Sutton Place (Sutton Place Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  ‘Item to the King’s Highness £46, won of the King at Dice. Item, £6.3s. won of the King at Imperial.’ A great many entries of that nature. Francis recalled a conversation with his father, Richard.

  ‘Francis, you win too often. It is not wise with a man of the King’s temperament.’

  How right Sir Richard had been proved. If he had deliberately lost a little more would he be facing the death sentence now?

  ‘So all is finally reduced to ifs and possiblys,’ thought Francis.

  But it was growing lighter by the minute. He put his quill to paper and wrote the final sentence.

  ‘I desire for the love of God to forgive me, and to pray for me, for I believe prayer will do me good. God’s blessing have my child and mine.’ He thought for a minute and then altered the word child to children. They had had such loving before he left her for ever that possibly another babe dwelled, secret and hidden, in her belly. ‘By me a great offender to God, Francis Weston.’

  He addressed the will to Sir Richard Weston, Sutton Place, Guildford, then he rose and went once more to the window. The Thames was sparkling now. He stayed there until he heard the bolts draw back on his cell. Sir William Kingston — the Lieutenant of the Tower — stood in the doorway.

  ‘Come, Sir Francis,’ was all he said.

  ‘How easy,’ thought Francis. ‘Come! How glib. Come to thy death is what he is saying and it rolls from his tongue as simply as a call to dine.’

  Behind the Lieutenant he saw the faces of his old friends Sir Henry Norris and William Brereton and, supported by soldiers on either side, Mark Smeaton. The musician was a human wreck — head hanging, chin sagging — disfigured to an idiot by the rack. Francis joined his fellow accused and they marched, Smeaton with splayed dragging feet, to collect the last of the party. In his cell, disdainful to the last, George, Viscount Rochford — Anne Boleyn’s brother — lolled in a chair.

  The four men exchanged glances — Mark Smeaton was beyond all human feeling — and each knew the others’ thoughts. Throughout the trial and finally now they acknowledged silently that they were to be sacrificed to the monstrous ego of Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn had fallen out of favour because she could not bear sons — primrose-pale Jane Seymour stood waiting to make her entrance — those that were in the way must be disposed of.

  ‘God save the King,’ said George and though Sir William Kingston might shoot him a black glance there was nothing in the Viscount’s expression to which any exception might be taken.

  As they were escorted out into the open of Tower Hill, Francis saw that a vast crowd had turned out. He did not look up, afraid that he might shake. He really must try to make a good end. He fixed his eyes on George Rochford’s sauntering gait. He knew all was affection but who cared aught? Each man must approach his own dying in the way which gave him most courage.

  Overhead a blackbird burst into sweet song amongst the May blossom, the beauty of the sound in counterpoint to the brutality of the scene below. Rochford mounted the scaffold steps. He turned to his friends.

  ‘Die courageously,’ he whispered; then he launched into a speech about hypocrisy amongst those who studied the Gospels, his eyes fixed firmly on the clerics who stood in attendance. Francis vainly searched among them for Father Dominic.

  ‘Humble old man,’ he thought. ‘It would have surprised me if he had been here and yet he had a kindly face.’

  George was busy now forgiving his enemies and praying that the King might have a long and happy life. He was still smiling when he died. Norris mounted the steps. Francis looked at the sky as the axe blade rose and fell.

  The push at his elbow told him it was his turn to climb up.

  ‘Goodbye Sutton Place — now I shall never inherit thee; goodbye old friends — all dying with me; goodbye my son — never to remember his father.’

  To the people he made a short speech protesting neither guilt nor innocence. He knew that, even now, a word badly placed, a nuance in the voice, could bring reprisals against the family he was leaving behind.

  As he was about to kneel he saw Father Dominic looking quite dreadful — green-faced and sweating profusely — hurrying to the scaffold steps. The priest gazed up at Francis and smiled.

  ‘The old man is more in dread than I,’ he thought.

  The priest prayed, ‘God, my Father, do not let me puke like a babe. I have come especially to help young Weston — give me courage I beg.’

