Eliza Rose Page 16

  ‘In fact,’ said the archbishop, looking again at his papers, ‘it appears that you can even be quite useful to us. It seems that His Majesty himself values your service. You will accept new duties from the king.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said in a tiny voice. It scarcely crossed my mind to wonder what these new duties might me. I was so relieved.

  Now that the danger seemed to be passing, all the bravado went out of me. I fell back against the chair, limp as my old doll Sukey. I almost whispered the words.

  ‘New duties. Of course I will do my duty.’

  Chapter 37

  At the Abbey

  Winter 1541

  It wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but it was far better than I had feared. I was told that I was to help to look after our former queen, becoming her maid once again, until her fate was finally decided.

  That very same day, I packed to leave Hampton Court. I was to accompany Katherine to the old abbey at Syon. This was the place to which she was to be sent for safety and to pray, in seclusion, for her redemption.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about my new task, which was really my old task but under vastly changed circumstances. As Henny helped me to pack my chest, there was a quiet tap at the door. It was Ned. Henny bustled out of the room at once, murmuring something about towels left behind by the laundresses.

  ‘Eliza!’ he said urgently, almost before she had gone through the door. He was frantically rubbing his hair upwards with his hands. ‘Why are you going? Have you been commanded to go? Shall I take you away somewhere instead?’

  ‘Oh, Ned!’ I said. ‘You have made yourself look like a cockerel. Here, let me comb you down again. No, you mustn’t take me away or you’ll lose your place at court. And you really mustn’t worry.’

  I gradually got him to stop pacing and explained that I didn’t mind going with Katherine. ‘I’m almost eager to get out of here,’ I said. ‘There are so many whispers. People keep talking it over again and again, and there’s nothing new to say.’

  Pragmatically, my head told me that I must show willing to serve the king’s purposes. At the same time, my heart told me that I had something of a duty to my cousin.

  ‘But I still don’t see why you should have to go,’ he said, pacing about. ‘She’s a traitor! You shouldn’t have to be dragged in!’

  ‘But, Ned,’ I reminded him, ‘the queen shares my own blood.’ At that I turned away from him to fold a shawl. It was not quite loyalty that I felt towards Katherine, and indeed, it was a little late in the day to be feeling it, but I did feel something.

  ‘Well, I can’t feel sorry for her,’ he said angrily. ‘She has put you in danger.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ I said coldly. ‘I can’t just put aside my family loyalty. How would that look? You’d understand if you were the heir to an old family yourself.’

  Even as the words left my mouth I regretted them.

  Ned’s face, which had been full of concern, turned into a picture of hurt.

  Then, all too soon, Henny was back again. Without another word, Ned moved quietly to the door and slipped out. Cursing my old enemy, my pride, I viciously threw a pair of shoes into the trunk. When they missed and fell to the floor instead, I swore under my breath.

  ***

  Katherine was truly a pitiable creature as we made our way, the following day, through the gardens at Hampton Court to the riverside, in order to take our boat to the abbey. Syon was one hour’s glide downstream from the palace, and likewise placed on the banks of the Thames. As we went, Katherine kept looking back over her shoulder at the palace. She was almost drinking in the sight of it, as if to draw it indelibly upon her mind.

  The slanting winter sun unfortunately highlighted the fact that her hair was greasy and straggly, her eyes red with weeping and her clothes dirty. As Katherine’s only remaining maid, I was struggling to cope, and that morning I had not been able to persuade her to change her linen. She had spent the early hours crying and pushing me away. At one point I’d managed to creep close enough to stroke her hair, but she’d burst out with a horrible, deranged laugh that made me snatch back my hand. How different she was now, I thought, no longer to be envied, no longer to be feared. The queen of Trumpton Hall, as she had been, was no longer the queen of anything at all.

  As the boatmen pushed us off the Hampton Court jetty, I saw that Katherine’s gaze was still fixed upon the windows of the king’s apartments.

  ‘A magic spell has been cast upon my husband,’ she said softly, almost reasonably. ‘That’s all. It cannot last much longer now, and then he will want me in his bed once more. God forgive me for what I will do to the witch who cast it, when I find her!’ Then the boatmen started to beat their oars, and the palace passed out of sight.

  At Syon, the weeks dragged by with unbearable slowness. While we knew that the investigation was progressing, we did not know what course it was taking.

  One December afternoon I walked out in the abbey’s leafless orchard, huddled inside my cloak against an angry wind, but glad to be breathing in fresh air for a change.

  Our chamber inside the abbey had grown somewhat fetid. Katherine had so far refused to leave it, anxious, she said, not to miss any messenger coming from the king. This meant that it had been hard for the servants to clean it. We had been treated with great courtesy and dignity by these abbey servants. Katherine took this as no more than what was due to a queen, but I myself felt some shame. I could imagine the elderly steward and the similarly ancient cook-maid saying to themselves in the kitchens and corridors that we were just a couple of jumped-up girls who had misbehaved.

  As I pushed my way through the long wet grass under the trees, I was enjoying the feeling of life returning to my legs and entertaining myself by finding and counting the few shrivelled and spotted apples still clinging to the black branches. Then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a slight, dark, female figure.

