by Nell Gavin
Now, however, the prospect of our summer progress brought me no pleasure. Henry had plans to go without me. It was for my own good, he insisted. It was out of concern for me, he said.
It was 1534, and I was pregnant again. Henry had stopped coming to me, so a quick calculation was all I needed to place conception around the time of my nightmare, and the birth around late summer.
Henry was not as solicitous toward me as he had been the time before. Knowing now that my temperament in pregnancy was foul, he spent a large portion of his time away from me. Since I had daughters rather than sons, his interest in me was spent.
Word got back to me that he was lecherous in his pursuit of other women while I awaited the birth of his child. There was no shared pleasure and expectation. No longer did he show more than superficial concern for my welfare, and when he did, it was only for the benefit of an audience. He showed no concern in private and he placed no buffer between me and shocks I might suffer, either physically or emotionally. This time, I was pregnant alone, bristling with resentment and struck mindless with fear.
As my belly grew larger, I carried on long conversations with God in the gilded chapel, gazing up at the clutter of sweet winged cherubs, eyes wide, lips pressed, fingers white from gripping rosary beads.
Emma was gone, replaced by other ladies who could not ever hope to replace her. I had never been so lonely in my life.
I had no Emma with me, but I had my fool. He alone could cheer me into good temper. Easily wounded and prickly with distrust, I allowed only my fool the privilege of chiding and abusing me as, before him, I had allowed only Emma. He was the only person upon the earth, besides Emma, whom I knew with certainty loved me. I had removed even my own family from that small list.
We spent our days together, and I took my fool with me wherever I went. There were several instances when we ventured outside the palace gates by carriage, and crowds screamed their insults. Each time, he screamed right back in my defense, making a mockery of them by aping them, and pointing his finger, and twisting his face into horrible contortions.
Then he would turn to me and say “But you know, all they say about you is true, Your Majesty.” He would pause then continue: “You did eat ham this day, just as these goodly people insist.” I would laugh nervously at his nonsense if I were able. When I was not, when I was in tears or white from panic, he would hold my hand tightly and pat it while the shouts rang out: “Nan Bullen be damned!”
“Nan Bullen had ham!” he cried to drown them out until the carriage rolled past the angry crowd and its threats.
I never knew he held my hand, for he only did so at critical times when the shouts drove me to near hysteria. It was a shocking breech of propriety for a commoner–and a man–to touch a queen. It was an act that could even be construed as treasonous, and considering Henry’s state of mind, could have meant death. My fool was well aware of this. He did not seek reward in comforting me. Yet a fool’s seemingly small, unnoticed act of defying convention and precept to hold a terrified woman’s hand looms large, in this realm. It was a compassionate act of selfless courage, and he will be amply repaid, I am assured.
This pregnancy ended with the early birth of a stillborn male child we named “Henry” and placed in the crypt. The nursery preparations were hastily removed and nothing further was said about them, or about my poor dead child for whom, it seemed, only I grieved.
Henry’s lips grew more taut.
I grew more shrill as I plummeted into an abyss of misery and fear. I could not hold back the fear, nor could I keep it from dominating my thoughts. When I was fearful, I could not stop my tongue. I lashed at everyone. I aimed carefully restrained reproaches at Henry, spewing louder reproaches into the ears of others. In private I chewed the cuticles from my fingers, and lapsed into long moments of absent staring.
My eyelid uncontrollably twitched.
Was I turning into Katherine? I now understood her as no one else on earth could understand. I did not hate her less, but I knew, as no one else did, what Katherine had prayed, and why.
Chapter 3
•~۞~•
There were two means through which an English subject might guarantee the hastening of his death: treason or heresy.
Treason consisted of any act actually committed against the Crown, any act that might be construed as disloyal or threatening toward the Crown, and any act that might either provoke Henry to rage, rational or otherwise, or incite him in a moment of abstract displeasure or whimsical pique.
Heresy, on the other hand, consisted of any thought or deed suggesting God was something or someone other than that which Henry decreed Him to be. Heretics were typically burned at the stake; this was considered apt punishment for wrong thoughts or ideas inconvenient to the Crown.
Parliament had earlier passed the Act of Succession, which declared Princess Mary a bastard, and my own children Henry’s successors. All England was now being called upon to declare fealty, and to swear an oath. Few refused: to refuse was treason and the punishment for treason was death. My Elizabeth was now the heir to Henry’s throne, and England was forced to swallow this. It was forced to swear it swallowed willingly, and with pleasure.
Then, since the Pope would not acknowledge Henry’s marriage to me, or children born of our union, Henry had declared a new church, and assumed a role equivalent to “pope” within it. I even helped him with this, by locating literature that supported his position and handing it off to him to use in his arguments. In other words, it was I who fueled his flame. I was there behind him, encouraging him and showing joy when his efforts succeeded. It was I who had done all this.
It was I who, after these efforts had succeeded, felt the icy cold rush of second thoughts and of doubt. Not Henry.