  Aloud he shouted, ‘Go to God, Sir Francis,’ and made the sign of the cross.

  Francis nodded, knelt down and died without flinching. Overhead the blackbird carolled his requiem and Father Dominic gave a prayer of thanks that, though he had been forced to look away, public disgrace had been avoided.

  Up on the scaffold, Francis’s head and body were put into a plain coffin; he was buried in a communal grave with Henry Norris. Father Dominic intoned prayers for the dead in a dreary voice — dangerous to show too much emotion in these turbulent times.

  At Sutton Place the silence was intolerable. Neither Sir Richard, Lady Weston nor Rose had spoken above a whisper all day. The only cheerful sound came from the baby, Henry, gurgling to himself in his cradle.

  Since they had been curtly refused permission to visit Francis in the Tower there had been no word from London at all and this, in its way, was worse to bear than knowing the actual date when he was to die. Early morning waking brought its own nightmare and each setting of the sun with no messenger the horror of another agonized tomorrow.

  At dusk on May 17 it was almost a relief to hear the awaited horse’s hooves cross the quadrangle. Sir Richard, seated alone in the Great Hall, his head in his hands, straightened himself. He thought, ‘So he’s dead, my poor, stupid, harmless son. If only he’d listened to me. I warned him; if the King could turn against Wolsey he could turn against anyone. But, sweet Jesus, I loved the boy, for all his foolishness.’

  And he, who had not cried throughout the whole ordeal, felt the unfamiliarity of wetness at his eyes. He brushed the tears aside. He would need every ounce of control now to support his wife and daughter-in-law.

  ‘God’s head, I dread it,’ he thought. Since Francis’s arrest he had not only endured his own misery but witnessed that of the two women. If he had been one ounce less resilient and tough a fighter he would have cracked but over the years he had steered his unerring course deftly through treachery and intrigue and an inbuilt hardness had resulted. Sir Richard Weston was thought of as one of the coldest men alive by those who did not really know him.

  Lady Weston was at that moment standing in one of the large rooms at the back of the house overlooking the gardens. She was too far away from the courtyard to hear the messenger arrive but suddenly she was certain that Francis had died that morning. Looking round her in the lengthening shadows she thought, ‘This is a room of death. People will die here in time to come. I know it.’ She crossed herself and went down the short corridor to the Great Hall.

  Rose Weston had remained all day by the window at the end of the Long Gallery. From there she could see the parkland and anyone approaching the Gate House. For two days she had stayed thus only leaving to answer nature’s demands or when it was too dark to see any more. Then she had gone to the bed in which she and Francis had consummated their marriage and lain open-eyed in the darkness or drifted into wild, desolate dreams.

  She had eaten scarcely nothing, despite all urging.

  ‘Won’t my Lady have something of this lark pie I have made especially for her?’

  She had longed to scream, ‘Throw your lark pie to the beggars for aught I care. My only love lies rotting in the Tower,’ but she had simply smiled and shaken her head.

  Lady Weston had insisted on her drinking wine and this she had done so that now, on the second evening of her vigil, she felt light headed and faraway. The speck in the distance, just visible through the trees, meant nothing to her at first and then, in an instant, she was utterly sober, clinging to the window sill with hands like claw
s. It was the rider from London — Sir Richard’s man — but he could have been the Reaper himself sitting astride that horse. Rose threw back her head and opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. She was frozen, a gargoyle, an obscene caricature of her own beauty.

  Downstairs, Sir Richard and his wife held each other silently. The messenger stood before them, tears and sweat making childish rivulets in the dust on his face.

  ‘He died bravely,’ was all he managed to say before he wept.

  ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘He said ... he said, “I little thought I would have come to this.”’

  Lady Weston, her voice seeming over-loud in the vaulted roof of the Great Hall cried, ‘But I thought it would come. Sutton Place is cursed, Richard. You never believed, but I did. This house is built on accursed land.’

  The word ‘nonsense’ was on Richard’s lips automatically.

  Lady Weston rounded on him.

