Fatal Throne_The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All

by M. T. Anderson

  “Can you blame him, Anna?” Cromwell asks. “What is a king without illusion? The illusion of limitless wealth? Of absolute power? Illusion is all that keeps his people in check and his enemies at bay. Wives disappoint. Sons die. Allies become foes. Illusion is a king’s only true friend.”

  “Ah, Thomas, I see why Henry wept for you,” I say, moved by his devotion. “You were the only one who understood him. You should have outlived him.”

  Cromwell shakes his head. “I died at the right time,” he says. “Henry was in decline. His first Queens were dead. Many of his old friends, too. The great pageants, the masques and hunts, the jousts that went on for days, they were no more. The Henry who had once been—our handsome, laughing Prince—was gone. The man who’d taken his place was a limping old melancholic, and it broke my heart to look upon him. Henry was our sun. How cold our world grew as he faded.”

  Voices carry from the hall, interrupting us.

  “The vultures return,” I say, eyeing the doorway as Henry’s men walk through it.

  “At least Henry didn’t make you wait long,” Cromwell says, stepping back into the shadows. “The whole business was over and done in a matter of days.”

  I rise from my chair. My heart is pounding. These ruthless men hold my life in their hands.

  They greet me. Rich is again amongst them. He enters into a long-winded account of court proceedings. I listen impassively, all the while silently shouting at him to come to the point. After what seems like an eternity, he tells me that the court has carefully examined the agreement made on my behalf with Francis of Lorraine and found that it was, in fact, a marriage contract, not a mere betrothal promise.

  My heart lurches. My legs turn to sand. What does this mean for me? Somehow, I manage to keep myself upright.

  Rich finishes by telling me that in the eyes of the law, and God, I am Francis’s wife, and have been these many years. Henry has accepted the court’s ruling, he says, and wishes for a divorce.

  I am the wife of a man I’ve never even met. I would laugh out loud at the absurdity of it if I weren’t so scared.

  Rich and his companions wait for my reaction to Henry’s wish, but I will not give them one. Not yet. I am still playing my hand, and like all good players, I betray nothing.

  After a moment, Rich speaks again. He tells me the King is prepared to make me a generous settlement—if I cooperate. He lays out Henry’s terms, and as he does, my head spins so violently, I must steady myself against a table.

  Henry will not send me to the Tower or the scaffold. Instead, he will make me his sister.

  I shall remain one of the highest-ranking ladies in the land. Only a new Queen, should there be one, and the King’s daughters will come before me.

  Henry is giving me money, land, manor houses.

  He is giving me Hever Castle.

  Bletchingley Palace.

  Richmond Palace.

  Sweet God in Heaven, I am rich.

  I can keep my servants. My clothing. My jewels.

  I can stay in England. I don’t have to go home and face Wilhelm’s wrath.

  The future my brother chose for me fades like the morning mist. A new one emerges, one I could never have imagined.

  My marriage is ended.

  My life begins.

  I am free.

  I am free.

  * * *

  —

  Cromwell smiles.

  “You were a pawn, Anna of Cleves, but you played like a queen,” he says. “You survived us all. Who would have thought it?”

  He is fading before my eyes. He is leaving.

  “Take me with you, Thomas,” I beg. “Why must I stay here with ghosts and the hard memories they bring?”

  “Memory is a high palace containing many rooms. Some of the doors we rush to open; others we lock forever,” he says. “Death dwells in this palace, Anna. Keep opening doors and you will find him.”

  He kisses me, his cold lips like the winter wind against my cheek.

  And then he is gone.

  * * *

  —

  Determined to die, I open another door. My face falls as I see who is in the room.

  “You are not Death,” I say reproachfully.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Holbein says.

  He glances up at me from his easel. His eyes linger on my face. “I wish I’d painted you after your divorce,” he says. “I could have made good money exhibiting such a painting. You were like an elephant—”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “—or a zebra. A coconut. A pineapple. You were an oddity.”