So, Henry solved our problems with a wave of his magical, regal wand. With a wave of that wand, he dismissed the Pope, took his place as the highest representative in the Church of England and (in his mind) took his rightful seat at the right hand of God.
According to the rules of Henry’s church, our marriage was legal and Elizabeth was legitimate. Henry’s God (one must assume a different God from the one we knew before, since His opinions were so changed) viewed our marriage as valid and blessed. Those who thought otherwise must die.
To escape condemnation, the populace was therefore made to swear twice, first declaring loyalty to Anne Boleyn and the Princess Elizabeth, and then to Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England. All were also forced to deny the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome.
In terror, people swore their oaths to save their lives. In one breath the people of England were spitting out the words “Little Whore” and “Great Whore” and in their next, were declaring their undying loyalty to Elizabeth and to me. I did not question which of the oaths was the more sincere. Nor did Henry. He had long since abandoned all hope of persuading our subjects to love me. He was forcing their love–a love he himself no longer thought he felt–out of stubborn perverseness. He angrily, tenaciously, insistently promoted my cause throughout the country, even though he scarcely looked at me anymore and responded to me with irritation when I spoke.
Faced with the anger of England, I once had begged Henry, “Make it stop!”
Now, by God, he would. He would make it stop. And he would make me watch.
The butchering began.
Words declared against Elizabeth and me were now whispered, not shouted. Public, and even private displays of disloyalty toward us could send a man to prison, or even to his death. Some people took advantage of this as neighbor turned against neighbor, reporting treasonous speeches by those whom they disliked or wished to be rid of. The accused were then sentenced and dragged away to prison with neither proof, nor interest in proving within the courts, which churned out guilty verdicts one behind another.
Four monks, criminals for having worn priestly robes and hence shown loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, were disemboweled and their heads paraded, rotting on sticks, through the str
eets of London. More clerics and cardinals were rounded up and slaughtered, and their severed hands and feet were nailed to the city gates.
Had Henry lost his reason? No one dared question him lest treason be their crime and death their just reward, so Henry moved along, unchecked.
There was a fine line between heresy and treason, once Henry became both Church and Crown. In fact, one accusation was quite as good as the other. It hardly mattered why you were dead, precisely. The important thing was this: If you were dead, you most likely were dead because of me.
I did not have the influence I once did, and could not reason Henry away from the murderings. I grew drawn and gray as they continued. I could not even mourn because I could not feel; to feel meant I would have to lose my mind from responsibility, guilt and grief. Some self-preserving reflex numbed me through the months of slaughter. I watched it all unfold with detachment, as if from a large distance, and viewed it as if it happened because of someone other than myself.
For a time, throughout the bloodiest days, Henry seemed to need me again, and during that time he set aside his latest mistress. The guilt and the sorrow were beginning to fester within him.
Then, his fear grew even larger still, for the sky had burst open and the rains would not cease. Henry heard it said by many that God was taking His vengeance against him and, in his heart, he suspected it might be true. Rain pummeled against the palace walls, and washed away the roads, and brought the river Thames to the point of flooding. Cracks of thunder and bolts of lightening hurled across the sky in judgment and reproach, making Henry silent, pale and jittery. He spent a significant portion of his day knelt in prayer. He installed himself at my side through night and day, as if only I could offer him protection. I seemed the only one who could comfort him, during the storms.
I reassured Henry that he did the right thing. My critics might ask themselves what they would say, when asked by that king under those circumstances if he was right to kill. One does not argue with the man who wields the knife and who shows no mercy or restraint. Even I could bite my tongue when faced with that, or lie.
Furthermore, the killings were being done for my sake and for the sake of my child. If I protested, Henry was enraged and screamed that I was an ingrate and a peasant, and could instantly be flung back into the mud from which I had sprung. Such words bit me and stung because I had come to believe them to be true, and so I took measures to appease him in whatever ways I could. For the first time since I met him, I was frightened enough of Henry to become his quiet helpmate.
I aged years during those months, standing at his side as he grew ever more insane.
Meanwhile, in light of what they saw unfolding around them, our subjects searched their hearts and souls, reevaluated their religious faith, and made the decision that Henry’s God was the one they much preferred to worship.
Just that quickly, the population of Britain gave up its faith and accepted a new one. With naught but an oath, they let the old God die, and welcomed Henry’s.
I say, “They let the old God die,” but mean this more symbolically than literally. Henry did not outwardly change the Church except to change the structure of its hierarchy, remove Rome’s influence, and rename the pope “Bishop of Rome”. Priests still said Mass as they always had, and the Scriptures remained intact. But thoughts churned and whirled about in my head that perhaps we—both Henry and I—had gone too far.
I could still sympathize with Henry’s desire to rid himself of people who committed treason (by my definition, not Henry’s). As aghast as I was at the frightening speed of conviction and the injustice in many instances, I was quite as willing as he was to be rid of people who physically threatened my life and my child’s, and I fervently wished these people as dead as they wished me.
