In the Shadow of the Crown (29 page)

“I have a feeling that she will somehow survive.”

“Her position is even worse than mine. The King at least acknowledges me. Sometimes I think he tries to tell himself that she is not his daughter.”

“Could he look at her and doubt it?”

“Perhaps that is why he does not wish to look at her.”

“I have heard certain rumors lately. I believe that at one time you were very fond of him.”

“Of whom do you speak?”

“Of Reginald Pole.”

“Oh.” I was smiling. Memories were coming back. How young I had been, and he had seemed so wonderful…so much older than I was…so much wiser… and yet I had loved him and believed he loved me.

“What did they say of him?” I asked.

“That he has only taken deacon's orders… not those of a priest…so that, when the time comes…he will not be debarred from taking a wife. You and he could be married.”

“Do you think there is any truth in this?”

“It is what some people would like.”

“You mean… those whom the King would call his enemies?”

“Yes.”

“But Reginald is a cardinal now.”

“He remains free to marry.”

“Oh, Susan, I wonder if it could ever be…”

She lifted her shoulders. “The King hates him now, you know. He regards him as an enemy who can do him a great deal of harm on the Continent.”

“Yes, I do know. Oh, Susan, why are things never as they should be?”

She smiled at me fondly. “You would welcome a marriage with him,” she said, more as a statement than a question.

I nodded. “It would be suitable in every way. He is a Plantagenet. Our rival houses would be joined. Besides, I know him well.”

“It is long since you saw him.”

“But he is not a man to change. Susan, there is no one I should rather have for my husband.”

And so we talked.

But I was no nearer to marriage for all that. Sometimes I thought I never should be.

EVER SINCE THE DEATH OF JANE, MY FATHER HAD BEEN looking for a new bride. He was obsessed by the idea. Why he did not take a mistress, I cannot imagine. There might have been several prepared to accept that honor. But marriage? Any woman would look askance at that. The whole world knew what had happened to his first two wives. And the third? Had she escaped a similar fate by dying?

He had his eyes on several women at the French Court. The Duke of Guise had three daughters, François Premier one. All were eligible. My father wrote enthusiastically to François. Perhaps the ladies could be sent to England and he would promise to choose one of them to be the next Queen of England.

François' retort was typical of him. “Our ladies are not mares to be paraded for selection,” he said.

The fact was that none of the ladies was eager for marriage. Perhaps my father had forgotten that he was no longer the eligible bridegroom he had once been. He was ageing. His handsome looks were no more; he had grown fat; his once-dazzling complexion had turned purple. Since his fall he walked with a limp, and there was a fistula on his leg which refused to heal. There were times when it was so painful that he could not speak, and his face would grow black in his efforts to prevent himself calling out loud. There were some who said it was an incurable ulcer, others—though only a few bold ones said this—that it was the outward sign of some horrible disease. In addition to all this, it was remembered what had happened to his first two wives.

He was restive and angry; he flew into rages. On one hand fate had sent him his longed-for son and on the other it had turned life sour for him.

He wanted to be young again; he wanted to be in love, as he had been with Anne and Jane—and perhaps in the early days with my mother.

There was a spate of killings. Anyone who spoke against the King's supremacy in the Church was found guilty of treason. Many monks were butchered in the most barbarous way. Hanging was not enough. They were submitted to the most horrifying of all deaths, cut down from the gallows while they still lived, their bodies slit open and their intestines burned before their eyes; the object being to keep them alive as long as possible so that they might suffer the greater pain.

The more opposition there was to my father's rule, the more despotic he became.

He was reaping great wealth from the monasteries, and for some time he had had his eyes on that shrine which was perhaps the most splendid of them all. He must have known that to touch it would arouse great indignation, for the whole country revered Thomas à Becket. Ever since the death of the martyr, people had brought precious jewels to lay on his shrine while they prayed for him to intercede for them in Heaven. My father asked why there should be such worship for a man who had been the enemy of his king? He did not care for traitors, and that was what Becket had been. There should be an end to this idolatry. Becket had been a traitor. He should have been despised rather than idolized.

Becket's bones were burned and, as the belongings of traitors were forfeit to the King, my father took all that was in the shrine at Canterbury. He even wore Becket's ring on his own finger as a gesture of defiance to all those who questioned his behavior.

A tremor of horror seemed to run through the country. I was sure many were waiting for the wrath of Heaven to strike the King dead. For three years the threat of excommunication had hung over him. Not that he took any notice of it. Now the Pope signed the sentence. My father laughed. Who was the Bishop of Rome to tell him what to do? Foreign bishops had nothing to do with the Church of England over which the King was now Supreme Head.

But I think he must have been a little shaken and perhaps in his secret thoughts had a few qualms about his bold actions. He would not fear the wrath of God. My father always made his own peace with God, who was a part of his conscience; he would have already given God his very good reasons for acting as he did. The Church of Rome was corrupt. It extorted bribes. He was a religious man and would see that his subjects were too. God could have no quarrel with him.

But there were other forces. For instance there were signs of growing friendship between Charles and François; and what if they, with the Pope, looked for someone to replace him?

The Tudors' hold on the throne had not existed for very long, and there were still those who boasted of their Plantagenet blood. I knew that he often thought of Reginald, who had done the King's cause no good from the moment he had left the country.

