The Tudor Triangle

Chapter 17: The Pilgrimage Part 2

Friday 13th, September 1560

Throcking,Hertfordshire

"Poisoned? Tampered,...you mean...Why no, I was always in charge of the cooking. That is rude indeed of you." She started kneading the flour more furiously.  White dust flew up.

Katherine was sorry to have offended her but Amy's cause was more important.  "There was no new servant who expressed an interest in her food or what she was eating? Or a new sellar of goods who asked you of these things?"  

Mrs Weaver punched the dough quite hard.  "Indeed no.  I know Mistress Amy feared this. I was told about her feeding food to the dog and was not best pleased. But I just took it for her being a bit...troubled."

"She wasn't," protested Katherine.  Poor Amy was just afraid.

"Mrs Weaver, someone told me there was a rumour that someone had already been trying to poison her."  She did not tell her he was now rotting in a paupers grave, skin mottled by the Thames.

"Well not here. Truly Katherine. I think you know yourself how fearful she got at the end. Even you got weary of having to oversee her food, didn't you?"

Katherine said nothing and bit down hard on her lip.

Mrs Weaver observed,"it is not as if Lord Dudley wished to be rid of her.  When they walked together in the garden I thought they looked quite happy. " 

"But he was never with her for long," said the young girl.

"No court gentlemen are. Master Hyde is continuously off to London to petition for this and that." 

"But, I think Amy was pushed down those stairs, that she was murdered."

"Katherine, stop this. I know of someone who fell down a stone staircase ten years past. Fell down the church stairs he did and was a bag of broken bones at the end.  It happens. People die of foolish things all the time. Last month, a farmer died up the road  because he slipped and impaled himself on a knife he was sharpening. All we can do is trust in God that there is some higher reason for it all."

"Yes but, Mrs Weaver,  please think..."

"I cannot think of it, for it did not happen.  I cooked the meals. Sarah, you or Mrs Pinto took them up to her and none of us would see her wronged in this terrible way."

"Mrs Weaver, you do not understand what is at stake. There must be something." Her tiredness was not helping her persuasive powers and she tried to keep her temper.

"Please, if you know anything, anything at all, it would be of the utmost importance to me, to Mistress Dudley."

Mrs Weaver stopped kneading and said strongly. "I know nothing. Perhaps you'd best be moving on. You will get yourself into fierce trouble if you say these things, my girl. The mistress could be down soon to check on the menu for dinner. Anyway, Lord Dudley has been good to us and to Mr Hyde, I'll not hear a bad word said about him."  Her lips were pursed with irritation. Katherine guessed Mrs Weaver's children and grandchildren relied on Robert keeping the Queens favour, their bellies were full due to him.

Katherine knew she had blown her chance.  She could have fallen onto the kitchen floor flagstones and wept with frustration. All this way, all this was for nothing. Amy dead, sacrificed for Robert Dudley's ambition and there was nothing she could do.  She walked out, the pain from her body no longer registering.   

The day was now cold, the clouds pulled over the sky blocking out the sun's heat. Friday the thirteenth was an awful day.

Sarah, cook's helper, ran after her as she jumped her to her horse.  She was a few years younger than Katherine, with a face covered in freckles. The servants had mainly avoided Katherine, slightly intimated by her book learning.