Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  “Cromwell is a false man,” I said.

  “His arrest will not pardon my father,” Mary said. “But I think he is happier this day than the last.” She put her hand upon mine on her shoulder. “The past… it does not go. It is gone, yet here, haunting us. There is always a shadow even in the brightest light.”

  I seemed to hear a laugh, throaty and rich. I almost turned, expecting to see my cousin at my back. Mary’s father was not the only happy ghost that day.

  That night bonfires blazed all about London and people danced about the flames, celebrating the fall of Cromwell. In the distance I saw them, red fire against dark night. I thought of other bonfires which had burned for Midsummer in the year I had lost my innocence. Washing out the old and bringing in the new, that was the significance of those fires. I wondered what the new would be, what it would mean for me.

  *

  Gardiner and Norfolk worked fast, securing Cromwell’s treachery in the King’s mind. All knew the King was displeased with Cromwell, but the charges of heresy and treachery sealed his fate. It was said Cromwell had been about to suppress preachers who had the King’s support and was keeping an army of men ready to attack the King. He was a zealot disguising himself as a loyal subject, and meant to sail England into a sea of heresy, leading our sovereign blindly into sin. Cromwell had had knowledge that the Queen had been betrothed before she came to England, and had kept it from the King. It was also said Cromwell had tried to destroy plans to marry Lady Mary to a foreign prince, as he wanted her for himself, so he might make himself King.

  The only ones left on Cromwell’s crumbling side were the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had only dared speak for his friend a little, and the Lord Admiral, an opponent of my uncle’s.

  The same day he was arrested, a Bill of Attainder was drawn up and taken to Parliament, the charges against him heresy and treason.

  “An Act of Attainder allows the King to move against an enemy without a court of law,” Jane explained. “It makes Parliament the judge and jury, allowing them to pass sentence.”

  “So Cromwell will not have a trial?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Parliament will decide his fate, although all know the King is the one truly judging Cromwell.”

  And yet, the King still had uses for Cromwell. In the Tower, he was commanded to work on the issue of the King’s marriage. Evidence he collected would be used by the King to arrange a nullity suit. The pre-contract between the Queen and the heir to Lorraine was one of the reasons the suit could be brought to life, and an envoy was sent to France to gather information. The other reason was the nonconsummation of the present marriage.

  There were problems. The pre-contract with Lorraine was not binding as marriage had not taken place, neither had consummation. The nonconsummation of the King’s present marriage was also troublesome as the King had shared the bed of his Queen on many occasions. Problems enough had there been proving whether Katherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur had had sex. There were likely to be as many proving the King had not bedded his wife. Perhaps it was ironic the King was now using the same defence as his first wife had, this time to end, rather than extend, a marriage.

  “But, sweetheart, we will have our freedom,” the King told me. “I was not able to consummate the marriage because it was unlawful. I am in the right, Catherine. The Queen will be prevailed upon to understand this, and she knows as I do that nothing has happened between us.”

  “Your Majesty,” I said. “There is the possibility the Queen does not know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I told him about the conversation between the Queen and her women, and his face brightened. “But, Catherine,” he said. “Do you not see, my sweet one? This is proof there was nothing between the Queen and me.”

  Within a day, as stories about Cromwell filled the halls of court, ladies were brought quietly to the King’s chambers to testify against their mistress.

  *

  “I am to be sent away?” I asked the King.

  The night air was stifling. Little relief came from the open windows, bare of shutters, left open in a vain attempt to cool the chamber. Still there had been no rain. The streets were sticky. London stank as gullies of offal and blood from butchers, and ones of dog shit and rank water from tanners, poured slowly down the roads, pooling sulkily, transforming into vile-smelling mist which floated upon the hot air.

  The river, too, was fetid. The city hummed of sour sweat, rotting waste, shit, piss and festering meat. Above those smells, floating like oil on water, was the scent of incense burning in the gardens of the palace. Fragrance from pomanders and the slick, perfumed skin of courtiers rose too, but could do nothing against the onslaught of evil smells trapped in heated air.

  Sweat inched down my spine, a warm, tiny snake slinking down my sticky back.

  The King wanted to send me to my grandmother. The Queen knew something of our affair, perhaps even the plans to remove her, and had complained about me to her ambassador.

  “Only for a short while, sweetheart, and only to protect you. I will not have you slandered. If what the Queen has said gets out people will think you my mistress, and although we know this is not so, others will talk.” He put his hand on my knee. Sweat from his palm soaked into my moist gown. “But I will go to the Queen, and speak to her kindly. Then, she too will be sent away, so we might finish this.”

  “I will go to my grandmother’s house,” I said. “But I will miss you.”

  It was no lie. I was unstable, hanging from a window by my fingertips. The only protection I had was the King.