It was on the Poles that my father turned his anger.

The Poles were troublemakers, he said. He could not touch Reginald because he kept out of his way, and he was the real enemy. However, there
were other members of the family, and they were within range of his displeasure.

I was horrified when I heard that Sir Geoffry Pole had been arrested and sent to the Tower. Geoffry was the youngest of the Pole brothers and the most vulnerable. He was accused of being in correspondence with his brother the Cardinal, and he had been heard to make remarks in which he showed his disapproval of the King.

I was extremely anxious. My friendship with the family was well known. The Countess of Salisbury, mother of Geoffry, had been my dearest friend. As she and my mother had often talked of the desirability of a marriage between Reginald and myself, she might still be hoping for it. It was strange that that ardent churchman, the Cardinal, had kept himself in a position to marry.

I could see danger creeping close to me, ready to catch up with me. Of course my father was anxious. There were murmurings in the Court against him. The spoliation of the shrine of Canterbury, the dissolution of the monasteries to the great profit of the King and his friends, the severance from the Pope whom they had looked upon as the Vicar of Christ all their lives… this could turn many against him.

And now the Pope had excommunicated him. Reginald Pole was circulating evil gossip about him. He was without a wife and the ladies of France were not eager to marry him; even though he might offer them the crown of England, they did not want it since they had to take him with it. The pain in his leg was cruel; the wretched ulcer seemed to get better and then would flare up again. My father was an angry man.

He gave orders that Sir Geoffry was to implicate his brothers and his friends. At any cost this must be achieved.

As my father must have guessed, Sir Geoffry was not able to stand out against the rigorous questioning and as a result broke down and said all that was required of him.

As a result his eldest brother, Lord Montague, and Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, among others, were arrested and put in the Tower.

My father now had in his power the Plantagenet Poles and Courtenay whose mother was the youngest daughter of Edward IV and therefore in the Plantagenet line. If he could have arrested Reginald at the same time, he would have been overjoyed. As it was, he must leave it to him to wreak his mischief abroad. But he would see that the others did not continue to plague him.

It was tragic. There could not have been a family in the country who had been more ready to support the King when he had first come to the throne; but they were a devout Catholic family; they could not accept first the
divorce from my mother and secondly the break with Rome. It was revealed that they and the Marquis of Exeter had expressed approval for what Reginald was doing abroad. They had been in communication with him, and Montague had said there would be civil war in the country because of outraged public opinion on what was being done; and if the King were to die suddenly, it would be certain.

My father could never bear talk of death—and he had always considered mention of his own treasonable.

Lord Chancellor Audley and the jury of peers knew what verdict my father wanted and they gave it.

I was deeply distressed. My thoughts were for the Countess. What anguish she must have suffered. Her sons on trial for their lives, and in the present climate facing certain death.

For some reason Geoffry was pardoned. Perhaps the King was too contemptuous of him to demand the full penalty and possibly believed that more information might be extracted from him. But on the 9th of December Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter were beheaded on Tower Hill.

They went bravely to their deaths. Geoffry was released; his wife had pointed out that he was so ill that he was nearly dead. Poor Geoffry—his, I suppose, was the greater tragedy. How did a man feel when he had betrayed his family and friends whom he loved? Desperately unhappy, I know, because a few days after he was released he tried to kill himself. He did not succeed and lived on miserably.

All I could think of was the Countess. How I longed to see her, but I guessed that, in view of the suspicions under which her family now lived, that would never be allowed.

Then, to my horror, I learned that the Earl of Southampton and the Bishop of Ely had been sent to her home to question her and as a result she was taken to Southampton's house at Cowdray and kept a prisoner there. What was my father trying to prove? It was years since the Countess had been snatched from me, but I wondered if he were trying to implicate me.

He was in a vicious mood. Many people were against him, and that was something he could not endure. I heard, too, that his leg, far from improving, was growing more painful. He had always been watchful of those of royal blood. I waited for news in trepidation.

An attainder was passed by Parliament against Reginald and the Countess, among others, including Montague and Exeter who were already dead. Southampton had found a tunic in the Countess's house which had been decorated with the arms of England—the prerogative of royalty.

She was taken to the Tower.

I could not stop thinking of her plight. I knew how bitterly cold it could
be within those stone walls when one had no comforts at all, no heat, no warm clothing; and she must be in her late sixties. How could she endure it?

I wanted to go to my father. I wanted to ask him what harm an old lady like that could do.

It was not so much that I feared to face his wrath but that if I attempted to plead for her I would not only arouse his suspicions against myself but make things worse for her. But if I could have helped her, I would have done anything. I found I did not greatly care what became of me, but my instinct told me that to plead for her would only increase his anger against her. He had destroyed Montague and Exeter…royal both of them. Geoffry Pole was too weak to be a menace; Reginald, whom he regarded as the arch conspirator, was out of reach. And, apart from that, the Countess was the last of the Plantagenet line. But how could he really believe that she would harm him?

How precariously we all lived!

Chapuys came to see me.

“You must act with the utmost caution,” he said.

I replied that I was worried about my very dear friend who had been as a mother to me.

He shrugged his shoulders. “The Countess will remain in the Tower, whatever you do.”

“It is ridiculous to say that she is a traitor. She would never harm the King. She is guilty of no crime.”

“She is guilty, Princess, of being a Plantagenet.”