by Jean Plaidy
“Have you not had doctors brought to her?”
“She will have no one, your Highness. She screams if any approach. Her legs, your Highness, are in such a state of corruption that she screams in agony the whole day and night.”
“Something must be done,” said Juana. “I will visit her myself and take my brother’s physicians with me.”
So Juana set out immediately for Tordesillas, taking with her Philip’s physicians, but when they arrived at the Alcázar the old Queen refused to see anyone but Juana.
Young Juana caught her breath in disgust at the condition of the bedchamber. The legs were exposed in all their horror, for the old Queen screamed in agony when they were touched by even the lightest covering.
The Queen called out: “Who are you then … come to torment me? You are Mosen Ferrer, are you … you torturer? See what you have done to me with your tortures!”
Juana fell to her knees and put her hands over her face to shut out the hideous sight. She began to sob hysterically.
“What ails you?” asked the Queen.
“It grieves me to see you thus … and you … a Queen.”
“To see me thus … old, crippled, covered in sores … dying … ah, dying! But why be surprised? This is a fitting end for me.”
“Oh, Grandmother, no … no! The doctors can help you.”
“No one can, but I do not care. Soon I shall be past my pains. I shall be with him.”
“Grandmother, your soul is in God’s keeping?”
“I shall be with my Philip. What happens up there, eh? What happens in Heaven? Shall I find him there with his women about him?”
“Grandmother, hush … hush. I must call Father Borgia. You will see the doctors? You must see them.”
“Father Borgia! He is Mosen Ferrer in disguise, I believe.”
“No … no.”
“He poisoned Philip. Comes he now to poison me? Then let him. For soon I shall be with my Philip. Oh, to be with him again! We shall fight … It matters not. Better to fight with him than to live, weary and lonely, without him.”
“Here is Father Borgia, Grandmother. I sent for him. I implore you, listen to him before it is too late.”
“I’ll not see him.”
“You must, Grandmother. I beg of you, do not depart this life with all your sins upon you.”
She began to whimper: “I am tired. Let me go in peace.”
Young Juana beckoned to Father Borgia, who had come close to the bed. “Pray for her,” she whispered.
So he prayed. “Repent,” he urged. “Ask for forgiveness of your sins.”
She nodded—whether or not in answer to him, none of those who had come to the apartment could be sure.
A messenger came to say that learned priests, having heard of the Queen’s condition, had come from Salamanca to do for her what must surely need to be done.
They crowded about the bed, and one held a crucifix before the dying Queen.
“Your soul is in jeopardy,” he cried. “Speak and ask forgiveness. Say after me, ‘Christ crucified, aid me.’ ”
She lifted her eyes to his and the death rattle was in her throat. She murmured: “I feel no pain now.”
“Beg for mercy. Say after me, ‘Christ crucified, aid me.’ ”
Her lips moved. “Christ … crucified … aid me.”
The priest held the crucifix close to her face. Her breathing was very faint and suddenly she smiled.
Juana, watching her, saw her lips form the name: “Philip!” as she slipped away from the world.
It was April. A fitting time for the heir of England to be born. All the trees were in bud; the birds seemed riotously gay as though to welcome the baby Prince. Even the Spaniards seemed reconciled to England in the spring, perhaps because they knew they would soon be leaving it.
In Hampton Court there was a bustling and a hurrying to and fro and many an excited whisper. Any moment now, it was said; and all England and Spain were on tiptoe for the news. The French were hoping for a hitch, for the birth of a Prince would be the death-knell to the hopes of Henri II of securing England’s crown for his son through Mary Queen of Scots.
A peal of bells was rung at St. Stephen’s in Walbrook, and in less than ten minutes bells were ringing all over the city of London. This was taken as the signal.
“The child is born!” cried the populace.
“And is it a boy?”
“Of course it’s a boy!”
Nothing less than a boy would please the people. The bonfires were lighted. There was singing and cheering in the streets.
And on her bed at Hampton Court the Queen was tossing and turning.
Here was all the ceremony that must attend a royal birth. There must be no doubt that the infant was the one born of Mary; therefore there must be important witnesses at hand.
Some of the experienced midwives were looking furtively at one another. They dared not speak their thoughts for fear of being charged with treason.
The Queen screamed aloud in agony and the women closed about her.
One of the women, more bold than the rest, said: “The Queen’s time has not yet come.”
The other midwives nodded in agreement. Mistress Clarencius, her eyes filled with anxiety, whispered to the Queen: “Your Majesty, will you try to rest? The time is not yet here. You should try to rest, they say.”
“Not yet come!” screamed the Queen. “But I swear my time has come. I feel it. I know it. What mean they?”
“They are craving your Majesty to be patient.”
“The child … the child is safe …?”
“Safe, your Majesty,” said Mistress Clarencius, “but not yet ready.”
“Ah! I have come to my bed too soon.”
“Your Majesty should rest. Here is a soothing draught.”
She sipped it and lay back on her pillows. She looked very old without her jeweled coif; her light sandy hair was disordered on the pillows, her sallow face piteously lined. The women looked at her with a terrible fear in their hearts, but they saw that all the Queen’s hopes were with her still.
