Robbie and Alice - Tudor Voyage

By Antony Johnson

Young love and conviction clash with authority in sixteenth-century England in this exciting and vividly written novel. Challenging times are tenderly and evocatively portrayed in ‘Robbie and Alice – Tudor Voyage’: the second book of Robbie and Alice’s Tudor adventures. 1521. England’s Cardinal Wolsey, doggedly pursuing his ambition to be elected Pope, plots to challenge Spain’s new American empire and so gain prestige from the King of France. Robbie, fifteen years old and Alice, thirteen, find themselves unwittingly at the hub of Wolsey’s plot. Together they do their utmost – while on a journey that takes them to the far side of the world - to thwart it. ‘Robbie and Alice - Tudor Voyage’ is a coming-of-age novel that anyone interested in life in Tudor England should enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Jan 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781839787133

Book preview

Prologue

Wolsey. Inside Richmond Palace. Striding furiously: muttering, reciting, enumerating King Henry’s departments: ‘ …Privy Chamber, Purse and Wardrobes, Robes and Beds, Board of Greencloth, Pantry, Cellar, Buttery, Pitcherhouse...’

For reciting them in moments of doubt bolstered. Reciting them reminded him that he, Thomas Wolsey, had more power than all King Henry’s departmental heads lumped together.

As well as being the Pope’s legate, he was also the King of England’s lord chancellor and right-hand man – power unprecedented. Alter-rex, many called him. Friends and enemies both. Many.

Nevertheless ‘Soddin’ youngsters… sod, soddin’ sod… ’ under his breath, growled out.

Youngsters – a boy of fourteen, and three girls – had somehow, just months before, thwarted him. It rankled still: it had wobbled his once firm relationship with the King.

Wolsey, rounding a corner, found that two gentlemen deep in conversation were almost upon him; he swished imposingly the skirt of his red cardinal’s robe – like a lady in lively dance, he thought, momentarily amused – and forced the men aside. The amusement settled him. Much more composed now, he continued on along the corridor towards the courtyard – taking care to deliver, if any eyes dared to meet his, an outward, beneficent smile; keeping the turmoil in.

Though much to keep in: he’d been permitted one-to-one meetings with King Henry since 1513; it was now 1520, September: seven years of the privilege – and one he was in no hurry to relinquish. However, today’s meeting hadn’t gone as well as he’d thought it might. As once it certainly would – before the meddling of the youngsters: Robbie, Alice, Winn, and the exotic princess. For since their meddling, Henry had been more independent: not so often ready to leave the boring, paper-push stuff to others – particularly not to his chancellor.

Which (Wolsey now to himself opined) is bad for the king, bad for the kingdom, bad for God. Because – in spite of jealous criticism – my responsibilities to Christianity I take seriously. It would be to Christianity’s advantage that I become Christendom’s next pope.

Undoubtedly!

The thought lifted him. Resolve flared. Tomorrow, or someday soon, he’d try again: promote a different angle; over the years he’d found many ways to manipulate Henry. Today he’d introduced the notion that priests, bishops, cardinals should be allowed to marry. Agreeing to this would help to gain support from influential German princes and bishops – he’d explained. 

‘No,’ said Henry, flatly. ‘No, Thomas.’

Now, remembering it again – Henry’s ‘No’ – caused Wolsey to halt, cry out in frustration, even though his exit from the palace was just feet away, mule in sight, saddled, held ready.

‘No, Thomas,’ Henry ’d said.

And made a curt gesture of dismissal.

But then, suddenly, waved him back.

King Henry, smiling now:

‘Thomas, I’ve decided to write a book. It’s beginning’s stuff I wrote a couple of years ago, attacking Luther. The rest of it will attack Luther more. Thomas, I’m defending papal authority and attacking Luther. Assertio Septem Sacramentorum – to which end I want all clergy in my kingdom to toe the papal line. Priestly chastity’s part of that line. You’re to make example of any who flout it. Any secretly married especially. Definitely make example of those. Trial in a king’s court. If necessary, a hanging – hammer home our point.’

‘You are sure, Your Grace?’ 

‘Do it Thomas. Make arrests soon. Do it.’

Part One

Chapter One

January 1521

When the burial was done they started out for home. Alice and Robbie. Though not together. Separate homes. Separate ways. Last year, together, they’d experienced an extraordinary time – but their mothers both thought them still too young to marry. Another year. Just one more, the mothers thought. Robbie was in his fifteenth year. Alice, her thirteenth.

Robbie walked towards home accompanied by the priest who’d, at the burial, presided. Though it hadn’t been on consecrated ground – just a hilltop near the river channel that led to the sea.

They hadn’t really needed a priest.

