The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  I too felt a glow, and a sense of contentment. Now my future is settled, I thought to myself. I’ll never again have to worry about having no home, no comfortable place at court, nothing to live on except the charity of my relatives.

  Our wedding took place in the old, high-roofed chapel at Snape Hall, with choirs singing and my kinsman Bishop Tunstall performing the ceremony. John sent to York for bolts of fine French silk to make my wedding gown, and I wore Grandmother Fitzhugh’s lace veil and some of my mother’s long ropes of pearls. My stepdaughter Margaret walked solemnly ahead of me down the aisle casting out lavender sprigs and dried flower petals from a basket she held. It seemed as though there were hundreds of people in the candlelit chapel, nobles and tenants, men of business from York and all the members of the Council of the North.

  After the ceremony the spacious banqueting hall was filled with music and loud talk, wine flowed freely and great haunches of meat and platters of fish and fowl were brought in until the entire large and noisy party was replete and content. John and I sat in the seats of honor, my hand in his. We received the congratulations of the guests and their best wishes for long and healthy lives.

  I did my best to turn away haunting memories of my wedding to Ned, that blissful day, the joy I felt as his wife. Those memories made tears spring to my eyes, and sadness was the last thing I wanted to feel or display there in the banqueting hall.

  On our wedding night, however, I could not help giving way to my feelings. John lay beside me in the great purple bed, smelling of the musk he had applied very liberally to his jowly cheeks, and wearing a lace-trimmed nightshirt. But the musk could not disguise the stale odor that clung to him—the odor of age. And beneath the nightshirt was the paunchy, sunken-chested body of an old man, gray hairs sprinkled across his torso, buttocks low-slung and deflated, neck scrawny and wrinkled.

  I had thought that I could look past these signs of age and focus on the affection I felt for John. But I was wrong. There was no heat of passion between us. I had sworn to myself that I would be generous with my body, that I would do whatever John asked. I submitted willingly, but without desire. Afterwards I wept.

  “There there,” my husband said, patting my head soothingly, “we won’t try this again until you are ready. I have my own bedchamber. I’ll visit you when I am invited.”

  John was the most considerate of husbands, and I told him so. I wanted children of my own, yet I began to wonder whether a child begotten by an old man might be feeble and weak. It worried me. Out of kindness I continued to invite John into my bedchamber, and he sometimes enjoyed his nights with me, but after a few months he visited me less and less often, and finally his visits ceased. I resigned myself, for the time being at least, to not having a child of my own.

  Perhaps because of this change in my expectations, I devoted a great deal of time to my stepchildren, chiefly to my stepdaughter Margaret. Shy and bookish, Margaret needed a mother to praise and encourage her and give her confidence. She had no cousins living anywhere nearby; for playmates she had only the children of household servants and officers, and there were few of these. Most were either the wrong age to provide her with companionship or were not intelligent enough to share her interests. She had not been very well educated. Like most noblemen John saw no reason to train a daughter, even a bookish one, in the classics and believed that girls should be taught to sew, dance and sing, and play the virginals.

  Margaret and I began lessons in French and Latin each afternoon and we also read the Bible together, the king having authorized the distribution of an English translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale. In mild weather we went on long walks, taking the steep trails that led downward from the castle on its height through the hills to the lush valleys of the Swale and the Ure. I had never been a sturdy hiker but I grew more surefooted and Margaret too seemed to thrive on the outdoor exercise.

  “You’re getting to be a regular little mountain goat,” Johnny said to Margaret as he passed us on a trail one afternoon, on his way to St. Mary’s Abbey. “Oh and by the way, how do you say ‘mountain goat’ in Latin?”

  “Ask your monks,” Margaret said curtly, turning her head away and walking on. Johnny often taunted his younger sister. I found his tormenting of her hateful, but I left it to his father to discipline him.

  “We look forward to seeing you at the tournament in York,” I said, trying to sound as pleasant as I could to Johnny, who had never been welcoming to me.

