Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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“In truth, Sir Anthony,” Edward said, “you have marvelously, nay, excessively banqueted me. I shall so write to my dear Barnaby, who suffers privations in France on my behalf. Poor lad, I miss him.”
“I grieve, your grace,” answered Anthony smiling, “that you should lack for anything or anyone. Would I could conjure Master Fitzpatrick to Cowdray this moment!” As he spoke he considered this confirmation of the King’s affection for the Irish lad, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, who had been raised with him and once acted as his “whipping boy.” Anthony quickly decided that the Irish connection might be useful, for Barnaby was related to Elizabeth, the dowager Lady Browne, or “Geraldine” as she preferred to be called. Anthony glanced towards the end of the High Table where his stepmother was murmuring in obvious intimacy to Edward Fiennes, Lord Clinton, a chunky, shrewd, businesslike baron of forty. Clinton had commenced a rising career at court by marrying King Henry’s first cast-off mistress, Betsy Blount Tallboys; then upon that lady’s death he had prudently allied himself with the house of Dudley and thus with Northumberland, the all-powerful duke. Clinton then discovered in himself strong Protestant convictions which led to preferments He became a Knight of the Garter, ambassador to France whither he had shepherded young Barnaby Fitzpatrick, and now he was Lord High Admiral of England. And a widower again. Could the Lady Geraldine possibly entice Lord Clinton? Anthony thought while examining his stepmother hopefully. Aye, perhaps—He watched her and Clinton exchange sips from each other’s goblets. Such an alliance would be extremely helpful, and what a relief for poor Jane (and his sister Mabel) to be free of that haughty vixen at Cowdray.
Anthony had always ignored Geraldine’s advice, but it occurred to him that it might have been through her influence over Clinton that her brother Gerald had been restored to at least some of his Irish lands in county Kildare, though not to the earldom, which was still attainted. Indeed, what Catholic could hope for a peerage under this reign? Anthony sighed. He owed the King’s visit to Cowdray’s location near Petworth and Edward’s agreeable memories of the elder Anthony. He himself had been largely ignored by Edward’s Court, and by the King’s phalanx of guardians. Also, that sudden imprisonment in the Fleet had been most sobering. Anthony was neither a timid nor an imaginative man, but he had a composite vision of all the severed necks and spouting blood which followed upon disagreement with kings. The latest spouting neck had been the most shocking, for it was that of the Lord Protector, Somerset—the King’s own uncle—yet that was partly Northumberland’s doing.
Northumberland—born plain John Dudley fifty years ago, whose grandfather was said to have been a common Sussex carpenter, had mounted the glittering ladder of titles with a firm, implacable tread and reached his dukedom.
Was his influence on the delicate royal lad the result of witchcraft, as was constantly whispered? Anthony shuddered and forced his mind to less dangerous thoughts while he sugared and drank another goblet of wine.
Edward had turned to Sir Henry Sidney who sat next to him by royal command, for Edward shrank from nearness to strangers. And though he denied it even to himself, he had, since his attack of measles, been troubled by deafness. Henry Sidney had a voice which carried. Though Sir “Harry” was nine years older than the King, he was his boon companion, gentleman of his Privy Chamber and official cupbearer. Harry was clever, amiable and well informed and knew precisely the kind of political or theological talk which interested Edward. Also, Harry had recently allied himself with Northumberland through marriage to the Duke’s daughter, Mary Dudley. And the net closes, though what it will snare next only heaven—or hell—knows, Anthony thought, angrily checking his errant mind by considering Edward’s other and few close friends. Besides Harry Sidney, and Barnaby Fitzpatrick, and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton—a boisterous merry youth who evoked Edward’s rare moments of Tudor gaiety—there was John Cheke, the boy’s tutor and mentor whom he greatly revered.
It was known from Sussex to the Scottish Border (as every act of Edward’s was promptly known) that during Cheke’s grave illness in May Edward had imperiously prayed for his tutor’s recovery. Prayed to that preposterous Calvinistic God of his who abhorred altars, candles, statues, church music or Latin, chantry prayers for the dead and His Holiness the Pope. A god who even more incredibly forbade invocations to saints or the worship of His Own Divine Mother.
