The Baker's Daughter Volume 1 Read online

  “Not yet,” François replied. “Although from what I hear, that event cannot be long delayed if the lady does not produce a male heir. No, this time he has simply declared himself to be God. That ought to remove all obstacles.”

  Marguerite, for perhaps the only moment in her life, was at a loss for words.

  “He has renounced the pope and has declared himself,” said François, flourishing the vellum with the red seals swinging wildly from the bottom, “Supreme Head of the Church in England.”

  Marguerite threw him another grape, which he caught handily and began to toss from hand to hand, having laid the dispatch aside. “How absurd!” laughed Marguerite. “Defender of the Faith, indeed! Usurper of the Faith, more like.”

  “Indeed,” François grinned. “But then the man himself is absurd, is he not? At the Field of the Cloth of Gold I found him the hardest man in the world to bear. At one time unstable, at another time obstinate and proud, so that it is almost impossible to bear with him. This,” he picked up the discarded dispatch and shook it so that the dangling seals rattled, “proves that he is a self-satisfied dupe who thinks himself wise but is nothing more than a fool! He’s the strangest man in the world.”

  Marguerite shuddered. “And to think Maman once tried to marry me to him! I was not pleased when Louis married me to that dolt Alençon simply to keep Armagnac in the family, but at least Charles did not bring me to what Henry has done to Katharine of Aragon, and is about to do to Anne! Christ on the Cross, François, I have only a girl and I lost my dear boy; I am forty-two and past child-bearing. I would have been shut away to pine and die, just as the poor Spanish queen is doing.”

  François ate the grape and placed the dispatch on a table, then sat at his sister’s feet on the floor. “Not my beautiful, clever Marguerite,” he said. “You would simply have found a way to outwit him!” François plucked a grape from the stalk Marguerite held. “Your eyes,” he said, “are as purple as this grape. My sweet, beautiful, clever sister.” François licked the grape, then tore a little of the skin away from the flesh of it with his teeth.

  Marguerite longed to parry that thrust with a sally of her own, but she dared not. She loved François more than anyone in the world, but she loved him as her brother and her king. To do more was forbidden.

  “Well, I, for one, do not accept this Act of Supremacy any more than I accept his absurd Act of Succession. What thinks he, that he can simply wave his hand, scribble a few words, and it is done?” François scowled. “Besides, I want Mary Tudor for the dauphin.”

  Marguerite tossed her head back and laughed, showing even, white teeth. “Well, that is one way to gain a kingdom! I admire your gall, brother. But what makes you think that Henry will agree to that? You were supposed to marry the lady yourself, and that never came about because of the question of the princess’s legitimacy. Henry’s act now openly declares the princess illegitimate, and unable to succeed.”

  François took one of his sister’s hands into his own and gently rubbed its palm. “Who knows what the future holds? I am sorry now that I wasted Henri on Catherine de Medici. It seemed like a good match at the time, but now Pope Clement is dead, and the political advantage gone. So you see, what seemed desirable at the time has turned out not to be so desirable. Perhaps the reverse might be true of a match between the dauphin and the princess of England.”

  “You reason like a Turk,” laughed Marguerite. “But you have reckoned without what the Holy Roman Emperor would say to such a match.”

  “Oh, this to the emperor!” said François, biting his thumb. “Charles was none too pleased when we allied with Pope Clement, but in the end, did nothing. And all was well.”

  “Perhaps,” said Marguerite, yawning and stretching like a cat. “But an alliance based on a second son and a merchant’s daughter was not worth raising a fuss over. This would be different.” Marguerite placed a grape in François’ mouth.

  He chewed thoughtfully, plucking three more from the stalk. He began throwing them up in the air and trying to catch them in his mouth. “Charles will not be so agreeable when the heir to England, and she his own cousin, weds the heir to France.”