  “Each day will be torture without you,” said the King, pressing my hands to his lips, horribly wet, like raw, sweaty meat.

  I left court quietly, and heard the Queen was pleased. She thought it a sign her will was being done at court, and did not appear suspicious when she and her household were moved to Richmond Palace. It was said this was to keep her safe from the ill airs of London, as plague had been sighted in the city. Actually, the plague had not come, despite the heat. If it had, the King would have shifted out of the city, and he did not. He stayed at Whitehall, and came to me each night. The Queen was told the King would soon join her, for summer progress was to begin, but the route planned did not take the King past Richmond.

  Sometimes we met at Norfolk House, sometimes at Gardiner’s house in Southwick, and my aunt Katherine gave us her house in that same London den of iniquity, too. I had to stay up late, for sometimes he came close to one of the morning. My grandmother arranged a new chamber for me of my own, so I could sleep late into the day. “We do not want beauty fading for lack of sleep,” she said to my aunt Katherine as they fussed about me.

  But it was hard to sleep. When the King arrived, I had to exert energy to entertain him; I sang, danced and talked into the last hours of the night and first of day. When I went to bed, fears and worries that I pushed to one side when he was with me, for I could concentrate on nothing but him when he was there, returned to haunt me. The heat woke me earlier than I would have liked, and I napped in the day, further disturbing my pattern of sleep.

  I was on edge. I would remain that way from the first moment I was told I could become Queen to the day of my death.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” the King asked one day, his hand on my leg, as always. Perhaps he feared I would run from him, if I had the chance.

  “It is just… and I beg you would not be angry with me…”

  “How could you make me angry?” His face was genuinely amazed.

  “It is just… I pity the Queen,” I said. I was still afraid she would end up in danger and did not want that. “I sorrow to think of her angry or frightened.”

  “What cause would she have to be frightened?”

  “The removal of Your Majesty’s grace is like the loss of the sun from the skies,” I said. “She will be scared to see the darkness. I think she finds herself friendless in a strange country, unless Your Majesty will be that friend.”
>
  His face softened. “Catherine, always you think of others.”

  “As I am happy, my lord, so I wish others to be.”

  “The Princess will be treated well,” he said. “The fault is not hers, and neither shall any punishment be.”

  I smiled and the King chuckled. “You are so sweet,” he murmured, his moist, fleshy hand drawing my lips to his. At the last moment, I turned my lips away and offered my cheek, blushing as he kissed me. When I drew back, his eyes were glazed.

  I had seen that look often on the faces of men, and knew it could spell either advancement or destruction for a woman. But I was wiser now than I had been as a girl. The lust of men overwhelms them… brings them to a state where they are both dangerous and vulnerable. If a woman used it well, she could gain all she wanted.

  I thought I understood men, all of them. In truth, I only knew one kind. I understood predators for I had been prey. Nothing I had seen in my sixteen years told me there was any other kind of man. I thought myself wise, yet I was not.

  “Then you will be kind to her?”

  “Of course, sweetheart.”

  “You are the greatest of princes.”

  “As you are the most wonderful of all women.”

  On the 29th of June, the Act of Attainder was agreed by Parliament. Cromwell was condemned. He was judged a traitor, his goods and estates forfeit to the Crown, and he would die. Some said the King had only made him an earl in order to claim the lands of that title for himself when the time came. His offices were distributed to others, those of my uncle’s faction, and Cromwell was now to be known not by any noble title, but would be called “Thomas Cromwell, shearman.” The man who had risen so high, had fallen lower than any could imagine. Even my cousin had been treated like a queen until her death. There was no such grace for Cromwell.

  Cromwell wrote to the King, begging for mercy, and was ignored. Archbishop Cranmer attempted to intercede, and also was ignored. My uncle and his allies rejoiced. In the end of Cromwell they saw the dawn of the old faith returning to England.

  Norfolk and his allies wasted no time. Cromwell’s policies, every last one of them, were being unpicked in the King’s mind. Norfolk had used his embassies to France well, gaining support from Catholic countries and their ambassadors. My uncle wanted us in league with France and Spain again, and Cleves to be forgotten. The King’s conservative nature would be played on, and with Cromwell gone all further reform in England could be brought to a halt. The only strong reformer left standing was Cranmer.

  People in England rejoiced. They thought the end of Cromwell was the end of the horror they had endured for years. Monasteries would be refounded, life would return as it was supposed to. Peace with Catholic countries would come, and perhaps even with Rome.

  Yet I felt danger. I was the instrument of Norfolk’s ambition, used to pry the King from the reformist side. And I had seen before how when one faction fell its wounded beasts did not surrender.