Yet all these aberrations must be endured. Trivial outward compliance mattered little if the spirit were not affected. Anthony remembered for a second his house priest, hidden now in the stinking cell behind the latrines—but there would be only two more days before Brother Stephen might be released, and the chapel refurnished with its crucifix, sanctuary lamp and statues of the Blessed Virgin and St. Anthony of Padua, his own patron Patron saint, too, of that provocative little wench old Lady Ursula had so surprisingly produced as a niece Anthony glimpsed the girl’s golden hair and bluish gown as she sat at the far end of the Hall. Then he started as Edward suddenly addressed him.
“We’re weary of sitting at table, Sir Anthony,” said Edward, rising. “What do you propose that we do until evening prayers, after which we shall retire?”
Anthony jumped to his feet, instantly rejecting all the amusements which would normally pass an evening—cards, dice playing, dancing—of none did the King approve. More music then? But Edward, though said to be fond of some music, had shown no interest in the dulcet harmonies which had been wafting from the minstrels’ gallery. A hundred people rose when Edward did, and waited with their faces turned expectantly.
“There’s a Spanish juggler, your grace, very apt, and he has a monkey . . .” Anthony blurted out. “If he would divert you, I’ll summon him at once.”
“Spanish?” Edward’s eyes hardened, his boyish voice deepened to extreme displeasure. “Do you encourage the natives of Spain, sir?”
Anthony reddened and cursed himself for a heedless fool.
“Certainly not, your grace, I misspoke, I only meant that he seems dark-visaged like a Spaniard, and speaks that broken sort of English. ’Twas only that the monkey’s tricks are laughable.”
Edward continued to frown. “I’ve no love for Spain,” he said coldly. “’Tis the Spanish half of my sister, the Lady Mary, which hinders my true affection for her, that and her wicked, mule-headed popery.” He looked up at Anthony. “I’ve not yet spoke to all your guests, sir. I hear there are several so-called papist nobles amongst them.”
“Aye,” said Anthony, though he chilled inside. “Erstwhile Catholics, but they have seen their errors. They have come today to do you homage, Sire, they are utterly and loyally your liegemen.”
Sir Henry murmured something, apparently calming, in the King’s ear.
Edward nodded and said more gently, “Well, Sir Anthony, my father loved your father, and the sons shall be friends. I’ll now mingle with your company, and willingly.” He looked at the cluttered tables. “There are other rooms where we can be more at ease?”
Anthony bowed and motioned the way to the massive, richly carved new staircase which led up to the private chambers and the Long Gallery.
The King ascended alone, though Harry Sidney followed close. Anthony gave his arm to Jane and was perturbed that she dragged up each step with a painful sigh.
“Brace yourself, my lady,” he whispered, “you must make the presentations!”
Jane knew this, for as an earl’s daughter she outranked her husband.
“Aye . . .” she breathed.
Anthony noted his stepmother and Lord Clinton, mounting arm in arm. He heard his little sister Mabel’s high nervous giggle as she bounced along, twittery as a partridge. Pity the girl was so fat and plain-featured, and so unaccomplished. She had been given music and dancing lessons to scant avail. She had neither ear nor grace. Her passions were for eating, chattering and finery. It would be hard to find her a good husband, though it was true that the girl had lacked a mother’s watchful shaping. Geraldine had never made the slightest effort, averring that
Mabel was dimwitted and tiresome, calling her “lump of suet” and “greedy-guts” in moments of exasperation, and always begrudging the gifts Anthony good-naturedly gave the girl on Feast Days.
They all arrived at the Long Gallery, which had been newly wainscoted and furnished with crystal candelabra for the occasion. There were fresh painted wall hangings and a new Flemish tapestry of unicorns and virgins wandering through a misty forest, which the King affably admired. He stationed himself in front of the tapestry on a velvet-covered court chair, and waited.
Lady Jane dutifully came up with a gaunt dignified woman in tow.
“May I present to your royal grace, my former stepmother, the Countess of Arundel,” she said, her tone breathy and her eyes mournful, for her thoughts dwelt continually on the tiny shrunken corpse in the bedchamber.
The boy frowned uncertainly. Jane’s voice was hard to hear. “Eh . . .?” he said irritably. “Arundel . . .?”
