Mistress to the Crown (39 page)

Good men, brave men, to speak for me. And then there was one more, a man who had respected Hastings and sworn allegiance to Ned’s son – Bishop Kemp. Too old to fear the dukes and too wise to make that obvious, my judge, bless him, had the common sense, authority and courage to dismiss the charge of witchcraft on lack of evidence. But my relief was short-lived.

‘However, as to this grave matter of conspiracy,’ Kemp continued, blinking at the court, ‘it is not within the jurisdiction of Holy Church to judge whether this woman is guilty of treason.’

Dear God! Was he saying a civil court could still find me guilty?

‘On the charge of adultery, however, since the plaintiff admits by her own mouth that she is a sinner …’ He rambled on about virtue and those in authority setting a good example.

I closed my eyes in pain.

‘My daughter,
I repeat my question
: have you anything to say in your defence? Stand up and address the court.
Mistress Shore
?’

I was being given a chance to speak? I shook off my daze and glanced to my proctor for advice.

‘Say nothing,’ he mouthed as I stood up. But I knew his counsel was wrong. I let silence have its way as Ned always had done before he spoke. I stared around the faces watching me. There was not one woman present among these male custodians of temporal and spiritual law.

‘My lord bishop, I know full well that the Lord Protector blames me for the decline in the health of our late sovereign lord, King Edward. But I ask you: is a lowly woman like me more powerful than Almighty God?’ An ugly gasp came from the throats around me. ‘For surely it was God’s will that King Edward died too soon for England’s good?’

A precarious argument but they were listening. I could have sliced a knife through that silence.

‘And if you say the fault
is
mine, are you not belittling our late king? This may be a trial of my reputation but it is also a trial of his. Do you remember him as a feeble-minded dotard? No, I think you do not. Surely then in condemning me, you condemn King Edward’s judgment? Yes, I loved him, I was true to him and if love be a sin, then I am guilty.’

There was a silence until that bastard Catesby began a slow mocking handclap as he rose to his feet: ‘This woman is a liar and a whore. Upon my soul, I swear she lay with the traitor Hastings the very day King Edward died. Let her deny it under oath.’

I shook with shock at his venom but Bishop Kemp slammed his hand down upon the board.

‘Enough! Master Catesby, you are not requested to give testimony. Notary, strike that out!’ Looking back, I’d swear he was protecting Hastings’ memory and that meant clearing the court lest Catesby prove persistent.

‘I shall make the judgment of this court known to his grace the
Lord Protector and he may proceed as he sees fit. In the meantime, the prisoner shall be given into the authority of the Sheriff and delivered to Newgate Gaol. Court dismissed.’

Newgate!
The prison for criminals who were taken out to be disembowelled and ripped apart?
St Mary Magdalen help me!

And she did. She sent a lightening bolt of courage through my sinews.

‘Your pardon, my lord bishop, but as a freewoman of the City of London, I claim my right to be taken to Ludgate.’

Kemp might have been thinking about a late breakfast or maybe he relished thwarting the two dukes’ plans. He waved a dismissive hand to the men-at-arms.

‘So be it! Ludgate. Sheriff Whit, remove this woman hence!’

Ludgate Prison! Rebuilt about twenty years earlier, London’s cage for debtors, trespassers and frauds. I had visited poor widows here but never thought to find myself behind these iron gates. The quadrangle, which lay at right angles to the city wall, was some thirty-five paces long by two score wide and this was where the prisoners spent the day. At night they were locked into a large chamber upstairs. There were a few private cells if you had the means to pay.

I was dragged into the head gaoler’s room and forced to stand before him. He dismissed my guards. ‘I see you’ve naught to buy you comfort, Mistress Shore, so it’ll be bread and water unless …’ A rub across his codpiece underscored his meaning. ‘This great fellow is longin’ to follow the path of royalty.’ To my horror, he started letting down his flap.

‘What?’ I scoffed, grabbing up a stool. Within seconds I fled the room, leaving him staggering – and legless. So was the stool.

Word of the notorious Mistress Shore’s imprisonment spread swiftly. By noon a crowd had gathered outside. Will arrived, bringing cheese and ale. When he saw my state of dress, he went hotfoot to my house. Alas, he found it locked up with wooden bars across the doors. Then, bless him, he went to Jack’s and cajoled a gown, coif and clean chemise from Eleanor, my sister-in-law.

When I was decent once more, he and I sat down in a corner of the yard.

