The answer was, to Mary’s surprise, that she was left alone. Life continued quietly at Hatfield. She had reached an unspoken agreement with Lady Shelton that she would give no trouble, and in return would receive none.
She stayed in her chamber, reading, or helping the serving women to sew clothes for poor people, or else she walked in the high gallery within the house. She never played her virginals, as a sort of punishment to herself for her pride. Ashamed of how she had behaved with Reginald, she wore no outfit other than her old black dress.
She thought of Reginald often. He had made her wonder what it would really be like to be in love, and to be married. When she had written her dutiful letters to le duc or le emperour, she’d never thought of either of them as a real person, someone to sit down with, for example, in order to eat dinner. She certainly could imagine eating with Reginald. Or at least, she could have done, before it all went strange and sour.
For a few days, he had stopped her from feeling lonely.
More than ever Mary wanted her mother, to ask her what it was like to be married. She remembered Catherine warning her that a princess must live much within herself, and Mary wished she had listened better at the time. It would be so nice to live with someone you could trust and rely upon. Had it ever been like that for her mother and father? Had their marriage ever been happy? Mary longed to feel part of a family. To live with people who cared for her.
Even a sister would do.
Sometimes Mary heard her own baby half-sister crying through the wall. But Mary took great care to avoid Elizabeth in person, so as to sidestep the issue of having to recognise her sister’s status. Twice a day, Elizabeth’s nurses took her out from her rooms for an airing. As the nursery ran to a predictable timetable, Mary could retreat to her own room at mid-morning and mid-afternoon to avoid them. It made her sad. But this was how it had to be.
The so-called Queen Anne did not come again. Her father did not come again. Yet Mary suspected that they hadn’t simply forgotten about her. They were just biding their time. That Anne was devilishly good at biding her time. Mary knew that she must be hoping to give the king a boy baby as well as a girl. That would increase her power even more.
One morning a few weeks later, she heard an unusual bustle among the servants below, and knew that someone important had arrived at Hatfield. Her first fear was that it was Anne. The thought of her stepmother, and her plots, made Mary so queasy that she was even a tiny bit relieved when she saw that it was a large, moony man’s face peering around the edge of her door. Master Cromwell was still in his travelling boots, she saw, and had come at once to see her.
‘Straight up!’ he said. ‘I’ve come straight up to see you. How are you?’ He was moving towards her across the room, and Mary did her best not to flinch.
‘Well, thank you,’ she said cautiously. She might easily have misread the expression on his face as concerned, friendly, eager to please her. But then, she had seen that terrible piece of paper, with Anne Boleyn’s orders so clearly written out upon it, and signed with his name. She could not trust this agent of her enemy.
‘May I sit?’ he asked, flopping himself down in her chair. ‘You’re so kind. I’m sure you’ll humour an old man who cannot ride as hard as he used to.’
He groaned a little, stretched a little. Yes, he did look tired.
‘But it’s made up for,’ he went on, ‘by seeing how things are here. You are blooming, my dear.’ He looked at her with satisfaction, almost with pride.
Mary knew that she was looking less ghostlike than when he had last been at Hatfield and had ‘freed’ her from the attics. She was plumper now, perhaps a little more glossy, and her hair was growing fast and thick.
‘What do you want?’
She decided that she could not bear to play his little game that they were friends. It was just too awful. She crossed her arms, cradling each elbow of her black dress. She knew that this made her look angular, and sulky. She revelled in the feeling.
He sighed.
‘Oh, my dear,’ he wheezed, ‘don’t be like that. I was hoping that you and I could be allies, you know, working together. I can do all sorts of things for you, you know. Restore you to your father’s good graces. Get you out of here.’
‘Get me my title back?’
Mary snapped it out.
‘Ah, I’m glad that you admit that it is no longer yours,’ Master Cromwell said smoothly. ‘Does this mean you retract that paper you signed saying that you still stake a claim to it?’
Mary instantly regretted her mistake.
‘It was a figure of speech,’ she said. ‘Of course I am, and have always been, a princess. It’s just that no one here recognises it.’
He sighed again, moving in his chair and lifting his toes towards the fire.
