Chapter 24
Westmister Palace, Summer
I AM TOO WISE to risk good money gambling on the unreliability of Lady Margaret’s youngest son.
Sir Geoffrey is taken to the Tower for questioning in the dog days of August, while his powerful kinsmen are at their country homes, the king on progress, and all the court dispersed.
No one notices that the young man has disappeared into the unbearably hot rooms, under the leads of the roof of the Tower, and Sir Geoffrey, simmering with resentment against his older brothers, heated by Lord Cromwell’s questions, melts into spiteful gossip.
When the court returns to Westminster Palace in autumn and finds Sir Geoffrey under arrest, everyone assumes that he must have been taking bribes from the Spanish ambassador or even from the French, and is to be taught a lesson by a brief imprisonment.
The Pole family are glacially disapproving of one of their kinsmen falling below their high standards, but we are all sure that his name and his debts will be cleared by the matriarch of the family: Lady Margaret Pole.
There are other portents. The eternal chantry for Queen Jane, the Pole family’s abbey at Bisham, is closed again, only months after its brief reopening.
The king has changed his mind. Now, he thinks it is ridiculous to believe that souls wait patiently in purgatory to be bought into heaven by thousands of sung masses.
And if there is no purgatory, then there is no need for an expensive chantry, and the Pole family’s abbey can be closed again without regret – for anyone but the Poles: they are anguished, of course.
This is not the only straw in the changing wind.
The tomb of Thomas Becket, a sacred destination for the hundreds of pilgrim ways that cross and recross all Europe, is closed, too; the jewels gifted over centuries disappear into Thomas Cromwell’s Court of Augmentations, and the priceless bones of the saint are robbed from his tomb and promptly lost. The great ruby of Thomas Becket – the greatest treasure of the shrine – vanishes with the bones of saint but reappears – a resurrectionem – on the king’s fat thumb.
The heartbreak in Canterbury is completely silent.
I think of the priest in my father’s village church cutting all references to the pope from his missal; now he will have to cut out St Thomas Becket as well.
He might as well throw away his Latin Bible.
Every church is to have a new one in English; God will no longer be addressed in Latin.
The king knows that God speaks English. It is an English God for an English pope and king.
These are heavy reverses for the Papist Spanish party, but not their downfall. They believe that they are safe – their weakest link, Sir Geoffrey, has fallen silent in the Tower. They admit to nothing more than his minor indiscretion, and no one can be executed for an indiscretion.
‘I have good news for you,’ my spymaster tells me, finding me idle on the pier at the river, watching the fish rise in the still water.
‘Always welcome,’ I say.
‘I promised you a reward for keeping faith with me.’
I wait.
‘Your father-in-law sees reason at last. He’s wanting to settle his accounts and – as luck would have it – your widow’s jointure gives you a life interest in the lands that he wants to leave to his only surviving child.’
‘He’s never paid me a penny of the rents,’ I say resentfully. ‘And Mary was not so dear to him when his other daughter was queen.’
Cromwell smiles at my resentment. ‘I know. But I have put together an agreement that gives you good lands in Cambridge, in return for your jointure in Buckinghamshire. And –’ he pauses smiling – ‘you will be a tenant for life at Blickling Hall.’
‘Blickling?’ It was the Boleyn family home, before they had Hever.
He nods. ‘I could not get it for you outright, but it is yours for life, and I will have it confirmed by Act of Parliament. The king himself will agree to it.’
This man, this blacksmith’s son, has done for me what a duke of England, my uncle, would not do for me.
He has turned around my fortunes, I am a woman of property once again.
I can pay off my debts and my bills at court.
I can buy gowns and horses and jewels that match my station in life.
I can hold up my head. I am Lady Rochford with a grand house and lands to match my title.
I am Jane Boleyn and I have the Boleyn family house as my home.
I choose to live at court, it is a free choice, I am nobody’s dependent. I have a place of my own again.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ I am quite breathless with joy.
‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he says. ‘You’ve earned it. I promised that if you told me what I needed to know, you would be rewarded. And you told me – and it cost you your house and your husband. It’s only right that I give you the house back.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I said nothing that led to George’s death. I gave no evidence, I signed nothing.’
He bows. ‘Then the house is payment for nothing.’