The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

Sir Thomas ignored my interruption.

  “You and my son have done a poor job. I shall do what you could not.”

  His eyes were cold. Looking at him, I thought, not for the first time, how little Ned had resembled him. Ned’s handsome face was frank and boyishly eager, his brown eyes warm and lively and capable of deep tenderness. Sir Thomas’s face was feline, wary, shrewd and forbidding. Ned looked like his mother, whose miniature portrait he had kept in our bedroom.

  “You will remain here in your room until the king has come and gone. I will say that you are indisposed. I do not know what influence you have with the king, or how you tricked him into giving his blessing to your marriage to my son and making Ned master of Gainesborough. Your means of bewitching the king is a mystery to me. You are clever, anyone can see that. You are lovely to look at. Yet there are many clever, good-looking women in and around the court. What gives you more of his favor than any other woman?”

  He paused. He had allowed his resentment to make him vehement—and voluble, which was unlike him. He needed to regain his composure. When he spoke again it was in a calm, dispassionate tone.

  “At any rate, I cannot take the risk of allowing you to be in the king’s presence, or near it. You will stay in your room.”

  “But King Henry is coming to Gainesborough Hall chiefly because of me.”

  “I thought he was coming for the hunting.”

  “He can hunt anywhere. He chose Gainesborough as a compliment to me—and to Ned of course.”

  I saw Sir Thomas wince slightly at the mention of Ned’s name. He turned to go, then, as he reached the door, he looked back at me.

  “Don’t think for a moment that I am unaware of what happened to my son. You drove him to do more than he could. You wore him out. You sent him to Netherhampton on the day he died. You caused his accident.” He paused. In a low voice he added, “You killed him.”

  “No, no. You’re wrong! He drove himself. He didn’t know when to stop. I urged him to rest. I begged him not to go to Netherhampton that day, but he wouldn’t listen.” I broke down. For a moment my sobbing was the only sound in the bedchamber. My father-in-law stared at me stonily.

  “I loved Ned. I would never have done anything to hurt him. You must believe me.”

  “I believe this. You, Catherine Parr, have brought grave misfortune on us all.”

  “My name is Milady Burgh. Kindly address me properly.”

  Sir Thomas cursed at me and left, slamming the door and locking it.

  I felt shaky and unsteady on my feet. My heart was pounding and my head was beginning to ache. I lay down on the bed and tried to sleep, but restless thoughts kept me awake. What was I to do? I was at the mercy of Ned’s merciless father, who hated me so much that he had convinced himself that I was responsible for Ned’s death. The thought was so monstrous, so terribly wrong. Would Sir Thomas have treated me any differently had he known about the baby?

  A new and very worrisome thought came to me. What future was I to have? How was I to provide for my child, now that Ned was gone? Surely my son would be the heir to Gainesborough Hall and all its lands and rents. But what if my child was a girl? She would inherit the property, but it would come under the control of her nearest male relative. Would that be my brother Will, or, more likely, her grandfather Sir Thomas?

  I began to be frightened. I was shivering, and I drew the warm wool blankets over myself. I tried to sleep but my doubts and anxieties kept me awake. For what seemed like hours I lay in an unsettled state, distressed and uneasy.

  I was roused from my dark musings by a pounding on my bedchamber door.

  “A message from the king. For the Lady Catherine.”

  I sat up and, throwing the blanket aside, reached into my trunk for my morning gown. Hurriedly I fastened it around my waist and pulled on the sleeves, not bothering to attach them to the bodice. I tucked my hair under a French hood as best I could and stepped to the door.

  “I am ready,” I called out. “I cannot open the door from the inside.”

  I heard the key turning in the lock. The door opened.

  Before me stood a man in the king’s livery. He held out a document to me. I could see that it bore the mark of an official seal.

  “I was sent to deliver this to you, milady. And to you alone.”

  There was no sign of Sir Thomas or my uncle William in the corridor. Where were they?

