She feeds a little and then they take her away and say that I can rest at last. I lie on the thin pillow, it is damp with my sweat, but there is no change of linen for the bed. They bind my bleeding parts with moss and then at last they sit quietly and I hear the rocker tap her foot up and down on the pedal of the cradle and all the other noises die away as the rest of them go to eat or to sleep.
The candlelight flickers and gutters, the fire dies down in the grate. I cannot believe that I, a Tudor princess, should be trapped here, in little more than a border tower, watching the shadows jump on the mud-plaster ceiling and hearing the rats scratching on the floor. I close my eyes. I cannot understand how I can have been born so high and fallen so low. There is a cold draught through the shutters that makes the candle flames flare up and die down. There is no glass in the windows to keep out the cold. I can hear the nighttime noises of these hills, the persistent hooting of an owl, the sharp bark of a dog fox, and somewhere, miles away, the howl of a wolf.
HARBOTTLE CASTLE, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 1515
A month later and my baby is thriving. We have found her a wet nurse and my birth pains have ceased. Lord Dacre comes to the door of the castle commander’s bedroom and asks if he may be admitted. Nothing is as it should be. I was churched in my bed, the baby christened in the tiny chapel. Her godfather named as Thomas Wolsey in his absence, with no time for his consent. We are like reivers ourselves, camped on the wild lands of the border. I say that he can come in. There is no point in trying to live to the standards of my lady grandmother’s book of the household when we are little better than outlaws.
He takes in my pale face, the poverty of the furnishings. “Your Grace, I was hoping that you might be well enough to make the journey to Morpeth Castle where my wife can care for you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I can go. There is something wrong with my bones. I am recovered from the birth but I am strangely lame. I cannot walk. I cannot even sit up. The Berwick physicians have never seen anything like it.”
“We could take you in slow stages.”
“I can’t do it,” I repeat.
One of the ladies who has been found to serve me steps forward and curtseys to the English lord. “She can’t get out of her bed,” she says bluntly. “Her pain is quite terrible.”
He looks at me. “It is so bad?”
“It is.”
He hesitates. “Your brother has sent you wagonloads of goods for your comfort at Morpeth Castle,” he remarks. “And Queen Katherine has sent you some beautiful gowns.”
I feel desire clutch me like hunger. “Katherine has sent me gowns?”
“And yards of rich cloth, yards and yards of it.”
“I must see them. Can you bring them here?”
“I would be robbed on the road,” he says. “But I can take you to them. If you could find the courage, Your Grace.”
The thought of Morpeth and wagonloads of goods, clean linen and decent wine, and my gowns—new gowns—gives me courage.
“I have commanded physicians to come to Morpeth and see you there,” he says. “Your brother is determined that you shall be well again. And then you can go to London in the New Year.”
“London,” I repeat wistfully.
“Yes indeed,” he says. “And half of Europe is up in arms at the way that you have been treated. People are calling for war on France, and war on the duke. You are their heroine. If only you were able to rise up you could claim your throne.”
“How ever can I get to Morpeth?”
“My men can carry your bed.”
My lady-in-waiting billows forward. “Her Grace cannot be carried in her bed by common soldiers.”
Lord Dacre turns his weather-beaten hard face to me. “What d’you think? It’s that, or hold your Christmas feast garrisoned here, and we could be attacked at any time.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “How many gowns has she sent?”
They tie me into the bed for fear of an accident, and I grip the rope as they manhandle it down the three steps from the chamber to the great hall below. I hide my face in the pillow to silence my moans; at every jolt I feel as if I have been stabbed with a burning poker in my hip. I have never known such agony, I am certain that my back is broken.
Once in the great hall the men gather around my bed and run long poles underneath it as they might carry a coffin. There are six on each side and they go carefully, in step, out of the hall, across the drawbridge and down the long winding ride that leads up the steep slopes of the castle. Before us go the guards, Dacre riding among them, my baby held in the arms of my maid-in-waiting, riding pillion.
The ragged inhabitants, and the poor people who live in shanties against the castle walls hoping for some protection from the weather and the reivers, stand amazed as I go by, swaying like some icon being paraded on a feast day around the borders of a parish. I would feel foolish if I were not completely absorbed by the pain. I lie back on my pillow, and I see the snow clouds thickening in the skies above me and I draw on every scrap of Tudor courage that I have, and pray that this nightmare journey of swaying, jolting steps does not outlast me, and that I don’t break down before we have reached the end of it.
CARTINGTON CASTLE, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 1515
It is hours before we arrive at another poor fort, perched on a hill overlooking a burn with a jumble of rough shacks against the walls and a stone-walled keep inside. They carry my bed into the great hall and set it down there. The men are exhausted and cannot face heaving the bed up the narrow stairs, while I can’t bear to go further.
Here we rest for five days. I am in a daze of pain; every time I shift in the bed I can feel my bones grinding and I scream with the agony. When they lift me for the pot they have to give me a gulp of spirits before I can bear to be moved. I eat lying down and they spoon broth into my mouth.
On the morning of the fifth day I know that we have to go on.
“Not far,” Lord Dacre says comfortably.
“How long?” I ask. I wish that I did not sound fearful, but I know that I do.
“About three hours,” he says. “And they’ll carry you better now that they have learned to match their pace.”
I grit my teeth so as not to complain but I know that they will jolt me every step of the five miles. We leave the castle without regret, but they stumble a little on the potholes and slip in the ruts of the road and I cannot muffle my cry.
“Not far,” Thomas Dacre says staunchly.
BRINKBURN PRIORY, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 1515
The priory is a poor, small little place with half a dozen monks who are supposed to be Augustinians but keep up a halfhearted practice. They have a stone wall around their buildings and a great bell to sound the alarm, but they are rarely robbed as the local people know that there is not much here to take, and, besides, it is helpful to them all if the monks are there, feeding the poor, housing travelers, and nursing the sick.
They are flustered by my arrival and the prior suggests that my bed be put in the hall of the little guesthouse. They can barely get it through the door and, when it is in, it completely fills the space of the cell-like chamber. But the floor is swept and clean, and when they bring me something to eat it is well-stewed mutton and I am glad of it. They serve a thin red wine and the prior himself comes to bless the food and pray for my recovery. I see from his anxious face that I look desperately sick, and when he says that they will pray for my health and for the life of my baby I whisper: “Please do.”