Book Spotlight and Excerpt: The Conjuror’s Apprentice (The Tudor Rose, Book 1) by G.J. Williams

 

Born with the ability to hear thoughts and feelings when there is no sound, Margaretta Morgan’s strange gift sees her apprenticed to Doctor John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, and alchemist. Using her secret link with the hidden side and her master’s brilliance, Margaretta faces her first murder mystery. Margaretta and Dee must uncover the evil bound to unravel the court of Bloody Mary.

The year is 1555. This is a time ruled by fear. What secrets await to be pulled from the water?

The Conjuror’s Apprentice takes real people and true events in 1555, into which G J Williams weaves a tale of murder and intrigue. Appealing to readers of crime and well-researched historical fiction alike, this is the first in a series that will follow the life, times, plots, and murders of the Tudor Court.

Trigger Warnings:

Descriptions of bodies and the injuries that brought about their death.

Threat of torture; description of a man who has been tortured.

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EXCERPT

John Dee stared at the letter, then at Cecil. ‘The letter must have been penned by someone who has sight of this household – and the same person who planted the letter on Jonas.’

The master of the house nodded and put his head in his hands, propelling Mildred to cross the room and put her hand on his shoulder. He glanced up and patted her fingers. ‘Are you quite sure what you read, my dear?’

‘Yes. You heard the words yourself. The letter is to someone who wants testimony of your movements. The scrivener speaks of your visits to Lady Elizabeth. Each one is listed. They even know you are due to visit her again this week.’ Her lips pinched together in anxiety. ‘They state that you hide a book of Elizabeth’s treachery to protect her.’ Mildred looked at John Dee. ‘Why would they make up such stories of us?’

But next to her, Cecil did not move. He kept staring at the wood of his desk, his brow crinkled in thought. A slight flush spread across his cheeks.

Margaretta shifted in her seat, the feelings rising inside her. Dread. Something you’ve done. A secret. You imagine being arrested. You are hiding something. She leaned forward, touched John Dee’s sleeve, and whispered ‘Mae e’n cuddio rhywbeth.’ He hides something.

Cecil’s eyes darted to her. ‘I do not speak my forefathers’ tongue with ease. What did you say?’

Thank the Lord, John Dee stepped in. ‘She says she must away to the kitchen and her chores soon.’ He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a cajoling purr. ‘Is there anything you have secreted, my friend? Better we know.’

Cecil sat up straight and cleared his throat. His wife’s fingers tightened on his shoulder as she looked down, beginning to frown. Her husband looked at the window as if searching for the right words. ‘I…I…hold a book belonging to the Lady Elizabeth. Nothing treasonous. Just her thoughts.’ He swallowed and looked to Dee, a faint beseeching in his eyes.

The room was silent.

Panic. Confusion. It is you, Lady Mildred. Anger.

John Dee leaned forward again, keeping the low, calm voice. ‘Where is this book?’

‘Mildred’s library. Well hidden among the religious texts.’ At this, Lady Cecil gave a short, sharp cry and snatched her hand away from her husband. She walked to the window and put her hands on the glass. They could see her kirtle move with her fearful breathing. Then she turned and faced him, her face pale and fixed in fury. ‘You brought secrets here and put us all in danger? Have your senses left you, husband?’ Her voice was slow and cold.

In an instant, he was on his feet, rebutting her challenge with indignation. ‘No, Mildred. I was showing loyalty to a fragile girl wracked with fears. She is under constant suspicion.

So, when she was summoned to court to attend her sister’s birthing, she dared not take it with her, nor leave it behind. I am the only one she trusts. What could I do? Abandon her?’

‘And what is in this book, William?’ asked Dee.

‘Her thoughts on regency. She speaks of a fair rule; of religious tolerance rather than the burning we live with today; of making this land great again and not a puppet of Spain.’

Cecil dropped his head forward and his voice fell to a murmur. ‘She speaks of a golden age in which men thrive, not fear life.’

Dee sighed. ‘So, she speaks of being queen.’ He waited until Cecil nodded. ‘So, with Mary expecting her own son to succeed her, it is a tome of treason.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘Making my conjuring look pale in comparison.’

Cecil bristled. ‘No. It is a volume of hope. The only treason lies with those who would put a Spanish prince as our ruler.’

He gave a low growl. ‘For the love of God, they circle court like hawks awaiting the death of Mary and her babe so they can grasp power while England mourns.’

John Dee opened his palms in question. ‘Mary herself made Philip King of England. Not a prince. Not her consort. A king.’

