Sacred Treason (30 page)

“My lady, why did the king hate you?” asked Clarenceux. “You said he hated you all?”

“He was so intoxicated with his own power that he despised anyone who questioned what he did or created obstacles or difficulties. He hated anyone who stood in his way, whether that person was a pope or a mere woman. I created difficulties for him because I said publicly that Lord Percy had been married to Anne Boleyn, in my attempt to have my marriage annulled. When the king was ardent to win Anne's love and marry her, I was an irritant. Ultimately, of course, he tried to divorce Anne on the grounds that she had previously been married to Lord Percy—just as I had said. But then it was pointed out to the king that if he divorced Anne and acknowledged the earlier marriage between her and Lord Percy, this would make his daughter Elizabeth illegitimate.”

“I'm sorry, my lady, but why?” Rebecca asked.

The dowager countess faced Rebecca. “My girl, as your heraldic companion can, I'm sure, confirm, there were very specific rules laid down about the succession to the throne at the time of Richard the Third. Correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Clarenceux, but there are two conditions in the Act known as
Titulus
Regis
that prevent a royal child from inheriting the throne. Is that not so?”

Clarenceux had been thinking of the hatred that passes down from kings to lords, and from lords to lesser men—especially if the king be a man like Henry the Eighth, and indulges himself to excess. He paused, collecting his thoughts. “Yes, there are two conditions. If one of the parents—either the king or the queen—has previously been married and if the royal marriage took place in secret, then their offspring are barred from inheriting the throne. As a result, Edward the Fifth and his brother Richard Plantagenet were both removed from the line of succession. Although
Titulus
Regis
was specifically repealed by Henry the Seventh, to allow his wife to retain her royal dignity, it remains a potent threat to the queen. The circumstances described have already led to the deposition of a monarch once, and they could again. There is a precedent.”

The dowager countess lifted one of her sticks as if to accentuate what she had to say. “Mr. Clarenceux, I am impressed. You see, Widow Machyn, if Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn were married, and the marriage consummated as he claimed, then the same factors apply to our present monarch, Elizabeth. For the king and Anne Boleyn were married in secret. Even if the king was correctly divorced from his first wife—which he was not—then the prior marriage of his second wife still means that Elizabeth is illegitimate.”

“Hence ‘the fate of two queens'…” murmured Clarenceux.

“What was that?” asked Lady Percy.”

“I was just reminding Goodwife Machyn that her husband declared that the fate of two queens depends on the chronicle,” said Clarenceux.

“True. Mary of Scotland should indeed inherit the throne of England and return this kingdom to the fold of Catholicism. But somewhere I was interrupted. It is important that I tell you about the king. For in response to the realization that it would disinherit Elizabeth, he decided not to divorce Anne but to have her beheaded on a charge of adultery. And in order to twist the knife into Lord Percy even further, he made him sit on the commission that tried Anne. Now you see why I claim the king was cruel. He was like a boy playing with us, as if we were all tiny creatures. Any sign of trouble and he was ruthless—cutting off heads as that same boy might pull the legs off a cranefly. He had already forced Lord Percy to make him his heir and sign over all his estates to him. Now he made him judge his own wife—the love of his life—for adultery. And because Lord Percy saw Anne Boleyn as the cause of all his misery, he joined in with those on the commission who sentenced her to death. But unlike them, his reasons were personal, because she had been unfaithful to him. Of course, the king publicly announced that Lord Percy had denied marrying Anne, but the truth was otherwise. They had been married. The marriage had been consummated. Anne had been unfaithful. She had lied to the king. And ultimately the king had decided it was better to kill her than admit his daughter was illegitimate.”

Rebecca wanted to sit down. The story had weakened her. But still she stood, facing the old countess. “My lady, what has this to do with my husband?”

“After Lord Percy declared he would never live with me, he spent much of his time in Wressle Castle. He was there when Robert Aske and the rest of the men involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace sought his leadership against the tyranny of the king. But Lord Percy had no stomach for the fight. After Anne's death, his reason for existence was gone—and not even fighting the king, who had so recently had her tried and beheaded, could rouse him. Lord Percy had, after all, exercised his own vindictiveness in sentencing her. That last summer he spent at his house on Newington Green in Middlesex, and there he died. I believe he poisoned himself. He was only thirty-five. And he left very specific instructions regarding his funeral arrangements.”

“Did my husband arrange his funeral?”

