Green Darkness (33 page)

Though Mary was but thirty-five, Celia thought her old and negligible. She thought the whole visit tiresomely uncomfortable, since she was cold and hungry, nor had she much curiosity about the mysterious message. She stood aside and idly counted the panes in the latticed windows, while Mary questioned Wharton in her harsh, deep voice. Wat was seething impatiently, but held his tongue. Ursula watched the Princess’s little face grow increasingly suspicious; she saw that Wharton’s attitude would prevail and they would all be packed off into the cold drizzle again. She then perceived the elaborate gold crucifix amongst the other jewels on Mary’s flat chest.

Ursula reached in her pouch and drew out her own shabby rosary. She waited until the gesture caught Mary’s eye, then slowly kissed the silver cross.

The Princess started, her face was transfigured, her thin lips relaxed into a singularly sweet smile. “Ah-h . . . so . . .” she murmured. “You are welcome to Hunsdon,” she said, “in the name of Our Blessed Lord.”

She gave orders to the reluctant Wharton, and commanded that Ursula should sup with her. “You shall tell me, Lady Southwell, about my brother, the King’s Grace—how he looked, what he said, at Cowdray. ’Tis long since I’ve seen him, and never alone any more. He loved me once,” she added beneath her breath, “Holy Virgin, he can
not
have grown to hate me. He can
not!
”

Thus it was that they were all invited to spend the night at Hunsdon.

Mary had for weeks been both anxious and bored, a condition which increased her nagging ill health. She had headaches and toothaches, besides a frequent dull throbbing in her woman’s parts. The memory of her miserable girlhood with her adored, repudiated Spanish mother—the fears, the dangers—never left her though she seldom mentioned them. She prayed for forgiveness when hatreds overpowered her, especially hatred of the magnificent but heartless father who had replaced his legal wife by Nan Bullen, the whore. And hatred of Elizabeth, the innocent result of that sham marriage.

Mary had schooled herself to docility, to semi-exile, to patience. On one point only she had been adamant. She would alter no form or observance of her religion—her mother’s religion— she would have her confessor and her Mass. To retain these against fierce opposition from Edward and his Council, she had invoked her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles, whose threats of armed intervention had for long protected Mary—until lately. The war in France was ended; the Emperor, a world-weary man, had cooled off from defending a nearly friendless and aging woman who would probably not live to ascend England’s throne.

Mary was now forced to celebrate Mass in secret, her expostulary and affectionate letters to Edward remained unanswered. She who was well trained to recognize the scent of danger smelled whiffs of it around her, but she had never doubted her position as present heir to the throne. This was her father’s royal decree, it was also manifest Divine Decree. She loved her brother and made excuses for his unkindness because of his youth—in hopeful moments she felt sure that if she could manage to see him after he returned to London, she would somehow regain his affection, and her position at Court. Her prayers, and all the Catholic prayers in Christendom, headed by those of His Holiness the Pope would soon reclaim Edward from his morass of error. Of this Mary felt certain, and all the more so after hearing Ursula’s account at supper of the visit to Cowdray. Mary deplored but understood the temporary need for hiding the Benedictine monk, for denuding the chapel in deference to Edward’s temporary madness.

“’Tis vile!” Mary cried, slamming down her ale tankard. “The antichrists surrounding my poor brother! And the mere chits who are taught these preposterous heresies. Lady Jane Grey is another. Scarce sixteen and as wickedly deluded as his royal grace. Imagine what she said when she entered my chapel last May!”

Celia, whose thoughts had been wandering while her aunt talked with the Princess, pricked up her ears. She had never heard of a Lady Jane Grey, but the girl’s age interested her—so near to her own.

Ursula looked expectant. Lady Wharton, who was the other member of the supper party, shook her head and sighed.

“’Twas dreadful,” she murmured.

“That girl . . .” said Mary, “when my Lady Wharton knelt before the Host—we were still permitted to keep it on the altar then—she asked, ‘Why do you curtsy? The chapel is empty.’ Lady Wharton replied that she knelt before Him who had made her. And Jane Grey said insolently, ‘Nay, how foolish, for the
baker
made that sliver of bread up there!’”

