The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  Lady Anne spoke graciously to me in a very thickly accented English and then turned to the next woman to be introduced. My brief moment of royal attention was over very quickly. I watched as others knelt before her, murmured their greetings, and received hers in turn. King Henry, I noticed, was not watching his wife but the ladies who came before her, each in turn, and when Catherine Howard came forward to make her obeisance, he looked at her and smiled. She looked coyly back.

  When at last we all had been introduced, together with the prominent clergymen and members of the king’s council and the aldermen of London, we formed ourselves into a procession and followed the king and his new queen as they walked under the dark skies down the heath toward the royal palace of Greenwich, the members of Anne’s German household alongside us. Near the king and queen walked my uncle William and his troop of guardsmen, the Calais Spears. My stepson Johnny was among them, looking lean and fit. I glanced at him but he did not smile in recognition; the spearmen were taught to show no emotion when on parade, as I knew, and I did not expect him to acknowledge me.

  Besides, it was all the guardsmen could do to restrain the crowds that swarmed around us, calling out, clapping, reaching their hands out toward us as we passed in splendid parade. Entranced by the spectacle, they were wild with joy, like children let loose in a roomful of toys and sweets. Again and again they cried out to Lady Anne. “Welcome to our good queen! May she be fruitful! May she come to no harm!” Smiling, she nodded right and left as she walked along by the king’s side, hurrying to match his long, uneven, limping stride.

  From time to time she looked over at him, as if seeking reassurance. But he, when not gesturing broadly to the onlookers or flinging out golden coins to them from a bag he carried, was giving all his attention to his wife’s maid of honor, the plump and pretty Catherine Howard. And I, my heart beating rapidly as I walked along, barely took notice of anyone but Tom, who had offered his arm to Margaret Douglas and was escorting her, as gallantly as a husband or a lover might, in the direction of the distant palace gates.

  23

  WHEN I FINALLY SAW TOM ALONE, AFTER MANY TANTALIZING WEEKS at court without him, we flew into each other’s arms, heedless of everything but our need for each other. To kiss him was such rapture that it was almost painful. The feel of his warm lips on mine, the familiar smell of him, the comfort of his strong sheltering arms made me once again his, and his alone. All that had gone before, all my months of pain and sorrow before his loving letter arrived, all that I had heard about him at court fell away, forgotten, as he caressed me and once again made me his. I had no will, no thought, no self: we were one, and nothing else existed.

  We met in a small damp room with a cot and chest, next to the wine cellar. It had been an under-steward’s room, but Tom paid the under-steward to vacate it. The room became ours.

  “How I’ve missed you, Catherine! How I’ve longed for you!”

  I closed my eyes, listening to his tender voice as we lay, replete and more than content, side by side in the small candlelit room. “You cannot know what my life has been, these past months. How fast everything is changing. What dangers I have faced, and still face!”

  “Dangers? From whom?”

  He turned his face, so close to mine, away and stared up at the ceiling.

  “When a man rises high, he is always in danger. And I mean to rise higher. Oh yes. Much, much higher, before I’m through.”

  “You would be much higher, part of the royal family, if you married Margaret Douglas.”

  Swiftly his mood shifted. He chuckled. “Has that been worrying you? I told you, I could not bring myself to wed her, because my heart is yours.” He kissed me, and I yielded gladly to his kiss. But something in the lightness of his tone made me uneasy.

  “Or because the lady said no?”

  He pulled away suddenly, a strange glimmer in his intensely blue eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From the same person who told me that Henry Fitzroy’s widow would not marry you.”

  Sitting up, and pulling his linen shirt around him, Tom swore, vehemently and loudly.

  “Damn Howard whoreson villains! The lies they tell about me would fill one of your thick chapbooks! I suppose you’ve heard all the stories, about my thieving and whoring and lying—oh yes, and the one about how I raped a girl and killed her brother.”

  Surprised that he should mention the terrible incident Catherine Howard had told me about—an incident I had instantly dismissed as beyond belief—I nodded.

  “None of it is true. You do believe me, don’t you?”

  He looked bereft. I sat up and put my arm around him. “Of course. I always want to believe you.”

  He sighed and, head bowed, ran his hands through his thick reddish curls.

  “The Howards hate me and want to destroy me if they can. They will say anything, do anything, to bring me down. They lost the king’s favor when Anne Boleyn was disgraced. We Seymours gained it when my sister Jane became queen. That much is clear. But, beyond all the lies—there is something else. Sometimes—sometimes I wonder—whether there is any good in me. Whether I was even meant to live at all.” He spoke hesitantly, at the end of his words his voice dropped away almost to a whisper.

  “Whatever can you mean?” It was so unlike him, this mood of self-doubt. It was as if he felt a sense of doom hovering around himself. I felt a chill, listening to him.

  Instinctively I ceased to hold him and moved away. He reached for my hand and held it.

