Betrayal in the Tudor Court (25 page)

“Sister Mirabella!” the abbess cried. “To my knowledge you have not been elected abbess of this institution, yet you fall into the role of command as though you are entitled to it.”

Only now did Mirabella feel the first strains of genuine humility flow through her as she fell to her knees before her superior. “Forgive me,” she said in soft tones. “Whip me if you desire, discipline me in the manner you see fit … but know that I cannot be moved from what I am being called to do.”

“Is it God calling you, Sister?” Anna Shelby intoned as she seized Mirabella’s chin, lifting it up to gaze into her eyes. “Or are you driven by something far worldlier? Beware, my child, the sin of pride. It is pride that will separate you from God with far more success than King Henry ever could.”

Mirabella bowed her head, annoyed. How dare the abbess presume that her intentions were anything but pure?

“I beg of you, Sister, do not do this,” Sister Julia cautioned Mirabella as the two quit the chapter house, where, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of some, Mirabella did not receive punishment for her diatribe. “You have great sway over the women here—you could lead them all into danger. Do not persist. You must accept our fate and trust in God to care for us.”

“It isn’t always that simple, Sister,” Mirabella told her with a sigh of annoyance. “God requires us to serve Him above and beyond what we sometimes feel capable of. I am fighting for His Church. I am not going to slink off into the country to lick my wounds while the monasteries are looted and my brothers and sisters in God are thrown to the wolves. Perhaps some can live with that on their souls, but I cannot.”

“Mirabella.” Sister Julia’s voice was soft as she spoke her given name. “You are my child. … I beg you, for the first and last time, as your mother, not to do this. Come with me. We will retire to York. I have an uncle there. I am certain he will extend his generosity to me. We could be so happy. And we could establish some sort of monastic community of our own, perhaps not as formal as this. Perhaps it does not need to be like this. As long as our hearts are pure in their intent to serve and know the Lord, I do not think it matters where we reside.”

Mirabella stopped walking and turned to Sister Julia, fixing her with eyes hard as mirrors. “If you think you can use our tie of blood to manipulate me, you are wrong,
Sister
.”

Sister Julia flinched at this, then averted her head.

“As it is, I do not expect you to understand,” Mirabella went on. “You are accustomed to running away from life; you ran from me, you ran from scandal, you ran from my father. Why would now be any different?”

Sister Julia straightened, raising her chin in defiance as she regarded her daughter. Her voice when she spoke was low, laced with venom. “If I have been running my whole life, then indeed so have you. Did you not run away from the scandal of Lady Grace, from Brey’s death, from your feelings for the man you love and can never have? Don’t lie to me, Mirabella, not to
me
!” At once her face softened. She reached out, cupping Mirabella’s cheek in her hand. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. Examine your motives, my girl. Examine your soul.”

Mirabella bit her lip until she flinched from the pain. At last she said, “You do as your conscience advises and I shall do the same.”

Sister Julia cocked her head, her eyes filled with irony. “Well, then. If your introspection is sincere, I have nothing to fear. Do I?”

Cecily watched her son, Harry, romp through her garden in the company of his favourite companion, Alice’s daughter Joanna. Together the two children toddled about, exploring their surroundings, pinching flowers off their stems, fingering the delicate petals in amazement as they took in the bright colours of summer.

The young mothers looked on through fond eyes. Nearby Alice’s daughters Ellen and Margery played, shifting to other locales as soon as the babies caught up to them.

“The little ones always get left out,” Alice laughed.

Cecily smiled as she rubbed the slight swell of her belly. Her womb had only just quickened with her and Hal’s second child. She was as happy as she was terrified. She did not know if she could live through another birth if it proved as difficult as Harry’s. It seemed, however, that as fearful as she was, Alice was far more anxious.

She observed her friend now, noting the pinched, pallid complexion, the puffiness beneath her eyes, the distant gaze.

“Alice, what is it?” she asked at last.

Alice pursed her lips. She bowed her head. “I have been thinking of the future, of my daughters. With the dissolution of the monasteries, I cannot imagine it possible that they ever be sent away now. I had hoped to send them soon, but now …”

Cecily’s heart lurched at the thought. “Alice, but they’re only babies!” She laughed in nervousness as she covered her friend’s hand with hers. “You need not send them off so soon.”

“I do. The sooner the better.” Alice bit her lip, averting her head.

Cecily’s heart pounded with some unnamed dread. “Why, Alice?”

“He … he just won’t leave me alone. You know?” She rubbed her neck absently as she spoke. “Every day, every night, he is on me. I’m so exhausted. And the babies keep coming, all of them blasted girls.” She began to tremble. “Had God granted me a different life and a different husband, I wouldn’t have minded them. They would have been a comfort to me. …” She shook her head. “But not here, not now. Now they are as much a curse as they are accursed. Edward and his eldest sons … they descend upon us like vultures. No one is safe. They
are
just babies, Cecily!” She hugged herself, stiffening a moment, perhaps stifling a sob before continuing. “If it were just me it would not matter. I can stand it. I have stood it,” she added in soft tones. “But Edward says it’s our duty to satisfy the hot blood of the family males. Far better for him and the boys to get it from home than contract the pox by whoring.” The meaning of the statement hung in the air like a dense, strangling fog. Burning bile rose in Cecily’s throat. She swallowed hard. “You see, he has his heirs,” Alice went on. “It makes no difference to him now who my children look like—if they resemble one of his sons more than him. …”She shrugged.

