Daughters of the Doge (3 page)

October the 30th 1556 – Stocker’s Farm, Coly Valley, Devon

Unusually, my mother seemed reluctant to see me go; my mother, who had always been the one to push me into any challenge that might help me to make my way in the world, and who had been insistent that my brother John and I had a complete education.

‘Lord knows what you will get involved in in those foreign parts,’ she called from the dairy. As always, when she was embarrassed or upset, she had turned away and now shouted the words over her shoulder at me. ‘How long is this journey going to take? What is Dr Marwood’s poor wife going to do while he is away? Poor lamb, with those young ’uns and all.’

‘Now, Mother, don’t you worry about the doctor’s wife. She has two sisters in Honiton to help her with the children, and she is well provided for. In any case, she knows how important it is for Thomas to see his old friends again in Padua. We’ll only be away for three months or so.’

‘Ha!’

Preceded by his three dogs, my father walked right into the middle of the conversation, as he always seemed to do when my mother and I were having words. He must have caught the back end of our argument, for he joined in, while all three of the dogs tried to jump up on my lap together.

‘You won’t be back before Christmas of next year, I’ll wager. All that way to travel and what will happen when you gets among them noble ladies in Venice? Get yerself involved again, won’t ’ee? Just like up in Lunnon with that Lady Catherine sweetening you up and Lady Jane fillin’ yer head with Reformist nonsense. Just when the good doctor was getting yer head screwed back on the right way again.’

‘Don’t start on that, John. Richard’s religion is his own affair, even if it do seem a bit strange.’ Turning to take my side now, my mother saw Father in his mud-covered boots: ‘John Stocker. How many times have I told you? Get they muddy boots out of my kitchen! And they dogs. They belongs outside.’

The dogs, knowing the rules as well as she did, and enjoying the chase, seemed to be grinning as they fled into the yard. I sat back against the inglenook and smiled. It was all so familiar: the animals, the warmth from the fireplace, the smell of Mother’s baking and this year’s bacon curing in the chimney above me. Home again. Nothing ever changed.

‘Anyway,’ my Mother shuffled back into the dairy, muttering over her shoulder again, ‘at least Richard came back from Lunnon a rich man! Look at him now: twenty years old, six-foot-and-more tall, and already wealthy. That’s what I calls progress.’

Like my father, she had found it hard to come to terms with my love affair with Lady Catherine Grey and with Lady Jane’s impact upon my education and religious attitudes. I still found it strange: they had both been so keen to see me develop my education and to succeed, but when, having developed my own life at Court with the Duke of Suffolk and the Grey family, I returned home with views different from their own, both had been confused and upset.

Over the last few months my mother had carefully avoided the issues of education and religion, instead bringing the conversation round to the very large amount of money I had received after selling the Spanish stallion and gold-leafed saddle presented to me by King Edward. I had not done anything with the money, which was being held for me by a banker in London until I found a suitable investment, but my mother did take pride in reminding her friends in Colyton that ‘Our Richard has done very well, and is now a wealthy man, you know.’

My father was suspicious that I had not immediately bought a farm near our home (farms being the only investment he understood), and he believed that my decision to leave the money in London was proof that I would soon be off on my travels again. Perhaps he was right, for although I was happy in Honiton with Dr Marwood, deep down I did feel that life held something more for me to experience before, finally, I settled down.

My father had recognized that I would be in the close company of Edward Courtenay for perhaps many months and asked me how well I thought I would get on with him. Courtenay was held in high, if distant, esteem in this part of Devon. Not only was he Earl of Devon, with large estates stretching from Tiverton and Exeter to Colcombe Castle in our home valley, but, as the last of the Plantagenet line, he still represented to the common people an old-established royalty, which, although replaced by the Tudors generations before, still had a place in English history.

‘You are right, Father,’ I replied. ‘It will be a telling time for all of us, for the earl is trying to find his role and position, since he appears to have been misled by Queen Mary and her husband.’

‘Bloody Spaniard!’ my father spat. ‘Nevertheless, you keep your place, for remember, the earl is your Liege Lord.’ I nodded, uncommitted, for I was not sure I owed that man anything. I felt that loyalty was something a man should earn, not simply demand as of right. Liege Lords were an old-fashioned idea; we were now in modern times – Tudor times.

