Boleyn Traitor, page 24
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ I am quite breathless with joy.
‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he says. ‘You’ve earned it. I promised that if you told me what I needed to know, you would be rewarded. And you told me – and it cost you your house and your husband. It’s only right that I give you the house back.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I said nothing that led to George’s death. I gave no evidence, I signed nothing.’
He bows. ‘Then the house is payment for nothing.’
Hampton Court, Winter
1538
AS IF TO defy the shadow over the old royal family, Lady Lisle braves the stormy Narrow Seas in November and visits us from the English fortress of Calais, to see her daughter Anne Basset, who is slowly inching her way forward to be the king’s new favourite. We hold a banquet to celebrate Lady Lisle’s arrival. She is a big-boned, handsome woman, and Thomas Culpeper, the king’s new favourite groom of the chamber, has obviously been primed to show her all sorts of little attentions. Anne Basset – who had her eye on Thomas Culpeper herself – is hugely offended by this flirtation and is heard to say that if Master Thomas Culpeper wants a hawk from Calais, he can no doubt pay for it like anyone else, and there is no need for him to make sheep eyes at a woman old enough to be his mother.
Lady Lisle stays at court for several days, hunting and hawking, walking in the gardens – friendly with everyone and wheedlingly flirtatious with the king. I never see her alone with her many kinsmen – the Poles, the Courtenays, and the Roman Catholic lords – she only meets them casually in public. She is in a position of high trust: her husband, Arthur, Lord Lisle, is of the old royal family the Plantagenets and holds the English fort of Calais for England, and the English Church in the sea of envious papistry that is Europe. He could not be in a more tactically important position; he could not be more trusted. Lady Lisle, walking into a banquet in her honour, on the king’s arm, reminds everyone that the former royal family, the Spanish party, are still riding high, and she and her husband are trusted with the keys to the gateway of the kingdom.
But after she has said her farewells and set sail for Calais, as the court prepares for Christmas, we hear extraordinary news from the Tower. Sir Geoffrey Pole has confessed to a plot against the king and against the Church of England. He says his family supported the rebellion of the pilgrims and planned an invasion of England to be led by their exiled son, Reginald Pole, who was going to throw down king and Church, marry Lady Mary and take the throne.
No sooner has he signed his name to this death warrant for his family than he lapses into remorseful panic and stabs himself in the heart with his butter knife, after enjoying the good dinner that was his reward for betrayal. If he had used a proper knife and succeeded in killing himself, his family would have declared him insane and his words valueless: the ravings of a madman. But he did not hurt himself enough to save them. His blunt knife, his weeping survival, only proves his sanity and their guilt. An avalanche of arrests follows.
His brother, Henry Pole Lord Montague, is taken to the Tower with Sir Edward Neville. Henry Courtenay the Marquess of Exeter and his wife Gertrude are arrested for treason as well. Even the children of the family are taken with their parents: Edward Courtenay and young Henry Pole disappear into the darkness under the portcullis.
Sir Geoffrey names others: a canon from Chichester cathedral, a priest from the newly closed Bisham Abbey, a merchant who carried secret letters to the traitor Reginald Pole. Even Sir Nicholas Carew – who got George’s Order of the Garter – is arrested. One of the old lords, poor Lord De La Warr, says no more than that he cannot bear another trial of old and loyal friends, and is arrested for that – and held in the Tower along with them.
None of them confess anything. Gertrude Courtenay declares that everyone is innocent of everything, and she herself is a fool whose word cannot be trusted, and the many things she said in defence of Lady Mary, her insistence on calling her ‘Princess’, were nothing but feminine folly.
The old lady, Margaret Pole – too tough for feminine folly – is questioned, her home Bisham Palace is searched, and she is taken to Cowdray Castle in Sussex and interrogated for hours, day after day, by William Fitzwilliam, the newly appointed Earl of Southampton. The old lady is too wise and too brave to be caught by Fitzwilliam’s bullying. She does not break or even bend while her beloved son Geoffrey and his brother, his cousin Henry Courtenay, and his kinsman Sir Edward Neville, and their priests and messenger are tried for treason as the court has a merry Christmas. We do not even pause the music when we hear that Henry and Edward have been beheaded.
