by H. M. Castor
Old Warham has died; by my permission my new Archbishop of Canterbury has judged the case, and declared that Catherine and I were never truly married in the eyes of God. And so at last, I have a wife: I have married Anne.
She was right (as she so often is): Wolsey was no help. And now he is dead, too. Taken by illness, he breathed his last on the way to the Traitors’ Gate of this very fortress, whispering to his friends that Anne was a night crow who haunted me like an evil spirit.
But the evil was in his own heart only, and here’s the proof: look at her now.
Her slight frame is swollen by the child in her belly: my son.
I am standing on the drawbridge that links the wharf to the Tower. This is Anne’s formal reception into the Tower as my queen – in three days’ time she will be crowned in Westminster Abbey. Before me stands a greeting party: my Lord Chamberlain, my Lieutenant and Constable of the Tower, and those noblemen and bishops not already on the river.
Behind me stands the monstrous edifice of the Tower itself, the fortress I once saw as a swallowing beast, a gate to hell, a place of horrors. Today, Anne will shine a light in its darkness that will burn away the evil: that light is my son, in her belly.
I think of the child I once saw in a dream, the little boy walking down beams of light towards me from a bright black sun. Now I feel as if it is my son coming down the beams of light towards me, as I stand here in the darkness – the darkness of the Tower, the darkness of my years of struggle. He will stretch out his small hand to me. And I will take it and step into the light. He is my bloodline, my future, the beginning of my glorious dynasty that will live on for ever.
Anne walks past the bowing lords and bishops. She reaches me, and her black eyes shine brighter than her golden robes.
In a ringing voice that all can hear I say, “Welcome, my adored wife and true queen.” I take her shoulders and kiss her; more quietly I add, “Welcome Anne.”
And, turning, I take her hand and lead her under the shadowy gateway, and on, into the dark Tower itself.
The required feats have been performed; I have won the hand of the golden maiden. Now my destiny stretches before me, as the prophecy made in this very place, all those long years ago, foretold:
Oh blessed ruler… you are the one so welcome that many acts will smooth your way. You will extend your wings in every place; your glory will live down the ages.
Now, at last, the waiting is ended.
Empire and sons.
♦ ♦ ♦ VIII ♦ ♦ ♦
It is three months since Anne’s coronation: it is September and it is squally. The wind whines around the gardens and courtyards here at Greenwich, seeming unsure of the way out, buffeting the heraldic beasts on their poles and stirring the waters of the fountains. Inside my thick robes I shiver.
September, for months, has been my goal. By now, I was to have been deliriously happy. Because by now, the child would have been born.
And it is born. Anne has been delivered safely. She and the child are both alive. It is a fine-looking infant. Healthy, robust.
But it is a girl.
When the news was brought to me I took in a sharp breath. Now, five days later, I feel as if I have not yet breathed out again.
This I never expected.
Not this, not this, not this.
It is unthinkable.
The river today looks cold and grey in the flat north light. I am standing in a bay window, staring out; someone behind me speaks. It is a bishop, one of my councillors. In his hand he holds a dispatch: begging Your Grace’s pardon, but there is an urgent question regarding the matter of the ships from Lübeck…
I snatch the paper: I can read it for myself. The bishop makes a nervous little prance towards me and back, urging me to let him summarise – in scanning the paper I soon see why. Not just news of ships and mercantile quarrels: there is news from our man in Flanders of rumours, too. Rumours circulating that Anne has been delivered of a monster – or else a child that is dead; and that if I do not take back Catherine as my wife the Pope will summon all Christian princes to make war on England by Easter next. Oh yes and, to cap it all, these Flemings liken the King of England to Count Baldwin of Flanders, who was plagued by diabolic illusions…
I crush the paper – tight, tight into a ball – and take it to the fireplace and throw it in the flames. As it catches light it begins to unfurl; the edges flare brightly as they burn.
