The Tudor Bride (60 page)

However good it was to see her awake, I was far from happy with Catherine’s lethargy. It was only twenty-four hours since she had given birth and yet she asked no questions about the baby and nor did she respond to any reference I made to his whereabouts, his condition or even his name. Her main concern was for religious comfort and I was asked to leave the room when the abbot came to bring her this. Mysteriously her breasts showed no sign of producing milk. I told myself it was early days, and now that she was awake what I found more immediately worrying was the lack of communication from outside. Eleanor’s two Gloucester retainers turned up before nightfall and duly presented themselves, a florid-faced woman of childbearing age who introduced herself as Hawisa and a spotty young man wearing the Gloucester badge on his tunic called Edwin. Catherine would have nothing to do with either of them, perhaps because she knew as well as I did that they had come to spy on us, rather than be of any assistance. Edwin mostly made himself scarce, but I knew that he met Hawisa at regular intervals, presumably to acquire information to carry to Greenwich. Rather than let her sit around all day doing nothing, I made use of Hawisa for work that did not involve contact with Catherine, such as collecting and delivering meals and laundry, fetching water, medicines from the apothecary and fuel for the fire. Despite it being high summer, Catherine was constantly cold and wanted her chamber kept at what was, for me, an uncomfortably high temperature.

To the abbey’s credit it was a pleasant room, not large but beautifully embellished with carved and polished panelling, a stone fireplace and two arched windows set high in the outside wall. These let in air and light, but gave no view and anyway Catherine wanted the shutters closed so the room remained dark and stuffy, but it was well furnished with a curtained bed and comfortable cushioned chairs at the hearth. It was in one of these that I slept when we first arrived, before I arranged for a truckle bed to be delivered. I had no intention of leaving Catherine alone or of allowing her to eat anything that I had not tasted myself first. Moreover I feared that even the presence of a crucifix, a prie dieu and the sanctity of our surroundings might not be enough to deter the devil’s imps, for I believed it was at the instigation of his acolyte that we were imprisoned in the abbey at all and therefore easy prey to Eleanor’s spells and conjuring. I could not dismiss the dreadful feeling that Catherine and I had come full circle, vividly recalling her infancy, when her father’s madness had seemed to infect the palace with winged demons conjured by some nameless sorcerer.

The constant presence of Eleanor’s spies made me desperate for a friendly face, but there was no sign of either Geoffrey or Owen and by the end of the second day I was extremely concerned. Although Thomas could have been delayed or even, heaven forbid, set upon by thieves during his journey to Hadham or else have lingered there in the hope of Owen’s arrival, there was no reason I could think of why Walter and Geoffrey should not have managed to make their way to Westminster, discover our whereabouts and present themselves at Bermondsey within two days, unless the Duchess of Gloucester’s influence extended to the abbot of Westminster as well. Could both abbeys have been bribed into a vow of silence over the presence of their royal guest?

As the days passed into weeks, I became more and more dejected at being cut off from the outside world, utterly dismayed by the separation from my family and the total lack of information about them. Every day I went to the gate to ask if my husband had made enquiries, but the porter just shook his head and refused even to let me look out of the grille which afforded the only view beyond the walls of the enclosure, of the inns and houses that lined the pilgrim road to Canterbury. I nursed the faint hope that somewhere in one of them Geoffrey or at least one of Catherine’s household might be keeping a vigil. It seemed impossible that no one had discovered our whereabouts. Stressed and miserable as I was, I could not believe that two people, one of them a queen, could be made to disappear from the world of their loved ones in such a way.

Strangely, while I fretted and fumed and pined for my husband and children, Catherine seemed to have undergone some kind of spiritual catharsis during her unconscious state, because ever since regaining her senses she had displayed a complete lack of interest in anything other than her own state of grace and even began to talk of her illness and close confinement as justified punishment for her sins.

