“I was eager to visit with you, of course,” she said. “But more importantly, I want you to know what is happening in London because it will affect Mary. I have not forgotten our friendship.”
I puffed a breath of steam into the still air and said, “What is happening in London?”
“The lord protector is about to fall,” she said.
I stopped dead. “No. How can this be?” And then I recalled that my brother had predicted this very outcome.
“He’s alienated everyone with his arrogance and theft. He withdrew, abducting His Majesty to accompany him, to Windsor Castle and issued a proclamation for help. The king wrote that, as far as he were concerned, Edward Seymour had jailed him. ‘Methinks I am in prison,’ he said.”
“Did Seymour not learn from Lord Thomas’s attempt to do the very same? What did the council do?” I stepped around an abandoned bird’s nest that had fallen from a high branch and broken upon impact.
“They had the lord protector arrested and taken to the Tower.”
“On what charges?”
“The king himself said, ‘ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars in mine youth, negligent looking on Newhaven, enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority.’”
“Will the lord protector survive this?” Our situation grew more dire.
“Tristram says yes, but only for a little while. Seymour has been released from the Tower and even now he is fawning on the Lord Dudley, who has taken his place as lead on the council. His wife approached Lady Dudley practically on bent knee whilst the lord protector was in prison. She invited her to sup with her, presented her with a fine diamond, and asked Lady Dudley to speak to her husband on behalf of Edward Seymour. Lady Dudley did so, and Seymour is free. For now. But Tristram is having us leave London because he says this fragile peace will not last long, mayhap not last past the marriage, this coming spring, of the lord protector’s daughter and Dudley’s son John.”
I nodded. I should have liked to have seen Lady Seymour on bent knee.
“As you and the child are so closely aligned with the Seymours, I wanted you to have a care. All who have been their supporters begin to flee now, for Dudley’s camp. To be associated with them in any way will truly become, soon, a taint of its own.”
I hugged her, grateful for her warning and the time, money, and effort it had taken to deliver it. Like the jackdaws scared up from Seymour Place to roost at Syon, Edward Seymour’s home, the courtiers would now take wing from Syon toward Dudley’s residence. Dorothy knew nothing of how this further jeopardized the babe, nor me. The Duchess of Suffolk had said she would soon run out of money for Lady Mary, though we were shut away with little left; she had made one final application to the council on Mary’s behalf and it would be heard in January. We returned to my rooms and Dorothy told me of the reformist work that her husband was involved in. And then, I knew that if I dared, I could repay her gift to me with a gift of my own.
“Do you hold faith in prophecies?” I asked her.
She nodded. “’Tis in Scripture, so of course.”
“I shall share something with you that you must not pass along, excepting to your husband, of course,” I said. “This is a confidence you must keep.”
I did not say it to shame her for her last indiscretion—and she knew that—but rather to protect the countess.
“The Countess of Sussex told me, and Kate, of a vision she’d had that foretold Anne Askew’s racking and death. Exactly as it later happened.”
Dorothy leaned closer. “This be truth?”
I nodded and lowered my voice further, though there were none around that I knew of and we were well away from the manor. “But shortly afore she left the queen’s household she shared another prophecy with me. She had foreseen that the king would not reign for more than five years.”
Dorothy grimaced. “And then … Queen Mary.”
“And then Queen Mary,” I said, “who has no love lost for the reform or its champions. Have a care. Tristram is well-known.”
She nodded solemnly. “Mayhap because of this prophecy, evil has fallen upon the Countess of Sussex.”
“What evil?”
“She was questioned by a commission for errors in Scripture.”
“Never! She held completely to the text.”
Dorothy nodded. “’Tis possible some have heard of her prophesying, and did not find it agreeable or understand it. Wriothesley convinced Sussex that his wife had been adulterous and bigamous. The countess claimed innocence, and of course she is innocent, but her husband threw her out. She lives in poverty, even now, in a foul, miserable corner of London. She has some friends and supporters—including my Lady Suffolk’s sons, at Eton—but ’tis a difficult time, a difficult place. So now you know why I will be especially careful.”
Wriothesley had played the lyre whilst Anne Askew burned and then helped Gardiner chase down the queen to near death. Now he incited against the Countess of Sussex. “I grow chilled, of a sudden,” I said as I tucked her arm in mine and we made our way back to the house in silence. Inside, though, I was in turmoil over what had befallen the countess, who had foreseen the king’s death, considered treasonous, and yet was compelled to speak. She had no protector. Neither did I. I had to determine what next to do.
Late in January, after celebrating the New Year in London at court, the Duchess of Suffolk returned with a small retinue to Grims-thorpe. She did not intend to stay but came to check on her property and the handful of servants tending it, and apprise me of unwelcome tidings. She called me into her receiving chamber, which had been warmed with tapestries she’d brought for her visit.
“Cecil applied to the council on behalf of Lady Mary,” she began, “at my instigation. The council removed the taint from her and made her eligible to inherit all of her properties that had not been returned to the crown or otherwise assigned.”
“This is marvelous, my lady,” I said, flooded with joy to the point where I felt light-headed. But her countenance was not enthusiastic and I quickly became grounded again.
“It would be,” she said, “if there were any properties or money left. Alas, others have already carved up her properties, incomes, and purse. Mary has nothing left to inherit, as it has all been given to or taken by them who will not gladly return it.”
I sat down without being asked to, and she did not correct me. “But she is the king’s cousin; surely he will insist.”
“The king has no power in this, Mistress St. John. Power lies with those who received the bounty. Nor does His Majesty, I am sorry to say, seem to have sundry warmth for family, and has even, of late, taken to spurning his own sisters.”
I nodded glumly. “So Mary is …”
“Penniless. And I cannot afford her upkeep in London, assuredly. Mayhap Grimsthorpe for a while. But I cannot keep her in this style, and as there is no money for her, I am sore vexed.”
Within the week I dismissed Mrs. Marwick, whose milk had begun to dry up in any case, and hired a local girl to help with the child, who was beginning to prefer bits from the plate to milk. I did not ask for pay for myself, using instead money I’d saved from that earned whilst in Kate’s service, which would last a little longer. My Lady Suffolk agreed to pay Lucy and Gerald, for some meager clothing and some shoes as Mary was now toddling about, and for a handful of other servants. It was an unreasonable expense, I know, for her to have taken on an entire household on her own, and yet none stepped forward to help. It was not sustainable, and truly, she, too, had tried. I did note, though, that her Christian charity was more concentrated upon large buildings for strangers and not the helpless child of a friend.
“Mayhap I can plead with Lady Seymour, the child’s grandmother?” I asked.