Ursula gave a shocked sound, while Celia was disappointed. The baker
did
make the bread, didn’t he? Nor had she ever been taught of the miracle of transubstantiation. Stephen had never thought to mention it. What crime is this? Celia wondered, though she was woman enough to understand another allegation against Jane Grey, who apparently eschewed all finery, and had refused a richly embroidered gown Mary presented to her, saying that all ornament was vain, and that the Princess by adorning herself was one grown deaf to God’s word.

“Wicked impertinence,” said Mary angrily. “And a sign of these fearsome times which have come upon us. My royal father would have had her whipped, at least.”

The three elder ladies continued their scandalized comments while Celia sat below them at the table, silent as Ursula had taught her to be, unwilling to think of the past, unable to imagine the coming journey, absorbed in slaking her hunger with a surprisingly tough and rancid hunk of pork. She had grown accustomed to the Cowdray fare—always delicious—and missed it.

After supper Mary remembered Wat Ferrier and his insistence on delivering a message. Ursula’s confidences had made it plain that Anthony Browne might still be trusted, and Mary had her share of curiosity.

She therefore retired to her privy chamber, which at Hunsdon was no more than a curtained alcove at the end of the gallery, and she summoned Wat.

“Are we surely alone, your royal grace?” Wat asked, first kneeling, then standing with his leathern cap held in his hand.

“Aye,” said Mary, kind but wary. “What is the message you so press on me? I trust they’ve fed you well as can be in the servants’ hall?”

He nodded. “Thank ye, your grace . . .” and was silent a moment, covertly taking her measure.

He had never seen her up close before today, and like Celia, was startled by her meagerness in contrast to the deep voice. She had no sensuous appeal for a man, yet now he recognized in her smile, and in the set of her head, a likeness to her father. An aura of royalty, dim and tenuous, but she was not the poor little wisp he had thought.

He fumbled inside his jacket where his wife had sewn a tiny pocket. He drew out a small tarnished gold signet ring, and tendered it to her.

“’Tis this, your grace—and pray will ye examine it close?”

Mary took the ring, saw a faint carving of a buck’s head at gaze, and the scroll of a motto—“
Suivez raison
”—blurred by use.

“Aye . . .” she said. “What’s this for?”

“Will ye know it again?” asked Wat anxiously.

She nodded, knitting her sparse sandy brows.

“If it come to ye again, by
any
hand,” said Wat gravely, “your grace must beware of aught else ye’ve heard. Of
any
summons.”

She frowned harder. “You speak in riddles, my good fellow. Forsooth, the message was not so obscure as this?
What
summons?”

Wat did not know, Sir Anthony had made him memorize only these words.

“I mislike this,” she said with a flash of anger. “’Tis meant as a warning, I suppose, well-meant I hope. Did Sir Anthony give it you himself?”

Wat was silent, mindful of his master’s instructions: “Show the ring to her grace, say nothing but what I tell you to.”

“May I go, your royal grace,” asked Wat. “I’ve a hard ride ahead tonight.”

Mary bit her lips, uncertain, annoyed, and yet knowing that the man would explain no further. “How so?” she said sharply. “You can’t leave for Cumberland
now!
”

He shook his head. “London, your grace. I’ll come back for my ladies tomorrow.”

He reached his hand out respectfully for the ring. Mary gave it to him, impressed as she had always been by male strength and obduracy, even in a servant. Her head ached again, she lost interest in the little episode, lost interest in Lady Southwell and her pretty young niece. Though it was barely dark, she could think only of rest, of the soothing mithradate Lady Wharton would give her, and oblivion—were she lucky—for part of the restless night.

It did occur to Mary that Lady Southwell should be secretly apprised of the Mass which would be celebrated in the Princess’s bedchamber at seven the next morning. The priest, a Spaniard now disguised in the Hunsdon household as Mary’s secretary, advised against this when he came to bestow the nightly benediction. And Mary wearily let the matter slide. By morning her headache had given way to excruciating twinges in a back molar. While the barber was being summoned, Mary fortified herself with a mug of sack for the inevitable tooth pulling, and she had no further thought for her guests.

Wat returned from a hurried trip back to London, where he had deposited the signet ring with a taciturn goldsmith on Lombard Street according to Sir Anthony’s commands.

By noon, having dined alone, and skimpily—the Princess Mary’s larder was kept as straitened as her purse—the Cowdray party set forth again for the north.