Behind me the bishop’s voice patters on anxiously, bland and soothing: what ordure it is, sir, but it is as well to know what is said on the streets, what is said anywhere in fact; it’s astonishing of course how evil the slander can be, nevertheless we can circulate counter-rumours, even as far afield as Flanders; and now perhaps we can come on to the matter of those ships from Lübeck?
I don’t turn; I stare into the flames as they curl around the blackened remnants of the paper. These last few nights I have dreamed of monstrous births myself. Such events have genuinely happened in certain German and Italian cities – I have seen woodcuts of the things born. One woman produced a creature with bird’s wings and a single leg ending in a clawed foot. Another had a child with bat’s wings and two legs, one bearing a devil’s hoof, the other an eye at the knee. I have dreamed of Anne bringing forth a serpent, with a scaly hide and great tearing claws.
Each time, I have woken to find Anne lying beside me in the dark: this astonishing being sent me by God, as ready for battle as if she wore armour. And I have wondered how I can dream such things. She has given me a healthy girl. Next it will be a fine warrior son.
So Anne tells me – and she is right. She is as defiant and determined as in those dark years of struggle over the annulment of my marriage to Catherine, and she is delighted with our daughter, too – whom I have named Elizabeth, after my mother. She is delighted with Elizabeth’s strong limbs and her vigorous cry, her dark Boleyn eyes and her tuft of red-gold Tudor hair.
When I look at the child, I am also proud. But as soon as she is taken away, the feeling fades. I think: the boy Anne was carrying when she climbed the wharf steps at the Tower, the boy who shone his brilliant light in that place of dark horrors – where has he gone? He existed; I knew him. I put my hand on her belly and I felt him move and kick.
Behind me, the bishop has paused now; he is waiting for a response, though I have no idea of the question. I tell him I will deal with the matter later and I leave him, walking through my Privy Chamber and my Presence Chamber and a short gallery to my private closet on the first-floor balcony of the Chapel Royal.
Norris has followed me. At the chapel door I tell him to remain outside. As I enter, I see the Dean and one of the chaplains below me, standing near the dark-wood choir stalls; I dismiss them. I want to be alone. When they have gone I descend the spiral stair that leads into the main body of the chapel, approach the altar and kneel.
What is it I want to say to my God? That waiting a single moment longer for my son is an agony: that I have done too much waiting these last twenty years: that I am pulled taut, as if I am lashed to a wheel, or on the rack. I waited so long to marry Anne. Marrying her meant the end of waiting – I thought.
I know God has a plan for me but I do not understand why it should require this. Perhaps, then, I am praying for strength. Perhaps I am asking God to reveal to me His reasons…
The chapel is a cold and empty chamber. Candles are lit at the altar and beneath the stern-faced statues; from time to time a wick sizzles. Gradually, I become aware of the stillness of the space behind me. It seems eerily like a presence; like something waiting.
I look over my shoulder. The balcony is dark and seems unoccupied; beneath it, there is no movement in the shadows.
I turn back and bow my head. But now I can hear something: an indistinct brushing or scraping. I think of nesting birds. I think of rats. I try to block it out – to focus on my prayer. I hope the sound will stop. I don’t want to see what makes it.
But the sound doesn’t stop. And I
feel compelled to find its source.
In front of anyone else, I would never move like this, would never edge towards a sound, which I now sense comes from behind the pulpit to my right. I don’t want to see but I must see; I am already clammy inside my clothes.
Peering slowly, inch by inch, round the edge of the pulpit, I spot a sliver of something dark, down near the floor. The sliver shifts in sudden jerks – it is part of something active; I am not alone.
I cringe against the pulpit’s wooden panelling – then force myself to look. The sliver I saw was the edge of a doublet: dark fabric. Its wearer is kneeling on the floor; the soft scraping sound I heard is made by his fingernails as he drags them in great tearing sweeps along his skin. The scratching is violent and brutal. Unlaced at the wrists, his sleeves are pushed back – red tracks are raised on the surface of his forearms, intermittently speckled with blood.
