“But it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s not just me saying it. Everyone knows.”
“Everyone knows what?”
“That she will never give him a child,” Bessie whispers.
“Nobody can know that!” I exclaim. “Nobody can know what will happen! Perhaps this time she will give birth to a strong, bonny boy and he will be Henry, Duke of Cornwall, and grow to be Prince of Wales, and we will all be happy.”
“Well, I hope so, I’m sure,” she replies obediently enough; but her eyes slide away from me, as if the words in her mouth mean nothing, and in a moment she slips through the arched doorway and is gone.
As soon as the rooms are prepared, the queen goes into confinement, her lips folded in a grim line of determination. I go into the familiar shadowy rooms with her and, cravenly, I confess to myself that I don’t think I can bear to go through another death. If she has another son, I don’t think that I can find the courage to take him into my care. My fears have become so great that they have quite drowned out any hopes. I have become convinced that she will give birth to a dead child, or that any baby she has will die within days.
I feel only more gloomy when the king calls me to his side after Prime one morning, and walks with me in the early morning darkness back to the shadowy confinement chamber. “The queen’s father, King Ferdinand, has died,” he says to me shortly. “I don’t think we should tell her while she’s in confinement. Do you?”
“No,” I say instantly. There is an absolute rule that a queen in confinement should be kept from bad news. Katherine adored her father, though nobody can deny that he was a hard master to his little daughter. “You can tell her after the birth. She must not be distressed now.”
“But my sister Margaret went into confinement in fear of her life from the rebels,” he complains. “She barely got over the border to take refuge. And yet she had a healthy girl.”
“I know,” I say. “Her Grace the Queen of Scotland is a brave woman. But nobody could doubt the courage of our queen.”
“And she is well?” he asks, as if I am a physician, as if my assurance counts for anything.
“She is well,” I say stoutly. “I am confident.”
“Are you?”
There is only one answer that he wants to hear. Of course I say it: “Yes.”
I try to act as if I am confident as I greet her brightly every morning and kneel beside her at the grille where the priest comes three times a day to pray. When he asks for God’s blessing on the fertility of the mother and the health of the baby, I say “Amen” with conviction, and sometimes I feel her hand creep into mine as if she seeks assurance from me. I always take her fingers in a firm grip. I never allow a shadow of doubt in my eyes, never a hesitant word from my mouth. Even when she whispers to me: “Sometimes, Margaret, I fear that there is something wrong.”
I never say: “And you are right. What you fear is a terrible curse.” Instead, always I look her in the eye and declare: “Every wife in the world, every woman that I know has lost at least one baby and gone on to have more. You come from a fertile family and you are young and strong, and the king is a man among men. Nobody can doubt his vigor and his strength, nobody can doubt that you are fertile as your emblem, the pomegranate. This time, Katherine, this time I am certain.”
She nods. I see her staunch little smile as she enforces confidence on herself. “Then I will be hopeful,” she says. “If you are. If you really are.”
“I am,” I lie.
It is an easier birth than the last one, and when the midwives cry out that they can see the little bloody crown of the head, and Katherine clutches at my arm, I have a moment when I think, perhaps this is a strong baby? Perhaps all will be well.
I grip her hand and tell her to wait, and then the midwives exclaim that the baby is coming, and that she must push. Katherine grits her teeth and holds back a groan of pain. She believes—some devout fool has told her—that a queen does not cry out in childbirth, and her neck is straining like the bough of a twisted tree in the effort to hold herself regally silent, as hushed as the Virgin Mary.
Then there is a cry, a loud complaining bawl, Katherine gives a hoarse sob, and everyone is exclaiming that the baby is here. Katherine turns a frightened face to me and says: “He lives?”
There is another flurry of activity, her face contorts with pain, and the midwife says: “A girl. A girl, a live girl, Your Grace.”
