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

by Erickson, Carolly

In truth I was aware, in that year of warmaking, that my own beauty, such as it had been, was long past. My complexion, once bright and fair, was becoming dull and sallow. My gray eyes had lost much of their youthful luster. Childbearing had thickened my waist, and I was no longer as nimble or agile as I had been as a girl. I did not rue these changes, but I could not fail to acknowledge them. I was a small woman, no longer young, without uncommon beauty such as Henry’s sister Mary possessed in such abundance. But I was Queen of England, and the king’s regent.

  When Maria had cut my hair, I put on my helmet. I stood before the pier glass, and studied my reflection. I found it very satisfying indeed.

  I was no beauty, as my mother had been. Yet I had the look of a warrior queen all the same. I remembered my mother’s confessor reading to her the passage from the Scriptures about putting on the helmet of salvation, and the breastplate of righteousness. About fighting the wicked wearing the armor of the Lord.

  The recollection thrilled and inspired me, yet at the same time it made me sorrowful. I went to the cupboard where I kept, out of sight, the small suit of armor Henry had ordered for our son, the New Year’s Boy. I took it out and laid it on my bed. The Lord had seen fit to take unto himself that son I had loved. Now he had granted me another to carry under my heart. I vowed that the prince I would bear at the end of the year would wear this armor, and be strong and vital. He would not succumb to illness as his brother had.

  This in turn led me in my musing to think of Prince Arthur, whom I had married so long before, when I was an affectionate, trusting girl. Prince Arthur who had been born to be king of England. I had loved him, with a love as strong as that I had for the New Year’s Boy. How different Arthur had been from Henry! He was no warrior, yet he had won my heart and my sympathy, and my memories of him were sweet.

  I took the little suit of armor and put it away in the cupboard. I would keep it safe for our new son.

  * * *

  I had reminded Henry with pride that my father King Ferdinand was his staunch ally, whose soldiers were on their way to aid in his crusade. But within days of Henry’s embarkation for France I learned that my father had not done as he promised. He had not kept faith, either with Henry or with me. Instead of sending his soldiers northward from Aragon to join our English soldiery he had made a truce with the French, abandoning his allegiance and proving himself not only untrustworthy but dishonorable.

  He had betrayed those who trusted him, just as he had betrayed my mother with Doña Aldonza. I was ashamed of him, and felt that my own honor had been stained by his betrayal.

  This in turn made me worry that, added to the scoffing and contempt that might well be shown to me because I was a mere woman, I would now be regarded as the daughter of a faithless, deceitful father who was unworthy to be named as a champion of the Holy Father or to join in any crusade.

  Dreading this, I suffered, as I had always struggled to keep my own honor pure. I could not imagine giving my word, and then breaking it.

  Yet I had little leisure for brooding on my father’s faithlessness. A messenger arrived with a letter from Master Reveles, written from a camp near the French town of Thérouanne, in the midst of a rainstorm, as the stains on the document clearly showed. True to his promise, Master Reveles was sending me word of what was being said and done in France.

  What his letter told me was that news had reached Henry and his commanders that King James of Scotland was coming southward with a large force of men at arms, and that they were well equipped for battle.

  “The French have sent much treasure to pay the Scots,” Master Reveles wrote. “And not to buy arms and provisions only, but to hire spies and troublemakers.”

  I could well believe what he wrote, when I brought to mind the explosions on the docks, the treachery of Antoine Bedell, and other things done in secret intended to thwart our crusade. Spies and troublemakers were indeed at work, and in our midst.

  “The French are devious,” Master Reveles wrote. “They are adept at acts of cunning and crime. It is because they are cowards at heart. The English, however, are stout of heart and fear nothing.

  “King Henry has the stoutest heart of all,” the letter went on. “He rides through our camp all day and half the night, changing his mount every few hours, shouting orders to the men and urging them on until he is hoarse. He boasts that when we begin the siege of Thérouanne, he will throw off his armor and walk up to the walls and dare the French bowmen who defend it to shoot him.”