  I took the document, broke the seal and read the few words written on the page.

  “The king having been informed that recent rains have spoiled the hunting in the neighborhood of Gainesborough Hall, has decided to hunt elsewhere for the present.”

  That was all. Those few words. The king was not coming after all. All our efforts and expense. All Ned’s days and nights of labor. His accident. His suffering. His death.

  I felt my knees give way under me and reached out to clutch the nearest object—which happened to be the carved oak bedpost—for support.

  “Where is—my steward?” I managed to ask. “Send me my steward.”

  With a bow the royal messenger left and in a few moments Daniel Frith appeared in the doorway.

  “Daniel, the king is not coming.” My voice was very low. I could barely speak the words.

  “I know, mistress. I have ordered all the preparations for his visit to cease. The messenger informed us.”

  “Where is Sir Thomas?”

  “He has gone to his estate, and your uncle went with him.”

  “Oh Daniel, it was all for nothing! Everything we tried to do. Poor Ned’s death. It was all for nothing!”

  “Surely not, milady. The king is no doubt most grateful—”

  “The king cares nothing for any of us! We are pawns on his chessboard, flies in his soup! We matter not at all to the king!”

  I felt my face growing hot and saw that Daniel was looking at me in alarm.

  “Don’t distress yourself so, mistress! I urge you to try to be calm.”

  But calmness was the farthest thing from the feelings churning within me at that moment. I was aware of a great rage building within me. Rage against the waste of all our efforts—and above all, the waste of Ned’s precious life.

  I stood, and swore a great oath.

  “Damn King Henry to hell, and all his court!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  Then I collapsed.

  When I awoke it was night. I was in bed, in my candlelit bedchamber, and Dr. Swetnam was sitting quietly by my bedside. Two of my maids were also in the room, murmuring to one another and fussing with some linens.

  I was aware of pain in my belly.

  The doctor was looking at me. He reached over and put his hand on my forehead.

  “You must sleep,” he said. “And you must drink this for the pain.”

  He put a goblet to my lips and I drank from it obediently.

  “Is this what you gave Ned to drink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  “No. You are going to live. But you have lost the child. I’m sorry.”

  The maids had ceased their chatter. They were not looking at me. Only the crackling of the fire in the hearth broke the silence in the dim room. That and the sound of my broken sobbing, my tears falling for the baby that would never live, for the last of Ned that had died with it, and for myself, alone and bereft, and wishing that I too were dead.

  7

  I WAS SHOCKED BY THE SIGHT OF MY MOTHER WHEN WILL BROUGHT HER to Gainesborough Hall to see me three months after Ned’s death.

  Illness had aged her. Her beautiful red hair was lusterless and graying, her fine white skin veined and lined, and her lips were cracked by the harsh dry October wind that blew in ceaseless gusts up and down our valley. Though she wore a fur-lined gown as she was carried into the house I could see that she was shivering, and I gave orders for more logs to be laid on the fire and mugs of hot cider to be brought for mother and Will and their servants.

  Will embraced me and handed me a
bouquet of flowers—though where he had found flowers at this time of year I couldn’t imagine. He looked well-fed and prosperous in his thick felt cloak and blood-red doublet of fine cut velvet and his hat with a gleaming garnet and white feathered plume. He had been of the greatest help to me since Ned’s death, for my hostile father-in-law had seized all the rents from Gainesborough Hall leaving me with no income and Will had been sending me much needed purses of coins each month to pay my servants and buy what I needed.

  I smiled at my brother and bent down to smell the flowers he had given me. I felt a tickle in my nose, then an irresistible urge to sneeze. I sneezed—again and again, making Will laugh.

  “Oh no, not that sneezing powder again,” my mother said. “He’s used it on me and everyone else I know.”

  I threw down the flowers and blew my nose into my silk handkerchief. While I recovered Will settled mother and himself into a long bench with cushions in front of the fire, chuckling to himself as he did so. I noticed that he had to lift mother out of her carrying chair and set her down on the bench. No one had told me that she was having trouble walking. With a final wipe of my nose I went over to mother and hugged her and kissed her dry cheek.