The Countess bowed, she advanced unsmiling and sketched a kiss over Edward’s hand, not touching it. Edward’s eyes narrowed. He knew that Northumberland hated the Earl of Arundel, who, since Norfolk’s attainder, headed the Catholic peers; and too that the Earl had recently been released from the Tower, where he had been confined on evidence so flimsy that even the Duke could not detain him.
“Your noble lord is not here, my lady?” asked Edward.
“No, your grace,” answered the Countess in a voice equally smooth. “He is confined to his bed at Arundel. He has fever contracted in a most unhealthy place.”
“Hmm-m . . .” said Edward. “We are grieved to hear it. God send him quick recovery.” He inclined his head. The Countess curtsied stiffly and withdrew.
There was a small uncomfortable pause. Edward, who was growing tired, struggled between politeness to his subjects and unwillingness to endure other awkward encounters.
Sir Henry again murmured in Edward’s good ear, and the boy sighed acquiescence.
“My lady,” he said to Jane, “Harry tells me that yonder near the door there are a clutch of Dacres.” He smiled faintly. “I know of them, to be sure, but have never met any.”
The listening Anthony went to round up the Dacres. There were six of them, from two families—Dacres from the south, who lived at Hurstmonceux castle in East Sussex, and Dacres from Gilsland, who had traveled down from Cumberland to summer with their cousins.
In presenting the Dacres to the King, Jane and Anthony, who scarcely knew one lot from the other, were hesitant on the matter of precedence.
Geraldine Browne had been watching sardonically from beside Lord Clinton, and she now glided up. “Your Majesty . . .” she threw a little contemptuous glance towards her stepson and his sickly wife. “First, may I present to you Lady Dacre of Gilsland and Greystoke, who lives at Naworth Castle in Cumberland. Her lord, Warden of the West Marches, is at present engaged in the Border disputes. Lady Dacre has here three of her children—Sir Thomas, Leonard and Magdalen.”
“Ah . . . so?” said the King, grateful for this concise, clear introduction, though somewhat surprised by the brisk authority of the young dowager whom he had scarcely noticed. He extended his hand to Lady Dacre.
She gave the thin young fingers a hearty kiss while she made a clumsy bob and said, “Much honored, you gr-race—God gi’ ye health! These’re ma youngsters.” Lady Dacre thrust forward Sir Thomas, a huge, bulky youth with bristly red hair. Then, a second, even taller young man who held one shoulder higher than the other by reason of a broken, badly twisted collarbone. “Leonard,” said Lady Dacre, patting him. “An’ her-re’s ma braw lass, Maggie.”
Magdalen, like her brothers, had red hair and was amazingly tall. Though only fourteen, she had little gawkiness or self-consciousness. She kissed the King’s hand with a smack as hearty as her mother’s.
Anthony had drawn back to watch the new presentations and was relieved to see that the King’s frown had cleared to amused interest.
The Dacres from the North were an imposing quartet. Lady Dacre and her daughter towered over the company, while the brothers must have stood six foot three at least. Moreover, their homespun clothes appeared very old-fashioned and plain amongst the jeweled velvets, satins, lace ruffs. Uncouth “Border lords,” Anthony thought, rough and independent as the wild Scots whom they constantly fought. Yet, there was about them a dignified simplicity. The mother . . . Anthony racked his memory. She had highborn English blood, hadn’t she? Was one of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s dozen children—though her speech held the Northern burr and her manners were unpolished by court standards. Still, Lady Dacre and her large offspring were rather like lumps of honest sea coral amongst a trayful of spangled gewgaws.
The Southern Dacres were still awaiting presentation and Geraldine became less brisk. “The Fiennes branch, Your Majesty,” she said glancing towards Lord Clinton, who was himself a Fiennes, and from whom she had garnered her information. “Lady Dacre of Hurstmonceux and her son Gregory. No longer the titular baroness, sire, since the tragic miscarriage of justice in the lifetime of your royal father . . .”
Edward raised his sleepy eyelids while submitting his hand to a perspiring matron in black velvet and a wizened boy with a vacant look who clutched at his mother’s skirts.
“‘Tragic miscarriage of justice’?” said Edward, strangling a yawn yet alert to any possible criticism of his father’s lawmaking.