  Marguerite cupped her brother’s face in her hands. “You are as wicked as you are handsome,” she laughed. “But mark my words, brother. Henry will never allow his daughter to marry outside of England, and he will never allow her to marry a Catholic. I would be surprised if he allows her to marry at all.” She fingered one of the black curls that grew around François’ ear. She sighed. “Come, the day is fine. Let us ride.” Only a hard, breathless ride could chase away the demons that raged in her when she was close to François.

  Brussels, January 1535

  Charles read the letter from his ambassador to England one more time, then set it aside. Its contents needed thinking on before any action was taken. Chapuys had always been one of his best diplomats, entirely trustworthy and reliable, but he could not help wondering if somehow the man had become unbalanced. He seemed obsessed with freeing his, Charles’, aunt, Katharine of Aragon, and his cousin, Mary Tudor, from the oppressive situation in which King Henry of England had placed them, and kept them these many years.

  A rumor had been circulating for months that a Flemish prognosticator was predicting widespread rebellion in England during the year 1535. Charles snorted his derision. It did not take a soothsayer to see that the English were simmering about the state of affairs in that country. The question was not if the situation would come to a boil, but when? What disturbed him was that his own ambassador was deeply complicit in the disaffection that was raging throughout England. And Chapuys expected Charles, in the name of his unfortunate relatives, to assist in that effort.

  Charles sighed. What Chapuys could not see, would seemingly never be able to see, was that his Aunt Katharine would never allow herself to become a rallying point for civil war in England. When he had pointed this out, Chapuys simply waved away this difficulty with the information that a certain Lord Darcy, one of the English nobles at the forefront of the smoldering English situation, had sent him at Christmastime a medal struck with both the arms of the Poles and the leopards and lilies of England. This was a reminder that Mary’s cousin Reginald Pole had royal Plantagenet blood in his veins, and that a union between the two of them would make a splendid substitute for Katharine as a focus for rebellion in England.

  Certainly the English peasantry were willing to rise on a moment’s notice, but they were little more than an untrained rabble. If there was to be revolt in England, it must be with the support of the merchant class and the nobles. The support of many of the nobles they had; but the English merchants would only rise up to protect their profits. Certainly he had the power to spark the revolt in that manner, but that he would never do. He simply could not afford to let his personal feelings or emotions interfere with what was best for the Holy Roman Empire.

  His thoughts strayed to the devilish situation with the Turks in Central Europe, the threat to North Africa, and the nagging need to keep a wary eye on the ever-annoying French. That devil’s spawn, François, was wily; Charles knew that he had been suing for the hand of the Princess Mary in order to allay with Henry of England against himself. But he knew that the marriage would never take place. Henry refused to support Mary’s legitimacy, and François refused to accept the Act of Succession making her a bastard. It was all an academic point anyway, because Charles knew that Henry would never allow Mary to marry any Catholic prince, who might use the unacceptable religious reforms in England to invade that country at the head of an army, and with the pope’s support. But would a marriage for Mary with Reginald Pole advantage the Empire? That needed thinking on.

  Charles picked up Chapuys’ letter again, skimming the parchment until he found the passage he was looking for. While the issue was simply that all deplored the treatment Katharine and Mary were receiving at King Henry’s hands, and trade between England and the Low Countries continued to thrive despite all that, he had been
content, if not to encourage Chapuys, at least not to discourage him in his efforts to take the English pulse and keep him informed about the state of affairs there.

  But now things had taken a disturbing turn. Henry VIII of England, self-proclaimed Supreme Head of the Church in England, had commissioned Cromwell and his band of vultures to visit all of the religious houses in England to assess their wealth. Charles knew what Henry had in mind. There was precedent for such action both in England and on the continent. Henry V had dissolved the so-called Alien Priories and confiscated their wealth; these were French-run religious houses left over from the Norman Conquest. But that was a hundred years ago. Recently, the kings of Sweden and Denmark, as well as the city-state of Zurich, had all dissolved monasteries and taken their lands and wealth for the crown and the nobles. This smacked of that evil scourge, Protestantism, and that Charles simply could not abide. Even now the fires of the Inquisition burned brightly in his recalcitrant German states. But the success of such efforts could not have escaped Henry’s notice, and now he meant to do the same in England.

