“He’s still not had her,” Montague says bluntly. “She’s got him dancing on a thread. She’s a prize he has to win. He’s still, night and day, on the hunt, hoping that this day, this night, she will say yes. My God, but she knows how to entrap a man! She is always about to fall, but she keeps always a handbreadth, a moment out of his reach.”
The king seems to be delighted with the hunting, with the day, with the weather, with the music. The king is delighted with everything but especially with the company of his daughter.
“How I wish I could take you with me,” he says fondly. “But your mother will not allow it.”
“I am sure my Lady Mother would allow it,” she says. “I am sure that she would, Your Grace. And my Lady Governess could have my things packed and me ready to leave in a moment.” She laughs, a thin, hopeful, little nervous sound. “I could come at once. You have only to say the word.”
He shakes his head. “We have had some differences,” he says carefully. “Your Lady Mother does not understand the difficulty that I am in. I am guided by God, my daughter. I am commanded by Him to ask your mother to take up a holy life, a sacred life, a life filled with respect and comfort that would honor her.”
“Most people would say that she is lucky to be able to leave this troubled world and live at her ease in respect and holiness. I, for one, can’t just give up. I have to stay and struggle in this world. I have to guard the country and continue my line. But your mother could be freed of her duty, she can be happy, she can live a life that would please her. You could stay with her often. Not I. I cannot put down my burden.”
She folds her lower lip under her little white teeth as if she is afraid of saying the wrong thing. She is frowning with concentration on his words. Henry laughs and chucks her under the chin. “Don’t look so grave, little princess!” he exclaims. “These are worries for your parents, not for you. Time enough for you to understand the heavy burdens that I bear. But, believe this: your mother cannot travel with me while she writes to the Pope and tells him to command me, while she writes to her nephew the emperor and tells him to reprove me. She complains of me to others—that’s not loyal, now, is it? Complains of me when I am trying to do the right thing, God’s will! And so she cannot travel with me, though I would like her to be with me. And you cannot travel with me either. It is very cruel of her to separate us to prove her point. It is not a woman’s role to enter into discourse. It is very cruel of her to send me out on progress alone. And wrong of her, against the commandment of God, to set up her opinion against her husband.”
“It is hard,” the king continues, his voice deepening with pity for himself. “It is a hard road for me, with no wife at my side. Your mother does not think of this when she sets herself against me.”
“I am sure . . .” Princess Mary begins, but her father raises his hand for her silence.
“Be very sure of this: I am doing the right thing for you, for the kingdom, and for your mother,” he interrupts her. “And I am doing God’s will. God speaks directly to kings, you know. So anyone who speaks against me is speaking against the will of God Himself. They all say that—the men of the new learning. They all write it. It is indisputable. I am obeying the will of God and your mother, mistakenly, is following her own ambition. But at least I know I can count on your love and obedience. My little daughter. My princess. My only true love.”
Her eyes fill with tears, her lip trembles; she is torn between her loyalty to her mother and the intensely powerful charm of her father. She cannot argue against his authority; she curtseys to the father she loves. “Of course,” she says.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, AUTUMN 1530
The former cardinal, Wolsey, has died on the road to London, before he could face trial, just as the Holy Maid of Kent predicted. Thank God that we are spared the sight of a cardinal on trial. Cousin Henry Courtenay had been told he would have to present the charges of corruption and witchcraft; but God is merciful, and our family will not have his blood on our hands. We could not send a cardinal to the scaffold, though Tom Darcy says he could have done it.
The Boleyns, brother and sisters, danced in celebration before the court, in a masque of the damned. They looked as if they had come up from hell with sooty faces and hands like talons. God knows what we are coming to. Wolsey was bad enough but now the king’s councillors are a family of nobodies who dress themselves as devils to celebrate the death of an innocent man. Burn this.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, DECEMBER 1530
We spend Christmas at Greenwich as usual, the king his charming regal self, loving with the queen, doting on Mary, and proudly warm to his son the double duke, young Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond. He is now a boy of eleven years, of soaring importance, and nobody who sees him could mistake him for anyone but his father’s son; he is tall like a York, copper-headed like a Tudor, with the Plantagenet love of sport, music, and learning.