‘What’s happened to my servants? Isabel and Young were at a funeral when the soldiers came for me. Have they been taken as well?’

‘I don’t believe so. Your neighbours told me they’ve seen neither hide nor hair of them since yesterday morning.’

Yesterday? Was it only yesterday that Hastings died?

For a while we sat in silence, then he said, ‘By the way, Lord Hastings’ body has been taken to Windsor. I watched his funeral barge go past this morning. People are angry about what happened.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed sadly. ‘He was much loved. Even more than Ned at times.’

Seeing I was managing to hold myself together, Will glanced around to make sure no one could overhear. ‘There’s something else. When I went to see Mayor Shaa this morning to find out where you were, he told me a few things in confidence. It seems your “friend” became so incensed at the meeting in the White Tower that he drew his dagger on Gloucester and there was a right to-do. Yelling and so forth. Enough to have the guards draw their swords and rush in.’ He paused. ‘Can you bear the rest?’

‘Go on.’

‘Shaa rode to the Tower with his soldiers as soon as he heard. He said Gloucester was looking white and shocked when they spoke together but Buckingham was calm as anything. The benches and
papers were all over the place although that could have been done later. But what Shaa reckons, judging by the bloodstains on the flo—’ He grabbed my shoulder. ‘Steady, Elizabeth, hear me out! Shaa reckons his lordship was killed up in the meeting room, before he was beheaded.’

‘Before?’

‘Yes, in the heat of the moment. The official proclamation is that Lord Hastings committed treason and was taken down and beheaded. Don’t glare so. It
was
treason. Shaa reckons he was either dead or dying when they dragged him down.’

‘He died unshriven, then?’ I said dully.

‘It was swift and clean, Elizabeth. A soldier’s death. Only Shaa’s opinion, mind.’

‘But why would the dukes twist the truth, Will? I don’t understand.’

‘Look, if a man is cut down in an argument, whoever killed him can be held responsible and there must be an inquiry by the coroner. But if a man is beheaded for treason, it is done by the authority of the law and no individual can be blamed. That’s why they could not hold a trial. His lordship was already dead. Shaa reckons Buckingham was very quick-witted to work that out.’

‘Unless he intended it that way from the start,’ I suggested with bitterness. ‘And if Hastings could not be provoked to lose his temper, I’ll wager they planned to force a false testimony out of me.’

My brother thought about it and said, ‘It’s not good, Elizabeth, none of this.’

No, it wasn’t. I might have only hours to live.

‘If I am to be … b-burned, Will, please, will you make me a promise? Could you … would you, stay near me to the end?’

Will, bless him, stayed that night at the prison. He paid for a cell for me and slept across my door so that the gaoler would not pester me, but early in the morning he left to celebrate Mass, and I was in fear again. My instinct told me that if the knave took me against a wall of the quadrangle in daylight and full common gaze, no one would give a tinker’s cuss; they’d probably want their turn.

After those years with Shore, I was adamant that no man would take me against my will again, so when I espied a fist-size stone, I grabbed it and kept tight hold. Being hanged for murder was a loathsome thought but compared to burning.

The other prisoners were curious about me. Like timid beasts with an exotic creature in their midst, they edged nearer to where I sat. One pretty girl, fair-haired, grey-eyed, told me that she was Mistress Shore and that she loved King Edward more than any soul on earth. I listened fascinated until the head gaoler cruelly cuffed the poor wretch away. Then he came down on his haunches behind me and gifted a breath of onions and rotting teeth.

‘Now you tell me somefink, darlin’, did the Lord Protector wan’ yer an’ you said no? Is that what this is really abaht? Or wuz it
yer
wanted ‘im?’

Before I could snarl an answer, a horn sounded outside the gates and everyone in the courtyard came alert like wild creatures sensing danger. It was the other sheriff, former linen draper and now wealthy mercer, John Mathew, who rode in. There was a warrant tucked into his belt, a rope looped round his saddle pommel and a dozen pikemen at his horse’s heels. I started to shake as though I had the ague.

My gaoler laughed nastily. ‘Well, they’re not wastin’ time. It looks like today yer kiss the Devil’s arse. They’ll have the faggots piled for you.’ He grabbed my head and forced a kiss on my mouth before he swaggered out to meet the sheriff.

VIII

With a sense of inevitability I watched the warrant handed over and Sheriff Mathew’s gaze seek me out. I cursed that it was he who had come for me since he had never forgiven my father for opposing his acceptance into the Mercers Guild.

