by Nell Gavin
As queen I had, from the first, defended heretical writings. I had routinely obtained censored works and read them voraciously, quieted Henry’s objections, and even pointed out the logic and validity of some of the ideas they presented. I thought these authors brave and sincere and felt they should be heard, or at least not condemned and persecuted.
I had seen to it that Henry made it legal, finally, for common folk to own Bibles rather than be wholly dependent upon the clergy to intercede for them with God. I even persuaded him to allow the Bible to be translated into English so more people could be reached with God’s Word.
Throughout, I had persuaded Henry against hangings, and firmly seen to it that no heretic was ever burned at the stake during my tenure as queen. I must again defend the lives of those who wrote, or who spoke, or who believed. This would no longer be easy to do, for my influence had grown weak and my power was greatly diminished.
The clerics and the cardinals had slipped past me to their deaths. For that I grieved, and for them I built my resolve. Henry might be God’s spokesman, but I was still his queen and I could try to stay his hand in this. God had not made it clear to me whose beliefs were false, and so I would see to it that all were viewed with tolerance, at least as far as my power would reach.
I would let God sort them out. Better He than I. Better He than Henry.
It was far easier for me to persuade my husband to slow imprisonment and killing for heresy than for treason. Henry was the greatest heretic of them all in ousting Rome, and could not condemn without inviting condemnation. Even his convoluted logic shrank in defeat against that (though he would find new rationale after my death, and the burnings would resume). In this, at least, my will prevailed for a time.
And once again I did not earn Hell at all. I find that, in the midst of this mental and emotional turmoil, I chose correctly in deciding to protect and defend rather than draw circles and condemn. In so choosing, I unwittingly earned my greatest reward.
Chapter 4
•~۞~•
Henry’s next step was to commence a long campaign to pillage and strip the monasteries. Through Henry’s swift change in Gods, the gold and riches formerly claimed by the Church became ours.
Greed. It was greed. Holy Father forgive me, I could not restrain the greed around me. I even had to feign pleasure and accept these riches as gifts to me—blood riches that made my stomach queasy with sorrow and shame.
I had had no real fondness for priests since my childhood in France, but still felt toward them a habitual level of respect. I felt enough respect to wonder: Had we become such petty road thieves that we now could steal from them? Had we, in a palace like Hampton Court, a real need for more riches, while the priests and nuns were now forced to beg? Furthermore, the poor that these priests and nuns had once cared for no longer had them to turn to in their hunger, and in fact, now begged beside them.
As the riches poured in, I distributed a vast fortune in the name of “charity” to offset them, but could only touch a few of the hungry, after all, in the time I still had left.
The rains stopped, and Henry’s confidence swelled again. No longer fearful of God, he left my bed once again, and found another.
Henry had married two opposites, first a modest, quiet wife, and then an outspoken, assertive one. He now sought a wife who was different from either Katherine or myself, and he found her in Jane Seymour whose singular noteworthy quality—and what made her noticeably different from Katherine and me—was her remarkable stupidity.
Secondly, the difference lie in her seeming inability to remain upright and clothed, when in the presence of a man. I suppose her dim-wittedness contributed in part to her lack of balance in the bedroom; she toppled backward easily and indiscriminately, whereas a woman of wit and sense might have shown better taste and more restraint.
Neither did she once restrain herself with loyalty or duty. I should have thought that my own thankless efforts to spare Katherine during those early years might have been rewarded with even a feigned attempt by Jane to discourage Henry. However, that was not to be. Jane had no honor, and no integrity. She had no power against her ambition, and no scruples. Her solemn vows to serve me loyally caused her no anguish of conscience at all, when afforded an opportunity to overthrow me.
She was not even pretty. She was pale and pasty-faced, with a thick neck and no chin. If I had been a ruby, then this one was stained glass. That Henry should want her after me was an insult.
England sought to overthrow its Whore Queen, and cared little for the purity of her replacement. Purity, it seems, was never the point even as they had screamed “Whore!” with such fury, for they embraced Jane Seymour who had bedded most of the court, and chose to overlook her indiscretions so long as she ousted Queen Anne.
These past indiscretions did not even matter to Henry. He had chosen Jane for her wide child-bearing hips (though I found out here, they failed her in the end, and she died soon after giving birth to the son Henry wanted so badly) and for her family’s reputation for whelping litters and legions of dim-witted, pasty-faced infants.
۞
I await a scolding and a reminder that my thoughts are uncharitable and cruel, but my mentor is withholding comment.
“Did you not hear what I just thought about Jane and the dim-witted infants? Did you not hear me loathing and despising her?” I am defiantly braced for sharp words, and would rather hear them a hundred-fold, than make my thoughts more charitable.
The Voice says only this, and says it gently: “I only heard you weeping in despair.”
۞
Katherine could not have been any happier than I was at Henry’s choice. I cared little for Katherine’s happiness, as intent as I was upon hurting her, but years of enmity had bound us into a form of twisted alliance (in fact, when she came to die, I would be shocked to find I felt a deep grief). I wondered at times what she thought, and would have valued a short truce wherein we could discuss the current happenings together.
