Fatal Throne_The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All

by M. T. Anderson

  “What did you do, my lady?” Alice asks.

  “I consoled myself by imagining my prince,” I say. “I hoped he would be kind and handsome. People said he was tall, with a fine head of auburn hair and well-turned legs. I also distracted myself with entertainments. There was a bull-baiting on New Year’s Day. I watched it from a window in the great hall, though I did not like it. I thought it cowardly and cruel to set dogs on a bull. In the midst of all the noise and blood, the doors to the hall banged open and half a dozen men came in. They’d been riding; their cloaks and boots were muddy.

  “One of them, an old man who was heavy and lame, bowed to me and told me he had a present from the King. Then he kissed me. His breath was foul, the kiss revolting. I wiped it off with my hand and pushed him away, shocked. How dare he! I was the King’s betrothed, not some harlot in a bawdy house.

  “I sought my German ladies. ‘Wer ist dieser verrückte Mann?’ I asked them. Who is this crazy man? They looked as alarmed as I felt. The English ladies were averting their eyes, as if they’d just witnessed a terrible accident.

  “The old man took a faltering step back, a stricken expression on his face. Good, I thought. That will teach you to keep your hands to yourself. He left the room. His friends followed him. I turned my attention back to the bull-baiting. A few minutes later, the man returned. Only now he was wearing a coat of purple velvet. Trumpeters were playing a fanfare. Courtiers were bowing and curtseying. I looked left and right, utterly bewildered. I had no idea what was happening. Greta was the one who figured it out.

  “ ‘Es ist Henry, der König!’ she whispered.

  “I was stunned. Henry the King? This smelly lunatic? It can’t be, I thought.

  “ ‘Der König, Anna! Sie müssen vor ihm knicksen!’ Greta hissed at me.

  “I dropped into a curtsey and stayed there, grateful to have a few seconds to collect myself. I knew my marriage was about alliances, not love, but I was horrified. All I could think was This shuffling old man will be my husband.

  “By the time Henry raised me from my curtsey, my heart was hidden. He welcomed me, then led me to a private chamber. I told him, with the help of an interpreter, how happy I was to be in his magnificent realm. I said his prank was very clever, hoping to smooth any rough waters, but it was too late. Henry smiled, but his eyes were cold. He bade me good night and withdrew. Later, I learned that he had been so impatient to meet me, he decided not to wait in London for my arrival, but to travel to Rochester in disguise to play a lover’s trick and surprise me. He was certain I would recognize him as my betrothed, because of the true love I was bound to feel for him.”

  Alice giggles again.

  “Have you ever heard such nonsense?” I ask her. “And it came not from some moony little scullery girl, but the King of England! Who was nearly fifty and had been married thrice before, and had killed his first wife by cruel treatment and sent the second to the scaffold. One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive one day, compose a love sonnet the next.”

  Alice is still smiling. But I feel only sadness as I recall the aftermath.

  “I didn’t understand anything. Not the language, or the customs, or Henry. I was unprepared for the ways of the English court. No one told me that Henry liked such pranks, or that he might play one on me,” I say. “If they had, how different my life might have been. Henry saw himself as young and virile still, and his courtiers knew to cast their faces into masks of admiration to preserve the illusion. But I did not. My face was the looking-glass that showed Henry to himself not as he would be, but as he was.”

  For a moment, I see Henry again. Standing there in that muddy cloak. Old. Broken. Mortal. And for the first time, knowing it.

  “To this day, I am sorry for it. Sorry for him,” I say softly.

  “Sorry for him, my lady?” says Alice, incredulous.

  I nod. “Henry needed love like no one I have ever known. And his greatest romance was with himself. It survived heartbreak and betrayal. Outlasted injury, illness, treason, and death. It survived everything and everyone, Alice. Everyone but me.”

  * * *

  —

  “Did you have a pretty wedding gown?” Alice asks, determined to keep me talking.

  She moves to the window and watches anxiously for the physician.

