply. We were silent a few moments, then Emma said, 'I heard they have given up trying to raise the
Mary Rose
. The masts have collapsed, she has settled into the silt. With the remains of all those men, God rest their souls.'

We were silent a moment. Then I asked, 'What will you do? As I have said before, you can do what you like with your life now. That is what I wanted for you. The Court of Wards has permitted me to hold all your money. I have to hold it for three years, but whatever sums you want, just ask. So far as I am concerned it is yours. God knows you deserve it after what it has cost you. I have it safe in the old gold coins, protected from this endless collapse in the value of money.'

Emma shook her head. 'I do not know, Master Shardlake. I like it at my rooms. You know, I thought it might be more difficult to pass as a boy in the city. But no one looks at you twice, it is easy to blend in. Thank you, by the way, for sending me the money to buy those books.'

'You can buy what you like now. You are rich.'

'Yet still I do not know who or what I am. But I do not want to be a woman, to be an obedient, subservient creature, wear those uncomfortable clothes.'

'You should meet Barak's wife, Tamasin, nobody could ever call her subservient. And it is possible for a woman to be independent, if she has money.'

Then Emma sighed, looked away. She said, 'There is a boy who has a room in my house, who I have gone drinking with some evenings. I - I like him. His name is Bernard.' She reddened slightly, her scars showing pale, then added, 'But I fear he might guess the truth, as Sam Feaveryear did. Love,' she said bitterly, 'it is a very dangerous thing.'

'Emma, it would be difficult for you to assume the identity of a woman now, I know. But I have been thinking. Jack's wife Tamasin could help you, show you how a woman dresses and behaves. She is to be trusted with the story, and you would like her, I am sure.'

'Does she not have a new baby?'

'Yes. But she would be glad to help you, I am sure.'

She shook her head. 'I cannot bear the thought of learning how to become a different person. Not again. No matter how good and kind your friend Tamasin is, it would bring back those days when Hobbey and Fulstowe made me learn how to impersonate Hugh. And wearing skirts again would make me feel hopeless, helpless, as I did when my brother died.'

'But now you have money - '

'Even if I wanted to, I do not think I could do it.' She took a deep breath. 'Master Shardlake, I have been thinking of going abroad, perhaps to the Low Countries, away from England. Perhaps even seeing if I can get a place in one of the universities there. I could never be a soldier now, not after what happened.'

'No.'

'You see, I think you were right, perhaps I am a scholar by nature. But there are no women scholars, are there?'

'There are learned women. The Queen herself has written a book, and the Lady Elizabeth - '

Emma shook her head vigorously. 'They have a dispensation, as royalty.'

I thought, then asked, 'Are you running away from your feelings for this boy Bernard?'

Her face worked, the scars pulling. 'I need time, Master Shardlake. I need some occupation. Would you let me go abroad?'

'It is your life. I have interfered too much with people's fates. I will help you, at any time. But you must come to me.'

She stood up. 'Then I will arrange a passage to Flanders. I will write to you from there. To let you know how I fare.'

'You will go, then?'

'Yes.' Emma rose from the bench and extended a long-fingered hand.

I said, 'Emma, there is one thing I have never asked. Do you still wear the heartstone?'

She looked at me, a warmth in her eyes I had never seen, then shook her head. 'No,' she answered quietly. 'I cast it in the Thames. It was part of my old life with the Hobbeys. I wear the cross my mother gave me now, that you took from Hoyland and gave me in August.'

I smiled. 'Good.'

'I wish I could have thanked that good old lady for what she and poor Michael did, but I could not - ' her voice tailed away.

'Practise the deception with her? No. But I have sent word to her that Hugh is safe.'

She said, 'I thank you for everything, Master Shardlake. But I am on my own path now; let it lead where it will.'

I took her hand. The rough calluses formed by the years of archery practice were fading. I watched as Emma Curteys walked back down the path, to all appearances a young gentleman with a firm tread, a fine coat, short brown hair under a black cap. The dead yellow leaves swirled around her feet.

H
ISTORICAL
N
OTE

H
ENRY
VIII's French war of 1544-6 was probably the most disastrous policy decision that even he ever made. Henry has sometimes been portrayed as a 'modernizing' monarch, but his attitude to war harked back to medieval times. From the beginning of his reign he wanted the glory of the conquests in France that had garlanded his medieval predecessors. France, however, was now a united and prosperous state, with a far larger population than England's.

Learning nothing from the failure of two previous attempts, in 1544 Henry invaded northern France in a shaky alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The objective was for Henry's and Charles's forces to converge on Paris, but Henry diverted his army to attack Boulogne, which he hoped to link to England's remaining French possession of Calais to form an enlarged English territory. But when, after a long and bloody siege, Henry took Boulogne, his own forces were besieged there by the French army. Charles and the French King, Francis I, made a separate peace and the English forces were to remain bottled up in Boulogne for the next eighteen months, supplied with difficulty from England. Henry now faced the weight of France alone; and in addition France sent troops to its ally Scotland, against which Henry was already waging war.

