“I will mourn, Your Majesty. I don’t know how I shall ever bear it.”
“Nor I!”
Susan and Anne cling to me, our tears mingling, and some strange instinct urges me to comfort them. I am dying, yet I need to protect them from beyond the grave.
“Fetch my casket.” I pull away and point across the shadowy room. Reluctantly, Susan rises and brings my jewel coffer to the bedside. I feel inside and draw out a handful of trinkets, press them into Susan’s hand.
“When the time comes, you must accompany Jane Dormer and Feria to Spain. Do not linger for my interment. Leave this place as quickly as you can. Things may quickly become difficult for Catholics.”
If it does, I am to blame.
I fumble again and know by the touch when my fingers alight upon the rosary I carried as a girl. It is a priceless piece, crafted in gold, and adorned with pearls and rubies. I grope for Anne, let the thing trickle into her palm. I hear her gasp.
“Your Majesty, it is too…”
“Be silent. It is my wish that you prosper after I am gone. Susan will protect you but this will give you independence. Go with her and make a life overseas. If you should decide to take a husband, then choose him carefully. If I have learned anything in life, it is that there is nothing so damaging as a bad spouse.”
“Your Majesty.” With a few sniffs and whimpers, she pushes the rosary into her pocket.
The chamber is full of tears. Susan is prostrate on my bed, her face buried in the pillow beside me. In the next room, I hear further sounds of weeping and realise that the remaining members of my household are weeping for me.
A bell begins to toll. A priest mutters at the foot of the bed.
I must be dying. I turn my head, searching for a friendly face, but I am blind and cannot see.
“I had always meant to be so kind…”
My mouth feels tight, my tongue stiff. I cannot form the words; they gurgle in the back of my throat. I am a paralysed, voiceless wreck of a woman.
I meant to be so kind.
Someone is holding tight to my hand. I recognise the small palm, the smooth fingers and the voice whispering my name. My last human contact is with a girl named Anne.
I try to laugh at the irony but my lips won’t obey.
Author’s note
As always, I must stress that The Heretic Wind is a work of fiction. I carried out lengthy research to help me get inside Mary’s head and, of all the women I’ve written about, I think Mary is the most tragic. After all the harsh things that have been said and written about her, I hadn’t expected that.
I haven’t attempted to whitewash or excuse either her character or her actions. I have simply tried to understand, and imagine the events of her life from her own point of view.
If you leave aside the religious bigotry and the cruel punishments she inflicted on heretics in her latter days, and consider her experiences during her formative years, it is little wonder she became the woman she did.
As I delved more deeply into Mary’s personal life, the one aspect that stood out from the rest was her isolation. During and after her parents’ divorce, Mary had few friends, and no equals. Later on, she had faithful servants in Susan Clarencius and Jane Dormer, but they were not her equals – they served her, they loved her but they could never really have understood.
The only person with whom she might have enjoyed an equal relationship was Elizabeth, the daughter of her enemy, Anne Boleyn, but for all her pretentions, Elizabeth was a Protestant. Although she was often suspected of treason, Elizabeth escaped full punishment because Mary went to great lengths to avoid it. This could have been due to fearing the backlash of the populace, but it could also be simply because Elizabeth was her little sister.
For a time, they had been close, sharing the same roof, the same father, and similar fractured childhoods. Their relationship was always complex, fraught with suspicion and probably more than a hint of jealousy. But, I think, empathy and shared blood proved stronger than Mary’s resentment.
During her youth, Mary experienced rejection by her father, separation from her mother, Catherine of Aragon, banishment from court and the loss of her title, her status. This was followed by the death of her mother, and the execution of two stepmothers, and two who died after childbirth. During her father’s reign, Mary was mistreated, bullied and derided as a bastard. During her brother’s, she faced religious persecution. Happiness and security were always just out of her reach.
Even when the crown of England finally became hers by right, she was forced to fight for it and her early reign was smeared with violence, and the execution of her cousin, Jane Grey.
At this point, safely on the throne, she might have imagined her trials were over. But an unsuccessful marriage to Philip of Spain followed and, hot on the heels of that, came the humiliation and disappointment of two phantom pregnancies.
Catholic to the point of fanaticism, Mary was determined to turn her subjects to what she regarded as the true church. In Tudor England, the punishment for heresy was burning, something that Mary took to the extreme, but the actions of the past must not be measured by twenty-first century sentiment.
In studying the character of Mary Tudor, I discovered a woman who endured relentless misery. She was driven by unshakeable religious faith, and the desire to be true to her God and her church. I think, in the end, ravaged by sickness, blind and old beyond her years, Mary’s self loathing and disappointment was perhaps exacerbated by a touch of dementia.
After her death, Protestant England inflated Mary’s actions and subsequent popular history has turned her into a monster. In The Heretic Wind I have taken her pain, her hopelessness, her disappointments and her anger and tried to present a rounded character; a cultured, pampered infant princess, a strong-willed warrior queen and, in her last days, an angry, thwarted and isolated old woman.
Judith is the author of twelve historical fiction novels:
The Heretic Wind: the life of Mary Tudor, queen of England.
The Beaufort Chronicle (three book series) tracing the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort.
The Sisters of Arden: on the Pilgrimage of Grace
A Song of Sixpence: the story of Elizabeth of York
The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII
The Kiss of the Concubine: a story of Anne Boleyn
Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr
The Forest Dwellers
The Song of Heledd
Peaceweaver
author.to/juditharnoppbooks
www.judithmarnopp.com
Judith Arnopp’s books are available on Kindle, Paperback and some are on Audible
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[CP1]Father and farther??
[CP2]I think this is far too modern a phrase. I’d suggest ‘to heart’.
[CP3]Repeat of ‘stubbornness’.
The Heretic Wind: The Life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England Page 28