by G Lawrence
These flashes started to assault me when I was awake. I would be sewing and crimson thread became tissue and blood. As I stared into books, hoping to find peace, words blurred into grey fuzz, and the parchment became the cloths placed between my legs in those awful days of loss and pain. I saw my dead sons in windowpanes. I became unwilling to sleep, unwilling to do anything. I was haunted. My appetite slipped away like a thief in the night.
I needed time to grieve. I needed understanding and companionship. I needed Henry to take my hand and lead me back to the world. But he did not. He had convinced himself that my pregnancy had never been. Perhaps it was easier for him that way. It was not for me.
I had no outlet for grief. I was expected to immediately become the merry maid again, entertaining in my chambers, calling young men to adore me from far and wide. I was expected back at Henry’s side, to meet dignitaries and ambassadors. I was to smile and wave and sing and dance and laugh and play.
Sometimes, when I sat with a fixed smile upon my face before court, I thought I might shatter into a thousand pieces. Once, I had said I ruled an empire of glass. Now that empire was within me. I was glass; brittle, fragile, sheer… I felt transparent. All eyes would see through me and in my chest witness not a heart that beat with life, but a wizened core, blackened and dead.
And along with all this, there was guilt.
Guilt is a raw, rubbed wound that never heals. It festers, leeching into your heart and soul, dragging aside sense and reason and infecting them with venom. This time it was worse than when I lost my first son. Perhaps it was because this child had had so little time to live. Perhaps it was because this time there was a reason. When I had lost my first son, there had been no discernible cause. No trail I could follow back and say, this, this is the moment I lost my babe… Without firm reason for my loss, there had been fewer ways to blame myself. But this time, as Henry had so kindly mentioned, there was a reason.
I found myself running over and over the sequence of events, from Frances’ first show of illness to the day I felt the pain, trying to find a moment where I could have saved my child. Over and over and over and over went my mind, tumbling on a wheel of horror and dismay.
I do not know if Henry ever understood that his words had such an impact. If he had not suggested I was to blame, perhaps I would not have fallen so hard on myself. But that which is spoken may not be unsaid.
A second lost baby. A second silence. How can silence be so powerful as to break a woman’s heart?
A new lowness fell upon me. I hid my sorrow under bright gaiety, but anyone, had they gazed into my eyes, would have witnessed not happiness there, but stark, barren emptiness. My heart had become a desert, where nothing lived. Only sand, the broken, fractured, miniscule remains of dreams, dwelled there, billowing in the light wind… spiralling in the sultry air.
Everything was stale and broken. The dreams I had nurtured were unwinding like a ball of wool. Everything was dust, slipping through my fingers.
*
“Take it away,” I said, turning my head from a spray of red rowan buds my ladies had collected from the gardens to decorate the bare hearth. I could not look on the colour. I could not bear it. Every time I saw it, a flashing image of white cloth and bright red blood swam before my eyes, making me sick and dizzy. I had told them not to give me gowns of crimson anymore. I would wear green and white and silver and gold. I could not wear red. Not for a while. Not until these visions left me.
I did not tell them why. No one could think me unhinged.
My ladies were fearful to upset me, and removed the offending branch. They brought my brother in to cheer me, knowing that he, unlike my husband, could restore my spirits.
“You need time,” my brother said, sitting beside me. “Time to grieve.”
“I am not permitted such luxuries,” I said, my voice desolate and cold. “Henry says nothing will be announced, and so he makes it as though it never happened. Just like the last time.”
I put my face into my hands and wept. For a time, there was no noise in my chamber. My ladies, anxious to obey Henry’s instructions, made no move towards me. Only my brother’s hand on my back gave me any indication that I was not utterly, and completely, alone.
“I want you to do something for me,” I said when I was able to draw breath.
“Anything.”
“You translated works for me before, from Jacques Lefevre,” I said. “I want more. I want solace, George.”
George agreed. He set to work to translate the Epitres et Evengiles pour les Cinquante et Deux Semaines de L’an, the Epistles and Gospels for the fifty-two weeks of the year. Eventually his work would be turned into illuminated manuscripts for me.
“Pourge therefore the olde leven bread,” said Lefevre’s work, taken from Saint Paul, “so that you maye be new dough. As ye are sweete bread. For Christ, our Easter lamb, is offered up for us. Therefore let us keep holy days not witholde leve, neither with the leven of maliciousness and wickedness, but with the sweete bread of pureness and truth.”
I wanted only part translations… passages, snippets of truth, which I could scan quickly to bring me comfort but not read for too long lest the pages transform into something else, something darker. George did not question me, for I think he understood. He, too, took comfort in the work of scholars and in the Word of God.
When I was well enough, I called my chaplains to my chambers and set them to work. I wanted good books from learned men, so I might draw wisdom and succour from them. Thomas Tebold and William Lok were my agents on the Continent, procuring volumes for my library, and seeking out banned books for me to consume. And consume them I did. This was no mere habit or hobby. These books were my salvation; the only release I had from the horrors I had faced. But if I found comfort in words and thoughts and facts, Henry hid in fiction.