“He did indeed. Sir Arthur Darcy took your husband to see him just before he died, and he gave Goodman Machyn instructions for the conduct of the service and the construction of his tomb. He also gave him a document that he treasured above everything else he possessed.” The dowager countess paused, looking from Rebecca to Clarenceux. Then, very slowly, as if it pained her to say the words, she added, “It was proof of his marriage to Anne Boleyn.”

Clarenceux's skin suddenly tingled from his neck and face down to his legs and feet. “What? Proof that…that Queen Elizabeth is illegitimate?”

“Exactly, Mr. Clarenceux. He gave Goodman Machyn the original marriage agreement, signed and sealed by an official notary, the bishops of Durham and Rochester, and the queen's chaplain. It is unquestionable proof that Anne Boleyn had previously been married, before she was secretly married to the king.”

Rebecca felt herself trembling.
Henry—my husband—knew this all these years and never spoke a word about it. How was he able to conceal it?

She looked at Clarenceux. His brow was furrowed. “But why did the chronicle not begin until 1550? If Henry Machyn had been guarding the document since 1537, why did he not start writing it then?”

“Goodman Machyn came to me when my father died—he saw to that funeral too. It was the year after Lord Percy's death. He told me he had received the document and asked me for advice. I asked him whether he believed it should be destroyed. He said no. I asked him whether it should be used; he said not at that time, no. But if it looked as though Elizabeth might ever come to the throne, then it should be produced. I agreed. In 1550, when Edward the Sixth was ill and likely to die, Goodman Machyn came to me again, with Sir Arthur Darcy and the man who eventually became known as Sir Percival. We agreed how the marriage agreement should be guarded: by a fraternity of nine men who, when gathered together, would be able to locate it no matter what happened to the keeper.”

“But, my lady, that is my whole point,” said Clarenceux. “We cannot locate it. The names of the Knights simply spell ‘Lord Percy,' and their dates point to the month of his death. Nothing reveals the whereabouts of the document at all.”

The countess was silent for a long time. “Mr. Clarenceux, I have told you as much as I can about this document. I do not know where it is; I entrusted its location to Goodman Machyn. If his instructions are insufficient to find it, then perhaps it is lost to us. In which case his death will have been in vain.”

“But I still do not understand. How am I to interpret the chronicle?”

“I do not know the answer, Mr. Clarenceux. But one thing I can tell you is that the answer does not lie here in Sheffield. Lord Percy never liked coming to my father's house. It was the only place where the servants refused to obey his commands over mine.”

Clarenceux stared at the old woman, unable to believe that she did not have the answer he sought. He looked down at the book, still cradled under his arm.
Henry
Machyn
did
not
tell
me
what
I
need
to
know. He had too high an opinion of me. He thought I would see something that I simply cannot see.

Then a possibility struck him. “My lady,” he said slowly, “does the book of Job mean anything special to you?”

“From the manner of your asking, I am sure you already know the answer to that question. It means nothing to me—but to Lord Percy, it meant everything. He read from it every day.”

“His epitaph!” Clarenceux said. He looked from Rebecca's startled face to Lady Percy's. “Your ladyship, do you know what the epitaph on Lord Percy's tomb is? Is it from the book of Job?”

“I do not know for certain,” she said. “I have never seen it. But on his second visit, Goodman Machyn did say that he was going to add some lines of scripture to the tomb.”

Clarenceux punched the palm of his left hand. “Now I see. We have come to the wrong place. The key lies not in the dates themselves but in another document, one written in stone. I was a fool, a blind fool. ‘Lord Percy, June 1537'—it was a direction to go to the tomb, not to come here. We need to return to London as quickly as we can.”

The countess put forward her sticks and walked toward Clarenceux. She looked at him. “I trust nonetheless that this visit has proved worthwhile. I strongly suggest you allow Goodwife Machyn a night to rest before you take her back to the south. She looks weary and I notice that she holds her wrist as if it pains her. In fact, you might find a slight delay profitable. Since I never did get my annulment, I took advantage of my status as Lord Percy's widow to take his personal papers and account books. You will find several boxes of them in the muniment room.”

Clarenceux frowned. “I do not follow you, my lady.”

“Yes, you do. There are certain myths and legends about Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn that you might like to check for yourself. Some are true; some are not. You will know when you see the papers.”

