A Dangerous Inheritance

Kate turned her face away. Mattie had her hands to her mouth, weeping in horror; she must be feeling terrible, for it was she who had suggested that Kate send a letter to John. But she had not been responsible for its contents; as for Kate, she did not regret having sent it at all.

‘Sirs!’ she said, as the officers made to leave. ‘Can you tell me where that letter was found?’

‘On the body of the traitor Lincoln,’ the dark-haired man said.

He hadread her letter; he haddied with her words of love in his heart. It was all she wanted to know. She smiled faintly. ‘Thank you, Sir. I am content now.’ And she felt a welcoming sense of peace.

The officer looked at her curiously. William opened his mouth to castigate her again, but Mattie forestalled him. ‘Good Sirs, do you know of the fate of my husband, Guy Freeman? He was a big, tall man with a red face and fair hair. You would recognise him because he has a large wen on his cheek.’

The officers exchanged looks. ‘Wearing a tan leather jerkin and green hose?’

‘Yes!’ Mattie’s voice was eager.

‘Sorry, woman, but he’s dead. He was found lying wounded in the ravine they’re now calling the Bloody Gutter. He was another traitor, wearing Lincoln’s badge. They hanged him.’

Mattie screamed.

Katherine

August 1563. The Tower of London.

To write this is painful to me. My love is gone from me, forever, maybe, and it is as if a thousand distances lie between us.

I bore my child, little Thomas. God gives us His great paternal blessings once again, Ned wrote, delighted to learn he was the father of a second son.

I thought we had managed well, for none knew of my pregnancy until a servant blabbed of it. And then the word was out, and the Queen’s wrath erupted; I heard later that she’d turned the colour of a corpse when told the news. Poor Sir Edward, our kindly gaoler, to whom I shall always be indebted, and who had got two of his warders to stand godfather at the second baptism, found himself that very day summarily dismissed from his post and clapped in one of his own dungeons.

Sir Edward’s superior, Sir Robert Oxenbridge, the Constable of the Tower, took evident pleasure in telling me that Ned had been summoned immediately before the Court of Star Chamber at Westminster, charged with breaching his prison, deflowering a virgin of royal blood, and compounding that crime by defiling me a second time. They sentenced him to be fined – extortionately – and to remain in prison in the Tower during her Majesty’s pleasure.

The last sight I had of Ned was at Thomas’s baptism. I remember him cradling our new son in his arms and uttering fervent thanks to God for my safe delivery, with toddling Edward clinging to his knee. By the good offices of Sir Edward Warner, I had had my portrait painted for a locket, holding Edward in my arms, a miniature of my sweet lord about my neck. Ned admired it when we were in the chapel, and I snatched it off and covertly passed it to him as a keepsake before I watched him walk away under the stern guard of the Constable. We had not been permitted even a farewell kiss.

That was six months ago, and since then I have pined here alone in my prison, cowed into subjection under the harsh rule of Sir Robert Oxenbridge. Were it not for my precious babes, I think I would commit the great sin of killing myself.

And now, in the heat of summer, comes the plague. They are falling like flies in London, a frightened Mrs Ellen reports. The word is that people are dying at a rate of a thousand a week. The stink from the City, when the wind is in the wrong direction, is all-pervading, contaminating everything, and making me fearful for my little ones. The court, I learn, has removed to Windsor, where the Queen has had a gallows put up and threatens to hang anyone from the capital venturing thither.

I am terrified for my sons. While they remain here with me in the Tower, they risk becoming infected. I contemplate asking if Mrs Ellen can take them away to a safe place, just for now. But Sir Robert appears at my door.

‘Lady Katherine,’ he says, ‘I am commanded by the Queen, out of compassion for the sake of your health, and that of your children, to send you all under guard into the country. Lord Hertford is to be sent away too, to a different place of residence, and you shall have separate custodians. The infant may stay with you, and young Master Edward must go with his father.’

‘No!’ I cry in anguish. ‘No! I ca

The Constable regards me disapprovingly. I know he thinks me a rash, foolish, even dangerous woman.

‘Calm yourself, my lady. These measures are for your own safety, and that of your children and Lord Hertford. And my lord is content to obey. He has asked me to give you this as a farewell token. I permit it as a special favour.’

It is a mourning ring, with a death’s-head intaglio. He wore it for his father, I recall. And now, turning it over in trembling hands, I see there are words freshly engraved on it, as with a sharp knife. It reads: While I live, yours.

Part Four

Greedy Death

ON THE FIRST day of July, in the year of grace 1487, Katherine, Countess of Huntingdon, daughter of Richard, sometime King of England, began her travail. Her infant, a son, was born dead, to the great grief of her husband, the Earl. Soon afterwards, the Lady Katherine herself gave up the ghost, and rendered her spirit to God most joyfully, uttering one last word, John. Upon hearing which, her lord was observed to groan woefully in grief. It was thought, by most of those kneeling by her bed, that she spoke of her brother, then far away in Calais.

After her death, a bundle of papers tied with ribbon was found among her effects by her maid, who hid it in an old muniment chest beneath the family documents. Only this maid, who took her secret with her to her grave, fifty years later, knew that her beloved mistress had died without ever finding out the truth about her father, King Richard. And that caused the maid to weep even more. For she alone was aware that death had prevented the Countess from obtaining the answer to a question that she believed would have settled the matter once and for all. And she alone had borne witness to her heartbroken mistress writing a few final words about her arrest – which had been kept secret, and would never be made public, out of respect for her widower – and then laying down her pen for ever. It is believed that the Countess’s papers were burned by Sir Owen Hopton in the reign of Elizabeth I.

The Countess was laid to rest in the parish church of St Cadoc in Raglan, without ceremony. The Earl, her widower, stood stony-faced throughout the funeral. He was not a well man, although he did not yet know it, for his disease was a silent one, and he was gathered to his forefathers just four years later. He was interred in Tintern Abbey, having chosen not to be laid beside his lady, whose name would soon largely be forgotten, for no monument was ever built to her memory.

Katherine

Then began my Calvary. Years under house arrest in a succession of remote places in the depths of East Anglia: Pirgo Park, Ingatestone Hall, Gosfield Hall … Always a prisoner, an unwelcome guest. Never allowed to speak to anyone but my guardians, and made to behave at all times as if I were still in the Tower.

I wrote several times to Mr Secretary, pleading to be reunited with my dear lord and my elder son, and begging him to intercede for me with the Queen’s Majesty. I recall the grovelling words I wrote, my abject plea for the obtaining of her most gracious pardon and favour towards me, which, with upstretched hands, and down-bent knees, from the bottom of my heart most humbly I craved.