I am almost sick with disappointment for the queen, but then I hear the baby cry, a good loud shout, and I am overwhelmed at the thought that she lives, that there is a live child, a live child in this room that has seen so many deaths.
“Let me see her!” Katherine says.
They wrap her in scented linen and pass her to her mother, while the midwives busy themselves, and Katherine sniffs at the damp head as if she were a cat in a basket with a litter of kittens, and the baby stops crying and snuffles against her mother’s neck.
Katherine freezes and looks down. “Is she breathing?”
“Yes, yes, she’s just hungry,” one of the midwives pronounces, smiling. “Will you give her to the wet nurse, Your Grace?”
Reluctantly, Katherine hands her over to the plump woman. She does not take her eyes off the little bundle for one moment.
“Sit beside me,” she says. “Let me watch her feed.”
The woman does as she is ordered. This is a new wet nurse; I couldn’t bear to have the same woman who had fed the previous baby. I wanted everything new: new linen, new swaddling bands; new cradle, new nurse. I wanted nothing to be the same, so I am dreading what happens now, as the queen turns to me and says gravely: “Dear Margaret, will you tell His Grace?”
This is no honor anymore, I think, as I go slowly from the overheated room and step into the cold hall. Unbidden, my son Montague is waiting for me outside. I am so relieved to see him that I could weep. I take his arm.
“I thought you might want someone to walk with?” he asks.
“I do,” I say shortly.
“The baby?”
“Alive. A girl.”
He purses his lips at the thought that we may have to tell the king disagreeable news, and we walk swiftly in silence, down the hall together to the king’s private rooms. He is waiting, Cardinal Wolsey at his side, his companions quiet and anxious. They do not wait with excitement and confidence anymore, cups filled in their hands ready for a toast. I see Arthur among them and he nods to me, his face pale with anxiety.
“Your Grace, I am happy to tell you that you have a daughter,” I say to King Henry.
There is no mistaking the joy that leaps into his face. Anything, as long as he has got a live child on his queen. “She is well?” he demands hopefully.
“She is well and strong. I left her at the wet nurse’s breast and she is feeding.”
“And Her Grace?”
“She is well. Better than ever before.”
He comes towards me and takes my arm to speak quietly to me, so that no one, not even the cardinal following behind, can hear. “Lady Margaret, you’ve had many children . . .”
“Five,” I reply.
“All live births?”
“I lost one in the early months, once. It’s usual, Your Grace.”
“I know. I know. But does this baby look strong? Can you tell? Will she live?”
“She looks strong,” I say.
“Are you sure? Lady Margaret, you would tell me if you had doubts, wouldn’t you?”
I look at him with compassion. How will anyone ever find the courage to tell him anything that does not please him? How will this indulged boy ever learn wisdom in manhood if nobody ever dares to say no to him? How will he learn to judge a liar from a true man if everyone, even the truest, cannot speak a word to him that is not good news?
“Your Grace, I am telling you the truth: she looks well and strong now. What will become of her only God can say. But the queen has been safely delivered of a bonny girl, and they are both doing well this after
noon.”
“Thank God,” he says. “Amen.” He is deeply moved, I can see it. “Thank God,” he says again.
He turns to the waiting court. “We have a girl!” he announces. “Princess Mary.”
Everyone cheers; no one reveals the slightest anxiety. No one would dare to show the slightest doubt. “Hurrah! God save the princess! God save the queen! God save the king!” they all say.
King Henry turns back to me with the question that I am dreading. “And will you be her Lady Governess, my dear Lady Margaret?”
I cannot do it. I really cannot do it this time. I cannot once again lie sleepless, waiting for the gasp of shock from the nursery and the noise of running feet and the knock on my door, the white-faced girl crying that the baby has just stopped breathing, for no reason, for no reason at all, and will I come and see? And who will tell the queen?
