London - Edward Rutherfurd [323]
Peter. In the first weeks after Rowland’s death, she could not even bear to hear his name. When she heard he had left London for the north, she was glad. Once or twice, in the last two years, she had considered writing to him, but had not done so since she did not know what she should say. And now he was coming to see her. All the monks in England, of course, were now without a home. As each monastery was dissolved, they had to leave. Most were being given pensions, not ungenerous. Some had become parish priests; some left holy orders and even married.
“I will see him,” she had told Thomas finally, “but you must make one thing clear. I cannot take him in to live with me. I hope he does not think I can.”
At mid-morning there was a knock at the door and the sound of footsteps entering the little house. And then she saw her husband.
Few people in Rochester, in the years that followed, paid any special attention to the Brown family. Her neighbours remembered that Susan Brown had been a pious widow and that she had married again. It was said that her new husband, Robert Brown, had been a monk, but no one seemed certain. He was a quiet man, devoted to his wife and stepchildren, who referred to him affectionately as “father”. He became a schoolmaster at Rochester’s ancient school; and he seemed happy in his work and in his loving family, though sometimes, it seemed to those who came to know him a little, he wore a rather wistful expression which suggested that he might still secretly hanker after the life of the cloister he had left.
When he died, ten years after coming to Rochester, his wife was so upset that the priest heard her call softly to him, “Rowland,” which, he believed, had been the name of her first husband. But the priest knew that, in their grief, people sometimes became confused, and he thought no more about it.
In the decades that followed, no family could have been less conspicuous. Susan was determined to keep it so. The girls married; young Jonathan became a schoolmaster. Their inner faith, of course, was Catholic. But after all that had passed, she advised them: “Whatever happens, keep your own counsel. Be silent.”
The final years of King Harry were grim. He became bloated and sick. The fortune he had stolen from the Church was wasted in extravagant palaces and useless foreign ventures to satisfy his craving for glory. Wives came and went. Even clever Cromwell fell from favour and lost his head.
The king had managed to produce an heir in the end, by the third of his six wives. The boy Edward, everyone said, was brilliant but sickly, and it soon became clear that his tutors, Cranmer and his friends meant to take their new boy king even further from the true Catholic faith after King Harry died. But even Susan was astounded when she discovered how far they meant to go.
“Cranmer’s Prayer Book,” she said to her family, “need not have been so bad. After all, it is mostly a translation of the Latin rite and I’ll agree that his language is beautiful.” But the doctrines the English Church were now espousing were no longer just those of reformers. They were entirely Protestant. “The miracle of the Mass is utterly denied,” she cried. Priests could marry. “I’m sure that suits Cranmer,” she remarked acidly. But, in a way, even more shocking to the senses was the physical destruction which the Protestants demanded. She saw it most painfully one day when, visiting London, she slipped into Peter’s little church of St Lawrence Silversleeves.
The change was truly astounding. The little church had been stripped. The dark old rood screen which her brother had loved was gone. They had burned it. The walls were whitewashed. The altar had been taken away and a bare table placed in the middle of the church. Even the new stained glass windows had been smashed. She knew this vandalism had been taking place