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

by Erickson, Carolly

  On Henry’s order Anne had recently begun to live apart from the other women of my household, in a suite of rooms all her own. In the bedchamber of her new suite was a large bed he had given her, resplendent in coverings of gold and silver. A bed more suited for a queen than a maid of honor. Also in this room, on one wall, was a carefully drawn, branching tree of descent displaying Anne’s ancestry—a largely imagined ancestry, as I was told indignantly by the Countess of Norfolk—stretching back to the generation of William the Norman nearly five hundred years earlier.

  “She remembers well your wedding night,” Anne continued. “How ardently you and Arthur embraced, how she and others witnessed and displayed the bloodstained bedsheets afterward—”

  Here Maria Juana nodded vigorously.

  Anne went on. “She recalls how Arthur boasted of his conquest, not once but many times—”

  “Yes, many times,” Maria Juana put in, continuing to nod in agreement.

  “And that you, Catherine, having lost your maidenhead, blushed and smiled and stammered that you were now a true wife.”

  “I did no such thing!” I interrupted. “I said no such thing! And well Maria Juana knows it! If she had any truthfulness in her, she would ask my forgiveness for her lies!” I paused for breath.

  “I am sorry to hear you speak so disparagingly of your sister,” Anne said smoothly, “when she has come all the way from Aragon to bear witness to your union with the prince. Her words carry much weight.”

  “Maria Juana is not my sister,” I snapped, “though she is said to be the daughter of my father’s whore. For all I know, her ancestry is as uncertain as your own.” I glanced with contempt at the genealogical tree as I said this.

  In truth I was shocked by the bitterness and ugliness of my words. I had always thought of Maria Juana as my half-sister, and had never denied our shared paternity. I had not realized, until that moment, how angry I was at both Anne and Maria Juana, who were doing their best to put me in a trap from which only supporters long gone or long dead could rescue me. Until that terrible afternoon I had been the outwardly calm, composed one, Anne the quarrelsome, accusing harridan. I had had the upper hand. Now that Anne had the all too willing support of Maria Juana, however, she felt that she had triumphed, and that left me furious and spiteful.

  Nonetheless my retort was swift.

  “No matter what lies this faithless woman tells, my almoner Master Reveles and many others in my service at the time will refute them!”

  “What others?” Anne demanded.

  “My confessor, Fray Diego—”

  “The drunkard? The debauched friar, who, I believe, was sent away in disgrace?”

  “My duenna, then.”

  “I believe she is deceased.”

  Anne knew a good deal about my household as Arthur’s wife and widow. I concentrated, I searched my memory.

  “My duenna, Doña Elvira,” I repeated.

  “Doña Elvira has gone to be with the angels,” Maria Juana put in.

  Who was there, I asked myself. Who remained, out of all those who had served me so many years earlier, who could recall the intimate details of my marriage to dear Arthur? Dear, weak, frail Arthur?

  I could not think of a single one who could truthfully refute Maria Juana’s lies.

  Anne, seeing that I had run out of servants I could appeal to, smiled, a knowing smile. She had triumphed.

  To underscore her triumph the dour, morose churchman Thomas Cranmer came himself to inform me, in mournful tones, that any hope I had of remaining King Henry’s wife was without merit.

  “It is plain that you were indeed married to Prince Arthur, Mistress Catherine. Therefore any later marriage you may have entered into cannot be looked on as valid. Nor can it be made so by any dispensation granted by the Bishop of Rome, nor by any person in heaven or on earth!”

  He allowed his chill words to hang in the air, final and unanswered, until I turned and left the room in disgust—or, more truly, in dismay. Cranmer, a renowned scholar, had been my last hope. If he could not defend my cause, my right to remain Queen of England, then I could expect no other aid. And the learned Cranmer had called me Mistress Catherine and not Queen Catherine. He had been convinced by the king, or by the king’s money and power, to abandon me—and Princess Mary—and to lend the weight of his learning to Anne.

  I threw up my hands in despair and paced up and down the length of my apartments, which had never seemed so empty. Then I prayed, swore, asked forgiveness for my swearing and prayed again.

  In my aching head I could not stop hearing the scholar’s dire words. My marriage to Henry, he had said, was no marriage, and no power in heaven or on earth could change that.

  16

  We saw strange lights in the sky all throughout that summer, and they went on appearing long into the fall. Streaks of green and blue, yellow and deep glowing violet lit the nights, and in the days, there were odd luminous clouds, no larger than a man’s fist, that grew brighter and brighter until they gave forth lightning in quicksilver bursts.

  No one doubted that these prodigies of nature were omens of disaster.

  “Evil days have come upon us,” my dresser Maria de Caceres was fond of saying, shaking her head. “Evil days indeed.”

  As if in sympathy with the signs in the sky there were rumblings under the earth, and shakings, so strong and violent that buildings fell and great trees crashed to the ground, their limbs and branches slapping the turf until it quaked afresh.