Cecil wheeled round. ‘Elizabeth is the rightful heir to the throne. Not a Spanish puppet of the Catholic Pope. A woman of the true faith…Protestantism.’

‘So, if Elizabeth aspires to be queen, she is the single threat to the supporters of Philip.’ John Dee pointed an accusing finger. ‘And that book sets out her ambition.’ He paused. ‘That book will take her to the Tower and her death for treason… and someone in your household knows of it. They also know your involvement.’

From the window, Lady Cecil spoke. ‘And her treasonous book is in this house. And somebody knows it.’ She turned to look through the glass onto the bustling street below. ‘May God save us.’

G.J. Williams

After a career as a business psychologist for city firms, G.J. Williams has returned to her first passion – writing tales of murder, mystery, and intrigue. Her psychology background, melded with a love of medieval history, draws her to the twists and turns of the human mind, subconscious powers, and the dark-side of people who want too much.

She lives between Somerset and London in the UK and is regularly found writing on a train next to a grumpy cat and a bucket of tea.

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Lady Jane Grey: why do we want to believe the myth?

History Extra

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) by French Romantic painter Paul Delaroche dominates its display room at the National Gallery in London. © National Gallery

The teenage queen, Lady Jane Grey, has been mythologised, even fetishised, as the innocent victim of adult ambition. The legend was encapsulated by the French Romantic artist Paul Delaroche in his 1833 historical portrait of Jane in white on the scaffold, an image with all the erotic overtones of a virgin sacrifice. But the legend also inspired a fraud, one that has fooled historians, art experts, and biographers, for over 100 years.
A 16th-century merchant gave us what was believed, until now, to be the only detailed, contemporary description of Jane’s appearance. In a letter, he wrote an eyewitness account of a smiling, red-haired girl, being processed to the Tower as queen, on 10 July 1553. He was close enough to see that she was so small she had to wear stacked shoes or ‘chopines’ to give her height. Jane was overthrown nine days later, and, eventually, executed in the Tower from where she had reigned. But while the tragedy of her brutal death, at only 16, is real, the letter is an invention that obscures the significance of her reign.
The faked letter first made its appearance in Richard Patrick Boyle Davey’s 1909 biography The Nine Days Queen, Lady Jane Grey & her Times. Davey’s subject was already a popular one. The Victorians had lapped up the poignant tale of a child-woman forced to be queen, and despite this, later executed as a usurper. The letter, ‘discovered’ by Davey in the archives of Genoa, seemingly brought this tragic heroine to life. But in retrospect that should have sent alarm bells ringing, for the Jane the Victorians knew was already heavily fictionalised.
The historical Jane was a great grandchild of Henry VII. Highly intelligent and given a top flight Protestant education, she might have made a queen consort to her fiercely Protestant cousin Edward VI, as her father hoped. But instead, on 6 July 1553, the dying Edward bequeathed her the throne, in place of his Catholic half sister, Mary Tudor. Mary overthrew Jane 13 days later, and she was duly tried for treason, found guilty and condemned.

_{Queen Mary I. © Bridgeman}
Mary indicated she wished to pardon Jane. But Jane was executed, nevertheless, the following year. It was the aftermath to a rebellion in which she had played no part (although her father had). Why then did Mary sign Jane’s death warrant? The reason was indicated the day before Jane’s beheading. The bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, reminded Mary it was leading Protestants who had opposed her rule in July 1553, and in the recent rebellion. Jane, who had condemned Catholicism as queen, had continued to do so as a prisoner in the Tower. As such she posed a threat. It was for her religious stance that Jane would die, not solely for her father’s actions, or her reign as a usurper.
Aware that the Protestant cause would be damaged by its link to treason, Jane reminded people from the scaffold that while in law she was a traitor, she had merely accepted the throne she was offered, and was innocent of having sought it. From this kernel of truth the later image of Jane was spun. Protestant propagandists developed her claims to innocence, ascribing the events of 1553 to the personal ambitions of Jane’s father and father-in-law, rather than religion. Under Queen Elizabeth, treason was associated with Catholics, not Protestants, and the earlier history was forgotten.
The religious issue of 1553 concluded only in 1701, when it was made illegal for any Catholic to inherit the throne: a law that still stands. But Jane’s story continued to develop. Her ‘innocence’ was associated increasingly with the passivity deemed appropriate in a young girl. The sexual dimension to this is evident in Edward’s Young’s 1714 poem, The Force of Religion, which invited men to gaze as voyeurs on the pure Jane in her ‘private closet’. Jane’s mother, Frances, meanwhile, was reinvented as a wicked queen to Jane’s Snow White.
By the 19th century Jane’s fictionalised life was enormously popular. But there was something still missing from her story: a face. With no contemporary images or descriptions, the public had to be content with Jane as imagined by artists. The most striking work remains Paul Delaroche’s portrait, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, bequeathed to the nation by Lord Cheylesmore in 1902 (and now part of a major exhibition at the National Gallery). Jane, blindfold, and feeling for the block, represents an apotheosis of female helplessness. Richard Davey seems to have spotted a need for an account of Jane’s appearance that matches its power. He claimed to have found it in a letter in Genoa, composed by the merchant, ‘Sir Baptist Spinola’.