As I watch he bends his head, puts his hands – like bony rakes – beneath the straw-coloured hair at the nape of his neck and drags them downwards around the curve of his throat, leaving fork-tracks of red. The effort pulls from him a gutteral grunt – the effort and perhaps the pain.
The sight is contemptible, disgusting; I lean against the side of the pulpit, then stumble up its short staircase and lunge for the Bible as for a talisman that will ward him off.
The great book is lying open on the lectern. It takes me a moment to focus on the words. To drown out the sound of him – the thing, the boy – I read loudly the first sentence my eye falls on: “Be sober and watch, for your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour…”
I can still hear him; still louder I read, declaiming the words as if to a congregation: “The God of all grace, which called you unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, shall his own self, after ye have suffered a little affliction, make you perfect; shall settle, strengthen and establish you. To him be glory and dominion for ever, and while the world endureth. Amen.”
“Sir?” At the back of the chapel Norris has put his head around the door: his mild brown eyes are puzzled and concerned. He could hear me outside, no doubt, and must have wondered at me shouting in an empty space.
I have stopped shouting now. The scraping sound has stopped, too; I know, without looking, that the boy has gone.
My hands are on the open book; I am breathing hard, as if I have just fought a bout. Why do I suffer this? Is it part of God’s purpose? Does He show me this hideous apparition – this ghost or whatever it may be – to remind me that there is evil in the world that I must fight too?
I don’t need to look far for it. Plenty of my own subjects wish me ill. There have been predictions – some would call them prophecies, but I do not grace them with that name. A monk declared last year that if I married Anne the dogs would lick my blood as they licked Ahab’s. And a nun who claimed to see visions foretold that I should not remain king one month after the marriage.
When I hear such things I am ready to lick the blood of the traitors that circulate this filth. But look: the months have passed and none of it has come true. It is more than half a year since Anne and I were married and I am still king.
As I move among my smiling courtiers these days, though, I wonder: how many in their secret hearts believe I deserve death – for breaking with the Pope, for heresy; how many of them hope my grave is gaping for me even now?
“Norris,” I say, coming down from the pulpit, “call in all keys – the master keys and the by-keys. And send for my locksmith. I want a new set of locks made. Larger and more complex. More secure. Perhaps I will design them myself.”
“New locks for the royal apartments, sir?”
“For all the rooms in the palace, Norris,” I say, passing him. I head towards the spiral staircase that leads back to my apartments. “In every palace.”
♦ ♦ ♦ IX ♦ ♦ ♦
The piece Anne’s playing is very difficult. Her fingers move swiftly over the keyboard; her brow is furrowed in concentration.
I lean across, and play a flourish on the low notes. She slaps me away.
“You are very irritating,” she says, but her tone is teasing.
My chair is right beside hers. I put my face close to her ear. “I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you.”
She swats me away like a fly. Grinning, I return my attention to the astrolabe I’m holding. “My wife is so heartless.”
The astrolabe is a thing of beauty: a gilt brass disc and dial, engraved with sea monsters and signs of the zodiac. It can be used for navigating on board ship, for telling the time day or night, for casting horoscopes and for surveying land. When the new child in Anne’s belly is born, I’ll be able to calculate his natal chart with this thing – for I was right: God has brought the next child, the boy, to us swiftly: the infant Elizabeth is only a few months old and Anne is pregnant again.
I move the astrolabe’s dial, examining the gradations marked on the rim. I say, “Have you felt him move, yet?”
“It’s too early.”
We both return to our preoccupations. Outside, the winter sun is watery and cold, weeping a trickle of light through a dank fog. Here, in my private gallery, torches in sconces on the walls throw patches of flickering orange onto the ceiling. A great fire blazes in the grate, but draughts still swirl at floor-level; my bad leg is propped up to escape them.