  “You are relentless, child. Can you not just let me die?”

  “No.”

  I heave a sigh. “It was a pretty gown,” I tell her. “It was made of cloth of gold, embroidered with pearls. I wore jewels at my neck and waist and a gold coronet. My hair was blond then, not grey, and it cascaded down my back. Henry wore crimson and cloth of gold. The sleeves of his coat were slashed and tied with diamonds as big as hazelnuts.”

  “Diamonds on his sleeves?” Alice echoes.

  I nod.

  “How many diamonds, my lady? Four to a sleeve? Five?”

  “Dozens. Too many to count.”

  Alice turns to me, dumbstruck. She cannot imagine such wealth.

  “What was the ceremony like, my lady?” she asks, when she finds her voice.

  “Delayed,” I reply wryly. “Two days before the wedding, Henry’s councillors suddenly became concerned about a betrothal contract between myself and Francis, heir to the Duchy of Lorraine, that had been undertaken when we were children. My German ambassadors assured the English that the contract had been dissolved, but they’d neglected to bring the paperwork from Cleves to prove it.”

  “What happened?”

  “The English were reluctant to press ahead with the wedding, but my ambassadors were adamant that the proper documents could be swiftly fetched from Cleves, and they offered themselves as hostages against the outcome. I was told to sign a paper declaring I was free to marry, and the wedding proceeded. At the time, I thought the delay was due to officials being officious, but I was wrong. Henry was behind it. He was looking for a way out of the marriage.”

  “But he didn’t find one,” Alice says.

  “No, he did not. Count Overstein, a German noble, walked me to the altar. Archbishop Cranmer performed the ceremony. Henry presented me with a gold ring engraved with the words ‘God send me wel to kepe.’ Afterwards, there was a feast. The whole time, I told myself all would be well. Our first meeting had been a disaster, but I thought if I tried hard, I could be a good queen to Henry.”

  “And were you, my lady?” asks Alice. “I should think so. You are a good mistress to me.”

  I smile at that. “I did my best,” I say. “When I became Queen, I was given my own apartments, my own chamberlain and attendants. I liked having my own household. I liked having work to do, things to manage. I tried to win the love of my servants, and the common people, with kind words and good works. I tried to win Henry’s love, too. I studied English diligently. Played the card games he liked. I had my dresses remade in the French style that he favoured.”

  “Did the King do any remaking?” Alice asks, peering out of the window again.

  “Not a bit. He was the tailor, Alice. And we, the court, were his cloth. He shaped us to fit his fancy.”

  “Being Queen sounds exhausting,” Alice says.

  “It was,” I say. “There is no privacy and little quiet. The only time you are alone is at prayer. Which is why so many queens are pious. I never complained, though. My conduct was exemplary. Everyone said as much. The French and Spanish ambassadors. Henry’s courtiers. Henry himself said my conduct was well and seemly. But it didn’t matter. The damage was done.”

  I think back to our first night together, as man and wife.

  “Yes, I was a good queen. In most things, but not all,” I say.

  And then I stop speaking.

  Because this is a memory for myself alone.

  * * *

  —

  The servants undress us. Give us wine. Put us to bed.

  There are carvings on the headboard. Of a man wearing an enormous codpiece, a woman wit
h downcast eyes, plump little cherubs. Our initials, “H” and “A,” are painted in the centre.

  I am awkward. Scared. But determined, too. This is how children are made, and I must make some.

  “Give the King many sons, Anna,” my sister Sibylle had told me, “and many daughters, too. Sons make wars, and daughters prevent them.”

  That is what I’m doing here, isn’t it? In bed with an old man who doesn’t like me? Joining England and Cleves. Preventing France and Spain from attacking my old home, and my new one.

  I see Henry’s belly jiggling inside his nightgown as he gets into bed. Veins, raised and gnarled, wind around his calves. I glimpse the dressing on his ulcerated leg, freshly changed but already wet with pus.

  He drains his goblet and places it on the bedside table. Then he flops back against the pillows, takes a deep breath, and blows it out again.