  I guessed that perhaps it was one of the nuns expelled from this place by the Lord Cromwell, come back for some reason unknown. The sight of a stranger in the abbey orchard made me uneasy. The place was so ancient and so quiet that it even crossed my mind that perhaps it was the spirit of one of the nuns of old, walking abroad. But not in full daylight, surely?

  The wind whipping my hair around my face and neck obscured my view of the woman approaching, but she was quickly coming towards me. She materialised into Anne Sweet, heavily wrapped in a black cloak, and her head muffled in a dark-coloured shawl.

  ‘Anne!’ I said. ‘What are you doing here? You will be in trouble!’

  ‘It’s all right, Eliza,’ she said, breathing a little heavily as she glanced around in all directions. ‘My escort is at the edge of the woods there. No one saw us arrive, and, in any case, the countess knows I am here. How are you, Eliza? You look tired. I’m sure I would look like a corpse if I was as pale as you are, but those violet stains under your eyes look rather romantic.’

  I was so pleased to see a friendly face I could have cried. Anne, true to her nature, discerned that I was too proud to ask for a hug, so she hugged me anyway. ‘We are all worried about you!’ she whispered into my ear. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  Eventually she pulled away, and we went to sit on a stone seat in the shelter of the orchard wall, clearing it as well as we could of its heaped, rotting leaves.

  ‘What news of Katherine’s trial?’ was my next question.

  Anne had little to tell me. ‘They’re keeping it from all the former members of her household,’ she said. ‘They may yet call us back to give further testimony, you know.’

  At that I shivered.

  ‘Do you know what Katherine herself has admitted to the archbishop?’ she asked.

  I didn’t know the answer to Anne’s question, but I suspected what it might be. To me, Katherine had stuck to the line that she had done nothing wrong. I believed that she placed such certainty in the king’s love for her that he would ultimately take her word
over her accusers’. For myself, I suspected that this stiff pride in the face of so much evidence would lead to her downfall, and that she would have been better advised to confess all and hope for mercy.

  I told Anne as much. ‘But I cannot blame her for clinging on to this hope,’ I added, ‘or she would have certainly lost her reason and her mind.’

  ‘I fear that the king will never relent,’ Anne said, sighing. ‘They say that the fact he loved her so truly explains the betrayal he feels now.’

  There seemed little else to be discussed between us, and the wind was cold. After a final hug, Anne pattered off.

  ‘Just a moment!’ I called.

  She turned back to me, hands busy rewrapping her head. ‘Who brought you here, Anne?’

  She tucked in her chin to disguise her grin. There was a hint of rose in her cheeks, I noticed, as her dimples deepened. ‘Master Barsby, of course!’ she said lightly. ‘Shall I take him a message from you?’

  ‘Oh! … No, nothing from me, thanks.’

  But I wondered why she had not volunteered the information. And I wished I had not asked, because I now felt envious of their journey home together, back to warmth and safety and to some relief from the cares that made my head ache. Although I had felt that my duty compelled me to come here with Katherine, I had been left feeling more alone than ever in my life. When Anne’s slight figure had vanished from sight, I watched and waited for a long time, just in case someone else should appear.

  At length, shaking myself as if to wake from a daydream, I turned back to the grey abbey building.

  Chapter 38

  ‘Don’t Worry, All Will Be Well!’

  February 1542

  Some weeks later the order came that we were to travel to the Tower of London, once again by boat. By now I was so tense with waiting that it seemed almost a relief.

  There had been absolutely no personal word or message from the king, although we had been sent fine clothes for Katherine to wear. Katherine took great comfort in this. I could see that she was thinking that the gift showed that she had not been forgotten.

  On the morning of the journey, we sat silently in a room over the abbey’s gatehouse. The nuns of old must have looked out of this window for approaching travellers in need of hospitality or paupers in search of aid. But now I was watching for figures in red.

  Katherine was washed and clothed as best as I and the dressers I had drummed up from among the abbey servants could manage. It was so odd to me to see her careless about her appearance. This morning she was composed, although pale.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Katherine asked from her place near the fire.

  ‘Shh, only the servants bringing logs from the forest,’ I said, speaking soothingly as I might to a child. I was terrified that she would start her deranged howling once again. I could not bring myself to say that it was a column of troops.

  ‘But they’re coming up here!’ she said, and indeed, the steps were now loud on the stairs outside the room in which we waited.

  ‘Don’t worry, all will be well!’ I said desperately. I went to stand behind her, my hand resting upon her shoulder as we both turned towards the door. Tears were already welling in my eyes.

  ‘Indeed,’ she whispered, ‘I believe it. I know that my husband will forgive me, for he loves me. This will be his messenger at last.’ At that she looked up at me and smiled, and placed her hand upon my own. Her faith nearly broke my heart.

  ‘Open up.’ A stern voice accompanied a tap at the door. I crept to the door to open it. Outside was the tall figure of a guard. He had that air of invulnerability that I remembered from the yeomen guards we had seen standing outside the king’s rooms on our very first night at court.