  “Something happened to me a long time ago. It was terrible. No one knows about it but my brother and me—at least I think no one knows. I have never told anyone. My brother Edward is a few years older than I am and as boys we were always at each other’s throats. He is cleverer than I am and yet he always envied me because I was tougher and bolder. I wasn’t afraid of a fight. It irked him that I wouldn’t run away when he came after me. I stood and gave back blow for blow.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Ah, but there are many ways to fight—and I am only good at one of them. He found another.”

  “He drowned my favorite spaniel, and he made me watch while he did it. I was so enraged that I took a stone and tried to smash his head with it. He still has a scar. I became obsessed with killing him. I tried to push him off a high roof. When we went hunting I aimed at him with a crossbow and would have hit him but a deer got in the way. We fought a lot—until he was sent to live in Archbishop Cranmer’s household and I went to sea for a few years. By the time we saw one another again, I had grown much bigger and stronger and he would never fight me again. But I still hated him. I still hate him now. I think, given the chance, I might kill him. So you see, I wonder whether I am worth very much. Maybe I ought to have been drowned along with my dog.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “It is, isn’t it? But you see, there is something more. My brother told me that he heard our mother admit once that after he was born, she didn’t want any more children. She hated our father and wanted to leave him and enter a convent. So she went to an herb woman and got a poultice that was supposed to make her womb shrivel. Instead it made her fertile. She had me—and my younger sisters. So in a way, I should never have been born. Perhaps that’s why I carry such sinful thoughts in my head.”

  “But Tom, surely you can see all this through a man’s eyes now, and understand it—and understand and forgive yourself. To begin with, you know that boys are cruel, terribly cruel. What your brother did was wicked, and he should have been punished for it—not by you, but by your father. If he had been, you wouldn’t have burned for revenge. Your need for justice would have been satisfied—or nearly so. Can’t you see now that your brother was terribly jealous of you and did and said anything he could to hurt you? It was wrong—yet you can see why he acted as he did. Instead of wanting to kill him you can see that you need to protect yourself against him.”

  “I do protect myself—as well as I can.”

/>   “You think yourself unworthy, yet the truth is, you are no better or worse than others. Many people imagine themselves taking violent revenge on those who have hurt them, not just you. I know, I’ve heard them say it. And I’m quite sure that many unhappy mothers have tried to ensure that they would have no more children. That doesn’t mean God didn’t want you to be born, or that he cursed you with malicious thoughts.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because God is our merciful father, who loves us.”

  “I have never known a merciful father.”

  I took Tom in my arms again. I had never felt so close to him as at that moment. I loved him beyond anything, and wanted to help him.

  “I’m glad you told me this. Promise me that you won’t reproach yourself any more.”

  “If you will promise to lend me your strength when I need it.”

  “All that I am is yours, you know that.”

  Our embrace turned once again to an embrace of desire, and the love that flowed between us was stronger and more intense than before. When we parted—all too soon—I returned to my duties in the queen’s apartments with a full heart, feeling that Tom had entrusted something precious to me—not only his love, but his trust.

  24

  HMMING A BRIGHT LITTLE TUNE, A SMILE HOVERING AT THE CORNERS of her small mouth, Queen Anne sat at her large embroidery frame stitching a coverlet. Some of us, her ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor, were sitting with her around the frame, adding our own stitches and providing her with company. In addition to myself, there was my sister Nan, visiting for the afternoon, Lady Guildford, Lady Dorchester and the pretty young maid of honor Catherine Howard.

  The windows of the queen’s sitting room were open to the afternoon breeze, which brought in from the garden the sweet scents of roses and lilac, white star-flowers and freshly cut grass. It was spring, yet Anne was still dressed for winter. Though she had been in England for five months, she still wore her large, unattractive German hoods and her dressmakers continued to cut her gowns in the stiff, square German style and to sew them from heavy cloth suitable for a much chillier climate than ours. The dressmakers came often to fit her for new gowns, speaking to one another in their own harsh language and casting surreptitious glances at us from under beetle brows.

  Anne’s German servants had made no effort to learn any English, but Anne herself had an English tutor who came every other day to give her a lesson; she was able to converse in English after a fashion, with much stumbling and long pauses while she searched for words. She still swore in German, however, so that none of us could understand and take offense, and I often heard her muttering to herself in German under her breath. I could only imagine what those mutterings might mean.

  “My dear mother would love this warm weather,” Anne remarked to us, each of her words heavily accented. “It is so very cold in Düsseldorf at this time of year.”

  “Is it ever warm in Düsseldorf?” asked Lady Dorchester.

  “Of course it is warm—in summer. That is when we have our fine weather.”

  “And is your summer very long, your majesty?”

  “At least three weeks. Sometimes four,” was Anne’s tart response. The superiority of English weather to German was a frequent subject in the royal apartments, and Anne was always nettled by it. In truth, there were few subjects on which she could converse with anything like fluency, and weather was one of them.

  We were silent for awhile, attending to our stitching. I was thinking of Tom, who I had not seen for several days, and wondering when we would meet again.

  “Is this coverlet we are stitching meant to be a cradle blanket?” asked Catherine Howard with a sly look at the rest of us.

  “No. It is for my bed.”

  “We do so hope that your majesty will soon be able to give us the good news that you are expecting a child.” Catherine was persistent.