  “I suppose we should get down to business,” he says, rolling onto his side. “I need a bull calf from my new German cow.”

  I try to smile. I don’t understand all his words, but I know “cow” because it sounds like its German counterpart, Kuh.

  He unties the strings at the neck of my gown. Will he kiss me? I wonder. Will he say something tender?

  Wordlessly, he snakes his hand inside my gown and gropes my breast, hefting it as if it were a ham at a market stall. Then he lifts the hem of my gown and heaves himself on top of me.

  I can barely breathe while he makes his attempt, so great is his weight, but not breathing is no bad thing. His breath has not improved, and the smell from his festering leg makes my stomach twist. There is a great deal of heaving and grunting, but nothing more.

  “Call yourself a woman? Help me, you cold fish,” he mutters, grabbing my hand and placing it on his member. I squeeze it. Perhaps a bit too hard. “Ouch! That hurts!” he yelps. “God’s blood! Are you trying to pull it off?”

  Another attempt. His hands are on me again, rougher now. But the bread does not rise. The sausage does not swell. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard that it bleeds.

  Henry cannot do what he must. He swears. Rolls onto his back. Groans. “This is your fault,” he says. “Dugs like a sow, and the belly to match.”

  Sow. Sau.

  Hot, angry tears roll down my cheeks and soak the pillow.

  I am not a cow, a sow, a fish, or any such animal, I tell him silently.

  I am not my breasts, my belly, my legs, or that which lies between them.

  I am my head and my heart. All that I know, all that I love, everything I hope for.

  I am the blue waters of the Rhine, sparkling in the sun.

  I am ripe pears in a basket. Fresh nutmeg. The smell of Christmas.

  I am swallows soaring over wheat fields.

  I am the hymns the choristers sing. The rise and fall of an old German lullaby.

  “Ich bin all diese Dinge. Diese Dinge und so viele mehr,” I say. I am these things. All these things and so many more.

  Henry can’t understand me. I don’t even know if he hears me. He’s half asleep.

  He rolls over. Farts loudly. And starts to snore.

  * * *

  —

  “My lady, what’s wrong? You’re so pale. Are you bleeding again?”

  A worried Alice is leaning over me, peering at my face.

  “I’m fine,” I say, waving her concern away.

  “You looked as if you were in pain.”

  “I was. It passed.” As most hurts do, given time.

  “The physician will be here soon. I know it,” Alice says anxiously. She sits down again. “You said you were a good queen in most things, but not all. I do not believe that. You are good at everything you put your hand to. How could you have failed the King?”

  “I did not amuse him, child. Henry was not afraid of much, but he was terrified of boredom. His courtiers were run ragged devising entertainments for him. Hunting. Jousting. Racing. Masqueing. Hawking. Dicing. We were so different, Henry and I. He liked theology. I liked cheese. He liked witty words and jests. I liked to sew.” I pause, then add: “And of course there was Catherine Howard.”

  “His fifth Queen,” Alice says.

  “Indeed. She became a lady-in-waiting to me through the influence of Norfolk, her uncle. And in no time, the King’s eye fell upon her—just as Norfolk hoped. Catherine was everything I was not—pretty, a flirt, full of fun and mischief. She was an enchantress who could make an aging man appear young and lusty again, if only to himself. And Norfolk, the clever bawd, set her price high. Catherine would be Queen—nothing less—or Henry could not have her.”

  I am interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats carrying in through the windows. I am glad, for the ache has begun again. “That will be Edmonds on that fine grey gelding of his,” I say. “And it sounds as if Rafe is ahead of him on my little chestnut mare.”

  In a flash, Alice is back at the window. Then she is gone, out of the door and down the stairs, to hurry Edmonds along.

  “I was so naïve. Such a fool,” I whisper to the empty room.

  I had no idea what Norfolk was planning. I thought Henry would take Catherine to bed, not to wife. After all, I was his wife. We had been lawfully married before God, and what God joined together, no man could put asunder.