  ‘So ’tis nonsense is it? Do you realize the date? It is May 17; does that mean nothing to you? Today Francis stood on the very spot where the Duke of Buckingham was beheaded exactly fifteen years ago to this day. And what is the date on the grant of the Manor of Sutton, Richard? Also May 17, is it not?’

  ‘Christ!’ Sir Richard had gone white.

  The mention of Buckingham brought back the dark secret he had stored in the remotest part of his mind. He had been involved in the Duke’s downfall, actively plotted with Wolsey to see the man go to the block and the Manor of Sutton had been his reward. And now his own son had died on precisely the same date in the same place and in the same manner. At last Sir Richard was unnerved.

  ‘I tell you,’ said Lady Weston, her voice hoarse, ‘Sutton Place and all who dwell here are plagued by the curse of Queen Edith.’

  For once Richard Weston was silent.

  *

  Through the thick forest of Sutton a cavalcade of riders, their rain-soaked clothes streaming, their faces set and determined, cantered forward. In their midst a young woman clad in sombre grey stared solemnly at the neck of her horse, her gaze never moving to look at her escort. The rain, lashing into her face, ran down her cheeks like tears, hiding the fact that she was indeed weeping.

  With each miserably uncomfortable jolt she thought, ‘I hate him. I hate him.’ But sometimes she grew confused and found she was saying ‘I love him’ instead. And here lay the truth. In her bizarre relationship with her husband — Edward, crowned King of England in 1042, known by the people as the Confessor — she was no longer sure what she felt. Never would be sure — every emotion confused.

  When he patted her on the head and gave her sweetmeats and admired her tapestry work, or brought her a clear-voiced song bird for her room, all was sunshine and she would run to hug him. And then when he drew back from the embrace, tensing his body and moving away quickly, the sadness came, and she would berate herself for never learning, for always being anxious to please, for still hoping — in the face of constant rejection — that one day he would hold her tightly to him and love her like a man. It had always been the same. She, for ever eager and affectionate; he, kind in his fashion, but quite incapable of giving the love she wanted. She had grown from a young girl to a woman in this atmosphere and to him she was still a child. He even addressed her as ‘daughter’ when he wasn’t thinking.

  Edith remembered her wedding night. Her father, the mighty Earl Godwin — friend and adviser of the great Knut, Viking warrior who had crossed the seas to conquer England — had personally taken her hand and placed it in Edward’s.

  ‘I give you my flower, sire,’ he had said.

  And then in the royal chamber, with the clean sweet rushes on the floor, in her new white nightshift stitched by her mother, Edith had climbed into the King’s bed. She had undone her plaits and her hair, the colour of strawberries that grew wild in the forest, hung loosely over her shoulders. Edward had picked up a strand of it and held it delicately in his thin fingers. He had looked at her, his gaunt, hollow face softened for once.

  ‘Beauteous child,’ he had said and then — after kneeling a long while in prayer — he had blown out the candle. Edith had lain in the dark waiting for something to happen. The fact that he was over forty and she still nineteen did not worry her. She was excited. She had learned from her parents that love was enjoyable; there had hardly seemed a time when Gytha, her mother, was not with child. And her father had made no secret of his lustiness. He would kiss his wife, smack her buttocks, cuddle and caress her, and all in front of the ever-increasing family. Then he would sweep her off to their chamber and the laughs and sounds of pleasure would ring out without inhibition. The Godwin children had taken it all in their stride; to have lived with their boisterous father and had any shyness left would have been an impossibility.

  And now this. Edward lay still beside her, his breathing deepening into sleep. Edith had cautiously put out a hand and touched his arm. The instant response had been to sigh and turn away. And so it had continued for a week; every night she had suffered the same humiliation.

  Finally she had plucked up enough courage to speak to him.

  ‘Remember, you are the Queen of England,’ she kept telling herself.

  She had been dancing in the garden while one of her ladies had plucked the strings of a lyre. Edward, giving one of his rare smiles, had come up to her, clapping his hands.

  ‘Do I please thee, sire?’ she had said, curtseying respectfully.

  ‘Of course, my sweet daughter.’