I MEET LORD CROMWELL at the king’s gift-giving, and companionably, we watch the courtiers coming forward as if to pour sacrifices of blood on a reeking altar.
‘You are keeping Lady Margaret Pole and Gertrude Courtenay in the Tower with the little boys?’ I confirm. ‘But they will be released?’
‘Of course – nobody would execute such great ladies, and the boys are just children. But I’ve no doubt they will return to plotting as soon as they are free. I’m surrounded by rivals who take the king’s fancy and drag him their way. There’s always some bright lad coming up through the ranks; there’s always a pretty Howard girl in the nursery.’
I laugh at the truth of this. ‘My uncle was speaking to me of a cousin – Katheryn Howard, his niece – who should come to court. And the king’s rooms eat up young men like a manticore – he needs a constant supply of companions. But you are secure?’
‘While the king wants a well-run country, a fortune without the trouble of earning it, and everything done his way before he’s thought of it – I am secure.’ He looks at the king, receiving gifts that cost a fortune and handing out baubles. ‘But serving a man of power is to feed a furnace. The more that he has, the more he wants.’
‘Wealth?’ I ask.
‘Wealth I can easily get,’ says the destroyer of the Church. ‘It is power that is harder. The greatest want for a rich man is power over others.’
Whitehall Palace, Spring
1539
NICHOLAS CAREW IS tried and beheaded in the spring for the crime of questioning the arrest of the Pole family. Since he dies for asking a question, no one dares to inquire about him. I think someone should speak out for him; but he was no friend of mine nor friend to my husband, so I don’t speak.
In May, Lord Cromwell brings the case of his old enemy Lady Margaret Pole before parliament, as if it were another May Day joust. He shows the House a silk tunic found in the bottom of an old trunk at her home, embroidered with the five wounds of Christ – the old crusader badge that the pilgrim rebels wore when the north rose up. There is nothing to connect the banner with the rebellion; there is nothing to prove that the old lady even sewed it, that it was not laid away by an old crusader’s wife, years before. But a single silk banner is enough for this cowed parliament to condemn her to death without trial.
Nobody dares to defend a disgraced princess – we have three of them already, silent at court. Nobody is going to speak up for the mother of a cardinal. The old lady waits for her death in the Tower of London, where her son Henry and his kinsman were killed. Her twelve-year-old grandson Harry, Gertrude Courtenay, and her son Edward visit her in her cell.
‘But she won’t be executed?’ I ask Lord Cromwell. ‘You said she would not be executed?’
‘No,’ he reassures me. ‘In time, she’ll be released, but she’ll never again have the power to raise the north or kill a queen, your sister, or your husband. It is the end of the Poles and the Spanish party, as I promised.’
We exchange a smile. This is our revenge.
Westminster Palace, Summer
1539
THE COURT’S MOOD swings against old families and the old faith. At midsummer, we have merry joust of barges on the river. On one side is a barge dressed in imperial purple, crewed by a gross figure, fattened on indulgences, waving a papal crook, and a whole college of fat lazy cardinals splashing about with oars. On the other side of the river on their barge are Tudor green rowers and black-and-white soldiers of reform. Fireworks explode around them, mock cannon fire roars, and jets of water spurt, as battle is joined, and the royal barge, with the king and the ladies of the court, rows close enough to see the action and be thoroughly splashed. We scream with delight and encouragement as the reform barge throws grappling irons and boards the papal barge. There is rough and dirty fighting until the righteous reformers triumph and tip the pope and his men overboard into the river, where they bob about, pleading for rescue.
The king orders them fished out of the water with boat hooks before they drown in their great robes and applauds both sides for the spectacle. The court and the people watching from the riverbank loudly cheer and read this entertainment for the lesson that it is: the old faith, the old Roman Catholic families, the Spanish party have overreached themselves and are defeated as surely as if they were tipped in the river and left to drown.