  He shrugged and passed on. His rudeness irked John, who spoke harshly to him and threatened to take away his tilting ponies and even to whip him unless he learned civility. I didn’t take offense, though I well might have. I remembered how brusque and aggressive my brother Will had been when he was Johnny’s age, nearly fifteen, though Will, even when on his worst behavior, had always been amusing.

  Instead of attempting to intrude myself into Johnny’s life or win him over I watched him, and talked to John about what I observed.

  “You know he spends a great deal of time at St. Mary’s,” I remarked one afternoon after we had seen the boy practice his wrestling, and praised him for his strength and his skill. In his athletic pursuits he was not only skilled, but determined, bent on winning at all costs and often contemptuous of his opponents. It was almost alarming to watch him, his face set in a grim rictus, his jaw locked and his eyes narrowed. He was like a warrior going into battle, fearsome and invulnerable.

  “Yes. He’s always gone there a lot. I used to think he might become a monk.” John laughed. “That was before he began seducing the stable girls.”

  St. Mary’s Abbey, only four miles from Snape Hall, was the greatest religious house for many miles around, indeed one of the greatest in all Yorkshire. With its flocks of sheep, vast pasturelands and woodlots it was wealthy, and the monks ate well and lived in comfort. Like all such venerable religious houses, St. Mary’s provided alms to the poor and hospitality to travelers. The monks took in the sick and often cured them; many of the cures were brought about, so it was said, by the wonderworking powers of Saint Agatha.

  Saint Agatha’s tomb to the right of the high altar in the abbey church drew many pilgrims from Yorkshire and beyond. Parents brought their sick children, farmers their diseased cattle to the holy tomb and often both the children and the cattle were healed. Saint Agatha had lived in the tenth century, a peasant girl greatly favored by God who gave her the gift of curing disease and alleviating pain. After she died, her body was brought to the abbey and enshrined in its tomb in the church. In a golden reliquary were kept locks of her hair and nail parings from her slender white fingers, and each year the reliquary, together with a waxen image of the saint, were carried reverently around the abbey buildings three times with a great crowd of the faithful forming a procession.

  In the year after John and I were married, we learned that the traditional procession had been canceled.

  “Blasphemy! Sacrilege! The Holy Father will never allow it!” Johnny’s shouting could be heard throughout the lower floor of Snape Hall. He came into the sunlit room where John and I customarily sat in the morning after we had broken our fast.

  “You can’t allow this, father. The procession must be held. It’s always been held. It always shall be held, from now until the end of time!”

  John raised his eyebrows and looked quizzically at his blustering son.

  “If there is to be no procession, I cannot change that. I am not a churchman.”

  “You can make your friend Bertie change it!”

  “Bishop Tunstall is his own master.”

  “No he’s not! He answers to the Bishop of Rome! As a loyal son of the church you must hold him accountable!” Johnny stood, feet apart, arms folded, his every muscle tensed, aquiver with passion. “Tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Agatha. Our tenants, and the peasants from the abbey lands, have all gathered in front of the church. I’ve just come from there. They don’t understand why the relics aren’t being brought out and the cart decorate
d for Saint Agatha’s image to ride in. They are confused. Tomorrow they will be furious.”

  “Son, nothing you or I might try to do would make any difference. The church in this realm is now under the headship of King Henry, not the Holy Father in Rome. King Henry is not in favor of showing special veneration to saints.”

  “Then King Henry can go straight to hell!” And before his father or I could react, Johnny ran out into the corridor and down the stairs into the courtyard. In a moment we heard the clatter of his horse’s hooves as he rode away.

  John swore, red-faced, got to his feet and started out after his son, limping on his imperfectly healed leg.

  “Wait!” I cried. “You’ll never catch up with him. Besides, what would you do if you did catch him? He’s stronger than you are now.”

  “He wouldn’t dare defy me!”

  “Did you never defy your father, when you were fifteen?”