  My uncle was setting me up to his allies as a queen who would speak for the old faith. People would become my enemies simply for my connection to Norfolk. I was on one side, Queen Anne on the other. With the fall of Cromwell the old guard were in ascendancy. But I was no leader. I was not my cousin, a general guiding and commanding, bending men to her will. I was in this battle, but I was not in control.

  That day, I stood at the window, knowing there were now many in England who were my enemies. Reformists would hate me. My only constant was the King. I would not oblige my uncle by speaking for the old faith. My safety lay in one thing; keeping the King happy.

  A whisper fell upon my ear, warning not to place faith in the King.

  “What choice do I have, cousin?” I murmured to Anne’s ghost. “The die is cast, and not by me. All I can do is hope it falls with good fortune.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Norfolk House

  Summer 1540

  At the start of July, as England sweltered in unyielding heat, the King was working hard to rid himself of his wife. Reasons for the annulment of his present marriage poured from the skies like the rain all dreamed of, and at the same time, he was preparing for his next.

  An Act had been passed at the end of June. Any marriage contracted and consummated would now be upheld as valid whatever pre-contracts existed. When the King married me, and took me to bed, it would nullify anything he had with the Queen. It also reassured me. This meant any hold Dereham thought he had upon me was done. I had no intention of my past being known, but it was good to know.

  The Act also condemned dispensation, saying it had been used by Rome as a way to extract money. Cases were listed that would no more require dispensations. Kindred or affinity between first cousins was one, along with “carnal knowledge of the same”. Now, the King did not require a dispensation to marry me because he had married one of my cousins, bedded another and married a second cousin, Jane Seymour. My future husband and I were not related anymore.

  By the fifth day of July, the Queen knew something was going on. Waiting patiently at Richmond for a husband who would never appear, she had been assured by the Earl of Rutland, her Chamberlain, the King would do nothing but that which “should stand by the law of God, for the discharge of his conscience and hers, and the quietness of the realm.”

  The Queen was not assured.

  I wondered what terrors were going through her head. A charge of treason, or was she to be a second Katherine of Aragon, shipped off to some remote castle where she might be poisoned?

  On the sixth day, Parliament petitioned the King, asking, for the sake of his conscience and theirs, his marriage be investigated. The King agreed.

  “We need fear Cleves no more,” he said that night. The bell had rung for midnight, and we sat near a window, trying to find relief from the oppressive heat. “The Emperor is our friend, and France clamours for affection too.”

  “But the Queen will be cared for?” I asked.

  “I have arranged a generous settlement.”

  The King told me his Council had gone to the Queen that day, to tell her there was an investigation into her marriage, and once it found the union was illegal, as all knew it would, they wanted her consent to start proceedings for an annulment.

  “She sees our union is not legal,” he said, tracing a finger up the back of my hand. “She agreed to the investigation, saying she was content for the matter to be examined by my clergy, as they were competent in such matters.”

  There was a strange look on his face, almost disappointment. I had to hide a smile. This was the first wife who had not fought for him, and much as he wanted her gone, the thought she had no love for him was bitter.

  “But this is good news,” I said. “She means only to do your will. She obeys you as her superior, my lord.”

  That made him happier. The defiance of Katherine of Aragon and my cousin had cut him deep, for they had questioned his authority, shamed him before his people. But he was still hurt the woman he wanted not did not want him, either.

  It had little to do with want, even though the King understood this not. Clever Anne understood the danger she was in. She would not become Katherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn. She would not sacrifice life to save pride.

  The next day, the King sent a written declaration to the council appointed to investigate his marriage. He told them he had been troubled by his conscience from the first moment. His men said the same, and claimed this was why the King had been rendered temporarily impotent. Doctors testified too, and ladies of the Bedchamber were brought in to talk of the Queen’s absolute innocence of the marital bed. The King’s men spoke of how the King was revolted by the Queen’s slack breasts and belly. Her personal habits, such as her scent, clothes and upbringing, were discussed and all found wanting.

  The King declared the Queen had come to him a virgin, and remained in that state. He had shared her bed for four months, but had never had carnal knowledge of her.

  Whilst the King was declaring this to his c
lergy, the House of Lords were debating his marriage too. The contract with Lorraine was discussed, along with consummation, but the final reason was most important. The purpose of marriage was for the King to bear another son, making our lands safe, and this would not happen if the couple were never bedded.

  On the ninth day, the Convocations of Canterbury and York declared. They found the King’s marriage null and void.

  The fourth marriage of the King of England was destroyed in seven days. His first marriage had taken seven long, tiresome and shameful years to bring to an end.

  I felt cold that day. Fire raged in the skies, but my blood was chilled. How easy it was now to rid England of an unwanted Queen. How easily were women disposed of. Keep the King happy to keep your head, I thought. Be Jane Seymour in the body of Anne Boleyn.