Lady Shelton was right; things did get better. But first they had to get worse. It was a dark day when news came of Mary’s mother’s death, but it was hardly surprising. She would never forget how kindly, how gently, Lady Shelton broke it to her.
‘Her last words were of the king, your father,’ Lady Shelton said. ‘But you know what she was thinking? She was thinking of you and your position. Everyone knows that her last words would be reported back to him. And that it would be best for you if her last words were that she was still loyal to him, despite … everything.’
Mary did know what Lady Shelton meant. Her mother had explained to her, in her own words, about the importance of doing things for show, for politics. But still it gave her a stabbing pain in the stomach to think that her mother had spoken of her father in her last breath, and not of Mary herself. Still playing the game, then, to the very end.
Mary sat silent and bereft. Her mother had died as a queen, not as Mary’s mother. She felt a great big mother-shaped hole in her heart.
‘And there’s more.’
Mary couldn’t believe that there was ‘more’. More what? More accusations? She sat utterly still, staring into the flaming heart of the fire.
She knew that some people would think that she had caused her own mother’s death by her refusal to sign the Act of Succession. Should she have signed? Should she have had her mother released from that dangerous prison in the marshes? Had Master Cromwell been right after all?
‘No,’ said Lady Shelton fiercely. ‘I can see what you are thinking. It was not your fault, it was never your fault. She … it’s almost as if she wanted to die.’
‘But that means she wanted to leave me behind,’ Mary said blankly.
‘To leave you behind to continue the fight, for her rights, and for your own. And that’s why you can’t give up now. Do you understand what your mother’s death means, for your own position?’
What a stupid question, Mary cried inside her heart. It means I am all alone in the world! She almost wanted to plunge her hand into the flames, so that they would eat her up and she could travel to Heaven, where her mother would be waiting for her.
But Lady Shelton was gently snapping her fingers in Mary’s face, even cradling her cheek, bringing her back to reality.
‘This is what I believe,’ Lady Shelton was saying. ‘I believe that your mother did not, perhaps … resist death, as much as a Christian should have. But I also believe that she did it for a reason, which is to set you free, Mary.’
Mary could not bear this foolishness.
‘How does this set me free, Lady Shelton?’ she said. Indeed, she half shouted the words. ‘Am I not still practically in prison?’
Lady Shelton sat down beside Mary’s chair, crouching on the floor-rushes. They had long got past being gaoler and prisoner, even mistress and servant. They were a team. She clutched Mary’s hand and squeezed it to get her full attention. Slowly, Mary’s mind returned from Kimbolton and the marshes, and back to her bedchamber here at Hunsdon.
Lady Shelton was waiting for her to be ready. Well, Mary thought, perhaps I had better listen, at least, to what she has to say.
‘Now,’ Lady Shelton began. ‘You understand that your father … cast aside your mother to marry my niece Anne?’ Mary nodded. She didn’t like to think about it, but it was true. It had been her father’s strange desire for that woman, a desire she couldn’t fully comprehend, that had destroyed her family.
‘It was a big thing to do,’ Lady Shelton continued, ‘very difficult, very expensive. And, as a result, my niece was very secure in her position as queen. If the king gave her up, why then, it would all have been a waste of time. Offending the Pope, offending the emperor, offending all right-thinking people.’
Mary nodded. Yes, he could be as obstinate as her mother, in his own way. Once her father had set his heart on the lady, it would have hurt his pride to have changed his mind.
‘Pig,’ she whispered. ‘He is a pig.’
‘He’s a pig,’ Lady Shelton agreed, ‘but a pig caught in a trap. Because my niece the queen –’ here she glanced round to make absolutely sure the room was entirely empty – ‘has not been able to make him happy in recent months. He is tired of her. Everyone at court is saying that now your mother is dead, he will set her aside.’
‘Set her aside?’ Mary must have looked as surprised as she felt. Surely this miserable blight upon her life, her stepmother, would never lift. Surely not.
‘Yes!’ whispered Lady Shelton, her voice low. ‘Not even I love my niece any longer,’ she admitted. She was speaking very, very softly. ‘She has turned proud, and cruel. It could be that she will not be queen for much longer. The people support you, Mary. The guards have told me that they have intercepted, oh, more letters and messages and gifts than ever, this last week.’ Lady Shelton’s voice grew warm, and full of consolation. ‘Your time is coming,’ she continued. ‘The tide will turn. Remember I told you that before?’
Mary did remember – it had been the night of her failed escape. If Master Cromwell hadn’t prevented her from leaving that night, she would perhaps have had the chance to see her mother one last time to say goodbye.