‘It’s just a word,’ he said comfortably. ‘Just a little word. Isn’t it more important that you have your health, and your happiness, and your family?’
‘I have none of those things,’ Mary said stiffly.
It suddenly pierced her, like an arrow, that she wanted her family, her mother and father, oh, so badly. Her health and her happiness were as nothing to her, besides them.
‘You could be with your father and mother in a trice!’ he said shrewdly, as if reading her mind. ‘There’s just one little signature that stands between you and them. Look, here is where it goes.’
He had his paper ready again. ‘Just … acknowledge your sister as princess. That’s all it takes, one signature, and you’ll be welcome at court, or you can go to see your mother if you will. Your sister exists, doesn’t she? She’s real! She’s here! You can’t deny that.’
As if on cue, there was a thin wail from the nursery just a few rooms away.
‘She’s a bonny child,’ he said, ‘if all the reports continue true. I haven’t even been to see her yet. You, my dear, you are the main priority. It’s you and your future that everyone is hoping and praying for.’
Mary noticed a gold ring twinkling on his finger. He was rich, and sleek, and well cared for, even though he spoke like a hoodlum. His clothes were not showy, and his person was rather like a sack crammed full of potatoes. There was something particularly unpleasant about his fat white fingers. She could see long, dark hairs growing on their backs.
She bowed her head. She did not believe that her father was praying for her, although she was sure that her mother did so, every single day.
‘My mother, the queen of England,’ she began deliberately, ‘has commanded me to sign no papers until she can advise me herself, in person.’
‘Ah, you call her the queen,’ he said, sighing gustily again. ‘I’m afraid that the Pope in Rome agrees with you there. Quite a fuss he has caused me.’
Mary started up. She had not heard this before. So her father’s supposed remarriage had not been recognised in Rome! This was excellent news.
‘Ah, my poor darling.’ He had noticed her pleased reaction, and Mary grimaced in distaste at his pity.
‘I’m afraid that what the Pope may think doesn’t change a thing,’ he continued. ‘Your father is still married to Queen Anne Boleyn. We’re in England, not Rome, and your father is the head of the Church of England. The succession still goes to their daughter. Now, if you sign here, I can promise you something that I haven’t even mentioned yet, but it’s something that will please you greatly.’
Mary waited, warily. To return to court would not please her greatly. Why would she want to go back to Greenwich with that wicked lady running the place?
‘Your mother,’ he said, ‘is going to be moved again. She has been living in the Fens, you know.’
Mary did not know, and felt confused. Surely there were no royal palaces in the Fens? Surely they were full of marshes, and mosquitoes?
Yet again he noticed her reaction. Mary gave an internal wince. Her mother would not have foolishly revealed the thoughts inside her head like that. A daughter of Spain never shows pain.
‘Ah yes,’ Master Cromwell was saying. ‘It is most unhealthy there. And the house where she is now can no longer be used. She will have to go to Kimbolton. It’s a run-down old place, and people have died there, quite recently, of the putrid fever. You can save your mother from being sent there, you know. Just one signature, that’s all it will take.’
Mary stared straight ahead of her, very hard. She did not see the room, or the tapestries, or the man sitting there by the fire. She focussed on a tiny crucifix that was pinned to the curtain of her bed.
She felt faint. He was a devil. He had found the very weakest spot, the very worst thing. In all her nastiest imaginings, she hadn’t imagined this. He was threatening her with her mother’s life.
He waited awhile but she did not speak.
Look at the cross, Mary told herself. Just as long as you are looking at the cross nothing bad can happen. She kept her hands clasped firmly together, in case they should reach of their own accord for the pen.
‘I’ll leave you to think it over,’ he said lightly, and heaved himself up from his chair. ‘There’s no hurry, you know. I’ll be here for a few days, and there will be, oh, many days after that for you to change your mind. Your mother’s a healthy woman. There’s no reason that she shouldn’t survive living there. But she’s Spanish, you know. Thin blood. Never could stand the damp, that woman.’
He was talking, bowing, puffing out his cheeks, smiling and apologising all at once.
Mary did not listen. She was thinking only of her mother. What on earth were they doing to her?