_{Lady Jane Grey, seen here in a Victorian illustration, was a doomed teenage queen. © Bridgeman}
The letter has been quoted in biographies ever since and used to argue the merits of ‘lost’ portraits of Jane. But I was concerned that Davey was the sole source for this letter. Researching my triple biography, The Sisters Who Would be Queen, I had discovered that Davey had invented evidence that Jane had a nanny and dresser with her in the Tower: characters inspired by earlier novels. I began a long search for the ‘Spinola’ letter, but never found it in Genoa or in any history predating 1909. And it became clear the letter is a fake that mixes details from contemporary sources with fiction.
There was a contemporary merchant called Benedict Spinola and a soldier called Baptista Spinola. The description of Jane has echoes of the red-lipped girl in the Delaroche portrait, but resembles also a contemporary description of Mary Tudor, who was “of low stature… very thin; and her hair reddish”. Jane’s mother carries her train in the letter, as was observed in 1553. The platform shoes or ‘chopines’ were taken from the Victorian historian Agnes Strickland, quoting Isaac D’Israeli. I can find no earlier source. But they are suggestive of Jane’s physical vulnerability: an element in the appeal of the abused child woman that remains so popular (we even find Jane raped in a recent novel).
The rest of Jane’s dress, described by Spinola as a gown of green velvet worn with a white headdress, was in colours traditionally worn by a monarch on the eve of their coronation. But they are also the colours of the illustration, Lady Jane Grey in Royal Robes, published in Ardern Holt’s 1882 Fancy Dresses Described. Significantly, in Davey’s The Tower of London, published in 1910, he describes Jane’s dress as edged in ermine, as it was in Holt’s illustration: a detail overlooked by ‘Sir Baptist Spinola’.

Davey’s lies and the repetition of old myths are damaging. Because Jane’s reign was treated for so long as the product of the ambitions of a few men, or of Edward VI’s naïve hopes, it is regarded as a brief hiatus, of no consequence. But it is key to understanding the development of our constitutional history. And we have overlooked something else. The Tudor unease with women who hold power has never really gone away. In legend Jane is the good girl: weak and feminine; Frances is a bad woman: powerful and mannish. This is the lesson of the myths – one that historians have too willingly accepted.
Leanda de Lisle is a bestselling author. Her book The Sisters Who Would be Queen is out now.

History Trivia - Cardinal Richelieu of France creates the table knife

May 13

1497  Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola (Italian Dominican friar and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence. He vehemently preached against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time, and his main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia).

1515 Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk were officially married at Greenwich.

1637 Cardinal Richelieu of France created the table knife.

History Trivia - Cardinal Richelieu of France created the table knife.

May 13

1497 Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola (Italian Dominican friar and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence. He vehemently preached against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time, and his main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia).

1515 Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk were officially married at Greenwich.

1568 Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots, were defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.

1637 Cardinal Richelieu of France created the table knife.

History Trivia - Cardinal Wolsey to hand over the great seal to Henry VIII

October 18

768 Charlemagne and his brother Carloman were crowned co-rulers of the Franks, after the death of their father, Pepin the Short.

1009 The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church in Jerusalem, was completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacked the Church's foundations down to bedrock.

1016 Canute of Denmark became the heir of Edmund Ironside, King of England, with victory at Ashingdon, and Edmund agreed to divide England between himself and Canute. At the end of November, however, Edmund died, and Canute became king of all England.

1081 The Normans defeated the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Dyrrhachium.

1210 Pope Innocent III excommunicated German leader Otto IV.

1529 Henry VIII ordered Cardinal Wolsey to hand over the great seal.

1541 Princess Margaret Tudor died.