At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (32 page)

The king’s great tournament was held as planned, but afterward the king and queen retired to the most healthful of their royal houses, well away from any risk of infection. They took with them only a much-reduced “riding” household. Anne’s sister, Elizabeth, remained with the queen, but Anne and George were permitted to return to their children. Anne’s brother Hal likewise departed for one of his country estates, expressing a desire to remain away from court. Like Anne, he’d grown tired of the constant catering to royal whims. The Duke of Buckingham retreated to Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire, still fuming about his sister’s lack of family loyalty and decrying King Henry’s lack of judgment in placing England’s government in the hands of an upstart commoner like Thomas Wolsey.

T
here will be a change before Christmas,” the Duke of Buckingham said, “following which I will have the rule of all of England.”

The monk’s newest prediction both excited and alarmed Madge Geddings. This time Edward had sent Robert Gilbert to Hinton. The former chaplain was now the duke’s chancellor.

“Perhaps the king will die of the sweat,” Edward speculated, “despite his best efforts to avoid contagion by constantly moving from one palace to another.” He lifted his goblet in a mocking salute to the large portrait of King Henry that hung on one wall, almost obscuring a painted mural depicting flowering plants on clumps of grass against a red and cream striped ground. Then he drained his drink to the dregs.

Madge, watching her lover from the other side of the small table set up in his privy chamber, only picked at her food. Even this light supper of freshwater fish and rabbit contained delicacies—a game pie stuffed with oranges and a bowl of aleberry, a bread pudding flavored with ale—but this evening she could not enjoy them.

She rose and went to stand by the fireplace. The screen placed in front of it in summer was carved with the duke’s arms and its feet had been fashioned in the shapes of a lion, a dragon, a greyhound, and a
griffin. The floor tiles that felt so blessedly cool beneath her slippered feet—the weather had been unseasonably hot since early June—also boasted heraldic patterns. The English royal arms and garter were surrounded by Stafford knots.

There were some who said that in summer disease killed faster. Madge supposed it was true. All over England, fairs had been canceled and shops closed. Large gatherings, both public and private, were forbidden, for fear of spreading the sickness. The court had been much reduced in size and everyone stayed as far away from London as they could.

The duchess and her ladies were at Bletchingly. The duke and his mistress, together with his unmarried children, remained at Thornbury. The bear Edward had kept for years had finally died, but they still had two monkeys, a ferret, and innumerable dogs and cats in the castle with them. The monkeys were useless, but the cats caught mice and rats. The greyhounds were excellent at otter hunting. The spaniels rooted out game and retrieved it, as did the ferret.

And the monk? He was as useless as the monkey, Madge thought. And like the monkey, made a mess that others would have to clean up. So far, the only one of his prophecies to come true had been the one about the Scots invading England, and anyone could have predicted that! But when Edward called to her and began to regale her with plans for his monarchy, she listened with rapt attention and never said a word to dissuade him from his firm belief that he would one day be king.

W
e will call him William,” George announced as he entered the chamber where an exhausted Lady Anne lay on the bed. Their newborn son had recently been fed by the wet nurse, but Anne cuddled him against her bosom. She’d have liked to nurse him herself. It was a pity that practice was frowned upon by physicians. And that she’d likely be obliged to return to court well before the baby was ready to be weaned.

“William,” she repeated. It was a good name. Strong. But it was also Compton’s name. George’s choice seemed an odd one. “Why William?”

“It was my grandfather’s name, and the name of my older brother, who died shortly before my father did.”

Reason enough, Anne supposed, but she imagined there would be some at court who would speculate that the child had been named William because Compton, not George, was his father. She thanked God that George would no longer be one of them.

After their return to Leicestershire, time had passed quickly. Anne had felt well enough to continue hunting and hawking until nearly Christmas, and she’d taken pleasure in her children and her dogs. She had kept the pup Will Compton had given her. Dancer was an excellent hunting dog.