I cannot imagine what the king means to do with him, unless it is to hold him in reserve as an heir, in case he gets no other. The fortune that is spent on his household and on his goods, even on his New Year’s gifts, shows that he is to be regarded highly, even as royal as the Princess Mary. Worse, it shows that the king wants everyone to see this—and what this means for my princess and her future leaves me puzzled. Every ambassador at court, every foreign visitor knows the princess is the only legitimate child, the daughter of the queen, a little crown on her head, the king’s acknowledged daughter and heiress. But at the same time, walking beside her like an equal, is the king’s bastard, dressed in cloth of gold, served like a prince, seated beside his father. What is anyone to make of this but that the king is training up his bastard child for the throne? And what is to become of his daughter if she is not to be Princess of Wales? And, if Henry Fitzroy is the next king, what is she?
The queen is outwardly serene, hiding her anguish at the supplanting of her daughter with a nameless bastard. She takes her place on the throne beside her smiling husband and nods to her many friends. The ladies of the court, from the Dowager Queen of France down to Bessie Blount, show her every respect; most of them show her a special tenderness. Every woman knows that if a husband can set his wife aside and say it is the will of God, then not one of them will ever be safe, not even with a wedding ring on her finger.
The noblemen of the court are scrupulous in their respect. They dare not openly oppose her husband, but the way that they bow when she walks by, and lean towards her to listen when she speaks, shows everyone that they know this is a Princess of Spain and a Queen of England, and nothing can ever change that. Only the Boleyn family avoid her, the Boleyns and their kinsman Thomas Howard, the new young Duke of Norfolk—he has none of his father’s fidelity to the queen, but thinks only of his own family’s growing power. Everyone knows that the Howard interests are bound to the success of the young women whom they have planted in the king’s bed; their opinion of the queen is worthless.
They keep out of the queen’s rooms but they are everywhere else at court, as if it were their own house, as if the magnificent Greenwich Palace were poky little Hever Castle. I hear from one of the ladies that the Boleyn woman, Anne, has sworn that she wishes all Spaniards were at the bottom of the sea, and that she will never serve the queen again. I think that if refusing to serve is the worst thing that Anne Boleyn can threaten, then we have nothing to fear.
But the loss of the cardinal and the dominance of the Howard faction at court means that the king has only one good advisor: Thomas More. He is at the king’s side through the day but tries to go home to the City to be with his family. “Tell your son that I am writing a long essay in reply to his,” he informs me one day as he walks to the stable yard, calling for his horse. “Tell him I am sorry to be late in my reply. I have been writing too many letters for the king to write my own.”
“Do you write everything as he bids, or do you tell him your own opinions?” I ask curiously.
He gives me a small, wary smile. “I choos
e my words carefully, Lady Margaret, both when I write as he commands, and when I tell him what I think.”
“And do you and Reginald still agree?” I ask him, thinking of Reginald traveling in France, consulting with churchmen, asking them for the advice that Thomas More avoids offering in England.
More smiles. “Reginald and I love to differ over detail,” he says. “But in general, we agree, my lady. And as long as he agrees with me, I am bound to think your son a very brilliant man.”
I am to take a new young woman into my care in the princess’s household. Lady Margaret Douglas, the commoner daughter of the king’s sister the Dowager Queen of Scotland. She was Cardinal Wolsey’s ward and now has to live somewhere. The king chooses to put her in our household, living with our princess, under my care.