Richard Crackenthorpe nudged the corpse with his foot. He put down the candle on the cellar floor and kicked the body harder. The candle flame guttered with the swirl of the air. He kicked the corpse again; this time it just moved like a heavy lump of meat.

He cursed and took a deep breath. How was he going to explain this to Walsingham? Daniel Gyttens had known where the chronicle was. Somewhere called “Summerhill.” It had to be near London. Gyttens had specifically said that Rebecca spoke about the need to go back there, to check the chronicle. But where was Summerhill?

Still unable to believe that the man was dead, Crackenthorpe knelt down and felt for a pulse. There was none. For a moment he rested his head on his arm. Then he stood up straight. He was bloody, tired, and dispirited.

Suddenly he decided to take out his frustration on the body. He kicked it again and again. He felt the ribs break beneath his foot as he stamped down on them, anger surging through his body. And then he thought of Clarenceux. The rush of hatred the thought brought on made him reach for the knife at his belt and plunge it through the eyes of the corpse, one by one, before slicing through the throat and breaking the vertebrae of the neck, so he could hold the eyeless head aloft in the candlelight.

“Behold the head of a traitor,” he snarled. The jaw hung slack. A little slow blood crept from each eye socket. It looked like a skull. Then he hurled the head as hard as he could against the wall of the cellar.

It was late. Clarenceux sat hunched over a table reading documents by candlelight in the second-floor chamber he had been assigned by Richardson. Paper account books bound in vellum lay in boxes on his left; piles of folded deeds lay in a chest on the floor beside him. On the table was a round-edged deed box containing a number of copies of letters.

He picked up a letter in Spanish. It mentioned another letter, one dated May 2, 1536, and a report by the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, to his master, the Holy Roman Emperor. It stated that King Henry the Eighth had decided to rid himself of “his mistress” who called herself Queen Anne, because she had been married to Lord Percy more than nine years earlier and had consummated the marriage, as many people then at court were ready to testify. The letter added that the king would divorce her if she were not convicted of adultery.

Clarenceux unfurled another small roll of paper, bound with a faded ribbon. He read the address and the date: Eustace Chapuys to the emperor, May 2, 1536. This was a copy of the original report, in French, to which the other letter had referred. Chapuys had written:

I have not written sooner to your majesty on the particular subject of the divorce of the king and Anne Boleyn because I was naturally waiting for the issue of the affair one way or the other; but it has since come to a head much sooner and more satisfactorily than one could have thought, to the greater ignominy and shame of the lady herself, who has actually been brought from Greenwich to this city under the escort of the duke of Norfolk…The reason is that she has for a length of time lived in adultery with a spinet-player of her chamber, who has this very morning been confined to the Tower, as well as Mr. Norris the king's most favored groom-in-waiting, for not having revealed what he knew of the said adulterous connection. Lord Rochford, her brother, was likewise sent to the Tower six hours earlier. I hear moreover, from certain authentic quarters, that before the discovery of the lady's criminal adultery, the king had already resolved to abandon her, for there were many witnesses ready to testify and to prove that more than nine years ago a marriage had been contracted and consummated between the said Anne Boleyn and the earl of Northumberland, and that the king would have declared himself much sooner had not one of his privy councilors hinted that he could not divorce himself from Anne without tacitly acknowledging the validity of his first marriage and thus falling under the authority of the pope, whom he fears. This is certainly a most astounding piece of intelligence…

Clarenceux read through the passages again, his mouth open with astonishment. “Nine years earlier” was the critical point: 1527, when the king had decided to marry Anne Boleyn despite her previous “betrothal.” If the information that Chapuys had received from “certain authentic quarters” was correct, Anne Boleyn had lied to the king about not having consummated her marriage with Lord Percy. And if he divorced her, the king would have had to acknowledge Elizabeth was illegitimate, just as the dowager countess had said. So he had executed Anne instead.

Clarenceux exhaled slowly. Somehow, somewhere, the proof of all this was in his possession. It was important that he see the epitaph written on Lord Percy's tomb in Hackney. If that gave him the key to the chronicle, and allowed him to find the original marriage agreement, he would have sufficient authority to go to Cecil and to bargain with him.

There was no time to waste. He would copy these letters and they would set out in the morning. But, late though it was, Clarenceux's curiosity urged him first to reach for Lord Percy's household account books. This would be his only chance. He lifted the pile and found the volume for the year beginning Michaelmas 1532 and looked for the entries relating to November and December.