No sickness had touched them throughout the long summer and autumn, although they had heard that in the south of England it had reached epidemic proportions. The outbreak had largely subsided, as it was wont to do in winter, by the time Anne gave birth to little William.

The roads were poor and often icy that winter, but Anne and George continued to receive periodic news of the court after their son’s birth. They knew that the king continued his travels, trying to avoid coming in contact with anyone who was ill. The cold had reduced the danger of contracting the sweat, but hard on its heels had come a new outbreak of the plague.

The king spent more than three weeks at Abingdon Abbey, fearful of infection, before moving on to Woodstock in early April. It was from Woodstock that Bess Boleyn wrote to Anne, a letter full of odds and ends of news that ended on a jarring note. The Duke of Buckingham, Bess wrote, was to join the king at Woodstock after St. George’s Day. He had done something to earn the king’s mistrust, Bess confided, and was therefore one of several noblemen on whom the king had ordered Cardinal Wolsey to keep a close watch.

It was just as well, Anne decided, that they need not leave Ashby de la Zouch until
all
danger of the plague was past. She had no idea what Edward had done to arouse the king’s suspicions, but she thought it best to stay as far out of her brother’s orbit as she could. She was still one of the queen’s ladies of the privy chamber. She would have to go back sometime, but she would strive to delay their return as long as possible. For the present, the spread of the plague provided all the excuse she needed.

By Easter, few families remained unaffected. Although Anne and George and their children remained in good health, word came from Bletchingly that some of the ladies who attended Anne’s sister-in-law, the Duchess of Buckingham, had fallen ill. One, Elizabeth Knyvett, half sister to Charles and therefore cousin by marriage to Lady Anne, did not survive.

T
his monk is the most remarkable fellow I have ever met,” said the Duke of Buckingham.

Madge continued to make close herringbone stitches in her needlework, creating a small blue bird. A French knot served for an eye. Keeping her hands busy concealed what a struggle it was to hide her doubts from her lover. After a moment, she was able to smile up at him.

Edward had gone to visit Hinton in person the day before. Now he was even more convinced that the seer-monk, Nicholas Hopkins, was a true prophet. Madge had her doubts. Hopkins had been wrong about “a change before Christmas.” The king had not died. Nothing of import had happened that Madge knew of, not that Yuletide nor in the nearly fifteen months since.

She’d thought about that prediction many times during the last year. Hopkins had not promised that Edward would be king. He had said that the duke would rule England. Perhaps it would be Cardinal Wolsey who would die and Edward would be called upon to guide King Henry in his place. Or Edward might serve as regent for His Grace’s daughter, young Mary Tudor.

Madge sighed. She doubted that Edward would consider the latter a possibility. He did not believe any woman capable of ruling in her
own right. It was strange that he should think so, she mused, when Queen Catherine had been so successful during her brief tenure as regent. While the king fought in France, she had led troops out of London to repel King James’s invasion from Scotland. And after his death at Flodden Field, she had negotiated with the defeated Scots to make Margaret Tudor regent for her baby son. But then, as if to prove Edward’s point, Queen Margaret’s tenure as regent had been a resounding failure.

“I
will
be king,” Edward said now, his voice rife with self-satisfaction. “Hopkins has seen it.”

And Hopkins had also said, Madge recalled, that King Henry would have no heirs of his own body. But Princess Mary was thriving. Moreover, the king’s mistress, Bessie Blount, was reportedly expecting a child. Surely that was proof that His Grace could father more children. He was, after all, not yet twenty-eight years old.

“We have a king already,” she said aloud, “one who does not appear to be at all sickly.”

“That can change in an instant.” Edward dismissed her comment with an impatient wave of one hand.

“Edward!” Surely he did not intend to do anything to cause the king’s death!

Guessing her thoughts, he chuckled. “There is no cause for alarm, sweeting. I am a patient man. I can wait for fate to take its course.”

Madge was not reassured. Even to imagine the king’s death was treason, punishable by execution. She might not have been at court or have learned to read Latin and Greek, but people talked in her presence. She knew what was within the law and what was not.