Anne sings a phrase or two as she plays, then breaks off. “If you love me so much… what… then…” She plays a note for each word, “would… you… give up for me?”
I laugh, still fiddling with the astrolabe. “What have I not given up for you?”
She turns and looks at me severely; I raise my eyebrows – what? Then I relent, and play the game; I put down the astrolabe. “All right. My hunting. I would give up the chase.”
She pretends to consider the offer for a moment – then turns back to playing. “Not enough.”
“What? That’s huge! All right then… I would give up gambling. Of any kind. No money will be staked by the King on anything ever again.”
She plays a little more; breaks off; shakes her head. “Uhuh.”
Reaching over, I take hold of her chin and turn her face to me. I say, “I would beg alms from door to door for the rest of my days.”
“To keep me in finery, I hope.”
“Of course. And I would lie at your feet in my stinking rags like a dog, and you could feed me scraps from your plate.” I kiss her. “Is that enough?”
I kiss her again. She wrinkles her nose and says, “Maybe.”
I kiss her repeatedly – kiss, kiss, kiss. I say, “Maybe, hm? Maybe.”
Suddenly I feel Anne tense, though she doesn’t move away. I realise that someone has come in. A bulky figure is standing in the shadows beyond the window. I let go of Anne, stretch, get up – say, “Cromwell, my diligent man, what have you brought in your ink-stained hands for me now? Come on. How many things on your list?”
The hands holding today’s documents are thick as a black-smith’s. Cromwell is a fighting dog, born in a back alley – a start in life so unheralded that he doesn’t even know his own age. I like his savage teeth; I like his charm. He is quick to see my purposes. God’s purposes. He gets things done.
Right now he is scanning his list. I say, “Oh, don’t depress me. Just start.” I turn to Anne. “Business is troublesome. Yours should be all happy thoughts. Take yourself to your ladies. For the child’s sake.”
She’s standing beside the virginals, queenly and authoritative. She says, “I’m fine.”
“For the child.”
She shoots me a withering look – and a concession. “I’ll sit down.”
Cromwell’s first subject is Catherine, whose title now is not Queen, of course, but – as my brother’s widow – Princess Dowager. He says, “Your Majesty. The latest report from Buckden says that the Princess Dowager hasn’t been out of her room for an entire month. Except to hear Mass in a gallery.” Anne gives a snort of exasperation; gets up a
gain.
Cromwell refers to his notes. “She won’t eat or drink what her new servants provide. The little she does eat is prepared by her chamber-women. And her room is used as her kitchen—”
“So – what?” I slap the sideboard next to me. “What should I be doing about it? Did I order any of this? This squalid situation is—” I beat my hand on the wood for emphasis, “entirely of her own making. What does she think? That we intend to poison her?”
“Of course,” Anne says. She follows me with her eyes as I cross to one of the windows. The fog seems to press against the glass. Below, dim silhouettes appear and disappear in the near distance – the builders are doing what they can despite the weather. This palace of Hampton Court is to have entirely new queen’s lodgings; we are impatient for them to be finished.
Cromwell says, “The Princess Dowager complains that the house at Buckden is too near the river, sir, and that the damp is destroying her health.”
“Nothing will destroy her health so well as keeping to her chamber, taking no air or exercise, and thinking nothing but obstinate and vengeful thoughts.” I turn to face him. “But if she is determined to hasten to her grave, I will not stop her.”
“And she asks, again, to see the Lady Mary.”
The Lady Mary, our daughter – our illegitimate daughter, since she was born during an invalid marriage. Now no longer Princess, and now almost eighteen years old.
Anne answers quietly: “Mary can see her mother when she tames the obstinacy of her Spanish blood and recognises that she herself is a bastard.”
Cromwell’s eyes flick to me: checking.
I say, “Exactly. I expect Lady Shelton has told you – Mary is playing the same trick as her mother and keeping to her chamber, so she won’t have to encounter our daughter Elizabeth.”
“And curtsey to her,” Anne puts in.