Chapter 27
At the end of May, Kate looked out of an upstairs window and saw a messenger approaching, then heard Bilkins thank him for the letters he brought.
Always fearing the worst these days, especially since the burning of Archbishop Cranmer in March, she hurried downstairs to Francis’s study.
She found him weeping, a letter in his hand.
“Our dear friend Will is dead,” he sobbed. “He passed away in Geneva. To make matters worse, Dot has fallen out with Calvin and taken her children to Basel, where she wrote me this letter.”
“How did it happen?” Kate asked, shocked and deeply saddened to realize that she would never see her staunch, reassuring stepfather again. For more than twenty years he had been there in the background of her life, a steady, supportive presence, and it was hard to believe that he had gone forever.
“A rheum on the chest, she says.” Francis wiped away a tear with the back of his hand. “I tell you, Kate, that one of the brightest lights of our faith has gone out. He will be sadly missed.”
“Why did Dot fall out with Calvin?”
“He took custody of her third son, John, and forbade her to leave Geneva with him. She had to appeal to Will’s brother, Sir Robert Stafford, who threatened to invoke aid from the French if Calvin did not let them go.
Calvin backed down. I suspect he wanted to keep young John with him to remind people of his faithful father and bring him up to follow in his footsteps. ”
“But Dot will do that anyway. I am glad she got away.”
“She has little money and must rely on the charity of strangers. The Privy Council ordered that no money was to be sent abroad to Will.”
“How vindictive of them! They are forcing them to choose between a horrible death and impoverished exile.” Kate was suddenly vehement.
“We can thank the Queen for that!”
“How terrible to die abroad, far from the land you love. Mother would be turning in her grave. He will never lie beside her now.”
“I dare say not.” Francis rubbed away another tear. “Let us pray that we do not have to follow him into exile.”
Kate gazed out of the window at the frosted trees and shrubbery surrounding the courtyard. She could not contemplate leaving Greys Court. The prospect was unbearable, especially now, when she suspected that she was with child yet again.
—
Francis was worried about Dr. Palmer. The children’s tutor had obtained an illegal copy of one of Calvin’s works and made little secret of it.
He was growing ever more outspoken in his views and was now as vehement a Protestant as he had before been a Catholic.
He refused to attend Mass and made a point of walking out whenever any rite offended him in church.
Kate was becoming frightened to have such a man in charge of her children. Who knew what might happen? The older ones had been schooled to discretion, but the younger ones might blurt out anything their tutor said, and then where would they all be?
She and Francis discussed the matter, and he dismissed Dr. Palmer from his duties, although he assured him that he would continue to pay his stipend.
He used his influence to help him obtain the post of master in Reading School.
On the day Palmer left, Kate exhaled in relief.
The man was too garrulous and opinionated; he had been a danger to them all.
Not long afterward, Francis came to her looking worried.
“That fool Palmer is his own worst enemy. One of his colleagues has written to me to say that he was unpopular at Reading from the start, and that he gave his enemies cause to search his study. I suspect he had made his opinions known. They found anti-Catholic writings and threatened to inform against him unless he left the school at once. He has gone to stay with his mother at Eynsham.”
“Let us pray he stays there!” Kate said tartly, and returned to checking her accounts, feeling anxious lest Palmer’s foolishness rebounded on them in some way.
It was July before they heard of him again.
The Mayor of Reading was a friend of Francis, and they had the news from him.
Apparently, Palmer’s mother had refused to give him shelter on account of his heretical opinions.
He had hurried back to Reading to remove his papers and demand arrears of pay due to him, but had been arrested and brought before the mayor, who sent him to be examined by the authorities in Newbury.
He’d refused to recant and had been burned at a stake set up in the town’s sandpits the next day.
Kate shivered, sickened. It grieved her that a man who had once lived under their roof had met such a terrible end. “This comes far too close to home!”
“Indeed, it does,” Francis said, his face grave, “especially as my name came up during Palmer’s examination. It was alleged that he had incited my servants to murder and sowed sedition.”