I was losing my edge in the battle with Katherine. Her attacks were becoming far crueler than my own, for she still had her focus and her clever supporters, whereas my mind had now been pulled elsewhere. I no longer had Emma to coach me in my wickedness. I no longer had Henry to lean on, nor did I have his love, so my words and threats rang hollow and were better left unsaid. However I said them anyway, as I was typically wont to do, and let them ring hollow as they would. And now, with word of Jane Seymour, I would quite possibly have to withdraw from the fight with Katherine altogether. There was a woman I hated far more.
I could not abide Jane. I took to pinching and shaking her, and slapping her witless face. At least Katherine had been a worthy opponent. Katherine had been one for whom I had to plan and hone my insults and attacks—and these had to involve some artistry and imagination in order to have effect. Jane could only understand a simple boxing of the ears, but even that gave me some pleasure. It was satisfying at times, to box the harlot’s ears.
Ye gods! Why had they never called her a whore? Why could she warm dozens of beds without criticism? Why was I, whose only partners were a rapist and my husband, enduring attacks more rightly owed to Jane?
More importantly, how could Henry love her? Did he love her? Or, did he simply claim to out of spite? How could a man who had always required thoughtful discourse and the mental stimulation of an intelligent woman abide the company of Jane, who was more aptly viewed as a pet than as a lover? She could not even read or write, except to copy letters written for her by someone else. She could only write her name, and unskillfully at that!
Had Henry ever really loved me?
Chapter 5
•~۞~•
I did not fully realize it, and it would not have pleased her to know this, but Katherine was the one person saving me from abandonment. Henry could not claim his marriage to me invalid as long as she lived or the end of his marriage to me would, through political pressure from Spain and Katherine’s followers, mean resumin
g his marriage to her. This, of course, was out of the question. He wanted to marry Jane. He would need to rid himself of both Katherine and me in order to do this.
Most terrifying to me were the circumstances of Katherine’s death, for indeed she died, writhing and vomiting, in agonizing pain. Since I was not made aware of the details of her cancer, I assumed she had been poisoned . . . by Henry? He certainly was not displeased to hear word of her passing.
He was now rid of one.
I saw this only in retrospect. My fool, however, clearly saw it all as it was happening. He took bites of my food before handing it off to me, not trusting anyone. In the beginning, I humored him and thought he was silly to be concerned on my behalf, for Henry, I told him, could never harm me.
“Of course not, Your Majesty,” he quickly replied with a strained and guarded look. “The king deeply honors Your Majesty. However, there are others who may wish Your Majesty harm, and it is from these that the threat comes.”
He was so solemn as he said this. His words held no humor at all as they should, and it was his jarring absence of humor that shook me into vigilance.
I would soon learn I was suspected of being Katherine’s murderer. I was roundly accused of plotting to poison everyone–there were even persons who would die after me, whom it was said succumbed to slow poison administered by “the she-devil, Anne Boleyn while yet she lived”. My fool had heard the rumors and did what he could to protect me from retaliatory actions from that camp. He suspected Henry might be planning mischief as well, but could do nothing about that, except fret.
It was at this time that Henry first asked if I would renounce Elizabeth’s claim to the throne. My reaction to this was to swallow down the bile of outrage. It was a disgrace and a shame for reasons that went beyond his lack of loyalty to his children, for had he not treated Princess Mary the same? I felt it was right that I should hate Princess Mary, for she continually snubbed and insulted me, and furthermore was a threat to me and my child. But Henry’s cold treatment of her had, at times, given me pause to reflect—even as I, in hurt or in anger, had pushed and goaded him to do it.
What infuriated me more than that was how frivolously Henry could destroy lives. For what reason had he caused those people to die, if not in defense of Elizabeth’s right to be queen? Were their lives all so cheap that Henry could simply say: “I changed my mind”? I would that he could bring them all back as easily as he had just now made their deaths so meaningless with his request. Were he able to do this and give them back their lives, I would happily renounce my rights and my daughter’s. However, as it stood, I could not. I never could. I would die myself before doing so, and I told him as much, and I did not back down.
Furthermore, I would never allow a child of mine to step aside and make room for a child of Jane Seymour’s. I had lost virtually everything when I married Henry, and in return had gained nothing that still remained, or that I still valued from my marriage, except the knowledge that my child would be a queen. I would not relinquish it to the likes of Jane.
Henry would have to do what his conscience dictated. I would not give in to this. Not ever. Not even if it meant divorce.
That was what I feared: divorce. I never, ever feared for my life–truly I did not–even as I stood and smelled the corpses rotting.
Henry was preparing to move me out as he had moved Katherine out. I did not have supporters as Katherine had had, and my outlook became hopeless. Even my family was leaping like rats from a ship. All my loved ones, the same ones who had haunted me ceaselessly throughout my marriage with hands held out for gifts and favors, were seeking shelter elsewhere by disassociating themselves from me.