  “From what I hear,” mother said when I had sat down, “you haven’t been taking very good care of yourself. Now I see it for myself. Look at you! Have you no better gown? I remember that one from three years ago.”

  “I am in mourning, mother.”

  “To show respect is necessary, yes. And your husband was a good man, by all accounts. I liked him—even though I always thought you ought to marry his grandfather.”

  “Yes mother, I know.”

  “And as to the child—well, we women all have our private sorrows. Best not to dwell on a loss like that. Heaven knows I have been through many such losses with our dear queen.” I had written to mother to tell her about the child I had lost. But I had sworn her to secrecy. Apart from Dr. Swetnam and two or three of my chambermaids, who were discreet, only she and Will knew about the baby.

  “Are you still able to serve the queen?” I asked, wondering how mother would perform the duties of a lady-in-waiting when she was unable to walk.

  “Queen Catherine has given mother a long leave of absence from her post,” Will told me, and I could tell from his tone that it was likely to be a permanent leave. “With her usual stipend. Mother has come to live with me for the time being.”

  I nodded, thinking how kind Queen Catherine was and how glad I was that Will was such a good son to our mother. Of our sister Nan we said nothing. She had married Sir William Herbert, an ambitious young soldier, and was keeping a cordial distance from us. Why, I didn’t know for certain, although I had my suspicions. The scandal over our sister-in-law Anne Bourchier, and my own early widowhood and conflict with my father-in-law made Will and me both objects of gossip. Nan was a deeply conventional girl. Respectability mattered far more to her than family loyalty. She did not want to be closely associated with us.

  Our mugs of cider arrived and we drank the hot cinnamon-scented brew, mother wrapping her chilled fingers around her mug and holding it up to her face so that the steam bathed her cheeks and forehead.

  “What of you, Will?” I asked after a pause. “Have you heard anything at all from Anne?”

  “Best leave that subject alone,” my mother said sharply.

  “No, mother. Cat has a right to know what has become of her sister-in-law. Of course I have seen nothing of her for nearly two years. The last I heard she was living with a renegade priest and having his children.”

  I shook my head in wonderment. “Whatever would Grandmother Fitzhugh say?”

  “That she was a heretic.” We all laughed.

  “Anne’s departure has made Will a wealthy man, as I think you realize,” mother remarked. “He has inherited her property, just as if she had died.”

  “I hope she has something to live on, at least,” I said, remembering my own uncomfortable situation and trusting that Anne would not be left in want.

  “I believe she has a small allowance. I would send her something myself, if I knew where she was.”

  Will spoke without bitterness. Apparently he was reconciled to his situation, as a married man but without a wife. But then, if what Anne had told me was true, he was probably happier without her.

  After supper that evening, when mother had gone to bed and Will and I were lingering by the fire, I asked him about mother’s condition.

  “As you can see, her legs have given out. She can walk a little, if she has someone on either side of her to steady her and catch her when she falls. Her mind is clear though her tongue is more and more tart. We humor her, I do my best to make her laugh and forget her fainting spells and the soreness in her back, which sometimes keeps her up all night.”

  “The sneezing powder.”

  “The sneezing powder, yes. And the mechanical mole I bought to amuse her when I was in Saxony—they make the most remarkable things there—and the candles that you can’t blow out and the drippy yellow stuff that looks just like egg yolk that I manage to spill all over her gowns now and then.”

  I smiled, remembering what it was like to live with Will.

  “How can she be so ill, when she’s not yet forty?”

  Will shook his head. “We’ve called in the king’s own physicians, and the queen’s. They all say different things. No one has a name for her disease.”

  “I’ve heard that the best physicians come from Italy.”

  “We had an Italian one, a monk from Salerno. He said she had a wasting disease caused by too much bilious humor. He said she would die in three months. But it has been a year, and she still lives.

