Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  The bed itself was ornate, carved with royal ciphers, entwined H&A’s, and two lewd carvings at the head of the bed, over the couple; one of a cherub with a huge erect shaft, and another of a female cherub with a fat, swollen belly. They leered from behind the Queen as she arranged the sheets about her.

  The drapes were drawn, and we retreated as the King and his men entered. Usually, there was ribald jesting and cheering when a couple were put to bed, but the King entered in silence and we left in silence too, wandering back to our chamber quietly, wondering what would come of this strange, stilted marriage.

  Everyone assumed the deed was done when we came to collect her in the morning. The King had been there an hour or so in the night, and then left, which was not abnormal, although on a wedding night the groom normally enjoyed his wife until dawn. Ladies from her homeland evidently tried to find out if she was sore, for they sought out ointments from her chests, and indicated where she was to rub them, but the Queen waved them away.

  There was good reason. Pages whispered to maidens that when Cromwell had asked his master how he liked the Queen, the King had replied, “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse.” They said the King had spoken loudly of her slack breasts and belly, and said he thought she was no virgin. The King had said she smelt evil, and had left her as good a maid, if that was what she was, as he had found her. The match was unconsummated. It was not yet legal.

  The King had also insinuated his wife was a whore.

  Doctor Butts, the King’s physician, had been brought to the King and not in private, for all his men knew of their conversation. The King had declared he had been unable to perform, an astoundingly stark and honest statement, which sent waves of amazement through court. No man admitted he was at fault in the bedchamber. It was unheard of.

  But this was not quite what the King was saying. He said he had had two dreams that had brought him to the state of ejaculation in the night, but could not find any desire for his new wife. He was blaming her. She was so unattractive he was rendered impotent when it came to performing with her.

  “I doubt the Queen finds the King ravishing, either,” I whispered to Anne. “He is hardly an Adonis.”

  “Catherine, say nothing like that aloud,” she whispered back, but I could see she agreed.

  The King was said to be in a perilous mood, his temper easily roused. Cromwell had been called, sent away, and recalled almost every hour, as the King berated him, not caring who heard, about his unhappiness.

  To all this, our new Queen was apparently blissfully unaware. She praised us in her harsh voice for our singing and dancing, and spoke happily of England. Keen to learn the language properly, she had us all holding up objects and naming them so she could echo our words. She was a swift learner, picking up more and more each day, and although some of her phrasing was awkward, it was certain she would know the language in no time.

  “I wish to please mine husband,” she said to Anne. “So, I learn.”

  “You are doing wonderfully, Your Majesty,” said Anne.

  She was. The Queen was doing all she could to be pleasing, accommodating and refined. I also had the impression she understood more English than she could speak, but was not telling anyone that. I admired her, as did many at court, but we were not the ones she needed to impress. By the end of that first day of marriage, the whole court was afire with talk about how the King was utterly repulsed by his wife, and they were laughing at the Queen.

  It was being said her country was nothing; a poor, mean state neither wealthy nor powerful. This, it was whispered, could be seen in the Queen, for although richly dressed, she looked like a commoner playing Queen. “She is no Katherine of Aragon,” was a murmur heard often. Our mistress was compared to the women who had come before her, but even against my cousin and Queen Jane, women with no royal blood, was found wanting. The King did not care that his wife was regal, dignified and kind. She was not the promised angel.

  As I walked about court on errands for my mistress, I could hear people tittering, exchanging stories, mocking her. I thought this immeasurably cruel; the poor lady was doing her best, and her best was astounding, especially considering the circumstances. She was utterly concerned with the happiness of her husband and eager to integrate with her new country as swiftly as possible. No one could have done more, and yet, because the King did not like her, she was mocked. No one was mocking the King for riding to her like a fool and playing the young, handsome knight. No one pointed out he hardly smelt wonderful, puss seeping from his bloated leg, or that he was so fat a whale of the northern seas might have mistaken him for one of its own kind. No. She could be disgraced. He was untouchable.

  And other rumours were circulating. It was being said the Queen had declared she would not come to England whilst one abbey was left standing. There was nothing to show she thought any such thing, and she had objected to no parts of any Mass. But rumour she was Lutheran was spreading, no doubt encouraged by Catholics. In truth, it was not the Queen they were aiming to discredit, but Cromwell.

  The King did not come to her bed on the second night, but the Queen seemed blissfully unaware anything was wrong, and merely thanked us for the message as she settled into bed with her ladies from Cleves. The King tried on the third and fourth nights, but emerged in the morning with a face black as thunder, and shook his head at his men, clearly displeased. We had no idea if he had managed the feat.

  “Culpepper told me the King says her body is disordered,” Bess told us one afternoon.

  “I see nothing wrong,” I said. “And we dress her. We would see if anything was unnatural.”