  ‘But husband,’ Edith had said, ‘I am your wife and I desire to be so in every way.’

  As the colour had heightened in her cheeks, so it had drained from his. He had started to walk away and Edith had been forced to run along beside him. He had stopped dead in his tracks and given her a look that made her tremble with fright.

  ‘Do not speak of it,’ he had said in a violent whisper. ‘Chastity is a virtue and the soul is purified by abstention. You must never talk of it again.’

  He had hurried off and her words ‘But we married ...’ had died lamely on the air. That night he had not come to her room and she had learned from the servants on the next day that he had removed to another chamber.

  After two months of bitter distress, Edith had gone to her parents.

  ‘What!’ her father had roared. ‘The craven wretch! Has he left thee untouched, girl?’

  ‘Aye, father.’

  ‘By the Gods, I’ll swear he’s not capable of it.’

  ‘He says that it is a virtue to remain pure.’

  Godwin’s eyes had bulged in his head and his face had turned an angry mottled shade. It was he who had arranged the marriage and even at the time a doubt about the thin ascetic who was to be his son-in-law had crossed his mind. He had thought he might prefer men to women but that the King was impotent — or chose to be — had not occurred to him. In fact Godwin had fondly imagined, as Edward had slipped the wedding ring on Edith’s finger, that he would be the grandfather of England’s future King and founder of a great dynasty.

  ‘The praying fool,’ he bellowed. ‘If he spent less time on his knees and more in his wife’s bed ’twould be a better thing for England.’ And he had hit a nearby table so hard with his clenched fist that it had broken in two.

  It could have been a portent, for the strange partnership of the pious King and red-blooded Earl who, between them, kept England in a state of peace, was never the same from that moment. Godwin took to sniping at Edward — deliberately going out of his way to make caustic remarks. If these could contain a reference to potency and virility all the better. In return Edward developed a petulance, an obstinacy, and as his word was finally law he was able to thwart the Earl at every turn. In between the two was Edith, detesting the situation, still hoping that one day Edward would consummate the three-year-old marriage; wishing her father would hold his tongue or that God would do something to help her.

  She had always found it difficult to reconcile Christianity with the old pagan b
eliefs. Her father was indifferent to religion. His contention was that life on earth was the one to enjoy and that the after-life could take care of itself, could not but rub off on his family and reduce his praying son-in-law — the King — to a state of nervous alarm. But from their mother Gytha, sister of the Viking warrior Earl Ulf, the Godwin children had heard many times the stories of the old Gods — Odin the all-powerful; Thor with his red beard and mighty hammer; Freya, paramour of the Gods, going to her trysts in a carriage drawn by cats. Of them all Odin had stirred Edith’s imagination most; tall, one-eyed, hunting by night and yet governor of mysticism and the soul’s yearnings, a great and formidable sorcerer. She had sometimes thought, most secretly, that if anyone could take on Edward’s God and send her husband to her, it would be Odin. But such ideas were forbidden and she had always ended up on her knees praying to the Christian God for forgiveness.

  But neither the Christian God nor Odin listened, and finally Godwin lost the last vestige of patience with his son-in-law and the scene was set for a monumental quarrel which was to have the most devastating result.

  Edith had been present when the King — all control and majesty gone — had screamed at her father, ‘Murderer, murderer! I accuse you of causing the death of my brother.’

  ‘Lies!’ Godwin had thundered. ‘I stood acquitted of that charge twelve years ago. You enfeebled fool! That my poor daughter should be condemned to a life with an incapable husband sickens me. A state of war exists between us.’

  And in a highly dramatic gesture the Earl had thrown down his hunting gloves at the King’s feet. Looking as if he was about to have a seizure, Edward had hissed menacingly, ‘So be it, Earl Godwin.’

  Whilst the two factions had mustered on opposite banks of the Thames, Edith had been confined to her apartments, uninformed as to events. And then one day her door had been thrown open unceremoniously and Edward had stood in the opening. She had not seen him for several weeks and it occurred to her at once that during this time he had become slightly demented. He was thinner than ever and his eyes looked crazed — a great deal of the whites showing.