My son Montague meets my eyes and nods. He need do nothing more to remind me that we all have to endure things we would prefer to avoid, if we are to keep our titles and our lands and our favored place at court. Reginald has to go far away from his home, Arthur has to smile and play tennis when his back is wrenched from jousting, he has to climb back on a horse which has thrown him and laugh as if he has no fear. Montague has to lose at cards when he would rather not bet, and I have to watch over a baby whose life is unbearably uncertain.
“I shall be honored,” I say, and I make my face smile.
The king turns to Lord John Hussey. “And will you be her guardian?” he asks him.
Lord John bows his head as if overwhelmed by the honor, but when he looks up, he meets my eye, and I see in his face my own silent dread.
We christen her quickly, as if we don’t dare to wait, in the chapel of the Observant Friars nearby, as if we don’t dare to take her farther afield in the cold wintry air. And she is confirmed in her faith in the same service, as if we can’t be sure she will live long enough to make her own vows. I stand sponsor for her confirmation, taking her vows for her as if they will make her safe when the plague winds blow, when the sickly mists rise from the river, when the cold gales rattle the shutters. When I take the holy oil on my forehead and the candle in my hand, I cannot help but wonder if she will live long enough for me to tell her that she was confirmed in the faith of the Church and that I stood proxy for her and prayed desperately for her little soul.
Her godmother, my cousin Catherine, carries her down the aisle, and hands her at the church door to the other godmother, Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. As the ladies file by, each one dipping a little curtsey to the royal baby, the duchess hands her back to me. She is not a sentimental woman, she does not love to hold a baby; I see her brisk nod at her stepdaughter Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. Gently, I put the little princess in the arms of her Lady Mistress, Margaret Bryan, and I walk alongside her, wrapped in ermine against the cold wind blowing down the Thames valley, yeomen of the guard around me, the cloth of estate carried over our regal heads, and all the ladies of the baby’s nursery following me.
It is a moment of greatness for me, even grandeur. I am Lady Governess of the royal baby and heir; I should be relishing this moment. But I can’t revel in it. All I can do, all I want to do, is to go on my knees and pray that this baby lives longer than her poor little brothers.
ENGLAND, SUMMER 1517
The sweating sickness comes to London. The Dowager Queen of Scotland, Margaret, hopes to avoid it by traveling north, returning to her own country to rejoin her husband and son. As soon as she leaves, the king orders that the court pack up and go to Richmond, farther away from the dirt and the smells and the low-lying mists of the city.
“He’s gone on ahead with just a riding court,” my son Montague tells me, leaning on the doorway of my room and watching my maids go one way and another, packing all of our goods into traveling chests. “He’s terrified.”
“Hush,” I say cautiously.
“It’s no secret that he’s sick with fear.” Montague steps inside and closes the door behind him. “He’d admit it himself. He has a holy terror of all diseases but the Sweat is his particular dread.”
“No wonder, since it was his father who brought it in, and it killed his brother Arthur,” I remark. “They called it the Tudor curse even then. They said that the reign had begun in sweat and would end in tears.”
“Well, please God they were wrong,” my son says cheerfully. “Will the queen come with us today?”
“As soon as she’s ready. But she’s making a pilgrimage to pray at Walsingham later in the month. You won’t see her change her plans for the Sweat.”
“No, she doesn’t imagine herself dying with every cough,” he says. “Poor lady. Is she going to pray for another child?”
“Of course.”
“She still hopes for a boy?”
“Of course.”
Reports of the disease grow worse, and worse still in the telling. It is the most terrifying of sicknesses because of its speed. A man at dinnertime, reporting to his household that he is well and strong, and that they are lucky to have escaped, will complain of a headache and heat in the evening and will be dead by sunset. Nobody knows why the disease goes from one place to another, nor why it takes one healthy man but spares another. Cardinal Wolsey takes the disease and we are all prepared to hear of his death, but the cardinal survives it. Henry the king is not comforted by this; he is completely determined to escape even the breath of it.