‘My mother also said that,’ Mary admitted. ‘She said that the Wheel of Fortune may take me high but also cast me low.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Shelton, almost tartly. ‘I think you have been about as low as is possible. I think that God will decide that the tide in your fortunes must change. And what else would your mother say?’
Mary had told Lady Shelton often enough, since they had become confidantes, about what her mother was like.
‘She would tell me to be a bloody stubborn blood-drinker,’ she said begrudgingly. ‘And to wait for better days.’
***
It was a few weeks later that Lady Shelton’s prediction took solid form. Mary was still at Hunsdon, sitting at the high table in the hall, pretending to eat. She had lost the gains she had made since her release from the Hatfield attics, and could feel herself growing thin and gaunt again. With her mother dead, she hardly cared.
This particular dinner hour, there was a commotion in the courtyard. Just like the time the Duke of Norfolk came to take me away to Hatfield, Mary thought warily. The idea led to Nan Hussey, who back then had been sitting at the table with Mary. Mary had no idea where Nan was now. She prayed that Nan had been allowed to retire quietly to the Husseys’ country estates, to recover her health after her incarceration in the Tower.
The door burst open, just as before.
This time it was two gentlemen who came in, bristling slightly, and shooting each other glances out of the corners of their eyes. Clearly they were at odds. There was an elaborate pantomime of courtesy about who should approach her first.
Mary was surprised to realise that they were Sir Nicholas Carew and Master Cromwell, two people she had never thought to see together.
Master Cromwell stretched out his arms as he approached the table with his usual waddling gait. He pushed his fists into his arched back, stiff as usual from the ride.
‘Yes, we are odd travelling fellows, are we not?’
Sir Nicholas merely glowered at him. He paced in with grace, like a cat. A few hours on horseback from London presented him with no challenge.
‘Yes, we are here together,’ Sir Nicholas said, in response to the question that Mary was looking at him with. ‘We come in common cause. But first things first. I am deeply, deeply sorry for the death of your mother, the queen.’
His hat was off his head, and he dipped his chin so low that his beard touched his chest. Although his gesture almost hid his face, Mary could tell that he was sincerely moved.
She inclined her head, willing herself to remain glacially calm and not to give way to her grief. She needed her wits about her. She had an overwhelming need to question Sir Nicholas. What could he tell her? When had he last seen her mother? But she did not want to ask him anything in the presence of that cruel slug Master Cromwell.
‘I too offer my deepest condolences,’ said Cromwell now, reaching for one of Mary’s hands as if to give it a consolatory caress. She snatched it back out of reach, but quickly turned the movement into the action of rising from her chair, as if she had meant to do so anyway. She could not bear the thought of his fat fingers touching hers. But she also felt that she could not afford to antagonise him entirely.
All three of them stood there, uncertain. Eventually, Mary’s curiosity overcame her.
‘So, why are you here?’ she asked bluntly, sitting down again.
She knew that there must be two serving men standing just outside the door. ‘Have you been offered ale?’ she asked, loud enough for them to hear. The enquiring face of one of the men appeared round the door frame, ready to take an order.
‘No, no,’ said Master Cromwell irritably. ‘We don’t need refreshments. Now shut the door, my good man, and leave us alone.’
As the door banged shut, Mary thought warily that maybe she should have requested a witness for what might follow. She imagined the way that Lady Shelton would raise her eyebrows and look coolly down her nose at Cromwell’s squat figure. She drew herself up to do the same thing.
‘To business,’ Cromwell said.
He splatted his palm down heartily on the table near to her. Sir Nicholas slowly turned his gaze upon Cromwell, as if to signal distaste, but not his entire dismissal of what Cromwell was about to say.
‘It’s the death of your mother, the late dowager princess,’ Cromwell began, ‘that changes everything. As you know, your father, the king, is growing a little tired of your stepmother, the queen.’
Mary gasped. She had heard these rumours, but to have such treasonable matters spelled out, aloud! It was unthinkable.
‘I thought you were a good friend to the Lady Anne Boleyn,’ she said distantly. ‘Do you now betray her, as you betrayed my mother, and me?’
‘I serve the king,’ said Master Cromwell pointedly. ‘Not the queen. I have no agenda other than to serve the needs of my royal master. He knows this, and has rewarded me well for it. My master now requires me to … rid him of a marriage that has become an encumbrance and a chore to him. He endured it as long as your mother endured, out of, well, propriety and dignity.’
‘He didn’t want to admit he was wrong, more like!’