‘It is no more than I deserve, Mette,’ she told me on the day when she at last rose from her bed to sit beside the fire, staring into its shifting embers. ‘I thought I deserved the happiness of love and a quiet life with my family, but that was sinful self-indulgence. Queens do not make second marriages, even when they are widowed as young as I was. It disturbs the political balance. I should have obeyed the precedents and taken the veil.’

I could not believe my ears. ‘You were only a girl, Mademoiselle. Not twenty-one years old when King Henry died. Why should you have wasted your youth wearing out your knees when you had no vocation to the religious life?’

She raised her sunken blue eyes to mine. They were duller than I ever remembered them, like those of a leper cast out from society, whose spirit has been eroded by pain and rejection. ‘Because it was my duty and because it would have pleased God,’ she said. ‘I have tried to live against the order of things and my sin has caused a canker in my belly. I should not have married Owen and I should not have had his children and now I must suffer the consequences. I shall not leave this place alive.’

I am sure it was the illness that made her so depressed and hopeless; God knows, I felt shattered and helpless myself though I was healthy enough, but she was right when she said that something was growing in her belly, a grotesque swelling protruding in her stomach, like a jester’s bladder. Most likely the baby had come early because he simply had no more room to develop in a womb that was being invaded by a growth. I wondered daily whether the tiny boy who had been baptised Owen was still alive.

Smothering my own depression, I did my best to persuade her out of her lethargy. ‘You speak as if you came here voluntarily, Mademoiselle. You did not. You were brought here by servants of Eleanor Cobham, the girl you rejected twice as your lady-in-waiting. Perhaps you are paying now for those rejections. This is not a beguinage like those we knew in France, where noblewomen retire from the world of their own volition; this is a prison where women are sent by others because they want them out of the way. I have seen them scurrying to the church, draped in black veils, their eyes on the ground. I have spoken to their servants. You are here because someone – Eleanor of Gloucester and probably Humphrey as well – wants you out of the way, just as your mother did all those years ago when she sent you to Poissy Abbey.’

To be locked away behind walls in a place where the only freedom was to offer your life to God was anathema to me, but to her it seemed to be the most natural place in the world if she was to atone for some terrible and, as far as I could see, totally imagined sin. Always Catherine had turned to prayer and the Church for consolation, proving that the nuns had done their job well when they educated her from the age of four.

The weary smile she gave me at the end of my homily was striking evidence of that. ‘What you will never understand, Mette, much though you love me, is that I believe in God’s holy purposes. I am here at His will, not that of Eleanor of Gloucester. She may think she has got me out of her way, but in fact she has put me in God’s way. And for someone who has not long to live and a lifetime of sin for which to atone, I could be in no better place than in His holy house and among His holy brethren.’ She sank down wearily against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. ‘I wonder if the abbot could find me the habit of a Tertiary. The next time I dress I should like to wear that. Would you ask him for me, Mette?’

I remembered how she had reacted all those years ago to the awful carnage of Agincourt. Even as a girl of fourteen, she had retreated into the teachings of Holy Writ and the revelations of saints and scholars in grief at the thousands of French deaths in that battle. Now, once again, Catherine turned to prayer and the Church as her means of salvation; she was beyond consolation, and had only her staunch faith.

I shook my head hopelessly and turned away, making the sign of the cross, not in acknowledgement of her piety but in pity for her state of mind and body and, being honest, in consolation for my own sense of desperation. It saddened me profoundly that in fear for her eternal soul she appeared to have erased from her memory the happiest part of her life and all the people who had contributed to that happiness. As well as begging God for Catherine’s recovery, my own prayers now were for her children and for Owen, who, unbeknown to them and through no fault of their own, seemed to have lost their place in her heart.

I told myself repeatedly it was the canker, while nursing the ghastly fear that it, too, was the work of Eleanor of Gloucester. How many incantations over Catherine’s wax image had it taken I wondered to magic the evil growth in her womb and how many spells and potions and pacts with the devil had Eleanor made to try and conjure herself a crown? Catherine might believe in the power of God and his saints to protect against the devil, but my roots were in a place where everyone believed in sorcerers and their ability to conjure evil. The devil’s imps had infected my world when I had been nursemaid to her and her brother Charles; that same little brother who had branded her a traitor and cut her completely from his life and the country of her birth. Now, at my lowest ebb, in the loneliness and abandonment of being shut away with the dying spectre of the person to whom I had given so much of my life and love, those imps had returned to infect the shadows that constantly surrounded me in the room where she would not allow the daylight to penetrate.