However, the priest, Christopher, was a family friend, by chance visiting – and not very much older than Robbie. Unlike Robbie, he already had a wife.

It was why he’d come.

*

Christopher and Mary married, secretly, five months before: 10th August 1520. Two months later they’d made their decision to seek out Robbie’s father. Beg help.

They hadn’t then known that in July last, he’d been buried too.

Not known. And not knowing, a life-changing decision had been made – though not without trepidation.

So now, when Christopher, walking with Robbie, reaching the outlying streets of Bristol’s town, observed that most of the plaster and wood-gabled houses framing the road had closed their shutters – that most rushlight, candle or fire glow was hidden – his thinking was: the city’s houses are fearful. As if Wolsey’s retributive justice has almost caught me – a thought that gloomed further the dusk-already day.

January’s day. Twelfth Night two weeks gone. And hopes of the voyage, seemingly exhausted.

Bleak. Disappointing. Cold.

The day he told Mary about his voyage-idea it had been bitter cold, Christopher remembered (walking faster, Robbie beside him, miserable, silent, offering no happy distraction). Thinking back now, it could even be argued that coldness was the first of four troubling omens waiting for him that day.

Unusually cold, he said to Mary – nothing of Robbie’s father and a voyage – as he went out. And similar, just the weather, as he greeted early-up parishioners off to field or pasture: the sun trying to be bright that October morning – and the sky, mostly blue. He walked away from them quickly, wanting only to focus on the decision to be made. And was lost in that, and yesterday’s potentially life-changing rumour, when the track reached woodland; the trees still casting shadows black enough to require care.

He tripped, fell hard. Hurt a foot. Badly.

Second omen?

Rumour: passed down from London through a line of friends: Cardinal’s clerk, Bishop’s secretary, Chichester Cathedral’s choirmaster. Told to him yesterday, the rumour intimated that he would be given precious little wriggle room if his marriage to Mary were found out. Apparently, Wolsey had suddenly become keen on stamping down on married priests, and had begun to search high and low for them. So probably, soon it would have to be the one choice made or the other: stay married and leave the priesthood, or remain a priest and abandon Mary. Unless…

Since yesterday a possible middle way had been rattling around in his head: a voyage across seas, he and Mary, to far off, unknown lands.

The hurt foot was agony. And in the sky above, the night’s moon hadn’t departed. An odd moon – he thought. Full, but ghostly pale. Out of its normal pulse – an omen moon, lingering, nagging.

Stupidly early to go out – Mary had said, sort of nagging, adding: don’t be long; I’ve something to tell you. But he’d wanted time enough, before the ministering-thrust of the day absorbed him, to walk to his favourite place – for though he’d been there time and time again it took always his breath away. Here the trees stopped, bestowing a view of undulating shingle dunes that merged into the sea: sea going on until it merged into the sky. A place where, usually, he found conflicting whats and ifs and buts could be sifted and sorted.

Decisions reached.

When he arrived, limping, in pain, bad-omen (probably) moon visible still, he found the wind coming off the sea to be unexpectedly fierce, breathtakingly cold. The sea, though blue, was lumpy, with white breaking out of most wave-tops. Wind swirled fallen leaves around his feet and jumbled his thinking. He’d not thought to wear his coat – further evidence of his stupidity that day, Mary said.

Drained after an hour of numbing cold, the voyage-plan floundering, he decided on another way to ease life’s pressures.

Mary, later, said, ‘How could you? Take to drinking so early? How could you?’

And, even though he ruffled her hair compassionately, found encouragement in the wry amusement that played across her lips, lifted up her chin, kissed those lips, she said she didn’t care one jot about the voyage. His middle way. Surely the answer was obvious: leave the Church. There was nothing to think through. Nothing. No middle way necessary.

‘Your wife or the Church, Chris. Christopher Harewood look at me – I’m going to have a baby.’

Then, weeks later, wasn’t. Miscarried. Mess devastating them both.

Then, the middle way decision back on the table. But time, running out.

*

‘What we need Robbie is a drink.’

‘Don’t think I recall you being much of a drinker, Chris? Marriage driven you to it?’

‘First tavern we come to. What do you say?’

‘I should say no. Mum’s waiting for us back home. I said we’d get back before dark. Your Mary’s stuck with her. That’s not a good thing for Mary.’

‘She can give as good as she gets.’

‘That sounded unexpectedly bitter.’

‘No one knows how the shoe pinches until you wear it.’

‘Ouch! Poor Christopher. Next street has the Cross Keys. I’ll buy you a drink there. But just the one.’