  It was as I feared. Henry was doing too much, overtiring himself and putting himself in danger needlessly. He was abandoning good judgment. I hoped he was not ill.

  I sent word at once to the earl marshall to fortify the borderlands, and set about raising the shire levies of men and arms and horses. My summons were obeyed, for the most part, and within a week the first of many hundreds of men were arriving in the capital, to be sent north by sea. I was glad then for the Venetian galleys, with their large holds and wide decks. They held not only fighting men but tents and provisions, and seven heavy cannons, nearly as large as the Twelve Apostles, that became known as the Seven Sisters.

  By the time I was ready to lead my own men—a chosen force of some five thousand—toward the border to support the much larger army of the earl marshall, several more letters had arrived from Master Reveles. Not only had Thérouanne been taken by our English soldiers, but there had been another triumph—hundreds of mounted English knights had met and overwhelmed a much larger contingent of the French and put them to flight.

  “It was a triumph,” the almoner wrote, “but I must tell you that the king was not in the forefront of the horsemen, leading them on against the enemy. He was not among the English knights at all. His delight is not in fighting, but in feasting and dancing. We have had much revelry among the ladies.”

  Much revelry indeed! I could imagine Henry amusing himself as he loved to do, indulging himself and performing at the things he did best while being praised and flattered by those around him.

  I did my best to banish such disloyal thoughts from my mind, but when another letter was brought to me, telling me of my husband’s weeks of tilting and masquing, of how he entertained the Archduchess Margaret and her women by playing his lute and piping and singing, I grew angry and cut the letter to pieces with my knife.

  How dare he waste weeks dancing and piping while I was heavily burdened with so many duties, so heavily burdened, some days, that it was all I could do to find time to drink and sup and even to rest! I had not written to him to complain of this, nor had I told him that my swelling belly was a hindrance to all that I did. My letters to Henry were full of praise and encouragement. And did he send letters to me of the same sort? No. He sent no letters at all.

  Then arrived the most vexing news I had received since the day Henry left for France. News so disturbing that it could not be written down (lest it be read by others) but only delivered by a trusted servant, who told me in confidence what I least wanted to hear.

  * * *

  My informant, my almoner’s laundress, arrived in a boatload of French prisoners. One of my more onerous tasks as regent was to receive captured French knights and see that they were placed under guard in the Tower. The laundress had been instructed to wash the prisoners’ shirts and mend them as necessary. But I soon discovered that she had come on a different errand: to pass on to me the secret that Master Reveles was certain I needed to know.

  The laundress was shy and unsure of herself at first, but when I gave her a coin and reassured her that I wanted to hear her news, she became more confident.

  “Your Highness’s almoner wishes me to say,” she began, “that there is a girl who has become King Henry’s favorite companion. She is the daughter of Sir John Blount, who serves His Majesty as captain of the guard.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Her cousin is my chamberlain, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy.”

  The laundress licked her lips, her uncertainty returning. “They sing and
dance together. She is such a lively dancer, and sings so sweetly. They—are together day and night.”

  My heart sank. “Is she his mistress?”

  The woman began to answer, then hesitated.

  “I must know. Is she his mistress? And is she young and beautiful?”

  “She is—a very charming girl. Always smiling and laughing. And very pretty—as Your Highness is—”

  “Hush! No false flattery! Save that for my husband, who appears to crave it! Her age. What is her age?”

  “I am told by Master Reveles that she is not yet fifteen.”

  “Very well then. You have told me. Now you may go.”

  I felt my entire body stiffen. My heart was beating too quickly. I was beginning to feel faint. The laundress stayed where she was.

  “Yes? What is it? I have said you may go,” I repeated, more harshly than I meant to.

  “If you please, Your Highness, there is more to tell.”

  I felt, then, as if I had turned to stone, to marble as cold as the pillars in the gardens in the Alhambra.