  “Often. But he punished me. He used to shut me in the dog kennels with the hounds, and make me eat the scraps that were thrown to them. Once I was in the kennels for a week before my brother let me out. And even then my father beat me until I bled.”

  We saw nothing more of Johnny. Then, a week after he left, word reached us from St. Mary’s that an important event was about to occur. The body of Saint Agatha was to be disinterred from its tomb. After nearly six centuries, the earthly remains of the wonderworking saint were to be brought once again into the light.

  Johnny was among those we saw in the large crowd when we arrived at the abbey to witness the historic opening of the saint’s tomb. Along with the hundreds of others in the abbey church, he knelt in prayer, head bowed, as the abbot asked God’s blessing on the ceremony.

  Silence fell as the work began. The only sound in the vast echoing nave was the clank and crash of pick on stone, followed by the shoveling of earth and then, after nearly an hour, by the groaning and tearing of ancient wood. The tenth-century casket was being opened.

  We heard a gasp, then a cry from the abbot, followed by similar sounds of surprise and amazement from the workmen and others close enough to see what the casket held.

  “Look, milord!” the abbot said to John, who went over to the lip of the tomb and peered down into it.

  “By all that’s holy! She’s as fresh as the day she died. And she smells of roses!”

  The cry was carried throughout the church. “The body is fresh! It smells of roses! There is no decay! Surely Saint Agatha is greatly beloved by God, to lie in her tomb for six centuries and know no corruption.”

  Spontaneously, with no one leading it, the congregation began to sing a hymn. The melody hung in the air, a reverent paean to the miracle we were witnessing.

  “It is a sign,” I heard people whisper. “The Lord has given us a sign. We may be forbidden to carry the saint’s relics in procession, but Saint Agatha is stronger than any prohibition. She has been preserved uncorrupted. The old ways of the church will also be preserved, without taint or change, and we will preserve them.”

  I made my way to the casket and looked down into it. There, lying on a bed of lilies, was a young girl, her white hands folded across her chest, her eyes closed as if in sleep. Her long dark hair fell in waves to her shoulders. Her face held none of the waxy pallor of death.

  I was astounded. There should have been nothing in the tomb but bones, yellow and shrunken by time. A grinning skull should have met my gaze—not this lovely, sweet-smelling body, its odor as fragrant as if it had been set in a garden of flowers. With the others in the church I knelt in reverence, and joined in the singing of the hymn, feeling with each rise and fall of its beautiful old cadences the worshipful response of a believing heart.

  12

  JOHN AND I RODE SIDE BY SIDE, OUR HORSES GALLOPING WITH A NOISY clatter along the wide, straight highway known as the Great North Road.

  We were on our way to Durham, where a rebel army was said to be gathering, and where the Council of the North was about to meet in urgent session. We hoped to arrive by nightfall the following day.

  Much had happened in the past six months, since the unearthing of the miraculously preserved body of Saint Agatha. Word of the remarkable discovery had spread rapidly, setting off a spontaneous rising of the devout peasants of Yorkshire, who came to St. Mary’s Abbey in their thousands and then began marching, under the saint’s banner, all across the region.

  Wearing gray woollen robes with a white cross emblazoned on the front they walked in resolute procession from town to town and village to village, Saint Agatha’s banner held aloft, stopping in churchyards and cemeteries, at wayside shrines and in monastery courtyards to recruit others to their cause. Dozens, then hundreds joined. Men and women paused in their labor, leaving fields untended and animals untethered, to follow the holy banners and add their voices to the chants and songs of the pilgrims.

  “Saint Agatha and the True Church!” they shouted. “Restore the saints! Restore the relics!”

  “All commons unite together! Saint Agatha forever!”

  As their pilgrim army grew, they became more bold.

  “Down with the Mouldwarp! The Mouldwarp sins against God; let him die!”

  It was treason, this rallying cry, for the Mouldwarp was the mythic name being attached to King Henry, and the pilgrims were calling for the death of the king.