  Charles knew that Lord Darcy, along with many of the lords of northern England, was opposed to the church reforms that he sensed were coming, and that is why he was desperate for Imperial support for rebellion in England. On the face of it, there seemed every reason to send the support that these lords were clamoring for through Chapuys. Everyone high and low was shocked at what Henry had already done to the church in England. But so far Henry had been astute enough to ignore Chapuys’ involvement, which he almost certainly knew about. Henry was counting on Charles not to spend his own resources to free Katharine and Mary from their travails. But did he think that Charles would ignore a direct attack on the Catholic Church in England?

  Charles picked up his wine cup and took a long, slow draft. He had always been cautious where his reckless nephew-by-marriage was concerned. Perhaps he should employ the tactic that had worked so well for him in the past; wait and see which way the cat jumps. He smiled. Unless he missed his guess, Henry was becoming impatient, and when he was impatient, he tended to make mistakes. Perhaps Henry would make a big enough mistake to set the spark to the tinder on his own. Charles would give him no help; he had seen just in time the trap of assisting his cousin Mary to escape. Such a move might have sparked the very war he wished to avoid, a war he would then have had to support with men and arms. He preferred more subtle means. Yes, he would wait. Perhaps the Flemish prognosticator would be right; perhaps Henry was headed for dangerous waters, without any help from the Holy Roman Emperor.

  Tower Hill, London, 22 June 1535

  The sound of so many hammers meeting their targets was disconcertingly loud, but the real discomfort wrought by the efforts of the carpenters was that they were working without any sense of coordination. There was no rhythm, and he found the resulting discord annoying. But if this was the last sound he was to hear on this earth, he should endeavor to enjoy it. John Fisher smiled his wry smile. It was, after all, not every man who was privileged to watch the construction of his own death machine.

  Death. It came to all men, and if one had lived a pious life, was not to be feared. He had, after all, led a full, long life. He had no regrets. If God had ordained that this was to be his time, so be it.

  Suddenly a thought struck him. He was being executed for treason, and of this he was undeniably guilty. Had he not written letters to Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, imploring him to invade the king’s realm, to save the lives of the queen and the princess, and the Roman Catholic faith in England? Had he not denied that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church of England? For this, according to English law, he deserved to die. But in reality he knew that the king wanted him dead solely because he had opposed the royal will. That Henry simply could not tolerate.

  He thought of the deaths that had preceded his in this cause of the King’s Great Matter. John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, Richard Reynolds, John Haile, all good, pious men, all men of the church, all suffering the vile traitor’s death at Tyburn in May; and then Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate just a few days before. All were executed in their religious garb, an unforgivable insult to the church. And Middlemore, Exmew and Newdigate had been tortured before being hung, drawn and quartered. It was almost inconceivable. Had they all died for nothing? He could not believe so. God must have a reason, a plan.

  Having been attainted and stripped of his bishopric of Rochester, he was now a commoner once more and a private citizen. And yet Henry had seen fit to commute his sentence to beheading on the privacy of Tower Hill instead of at the place of public execution at Tyburn. His contemporaries had not been so blessed, but Fisher was under no illusions as to why the king had spared him the ignominy visited upon his fellow priests. It was simply that the people were outraged by the disrespect shown to the men of the church, and Henry wished for no further public outbursts of disapproval of royal policy. But it was, ironically, this reprieve which had led to the confusion about the time of his execution. So now he stood, hands bound, awaiting the completion of the scaffold on which would be placed the block.

  As far back as 1529 he had tried to warn Parliament that the direction he perceived the king to be moving, in regard to Mistress Boleyn, had the potential to wreak the utter destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in England. From that time on, he knew that the king was his enemy. The following year, he had been arrested for appealing to Rome for help. He had been thwarted at every turn; his plea had only resulted in the king forbidding such appeals, and the clergy in England had been heavily fined.

