My daughter-in-law knows better than to fear my anger, as she knows I love her too dearly to lift a hand to her. But she makes sure that the princess hears nothing of the baby who is called Henry Carey, or of the new flirtation that her father has taken up in place of the old.
Under my guardianship the princess learns nothing more, not even when we go to court at Westminster and Greenwich for Christmas each year, not even when the king commands that we set up a court for the princess in Richmond Palace. I command the ladies as if I were the strictest abbess in the kingdom and there is no gossip spoken around the princess though the main court is beside itself about the king’s new flirt, Anne Boleyn, who seems to have taken her sister’s place in his favor, though not yet in his bed.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, MAY 1527
I am commanded to bring the princess to court for the celebration of her betrothal into the House of Valois. She is to marry either the French king, or his second son, a little boy of seven years, the duc d’Orléans, so a completely disorganized and inadequate plan. We arrive at court and Mary flies to her mother’s rooms with me running behind her, begging her to walk with dignity, like a princess.
It hardly matters. The queen jumps down from her throne in the presence chamber to embrace her daughter and takes me by the hand to lead us both into her privy chamber so that we can chatter and exclaim, and delight in each other without a hundred people watching.
As soon as the door is closed behind us and mother and daughter have exchanged a ripple of inquiries and answers, slowly the brightness drains from the queen’s face, and I see that Katherine is weary. Her blue eyes still shine with pleasure at seeing her daughter; but the skin beneath them is brown and stained, and her face is tired and pale. At the neck of her gown I see a tell-tale rash and I guess that she is wearing a hair shirt beneath her rich clothes, as if her life was not hard enough in itself to mortify her.
I understand at once that she is grieved her precious daughter is to be bundled off to France as part of an alliance against her own nephew, Charles of Spain, and that she blames herself for this, as for everything else that will befall England without an heir. The burden of being a Spanish princess and an English queen is weighing heavily on her. The behavior of her nephew Charles has made her life in England far worse than it was. He has made promise after promise to the king, and then broken them, as if Henry were not a man dangerously quick to take offense at any threat to his dignity, as if he were not so selfish as to punish his wife for events far beyond her control.
“I have good news, good news: you are not to go to France,” she says, sitting in her chair and pulling Mary onto her lap. “The betrothal is celebrated but you will not go for years, perhaps two or three. And anything can happen in that time.”
“You don’t want me to marry into the House of Valois?” Mary asks anxiously.
Her mother forces a reassuring smile. “Of course your father will have chosen rightly for you, and we will obey him with a glad heart. But I am pleased that he has said that you are to stay in England for the next few years.”
“At Ludlow?”
“Even better than that! At Richmond. And dear Lady Margaret will live with you, and care for you when I have to go away.”
“Then I am glad too,” Mary says fervently. She looks up into the weary, smiling face. “Are you well, Lady Mother? Are you happy? Not ill at all?”
“I am well enough,” the queen says, though I hear the strain in her voice and I stretch out a hand to her so that we are linked, one to another. “I am well enough,” she repeats.
She does not speak to me of her disappointment that her daughter is to marry into the house of her enemy, France; nor of her humiliation that the bastard boy of her former lady-in-waiting is now Lord of the North, living in the great castle of Sheriff Hutton with a court as grand as that of our princess and commanding the northern marches. Indeed, now he is Lord High Admiral of England though a child of eight.
But she never complains, not of her weariness nor her ill health; she never speaks of the changes of her body, the night sweats, the nauseating headaches. I go to her room one morning and find her wrapped in sheets stepping out of a steaming bath, a princess of Spain once more.
She smiles at my disapproving face. “I know,” she says. “But bathing has never done me any harm and in the nights I am so hot! I dream I am back in Spain and I wake as if I had a fever.”
“I am sorry,” I say. I tuck the linen sheet around her shoulders, which are still smooth-skinned and pale as pearls. “Your skin is as lovely as ever.”
She shrugs as if it does not matter, and pulls up the sheet so I shall not remark on the red weals of fleabites and the painfully raw patches that come from the rubbing of the hair shirt on her breasts and belly.
“Your Grace, you have no sins that would require you to hurt yourself,” I say very quietly.
“It’s not for me, it is for the kingdom,” she says. “I take pain to turn aside the wrath of God from the king and his people.”
I hesitate. “This can’t be right,” I say. “Your confessor . . .”
“Dear Bishop Fisher wears a hair shirt himself for the sins of the world, and Thomas More does too,” she says. “Nothing but prayer, passionate prayer, is going to move God to speak to the king. I would do anything.”
That silences me for a moment.
“And you?” she asks me. “You are well, my dear? Your children are all well? Ursula had a little girl, didn’t she? And Arthur’s wife is with child, is she not?”
“Yes, Ursula has a daughter named Dorothy, and is with child again, and Jane has had a girl,” I say. “They have called her Margaret.”
“Margaret for you?”
I smile. “Arthur will inherit his wife’s great fortune when her father dies but they would like to see some of my fortune going to my namesake.”