We stay at Richmond and then one of the servers takes ill. Henry is at once plunged into terror at the thought that a boy under the wing of death handed him his meat; he thinks of the poor victim as an assassin. The whole court packs up to leave. Every head of each service is told to go through his staff and examine each one minutely, demand of every man if he has any symptoms, any heat, any pain, any faintness. Of course, everyone denies that he is ill—nobody wants to be left behind with the dying page boy at Richmond; and besides, the disease comes on so fast that by the time everyone has sworn to good health, the first of them could be taking to their beds.
We rush downriver to Greenwich, where the clean air smells of salt from the sea, and the king insists that the rooms are swept and washed daily and that no one comes too close to him. The king, who is supposed to be blessed with a healing touch, will let no one come near him at all.
He is distracted from his fears by the Spanish, who send an embassy hoping for an alliance against France, and under their urbane scrutiny we pretend for weeks that there is nothing wrong, that the kingdom is not dogged by sickness and that our king is not terrified. As ever with the king, when he is meeting with the Spanish he prizes his Spanish wife more highly, so he is kind and attentive to the queen, listening to her advice, admiring her elegant conversation with the emissaries in their language, coming to her bed at night, resting in her clean sheets. Her dear friend Maria de Salinas has married an English nobleman, William Willoughby, and there are compliments about the natural love between the two countries. There are feasts and celebrations and jousts, and for a brief while it is like the old days; but after the Spanish visitors ride away we hear of sickness in the village of Greenwich, and the king decides that he would be safer at Windsor Castle.
This time, he shuts down the court altogether. Only the queen, a small riding court of the king’s friends, and his personal doctor are allowed to travel with them. I go to my own house at Bisham and pray that the Sweat passes us by in Berkshire.
But death follows the Tudor king, just as it followed his father. The pages who serve in his bedchamber take the illness, and when one of them dies, the king is certain that death is tracking him like a dark hound. He goes into hiding, leaves all his servants behind, abandons his friends and, taking only the queen and his doctor, travels from one house to another like a guilty man seeking sanctuary.
He sends outriders ahead, wherever he plans to go, and the king’s doctor interrogates his hosts, asking if anyone is ill in the house, or if the Sweat has passed them by. Henry will only go to a hous
e where he is assured that everyone is well, but even so, time and again, he has to order that the horses be saddled and they rush on, because a lady’s maid complained of the heat at noon, or a child was crying with toothache. The court loses its dignity and its elegance careering from one house to another, leaving furniture, linen, even silverware behind in the confusion. The king’s hosts cannot prepare for him, and when they have ordered in costly food and entertainment, he declares that it is not safe, and he cannot stay. While other people rest at home, try to avoid travel, discourage strangers, and quietly, trustingly, put their faith in God, the king roams the countryside demanding safety in a dangerous world, trying to get a guarantee in an uncertain realm, as if he fears that the very air and streams of England are poison to the man whose father claimed them against their will.
In London, a leaderless city plagued with illness, the apprentices take to the streets in running riots, demanding to know: Where is the king? Where is the Lord Chancellor? Where are the Lord Mayor and the City fathers? Is London to be abandoned? How far will the king run? Will he go to Wales? To Ireland? Beyond? Why does he not stand alongside his people and share their troubles?
The common people—fainting as they walk behind the plow, resting their burning heads on their workbenches, the brewers dropping down their malting spoons and saying they have to rest, the spinners lying down with a fever and not getting up—the common people take against the young king whom they had adored. They say that he is a coward, running away from the sickness that they cannot escape, fearful of the disease that carries his name. They curse him, saying that his Tudor father brought in death and now the son abandons them to its pains.
BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, SUMMER 1517
Released from court by the king’s flight, I am not required to care for Princess Mary, who is safe and well in her nursery. I can take the summer to myself, working on my own buildings, my own lands, my own farms, my own profit and—at long last—the marriage of my son Montague.
The King's Curse Page 18