He would not speak of our children. He would not acknowledge their existence. He liked to pretend we had conceived no child but Elizabeth and spoke brightly of the day our son would join his sister.
But for me, the idea of becoming with child filled me with ghastly terror. I was afraid; afraid to become pregnant again if I was to face the same nightmare as before.
Henry chattered away about our little girl and the sons who would shortly come, bemusing his own mind into blocking out the trauma of losing two children. But for me, there was no escape.
I understood my duty. I had to have a son. But part of me wanted to rise from my chair when Henry spoke. Part of me wanted to flee, taking to the stables and a swift horse, galloping away on its back, never to return.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hampton Court
Late April – May 1535
At the end of that month, a gaggle of Carthusians appeared before the King’s Bench at Westminster; three priors and two priests. Charged with denying the royal supremacy and upholding the Pope and Rome over their King, they faced a sentence of death.
I had reason to dislike the Carthusians, and their brothers, the Observants, who, I had been told, when asked if my daughter had been baptized in cold water or hot, had replied, “hot water, but not hot enough.” The Carthusians also dabbled in scandal rousing and obscure prophesies. They said Henry was the cursed Mouldwarp, prophesised by Merlin, who would bring about the destruction of England, and added for good measure that I would burn to death for my sins.
If they will not swear the oath, I told myself, they are traitors.
I knew their arrests were justified, but I worried about the outcome. Cromwell wanted to make examples, so all men would fear to defy their King. I wondered if we should attempt to convert them, to show the people of England that the new leader of their Church was a merciful, Christian prince. But Henry said they had had enough chances.
Cromwell had led their interrogations personally at his Rolls House in London. One of the accused, Richard Reynolds, was part of the Bridgettine house of Syon, where my young ward, Henry Carey, was studying. Syon had become a hotbed of treasonous talk. Some me
n of Syon claimed Henry was a whoremaster who bedded every maid at court, whether they wanted him to or not. Others said that he had meddled with my mother as well as my sister, and Mary and I were in fact his offspring.
More men claimed the Emperor or the Pope would invade England soon, and God would have His revenge. John Hale, one of the accused, was said to have declared Henry was “more foul and more stinking than a sow, wallowing and defiling herself in any filthy place. For however great he is, he is fully given to his foul pleasure of the flesh… And look how many matrons be in the court or given to marriage, these almost all he has violated, so often neglecting his duty to his wife and offending the sacrament of matrimony… And now he has taken to his wife of fornication this matron, Anne, not only to the highest shame and undoing of himself, but also of all his realm.”
The wife Hales was concerned about was not me, it was Katherine. Whilst I had unbounded sympathy with the notion Henry was offending God by keeping mistresses, I had none with the idea that I was another of his jades. But people like Hales would never support me. To them, I was the Devil, and Katherine an angel.
The monks were found guilty, and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. One exemption was made, ostensibly because the pardoned man, Robert Feron, was but a youth, but everyone knew he had really been spared for turning King’s evidence to escape death. The condemned were to die on the 4th of May, and Henry refused to hear any petitioner who came begging for their lives.
I watched Henry as a bishop was screamed out of the room for daring to ask for mercy for the accused. It was not only resolution that I saw on his face, but sorrow. Grief twisted and curled inside him, oozing from his skin, transforming into another being. Henry might have liked to think he had forgotten his sadness, but he had not. It was there, under his skin, as mine was. It was a trapped beast.
But trapped beasts are canny creatures. Those who seek to ignore the monsters within often find that the beast has found a means of escape; by wearing their skin… by overcoming the soul of their host.
There was a monster inside Henry. My mistake was not to understand how dangerous it was until it was far, far too late.
*
As the condemned monks were taken back to their cells to wait for death, Cromwell visited Thomas More. Henry still harboured love for his friend, and this was one reason why Cromwell went to More, but there was another. All over Europe there were cries for More’s release, and with him, Fisher. Both were upheld as paragons of virtue. Whoever thought this must have missed More’s bloodthirsty career as Chancellor, but all the same, More and Fisher were respected men. Henry little wanted to offer the Emperor another excuse to come for England.
Cromwell and Henry both believed that the sentence of execution on the Carthusians might sway Fisher and More into terror, allowing Cromwell’s men to extract the oath, but if they believed this, they were fools.
Cromwell asked for More’s opinion on the succession and supremacy, and More replied that he had already given it. “I have discharged my mind of all such matters,” he said. “I will not dispute the King’s titles, nor the Pope’s, but I am, and always will be, the King’s true, and faithful, subject.”
When Cromwell pointed out this would not satisfy Henry, More smiled. “I may be condemned to perpetual imprisonment,” he said. “But not of my duty and obedience to the King.”
“I have done no one any harm,” he went on. “I have said no harm and thought no harm, but thought everyone good. If this is not enough to keep a man alive, then I long not to live. I have been ill many times since coming to this prison, and more times than once thought I might die of natural means in this cell. I am not sorry for it, but rather was sorry when my pangs and pains passed. My poor body is at the King’s pleasure, and I wish that my death may do him good.”