  “Yes?” I asked, this time my voice was weak.

  “It is said that she is with child by the king.”

  * * *

  The men were beginning to sing about me.

  Their songs were no poetic odes or melodic airs, but plain soldiers’ rhymes, set to the rhythm of tramping boots. “The warrior Catherine in helmet of gold, the warrior Catherine so brave and so bold,” they sang. “The Scots went a-running, she put them to flight. They ran from her presence by day and by night.” On and on the verses went, until a ballad of sorts was fitted together and written down.

  I had not put the Scots to flight, but my men were confident that I would.

  We had marched north out of London, intent on joining the Earl of Surrey and his far larger army in the borderlands as swiftly as our cumbersome train of men and carts and horses would permit. We traveled under a banner with the combined arms of England and Spain, and also the banner of the Virgin Mary and of Saint George who had killed the dragon. My puirsuivants bore their own coats of arms, and my trumpeters also.

  I was bent on war, I let nothing hinder me. Not the damp weather or the lowering clouds, nor the thought of the enemy, in full battle array, or the Scots King James and his guns and soldiery. Not even the dread thought of Bessie Blount and the king, together day and night. Day and night. For was I not wearing the golden helmet, and was not ours the Lord’s cause?

  We had been traveling for nearly a week when a messenger came from the earl marshall, bringing us word of a great victory. The earl and his men had held firm against King James and his thousands, with their French guns and their knights and pikemen, on a sere meadow known as Flodden Field. The Seven Sisters had boomed a strident answer to the cannons of the enemy, and it had not taken long—a single afternoon—for the Scots cause to be ruined leaving many men, even King James himself, lying dead on the field.

  We could hardly believe the wondrous news. This was no skirmish such as had taken place between King Henry’s knights and the French after the capture of Thérouanne, but a full-out contest of arms, a defeat far more final than any battle fought against the Scots for hundreds of years.

  The armed might of the Scots lay in ruins.

  I could not rest until I had seen for myself the scene of battle, the field of death. Though hindered by pain in my rounded, bulging belly I rode on north at once, taking only an escort of a hundred of my guard and a dozen bowmen. We traveled in the greatest haste, over rough terrain soaked by the autumn rains and full of broken ground and much stubble. Here and there trees had fallen across the roadway, and streams overflowed their banks to flood the low-lying valleys.

  We smelled the battlefield before we reached it, the overpowering stench of death was like an assault. I felt my stomach heave, and saw that others in my company sickened at the odor and purged their stomachs. When we came to the bloody ground itself, with its mounds of corpses, its litter of dead horses, covered with flies and vermin, and its abandoned weaponry, flung away as if in hasty flight, I had to force myself to look at what lay before me.

  For it was, as we had been told, a scene of utter ruin. And the very symbol of that ruin was the scarred, mutilated body of King James. A body so rent by sword cuts and wounds that no one, not even my sister-in-law Margaret, could have recognized it as that of her husband. What if this had been Henry, I wondered. What if Henry had fallen dead on a battlefield in France? It could happen yet. It could happen at any time.

  The bloody coat armor that covered the body of the Scots king, with its royal crest, proved his identity. I made the decision to send it, rent and stained as it was, to Henry in France, as the prime trophy of our victory. I would send the king’s corpse entire, as my mother would surely have done had she been in my place.

  But my mother’s victories were against the heathen Moors. Not her Christian relatives. And as I had good reason to know, Henry shunned all reminders of death. He had barely spared a glance for our New Year’s Boy in his last hours. He would be glad to receive the Scots king’s stained surcoat, but to receive his flesh—I was certain that would horrify him.

  No—I would have King James’s embalmed body taken to Stirling Castle for burial. I would bear in mind that for the moment, the late king’s baby son, who was not yet two years old, was not only King of Scotland as James V but heir to the English throne as well. I wondered whether Margaret was thinking these same thoughts.

