The Spanish Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

by Erickson, Carolly

  We were married early in the morning, with only a few witnesses present. And in the afternoon, my husband went hunting.

  That night he came to our bed, gleeful and affectionate and full of energy, flung off his clothes and bore down on me again and again with the full weight of his huge athlete’s body—a body that felt three times my size. I suffered under the crushing, choking weight of him and endured the pain between my legs for as long as I could without crying out. We Spanish women bear pain well, or so I had always believed. But in the end the sharp, unendurable pain overcame me, and I could not help myself. I screamed.

  “No more! Have mercy, no more!” I heard myself shout.

  Henry immediately heaved his body off mine, looking very surprised and puzzled.

  I lay where I was, panting, trying to catch my breath, close to tears from hurting so much. All I wanted, all I could think of, was how much I needed the pain to stop. Gradually I began to recover my breath, and the hurt began to grow less.

  “Paul told me it might be like this,” my new husband said as he put on the nightshirt that had been laid out for him. “That you might complain. None of the others ever have.”

  “What others?”

  “The girls of the Maidens’ Bower. The ones I take my pleasure with, when we are at Greenwich. The ones Paul sends there.”

  “Your huntsman, your harness gilder, Paul Van Vrelant?”

  Henry sat down on the bed, grinning. “The same. I have made him a gentleman of my bedchamber. I may appoint him lord of misrule, if he agrees.”

  My body hurt, my mind reeled with unwanted thoughts, unwanted images. That kings had mistresses I knew only too well. But Henry, who had told me so often how he had been kept caged, confined, spied on by his father—had he been far more worldly than I realized?

  I thought of my mother, who had endured my father’s infidelities for years. What would she tell me now? I needed her answer. I closed my eyes, and imagined her, the last time I saw her, in the Court of Myrtles, in the gardens of the Alhambra. I heard the fountains, I smelled the sweet perfume of the jasmine. I saw her smile. And then I knew what she would say. She would tell me to remember that I was her brave daughter, Infanta Catalina, and to do my duty. Leave the transgressions of others to God and their confessors, she would say. Forgive them, and forgive their companions in wickedness.

  The image faded. I opened my eyes. I looked over at my husband, my friend with whom I had once, amid great difficulties, exchanged a pledge of enduring trust. My king. The man who would be the father of my children. I wanted to tell him all that was in my thoughts as I lay there, aching and in need of comfort.

  But he had fallen asleep, still grinning, his breath coming and going with a whistling sound. So I prayed for forgiveness—though what I had to be forgiven for, I could not have said. And so all passed in silence and sleep.

  6

  I set about to learn what I could about being a wife. About the pain of joining with my husband in hopes of conceiving a child, and what unguents and salves could ease that pain. I needed to know what I imagined the girls of the Maidens’ Bower must surely know: how to give my husband pleasure yet spare myself the agony I had endured on my wedding night.

  I looked on this as a challenge, and I was determined to meet the challenge and overcome it.

  Yet I felt certain that if I asked either my physician, or his apothecary, or my confessor for help they would all tell me the same thing—that pain is the lot of all women, that it is Eve’s curse. I must expect to conceive children in misery, they would say, and bear them with much suffering. Yet surely a merciful God would not allow this, I told myself. Not if the suffering was so great that there might be no children at all, or that the woman might suffocate, as I feared could happen to me.

  I decided to ask Lady Margaret for her advice, as she had shown me much attention and concern in the past. Had my mother been alive, she and Lady Margaret would not have been far apart in age.

  As I hoped, she received me graciously and with a bow that reminded me I was now queen. She had grown thin, her face more deeply wrinkled than when I had seen her last. Strands of white hair spilled out from under her black headdress. But her eyes seemed undimmed, and her wits as sharp as ever, and when she spoke her words were carefully chosen. I asked her to send her serving women away, then explained why I had come to see her.