  “Are these your compliments? I would hate to hear your insults.”

  “You were that rarest of creatures—a divorced woman. You were happy, and your happiness made you beautiful.”

  “I was happy,” I say, remembering my first days of freedom. “Too happy. My God, how I spent money. On jewels. Books. Nutmegs. Vanilla beans. Pear trees.”

  Holbein’s eyes glint with mischief. “Do you know what Marillac said about you?”

  I shake my head.

  He affects the French ambassador’s accent. “ ‘She is as joyous as ever, and wears new dresses every day; which argues either prudent dissimulation or stupid forgetfulness of what should so closely touch her heart.’ ”

  We both laugh.

  “Foolish Henry,” Holbein sighs. “You were a young, healthy woman, Anna. I’d wager a purse full of gold that you would have given him the fine, strapping sons he wanted had he kept you as his wife.”

  “Perhaps,” I say.

  But I doubt it. Henry always said it was my ugliness that made him incapable of fathering children with me, but no babies were made with the pretty Queens who followed me, either. I was tempted, many times, to remark upon this to Henry, but held my tongue. Beauty is blameless and so are kings.

  “What are you painting now?” I ask, eager to change the subject. “Do not tell me you are still working on my betrothal portrait.”

  “No. I am working on a new portrait for you,” he says.

  “For me?” I echo, puzzled. “Do you mean of me?”

  He shakes his head. “For you. To settle your debts. You must settle your debts, Anna. The bad done to us, we must forgive. The good, we owe to the next man.”

  “Again you talk of debts?” I say, my good humour darkening. “What debts, Holbein? Speak plainly!” I am so frustrated with him, I am shouting. “My bills are paid! My will is complete! My best jewel will go to Queen Mary. My second-best to Elizabeth. My servants have all been found new positions…”

  I stalk up to his easel as I harangue him, and peer at the canvas, and my words fall away.

  The portrait is of a girl. She is wearing the plain clothing of a servant. Her hair is covered by a simple linen cap. There is a birthmark on her face.

  “Time grows short, Anna. Settle your debts,” Holbein warns.

  And then he is gone and I am back in my bedchamber and dawn is breaking.

  Its pale light steals in through the windows, summoning me out of the darkness.

  * * *

  —

  “Hush, my lady, do not upset yourself,” a voice croons. “You have been dreaming. There is no Cromwell here. No Holbein. Just me.”

  It is Alice. She is sitting on the edge of my bed, a worried expression on her face. She takes my hand in hers.

  “It’s all right. I am here.”

  “Yes,” I say. “You are here, Alice.”

  And then I start to weep. For myself. For Henry. For his dead Queens. His doomed son. For Cromwell. For Greta. For apple cake and snow and horses. The Rhine and the Thames. For rain-soaked days and black-robed men. For the dark fairy tale that is life.

  “More poppy,” says another voice. It belongs to Edmonds.

  Alice rises to fetch it, and at that instant, as I watch this good, clever girl, I know.

  I know why I have not yet died. Why the ghosts have come. Why Holbein made a portrait of her. I know t
he thing I’ve left undone.

  “Alice!” I say. So loudly that both she and Edmonds jump. “Fetch some hot milk. I am chilly.”

  I am not really, but I need her to leave the room.

  “That is not a good idea. Milk taxes the digestion,” says Edmonds.

  I wipe my eyes. Sit up in my bed. “What will it do?” I ask. “Kill me?”

  Alice looks to him. “Sir?” she says uncertainly.

  Edmonds sighs. “Fetch it, child, before she fetches it herself.”

  I wait until the door closes behind her, then I pounce. “You must take her on. She must become your apprentice.”

  “Take whom on?”

  “Alice! Who do you think, the cat?”

  Edmonds regards me closely. “You have had too much poppy, madam.”

  “She is capable. A good worker.”

  “She is also a girl.”

  “You said yourself that your two apprentices were useless. Alice is clever. She would be a great help to you.”

