Chapter 38
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – PRESENT DAY
Was it revenge? thought Tabitha.
Her phone buzzed.
‘Hey, Gull,’ she answered.
‘How far have you read?’ he asked.
‘To 1525. Elizabeth has found a list of expenses in the account book from Thomas’s trip to Windsor to see “Maister Perssy”.’
‘Who was “Maister Perssy”?’
‘There are a few books which mention this reference and it’s thought to have been Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland. Anne was supposed to have had a potential betrothal with him, but he was warned off to leave the way clear for the king.’
Gulliver gave a murmur of interest, then there was a pause and Tabitha could almost hear his brain whirring.
‘Do you believe all this?’ he asked. ‘Do you think Henry VIII would have gone to such lengths to revenge himself upon Elizabeth by destroying her children?’
‘I understand your scepticism,’ said Tabitha, ‘but when you view it through their mother’s eyes, there is a strange, macabre logic.
Henry’s affair with Mary began after the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
There are no dates chronicling the exact start of the relationship, but the mishaps of the Boleyn children all began after 1520.
Henry’s behaviour is methodical, vindictive, yet it’s tied up in a superficial veneer of charm, benevolence and apparent love.
It’s classic abuse, the smiling serpent. ’
‘You’re right,’ said Gulliver. ‘Wasn’t Henry VIII supposed to be insane too? Was it syphilis?’
Tabitha smiled. It was a common misconception, but it was something she had studied during her degree.
‘No, Henry was a hypochondriac and very interested in medicines. There are detailed records left behind by his physicians and there are no lists of treatments pertaining to syphilis. However, as he grew older, he became increasingly paranoid.’
‘Was that after he fell from his horse?’
‘Both before and after. It’s a bit convoluted,’ Tabitha said hesitantly.
‘Go on,’ Gulliver said encouragingly.
‘Several medical historians have put forward a theory that Henry might have carried what’s known as the Kell blood antigen. If he did, it could explain the string of failed pregnancies.’
‘How so?’
‘If one partner is Kell-positive and the other negative – which is the case for about 90 per cent of women – it makes it extremely difficult to produce more than one surviving child.’
‘Then he’d have been the problem, not them,’ Gulliver said. ‘What does that have to do with his increasingly tyrannical behaviour though?’
‘The same medical historian suggested that if Henry had Kell blood, he might also have suffered from McLeod syndrome. It’s a related condition and symptoms appear in adulthood, these include muscle weakness, movement issues, but what’s more compelling in Henry’s case are the psychiatric symptoms, including cognitive decline and erratic behaviour. ’
‘Interesting,’ said Gulliver. ‘I’d always been led to believe his change of behaviour was due to a fall during a joust. McLeod syndrome is an interesting theory, but the fall is documented.’
‘Actually, it isn’t – at least, not in England,’ said Tabitha.
‘The only record we have is from Rodolfo Pio, the Bishop of Faenza – the Papal Nuncio in Paris. He claimed Henry was unconscious for two hours. But he wasn’t a trustworthy source, and there’s no contemporary corroboration.
Yet somehow his account has become the accepted version. ’
‘So, the famous fall might never have happened at all?’
‘Exactly,’ said Tabitha. ‘Which makes you wonder how much of what we “know” about him is the truth and how much is convenient storytelling.’
‘What about the curse, though? In Elizabeth’s version, it was Henry who invoked a curse, yet we have a curse-like poem that’s been passed down through generations of Boleyn descendants?’
‘Perhaps the poem was only ever a poem, never a curse,’ said Tabitha.
‘It’s possible,’ he said.
‘By the way, what’s happening with the hawking whistle?’
Gulliver had rung a few friends from the art world to authenticate the gold whistle. When he had explained this to Tabitha, she had thought it was odd. His wife ran her family’s gallery and had a contacts list bulging with experts who could have helped.
‘My friend, Jez, who specialises in sporting antiques, is going to have a look at it,’ said Gulliver. ‘He has a shop near Waterloo Station. I planned to pop up next week. If you’re free, maybe we could go together.’
Tabitha grinned in delight, relieved Gulliver was on the end of a phone call and could not see how pink her cheeks had become at the idea. ‘Yes, that would be great,’ she said.
‘Perfect,’ he said, then he asked, ‘Where are you?’
‘In my cottage,’ she replied. ‘You?’