  She did not answer me right away, but reached out to pat my hand. It was such a motherly gesture that all my dignity crumpled, and tears came into my eyes. I wiped them away at once, and turned my face away as well—but I did not move my hand.

  “Poor girl,” she murmured. “Poor girl. You have no one to help you through all this great change in your life. There is no Doña Elvira to help you and defend you anymore.”

  I nodded.

  “And I assume that you never had this pain, or felt this crushing weight on top of you, when you were married to Prince Arthur.”

  “No,” was all I said—and all I needed to say.

  “Dear Arthur was such a frail boy,” she began. “So very unfit to be a king—or a husband. But then, you have not come to me to talk about Arthur, but about your urgent need at this moment.

  “First, as to the lot of Eve, the lot of all women because of Eve’s sin. We women must endure sorrow and pain, yes—but the Scriptures say nothing about how much sorrow, or how much pain. Nowhere is it written, I believe, that we must allow our very lives to be in peril. That is not pain, that is sacrifice, which is another sort of curse altogether.

  “Besides,” she went on, “from what you tell me I suspect it is my grandson your husband who needs the help, not you. He needs to be made to realize that he has married a small and delicate woman, and that if he smothers her, there will be no heir to his throne!”

  She laughed then, her laughter joyous, not a cackle of age but a youthful peal of merriment that made me think of Arthur. I felt a surge of hope. I smiled.

  “I will speak to Henry,” she assured me. “And until I do—” She left me to go into an antechamber. In a moment she returned, carrying a small earthenware pot, which she handed to me.

  “This balm has eased many a pain of my own,” she told me. “I hope it will ease yours.”

  And it did.

  Much heartened by the Lady Margaret’s assurances and advice, I set about once again to learn what I needed to know. How to join our bodies in ways that did not leave me gasping and hurting.

  It astonishes me now to look back on that time, and to admit to myself how little I knew of love and lovemaking, how I had been kept in a state of protected innocence, sheltered from the ways of the world and in particular, the ways of love. At my parents’ court, men and women were kept separate from one another, they did not even eat together at the great court feasts. Men expected women to serve their needs and desires, not to understand or question them.

  As Doña Elvira had once explained to me, men could not allow themselves to love their wives, for as everyone knew, a great many wives died from the rigors of giving birth, or from the fevers that attacked them soon afterward. To survive childbearing was a feat of endurance. Men expected to lose their wives and to remarry, often three or four times. And with that expectation, they withheld their love—although the best of them, she assured me, showed a knightly courtesy toward all wellborn women. They reserved the pleasures of love for their mistresses.

  As I have said, I sought to find out what I needed to know, confident that I had Lady Margaret’s support and help.

  I read the Roman poet Ovid who wrote on the art of love (a book Fray Diego would have condemned as perilous to my salvation) and also the bawdy stories of the Spaniard who called himself the archpriest. I saw it as my duty to read these works, not because I sought to inflame my lust, lust being one of the seven deadly sins, but because I knew it to be my duty to bear sons. My one and only duty, as my father had once told me. And before I had read very far, I found an answer to my dilemma.

  There were man
y ways of making love, I learned. Gentler and less wounding ways than I had experienced with Henry. I am happy to write that my husband was not too proud to learn them, especially since he discovered that his pleasure was increased. And that he was not too proud to heed the advice of Lady Margaret as well. By the time we set out on our summer progress that August, I was feeling ill each morning and the seamstresses had to alter my gowns, as I was putting on weight. I was all but certain that I was carrying Henry’s child. Our first son. England’s future king.

  * * *

  I learned many things that summer and fall, as I waited for our son to be born. I deepened what knowledge I had of the English countryside—of its forests, of which trees are best suited for lighting fires, and which winds are most likely to bring rain. I was too ill, most mornings, to hunt with my falcons, but by afternoon I was often able to walk in the fields, or watch the others fill their game bags or gather mushrooms. I remember an old man cautioning me that I must never eat any mushrooms that have grown beneath an oak, and I took this to heart. I was eager to protect not only myself but my child from every harm.