“I hear bells … shouts …” said Mary.
“It is the people, your Majesty. They rejoice in the blessing which is about to be yours.”
A tired smile was on her lips. “My husband …” she began.
Philip came forward. He could be relied upon to do what was expected of him. He looked at Mary and tried to hide the repulsion she aroused in him. He was not unaware of the tension in the apartment, and he knew that all was not well with the Queen.
Unless this child was born, the discomfort and the humiliation of the last months would have been in vain. If the child died and Mary died, he would have no hold on England. The red-headed Elizabeth would mount the throne; and he doubted that not very soon after such an event she would be snapping her fingers at the Pope himself. And something was wrong … very wrong.
He took Mary’s clammy hand and kissed it.
“It is so long,” she said piteously.
“You were too anxious, my love. There has been a slight miscalculation. You have been brought to bed too soon.”
She nodded. “It seems as though it will never be.”
The draught they had given her was beginning to have its effect. He said: “Sleep, my love. That is what you need. And when you wake … who knows, your time may have come.”
She would not release his hand. Those cold fingers twined about his, pressing, squeezing, like snakes, he thought. As soon as he was sure she was asleep, he gently withdrew his hand.
“What is it?” he asked the midwives.
They lowered their eyes.
“Let us leave the apartment,” he said. “The doctors also. If aught is as it should not be, I would know of it.”
In the antechamber to which he had led them, one of the doctors said: “Your Majesty, I never saw such a strange pregnancy. There seems to be no child … no movement.”
“You think the child is dead?” His voice wa
s cold and precise.
“It is not that, Sire. It is as though there is no child.”
He looked at the doctors. “Well, you are learned men!”
“It is true, your Majesty, that there is all the outward appearance of pregnancy, but … a softness, you understand? It would seem that there is … no child.”
“But how could this be?”
“Sire, there have been similar cases. There have been ladies of the Queen’s age whose desire for children was intense. There followed all the outward signs of pregnancies … but mock pregnancies, your Majesty. The would-be mothers were completely deceived.”
“But this is … impossible!”
“We crave your Majesty’s pardon, but it has happened thus in other cases. Ladies long for children, their longings become hysterical, and they may not be in the best of health. We fear that the Queen’s age may not allow her to bear children, and that in the greatness of her desire she has created a mock pregnancy.”
“I cannot believe this. It is fantastic.”
One of the women curtsied low. “Your Majesty, the Queen expected to be brought to bed last month. She was waiting for her pains. Many times she thought they had started, but they had not. And so it was on this occasion. She waits for her pains in vain.”
Philip said: “Leave me now. Not a word of this to the Queen. It would kill her. We must wait and hope. There must be a child.”
There must be a child. The bells were ringing throughout London. Soon the news of the supposed birth would be all over the country.
And if there is no child, pondered Philip, what hopes are there for Spain? How Henry of France would be laughing up his sleeve! The whole of France and England would be laughing at poor, plain Mary and solemn Philip, who could not get a child.
There must be a child. News of it had been sent to the Emperor, who had written back gleefully to Philip to say that he had heard that the Queen was “hopeful and that her garments waxed very strait.”
Could the hopes of the last months have grown from nothing more secure than a hysterical woman’s delusions?
All through the palace the rumors were circulating. Philip was filled with pity for Mary, that sad, frustrated woman who had already suffered more in one lifetime than anyone should. What would her reactions be if she knew the truth? He must order the cessation of the bell-ringing. Yet how could he tell the people that there was to be no child because it had never existed outside the Queen’s imagination?
Mary was wild-eyed. They had tried to break the news to her. She screamed: “It’s a lie. It’s a conspiracy. My sister has set these rumors abroad. Look at me. Am I not large enough?”
Her women were weeping about her; but she paced up and down her apartment, her hair wild, her eyes blazing. Let others doubt the existence of the child; she would not.
“Send the doctors to me. Send to me the men who have set these rumors working. I’ll have them racked. I’ll get the truth of this matter.”
Philip alone could soothe her. “Wait,” he begged. “I doubt not that shortly you will prove these rumors false.”
She took his hands; she covered them with burning kisses. “My love, you are with me. Oh, Philip, how happy you make me! How we shall laugh at these people when I hold my son in my arms!”
“You shall,” he said. “But calm yourself now. Rest. You must be strong for the ordeal when it comes.”
“How you comfort me! You are always right, and I thank God for bringing you to me.”
He felt the smile freeze on his face at these protestations of affection. Did she notice that? She was watching him suspiciously. “What do you do while I am resting?” she asked. “What do you do at night?” Her voice grew shrill. “Is it true what they say of you? That you are with … women?”
“No, no,” he soothed. “You are distraught.”
“They plot against me,” she cried. “They tell me that I am to have no child. I feel it within me. I know my child is here. And you? How can you love me? Do I not know that I am old and tired and worn out with my miseries? You wish me dead that you may marry Elizabeth, because she is young and healthy and more pleasant to look at than I.”