  Bess shrugged and went to her duties. The truth was clearly not as interesting as rumour.

  *

  Five days later, we finally succeeded in getting our mistress into an English gown, and the transformation was remarkable. She looked pretty, the tight waist and tapering sleeves suiting her much better than the chaos of her own gowns. The crimson of the dress and its purple underskirts went well against her fair hair and warm eyes. With a French hood on her head, rimmed with pearls that made her ruddy skin appear lighter, we took her to the tilting yard. Everyone remarked how fair she looked, and the Queen accepted compliments with calm pleasure.

  But as we watched the joust, and I tried not to stare at Thomas, breathtakingly handsome in his shining armour, there were rumours shifting through the stands, flowing under the deafening cheers for the knights.

  It was whispered that on the day of the wedding, the King had taken Cromwell aside and told him he would not marry the Queen for any earthly reason, were it not vital for the security of England that he do so. There was talk of the King’s desperation to find a path out of the wedding wood that had grown about him, trees and roots twisting, snaring him into the trap of matrimony with a woman he desired not.

  “But he went to her each night after,” Mary Norris whispered to me.

  “Yet the Queen calls for none of the ointments her ladies push her to use,” I whispered back. “A woman is usually sore after her wedding night.”

  To me it was clear. The King might have been coming to the Queen’s bed, but he had not been bedding her.

  “Cromwell is on edge,” said Anne that afternoon, “as are his men. The King is blaming him, for he told the King such tales about the Queen that he believed her to be his perfect angel.”

  “She is fair enough,” I said. “And once in good clothes, she looks pretty.”

  “The smell is not aiding her, though,” said Anne.

  We had done our best. Since she would not wash in full, we brought water and soap for her to wash her hands and face each morning, and rubbed her down with camomile and vinegar, which kept away the worst smells. She endured us dabbing her with these concoctions, but she needed a bath. Perfume was liberally sprinkled on her, but to do this we had to almost wrestle with the ladies of Cleves, who clearly thought we were making their mistress smell like a lady of the night. We gave her lozenges o
f honey, mint and lemon to eat, and since she enjoyed them she accepted these. In truth, her teeth were not bad and there was only the faintest whiff of bad breath from her, but any success was seized upon. Pomanders were easier, swinging from her side, wafting scents of musk and lavender, they were pretty and ornate, usually crafted from gold. She took them as simple presents.

  But the King was particular about smells, believing bad ones were linked to sickness, something he could not endure. And the perfume we liberally doused our mistress with could only do so much. Underneath, creeping up the nose, was the smell of an unwashed body, and one that had travelled far, picking up the stench of cities, as it had ridden towards England.

  Cromwell was so alarmed that he sought to shift the blame for the match onto the Earl of Southampton, who had seen the Queen in the flesh before she came to England, as Cromwell had not. Southampton told anyone who would listen that it had not been his task to assess the beauty of the Queen, but merely to escort her to English soil, and the marriage had been agreed upon long before he played any part in it.

  But despite the King’s dislike, it was said the Privy Council feared war with the Queen’s brother if she was set aside. The King was wed to her now, and although he liked her not, he seemed stuck with her. But the principal reason for marriage, children, was clearly not going to come easily from this union, and that had more tongues wagging. What was the point, they said, of this poor match, unless there came a Duke of York from it?

  What point indeed? Yet we had to keep this from our mistress. Throughout January, we sang for her, showed her the steps of English dances, selecting slow ones so she would not sweat and reek more. We played cards and she won often, much to her delight, and we sewed by the fireside.

  Outside, wind howled and snow fell. Tempests shrieked and ice gathered like the fronds of fern against the glass. Inside the chambers of the Queen, with her speaking calm but merry in her broken English, her head bent over embroidery so beautiful that I could hardly believe it was crafted by human hands, the Queen of England sat serenely composed, as about her a storm was gathering.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Greenwich Palace

  January - February 1540

  Not long after her wedding day, the Queen was sent a note. When the harder parts had been translated she showed it to us with delight. My mistress was not much given to excess of emotion, but she demonstrated true happiness that day. It was from my cousin, the Lady Elizabeth.

  “Permit me to show, by this billet, the zeal with which I devote my respect to you as Queen, and my entire obedience to you as my mother. I am too young and feeble to have power to do more than felicitate you with all my heart in this commencement of your marriage. I hope that Your Majesty will have as much goodwill for me as I have zeal for your service.”

  “How old is my stepdaughter?” she asked. “Twelve… or thirteen?”

  “She is six, Your Majesty,” I replied.

  “Six!” exclaimed the Queen, staring at the note in shock. She smiled then, shaking her head. “She had help.”