  Everything that harvest season gave me pleasure, as all that I did reflected the joy of my condition. Yes, joy—for even though my stomach was often in distress, and I could feel my body growing heavy, my spirits were high and I lived in a daze of happy expectation. Henry too seemed content, not only with the success of each day’s hunt but with the pleasure he took in riding or tramping through the yellowing grass, whistling as he went. He loved the birdsong. His fine ear for music helped him to tell by their songs alone which birds were in the higher, hidden branches of the trees, and from time to time he tried to teach me this art as well.

  I must admit that one reason I enjoyed our progress that autumn was that it kept Henry away from Greenwich, and the Maidens’ Bower. To be sure, Paul Van Vrelant was with us, both as my husband’s chamber gentleman and as a valued adviser on the hunt. (He had put aside the craft of harness gilding.) I hoped that he had no other role, though I could not be certain of that. It would have been easy enough for Paul to bring into our large traveling party a brace of maidens, kept in a special tent or housed in a nearby country inn, waiting for the king to visit them. I had no wish to discover that this might be true, and so I told myself that during our progress, Henry’s attentions were devoted to me—and to each day’s sport.

  When we returned to Richmond at the end of our two months in the country, I summoned midwives who felt my belly and confirmed what I was certain of: that I was carrying a living child, a child that had quickened in my womb. The entire court was informed, and the royal nursery prepared.

  The elaborately carved and gilded cradle that had held first Arthur, then Henry when they were babies was brought from where it had been stored and lined with crimson cloth of gold. Down-filled counterpanes embroidered with the royal arms were swiftly sewn to enhance the cradle, along with swaddling bands which would enfold the infant prince. The birth chamber where I would be delivered was cleaned and put in order, the bed made up with fresh linen sheets and bearing panes, and beside the bed a heavy chair was put in place—the dread groaning chair where I would sit, legs spread, gripping the armrests, while I endured the pains of my labor and the midwives did their work.

  The sight of the groaning chair made me tremble with fear. Beneath it was a wide copper bowl, waiting to catch my blood, and beside it, piled high, were thick towels to wipe my son clean when he emerged from my womb. I shuddered at the thought of the ordeal I would face, and prayed to St. Margaret that my delivery would be an easy one.

  My newly appointed lady mistress of the nursery, Lady Denton, stood by, watching me as I surveyed the room. I knew that my husband had chosen her, as he had our son’s cradle, because she had belonged to the royal nursery when he was born.

  “I trust Your Highness is satisfied with all that has been prepared,” she said crisply. “I have ordered the furnishings laid out as they were when the late queen was delivered.”

  The chill in her tone, and the mention of my mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth who had died giving birth in that very room, along with her child, made me bristle.

  “I have not yet decided,” I said. “I shall have to speak to the midwives, and choose my rockers and wetnurse—”

  “If Your Highness please, they have already been chosen.”

  “The choice shall be mine,” I said firmly, without looking at the lady mistress, adding “Leave me,” as I had seen my mother do when any of the household servants dared to oppose her or attempt to argue with her.

  When the angry Lady Denton had gone, I called for my chamberlain and ordered him to dismiss her from my household, and to send my lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Boleyn to me. With her efficient help I chose a healthy-looking wetnurse who had served in the noble Courteney household and two plump, kindly women to be my rockers.

  “I shall need a new lady mistress of the nursery,” I told Elizabeth. “I would like to appoint you.”

  “You honor me, Your Highness, but I cannot accept. The king has ordered me to accompany my husband to France. We are to leave very soon.” She seemed genuinely sorry. I thanked her for her help and sent her off to prepare for her journey. After she left I took one last look around the birth chamber. The golden cradle shone, the bed with its spotless linen looked inviting, and even the groaning chair had lost a little of its terrors. Confident that I would find a new lady mistress who would be more to my liking, I left the room and went in search of my husband.