Sir Nicholas had snorted the sentence with derision, but his words made Mary stiffen. It was all very well her thinking bad thoughts about her father, but it was different when other people put them into words.
Master Cromwell paused, and gave Sir Nicholas a stare, but responded no further.
‘Propriety,’ he started up again blandly. ‘But matters are different now. He has found the queen to have become … somewhat trying. And there is the matter of an heir.’
‘But the … but what about my sister, my half-sister, what about her?’
Mary had so nearly said the Princess Elizabeth, words that were constantly joined together in her presence, but she saved herself just in time.
‘Well, obviously a girl’s not good enough, and Queen Anne has failed to produce a boy,’ Master Cromwell said. ‘Your father has decided to try again, with a new queen, someone young, and fertile, and able to give the country what it needs – a baby boy. So your sister is like you now, just the plain “Lady Elizabeth”.’
Mary could hardly take it in. She had been demoted from princess to mere lady; Elizabeth had taken her place. But only for a time, it seemed. Were they both unacceptable, now that their mothers had fallen from favour? Mary felt a pang of pity for the tiny baby she’d seen at Hatfield. She’d been difficult to dislike, so young and defenceless. It would become even harder to hate her, if she too was going to suffer as Mary had.
Why could their father not just love them as they were? Mary curled up her fists as the thought came into her mind. She and her sister had nothing wrong with them. Nothing! Apart from everything, it seemed, in their father’s eyes. They were not boys.
Cromwell watched her absorbing the information.
‘Yes,’ he said, going back to what he’d said at first. ‘The Queen Anne no longer has friends at court. All good people will now do the king’s will in seeking to have her set aside. All friends of the old queen –’ here he gave a slight bow to Sir Nicholas – ‘will make common cause with us too.’
Mary saw it now. Her mother’s death, just as Lady Shelton had predicted, had brought about enormous changes. Now the wicked lady was to be brought low!
But how on earth could she play a part?
‘And what has this to do with me?’
She asked the question out of genuine curiosity. The two men exchanged glances without speaking. It was as if they were silently recommitting themselves to a plan previously discussed. Again, Sir Nicholas nodded.
‘We need information,’ Cromwell said at last. ‘At Hatfield House, the queen’s daughter, Elizabeth, was kept under … certain conditions. You know yourself what they were. You were her serving woman. It was by the queen’s orders that you were put in that position, and deprived of your liberty, and I believe deprived of food. And indeed, towards the end of your stay, I believe that you were poisoned. Is that true? We need your word for this. Your evidence will join the list, the growing list, I might add, of the misdeeds of the queen.’
Mary thought of the paper, signed by both Anne and Cromwell himself, which listed the conditions under which she was to be kept. But where was that paper now? She did not know. Even if she had the paper, he would surely protect himself by saying he had drawn it up at the request of the lady.
‘So you ask me to draw up an account of what happened at Hatfield, the ways in which my rights were infringed, for my father’s attention, do you mean?’
‘Oh no,’ said Sir Nicholas, ‘for the law courts. For nothing in this country proceeds without recourse to the law.’
He spoke bitterly, and Mary knew he was thinking of how her mother’s rights had been twisted and mangled and set aside by the lawyers eager to do the king’s will. They did his dirty work for him.
‘And if I don’t … agree to say what I know?’ Mary asked tentatively.
‘Then it will be hard for us – for us, as we are allies now – to get you brought back to court, and back into your father’s good grace,’ said Cromwell. ‘You can continue here, just as you are. Or you can return to court, and once again be a princess. He will welcome you back.’
‘Oh,’ cried Mary. ‘But this is what my mother wanted all along!’
She imagined the smile on her father’s face, his arms spread wide, as she ran into them. But would it really be like that?
‘Indeed, it is what your mother wanted,’ said Cromwell gently. ‘But she was too stubborn to get it. Will you be cleverer than she was, and please me, and your other good friend Sir Nicholas, very greatly? Will you accept the offer?’
Mary looked at Sir Nicholas. He slowly nodded.
‘I was drugged,’ she said. ‘I was given henbane. It is true. They poisoned me.’
Cromwell smiled, slow and triumphant.
‘Thank you, my dear!’ he said. ‘Now we can get you back to court.’
Back to court. How did Mary feel about that? She looked down at her hands, twisted in her lap, and pressed them hard together, so hard that the knuckles went white.
‘I may as well go back to court,’ she said. ‘Now that my mother is dead, there is nothing else for me to do.’
‘Good girl,’ said Cromwell again, encouragingly, as if she were a dog or a small child. His condescension did nothing to reduce Mary’s feeling that she had been played. She was still his puppet in this endless game.