  He gave me no chance to speak at all or to negotiate any kind of humane treatment for the queen. He thrust a paper towards me. Without delaying for me to read it, he marched across the room to where Katherine lay in a heap in her cushioned chair.

  When he took her arm, though, she suddenly became as tense and wild as a cat, clawing and spitting without words. But the room was now full of armed guards. Despite the desperate, horrible writhing of her body, they bundled her with ease down the stairs and across the gardens to the river.

  I stumbled behind as best as I could, though the tears in my eyes meant that I could hardly see my way. One of them splashed on to the parchment in my hand. I didn’t need to read it to know that it was a warrant for my cousin’s execution.

  Chapter 39

  ‘Why Would You Run the Risk?’

  We travelled down the River Thames and through the great city of London in bright sunlight. The weather was cold, but the glittering water made the city almost pretty, as if it were decked out in holiday clothes.

  As maids of honour we had made this trip many times, from Westminster to Greenwich, from Whitehall to Richmond, riding in the king’s own barge, our watermen singing songs to us, and distant cheers floating across the water from crowds of watchers on the banks. Today, though, there was no one watching from the banks, and the watermen kept pace to the slow, heavy beat of a drum.

  Katherine looked half dead, blindly turning her head from side to side, and I knew that she was still looking for a sign or message that the king had relented and had changed his mind about the need for her death.

  ‘Of course, many noble men and women have entered here and lived,’ Katherine whispered to me as we arrived at the Tower. Despite their blank faces, I could tell that our guards were hoping Katherine would come quietly, and that they wouldn’t have to manhandle her again like they had done at Syon. I took her arm, talking to her, reassuring her. I too did not think I could bear any more violence.

  So we managed to get out of the boat and up the steps, to be received by the Governor of the Tower with a semblance of normality. He led us quickly to a fair chamber in the palace which nestled inside the Tower’s horrible walls of hard white stone.

  At the threshold, though, Katherine’s hard-won poise temporarily lapsed. ‘This room!’ she said, clutching my arm. ‘This is the chamber where Queen Anne, Anne who was Anne Boleyn, that is, spent her last living night. They executed her out on the green just below.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I asked, not because I dis-believed her, but because I thought it would be good to get her to answer questions rather than to give way to fear again.

  ‘Because my husband the king told me so the day he showed me the Tower and all its fine guns,’ she said sadly. ‘And he also told me how deeply he’d been deceived by the vixen Anne Boleyn. I remember him saying, just here by the window, that he and I shared true love, not some strange enchantment as she had cast over him! He didn’t know himself in those days. He doesn’t quite know himself now.’

  The Governor of the Tower was now gesturing in servants, who brought with them ginger cordial and venison patties and some wrinkly black raisins of the east. They bowed shortly and left. I guessed that they had orders not to enter into any conversation with us. Once we were alone, we sat at the table to eat, again on my part for something to do, rather than because I was hungry.

  ‘Do you remember our banqueting table we prepared at Trumpton?’ I asked Katherine. I had noticed that she was fingering the dried grapes. ‘And do you remember how beautiful it was?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘Those were happy days with the old duchess and Juliana and you and, of course … Francis.’

  ‘Katherine,’ I began more earnestly. I looked her full in the face so that, with some reluctance, she was forced to raise her head and look back. ‘What … why … how did matters stand with you and Master Manham?’

  At this I lost her gaze, and it went back down to the table.

  ‘I can understand that you liked him when we were young, before we came to court.’ I decided to battle on with my questions whether she would answer or not. ‘I liked him myself – all the girls did. But why would you run the risk of seeing him later, once you were queen?’

  I knew Katherine well enough to wo
rk out what she was thinking as she prised the raisins, one by one, from their wizened vine. She was calculating whether the release of information could harm her … and she decided that it couldn’t.

  ‘Well, Carrots,’ she began. ‘You know that we were all coached and trained to get into the king’s bed.’

  ‘No!’

  I sat back in my seat, a little stunned by her boldness.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, almost with a smile in her voice. ‘You, personally, of course, did not like to believe such a thing; you thought you were too grand for it. But that was the message behind all our lessons. Think about it! How to dance, how to flirt, how to show off our bodies. Any one of us girls could have caught his eye, and our families, the Howards and the Camperdownes, did not care which of us it was.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ I said crossly.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Has your own father never spoken to you about sleeping with the king?’

  Of course her arrow had struck home, and she could tell by my lowered gaze that her guess had been correct.

  ‘But to sleep with him is not enough,’ she said, leaning forward and warming to her subject. ‘A subject’s duty, as the king’s wife or mistress or even his bedfellow for a single night, is to give him a son! The one thing that he needs, that England needs. The king’s son Edward is young and sick and likely to die. What the King’s Highness requires – at any cost – is a baby boy.’

  She paused to let this sink in.

  ‘But, Katherine,’ I said, ‘you never found yourself in the condition of being with child, and for certain the king was with you very often. We all know how much he enjoyed your company in the bedchamber.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Katherine hissed. She drew even closer to me, and I could smell the slight sourness of her breath. ‘It is treason to say it, but I believe that for all his love of frolicking, the king will never have a son. He … cannot act like a good husband should with his wife.’