  Edmonds strokes his beard. “There is much truth in what you say. But her father is a gardener. He cannot afford the apprentice fee.”

  “No, he cannot,” I say, hope leaping inside me. “But I can.”

  “A girl apprenticed to a physician…”

  “I will double the fee.”

  “Why do you wish it? How would it benefit her?” Edmonds asks. “She will never become a physician. Medicine is for men.”

  “How will it benefit her?” I echo, an edge to my voice. “By allowing her to use her gifts. By giving her pride in work well done. What is her alternative? Who will marry her? What shall she do? Dig furrows at her father’s side? A mind as sharp as hers, wasted on turnips. I cannot bear it.”

  He gives me a long look. “This wish to do good deeds…it is a common deathbed urge. But one person cannot change the world, my lady.”

  I groan with frustration. Fresh tears prick my eyes. Tears of anger.

  I think of Henry. He was one man. A second son not meant to rule. The King of a small island only, yet he changed the world. I think of his daughter Mary, who proves every day that a woman can occupy a throne. I think of Cromwell and Luther, and how they stole God from Rome.

  “Oh, Edmonds, you fool, can’t you see?” I say, with all the passion left in me. “By changing a life, just one life, you can change the world. It is the only way anyone ever has.”

  15 JULY 1557

  There is a vulture in my room.

  He perches by my window.

  I cannot see his face, but soon I will.

  He will fold his dark wings over me.

  He will carry me away.

  I am almost ready to go.

  Almost, but not quite.

  * * *

  —

  Up in the high palace, my mother is weeping.

  She storms and rages. Tears at her hair.

  She died thus, driven insane by war and the loss of her ancestral lands.

  Wilhelm fought Spain over Guelders. Spain won and took not only Guelders but the Duchy of Jülich, part of my mother’s dowry. She mourned the loss deeply and died soon after, heartbroken.

  “Anna? My child, is that you?” she asks.

  I embrace her. “Mother, why do you rage so?”

  “The doings of men have driven me mad. Everyone told me I must accept what I cannot change. But I wished to change what I cannot accept, and that is where the trouble starts.”

  “Do not grieve. I will join you soon. We will go back to Cleves and make a plum tart.”

  But nothing I say can soothe her. She shakes me off. Marches back and forth. Weeps. Then shouts, “How could I have raised such a stupid, stupid son?”

  “Mother, do not cry over Wilhelm,” I plead, taking her cold hands in mine. “He is not worth it.”

  “Ah, Anna,” she says sorrowfully. “You think I’m crying because I had such a foolish son and everyone knew it. But I’m not. I’m crying because I had such a clever daughter and no one did.”

  * * *

  —

  Morning has broken. The summer sun streams into my room.

  By some miracle, the ravening cancer slumbers.

  Edmonds has gone home. He has left me plenty of medicine, but I shall not be needing it.

  “I wish to walk out this morning,” I announce as Alice enters my room.

  “But Dr. Edmonds says—”

  “Fie on him. Help me dress.”

  Alice sighs unhappily. “Yes, my lady.”

  Though it is July, she makes sure I am warmly attired. A woollen kirtle goes over my linen shift, and a gown over that. I am winded after these exertions but marshal my resources.

  Alice puts a blanket and two pillows in a large basket. She tucks her sewing in, too. Then she offers me her arm. We make our way out of the manor, through the gardens, to my fields.

  The beauty of midsummer takes my breath away. The sky, so blindingly blue. The lark singing her heart out. Roses of every hue tumbling over stone walls.

  I have been busy these past few days. I have added lines to my will.

  As I walk, words I spoke to Holbein come back to me.

  How I looked was all that mattered. Not who I was.

  Who Alice is will matter. I have made sure of it.

  Her fee has been paid. Edmonds will take her on. She does not know yet. He will tell her after I am gone. I have left her a good sum of money as well.