  The king fired his next salvo a year after that, requiring that everyone acknowledge him as Supreme Head of the Church in England. Fisher was ashamed at how few people, lay or clergy, were willing to dispute the king on this issue. Henry finally agreed, at his, Fisher’s, insistence, to the addition of the qualifying phrase "so far as God's law permits", which made it possible for the few dissenters to accept the Act of Supremacy, as it was called. It was, he believed, no coincidence that a few days later, several of his servants had been taken ill after eating some porridge served to his household. Two people died, and many were sick unto death. The king, feigning outrage, executed the cook by boiling him slowly. Fisher was appalled; he was convinced that the king had gone mad. There would be no reasoning with him; Fisher knew at that moment that he was doomed.

  He was not intimidated, however, and continued to preach publicly against the king’s divorce. He was arrested again just in time to prevent him from opposing the announcement of the king’s divorce from Queen Katharine which the newly made Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced in May of 1533. This was followed by Anne’s coronation, after which he was released from prison.

  Fisher knew that Henry was looking for any excuse to persecute him at this point, and in March 1534, at the king’s pleasure, he was attainted, quite unfairly, in the matter of the Maid of Kent. He was condemned to forfeit all his personal estate, and once again found himself in the Tower. Without explanation, he was subsequently pardoned on payment of a fine of three hundred pounds. He had ceased trying to understand his mercurial king; he knew it was just a matter of time before he lost the game of cat and mouse that Henry was playing with him.

  The final blow fell when he refused to take the oath to the Act of Succession and was again sent to the Tower. Fisher chuckled anew at the memory; the mice and rats in his cell knew him by then and actually greeted him at the door, begging for food. Again the king relented, and pleaded with him to take the oath. Refusing, he was once again attainted, and this time his See of Rochester was taken from him. While refusing to take the oath, he agreed with Thomas More that perhaps there was safety in silence; he would speak nothing against the king’s new laws, but neither would he swear an oath to them.

  One day he awoke to find he had a curious visitor. Richard Rich, one of the king’s toadies, arrived, asking, on behalf of the king and in the strictest confidence, wh
at he really thought. He had been a cleric all his life; this smacked of the confessional. Foolishly, he told Rich, in confidence, that the king was not, and could never be, the Supreme Head of the Church in England. It was checkmate; Rich was the only witness at the trial at which he had been condemned to die.

  Fisher knew a sudden urge to touch his neck, where soon the blade of the axe would fall, but his hands were tied behind him, and he could not. He thought about his head, and a laugh escaped his lips. Fortunately, no one noticed; the headsman was dicing with the soldiers who were to witness his demise, and the carpenters could not hear above the pounding of their hammers. What had struck his fancy and made him laugh was the chagrin of the king upon hearing that Pope Paul III had made him a cardinal while he was in prison in the Tower. Henry had angrily shouted that there would be no head to wear the cardinal’s hat, when it arrived in London, and had offered instead to send Fisher’s head to the pope. He wondered if Henry would make good his promise this day!

  How could a man so utterly forget so much, he mused? Fisher had known Henry since he was a boy and had been destined for the church, being the second son behind Prince Arthur. He had been chaplain to Henry’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and had sung the requiem mass at both that lady’s and King Henry VII’s funerals. But such services to the royal family had been forgotten when he opposed Henry’s desire to divorce Queen Katharine. Henry had, in frustration, shouted at him that Fisher had been against the king from the start of his Great Matter, and with that Fisher could not disagree. He had defended Katharine as long as he was able, even though he knew that her cause was lost from the first moment.

  Fisher was a devoted, devout cleric, he had never loved a woman, nor desired one. But he understood that the king had been taken, body and soul, by his fascination for Anne Boleyn, and that no one and nothing on earth would stop him from having her. The irony was not lost on him that even as Henry continued to thrash in the throes of his determination to have his own way, he no longer even wanted the lady. But he did want a son, and from that goal nothing would turn him.