At a nod from him, his sergeant-at-law hauled me into the gaolers’ room off the courtyard. The head gaoler and the soldiers crammed the doorway. For a moment, I thought they were going to rape me, one by one.

‘Kirtle off,’ the sergeant ordered. ‘Shift only. Head uncovered. Hair loose.’

‘Never!’

‘Put it this way, you’ll burn quicker.’ The gaoler exchanged grins with the others. ‘Yer hair will sizzle in no time.’

‘To Hell with that!’ I snapped, but with the pack of them threatening to manhandle me, I had little choice but to disrobe and unplait my hair.

‘Barefoot! Take off them shoes!’

Anger was a crutch when my mind was crippled with the horror of burning at the stake. I turned my back and removed my garters and hose. ‘Why hasn’t a priest come to shrive me if I am to die?’ I snarled over my shoulder.

‘They do it next to the bonfire,’ the gaoler chortled. ‘Keeps the crowd nettled up, don’t it?’

My immediate fear was that the soldiers were going to strap me to a hurdle and drag me through the streets, but they bound my hands with the long rope and tied the other end to the sheriff’s stirrup. Thus I was pulled out into the street like a common whore in just a cotton shift with only my loosened hair to give me modesty.

I would not weep at this gross humiliation. It was taking all my effort just to keep upright. The knobbly cobblestones hurt. My feet would be bleeding if I had to walk all the way to Smithfield, but better bloody soles than my back hurdled skinless. My anxious thoughts were so cantered on the horror awaiting me that I did not notice at first that not only were we heading towards St Paul’s but also the shops of Bowyer Row and Ave Mary Lane were bolted. Then enlightenment came like a reprieve. Today was the Sabbath! There were never executions on Sundays.

I stopped stock still. ‘Sheriff Mathew!’ I cried out, pulling against the rope.

‘Ooooh, Sheriff Mathew, coo-ee, coo-ee,’ mocked the crowd.

Irritated, he turned his head with a haughty look. ‘What is it, woman? If you need to relieve yourself, do it now.’ His words shocked me but I had a more pressing matter.

‘I want to know if you are going to burn me?’ The soldiers and people laughed.

Mathew held up his hand for silence, and drew his lips together with false pity. ‘Foolish creature, whatever gave you that notion?’

‘The gaoler said—’

‘“The gaoler said”,’ he mimicked. ‘One can tell your brain is only between your thighs. You’re to do penance as a strumpet, Elizabeth Lambard.’ He kneed his horse forward.

They were going to stone me? Like Father’s whore? No, this could not be. No, no!

‘I’m a freewoman of the city,’ I protested, pulling back with all my strength, but Mathew ignored me.

‘Wotcha doing later after they’ve sloshed the shit off you, darlin’?’ yelled an apprentice in Poulterers’ livery, swaggering alongside.

‘Penny a screw now?’ jeered another.

‘Surely you’re worth at least a groat,’ I jibed, swallowing my tears. The jest worked; they became kinder. It was a mercy to enter the cathedral away from their taunts. Except I was wrong in that as well.

There was no holiness in St Paul’s that day. Here was Mathew’s haughty hate made hundredfold. If my hands shook as I carried the burning taper up the nave, it was because I had never known until now how much these self-righteous London worthies loathed me. Smug, disdaining to show overt glee, they stared ahead as I passed: I had become filth to be sidestepped by their clean-heeled virtue.

Bishop Kemp, flanked by a line of priests on either hand, was waiting for me on the chancel steps below the Rood screen. If he had not already acquitted me of witchcraft, I might have turned and hurled my defiance at the gloating hypocrites. Let them haul Gloucester in here, too, make him do penance for the bastards he’d fathered. Hypocrites! But as I knelt on the steps and saw the poor Lord Christ nailed in agony upon the Rood above, my indignation seeped away. What was my humiliation compared to His? Thus, I made my confession in a contrite voice, and Bishop Kemp set his hand upon my head in forgiveness and decreed that I must go forth and show to the people that I was a self-confessed sinner and truly penitent.

As the clergy escorted me out behind the processional cross, I kept my head high, yet without my headdress and robes, and
I tasted shame like ashes in my mouth. People who knew me stared stonily ahead. Hands that once reached for my help were tightly clasped in pious prayer. But as I passed level, I know they looked. The men’s glances fingered me lasciviously through my shift, while the wives, assuaging envy, cast daggers of malice at my back.