He shrank from her. He could not bear these noisy scenes; her jealousy shocked and humiliated his reserved nature almost more than did her cloying affection.
“You are not yourself,” he said gently. “I beg of you, for the child’s sake, and the sake of our marriage, be calm. Lie down, Mary. Rest, I say. Rest is what you need.”
“And you?”
He was resigned. “I will sit beside your bed.”
“You will stay with me?” she asked piteously. “I will stay as long as you wish me to.”
“Oh, Philip … Philip!” She flung herself at him, clinging to him, pressing her face against his. He steeled himself to return her caresses. Then he spoke firmly: “Come. You shall rest. This is so bad for you, and the child.”
Then he made her lie down, and tenderly he covered her; and he sat by the bed, her hand in his.
“There is comfort in this,” she said; “my child within me and you beside me—the two I love. I cannot help the fierceness of my love; I went so long without love.”
He sat silently beside her bed, wondering what would happen when she was forced to accept the truth that there would be no child.
Another month had passed. Mary went about with the light of determination in her eyes. She would see none of her ministers. She declared that the child would be born at any minute.
One day a woman came to the palace and asked to see the Queen. She said her mission was concerned with the Queen’s condition, so that none would turn her away, and eventually she reached Mary’s presence.
“Your Majesty,” she said, “I was forty when my first child was born.”
Then the Queen made her sit in a chair of honor while she told her story.
“Doctors are not always right in their reckoning. My child was three months overdue, your Majesty, and everyone declared it was a mistake. I was forty at the time, and a fine, healthy boy is my son today!”
Mary was delighted. She gave the woman a jewel and thanked her for her visit.
In the streets the townsfolk made sly jokes. “Now we know these Spaniards! They beget children who are too shy to put in an appearance!” The jokes became more and more ribald. And more and more women came to call on the Queen. Toothless old women presented themselves with their granddaughters’ latest. “See!” they wheezed. “Old women can have children!” It was well worth a journey to see the Queen and pocket the royal reward.
Every day the midwives and doctors waited on Mary. Continually she was declaring that her pains had started.
But May was almost out and the child was as elusive as ever.
The Emperor wrote impatiently to Philip, demanding to know the truth of this strange story. He feared that Mary was too old to bear children. “Ingratiate yourself with Madam Elizabeth,” he wrote. “I know she is suspected of heresy and that if she takes the throne all our work of bringing England back to Rome may be undone. But remember! Better a heretic England which is a friend to Spain than a Catholic England dominated by France. We must at all costs have the English with us, but I doubt you can do much good by staying in England now. Proclaim yourself Elizabeth’s friend and come to me in Brussels. I grow so feeble I can no longer rule. I wish you to take over my crown; and you must do that here in Brussels that all my vassals may, in my presence, swear fealty to you.”
To leave England! There was nothing Philip wished to do more. But how broach the matter to the love-sick woman who insisted on imagining that she carried a child in her womb in spite of all evidence to the contrary?
The Queen shut herself in her chamber and would see no one. She did not weep. She stared before her in such utter misery as she had never before known in the whole of her life.
She thought of her mother, longing, always longing for the son who would have made her life such a different one. She remembered Anne Bo
leyn could not bear a son. It seemed as though the very walls of this great palace echoed with the cries of defeated motherhood. “A son … a son!” wailed the wind driving through the trees in the gardens.
She was barren. Her swelling was due to some ailment, they told her now. The new physician had given her potions and had considerably reduced it.
She had said to Philip: “Perhaps there is yet time for us to have a son.”
How could she be blind to the look of horror which had passed over his face? Even his accustomed control could not hide it. What did it mean? That he believed her to be too old to bear children? That he found her repulsive? He was evasive, as he ever was. He spoke with quiet, yet firm tenderness: “In view of the ordeal through which you have passed, it would be advisable for you to have a long rest …”
Rest! All he could say was: “Rest!”
She must still delude herself, for a woman could not face, all at once, too much that was so tragic.
Mistress Clarencius, that privileged person, came to her. She shook her head sadly, for when they were alone there was little ceremony between them.
“Your Majesty gives way too quickly. Your hopes have been disappointed, but you are still a bride.”
Mary put her arms about her old nurse and wept quietly.
“It was a bitter disappointment,” soothed Mistress Clarencius. “But there will be another time, dearest lady.”
“My dear, dear Clarencius, will there be? Can there be?”
“Of course there can be. And the King is coming to see you. You must look beautiful, because that is how he will want you to look, is it not, dearest Majesty?”
It was good to be petted, to let oneself believe that one could be made beautiful, to sit while one’s hair was dressed and a glittering coif set upon it, to have one’s black velvet gown with its dazzling ornaments arranged to perfection, and to await the coming of Philip.
He came unattended, and as soon as he arrived Mary dismissed Mistress Clarencius. Philip kissed Mary’s hand.
“I rejoice to see you so improved in health.” He hurried on: “Oh, there is need for great care yet. You must rest and not excite yourself. We must take great care of you.”