  “Pardon my boldness, Your Majesty, but I think the note the work of Lady Elizabeth alone,” said Katherine Carey. “I was once in her household, and the Lady Elizabeth is a vastly precocious child, far ahead of her peers in her studies. She already speaks Latin, French and Spanish, and is a devotee of the works of Cicero.”

  “This learned, and so young,” the Queen said, wonder in her tone and she sighed. “My father did not…” she paused, searching for a word “… consider learning a good thing in women, but I think it can be.” She stared at the note, shaking her head. “Six…”

  Looking up, she beamed. “I must meet my daughter. I will ask the King.”

  The King, however, was in no mood to grant favours to his wife. The Queen made her request at dinner one night and he said he would think about it. Later, Thomas told Bess that the King had handed Elizabeth’s note to Cromwell and told him to write to her. “Thomas said the King shook his head, and said Cromwell was to tell his daughter she had had a mother so different from this woman, that she ought not to wish to see her.”

  We all stared at Bess. The King was upholding Anne Boleyn, the woman he would not speak of, as superior to Anne of Cleves.

  “Some say he speaks of her at times,” said Mary Norris that night in bed. “When deep in his cups. Sometimes he weeps.”

  “He loved her, once,” I said. “Sometimes, even when we wish it to, love does not die.”

  *

  Most days were the same. We entertained the Queen, tried to ignore gossip about her, and kept her happy. She had a household of one hundred and twenty-six, only a few fewer than Katherine of Aragon who had enjoyed the largest household of all the King’s Queens. Her native women were still in her household, although there was word they would be sent home soon, and she had a Clevian physician, Doctor Cornelius, as well as Master Schulenberg, her cook and a footman, Englebert.

  As January came to a close, we were told to prepare the Queen for a move to Westminster. We had been a month or more at Greenwich and the halls were ripe with the scent of bodies, piss and food. Rushes needed to be cleaned out and walls scrubbed, so we would go to Westminster, and the Queen would be presented to the men of the capital at the same time. Worryingly though, she was not to be granted the traditional state procession into London.

  And we knew the reason.

  The Queen had objected, through her translator, to her new husband about the Lady Mary being granted rooms on the Queen’s side of the palace. The main issue was that the Queen had not been consulted about this arrangement, and theoretically it was up to her to decide who had chambers in her domain. The Queen thought it a slight, and told her husband so. He, not at all concerned with her happiness, said little and did nothing.

  We had noticed Lady Mary did not show as much respect to the Queen as she should. Rumours our mistress was Lutheran probably had much to do with the Lady Mary’s lack of respect, but with the King acting as though his wife was an inconvenience at best, a harbinger of doom at worst, the King’s daughter had no reason to pretend affection.

  Our mistress was no fool, and was not unaware the King had reservations about her, to say the least. She played her part well, but to have a lesser member of the royal house, and a bastard at that, offering her spare respect was not something she would tolerate. She was within her rights to ask that she be consulted about such matters. It was the King who had acted without thought for her.

  But he did not care. He was too busy drowning in self-pity and anger. At times, he reminded me of my father.

  *

  At the end of January, the Queen’s ladies from Cleves were sent home, along with most of the officers of her old house. Sent away with gifts of plate and money, jewels and horses, the officers were merry. At the same time, the Queen sent word to her mother and brother, saying she was happy and the King contented her well.

  But if she was content, he was not, and there was rumour of a change in the shifting wind of politics. Both the Emperor and the King of France were eager to make friends with England. Both wanted our King as their ally, which seemed to indicate trouble brewing between them. It was whispered that England had never been as strong as it was now.

  Why are we only strong if our enemies are weak? I wondered. Why is it always a comparison? It was the same as was done to women. They were weak, so men were strong. Can England not be strong by herself? Because of herself?

  With friendship with other countries becoming likely, the alliance with Cleves became suddenly undesirable, and worse, potentially dangerous.

  “The Emperor does not like the King’s marriage because Cleves borders some of his Empire,” explained Anne, who always knew more about weighty matters than I. “And France likes it not because the religious policy of the country is unclear.” She sighed. “I fear for the Queen. The King likes her not, and now her country is no more a desired ally.”

  The Catholic, or more accurately named anti-Cromwe
ll, faction led by my uncle Norfolk and Gardiner, were quick to speak about the benefits of Spain and flaws of Cleves, but the King did nothing. His men said he was waiting. Often the Emperor and the King of France had pretended to be friends when they were not. He wanted to be sure of their intentions. But he did send away the erstwhile suitor of the Lady Mary. Phillip of Bavaria went home without promise of her hand. Almost that same day, Lady Mary recovered from her strange illness, which had always struck her the moment Phillip came to court, and was seen gaily laughing with her friends again.

  There was a grand feast on the night before the Queen’s retinue went home, with much singing and dancing, and fine foods. A select few were permitted to remain in England, which had, we were told, been a special favour from the King.