  “You said the same thing yesterday. My answer is still the same. There is no child on the way. Nor is there likely to be.” She muttered to herself in German.

  “You must not despair, your majesty,” my sister Nan ventured.

  “Oh, I never despair. Despair is a sin. It leads to suicide. I am merely practical. I know what I know. My dear mother told me about men and women, and how babies are made. The man must have—must have—” She paused, trying to think of a word. The pause seemed endless.

  “Manly force!” she said at length. “The man must have manly force. And your king is too old to have this.”

  All of us, save Anne, stopped stitching and looked at one another. King Henry, tall, broad-shouldered and strong, still magnificent despite his increasing girth and bad leg, King Henry with his Maiden’s Chamber, his many seductions and his bawdy joking with his men friends, was the last man we would have thought would be lacking in “manly force.”

  “I think you must be mistaken, your majesty,” said Catherine Howard boldly. “I believe his loins still stir—for the right woman.” The meaning of her sly words was unmistakable, and my sister blushed.

  “You forget yourself, Mistress Howard,” said Lady Dorchester sharply. As the mother of the maids, it was her duty to reprimand the younger women when they spoke ill-advisedly.

  “I am only repeating what I have heard,” was the tart reply.

  Anne glared at Catherine. “I think I know my own husband better than anyone else knows him. And if I say he has no manly force, then he has none. And that is the end of it.” She lapsed into German then, and even without knowing any of that language I could tell that she was cursing the maid of honor whose bold words had stung her.

  “Lady Catherine,” Lady Dorchester said, “there are duties in the stillroom requiring your attention. Your immediate attention. Kindly ask your royal mistress permission to withdraw.”

  The smile on Catherine Howard’s face told us all that, despite this reprimand, she believed she had won the skirmish. “With your permission, your majesty,” she said, curtseying to Anne.

  Instead of replying Anne waved her hand dismissively, and Catherine walked toward the door.

  But before she could reach it, the door opened and in burst King Henry, his round face more joyful than I had seen it in months.

  “Ah, here are my ladies! All my ladies!” His glance took in the five of us around the embroidery frame, and then lingered on Catherine Howard, who was only a few feet in front of him. She had knelt when he entered the room.

  “How does my lady this lovely afternoon?” He reached for Catherine’s hands, pulled her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek. “Well, I hope.”

  “I am just on my way to the stillroom, sire.”

  “Ah, indeed. I may pass by there later.” He came toward us and Catherine scurried out.

  “Henry, that Mistress Howard is a wicked girl. I will not have her in my service any longer. I want her sent away from court.”

  “And I say she stays, and that is an end of it. I caution you, wife. I command here, not you.”

  “In Cleves it is the wife who decides who will serve her.”

  “But you are not in Cleves—at least not for the moment.”

  I felt myself stiffen. The king’s words were chilling, an obvious threat.

  “And I don’t believe your brother the duke would be very glad to have you back. From what I hear, he has threatened to kill you if you should return in disgrace.”

  “He speaks violent words, but he would never harm me. My dear mother would protect me.”

  “I caution you, madame, I have heard quite enough about your dear mother. I wish she were at the bottom of the sea!”

  Lady Dorchester rose. “Sire, perhaps you and the queen would prefer to be alone.”

  “No. Stay. I am only here to tell the queen that the matter of her engagement to the Duke of Lorraine’s son is being debated in the royal council this afternoon. It has come to the council’s attention that she was pledged to the duke’s son before she agreed to marry me, and if this proves to be t
rue, then her marriage to me is invalid, under the law of the church.”

  “But it is not so!” Anne blustered. “I swear it is not so!”

  Henry held up his hand, and she was silent, though she continued to gasp.

  “The Lord punishes those who lie. They are stricken down like the grass under the mower’s scythe, like the trees uprooted by the whirlwind. They are afflicted with the pox. They are barren—”

  At these words he looked pointedly at Anne, and a long silence followed. Anne’s gasps had turned to tearful sighs, though she was too proud to let her tears overwhelm her. She did not sob, the tears merely trickled slowly down her pockmarked cheeks.

  “Ladies, I wish you a good afternoon.” He swept out, leaving us all reeling with the shock of what he had said, and what it meant.

  Lady Guildford, who had prudently held her tongue throughout the afternoon, quietly picked up her sewing things and moved to the window seat, away from the rest of us. Lady Dorchester bristled. “He should never have spoken to you that way, your majesty. I don’t care if he is the king. He has no courtesy. And he treats women like his old broken-down horses, as things to be cast aside and sent away.”

  “I am not a horse!” Anne burst out, sobbing now, uncontrollably. “I am the Queen of England!” Nan went to her and spoke soothingly.

  For a little while longer, I thought. You will be queen for a little longer—until the royal council can declare otherwise. Which the king has no doubt instructed them to do. This marriage has evidently been no marriage. And the king has his eye on a new lady, the ripe, pleasingly rounded, teasingly outspoken Catherine Howard.

  25

  AAH! OOH! GET AWAY FROM US, YOU OAF! GET AWAY FROM ME, ALL of you!”