Westminster Abbey, Summer 1441
Westminster Abbey, Summer
WE RATTLE THROUGH streets crowded with people, massing to see the marching watch, forcing them back to let us pass.
Nobody pays much attention to the small guard and the hooded figure hidden among them.
We get to the abbey, the guard halts, expecting me to tell them to run ahead and announce that the greatest woman in England is entering and the abbot must throw open the great double doors to welcome me.
‘You can all go,’ I say shortly. ‘Leave me here. Go home.’
I jump down from my saddle as if I were nobody of importance, and I leave them leaderless on the cobbles outside the west door as I skirt the great facade, with the staring stone faces of the statues glaring down at me. I try the handle of a side door, hidden from their gaze.
My luck is in, for it opens, and I step unnoticed into a side-aisle of the church.
The choristers are practising their chanting in their stalls; the monks are gathering in the body of the church for Compline.
I push through them and go to the Lady Chapel, up the chancel steps, through the rood screen that separates the altar from the church, right up to the stone altar, where votive lights burn beneath the statue of Our Lady.
I put one hand on the cold stone and the other on Our Lady’s stone sandalled foot, to make doubly sure. ‘I claim sanctuary,’ I say, loud enough for everyone in the body of the abbey to hear me. ‘I claim sanctuary.’
I STAY SERENE through the fuss they make at providing a decent room for me, sending to the palace for my maid, for my fine linen, for my clothes and for the silverware to serve me, sending messengers galloping to my husband, the privy council, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the king, to tell them that I have claimed sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.
They don’t know why, and I don’t tell them.
I stand beside the altar, pretending to be calm, hiding my terror that this looks like an admission of guilt.
I will say that I was afraid of what Southwell had done – I will say I was afraid of him, my chaplain who has turned to darkness.
I can say that I wanted sanctuary because of my horror of his crime.
They will believe this. Everyone loves to imagine that a powerful woman is fearful, putting on a show of bravery but trembling inside.
Everyone will believe I am shrinking like a violet.
I can say that I wanted to be in the house of God when such dreadful accusations were made, I wanted to live in the abbey, close to the king, my beloved nephew, while his life was under such terrible threat.
Where else would I want to be but with him in his favourite house of prayer when his life is in danger from a madman?
A madman who hates me? Where should I go but to the safety of the abbey when my own chaplain runs demon-mad?
While I am in sanctuary, I cannot be charged with any criminal offence.
Whatever Southwell says under interrogation, whatever the Beauforts or Owen Tudor invent, they cannot make me answer for it while I am in sanctuary.
I think of Owen, hiding in sanctuary from hanging, and I know that I am as clever and determined as he was then.
‘You got your hand on this altar, Owen Tudor,’ I whisper, as if in prayer. ‘You will have claimed safety in your fearless ringing voice. I can do it too.’
The abbot himself comes to find me in the Lady Chapel and bows low, his head almost knocking his knees.
They have prepared a room for me in his quarters at Cheyneygates, and he will escort me there now.
He says he is sorry for my trouble and that they will pray for me.
I show him a brave little smile, and I see his face warm with pity.
He leads the way, out of the Lady Chapel, down the nave and into the great cloister, past the refectory where the monks take their meals, and under the echoing archway, up the steps to Cheyneygates.
He throws open the door to a comfortable guest chamber with a bedroom beyond.
He looks around. ‘Your maid is bringing your own linen and hangings; there is nothing here good enough for you, Your Grace. And I am aware it is very small . . .’
‘It is sanctuary,’ I say in a thrilling tone. ‘It is what I need – a haven from a wicked world.’ I turn from him and kneel on the rich prie-dieu before the crucifix, and he bows, crosses himself, and leaves me to my prayers.
Once he is gone, I sit back on my heels to think.
I have to know exactly what they have against Southwell.
If they caught him with the wax doll in his hands or found him burying something they took for a real baby, and saying the funeral mass, it will be best if he confesses – saying it was all his own work – and is burned.
I could promise him a quick merciful death with dry wood and a purse of gunpowder around his neck, if I could only get a message to him secretly.
If he denies everything, then all they have is a madman with a doll – and nothing but his chaplaincy to link him to me.