Windsor Castle, Winter
1539
THE KING, WHO will never marry again, sends the court painter Hans Holbein all around Europe to take the portraits of young women. There is Mary of Guise, the favourite, who chooses to marry the King of Scotland, which gives much offence; but she has two sisters, Louise and Renée. There are two daughters of the Duke of Cleves; there is Christina Duchess of Milan, or Anna of Lorraine, and the French king’s sister, Marguerite.
Thomas Cromwell does not want England allied by marriage to either France or Spain, but to be an independent power, playing one side off against the other, so he chooses a bride free from the power of the pope: Anne of Cleves, a princess raised as a Lutheran – the most anti-papal of all the religions. Her dowry – her only dowry – is an alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany.
The king announces that he has made his choice and orders her bridal journey by sea in winter so that she can admire the power and strength of the king’s naval escort. Thomas Cromwell takes pity on her and sends her the safer and easier route overland.
In early December, Arthur, Lord Lisle, rides out from his fortress town of Calais and brings the new queen into his domain. He has survived the scourging of his family and remains our trusted commander of Calais. William Fitzwilliam the Earl of Southampton, high in favour after bullying Lady Margaret Pole, escorts the new queen into her fortress, and finally, after a noisy merry Christmas – with much flirtatious teasing of the most handsome bridegroom in Christendom – the returning ladies of the queen’s rooms go to meet their new mistress at Rochester and welcome her to her new country, where we tell her that we hope she will be happy and never admit that it is almost certain that she will not.
St Andrew’s Abbey, Rochester, Kent, January
1540
SHE IS A pretty young woman in her early twenties – slim and white-skinned, though her gown is padded to make her as big as a horse, and the hood on her head is like the roof of a house. I am to be chief lady-in-waiting again. Who knows better than I how to run the queen’s rooms for my fourth queen?
I curtsey to her and suggest that she change into the gowns we have brought from the royal wardrobe before she continues her journey to London.
She widens her brown eyes at me, and she smiles: ‘Was?’ she says encouragingly. ‘Was?’
‘God save me, does she not speak English?’ I exclaim to the Duchess of Suffolk, who greeted her at Dover.
Catherine Brandon is twenty years old now, and she’s been married to old Charles Brandon since she was fourteen – she should know better than to giggle.
‘You’re the first person to wait for an answer,’ she explains. ‘Everyone else reads aloud the ceremonial welcome in Latin, and she nods and smiles and doesn’t speak. My lord husband bellows at her like she was his cavalry. He hasn’t noticed she never answers. I don’t blame her – never answer him myself if I can help it.’
I glare at Susannah Hornebolt, the artist. ‘You were supposed to teach her English!’
She spreads her hands in apology; I can see a stain of paint on her forefinger.
‘You’ve spent all your time painting,’ I accuse her.
‘No – I am teaching Her Grace English – she is making good progress.’
I turn to the silent queen-to-be. ‘Français? Parlez-vous français?’ I ask her.
The pretty smile widens, but she shakes her head.
‘Latin?’
She laughs. ‘Kannst du Deutsch?’
‘Yes,’ I reply in German. ‘A very little. But we’ll have to teach you English at once.’
She claps her hands at my reply and says in German: ‘Of course I must speak English. I have started to learn, but everyone speaks so quickly!’
‘I will speak slow,’ I say in measured tones, and Katheryn Howard, a new maid-of-honour, niece to the duke, giggles like a naughty schoolgirl, nudges Catherine Brandon, and whispers: ‘I vill speak slow.’
I go with the queen to her bedroom to look at the gowns in her heavy travelling chests. She refuses to wear English dress but insists that she will make her grand entry to London in her best cloth of gold gown that her mother told her to wear, with a hood that looks like an anvil stuck on her head. There is no point arguing with a queen in a language that only she speaks fluently, so I leave her ladies to dress her in her ugly heavy gowns. I am going to my own rooms, when a manservant asks me to come to the hall.