I welcome her with pleasure. She is a pretty girl, sixteen this year, desperate to be at court, eager to grow up. I think she will make a charming companion for our princess, who is naturally serious and sometimes, in these hard days, troubled. But I hope that her wardship is not a sign to me that the importance of the princess is being diminished. I take my worries to the queen’s chapel, kneeling at her altar and looking at the golden crucifix gleaming with rubies, and I pray, wordlessly, that the king has not sent one girl who is half Tudor and half commoner into the house of a princess because he may one day argue she is the same: half Tudor, half Spanish, and no royal heir.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SPRING 1531
Geoffrey rides out to see me, in the twilight, as if he does not want to be observed. I see him from my window that faces over the London road and I go down to meet him. He is handing over his horse in the stable yard and he kneels for my blessing on the cobbles and then draws me into the cold gray garden, as if he dare not speak to me indoors.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” I ask him urgently.
His face is pale in the gloom. “I have to tell you something terrible.”
“The queen?”
“Safe, thank God. But someone has tried to kill Bishop Fisher, with poison.”
I grip his arm as I stagger in shock. “Who would do such a thing? He cannot have an enemy in the world.”
“The Lady,” Geoffrey says grimly. “He defends the queen from her, and he defends his faith from her, and he is the only man who dares to oppose the king. She, or her family, must be behind this.”
“It can’t be! How do you know?”
“Because two men died eating from the bishop’s bowl of porridge. God Himself saved John Fisher. He was fasting that day and didn’t touch it.”
“I can hardly believe it. I cannot believe it! Are we Italians now?”
“No one can believe it. But someone is prepared to kill a bishop to make the way easy for the Boleyn woman.”
“He is unharmed, God bless him?”
“Unhurt for now. But Lady Mother, if she would kill a bishop, would she dare attempt a queen? Or a princess?”
I feel myself grow cold in the cold garden; my hands begin to shake. “She would not. She would not attempt the life of the queen or the princess.”
“Someone poisoned the bishop’s porridge. Someone was prepared to do that.”
“You must warn the queen.”
“I have done so, and I told the Spanish ambassador, and Lord Darcy had the same idea and came to me.”
“We can’t be seen to plot with Spain. More so now than ever.”
“You mean, now that we know it is so dangerous to oppose Anne Boleyn? Now that we know that the king uses the axe and she uses poison?”
Numbly, I nod.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1531
Reginald comes home from Paris, in the furred robe of a scholar, with an entourage of clerks and learned advisors, bringing the opinions of the French churchmen and universities, after months of debate, research, and discussion. He sends me a brief note to tell me that he will see the king to make his report, and then come to visit me and the princess.
Montague brings him, traveling by our barge on an inflowing tide, with the sound of the drum keeping the rowers to their stroke echoing over the cool water at the gray time of the evening. I am waiting for them on the pier at Richmond, Princess Mary and her ladies with me, her hand in the crook of my elbow, both of us smiling a welcome.
As soon as the barge is close enough for me to see Montague’s white face and grimly set jaw I know that something is terribly wrong. “Go inside,” I say to the princess. I nod to Lady Margaret Douglas. “You go too.”
“I wanted to greet Lord Montague, and—”
“Not today. Go.”
She does as she is told, and the two of them make their way slowly and unwillingly towards the palace, so I can turn my attention to the barge, to Montague’s stiff figure and the crumpled heap of his brother, my son Reginald, in the seat at the rear. On the pier the sentries present arms and snap to attention. The drum rolls, the rowers ship their oars and hold them upward in salute as Montague hauls Reginald to his feet and helps him down the gangway.
My scholarly son staggers as if he is sick; he can hardly stand. The captain of the barge has to take his other arm and the two of them half lift him towards me as I stand on the pier.
Reginald’s legs give way, he collapses to his knees at my feet, his head bowed. “Forgive me,” he says.
I exchange one aghast look with Montague. “What’s happened?”
The face that Reginald turns up to me is as white as if he were dying of the Sweat. His hands that grip mine are damp and shaking. “Are you sick?” I demand in sudden fear. I turn on Montague. “How could you bring him here with a disease? The princess . . .”