There was seemingly no end to the humiliation. Henry ordered me away to the palace in Greenwich, even though I was pregnant once again and could be carrying a male child, a legal heir to the British throne.
Surely, I thought, the timing was such that this pregnancy was God’s kind intervention. Surely He was answering my prayers and would give me a son. When that occurred, I told myself, I would be called back to London, and Henry would love me again.
I comforted myself in this manner, but it was an unrealistic hope, that this child could reunite us. The pregnancy had come about in violent fashion, and without love. Henry raped me, in hatred and in spite, because it suited him to frighten and punish me for all the times I told him “no”.
I am certain he had other reasons: my tongue, the naggings, the dead male heir, the healthy daughter, the greedy, grasping in-laws, and years filled with curses for me from his subjects and his court. Every whispered warning and unheeded bit of advice from his counsel was coming to the fore of his consciousness and mocking him. And so, it was only right that he make a mockery of me and my love for him.
One night when Jane was presumably indisposed and Henry had time to mull over all the grief I had caused him, he made his way into my chambers. Then, he wordlessly grabbed me and hurled me onto the bed, pressed me face down while he held my arms and tore at my clothes. He raped me, and left me there, weeping.
I tried to believe afterwards that his actions were prompted by passion, even though he had shown no gentleness and spoke no words of love. I sometimes pretended such as this to myself, all the while knowing the truth in my heart.
When I could face that truth, I wondered: Does Henry now understand that a woman can be forced? Then I realized, “No.” I was his wife whom the law said he could abuse as he wished. The rape taught Henry nothing about himself, or about me. He viewed me coldly, and had barely spoken to me since.
Then, one day when Henry was away, word reached me that he had fallen from his horse and was dead. This declaration was uttered prematurely, or perhaps the message was purposeful and malicious; I was surrounded by people who took pleasure in causing me upset and distress.
With Henry dead, I would be drawn and quartered by the crowds, I thought. I could not survive a day.
I also felt sorrow for my lost husband, and despair that we had parted on bad terms before his death. I shared this only with my fool. I trusted no one else with the shame I felt in still loving the man (though all knew, and made me the object of their sniggering contempt).
I had a fit of nervous hysteria. Soon afterward, I lost the child, which was said to be male and severely deformed. In truth, I could not determine myself either its gender, or the state of the infant’s overall development. I trusted what I was told by persons who were not my friends.
Henry was not dead at all, but had suffered a head wound from which he was thought to fully recover. By now, however, the child was lost. I had no hope of conceiving another, convinced as I was that Henry no longer even cared enough to rape me.
I did not know this then, but he was not recovered, nor would Henry ever recover from the head wound. There was damage to one sector of the brain from the fall, and this weakness gave his illness full rein there. He now had only a tenuous hold on his own mind.
He seemed at times a different person, though how, exactly, I could not say. He had, more and more over time, given the impression of a dual character, and I had long been aware of this “second” Henry. What I was viewing now was simply all of the second Henry, and none of the first. The person I now saw was the one whom I did not much like. When I appealed to my husband, however, I spoke to the first Henry as if he could somehow still hear me, not understanding why he did not, and not knowing where he had gone.
Henry was understandably upset by the aborted birth. He was curt and said only that God obviously did not want him to have a son. Then he turned and left me without further word or concern.
To others, after he left me, he publicly mentioned that the child could not be his, since it was deformed.
Chapter 6
•~۞~•
After I miscarried, Henry began to orchestrate a conspiracy involving the family of Jane Seymour, Jane Seymour herself, my underlings and officers, members of my own extended family, and members of the court. This would ultimate
ly result in my death. I, of course, could not know this then. My suspicions were only that he was plotting a divorce.
With increased confidence from having finally gained his ear with regard to Anne Boleyn, Henry’s counsel now spoke more loudly, and with stronger conviction against me. Added to their voices were the voices of those they recruited. There was no end to the line of people prepared to discredit me. Some of these I had never met, nor seen.
One by one, these people stood before Henry (at his invitation), and denounced me as a whore and an adulteress. Others did the same, without provocation or encouragement. Even people whom I barely knew provided shocking reports of a very personal nature. Some of these fabricated stories out of spite towards me; others believed what they were told and were repeating tales as though they themselves were witnesses. These strangers and near-strangers were caught up in the momentum of the movement to overthrow me, and were anxious to be treated with the same consideration as the others.
They had proof. Had I not once dropped my handkerchief? Such an act was clearly one of seduction and proved I was a flirt.
And they had names. In response to the accusations, Henry called for the arrest of several people, all of whom I was said to have bedded, including my own brother George.
Henry nodded in seeming pain at learning the “truth” about the wife who had so betrayed him, and rewarded my accusers who lined up their friends for more rewards.
I was taken away to the Tower of London, in broad daylight rather than in the dignity of darkness, and locked away to await my trial. I was alone, now. I had no fool, no Emma, no husband, no friend.
I had no family. My father . . . my own father made public declarations against me in a vain attempt to hold onto his influence, and perhaps his life. My mother was silent and, I presumed, felt the same.