by Jean Plaidy
They had seen what happened to Thomas Cromwell over Anne of Cleves. He had died, it would seem, more because he had provided the King with a bride he did not like than for the foreign policy he had pursued with the German princes and the charges which had been brought against him.
So there were powerful men who would find a reconciliation an embarrassment to themselves, and they made sure that the story of Catharine's misdemeanors was circulated abroad. François, King of France, forever mischievous, wrote his condolences to his brother of England. That was the deciding factor. My father could not take back a wife who had humiliated him, however much he wanted her.
I wished that I could have gone to her. Elizabeth did, too. The child was deeply upset. She had been fond of Jane Seymour; she was even closer to Anne of Cleves; and now Catharine Howard was to die.
She became very thoughtful. I guessed she was thinking of the precarious lives we all led.
How brave they were, those two men. Neither Dereham nor Culpepper would implicate Catharine; and surely what had happened before her marriage could not be construed as treason. But the verdict had already been decided. Norfolk turned against his kinswoman just as he had against Anne Boleyn. He had wanted to make the most of the advantages which came from their being in favor, but as soon as they lost that favor he became their most bitter enemy. I despised such men—just as I had Thomas Boleyn for meekly presiding at the baptism of Edward. Self-seekers, all. They had no feeling, no heart. They made me despair of human nature.
That December Dereham and Culpepper were condemned to death. The court judged them traitors. The sentence was to be carried out with that barbarous method of execution which had been seen too frequently in these last years.
How did they feel when they—surely for no crime which could have been proved against them—were condemned to die? How did the Queen feel…if she knew? Poor girl. They said she was in such a state that she was hardly aware of what was happening about her.
Culpepper was of noble birth, and therefore the horrendous sentence would be commuted to beheading. So he, poor man, was merely to lose his head for a crime he had not committed. It was different with Dereham, whose birth did not entitle him to such a privilege. He must suffer the dreadful fate of hanging, drawing and quartering.
He petitioned against it, and the petition was taken to my father. He must have been enraged at the thought of someone's enjoying Catharine's charms before him. He should have known that she was not the girl to have come through her early life without some amatory adventures. If he had wanted an entirely chaste woman, he should have stayed with Anne of Cleves. He wanted everything to be perfect, and if it were not, those who denied it to him must pay with their lives.
So at Tyburn the terrible sentence was carried out on Dereham. He died protesting his innocence, as did Culpepper, who was beheaded at the same time.
The heads of both men were placed on London Bridge—a terrible warning to those who offended the King. People might ask how Dereham could possibly have known he was offending the King. Was no man to love a woman or to speak of marriage to her… for fear the King might fancy her?
Perhaps people were asking themselves a good many questions during those terrible times.
IT WAS A MISERABLE Christmas. I was glad I was not at Court. I could not imagine how my father could celebrate it. It would be a mockery. Catharine was still at Sion House. I wondered if she still thought the King would pardon her. The uncertainty must be terrible. I expect she had been fond of Dereham once; I believe she still was of Culpepper; and she would know that these two had died because of her. Doubtless she would have heard how they stood up to torture and had tried to defend her to the end.
February came—a dreary, desolate month. There was mist over the land until the cold, biting winds drove it away. They brought the Queen from Sion House to the Tower. I guessed that meant her death was inevitable.
I heard she was a little calmer now. She seemed to have accepted the fact that she was to die. Lady Rochford was in the Tower, condemned with her. She was accused of contriving meetings between Catharine and Culpepper; she was therefore guilty of treason.
I kept thinking of Catharine's youth. Such a short time she had been on Earth, and she had been such a merry creature, relishing life in the Duchess's household, reveling in that sexuality which pleased the men. And then the King's devotion, which, they said, she believed to the end would save her.
Susan and I talked of her. We could think of nothing else. I supposed the whole nation was talking of her. She would be the second of my father's wives to be beheaded—but that had not yet become commonplace.
It was the thirteenth day of February when she was taken out to die. Young, so pretty, her crime being that she had been too free with her favors before the ill-fated choice had fallen on her.
At Havering we heard that she had died with dignity. When she knew there was no hope and that the King, who had professed his love for her, was going to leave her to her fate, she accepted it meekly.
What seemed to worry her more than anything was that she might not know what she had to do on the scaffold, and she asked for a block, which would be exactly like the one on which she would have to lay her head, to be brought to her so that she might practice on it. She did not want to stumble on the day of her death. This was done. Later she went out bravely, and before she died she declared that she would rather have been the wife of Thomas Culpepper than a queen.
Lady Rochford died with her. I felt no compassion for that woman. In spite of my hatred for the Boleyn clan, I could not believe in the incest between Anne and her brother, and I thought how depraved she must be to have accused them.
Her last words were reputed to be that she deserved to die for her false accusation of her husband and sister-in-law and not for anything she had done against the King; for she was guiltless of that.