Then, one day in the middle of October, I heard a timid scratching at the door of my prison. I opened it to find the small, wizened figure of one of the lay brothers from the laundry. A score of these outside workers were employed in various capacities at the abbey and occasionally, when the spy Hawisa was occupied elsewhere, one of them returned the items of clothing and napery I had sent for washing. Usually they thrust them into my hands and left but, on this occasion, the wizened man stayed long enough to speak in a voice that squeaked with anxiety.

‘The laundress says one of the napkins got torn, Mistress. It is at the top of the pile. You should check.’ With that he scampered away up the cloister before I could respond.

I closed the door and put the pile of laundry down on a table, peering at the top item in the gloom. Then I picked it up and shook it out. There was no sign of a tear, but a sealed letter floated like an autumn leaf down to the floor. My heart began to beat and I pounced, as if it might vanish before I could lay my hands on it and instantly recognised the looped legal writing beside the seal. It was Geoffrey’s. The mere sight of it brought tears to my eyes.

With trembling fingers I broke the seal and spread out the single sheet of paper. The writing was close and cramped, even spreading along the margins as if he could not squeeze enough information onto the page. My mind filled with an image of him sitting at the writing desk in the window of his library, bending over his task, quill dipping in and out of the ink pot and I was consumed by a desperate longing to be there with him.

Catherine was sleeping in her chair as she did so much in those days, so I took the letter and crept nearer to the fire, which burned constantly in the hearth and gave me just enough light to read by.

My Beloved Mette,

At last, with the help of the Earl of Mortain, I believe I have found a way through the maze of lies and evasions we have encountered ever since discovering the queen’s whereabouts. Knowing that where she is you will be too, I hope against hope that this letter reaches you. My poor Mette, your admirable love and loyalty has led you into a desperate situation which you cannot ever have envisaged and which even yet I do not fully understand. Very soon, however, the queen should receive a visit from Lord Edmund, who will be able to tell you in person news of both your families and bring out to us some much-needed news of you.

In the space available I cannot adequately describe how dreadfully I have feared for your safety and how much I miss you because this letter has to be only one page, so I will reluctantly restrict myself to conveying as much information as possible. We know that the queen is ill and that you are caring for her at Bermondsey. We also know that her baby, Owen, is in the care of the Abbot of Westminster and sickly but alive. The king eventually told us this after we had met a wall of silence at Westminster Abbey and had to follow him to Eltham to hear it. It has been the only news we managed to glean until very recently, for the whole world seemed to have shut its ears, mouths and doors to us. It has been a fearful time, although I am certain no worse than the one you are experiencing.

Owen is a desperate man. He has been ill in Wales with the sweating sickness but when he returned to find Catherine gone and met the same terrible wall of silence, we got together and decided on a course of action. We all went to Hadham, being worried that the Duchess of Gloucester might discover the existence of the Tudor family and take action against the queen’s household. Owen took his sons to sanctuary at Barking Abbey and they remain safe there and Walter and I brought the others to London. All are well, including little Margaret Tudor and our own sweet William, but this house was too crowded and Mildy has now taken in Anne and Thomas and baby Hester. Hadham has been closed up for the present. All are anxious for news of you and concerned for the health of the queen.

I have only enough space now to convey the shocking news that last week Owen, John Meredith and Maître Boyers were arrested in the street outside Westminster Abbey by Gloucester’s men and thrown into Newgate prison. Having returned from Calais, Lord Edmund is trying to get them released but it is proving difficult. Doubtless the queen will be distraught to hear this, but Lord Edmund may have better news by the time he visits, which should be very soon.