Roses in the Tempest (20 page)

But again we would obey. We must. I trusted in God and His mercy and I prayed the king’s men were sent for a Godly purpose.

NOVEMBER, 1534

Stretton, Staffordshire

XXII

“…as touching the oath, the causes for which I refused it,

no man wotteth what they be, for they be secret in mine

own conscience…”

–Thomas More, 1534

We took residence in our home in Stretton not too long ago. The estates were well kept and Ursula favored them, as did I. It was only two miles from Brewood.

I stood looking out the window, each fluid diamond pane revealing a November-wet view through its modulating surface.

Ursula swept down the stairs, eyeing me as she was wont to do with those stern, dark eyes. She was tall and her features were much like Isabella’s only sculpted with a more genteel hand. I would say that Ursula was more beautiful than Isabella, and different in other ways as well.

She moved to stand beside me, easily slipping her arm in mine with the familiarity of intimately shared years. I did not mind, and I even turned to press a kiss upon the cheek she obligingly angled toward me. With child again, Ursula was never weakened by her pregnancies, but seemed revitalized. Her face glowed with health and her hair even seemed thicker, its dark tresses heavy, like the mane of a horse. She was not the shrew dear Dorothy had become in that earlier marriage. Ursula was instead a good and faithful wife, one who knew her place in my society and who fostered contentment at home.

Contentment was a much-needed commodity now, for court was becoming a battleground. On the one side were those who remained faithful to the Church of Rome, and on the other, those who would follow the king’s minions even into Hell. I spoke no treason, I made no man my enemy. But I saw that even loyal men were being imprisoned for their thoughts, even as Buckingham had been executed all those years ago for harboring private thoughts of treason.

From the window I could see the distant road, its amber ribbon breaking over the slope of green hills. There was a long string of people traveling along it, and I knew they were pilgrims setting off to see the relics in a nearby monastery.

Ursula clutched my arm before pulling me away from the window. “You spend much time at this view, husband. What of court? You have not been there in many weeks, almost a month. Will you not be missed? Does not the king require you?”

I patted her hand before I disengaged from her. “I am not missed by the king, for he has many ushers and grooms to attend to him, men who do not have papist sympathies.”

She glanced toward the door, a habit we of a sudden cultivated, fearful of our own servants. There was not a nobleman who did not take that backward glance when deciding to fervidly speak his mind. “Yet you took the oath. As did we all.”

“To save our lives, my dear. But I do not like this secular meddling in divine affairs. It has the off taste of meat left too long in the sun.”

“Why do you gaze out the window?”

“I am looking at nothing,” I confessed. “Except today. Pilgrims.”

“They go to the abbey to revere the relics. They do not think they will be there tomorrow.”

“I have never seen this many pilgrims along the road. Even during plague times.”

“These are plague times,” she said quietly. She moved to the casement, touching the glass delicately with her long fingers, the white ruffles of her sleeve falling past her wrist. “You have never been a religious man, Thomas. Why is it so important to you now?”

I chuckled and moved to stand behind her, wrapping my arms affectionately about her enlarging waist. “Age, Ursula. I am getting old. And when a man gets old he begins to think about greater things than himself.”

“Your soul, Thomas? I thought you encased it for safekeeping long ago in a chest, for seldom did you take it out to amuse yourself with it.”

“I take my soul very seriously, indeed,” I said, my voice muffled by her headdress’ veil. “And…my honor.”

If a man could not speak his mind—nay, even think in his mind a private thought—then there was little honor to be gained by being at court. With Ursula heavy with a babe, I was excused. But I did fear, though I said nothing to Ursula. In the past, I dueled, I fought in battles, I looked honorable death in the face, but now I feared. I feared men like Cromwell, the likes of which were not fit to wipe the dung from my shoes. That I—a Giffard—should fear his like! Take Breath and Pull Strong? It would take more than a steady hand and a long bow to do the work in this realm that needed the doing.

My hand reached to my doublet and fondled that pendant that lay beneath it. I took to wearing a crucifix. I felt, in these times, I needed it close to my skin.

“Perhaps you, too, should go to the abbey,” she said, picking up her sewing from where she left it on the casement. “Ease your soul on the veneration of a martyr’s bones.”

“Most likely they are the bones of a rabbit.” I smoothed my doublet over the cross, thinking of relics and of waste. “I know too many places encasing wax blood and pig’s skin for saint’s flesh.”

“Oh. You do not like this trafficking in saint’s wares? You sound very like Cromwell and his ilk.”

“Foolish, greedy men take coin from the innocent and naïve for one look at these relics. A bishop will tell you it does no harm to the people, but I say it wrongs them terribly.”

“Do you not believe in relics, Thomas?”

“I believe in few of them.”

“There is the old saw that if you took every piece of the true cross encased in reliquaries it would build an army of crosses.”

“So it is said.”

“And yet I myself have seen a splinter of the cross…” Her voice changed, softened, and I turned to look at her. “I was very moved by it. I shall never forget it, in fact. I prayed when I saw it, Thomas. I prayed with a fervency I have seldom possessed. I gave myself to God, dedicated my works to Him, however feeble they may be, through the sight of that single object. If it were not the cross of our Lord, it might as well have been.”

I bent toward her, touching her cheek with the tips of my fingers. “A sobering statement,” I said softly. “Full of all my own arguments.” Straightening, I happened to glance to the window again, and noted a rider kicking up mud along the path, scattering the pilgrims as he rode. Soon it was apparent that he was wont for our gates. I thought I recognized the sodden colors, but he was soon hidden behind the hedges and trees. My pulse hammered at what this visitation might mean, for surely this was a rider from court.

We were told George Throckmorton arrived and we received him at once.