  This girl will not spend her life digging turnips. She can make her own plans, command her own future. She will belong to herself. Henry freed me and I have freed her. That was the debt to be settled. Maybe one day, Alice will help set a girl free, too. Maybe one day, the world will change so radically that girls will not need freeing.

  Maybe.

  I have seen my priest as well as my lawyer.

  “Confess your sins,” the priest told me. “Forgive those who have sinned against you so that you may find forgiveness.”

  On such a summer morning, it is easy to forgive. With the sun on my face, I forgive England its autumn fogs, its bitter winters, its dreary, sodden springs. I forgive my brother for bartering me like a sack of flour. My mother for packing all the wrong clothes.

  And Henry. I even forgive Henry.

  As I reach the edge of a barley field, the hem of my skirts heavy with dew, I see not vultures now, but a flock of crows holding a noisy parliament amongst the furrows. I walk on. Past fields of wheat and rye. Past my apple trees. To my destination—the grassy banks of my trout pond.

  Alice spreads the blanket out and eases me down onto it. She puts the pillows behind me. I close my eyes and lift my face to the sun. She pesters me for more of my story.

  “There is no more. You have it all. I lived happily ever after,” I say.

  “There is no such thing, my lady.”

  “No?” I say, smiling. “We shall see, child. We shall see.”

  I gather the last bits of my strength and open my eyes. I look at Alice. Her head is bent over her needlework. I gaze at the pond and see Henry’s dead Queens walking along its edge. They beckon.

  “Soon, soon. Wait for me,” I whisper.

  And then I turn to Alice.

  “I have one last story,” I say. “Another fairy tale. We Germans love our fairy tales.”

  “I would like to hear it,” she says, “monsters or no.”

  “Good. I shall tell it. And then I shall sleep.”

  * * *

  —

  Once upon a time, there were six Queens who married the same King, one after the other.

  The first was a beauty, with red hair, blue eyes, and ivory skin. She gave the King a child, but it was a girl. So he banished the Queen and took her child from her.

  The second, whose beauty was as dark as her soul, also gave the King a daughter. And for this, he cut off her head.

  The third, as mild as milk, gave the King a precious son, and oh, how he loved her for it. But the womb that gave life to the boy stole life from the mother. She
died of childbed fever.

  The fourth Queen…ah, the fourth Queen. The King called her ugly and put her aside.

  The fifth Queen was young and the fairest of them all. Her eyes sparkled. Her laughter was music. The King adored her, but she loved another. So he cut off her head, too.

  The sixth Queen was learned and the King did not like it. He would’ve cut off her head, but she begged his forgiveness for being clever and he let her live. Years later, childbed fever took her, too.

  They are dead now, those beautiful Queens, all dead. And the King is dead. All his men, too. And the precious son for whom he remade the world.

  But the ugly Queen?

  Ah, she lived, child.

  She lived.

  How Cromwell thought to match his King with that German sow is beyond me.

  I have often been called the handsomest prince in Christendom, admired for the turn of my leg and the beauty of my face. Perhaps a few years have passed, but they have only added authority to my stance and dignity. How dare Cromwell deceive me and send into my bedchamber a dismal, stale girl, a cheese-jowled Teutonic frump who couldn’t even join in the pleasant jest of masquerading?

  When she first landed on English shores I believed (from Holbein’s false portrait) she was a beauty—but still, I was not eager to meet her. Sweet Jane’s death haunted me. I was sunk in a seemly gloom. I was always afraid for the infant Edward’s health, and ordered all the walls and linens in his chambers washed twice a day until they reeked of vinegar. The sight of him reminded me always of his mother.

  And yet it reminded me of my duty, too. I must ensure that there is a line of heirs. Each of my royal sons has been struck down, save Edward. Each has been sapped of strength by the wombs that carried them, vessels either weak or wicked.

  My people expect a sturdy line to spring from me.

  And so Cromwell arranged this new alliance, and I prepared to meet Anna of Cleves. I thought from her portrait she would be beautiful—a young, cooing, merry little thing.