“And they have a boy already,” she says wistfully, and this is the only acknowledgment she makes that her barren marriage with only our little princess has broken her heart, and now it is an old, old sorrow.
But as I go around court and greet my friends and my many cousins, I find that her ladies, indeed everyone at court, seem to know that her courses have stopped and that there will never be any more Tudor babies, girls or boys. Perhaps it will be, in the end, that there are no sons and the line will end with a girl.
The king says nothing about this slow, painful crushing of his hopes, but the favor shown to Bessie Blount’s bastard, little Henry Fitzroy, and the honors heaped on him remind everyone that the queen is past the age of childbearing and that, although we have a handsome young Tudor boy visiting court, running down the galleries and calling for his horse in the stables, it is not one that she has carried, and now no one hopes for anything more from her.
It is Maria de Salinas, now Countess Willoughby, the queen’s most loyal friend, who says quietly to me: “Don’t think she is too distressed at this French marriage. She feared far worse.”
“Why, what could be worse for her?” I ask.
We are walking together by the river, as the king has demanded a rowing regatta and the watermen are competing against the noblemen of the court. Everyone is disguised as soldiers or mermen, and it is a pretty scene. I can only tell which team is of noblemen and which watermen by the harsh fact that the watermen win every race and Henry’s laughing court collapse over their oars and confess that it is harder work than it looks.
“She fears that the king might order Princess Mary to marry Henry Fitzroy,” she says, and watches as the smile drains from my face. I turn to face her and grip her hand as I feel I am about to faint.
“What?” I think I must have misunderstood her.
She nods. “It’s true. There is a plan that Princess Mary will marry the Duke of Richmond, the bastard.”
“This is an ugly joke,” I say.
Her steady gaze tells me that it is no joke.
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“Be
cause it is true.”
I look around. There is no one in earshot, but still I draw her hand into my arm and we walk away from the riverbank, where the ladies are cheering their favorites, into the quietness of the lush garden.
“The king would never have thought of such a ridiculous thing.”
“Of course not. The cardinal put it into his head. But now the king thinks of it too.”
I look at her, and I am dumb with horror at what she is saying. “This is madness.”
“It is the only way he can get his son on the throne of England, without disinheriting his daughter. It’s the only way the people would accept Henry Fitzroy as his father’s heir. Princess Mary becomes Queen of England, with a Tudor husband at her side.”
“They are half brother and sister, it is quite horrible.”
“That is what we think. That is what a normal father would think. But this is the king, thinking about who is going to inherit his throne. He would do anything to keep the Tudors on the throne. A princess cannot hold the throne of England. And he could get a dispensation for such a marriage.”
“The Pope would never agree.”
“Actually, the Pope would agree. The cardinal would arrange it.”
“The cardinal has that much influence?”
“Some say he will be the next pope.”
“The queen would never consent.”
“Yes,” Maria says gently, as if finally I have come to an understanding of what she has been trying to say all along. “Exactly. That is the worst thing. That is the worst thing that might happen. The queen would never consent to it. She would rather die than see her daughter shamed. The queen would fight it. And what do you think will happen if she sets herself against the will of the king? What do you think will happen to her, if she defends her daughter against the command of her husband? What do you think he will do? What is he like, these days, if anyone contradicts him?”
I look at her pale face and I think of my cousin the Duke of Buckingham, who put his head on the block for nothing more than boastful words in the secrecy of the confessional. “If she opposed him, would he call it treason?” I wonder.
“Yes,” she says. “Which is why I am glad that the king plans to marry his daughter to our worst enemy, France. Because there was something even worse planned for her.”
My son Arthur, Sir Arthur as I delightedly remind myself to call him, rows in the regatta and beats four other boats before coming in second to a brawny waterman with arms like legs of ham. My son Montague takes bets on the riverbank and wins a purse of gold from the king himself. The happy, noisy court ends the day with a battle of boats with the king’s barge leading the charge against a small flotilla of wherries. Anne Boleyn gets herself the part of a figurehead, at the front of the king’s boat, gazing out over the water, directing the fire of the bargemen wielding buckets. Everyone gets drenched and the laughing king helps Anne out of the boat and keeps her by him as we all walk back to the palace.
Princess Mary practices her part in the great masque planned to celebrate her betrothal. I go with her to the wardrobe rooms where they are fitting her gown. It is an extraordinarily costly dress, the bodice encrusted with rubies and pearls, the red and white of the Tudor rose, their stems of emeralds, their hearts of yellow diamonds. She staggers at first under the weight of it, but when she stands up she is the most glamorous princess the world has ever seen. She is still slight and small, but her pale skin is flushed with health, her auburn hair is thick and rich, and in this gown she looks like an icon in a valuable shrine.
“We should really be in the treasury for this dress fitting,” I say to her and I see her face light up with pleasure.
“It is more treasure than velvet,” she agrees. “But see my sleeves!”