Chapter Two

Winter’s road

The moment the burial finished, Alice, chivied by her mother to get going – come away Alice, please. No now! – unexpectedly did. Put up little resistance. Which puzzled her mother. But there were miles and miles to go. Alice’s mother – Lady Catherine – was pleased to believe that her daughter, stubborn since birth, had seen sense.

‘Vital that we leave at once,’ Lady Catherine said. The light will fade quickly.’

‘My light’s gone out,’ Alice said.

But Lady Catherine didn’t pay much attention to that, only remembered once they’d cleared Bristol’s foothills – though, with hours of eastwards travel still to go, not home until at least tomorrow, she didn’t raise it.

Perhaps they’d discuss it when they reached their night’s stop, Lady Catherine decided. For now they must hurry – but take care: the puddled clay roads of the wooded valleys threatened horse-laming slips; the wind-swept ridges had already started to ice.

Hurry....

She shouted into John’s ear, ‘Getting dark already. Go on. Fast as you dare. John, dare it.’

For safety’s sake, and because – income compromised – they now possessed only two horses strong enough for such a journey, they’d accepted the necessity, the indignity, of riding pillion behind servants. In front of Alice was Steward Tom (his, too old to be riding horses mistress, complaining ignored); Lady Catherine had John – their stable’s main man.

Winn, Alice said, had told her that necessity was the bedfellow of indignity. And though her mother growled back that she wasn’t to keep spouting Winn’s homespun nonsense, it had been agreed. Winter roads were no place for wagons. Not especially easy even for horses. For Alice: nightmare.

The mud sprayed up, spattered – lumps sleet-big. Tom and Alice were on the horse following, getting the worst of it. Alice squashed tight as she could to Tom, using him like, she thought, an olden times fighter behind a big shield. Again and again she shouted, how much further? How long: until the priory? Tom, Tom, how long? 

But it was increasingly hard to shout – she couldn’t breath enough, make noise enough. The freezing wind shriveled every extremity, and the hurt of horse riding was almost unbearable. Now she felt certain that the skin on her legs was rubbed raw; that buttock flesh – the eiderdown cushion beneath her bottom having long ago stopped making any difference – splayed and bled.

The vibration, as hooves met road, juddered every bone.

‘Tom, how long?’

The last time she’d made this journey it had been in summer. Last summer – going slowly, carefully, in a horse drawn covered wagon. Although, she thought, at least not being in one now, spared her from meeting her mother’s look of constant apprehension: with the strained hollowness that pinched up her face, bent her eyes down – and few words uttered: most inaudible whispers.

So I ought to be, she thought, pleased that I’ve been spared confronting that. In a carriage for hours and hours, facing the: this is how Mummy’s been since Daddy’s disappearance and murder.

Though it was probably how Mummy ’d be at the priory tonight.

But nevertheless – Alice thought bitterly – Mummy would need to be told tonight. Told about the argument with Robbie, just before the burial. Because she didn’t think what’d been said could ever be put right.

Robbie had started it. Growled, ‘Your frown’s back. The one that seems glued on.’

‘If it’s back, that implies it went away. Can’t be glued on, can it!’

‘Well… it went away when we travelled to London to try to see King Henry. It was still away, on the journey back. And that time I saw you just after. But…’

‘That’s because you said you’d see to things. Sort things. The ship to take Honey back to her home country. But you didn’t.’

‘It’s not as easy as you think.’

‘But you said it is. You said you would. And you didn’t. And because you didn’t… that’s why Honey got ill. That’s why Honey’s in her grave. Dead.’ 

Chapter Three

Beer talk

They’d finished the first drink. Begun a second. Robbie still unusually quiet. Self-absorbed. Christopher trying to draw out what was wrong.

Because something was. And it wasn’t just that a friend was dead, Christopher was sure it wasn’t just that.

‘So tell me again, why did you want me, a Christian priest there? That girl, Honey, wasn’t a Christian.’

‘Alice wanted you there. Wanted your prayers. Prayers can help the dead. Alice wanted a priest’s prayers.’

‘For certain, prayers help Christian dead. But her?’

‘Why ever not! Not her fault she was born in a land far across the sea. Given more time here, she’d have been just like us.’

‘Would she?’

Robbie wasn’t sure. But he didn’t want to admit it. Or talk more about Honey. Or Alice. So he sipped at his beer, turned his head away from Christopher, and let his eyes wander the room.

Focused hard on the room. To push Honey and Alice away.

He wasn’t familiar with the Cross Keys – or many such places. He’d only recently, since his dad’s death, had money and independence enough to go to taverns of his own volition – and so far he hadn’t. But the Cross Keys was like the Dolphin, which he’d sometimes visited with Dad. Except the Dolphin was on the waterfront, and frequented more by merchants and business types than here; here – judging from clothes and