So perished the King's fifth wife, Catharine Howard, on that same spot where his second, Anne Boleyn, had died before her.
THE KING CAME TO VISIT US AT HAVERING—OR PERHAPS not to visit us especially, but it happened to be on the route he was taking to somewhere else.
Edward was always uneasy when the King was under the same roof as he was.
“I am not the son he wants,” he told me, his pale face anxious, his blue eyes a little strained, as Margaret said, from too much reading.
I told him he was wrong. “You are everything he wants,” I assured him. “Elizabeth and I…we are only girls and a great disappointment to him. You are the son for whom he has longed for many years. Of course you are what he wants.”
“He would like someone big like himself.”
“You have a long way to grow as yet.”
“He said when he was my age he was twice as big as I am.”
“Big people are not always the best.”
“But they can ride and hunt without getting tired.”
I studied him carefully. He was a delicate child; his attendants had always fussed over him, terrified that something would happen and they be blamed for it.
“I would like to be able to dance and jump and run like Elizabeth,” he said.
“Oh, there is only one Elizabeth.”
He laughed. He agreed with me. He was completely in her thrall.
When the King arrived, we all had to make our respectful bows and curtsies, and when he looked at his son, I could see he did not like the boy's pale looks; he tried to stop himself looking at Elizabeth but she had a way of pushing herself forward, even in the royal presence, and at times I saw him giving her a furtive glance. She looked more than a little like him. If he would have allowed himself, he could have been very pleased with her. She was the one among us most like him.
To my surprise, shortly after his arrival he sent for me, and when I entered his presence I found that he was alone.
“Come and sit beside me, daughter,” he said.
I was amazed at such condescension and obeyed with some apprehension.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“How long is it since you were born?”
“Twenty-six years, Your Majesty.”
“And no husband! Well, these have been tragic times for me. I have been disappointed in my wives… though Jane was a good wife to me. It would seem that there is some curse upon me. Why has God seen fit to punish me thus?”
I felt myself growing stiff with anger, as I always did when anyone said a word against my mother. I wanted to shout at him: You had the best wife in the world and you cast her off for Anne Boleyn.
I think he sensed my feelings and, as he was favoring me at the moment and meant to continue to do so, he was mildly placating.
“I was under the spell of witchcraft,” he said. “I was bewitched.”
I did not answer. His eyes had grown glazed. He was seeing her, I imagined, the black-eyed witch with all her enchantments, seducing him … turning him from a virtuous wife and the Church of Rome. It was necessary to see her thus now. It was the only excuse for murder.
“And Jane,” he went on. “She died…”
“Giving Your Majesty your son,” I reminded him.
“How is the boy? Does he seem weak to you, Mary?”
“He is not strong like Elizabeth, but Lady Bryan says that delicate children often become stronger as they grow older.”
“I did not have to grow out of weakness.”
“Your Majesty cannot expect another to have your strength and blooming health, not even your own son.”
“I do expect it, daughter, and methinks I do not expect too much… only what is due to me. I am too trusting. You see how I am treated. I believed that girl was sweet and innocent…”
I thought: Then you can have had little experience of women. It was strange to be with him like this—answering in asides remarks which I dared not say aloud.
He made a self-pitying gesture, and I tried to look sympathetic, but I kept seeing that poor child running along the gallery at Hampton Court. I kept thinking of her terror as she realized that the axe which was poised above her head was about to fall on her as the executioner's sword from France had on her cousin—his second wife.
“Daughter,” he was saying, “I want you to be beside me. I have no Queen now. I need someone beside me … someone who can play the Queen. We will have a banquet and a ball. We will set aside our gloom. We must, for the sake of our subjects. They like not this sadness. The people must be amused. So …you will come to Court. You will be beside me.”
He was beaming at me, expecting me to express my joy.
I was uncertain of my feelings. I was finding life dull and monotonous. I wanted to be at Court. I wanted to know what was happening, to see events at first hand, not learn of them through hearsay.
And here was a chance.
Yet to be near the King was dangerous. Well, I had lived with danger for most of my life.
He was looking at me steadily.
“I see the idea pleases you,” he said.
He leaned over and patted my hand in a fatherly gesture.
Not since I was a very little girl had he shown me such affection.
MY POSITION HAD CHANGED. I was now in high favor. The King would have me beside him. He made it clear that he recognized me as his daughter.
The loss of Catharine Howard had had its effect on him. He looked much older; even he could no longer deceive himself that he was a young man. His legs were swollen and very painful; his appetite had not diminished, and now that he had less exercise he was beginning to grow very fat. His glinting eyes and his petulant mouth often seemed almost to disappear in the folds of flesh about them. He was melancholy and irascible. People feared him more than ever. I was amazed at his gentle attitude toward me. His health was clearly not good. That running sore on his leg was an outward sign of the state of his body; for some time he had tried to conceal it, but now it was impossible.