But he is chaplain at many churches – he may incriminate someone else.
As soon as my maid arrives, I send her back to the palace with a message for Margery Jourdemayne to come to me at once. I say that I am gripped with women’s pains and I need to see a midwife.
Again, I have to wait for what seems like hours before my maid comes back, to tell me that the door was shut and Margery gone home for the evening. I order her to help me to bed. I will not get up for Lauds; I am too ill. She must go to Margery’s home at Eye and fetch her for me at once.
Sulkily, the girl does as I order, and I lie awake in bed, hearing the bells toll the hours of prayer, watching the walls slowly lighten with daybreak. At last I hear someone coming up the stairs from the kitchen, her heavy step, and her knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ I say, expecting to see Margery’s rosy face at the doorway. But it is my maid, carrying my breakfast on a tray.
‘Your Grace, the wise woman was not at her home, and they had not seen her the whole day,’ she tells me, laying out silver dishes on the table next to my bed.
‘They say she is often called direct from her room at Dog Court to a lady’s confinement.
She usually sends them a message, but yesterday she just went. ’
‘Did you order them to tell her to come to me as soon as they hear from her?’
She pours mulled ale into a silver cup and passes it to me. ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ she says. ‘They promised to tell her.’
I eat a good breakfast – even in this trouble, I remember I am carrying a child – and then there is nothing to do but wait all day.
I have to stay in my bedroom, in bed, to make my pretend illness more convincing, and though I would like to send for my clerk John Home, I cannot call him into my bedroom.
In the evening, my maid comes in after the slightest of taps on the door and says, baldly as an ale wife: ‘Margery Jourdemayne still isn’t home, and nor has she sent her family a message. Her husband’s afraid that she’s been attacked and says will you send out men to find her?’
‘I’m not her keeper,’ I object. ‘I can’t do anything. He must have servants; he should find his own wife.’
I CAN’T SLEEP. I don’t know how to get news without everyone seeing that I am desperate to know what is happening. I am afraid that someone will say that Canon Southwell serves me loyally, visits Bella Court, and is paid from my household treasury, and would never do a thing without my order.
Now I have claimed sanctuary, I cannot leave the abbey until I have been blessed and given permission to return home, still under the protection of the Church.
I need John Home to write an appeal to the Church authorities, but I cannot summon him to my bedroom.
I call for paper and a quill and ink, and write to my husband:
My lord and husband,
I have come to the abbey for safety against this attack on us – the royal family.
I pray that His Grace the king is unharmed?
I am being poisoned. I am suddenly faint and seized with pain.
I pray that any wizards or ill-wishers working against us all are brought to trial and condemned.
I am so afraid their malice has been directed against you too my lord.
Are you quite well? If so, please come to me.
I am glad to suffer this pain and illness if it spares His Grace the king, and you, my lord and beloved husband.
Your obedient and dutiful wife,
Eleanor
That will fetch him, I think with satisfaction, and it tells him what to say and proves my innocence by posing me as the first victim of the black arts aimed at the king. I will wait for Humphrey to come, before I send for anyone else. Once I have taught him what to say, we can ride out anything.
NOT A WORD from Humphrey all day, though I wait at the little window that overlooks the courtyard below.
Then I think he will perform the part of an anxious loving husband for the London crowd and enter through the west door, attend mass, pray for the health of the king, and then visit me.
I think that would give the best appearance, and I write a second note to tell him to come that way tomorrow, at Prime.
I ring the little bell for my maid to take the note for me, but when the door opens, it is not her but a strange womanservant.
‘Where’s Bess?’ I ask.
The woman bobs. ‘Gone, my lady,’ she says. ‘I’m taking her place.’
I press my lips together to stop myself ordering her from my presence. ‘You’re not of my household?’
‘Hired special.’
‘You’re not a lady’s maid,’ I say, looking from her plain apron to the clogs on her feet.
‘Midwife,’ she says stubbornly. ‘Certified by the bishop. I lay out the dead and search witches.’
‘I thank God that I am neither,’ I say sarcastically.
‘Then you’ve no need to fear me,’ she says.
‘Very well – I have a letter for you to take,’ I say.
She puts out her hand to take it.