After this visit, Cromwell became so ill that he had to excuse himself from court. He insisted that his papers were brought to his room, so he might work in bed. He wrote to the new Pope, explaining the reasons for Henry’s separation from Katherine and the annulment of their union. He pressed not only for the Pope’s understanding and acceptance, but for his espousal. Cromwell asked for a public testimony of the Pope’s support, knowing that if it was offered privately, it would not satisfy the Emperor, Katherine, or any other opponent we faced.
Henry sent constant messages to Cromwell, not enquiring about his health, but commanding him to come back. “There is too much going on for Cromwell to be ill!” he said one day.
Cromwell now, is it? my mind asked. Thomas when you love him. Cromwell when you do not…
“He cannot help falling ill, Henry,” I pointed out. “No matter his many talents, he is mortal, like the rest of us. I think he has too much work. The strain is making him sick.”
I sent Cromwell some artichokes, a treat of which I knew he was fond, as well as another tonic for his eyes. Cromwell was approaching fifty, and his eyes pained him. He had a pair of spectacles which he used when working, and hid at all other times, as though if any witnessed their existence it might make him suddenly cursed with old age.
By the time May arrived in full bloom, Cromwell was back, but he was visibly ill. “You should take more care of yourself,” I said when he visited. “You do too much.”
“Yet there is always more to be done, Majesty.” He passed a hand over his brow and smiled wanly. “Work is like that. It is a hydra. Chop off one head and six more appear. The more one takes on, the more there is to do. But fear not, my lady. I will be well.”
When Cromwell felt haler, we went out to hawk. We rode out, spaniels and greyhounds panting as they raced alongside our horses, their pink tongues steaming in the early morning air. Greyhounds took the larger birds when they fell; herons, crane and bustard. Spaniels would capture struggling pigeons, ducks and geese. Beaters came to flush game from the reed beds, their hands clasping cudgels and long wooden staffs. Local children turned out, eager to earn a penny, and their laughter was as effective as the sticks they held at startling birds into flight.
At the river marshes we would stop, listening to the thump of a skin drum ringing in the distance, calling time for the beaters. Courtiers took it in turns to fly falcons from their wrists, with those of highest rank leading the hunt. Over the water, shimmering silver and black, our birds flew, their wings sharp against the skyline, eyes fixated on their prey. Titbits of flesh were offered to each successful bird, so they might be rewarded but continue to hunger for more. Dogs raced into the rippling water, upsetting its silent passage as tiny waves broke and crashed on the surface and against the banks of the river.
Wagering was part of the sport. One courtier would bet against another that he would win this match, or a lady would swear to outdo another. In the afternoon we would sit beside fires lain under trees, and sup on fresh meat cooked over the flames, dripping with fat and blood. Fine bread, cheese and pies baked that morn in the kitchens would accompany our feast of flesh, and Henry’s musicians would play as we rested on cushions and blankets of wool and velvet, under gaily coloured tents which provided welcome shade.
As the meat was sliced up, I had to look away. Cooked flesh, I could see without problems. Raw meat invoked flashes of blood on cloth.
As blue dusk fell, with it came silence. It was as though the world were holding herself still, to give us a moment in time to stand, to draw in courage. As we rode home, weary and happy, I would listen to the merry chatter in quiet contemplation, sensing a peace, stolen from the eternal world, as it settled in my soul.
It was not so in the palaces. There I was not free, not whole. There I felt haunted, anxious and watched. But in England, in the wild and open spaces, with the wind against my skin and the promise of rain ever close, I could find solace. Even for a short while, it was welcome.
When not hunting together, Cromwell often joined Henry and me for card games. On many an occasion, thinking it a clever jest, Henry would hold up a knave and exclaim, “I have been dealt a Cromwell!”
Sometimes, if the day was fine, I would take my women and Henry’s men into the gardens. At Hampton Court, Henry’s heraldic beasts, sitting atop poles painted in stripes of green and white, had been joined by a new friend. My secondary badge, that of the leopard, stood alongside Henry’s, his fierce eyes watching over the gardens. In the great hall, if one looked up to the magnificent ceiling, one would see my arms, and the entwined initials H&A. The gatehouse, too, held these symbols, and my badge of the white falcon, surrounded by roses, was everywhere. Long had Katherine’s emblems haunted me, but now there was a conscious effort to remove them. If only it were so easy to remove Katherine from the minds of the people, as it was to strip her from wood, plaster and stone.
Sometimes I would put my fingertips to a necklace or brooch that once had been hers, and wonder if anyone saw those stones on me and remembered her. Her shadow was with me. Everywhere I went, there she was. Pearl chokers, made before I became Queen, hung about my neck, along with strings of sapphires, rubies, and diamonds. I wore golden emblems depicting our entwined initials, but even as I hung them about my long, white swan’s neck, I wondered if any could still see the vision H&K rather than H&A.