They hold out the golden surcoat and she puts it on. The hanging sleeves of the gown are in the new fashion, so long that they almost reach the ground, and she is draped in golden light. They gather her thick hair in a garland of flowers, and capture the mass of flowers and auburn locks in a silver net.
“How do I look?” she asks me, knowing that the answer is “beautiful.”
“You look like a princess of England and a queen of France,” I tell her. “You are as beautiful as your mother when she first came to England, but even more richly dressed. You’re dazzling, my dear. No one will look at anyone but you.”
She sweeps me a curtsey. “Ah, merci, ma bonne mère,” she says.
At first I am proved right; no one takes their eyes from our princess. The masque is a great success and the princess and seven ladies emerge from the painted scenery to dance with eight costumed knights, and she is the center of all attention, dripping in jewels and faultlessly trained. When the masque is over, the French ambassador begs her to honor him with a dance. She takes her place at the head of the set, and on the other side of the room her father lines up with his partner. My friend the queen watches smiling at this official, most important occasion, as her husband dances hand in hand with the commoner Anne Boleyn, his head turned towards her, his eyes on her animated face.
I wait for the signal that the ladies are to withdraw, but the dancing goes on long into the night. Only after midnight does the queen rise from her chair under the cloth of estate and curtsey to the king. He bows to her, with every sign of respect. He takes her hand and he kisses her on both her cheeks. Her ladies and I rise from our stools or reluctantly trail away from the dancing and prepare to leave.
The queen says: “Good night, God bless you,” and smiles at her husband. Princess Mary, her daughter, comes to stand behind her; Mary Brandon, the Dowager Queen of France, comes behind her. I follow them, all the ladies in order of their precedence, we are all ready leave—but Anne Boleyn has not moved.
I feel a moment’s horrible embarrassment: she has made a mistake and I, or someone else, had better smooth it over. She has not noticed that we are leaving and she will look a fool, scampering behind us when the queen withdraws. It doesn’t matter much, but it’s awkward and stupid of her to be inattentive to the time-honored rituals of the court. I step forward to take her by the arm and curtsey to the queen and sweep her into the train of ladies, to do this young woman the favor of skimming over her error before she is embarrassed by her mistake. But then I see something in the tilt of her head and the gleaming challenge of her smile, and I hesitate.
She stands surrounded by a circle of the most handsome men of the court, the center of attention in the beautiful arched hall, her dark head crowned by a French hood of deep crimson set with rubies and gold thread. She does not look out of place, she does not look shamed as she should, a lady-in-waiting who has forgotten her place. Instead, she looks utterly triumphant. She sweeps a shallow curtsey, her red velvet gown spread wide, and she does not hurry to join the queen’s train, as she should.
There is a momentary pause, almost an intake of breath, and then the queen looks from her husband to the Boleyn girl as if she realizes that something new and strange is happening here. The young woman is not going to withdraw from the hall following the queen, walking behind the superior ladies in order of strict precedence—and since she was born the daughter of a simple knight there are very many of us to precede her. She is not coming at all. In this one act she has changed everything. And the queen is not ordering her. And the king is allowing this.
Katherine gives a little shrug, as if it does not much matter, turns on her heel, and walks from the great hall with her head held high. Led by the king’s own daughter the princess, the king’s sister—a princess by birth and a queen by marriage—his cousins like me born royal, all the other ladies of the court, we all follow the queen in deafening silence. But as we proceed up the broad stairs, we hear Anne’s seductive giggle.
I command Montague and Arthur to my rooms at dawn, before breakfast, before Prime, before anyone else in the royal household is stirring.
“You should have told me matters had gone so far,” I say sharply.
Montague checks
that the door is tightly closed, and that his sleepy groom is standing outside. “I couldn’t write anything, and besides, I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” I exclaim. “She serves as a lady-in-waiting but goes where she wants, dances with the king, and doesn’t leave when we do?”
“That’s the first time that has happened,” Arthur explains. “She’s never stayed behind before. Yes, she’s with him all the time; she goes alone to his rooms, they ride out just the two of them with the rest of us following behind, they sit together and talk or they gamble or they play and sing.” He makes an almost comical grimace. “Lady Mother, they read books of theology together! What sort of seduction is this? But she’s always been discreet before, she’s always been like all the others. She’s never stayed back like that.”
“So why now?” I demand. “In front of the French ambassador, and everyone?”
Montague nods at the question. He’s more of a politician than his brother. Arthur sees everything because he is all but inseparable from the king, one of the band of his close friends who go everywhere together; but Montague understands better what it means.
“Could it be for that very reason? Perhaps because this was the betrothal of Princess Mary to the French,” he suggests. “Anne favors the French, she spent years at the French court. She helped to bring this about and they know that. Henry doesn’t intend to befriend the Spanish again, they are to be our enemies. The queen—God bless her—is of the enemy. He feels free to offend her. Anne shows that it is her policy which will triumph.”
“What good does it do the king?” I ask crossly. “To insult the queen before the whole court does nothing but hurt her, and demean himself. And that young woman laughed as we left, I heard her.”
The King's Curse Page 26