Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [443]
Katherine was happy; and he had to admit, that as far as his home life went, so was he. She was pregnant again.
And yet, despite this happiness, like a man who is unfaithful to his wife when he is happy with her, Edward Shockley was tempted to lead a double life.
He knew about the Mason family’s illicit prayer meetings because Peter Mason had told him; and it was one day in the late spring that he had astonished the cutler by suggesting that he join them one day.
“Only, you must not speak of it,” he made him promise.
Peter was delighted, and if Abigail was not, she pursed her lips and said nothing.
He liked the prayer meetings for several reasons, not least of which was that it made him feel proud of himself.
He might lie in public when he raised his eyes at the elevation of the Host; he might lie in private to his wife. But at least here, with these good people at their secret prayers, he felt he was being honest.
The meetings were illicit and dangerous. The thought that he might be discovered frightened him. But he felt sure he could trust the Masons.
“Of course,” he remarked to Abigail one day, “though I pray in private, with my wife and family to consider, I cannot speak out.” He watched her, hoping for the sign of approval.
Abigail said nothing at first, but she turned to look up at him with her deep brown eyes; he noticed how pale her face was, how dark the shadows were under her eyes; and she gazed at him now for fully half a minute. It was a look of perfect understanding, of resigned contempt, and of gentle condemnation that he would never forget.
“Ask God and thy conscience, Edward Shockley,” she said at last. “Do not ask me.”
He blushed deeply and did not raise the subject again.
It was after one of those meetings that he experienced an anxious moment. For as they came together out of the little house in Fisherton, Edward Shockley suddenly caught sight of John Moody. He was standing in the lane, about a hundred yards away, and since he was in the act of turning, it was impossible to be sure whether the young man had seen him or not.
He hurried away, and put the incident out of his mind.
In the year of Our Lord 1554, at the end of November, after Parliament formally submitted to him as papal legate, the kingdom of England was received back into the Church of Rome.
That this had been achieved, despite the earlier wishes of Parliament to remain free of Rome, was due to the determination of three people: Mary, her husband Philip of Spain, and the legate himself, Cardinal Pole.
The last was a remarkable figure. He was of English royal blood. His only ambition, to be pope, and his mission, to return England to the fold.
He was frankly disgusted by what he found.
The English Parliament would only vote for a return to Rome on condition that none of the Church lands taken by King Henry and now in their hands were to be restored – a greedy pragmatism that appalled him. As for the Church of England, the Protestant success, he roundly told the English Catholic clergy, was chiefly their own fault. If they had not so utterly neglected their duty, the people would have held the Roman Church in more respect. “You’ve only yourselves to blame.” Now, however, action was called for: and the first task was to place worthy priests in every parish.
“There’s only one problem,” Forest remarked caustically to Shockley: “no worthy priests.”
The shortage of priests was chronic: even the august Cardinal Pole could not immediately change that. The Catholic reform of Queen Mary was, in religious terms, an undistinguished affair.
But certain things the queen and cardinal could do. If they could not supply sound Catholics, they could root out and destroy heretics, and from the end of 1554 they set out on that course.
They were dark years for the queen as well as her subjects. Tortured by the misery of a false pregnancy when all she wanted in the world now was a child; made still more desperate by the coldness of her husband Philip,