The war was extraordinarily, ruinously expensive - to pay for it Henry sold off much of the monastic land he had taken from the Church in the 1530s, bled England white with taxation, and even debased the coinage through reducing its silver content, starting an unprecedented spiral of inflation. All sections of society were affected, but it was the poor, who had no power to raise the price of their labour, who suffered most.

In the summer of 1545 the French decided to dispose of the problem by invading England. This was a real and very serious threat; the French gathered a fleet with perhaps three times the number of warships England could command, carrying around 30,000 soldiers. The Pope contributed a ship. The enterprise was larger in scale than the Spanish Armada of forty years later. To meet the threat Henry ordered a massive levy of soldiers from the civilian population. Including militia and naval forces, over 100,000 men were put under arms - as a proportion of the population the equivalent of well over a million men today; a proportion of the male population comparable to that mobilized to resist Hitler's threatened invasion in 1940.

Fortunately for England the French were poorly led by their commander, Admiral d'Annebault - like the English, the French always had aristocrats rather than professionals to lead their forces. If d'Annebault had concentrated his resources, it is possible the French could have gained control of the Isle of Wight, or, had they managed to land on Portsea Island, besieged Portsmouth as the English had besieged Boulogne. Large-scale amphibious landings are notoriously difficult, but there would have been, at the very least, serious fighting in southern England.

In the end, however, after the inconclusive Battle of the Solent described in the book, the war simply petered out and most of those levied went home to the harvest - though some were sent to the continuing siege of Boulogne. At the peace treaty of 1546 England was allowed to hold Boulogne - which by then had been reduced to a heap of rubble - for ten years. Henry was also awarded an indemnity that was a drop in the ocean of the vast sums he had wasted.

The war achieved absolutely nothing save the loss of the lives of thousands of soldiers and sailors; English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, French, and men from other European nations. To that number must be added many French and Scottish civilians.

Six months after the peace treaty Henry VIII died. He left his children a legacy of isolation in Europe, continuing war with Scotland, religious conflict, inflation, national penury, and incipient social revolt. In the 1550s Boulogne was handed back to France and in 1558 Calais, England's last possession on the continent, was lost.

T
HE SINKING
of the
Mary Rose
as it sailed into battle on 19 July 1545 has attracted many different explanations. It seems certain that the gun ports on the starboard side were not closed when a sudden gust of wind, common in the Solent, caught the sails and caused the turning ship to heel over, allowing water to flood in through them. The ship may also have been seriously overloaded with cannon and soldiers, and top-heavy with men in the high castles. It is also possible she was hit a glancing blow by gunfire from the French galleys and may have been taking in water. Whatever the cause, or combination of causes, the
Mary Rose
sank in minutes, with the vast majority of those aboard trapped under the anti-boarding netting. Their screams were audible from the shore. Around thirty-five people survived out of, it is now estimated, 500.

Henry had dined the previous day on his flagship, the
Great Harry
, and left the ship suddenly when the French fleet was sighted off the eastern end of the Isle of Wight. I have invented his plan to visit the
Mary Rose
afterwards. It is not known where Henry stayed during his 1545 visit to Portsmouth, but the most likely candidates are Portchester Castle and the royal tents erected on Southsea Common. It is also not known where Catherine Parr was in the summer of 1545, but one piece of evidence leads me to think she travelled to Portsmouth with the King. In his dispatch reporting the battle of the Solent, Charles V's ambassador Francis Van der Delft refers to being shown the ships by the Queen's chancellor. Given the structure of the royal household, the only reason her chancellor would have been at Portsmouth is surely if Catherine were there too.

I have invented the presence at Portsmouth of Richard Rich. The records show that he was not among the members of the Privy Council who accompanied Henry there. But his role in the financial organization of the invasion of France in 1544 is accurate, as are his loss of the post and the suspicion that he had been lining his pockets a little too heavily. However he remained on the Privy Council and his career was not affected.

Robert Warner was Queen Catherine Parr's solicitor, and was used by her to defend a relative of one of the Queen's servants accused of heresy in 1544.

I
N
1526 Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon did go on a summer Progress which took them to Petworth. Henry was by then in correspondence with Anne Boleyn; it was also probably in 1526 that he decided to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. However, the intercepted letter is fictional. It is true, though, that the Pope did later suggest that Catherine of Aragon resolve the problems raised by Henry's desire for a divorce by going into a nunnery, and that she refused because she believed God's wish was for her to stay married to Henry. If she had agreed, paradoxically, Henry's split from Rome would probably never have happened.