  “Her mind is always active. She has been thinking a lot about you, as you will find out tomorrow. She has good news for you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll let her have that pleasure.”

  I did not press him, but was very curious. Was I going to be liberated from my uncomfortable situation at Gainesborough Hall?

  Everything about the house and grounds reminded me of Ned, and of the future I had hoped for with him. My father-in-law was doing all he could to force me to leave. He had threatened to evict me, and was suing for ownership of the manor, though he had taken no direct action against me as yet. I had no doubt that the day would come when I would have to fight for my right to stay in the house. I dreaded that day.

  The following morning I was relieved to see that mother looked brighter and more rested as we sat down to our morning meal of white bread and kid stew. She ate heartily, and drank her flagon of small ale with relish.

  “Now, Cat, it is time to speak of your future,” she said when she had finished, her manner brisk. “It’s no good your moping here. I advise you to come to an arrangement with Middle Burgh—I mean Sir Thomas—and let him buy the house and estate from you. I think he would prefer that to going to court. Once all that is settled there is a post waiting for you. I have arranged for you to join the court of young Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the king’s son.”

  The king’s son, I thought. And Bessie Blount’s. The boy I saw in King Henry’s arms when I was a child in the Golden Valley. How old would he be now? Ten or twelve?

  “Lord Fitzroy will soon be married,” mother was saying. “You will be lady-in-waiting to his bride. There are great changes at court, you know. Queen Catherine, bless her, will be divorced. I have no doubt of it. Princess Mary will be disinherited. The king will marry Mistress Boleyn. If she has a child it will inherit the throne. But if she does not, then young Henry Fitzroy will become the next king. And you, my dear, will be lady-in-waiting to the future Queen of England.”

  8

  I REMEMBERED MY MOTHER’S WORDS AS I RODE TOWARD THE MANOR OF Sheriff Hutton a week later, escorted by my faithful Daniel Frith and some half-dozen of my familiar servants from Gainesborough Hall. I was to serve the king’s son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, and his future wife. One day they might be king and q
ueen.

  But as soon as my traveling party rode into the courtyard of the large manor house I was reminded that the change of reigns, when it came, was likely to occur far in the future.

  For there in the courtyard, bending back a thick ashwood longbow, was the tall, golden-haired King Henry, looking as strong and fit and youthful as any man I had ever seen. And beside him was a thin stripling, doing his best to bend back his own small bow but failing again and again to launch his arrow.

  Man and boy were dressed alike, in the green jerkin and brown cloth trousers of foresters. Seeing them I was reminded of the long-ago day at the Field of Cloth of Gold when King Henry had carried his baby son in his arms to show him off to his court. Then the king and the boy had been dressed alike in suits of cloth of gold; now they were alike in being disguised in forest green.

  They were greatly unalike, however, in their abilities. Young Henry Fitzroy was small for his eleven years, with narrow shoulders and spindly legs. When he attempted to draw the bow he clenched his teeth and drew his lips back into a grimace of ferocity, giving evidence of a considerable strength of will. Yet determination was not enough; his muscles were too weak to draw the heavy bow. Time after time he made a heroic effort. Time after time he failed.

  I saw the king look over at the boy with an expression of resignation. He said little, he preferred to encourage and teach by example.

  “Here, boy.” He adjusted young Fitzroy’s slender fingers into a tighter grip. He touched his narrow back, at a point between the shoulder blades. “Pull from here.”

  Without waiting to watch the boy’s effort he strode a few feet away, took up his own bow, and drew back the hempen string with practiced ease. The arrow flew to the target, and struck its center, setting off a round of polite applause from the onlookers. Fitzroy looked at the ground. The king, not unkindly, patted him on the shoulder as he walked past him.

  “Never mind, boy. We’ll try you at tennis,” I heard King Henry say as he walked nonchalantly off toward the stables, his figure magnificent even from the rear.