‘Going to the kitchen to grab Auntie Edie a cup of tea and a cake,’ he said. ‘I’m concerned her constant relapses are a sign of a more sinister infection.’ Tabitha heard the door open, then Gulliver’s voice became sharp. ‘What are you doing? Tabs, I’ll call you back…’
Tabitha stared at the screen, wondering what had caused Gulliver’s swift change of tone and to whom he had been speaking.
She put the manuscript aside, considering the impact the new angle on the Boleyn story would have on the wider world.
If it was true, then it rewrote history in a significant way: Henry’s obsession with Anne was never love, it was hatred.
It was her mother he had loved, even sending similar letters and extravagant jewels to Anne, as he had sent to Elizabeth.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ gasped Tabitha aloud. ‘Anne’s symbol as Henry’s queen was a white falcon.’
Elizabeth had owned a white falcon and the argument over the earldom of Ormond had been tied up with Henry’s obsession with Elizabeth.
Tabitha twirled a strand of hair around her finger, wondering if Henry had deliberately withheld the earldom from Thomas Boleyn to taunt him.
Thomas had the woman Henry loved, why would he ennoble him?
Again, there was an undeniable logic to it.
But, she thought, why would Anne choose the symbol? Was it simply a feminine motif with noble connections? The Boleyn family was represented by the head of a bull, which would have been too masculine and challenging to use as her queenly emblem. Or had Anne been returning the taunt to Henry?
Tabitha stared at the pages and wondered about Henry’s motives.
Perhaps the king had understood this symbolic goad and, after his marriage to Anne, he had instead created Thomas Boleyn as Earl of Wiltshire, making Elizabeth a countess, giving him the chance to make good on his threat to raise Thomas high before casting him down into the mud.
There are so many unanswered questions, thought Tabitha.
She grabbed her phone and called Mark Llewellyn.
‘Hey, Tabs,’ he said. ‘Everyone here is ecstatic about The Mother’s Tale. Perdita is desperate to see the Chaucer when we’ve finished the tests and, obviously, with your permission.’
‘I’m sure neither Edith nor Gull will mind her looking,’ said Tabitha. ‘I wondered how far you were in examining The Canterbury Tales?’
‘We’re doing The Squire’s Tale at the moment,’ he said, and Tabitha could hear the excitement in his voice. ‘Once we realised there might be a link to Elizabeth Boleyn, it became our priority.’
‘And have you found anything? Any hidden messages? Poems?’
‘Not yet, but we’ll let you know if we do,’ he said. ‘There is a poem, though, it’s written on an illumination at the beginning of The Squire’s Tale, but it was written by the former abbess, Lady Reynolds, when she was a novice. Any use?’
‘It could be,’ she said. ‘Do you have a transcript?’
Her phone pinged.
‘Already with you,’ Mark said with a huge guffaw. ‘Let me know what you think and I’ll send regular updates to Edith and Gulliver.’
Tabitha opened the message. She gasped when she saw the photograph of the illuminated page at the beginning of The Squire’s Tale.
Most of the gold leaf had flaked away, but the remaining hints suggested the beauty this page had once held.
At the base were six lines of tiny, faded text.
Tabitha enlarged it and saw it was written in Latin.
She opened the Word document Mark had sent, hoping there was a translation.
As she read the words, she felt a strange understanding sweep over her.
If breath is loosed in trembling fear,
Then danger soon will draw it near.
If breath is loosed in wrathful fire,
The devil shall appear in ire.
If breath is loosed in love sincere,
The ancient curse shall break – and clear.
‘None of these poems are the curse,’ she said aloud. ‘The Boleyn curse was Henry VIII himself.’
She tried Gulliver’s phone, but it went straight to voicemail, Edith’s was the same and Molly was away for a few days staying with a friend.
Frustrated, Tabitha flung her phone onto the table.
She paced around the cottage. It was Saturday, but it was pouring with rain, and she had no desire to go into the village or even drive to the nearby town.
The kettle boiled and with a mug of tea in her hand, she returned to her sofa, trying Gulliver again but to no avail.
Wondering where he had disappeared to, she opened the genealogy site where she had been researching the Last and Forelli family tree, in order to distract herself.
After an hour of searching records, Tabitha was bored.
Gulliver continued to be unresponsive and she was at an impasse with the family tree, which could be brought no further forward than 1921.
She opened a new tab and pulled up a website she had used when researching her PR campaigns at work.
It was a searchable database of newspapers from all over the country, dating back to the Victorian era.