“Murder?” Kate was horrified. “What murder?”
“I have no idea, but I will find out. What worries me more is the implication that he sowed sedition in my household.”
“But you have done nothing wrong! You dismissed him! Therein rests your defense, if any man accuses you.”
“No, Kate, I have done nothing wrong, but the fact that my name was raised is troubling. Darling, I fear that the net around Protestants is tightening. I hate to say it, but I think the time has come for us to go abroad.”
She gaped at him, appalled. “But they can prove nothing against us. You weren’t implicated in his heresy.”
Francis gripped her shoulders. “My love, some are using this persecution to settle old scores and rivalries. Others are being burned simply for being ignorant. I heard of a case where one poor soul was condemned because he could not say the Lord’s Prayer.
In such a climate, no one is safe. Now attention has been drawn to us. We must think of the children.”
Kate stared at him, appalled. “No. We cannot leave. I cannot bear the thought. And anyway, how will we flee abroad with ten children and no home to go to? It’s madness, Francis!”
“I have prepared a way for us, darling,” he insisted. “I will go ahead and find us accommodation.”
“And how am I to travel with the children? Tell me that?” Tears were streaming down Kate’s face.
“Travel can be dangerous; the journey will take weeks, and I am plagued by nausea. Are we just to uproot the children from the only life they know, and with Hal set to go up to university at Oxford in the autumn?”
He regarded her sadly. “Kate, I know you will not like this, but we cannot take them all. We will find places for the older ones here and take the younger ones with us.”
“No!” she cried, aghast. “I will not be parted from any of my children! It is madness. They might not be safe from persecution. They could be used against us, as hostages for our return, because once we flee, we will make our position very clear. Francis, I have ever been an obedient wife, but I swear I will defy you on this point! I will not go!”
Seeing her so fierce, Francis gave a deep sigh.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Kate.
Because if the authorities come for us, it will be too late to flee, and what then will become of the children?
Would you have their lives blighted by the memory of their parents dying a horrible death?
I dare not even tell them what has happened to Dr. Palmer. ”
She sank down on a stool, weeping. “No! But to leave all that is dear and familiar, when we may not have to? Let us just wait a while. If Dr. Palmer had implicated us, you would have been arrested by now, surely?”
“You have a point there,” he conceded. “Very well, we will stay on here for now. But if there is the slightest possibility of our being in danger, we must go. I want your promise on that.”
“Very well,” Kate said. She was full of misgivings.
—
The next weeks were tense. They remained alert and permanently on edge.
Nothing happened. Hal, now a tall, broad-backed fifteen-year-old, went cheerfully up to Oxford.
Waving him goodbye, Kate wondered if she would ever see him again.
She had impressed on him the necessity to attend Mass and never to betray his true beliefs, and he had solemnly promised her that he would obey.
It was hard letting him go, harder than it had been when he went away to school.
In November, it was announced in church that Lord Chancellor Gardiner had died. He was known to have been a moderating influence on the Queen, and Kate and Francis were fearful that the persecution of Protestants would now escalate.
“We cannot risk staying in England,” he declared that night, as they lay in bed in each other’s arms.
“Please, Husband, let us wait and see. Entrusting ourselves to the mercies of the seas and the compassion of strange nations will involve great risk. We would be cast adrift, relying on the charity of foreigners. And if we leave, this house and all your property will be confiscated.”
“Even that will be preferable to being burned alive,” he said, holding her tightly.
“I am telling you, darling, we must leave, and soon. We dare not tempt Fate by staying. I will go ahead, as I said, and find us somewhere to live. You can find places for our older children, then follow with the little ones.”
Kate burst into tears. The prospect of leaving Greys Court, and England itself, and being parted from her children, and from Francis for the time being, was overwhelmingly awful.
It tore at the very core of her being. Now she understood what her mother had been through when she had had to abandon her children for exile in Calais.
She felt so desperate that she feared she might miscarry.
“It is a heartbreaking decision to make,” she sobbed.
“That is why I am making it for us,” Francis said firmly.
—