Try as I might, however, I could not quite grasp the reason why we must kill a person for his religious beliefs. There must be some sense behind it, for it had always been done, but I could not follow the logic. I had known Jews in my life, and they were no more evil than Christians. They were, in fact, about the same in their evilness and goodness. I would not think of killing one of them. The same was true for heretical Lutherans, and now, the Catholics. I could find no compelling reason why any of them must die and had not, as yet, had a reason explained to me in terms I could fully understand. If the issue were one of goodness versus evil, I would need to see more proof on either side. If, on the other hand, it was an issue of punishing sincere good intentions and simple interpretation of the Scriptures, I had to protest.
I knew there was a movement within England to reform the Church and to promote the various Protestant religions. To them, Henry’s and my actions were welcome and long overdue.
Pitted against this movement were the traditional Catholics who were driven to the point of war, and would war, and would, in years to come and with Princess Mary at the forefront, ruthlessly kill in defense of their religion, just as Henry was now killing in defense of his.
Each one of these people–on both sides–believed that only he and his kind were privy to the Truth because of a larger wisdom and mental sobriety only accorded to those who thought as they did. Each one of them was certain God loved only him and his kind, and would cast the rest into oblivion, or flames.
Each prayed to the same God to strike the other dead; the same God, for there is only one.
Caught in the middle, still worshipping and thinking of myself as a Catholic but having been thrust by circumstance into the very odd role of “patron saint” of Protestants, I was forced to think more deeply than most of the other participants in the bloody drama.
I did not presume Protestantism was wrong. New ideas were fascinating to me, and I fully respected and even encouraged them. However, neither did I feel “Protestant”, myself. I was a Catholic as certainly as I breathed. I just did not feel strongly against Protestants and was now forced to become one to secure my child’s future.
I wondered: How do I choose? I had no choice, being Henry’s wife. I could not turn back now. I had brought Henry to this point and, having done so, I had to follow his lead. I had no open options left to me, yet still I viewed this as a situation that called for careful thought.
And so I weighed the issues.
I was in desperate need of my God through these dark days of doubt and fear, and it was in the midst of them that I found myself questioning His very existence. I began to think thoughts, terrible ones that had never crossed my mind before. Had I spoken these thoughts aloud, I surely would have been burned at the stake myself as a heretic.
I saw that each faction thought God existed only within a circle it had drawn to enclose itself. Each believer believed that to step outside his own circle was to hurl himself out of God’s reach and beyond His concern. Each believer believed that the reality of God could neither be greater than his own marred and human perceptions, nor could it reach out to embrace the other side.
All of them believed their own understanding and beliefs were All Truth, and that settled it. They each had made God just as small as they were, and just as they left no room for mercy or respect, they left no room for logic or for thought.
I did not believe, as they believed, that such circles and borders were supposed to separate the children of God from each other. Did God really forsake one circle for another? I did not believe so, nor did I believe those separations were of God’s choosing. I did not even fully believe it mattered how one worshipped God, or how one defined God.
A small question grew larger within me. I wondered if perhaps God did not care what we called Him, or how we described Him to ourselves, or how we chose to worship Him. Did the image we fixed our faith upon, our specific rituals and sacraments, and the particular words we said in prayer have such power that they counted more than what we felt within our hearts, or what we did? I did not think so. I crossed myself whenever this question taunted me.
Was my assumption correct? Or were the others—those others with their bloody circle
s—the ones in possession of the greater wisdom?
Was I, after all, becoming ensnared within a circle that did not contain God? By their definition, by everyone’s definition, someone had to be without God. The mystery was, which circle? Each one pointed to all the others and said, “You.”
Someone must be wrong. No one thought it was he.
In weighing thus, I came to the frightening and disturbing realization that none of us could make our beliefs real by believing, no matter how intensely we believed, or how certain were that our viewpoint was true. Were we able to do so, I wryly thought, Zeus would still preside over all of us, for the ancient Greeks would have made him real, through believing.
It does not fall to Truth to find us; it falls to each of us to think and search and seek it out. Truth, after all, does not ask for our permission or require our concurrence. It simply is. With or without us.
So what is true about God if we can manipulate and change Him just so a king might marry his whore? What is real and what is false? I did not know. God would not say.
I would go to Hell for this, if for nothing else. I knew it. I would burn in place of all the misfortune-struck souls who trusted Henry to be right about God for, if he was wrong, it was not their sin. It was mine. It was my thinking and speculation that prodded Henry to give lengthy consideration to a church other than the Roman one. It was in order to marry me that he abandoned his faith. It was I who was the impetus.
It was I who believed the Protestant circle we were about to enter and embrace was not outside of God’s long reach and, as yet, I had no proof that I was correct. I therefore had no right to take unwilling others with me.
What was I to do? I made my decision, firmly, by not deciding at all.
I could not bring back the old God, for Henry had declared Him dead. I could only do this: I could only try to see that no one—no heretic of any kind—would lose his life in England for his religious beliefs while I still drew breath. I could not view any religion as a crime or its believers as dangerous. There was too much doubt and too much upheaval, too many conflicting views, and too many contradictions for certainty about what and who was God.