Of course I cannot go to him, I cannot even send a message to thank him while my own inquisitors sit with me between breakfast and dinner and ask me over and over again if I remember eighteen years ago, when Montague said something while walking in the garden with Henry Courtenay, if the clerk of my kitchens Thomas Standish sang songs of hope and rebellion. If anybody mentioned Maytime. If anyone said that May would never come. But my stable boy runs an errand for me to L’Erber, and when Lord Delaware is walking in his garden the next day, he finds, flung over the garden wall and lying in his path, a white rosebud made of silk, and he knows that I am grateful to him.
“I am afraid, Countess, that you are to be my guest,” William says to me at dinner.
“No,” I say. “I have to stay here. There is much work to be done on an estate this large, and my presence here keeps the country calm.”
“We’ll have to take that risk,” the bishop says, smiling at his own humor. “For you are to be imprisoned at Cowdray. You can keep them calm in Sussex. And please, do not be troubled about your estate and your goods, for we are seizing them.”
“My home?” I ask. “You are seizing Warblington Castle?”
“Yes,” William says. “Please be ready to leave at once.”
I think of Hugh Holland’s white face as his horse was dragged from Bockmer to London with him strapped to the saddle. “I shall need a litter,” I say. “I cannot ride all that way.”
“You can ride pillion behind my commander,” William says coldly.
“William Fitzwilliam, I am old enough to be your mother, you should not treat me so harshly,” I suddenly burst out, and then I see the quickening of interest in his face.
“Your sons are far worse than me,” he says. “For they are confessing that they are rebels against the king. That is harsh treatment to a mother for they will be your undoing.”
I draw back, smooth my gown, and bite back my temper. “They are not saying any such thing,” I say quietly. “And I know nothing against them.”
It takes us two days to ride south to Midhurst, the roads are so bad with mud and flooding, and we lose our way half a dozen times. Only last year we would have been able to stay in comfort at one of the great monasteries on the way, and the monks would have sent a lad with us to put us on the right road, but now we ride past a great abbey church and it is dark, with the stained-glass windows smashed for the lead, and the slates stolen from the roof.
There is nowhere to stay at night but a dirty old inn at Petersfield, and the beggars at the kitchen door and in the street bear witness with their hunger and their despair to the closure of the abbey kitchens and the abbey hospital, and the abbey charities.
COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX, WINTER 1538
This is Fitzwilliam’s new house, and he has all the pride of a man who has entered into a new property. We dismount stiffly before the open door which leads into a dark paneled hall and there is Mabel Clifford, his wife, with her ladies around her, in her best gown, an English hood crushed low on her head, her face dark with bad temper.
I give her the slightest of curtseys and I watch her begrudgingly reply. Clearly, she knows that there is no need for her best manners; but she does not know exactly how she is to behave.
“I have made the tower rooms ready,” she says, speaking past me to her husband as he comes into the hall, throwing off his cape and pulling off his gloves.
“Good,” he says. He turns to me. “You will dine in your rooms and you will be served by your people. You can walk in the gardens or by the river if you wish, as long as two of my men are with you. You are not allowed to ride.”
“Ride where?” I ask insolently.
He checks. “Ride anywhere.”
“Obviously, I don’t wish to ride anywhere but to my home,” I say. “If I had wanted to go overseas, as you seem to suggest, I would have done so long ago. I have lived at my home for many years.” I let my gaze go to his wife’s flushed, angry face and the new gilding on their woodwork. “Many years. My family have been there for centuries. And I hope to live there for many years yet. I’m no rebel, and I don’t have rebel blood.”
This enrages Mabel, as I knew it would, since her father was in hiding for most of his life as a traitor to my family, the Plantagenets. “So please show me to my rooms at once, for I’m tired.”
William turns and gives an order and a server of the household leads the way to the side of the building, where the tower rooms are set one above the other around a circular stair. I mount it wearily, slowly, every bone in my body aching. But still, I am not allowed to go alone, and I will not hold the handrail and haul myself upward when someone is watching. William comes with me, and when I am longing to sit before a fire and eat my dinner, he asks me again what I know of Reginald, and whether Geoffrey was planning to run away to him.
Next morning, before breakfast, while I am saying my prayers, he comes to me again, and this time he has papers in his hand. As soon as we left my home at Warblington, they searched my rooms, turning them upside down for anything that might be used against me. They found a letter that I was in the middle of writing to my son Montague; but it says nothing but that he should be loyal to the king and trust in God. They have questioned the clerk of my kitchen, poor Thomas Standish, and made him say that he thought that Geoffrey might slip away. William makes much of this, but I remember the conversation and interrupt him: “You are mistaken, my lord. This was after Geoffrey had hurt himself while held in the Tower. We were afraid that he might die, that was why Master Standish said that he feared Geoffrey might slip away.”
“I see you chop and change words, my lady,” William says angrily.
“Indeed, I don’t,” I say simply. “And I would rather have no words at all with you.”
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