  I had no wish to linger at Flodden Field, especially as bad weather threatened, but there was provisioning to see to, and lookouts to post along the border, before I gave the order for our armies to return southward. I did what I could, as quickly as I could, doing my best to ignore the strong twinges of pain in my belly.

  I took heart from the singing of the men, the truest sign of their honor and respect. They are proud of me, I told myself. They are so proud of me.

  The warrior Catherine her story is told

  The warrior Catherine in her helmet of gold

  Her heart was for England, her zeal was for Spain

  We never shall witness her equal again

  The Scotsmen atremble, they scatter like down

  She raises her sword nigh to Edinburgh town

  Let all men remember for many a year

  How Catherine defeated the enemy here

  The warrior Catherine in her helmet of gold

  The proudest and bravest of warriors bold

  Her mother’s true daughter, her father’s true heir

  Our queen and our lady most true and most fair

  I heard them singing, and knew that they were full of the joy of battle, the joy of victory. But the ghastly sight of the battlefield, and my exertions there, had made my pain much worse. I huddled, shivering, near the camp fire, my clothing soaked in sweat. When a midwife was found in Branxton village and brought to our camp she made me lie on a straw pallet, under a mound of blankets. There was little else she could do. There in the damp and cold of a long night, I suffered my own defeat.

  England had won a great victory, but I had lost my child.

  9

  Henry rejoiced to hear of our triumph over the Scots at Flodden, and ordered feasts prepared and bonfires lit in celebration. He even pretended to be pleased to receive King James’s bloody, battlestained surcoat—though I am certain his pleasure was all for show—and held it high and waved it while his admirers cheered.

  When the news and the grisly trophy reached him he was at the court of the Archduchess Margaret, at Lille, enjoying more weeks of revelry and masquing, tourneying and—I had been warned—the companionship of Bessie Blount. He had reason to be gratified by his own attainments, having seized both Thérouanne and Tournai, but he had enjoyed no hard-won personal glory from either conquest, and in fact, as Master Reveles wrote me, his soldiers joked to one another that he was a better dancer than a fighter. And that I, a woman with a babe in my womb, had won a far greater victory than he ever would.<
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  “He seldom speaks to me,” my almoner wrote, “since he heard some of the men singing a ballad about you. I believe he envies you your renown, and resents you.”

  And indeed I saw this resentment for myself when Henry returned to England at the end of October. His manner toward me was brusque and dismissive whenever I tried to talk to him, his very posture was different and his tone scathing.

  When I congratulated him on his success, he barely acknowledged my congratulations, or thanked me.

  “And I have heard echoes of your own acclaim,” he snapped, “from among my men at arms. As I have heard it said that you lost the child you were carrying, there at Flodden.”

  At this I hung my head, more in sorrow than in shame, though his words were meant to shame me. If he felt any regret over the death, or over my own suffering, he did not show it—which made me resentful in my turn.

  “It is also being said that your mistress, young Bessie Blount, will bear your child before long.”

  He dismissed my words with a slight wave of one large hand.

  “Mere rumor. And she is soon to become your maid of honor.”

  “Not of my choosing, as you know.”

  With a shrug, Henry turned aside and shifted his attention to a document brought to him by one of the chancery clerks.

  “At your chamberlain’s urging, I believe,” was Henry’s low response.

  There was no point in arguing with him, though I was well aware that it had been Henry himself who told my chamberlain William Blount to come to me and inform me that his cousin Bessie was being appointed to my household. Such things were always done indirectly; my mother had told me that Doña Aldonza, when she was a young unmarried girl, and my father’s mistress, had been appointed to be one of her maids of honor. But the appointment was made to seem as though it came from the steward of mother’s household, and not from my father.

  In truth I found cheerful, innocent-looking young Bessie, with her thick cloud of tight light brown curls and her trusting blue eyes, more endearing than odious. Had Arthur and I been able to have a daughter, she might well have been like Bessie.