“I could not bear for anything to happen to you, Edward. Are you sure the king knows nothing of your consultations with the monk or his prophecies?”

Absently patting her hand, he dismissed her fears as groundless. “Henry is fully occupied with his own pleasures. He does not concern himself with my doings.”

“And the cardinal?” Edward had railed against him often enough for
Madge to know that Thomas Wolsey was a formidable foe. “You said once that he has a finger in every pie.”

Turning fully toward her, he gripped her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “You must not worry, sweeting. We are safe. I take precautions. And the monk is cautious, too. Does he not always instruct my chaplain to keep these matters secret under the seal of the confessional? But you are right in one respect. If the cardinal knew I had listened to such predictions, he would use it against me. But he does not know, nor does the king, and so long as they never hear mention of my name in connection with Hinton Priory, they can do naught to harm me.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and might have done more had they not been interrupted by the arrival of Charles Knyvett.

Madge forced a smile as she watched them leave the gallery to deal with estate business. It faded when she noticed the contemptuous expression on Knyvett’s face.

Pondering this anomaly, she sat with her embroidery in her lap but she did not pick up her needle. Charles Knyvett’s blind obedience to the duke had undergone a change. It dated, she realized, to just after the death of his half sister, Bess, long one of the duchess’s ladies-in-waiting. Bess Knyvett had died of the plague the previous spring, as had so many others. Her death had occurred shortly after she’d received her annual wages of twenty pounds and Edward had given Madge another fifteen pounds to oversee Bess’s burial at Thornbury. Then, having been so generous, he’d seized the possessions Bess Knyvett had left behind. She’d owned several very fine gowns, some jewelry, and a few pieces of plate. Edward had refused to allow her brother to take any of them for himself or his wife or give any of them to Bess’s other siblings. While it was true that Knyvett had not shown any overt anger at the time, the expression Madge had just glimpsed suggested that he’d been harboring a deep resentment ever since.

Madge’s thoughts circled back to Edward’s certainty that he would one day be king. He was deceiving himself about that. And he
was deceiving himself if he thought everyone in this household was completely loyal to him. If Charles Knyvett ever found out about the prophecies of the monk at Hinton, he would not hesitate to use that information to force Edward to turn over Bess’s possessions. And that was the least of what he might do with such dangerous knowledge.

O
f all her brother’s estates, Lady Anne had always liked Penshurst best. The manor house sat in the middle of green and lovely parkland in Kent, its crenellated curtain walls surrounding a sprawling mansion built of local sandstone. Towers rose from each corner of the walls and midway along each sat a smaller tower. Within these walls, well protected, was a building with large glazed windows and a sunny great hall. Its roof arched high over the octagonal hearth in the middle of the room and each of the huge supports holding it up had, at its base, a life-sized carved figure of a man.

Anne paused for a moment to study one of the figures, entranced by the detail with which the sculptor had imbued it. Wise stone eyes seemed to weigh her while the stone mouth quirked with what she hoped was approval.

“They are said to be satirical representations of workers on the estate at the time the hall was built.” The voice was high and childish but, because she’d believed herself to be alone in the hall, it still made Anne jump.

She turned to find a young girl of perhaps eight years studying her with eyes much more solemn than those of the carved man. There was something familiar about those eyes. After a moment, Anne realized
that they were identical to her brother’s. This, then, must be Madge Geddings’s daughter, young Margaret. The child had inherited her mother’s prettiness.

“When I was younger,” Anne said, “I liked to make up stories about them.”

“They have real stories, too. My grandmother remembers when the last duke was alive. My grandfather was in his service. I think one of these statues represents him.”

That could well be, Anne thought. Members of the Geddings family had been in service to the Staffords for generations. She smiled at the girl, and asked after her grandmother’s health. Madge’s mother, she recalled, had a life interest in a cottage on the Penshurst estate, a common reward for a loyal retainer.