  * * *

  My belly was growing quite round, and I was no longer ill in the mornings. Indeed I felt exceptionally well. I was urged to rest, not to become excited or to let anything agitate or upset me. I did my best to follow this advice as winter closed in, spending my time in reading or sewing, sitting quietly by the hearth when the weather was stormy or a cold wind made me call for a thick shawl.

  It was not yet time for me to withdraw into the seclusion of the birth chamber as royal women always do when their time is near. I told Henry that I found the waiting tedious, and that I wished I had some amusement beyond the companionship of my women and my books. I was certain that he heard me, but did not expect him to take my words so much to heart.

  Late one wintry afternoon he burst into my apartments, full of high spirits and dressed as a Turk in a wide short gray cloak, tightly fitting hose and trunks, slippers with turned-up toes and a gray velvet cap that covered his abundant red-blond hair. Six or seven of his usual companions were with him, all similarly disguised, capering and shouting and laughing, acting more like boys than men. Yet one among them, I noticed, was smaller and more slim than the others, and the black hair that was beginning to escape from under his cap as he leaped about was far too long to be the hair of a man.

  Then the cap fell off—and I saw that it was Maria Juana! A smirk of triumph crossed her seductive features as she paused, facing me, before reaching down to snatch up her cap and put it on again.

  What was Maria Juana doing among my husband’s companions in amusement? Had she always been one of them, in disguise as they inevitably were? Or was her presence there something new? She had not been a member of my household for a long time, though she still followed the court when we moved from palace to palace, and had been the mistress—so it was said—of more than one wealthy nobleman. My father no longer concerned himself about her, or insisted that I keep her among my maids of honor. He had become more wary of demanding my obedience on any matter, now that I was queen—and not only queen, but soon to be mother of the heir to the throne.

  The king and his disorderly Turks were soon gone, but I had been startled by what I had seen, and as the evening came on I became more and more unnerved. That night I felt a pain in my knee that kept me from sleeping, and the pain continued, and worsened on the following nights. I had hoped to be able to make a pilgrimage to a nearby shrine to pray for a safe delivery. But my throbbing knee and a heavy rainstorm that went on for days on end prevented me from tr
aveling even a short distance, and for a week and more I was shut indoors, brooding, more and more convinced that Maria Juana was my husband’s mistress.

  One night my back ached, and the ache worsened despite the massaging hands of the midwives. Maria de Salinas and Maria de Rojas kept the other servants and my chamber women away, though I wanted Fray Diego nearby, and he stayed near at hand.

  “Do not worry,” the oldest of the midwives assured me as she moved her hands over my belly. “I feel him kicking, he is a lusty one, a strong one.” I saw the concern in her wrinkled face. “I have brought a thousand babes into the world. I know when they are weak, and when they are strong.”

  “But it is too soon,” I protested. “You told me he was not due to be born yet. Not until spring.”

  “He may be in a hurry,” another of the midwives said. “Or it may be that Your Highness has nothing more than a pain in your back.”

  Poultices were applied, and hot cloths that reeked of oil of lavender. Physicians came and went. I saw worried faces, and overheard whispered conversations. Meanwhile my pain grew worse until, after many hours, I was lifted up and put into the groaning chair.

  In my fear and confusion I cried out, and struggled against the restraining hands that clutched at me. No one heeded me. I heard women’s voices, some soothing, some insistent. Then all was a blur, a delirium of pain and anguish. Then all sound ceased, all feeling ebbed away.

  I am told that hours passed, many hours, and that messengers were sent to find the king, to tell him that I did not have long to live. That the physicians despaired of me, and left it to the midwives to give me what succor they could. That in the end they delivered my child, a small, frail baby girl who had no life in her and could not even take her first breath.

  Fray Diego assured me later that he had baptized her, before she was taken away, in secret, her body kept hidden and her very existence never announced to the court.