  The Mouldwarp prophecy was an old one, attributed to the wizard Merlin in the days of King Arthur. According to the prophecy, a king would arise in England, a king destined to bring strife and bloodshed to the land as a result of his sins. He was seen as much monster as monarch, outsize and bestial, and according to the prophecy, he would be beset by enemies, and his inevitable defeat would be bloody and terrible.

  King Henry, outsize and in conflict with the pope, the French king and Queen Catherine’s nephew Emperor Charles, fitted the part of the Mouldwarp to perfection, and the pilgrims looked forward to the day of his certain defeat.

  We heard them singing about it when we passed through Warringham, where a hundred gray-clad pilgrims were encamped in a field.

  Mouldwarp alive

  Evil will thrive

  Mouldwarp is dead

  Evil has fled.

  They chanted the doggerel verse endlessly, clapping to its rhythm. I felt a chill, hearing the king cursed in this way. Somehow the religious devotion of these northmen had curdled into savagery, and no one knew where that savagery might lead.

  We stopped in Stainford and lodged with a landowner who was arming his servants and the most trusted of his tenants.

  “They captured the king’s tax collector two days ago,” he told us. “Before that they assaulted the justices as they were on their way to Durham for the assizes. You had best take care, milord, you and your lady. I hear they have sworn to kill anyone who serves the king on the Council of the North.”

  “We will guard ourselves, I assure you. Our best defense is disguise.” We were dressed as prosperous country folk, and our mounts, though sturdy and fast, were not the fine horses in John’s stables but serviceable horses bought in York by Daniel.

  The next day, outside the village of Randsby, we came upon a crowd, chanting and shouting. They blocked the road. We were unable to pass, so we paused on the edge of the noisy gathering to see what was happening.

  “We’ve got him! We’ve got the spy!” came the response to John’s query about what was going on.

  A man was being dragged to the center of a hastily dug pit, the sort of circle made for staging dog-fights or cock-fights. His hands were tied behind his back and he was bloody; clearly he had been beaten.

  As we watched a bullskin was brought and wrapped around the sufferer, whose pathetic cries were all but drowned out by the roaring and clapping of the onlookers. When the bullskin had been secured, hounds were loosed. With a furious snarling and growling they sank their sharp teeth deep into the bullskin, tearing it and ripping open the flesh of the man beneath.

  For one horrible moment the victim rai
sed his head and screamed, so that his face, his features locked in a rictus of agony, could clearly be seen.

  “My God,” I heard John say. “I know that man. It’s Bertie’s cook. I’ve eaten his dinners a hundred times.” He urged his horse forward, as if hoping to intervene, but there was no parting the densely packed, cheering spectators, some of whom had locked arms in solidarity. Besides, in a moment it was evident that the thing the dogs were consuming was no longer a man but a bloody corpse.

  I said a prayer for the soul of the dead man, and for the misguided and cruel zealots who had murdered him, and for our safety as we rode on, silent and shaken, toward Durham.

  No sooner had we arrived, road-dusty and stinking of horse sweat, at Cuthbert Tunstall’s episcopal palace than we were ushered into a chamber where several dozen grim-faced men were assembled. I was immediately aware that the men saw me as an intruder.

  “Lady Latimer is my kinswoman,” the bishop said, indicating a carved bench where I was to sit, somewhat uncomfortably, listening to the men talk for the next several hours. “She has been brought here for her protection.” It was not strictly true. John had wanted me with him, partly for my safety as he expected to be away from Snape Hall for some time, but mostly for his own sake. He relied on me and needed me.

  Bishop Tunstall wasted no time in accomplishing the vital business of the Council.

  “We all know why we are here. The revolt that is spreading through the North Country is the most dangerous rising I have seen in my long lifetime. Every lord and gentleman is expected to raise his men and arm them to be ready to march on the king’s order. That order has not yet come, but may come any day. We need to appoint a local commander. Is there anyone here who would oppose the naming of John Neville to be that commander?”

  Silence.

  “Good. John, you are to lead our forces.”