I see at once why I have been summonsed. Half a dozen gentlemen are in the hall, boisterously swinging marbled masquing cloaks around their shoulders, throwing off large glasses of wine, musicians with them, dancers trying out steps around them. In the middle is the noisiest of them all, an instantly recognisable figure: broad as a beam, swathed in a cloak swirling with colours, a hat pushed back from his wide face, a brightly coloured mask stretched from forehead to smiling mouth.
I drop into a curtsey, my hand to my heart as if I am breathless with surprise.
‘You guessed!’ he says. ‘You guessed at once! I had a bet that you would! Didn’t I say that Jane Boleyn would know me anywhere? In any disguise?’
The others whoop and laugh and clash their gold cups together in a toast to me.
‘Now, Jane, you’re going to have to join our band and be sworn to keep our secret.’
I come up, smiling. ‘Your Majesty, it could be no one else but you! So tall and so handsome and so gaily dressed! And what lord but you would ride all this way to surprise his bride?’
‘I am a fairytale prince out of the old Romances!’ He roars at the thought. ‘I did as my brother did all those years ago – he rode halfway to greet his bride on the road to London. Everyone said he was a true knight errant, and now I have outdone him.’
‘You have far outdone him.’ I pick up my cue, and one of the men behind him, richly dressed and masked, shouts: ‘Hurrah!’
‘I will keep your secret,’ I promise. ‘But I must go and get your bride ready for her surprise.’
I am absolutely determined that she won’t wear her ugly hood when she meets the king, and I turn to go back up the stairs to her rooms.
‘Not so! Not so!’ The king grabs me by my sleeve and then draws me down the stairs with an arm around my waist. His breath is a hot gale of stale wine in my face. ‘I’m not having you spoiling our surprise, Jane. I mean it. You shall stay with us and have a cape and a mask of your own, and you shall join my band. We’ll come in with music while she’s watching the bull baiting – we have it all planned. We’ll dance with her and her ladies, and you shan’t betray us.’
‘I won’t tell, I swear.’ I am desperate to get her out of that ridiculous hood and into a low-cut gown. ‘But she’ll want to look her best. You must surprise her at her best.’
‘Is she not pretty as she is?’ he asks, instantly suspicious, his eyes sharp through his mask. ‘Pretty as my Jane?’
‘Very pretty,’ I say at once. ‘Who is a better judge than you? Who catches a likeness better than Master Holbein? You couldn’t be mistaken in your choice. I just want to—’
‘No, no,’ he says. He hands me to Sir Anthony Browne, whose evidence brought my sister-in-law to the French swordsman and my husband to the block. We greet each other with clasped hands and warm kisses. ‘Sir Anthony! Give my sweetheart Jane a cape and a mask and a hood!’ the king exclaims. ‘She is my man for the night!’
I laugh with everyone, as if this is the best joke in the world, and Sir Anthony takes me to the back of the hall and gives me a little silvered looking-glass to hold, as he swirls a marbled cape around my shoulders and turns up the collar.
‘I have to go to her …’ I say urgently.
‘First swop your hood for a bonnet,’ he says, and with a strangely intimate gesture, he unpins my hood and replaces it with a man’s hat, pulled down over my eyes like his own. He ties the brightly coloured mask on my face and pulls up the hood of the cape so that my face is in shadow.
I look at myself in the mirror and see that my anxiety does not show behind a smiling face, which is hidden by the mask, and concealed by a hood.
‘I wouldn’t know myself,’ I say.
‘We all have many faces,’ he replies. ‘Come on – we’re going in.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I have to—’
But he takes me by the hand and makes me follow the others up the broad stone stairs.
‘Where’s Lord Cromwell?’ I demand desperately as the noise from the courtyard below swells to tumult and I guess the bull has been loosed and they are throwing dogs into the yard for him to gore.
Sir Anthony laughs recklessly. ‘Left behind in London! This is courtier work! Not for an old counting-house clerk!’ He pulls me by my hand up the staircase. ‘Tonight’s our night! The king and his comrades! King goes in first, we come behind, musicians follow us! King greets her, gives her a gift, steals a kiss, musicians strike up, we all dance. Usual. Dance is a gavotte.’