None of them had the slightest premonition that they would ever see Mary again. Even Ursula, who had enjoyed their talk at supper, saw the Princess as a cipher who would end her days in confinement and neglect, forlornly shuttling from one to the other of her rustic manors.

B
Y THE TIME THEY
reached Cumberland ten days later, Ursula was as sated by travel as Celia was enlivened. Neither of them had guessed what a different world they would gradually enter after they crossed the Trent. And for both, the crimson-heathered moors, the flaming bracken, and now the mountains—rocky, purple, misty-topped, were astounding. Ursula felt only the loneliness as they plodded miles without seeing a human, or even a shepherd’s little stone cot. What houses there were had all turned gray and forbidding. There were no more luxurious inns—no accommodations except dearly bought garret floor space in farmsteads. The language became incomprehensible, the food altered. Instead of bread, they were given dry oatcakes, and messes of entrails for meat; instead of good ale or even beer, there was nothing to drink but water, or a white liquid so fiery it burned their throats.

Ursula’s spirits flagged even lower as they reached Ullswater and gaped at the stark brooding mountains, the dark sinuous nut-brown lake. Few south-countrymen had liking for scenery so startling. It was too primitive, too grotesque, and their minds were not aware of any romantic beauty in wilderness.

“I doubt we should have come . . .” said Ursula, for the first time voicing her dismay.

“Oh, but yes—Aunt!” cried Celia. “I never guessed any place could look like this! Mysterious, grand—one can breathe deep . . .” She did so, her cheeks glowing, though she could not explain a glad yet awed response in her own heart to match the blackish mountains, the gray implacable crags, the orange bracken patches. She thought the lake itself a marvel of enchantment, more incredible than Windermere even. She who had heretofore seen no body of still water larger than the Midhurst millpond.

Wat returned grumbling from a cottage near Patterdale where he had gone back for directions. He observed Celia’s raptures with an even sourer eye than did Ursula.

“Clutch o’ mush-mouthed ruffians—these dalesmen,” he growled, jerking his head back towards the stone cot. “Can’t speak the King’s English, doubt they know they
have
a King.”

“Did you not get directions?” asked Ursula, anxiously. “We
must
be near.”

Wat shrugged. “They gobble an’ they point up yonder.” His own dirty forefinger jabbed towards the western part of the lake. “But not ’til I said ‘Dacre’—when they seemed afeared.”

Ursula sighed. “Then we must go that way. For sure it’ll be Naworth Castle at last,” she added to Celia, “and I trust they welcome us, sweeting.”

Her plan of escape now seemed as stupid as its reasons. Cowdray and the Benedictine monk had receded to insignificance. This menacing country seemed as far from Cowdray as Venice, as the Spice Islands of which she had heard talk at Sir Anthony’s table. The Dacres’ casual invitation given during the King’s visit, and her own later impulsive decision to accept it—Oh, I’m a foolish woman, she thought, looking down at the lake, then up at some black storm clouds which had massed in a corner of the northern sky, while slanting sunrays still shone to the west. “There’s too
much
sky,” she said crossly, guiding her horse around a pothole.

Celia laughed. Her eyes met Simkin’s. He shambled along beside the pack mule, prodding or thwacking its rump when the beast dozed. Celia had become aware of the lad’s infatuation for her, and found it agreeable. She had become used to his pitted face, and the droop in his left eyelid. Simkin spoke little except to curse the mule; he blushed and stammered when Celia addressed him directly, but there had grown between them a natural alliance against the elders. A bond of youth and adventurousness.

“There’ll be pharisees up here, won’t there, Simkin,” asked Celia mischievously, “not little Sussex elves but great handsome ones wi’ eyes o’ burning coal, and black hair streaming in the mountain wind?”

“For sure, m-maiden—” answered Simkin, grinning, while his father said, “Faugh!” expressing contempt for idiot chat about fairies, and the general tiresomeness of the young. Wat was becoming seriously worried about their safety. He was almost sure he had been directed amiss in Kendal where he had finally unearthed a blacksmith who spoke a recognizable language. The blacksmith, while reshoeing the horses, was vague and taciturn in his directions. There had been no mention of lakes, yet they had now seen two. These Cumbrians didn’t seem to call them lakes, they called them meres—maybe the blacksmith
had
said “mere.” Wat kicked his horse’s flank and barked at his son.