Cecily’s stomach churned. “Oh, God, Alice …”

Alice buried her face in her hands, dissolving into sobs.

Cecily wrapped her arms about her, holding her close, her heart wrenching in terror as all of her suspicions about Alice’s household were at last confirmed.

“Is there not something to be done?” Cecily breathed. “Perhaps my Lord Hal—”

“No!” Alice’s tone was sharp, edged with tears. “Not a word to a soul, Cecily, do you hear me? I told you to relieve my burden, to seek your comfort, nothing more. There is nothing more can be done.”

“But Lord Hal could help,” Cecily urged. “He is a gentle, honourable man. If he knew what Edward was about he would see justice done.”

“Justice for a woman?” Alice returned, her tears replaced by a cynical smirk. “Cecily, don’t be naïve.”

Cecily’s shoulders slumped. “All right,” she acquiesced. “I won’t tell him.” Whether it was right or wrong she did not want to ponder. She would do as Alice asked. She was her friend, was she not?

Alice visibly relaxed, her features softening, her shoulders easing. She sighed. “As it is, there will be no more children.”

“How will you manage that?” Cecily asked. She couldn’t fathom it, especially given the circumstances.

“There is a woman in the forest,” Alice said. “She has ways, herbs and the like that can stop a child from starting—”

“A witch?” Cecily’s cheeks burned at the thought. “But if Sir Edward ever found out—”

“He won’t find out,” Alice said in low, certain tones.

“But how can you be sure?”

“Cecily! He won’t find out!” Alice said again. “Unless you tell. And you will not, will you?”

Cecily’s heart sank. She felt queasy as she shook her head.

At once she was certain she trod on dangerous ground.

12

I
t was agonising watching the nuns trickle forth from the convent into the world, leaving the safety of the cloister behind them perhaps forever. With tearful good-byes, the women left the only home they had known, some for the better part of their lives. Some were collected by family members, some ventured out alone. The abbess thought to stay till the last sister in Christ departed but in the end shook her head at Mirabella, her rheumy eyes glazed with tears.

“I will not stay for this,” the abbess said. “My heart cannot take it.” She made the sign of the cross before Mirabella. “Bless you, child. I pray you are directed in wisdom—and right.”

And it was so that only three remained as servants to Lord Francis Morton, the gentleman who assumed temporary management of the abbey for the Crown, which would now be a sheep farm, like any other ordinary landholding. Nothing more.

When the guards came to dismantle their home of its treasures, Sister Julia, with great reluctance, Sister Agnes, the sub-prioress, and Mirabella awaited them. They made for a pathetic resistance, gathered in the chapel, pretending as they had pretended to for so many days now to be occupied with the mundane tasks of servitude to their new earthbound master.

“Three is not so bad a number,” Mirabella quipped with forced cheer as her heart thudded in time with the hooves thundering up the road. “We do remarkably well with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” she added, feeling clever.

Sister Agnes began to wring her hands. “They are coming! Oh, blessed Christ, they are coming! Today is the day!” She began to cry. “I should have gone. Taken my pension and removed myself to safety. Now we will be seen as rebels. Poor old Lord Morton will have been betrayed, and him just doing what he’s told,” she rambled. “I should have followed the abbess’s advice; didn’t she tell me we were two old women, unfit for the battles of men? God’s truth will reign in the end, with or without our interference. Now I will never know a day of peace.”

“Take heart,” Mirabella assured her in tones gentle but firm as she reached out to still her hands. “If God is for us, who can be against?”

The doors to the chapel burst open as the small regiment of guards entered.

“Good day, ladies. We mean you no harm. If you will simply step aside that we might carry out our orders, all will go smoothly,” said the lieutenant, his tone not altogether threatening as he regarded the three women standing at the altar.

“I am afraid you will be disappointed,” said Mirabella. “We are sisters in Christ and stay to remind you that you are in peril of your souls if you desecrate this holy place.”

The man tossed a smirk at his comrades-in-arms before returning his attention to Mirabella, who fixed him with her uncompromising stare, all the while hoping he could not hear her heart pounding against her ribs. She entwined her hands in those of the two nuns at her sides.

“You expect to hold us off then from our duty ordained by the king?”

“Yes,” said Mirabella. “For we are ordained by one even higher than the king: God.”

The man laughed as he approached her. “Not any more,” he said. His breath was foul, his cheeks ruddy. He appeared to be in his middle thirties and was built with the shoulders of an ox. He reached out, laying a heavy hand on Mirabella’s shoulder. She resisted the urge to tremble. “Lass, I respect your determination, but ’tisn’t wise to meddle in the affairs of the world. Leave this place. ’Twould be better for you.”

“We will not,” Mirabella said, shrugging his hand off of her shoulder as she stepped closer to the altar, as if hoping to absorb some supernatural strength from it. “Nor will we allow you to defile the house of the Lord by robbing it of its holy treasures. You will go now! Go in the name of the Lord!”

“My lady,” the man said, his voice low and menacing as he stepped even closer. “I am still here. I am a man, not a demon to be cast out, and I have not a saint’s patience. Remove yourselves and no harm will come to you. Remain and you will be dealt with in the manner I see fit.”

At this Sister Agnes began to wail.

The man turned to her, a dark smile twisting his lips. “You want to leave, don’t you, my lady?” he asked, his tone an exaggeration of gentleness. “Go now. We’ll not detain you. Go.”