Naturally there were spies about the Court whose intention was to report everything that happened, and it was soon known throughout Europe that the King was not in good health, that Edward was frail—and at that only five years old; and it would seem significant that my father had brought me to Court and was treating me with more affection than he had shown toward me since he had decided to discard my mother.
It was not long before King François of France was putting out feelers. His son Charles of Orleans was in need of a bride, and there was none he would welcome as he would the Lady Mary.
I was not very pleased. I had almost become reconciled to being a spinster, to living on the fringe of the Court; after all, there was a great deal to be said for a certain obscurity. One did not have to suffer those alarms every time trouble with which one could be connected sprang up somewhere.
I had settled into a routine, where I could read, write to my friends, occasionally receive them, walk a good deal—I was fond of fresh air, be with my ladies in the evenings by the fire or perhaps, in summer, sit out of doors with dear old Jane the Fool to enliven the hours. It might be a little dull and unadventurous but it was not without its pleasure, and peace of mind was something to treasure when one had had little of it.
How should I know what would be waiting for me at the French Court? Moreover, Chapuys would be against it. If there was to be a union—and I could not have Reginald; that seemed impossible now for he was getting quite old—I would have liked it to bring me closer to the Emperor.
In fact, I found the whole matter rather distasteful, particularly when I discovered that French spies had been questioning my bedchamber women. It was well known that throughout my life I had had bouts of severe illness, and these spies asked delicate and embarrassing questions. They wanted to assure themselves that I was capable of bearing children. They would be considering the many miscarriages my mother had had; my father's children— apart from Elizabeth—were not strong. The Duke of Richmond had died young; Edward was fragile, and I was plagued with illness from time to time. Did that mean that I might not be capable of bearing children?
How serious the negotiations were, I am not sure. The political situation on the Continent was never stable for long; friends became enemies overnight, and that had its effect on proposed marriages. It might have been that it was never intended that there should be a marriage.
The fact that there was a great deal of squabbling over the dowry suggested to me—now experienced in these matters after so many proposals which had come to nothing—that the proposed marriage was a gesture to give the Emperor some apprehension, as the last thing he would want would be an alliance between France and England. My father offered a dowry of 200,000 crowns and François demanded 250,000. Charles of Orleans was only a second son, it was pointed out; I do not know what the response was, but it might have been that the doubts of my legitimacy were referred to.
As the haggling went on, I guessed nothing would come of it, but I was in a state of uncertainty. I had so wanted to marry happily and most of all to have children. I thought this must be the greatest joy on Earth. How wonderful to have a child who would be to me as I had been to my mother! The longing for such a life was with me always
I think it was due to this uncertainty—another proposed marriage which was to end in nothing—that made me ill. There were some doctors who thought my illnesses were due not so much to an affliction of the body as one of the mind. Not that I was in any way unbalanced; but I was often melancholy; and I had suffered so much in my youth, living as I had on the edge of death, that it had affected my health. I was different from my sister Elizabeth. She, too, was in a precarious position, but she seemed to thrive on it. But she was not in such danger as I was, for throughout the country I was seen as the figurehead for those people who wished to deny the King's supremacy in the Church and to lead them back to Rome.
I was very ill this time. Every tim
e I lifted my head from the pillow, I suffered such dizziness that I could not leave my bed. My head ached and I was seized with trembling fits.
I believe those about me thought I would die.
My father visited me. He was most concerned.
“You must get well,” he said. “You shall come to Court. You shall take the place beside me which the Queen would have. You shall be my right hand.”
I smiled wanly. I was too tired and listless to care whether he favored me or not.
He sent Dr. Butts to attend to me—a sign of his favor; Dr. Butts was the only one who seemed to understand my illness and with his care I began to recover.
Susan told me that he thought that if I were happily married and had children I should cease to be tormented by these bouts of illness.
“The Lady Mary has nothing wrong with her body,” he told her. “If she could live in peace and ease…live naturally…I would be ready to wager that she would gradually cast off these periodic bouts of illness.”
He appeared to know how to treat me, and the very presence of Dr. Butts in the household had an effect on me.
My health was improving.
The King came to see me and said I must come to Court as soon as possible, where I could be sure of a welcome.
I always seemed to recover quickly after my illnesses, and I took a week or so to get completely well—taking walks, playing the virginals, chatting with my ladies and laughing at Jane the Fool.
Then I was ready to return to Court.
My father had been right when he said I should be welcomed. As I rode into the city with my household, the people came into the streets to cheer me. They had always been my friends. I did wonder whether the attention I was receiving now was partly to placate them. But as, recently, he had often acted in a manner to make himself unpopular, perhaps it was not that. It might be that he really did feel the need to have his family about him and wanted to have a happy relationship with his daughter.