“Dear George!” cried Ursula, rushing to greet him. She kissed her brother upon the cheek, and he stretched his arms to look at her.

“So it is true. You are with child again.” He smiled up at me. “Did I not say this would be a good match?”

I nodded. “And I am ever grateful for your prodding on the subject,” I answered. He continued to smile at his sister until his thoughts intruded on his features, which were spattered with mud from his ride.

“My manners,” I said, gesturing to a servant to bring wine and a bowl for him to wash himself. I tried to make light of weighty matters, for I sensed this was no social call. “George, please sit. Groom yourself, if you will.”

He first washed his face and dried it quickly with the towel before gratefully accepting the wine. Sitting back, he appeared agitated as the servant hovered.

“Joseph,” I said to the servant, “you may withdraw. Leave the jug.”

George watched Joseph depart and spoke only when the door was firmly shut and an interval passed between the last click and the faint footsteps of Joseph’s egression. “I have news, Thomas,” he said sitting forward. He cupped the goblet’s bowl between his hands, fingers curled and anxious. “Cromwell is sending his commissioners to the abbeys, forcing the religious to take the oath of succession.”

“What nonsense is this, George? Is he insane?”

“Husband!” Ursula clutched my arm, but I ignored her. Let the damned servants hear me! Let them know what their king is doing.

“It is already happening. Most are taking the oath, but those who have refused…”

“What, George?” she asked. “Who have refused?”

“Monks. Priests. They are being burned for treason.”

Ursula put a pale hand to her mouth and leaned against the wall. “Monks and priests?” she whispered. “What harm are they to the kingdom?”

George turned to look at her, his long, red-gold beard almost a part of his jerkin’s breast. “Anyone who does not swear to the invalidity of the king’s marriage with Queen Catherine—I mean, the Princess Dowager—must be made an example of. Even be they monks and priests, for they are becoming the most dangerous of all to King Henry. Any who are under the auspices of the pope—” He closed his eyes in frustration. “I mean the bishop of Rome—are His Majesty’s greatest foes. It is this influence the king fears. If priests bark from the pulpit about adultery and blasphemy, he cannot stand against it.”

“Then why do not more of them do so, George?”

“Because, my dear sister, they are being imprisoned for so doing, and then executed. It is a stony path to follow, opposing the king to side with the bishop of Rome.”

I scowled. To hear, in my own home, that a brother-in-law of mine must correct himself on matters provoking the king’s anxiety... “The pope,” I said boldly, “found for Queen Catherine in her suit. Little good it does her now. And little good the king’s hurried marriage to that Bullen woman did him when she produced another girl.”

George took a quick gulp of his wine while staring at me with his olive eyes. “It is all a tailless cat chasing its tail. Thomas More himself was imprisoned because of it,” he said to Ursula, “because he would not take the oath and would not say why.”

I slapped my thigh. “A man’s conscience again! Can a man not follow God’s law without fear of prison or worse?”

“The king is the supreme head of the church in England. If he wants an oath he will get his oath.”

“Even from poor clerics,” I rasped.

“Especially from poor clerics.”

“Even from nuns,” Ursula said softly.

I stared at her. I did not realize it until she said it, but they, too, were in danger. Involuntarily, my lips mouthed, “Isabella.”

I heard George’s voice vaguely through my clouded thoughts. “I tell you, Thomas, I do not know my own countrymen any longer. And where court was once merry, it reeks of fear and discontent. Brave men cower when Cromwell walks the halls. They fear him. Faith! I admit I fear him, too! What’s to be done?”

“What is there to do?” I muttered behind my hand. I smoothed down my mustache and worried at my beard.

“There is talk…”

“Speak not of treasonous talk, George. Not in my house. Would you widow your sister?”

“I am loyal to the king. But I am not loyal to his minions who teach him heresy.”

“Cromwell.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “He has too many spies. No. I can be patient. Like Wolsey, he will hang himself by missteps and vanity.”

“Can we wait that long?”

“It may not be all that long.”

“But these oaths—”

“—must be taken.” Yet even so, I imagined Isabella in all her boldness standing up to these men and leading her sisters to certain doom.

A servant arrived with a tray of meats and dried fruit, and George ate gratefully while Ursula ministered to him. I stood again at the window, listening to their talk with half an ear. My mind was on monasteries and just how quickly I could get myself to Blackladies.

It was not long until George obliged me by retiring for an afternoon rest. Ursula watched me steadily as I called for my horse to be readied.

“Where do you go, husband?”

“Brewood. I have business there.”

Ursula moved closer and measured me. “Thomas, I have never asked you. I have respected and honored you as my husband and my lord. But today—especially today when so much is in turmoil—I must risk your wrath. I have wondered these many years what it is that so intrigues you in Brewood.”

I stiffened. I was no adulterer, though it was true that I sinned in my heart for another. “I have told you before. My father and I are patrons to Blackladies. It is only a small priory, and very poor.”

“Priory.” She strode away from the window, and as gracefully as her girth would allow, sat upon a chair. The gown draped about her like furling crests of waves. It engulfed her being with their deep, raven reflections. She clutched her sewing in the white fist of one hand, its needle dangling from a crimson thread. “I have heard the rumors, but I was loath to believe them; that you spent your time at the priory…because of the prioress.”

My gaze grew steady upon her. “Yes, madam. It is true. We were childhood friends, you see. She was the daughter of a yeoman farmer near our lands.”

She settled back, a matronly smile on her face. “I see. You go to warn them, then. Go, Thomas. Do warn them.” Here her smile dispersed. “Save them, if you can.”

My heart grew within me, and I knelt to her, taking her hand and pressing a lover’s kiss upon it. She could never know how grateful I was for her confidence and her concern. I also knew then, that I was unworthy of such a wife.