Grimly, Montague shakes his head. “He’s not ill,” he says. “He’s been in a fight. He was knocked down.”
I clutch Reginald’s shaking hands. “Who dared to hurt him?”
“The king struck him,” Montague says shortly. “The king drew a dagger on him.”
I am wordless. I look from Montague to Reginald. “What did you say?” I whisper. “What have you done?”
He bows his head, his shoulders convulse, and he gives a sob like a dry choking heave. “I am sorry, Lady Mother. I offended him.”
“How?”
“I told him that there could be no reason in God’s law, in the Bible, or in common justice, for him to put the queen aside,” he said. “I told him that was the opinion of everyone. And he pounded his fist in my face, and snatched up a dagger from his table. If Thomas Howard had not caught him, he would have run me through.”
“But you were only to report what the French theologians believe!”
“That’s what they believe,” he says. He sits back on his heels and looks up at me, and now I see a great bruise slowly forming on the side of his pale handsome face. My son’s delicate cheek bears the mark of the Tudor fist. Anger curdles in my belly like vomit.
“He had a dagger? He drew on you?”
The only man allowed to bear arms at court is the king. He knows that if he ever draws a sword, he will be attacking a defenseless man. And so no king has ever drawn sword or dagger in court. It is against every tenet of chivalry that Henry learned as a boy. It is not in his nature to take up a blade against an unarmed opponent; it is not in his nature to bully with his fists. He is strong, he is big, but he has always managed his temper and controlled his strength. I can’t believe he would have been violent, not to a younger, slighter man, not to a scholar, not to one of his own. I can’t believe that he would have pulled out a blade on Reginald, of all people. This is not one of his wenching, fighting, drinking cronies; this is Reginald, his scholar.
“You taunted him,” I accuse Reginald.
He keeps his face down, he shakes his head.
“You must have driven him to anger.”
“I did nothing! He went in a moment,” he mutters.
“Was he drunk?” I ask Montague.
Montague is grim as if he took the blow himself. “No. The Duke of Norfolk pr
actically threw Reginald into my arms. Dragged him out of the privy chamber and thrust him at me. I could hear the king roaring behind him like an animal. I really think the king would have killed him.”
I cannot imagine this, I cannot believe it.
Reginald looks up at me, the bruise darkening on his cheek, his eyes horrified. “I think he is gone mad,” he says. “He was like a man insane. I think our king has gone mad.”
We bundle Reginald into the Carthusian monastery at Sheen where he can pray in silence among his brothers and let his bruises fade. As soon as he is well enough to travel we send him back to Padua, without a word to the court. There was some thought that he might be made Archbishop of York; but this will not happen now. He will never be the princess’s tutor. I doubt that he will ever come to court or live in England.
“Better that he’s out of the country,” Montague says firmly. “I don’t dare speak of him to the king. He’s in a state of fury, all the time. He curses Norfolk for driving Wolsey to his death; he curses his own sister for her affection for the queen. He won’t even see the Duchess of Norfolk, who has declared her loyalty to the queen; he won’t ask Thomas More’s opinion for fear of what he would say. He says he can trust nobody, none of us. Better for our family and for Reginald himself that he should be out of sight and forgotten for a little while.”
“He said that the king has run mad,” I say very quietly.
Montague checks that the door behind us is tightly closed. “In truth, Lady Mother, I think the king has lost his wits. He loves the queen, he has relied on her judgment and he has always done so. She has been at his side without fail since he first came to the throne at seventeen. He cannot imagine being king without her. He’s never done it without her. But he is madly in love with the Lady, and she torments him night and day with desire and arguments. And he’s not a youth, he’s not a boy who can fall lightly into love and out again. He’s not a good age for greensickness. This isn’t poetry and singing songs under her window. She tortures him with her body and her brain. He’s beside himself with desire for her, there are times when I think he’s going to injure himself. Reginald caught him on the raw.”
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