‘And a good Catholic,’ my father added, for emphasis, as if that closed the conversation. But for me it did quite the opposite – for although I knew I could rely on Thomas Marwood’s tolerance of my religious attitudes, my limited experience of Edward Courtenay left me with the distinct view that he was likely to be less forgiving.

And so, whilst I was confident that it was indeed time to leave England, I also knew that the next few months were going to test all of us, in one way or another.

C
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3

November the 12th 1555 – Port of Lyme, Dorset

‘Need a bit more westerly in that wind before we can safely clear Portland Bill.’

We were standing on the Cobb wall at Lyme, leaning into the wind and watching the rollers as they surged north-east, deep into the bay and Charmouth beach a mile or so in front of us.

‘Take her out of harbour now and that’s exactly where we shall all finish up.’ The captain pointed at the beach and spat forcefully with the wind, as if to make his point.

We had been loaded and ready for many hours, but any ship that left Lyme harbour in this wind would be on the rocks before she had a chance to get under way.

The captain returned to his ship and Thomas and I chose to drop down in the lee of the huge stone wall and talk there. Hearing the howl of the wind only a yard or two above our heads made the spot almost cosy. How the arrival of that fateful letter from the earl had changed our lives. Yet for a long time the journey itself, although frequently discussed by Thomas and the earl in their regular exchange of letters, had seemed uncertain.

Prior to his release, the earl had been led to believe that he would be sent to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, as Ambassador, and it seemed his expectations had been fulfilled, for His Grace had left England seven months previously, making passage to Brussels. Initially, it appeared, court life had pleased him. His letters to Thomas had described his position to be akin to that of Ambassador, and he hinted that he had strong hopes of making a good marriage amongst the royal personages at the Imperial Court. The journey to Venice had begun to look less likely.

But as the summer progressed, the tone of his letters had changed. First, discussions of his possible marriage to Christine, Dowager Duchess of Lorraine, had come to nothing; then, similar negotiations with Princess Elizabeth (back in England) were said to have been rejected; and finally it was made clear by Queen Mary and her new husband, Philip of Spain, that the earl was forbidden from returning to England. Now Courtenay realized that his position was not one of Ambassador at all, but of an exile. The visit to Venice became an objective once again – no longer as an enjoyable sojourn for an ambassador but as a means of escaping the influence of an England from which he had effectively been banished. Thomas had named me as his chosen companion, and reminded the earl that my responsibilities with the Duke of Suffolk had eventually been those of personal secretary, and that, under the tutelage of Lady Jane and her own tutors, I had learned to speak and write Italian. I was accepted, and we were to travel as the earl’s physician and personal secretary respectively.

Our status in this venture was clearly described. We would not be travelling as servants but as companions, with all our expenses paid by the earl.

His letter said that he planned to leave Brussels for Louvain soon: after completing some private business, he would commence the journey south from there on or about November the 20th. We had not been given much time to make our final arrangements but, having been forewarned, Thomas was already half-prepared. I myself had few possessions and fewer ties, and so my preparations were minimal.

Now we were on the brink of departure and I held my cloak collar up against the rain and grinned at Thomas as he stood, hat pulled down hard over his eyes, watching the waves and trying to discern any change in the wind-direction.

I envied him. Never had I known a man so at peace with the world and with himself. His peace, I knew, reflected a deep inner confidence. First, and foremost, he was confident in his God and the Catholic religion that represented Him. Second, he was confident in his skills as a doctor, whilst accepting the practical limitations of that calling. Finally, he had a calm inner belief in what he called ‘the order of things’; that somehow society as he knew it would face the various trials and tribulations the world threw up – wars, plagues, religious schisms, revolutions – and find a way through.

He was a strange mixture of contradictions. On the one hand, although in his middle forties, Thomas had a very modern approach to medicine. It was an approach he had learned from the professors of the Padua School; Dr Vesalius, who had, some years before been Professor of Medicine there, particularly influenced him. Vesalius believed in observation and pragmatic discovery based on evidence, and was not satisfied with those teachers who simply read and repeated the works of the ancients. He held the followers of Galen in particular disdain, and his disagreement with their methods had caused a rift within medical opinion throughout Europe.