Geraldine’s assurance wavered. She looked again towards Clinton, who stepped forward, having admired Geraldine’s spirited performance, as she had intended.
“Your royal grace,” said Clinton, his speech whistling a bit from the loss of his upper front teeth, “Lady Browne refers to the unfortunate hanging of Lord Dacre at Tyburn twelve years agone, whereupon his tide and estates were forfeited.”
“The hanging at Tyburn of a peer?” said Edward, incredulously. “How could that be? And for what crime?”
“The shooting of a gamekeeper,” said Clinton, shaking his square, grizzling head. “‘Twas all engineered by enemies who coveted the Dacre estates.”
“Monstrous, indeed,” Edward cried, looking sympathetically at the debased baroness, and interested not so much by the injustice as by the vulgar manner of execution.
“Moreover, your grace,” pursued Clinton, “this unhappy lady is daughter to Lord Abergavenny, and her murdered husband was my kin. We dare to hope that your royal generosity and clemency will consider restitution, especially to a family so wholeheartedly dedicated to the Protestant religion—as you know me to be, also.” Clinton bowed and gave his sovereign a hopeful, albeit gap-toothed, smile.
So that’s it! Anthony thought. It explained the presence of the Dacres; it partially explained the presence of the Lord High Admiral, though from what Anthony had been observing, Cupid’s darts had also pierced the heart of the middle-aged widower.
“We will consider this matter, my lord,” said Edward, “after consultation with the Duke when he returns from Berwick.”
Geraldine gave Clinton a quick triumphant glance. They knew and Sir Henry Sidney knew that the Duke would be agreeable to this comparatively trivial request, for even Northumberland would need support from every possible quarter to further the extraordinarily daring plan he was formulating. One which would catapult every Dudley connection into supreme power.
“We will proceed to your chapel for evening prayer,” Edward said, taking Sir Harry’s arm as he swayed in a moment of giddiness.
“Your grace is unwell?” Harry whispered anxiously, knowing how Edward hated the transient weaknesses he had never felt before the sickness in the spring. “To bed with you, at once!”
Edward shook his head irritably and straightened. “Your chaplain is waiting, I presume?” he said to Anthony, who was prepared for this.
“My own chaplain is ill, sire—Oh, nothing dangerous, some distemper of the bowels—the Midhurst vicar is here to conduct prayers.” And, by Christ’s blood, I hope he doesn’t falter, Anthony finished grimly to himself. The vicar
was a stupid man and barely literate, but he had been well rehearsed.
The King and his company jammed themselves into the lords’ gallery, the rest of the guests packed the chapel below. There was no room tonight for the servants.
Edward, after one satisfied glance around the denuded chapel, was fortunately too tired to heed the mumbling ineptness of the vicar’s rendition of the English prayers Edward himself had helped to write. But the evening was not yet over.
Ursula and Celia had remained in the Hall with the lesser folk while the privileged ones went upstairs. They had known nobody, nobody spoke to them, and Ursula, against all reason, felt hurt and disappointed. She had formed foolish hopes for this first evening of the King’s visit; she had expected that in some way her darling would be noticed, that something fortunate would happen to insure Celia’s future.
She had anxiously mulled over Celia’s horoscope again and decided that this was an extremely favorable day.
Yet nothing had happened except Sir Anthony’s brief greeting in the morning. The futility of her hopes was further emphasized by Celia’s instinctive behavior when the blue-liveried servitors were clearing the immense clutter left on the tables. Celia, bred to a life of clearing cluttered tables, jumped up to help.
“No!” said Ursula sharply. “Sit down, child!”
Celia, blushing, sat down beside her aunt on a small oaken chest at the side of the Buck Hall. They sat in silence until the steward announced portentously that the King was in the chapel, and everyone must assemble for evensong.
“Evensong . . .?” murmured Celia. “What’s that, Aunt?”
“Vespers, possibly,” snapped Ursula, exasperated. “But, remember Sir Anthony’s warning! Whatever these heretic prayers are, don’t listen to them. Say a Pater Noster to yourself, then an Ave.”
In the chapel Celia forgot this admonition, she was so much interested in the girl who stood beside her. They all stood. The prayer seats had been removed, since this strange religion apparently permitted no kneeling.