  But I forgot who God was.

  In England, God was Henry.

  * * *

  —

  Moments later, Edmonds is at my bedside. As he examines me, Alice tells him all that has transpired. The lines in his forehead deepen as he listens.

  “You did well to give pennyroyal in the amount you did, Alice. It stopped the bleeding,” he says. “You have saved your mistress’s life.”

  “Shall I pay her extra for that or dismiss her?” I grumble.

  Edmonds ignores me. “I only wish my apprentices had your good judgement,” he tells Alice. “One’s a fool, the other’s a rogue.”

  Alice’s face glows like a torch at his praise. What a strange girl she is. She actually enjoys this foul business.

  “I’m going to prescribe a stronger medicine for the pain. It contains poppy as before, but mixed with mandrake,” Edmonds says.

  Alice nods. “Shall I send Rafe to the apothecary?”

  “It will take too long. We shall make it up, you and I.”

  Edmonds pulls one nasty thing after another out of his bag—powdered worm, white lead, the dried excrement of a newborn, toad’s gall, a vial of cowpox scabs—until he finds what he’s after.

  Alice caresses the sinister mess as another girl might stroke a lover’s face. She shies from nothing—not blood, nor pain, nor Edmonds’s bag of horrors.

  By the time the two of them have finished their concoction, the wolf has returned. I cannot endure another bout of agony and tell them to give me a good dose. Alice carefully measures out the correct amount and helps me drink it.

  Seconds later, my head begins to whirl. This new elixir is much stronger than the last. I lie back in my bed, helpless.

  Black seas wash over me, wind-whipped and storm-driven.

  I go under. Sink down through the dark waters.

  And swim with the drowned.

  * * *

  —

  Cromwell sits in a chair on the other side of my bedchamber. He holds his head in his lap as if it were a small dog.

  “Can you not put it atop your neck?” I ask him. “It’s disconcerting to address your crotch.”

  “Had you addressed your husband’s crotch, my head would still be atop my neck,” he says archly, but he complies with my request, holding it in place with his hands.

  “Blame yourself,” I retort. “You are the one who brought the match about. You should have left me in Cleves.”

  He glares. A frosty silence descends. I break it, for I am angry with him. Still.

  “You are late, Thomas, by seventeen years. I sent for you after I became Queen, hoping for your help with the difficulties in my marriage. You ignored me then, but you come now?”

 
; “What you asked of me was dangerous. I knew what those difficulties were, you see.”

  “How?” I demand.

  “Henry. He told me that you so repulsed him he could not bring himself to make children with you, and did not even try.”

  I flinch at that.

  “My spies, however, told me a different story—that Henry did try, but failed,” Cromwell continues. “They listened at your bedroom door. Eavesdropped on conversations you had with your German ladies. Pawed through your dirty bedsheets looking for stains. I knew you would tell me the same, and to even whisper that the King was impotent was treasonous. Had anyone overheard us, we could well have been sent to the Tower, so I stayed away.”

  I laugh mirthlessly. “And how did that decision play out? Not well, I would say, since you ended up in the Tower anyway.”

  As I speak, I notice the hacked flesh about his neck and shoulders. It is a gruesome sight. “Does it hurt?” I ask, softening towards him.

  “Not anymore,” he replies. “It did at the time. The executioner was a bungler. It took him five tries.”

  My anger fades and sadness takes its place as I remember this brilliant, fearsome man striding the halls of Henry’s palaces, his black robes billowing behind him. It was Cromwell who threw the Pope out of England and gave the English a Bible they could read. It was Cromwell who dissolved the monasteries and convents, sold off their lands and treasures, and made his master rich.

  His power was second only to Henry’s, and courtiers parted like the sea before him, smiling and simpering and hating his guts. He was a threat to them. They were the old order, and he was something dangerous and new—a self-made man, a blacksmith’s boy who forged himself into an earl.

  “You did not deserve such a terrible death, Thomas. I am sorry for it,” I tell him.