  “It is that whore Anne Boleyn,” people said. “That evil-tongued, proud, scheming witless Mistress Anne, who bears the devil’s marks. She has brought these evils among us. England is undone!”

  Fishermen told of giant sea creatures, longer than ten boats, that swam up the Thames and beached themselves on the shore to die. Of tides flowing backward, and balls of fire the size of human heads falling out of the skies. Everyone in my household was afraid, even Griffith Richards, who I thought of as the bravest of men. It was he who brought me word that my chamberlain’s twin sons, Donald and Daniel, had hanged themselves in the meat locker, and that their father, in despair over their loss, threw himself in the river, leaving me all his possessions.

  There was a written message with them:

  “Done because I am undone,” the enigmatic message read. “O my sons, my sons—”

  Each day brought some new tragedy or omen. I began to be fearful myself, though I tried not to show my fear, lest I lead others to commit desperate acts. When my old horse Griselda, the filly I had had since she was foaled, began to stagger and lose her sight, I quietly told my groom to feed her on poppyseed cake until she fell into an unending sleep. I did my utmost to face each dire event courageously, and not to bleat and cower like the others, or give in to the terror of madness. But when I grew damp and hot with fever and could hardly stand upright from dizziness I felt my courage failing, and prayed to be delivered from hopelessness.

  Feverish dreams assailed me—of smothering under the weight of great fish, of being tortured and hanged, as men of unnatural desires for other men were hanged. Of familiar faces twisted and distorted in anguish until they were almost unrecognizable. I pray most fervently, as I write of this, that I shall never have to endure such fevers again.

  Throughout my feverish ordeal an old saying echoed and re-echoed in my head, one that I had heard recited and sung when I was married to Arthur. It was a chanted prophecy:

  A queen shall be crowned

  In the hall of the kings

  And the queen shall die.

  When my fever was at its worst I imagined that I was the queen who had been crowned in the hall of the kings, and who was doomed to die.

  My apothecaries bled me and dosed me with strong purgatives that made me vomit. I grew weaker by the hour, I felt myself giving in to the force of the old prophetic words. In my delirium I imagined Henry, greatly weakened by the pain in his leg, unable to reign any longer. I saw him handing his crown to Henry Fitzroy an
d disinheriting our daughter Mary. Then I saw myself led out to the kitchens, where grim-eyed cooks forced me to eat poppyseed cake until I could not stay awake any longer and sank down into the earth, to be covered, as I had ordered Griselda to be covered, with sweet grass.

  I was awakened from these dark fantasies by Maria de Caceres, who was noisily opening my traveling chests and removing my things from them.

  “He is taking that accursed woman to France,” she told me. “He requires your traveling chests. She has too few of her own.”

  So Henry was acting at last, I thought. He was determined to marry Anne. He feared to carry out the ceremony in England, knowing what an outcry the people would make. To avoid this he would take Anne to France, and marry her there. But I would not lend her my chests.

  “If she lacks traveling chests, let her buy more,” I said firmly. I had thirty fine chests covered in Cordovan leather, and several dozen inferior ones as well, all bearing my name and emblem. They had been brought from Spain when I came to England as a bride. They had held everything that was precious to me. I had no intention of letting Anne have them—or even borrow them.

  “And there is one thing more,” my dresser was telling me. Her voice was soft, apologetic. I was instantly on the alert. She sounded tenuous. She knew I would be loath to hear what she was about to say.

  “The king requires your jewels.”

  “Tell the king my answer is no.”

  Maria turned pale. “I cannot tell him that, Your Highness.”

  “Then summon him, and I will tell him myself.”

  So this is how it is to be, I thought. He intends to marry his whore mistress, and to take from me all that I value: my title of queen, my household, my most precious possessions. All these he means to squander, at my expense, on the least deserving of the women at our court: Anne Boleyn.

  And for what? For a fleeting passion, and the hope of a son.

  “Madam.”

  While I was lost in my musings, Henry had come into the room.

  Instinctively I knelt, as I always had. He was my sovereign. And something more: my husband, my partner and lover. My old friend and ally. And now, because of Anne, my enemy.

  He reached out his hand, the hand with jeweled rings on each fleshy finger, and raised me up. Standing before him, he towered over me. I had shrunk, over the years. He had expanded, in height as well as girth.

  “Catherine, I require your jewels.”

  “To adorn your mistress.”

  “To adorn my wife.”

  “I am your wife.”

  “As you please. In any event, I will soon have another.”

  “She shall not have anything of mine.”

  There was a pause, then Henry said, more softly yet urgently, “She has my heart.”

  A retort sprang to my lips, but I remained silent. I knew in that moment that my cause was lost. I knew it, as surely as I have ever known anything in my life. And still I argued, and fought over my rights. I clung to the symbols of my rank. I am ashamed to write this, but I quarreled with Henry, as loudly and bitterly as Anne ever had, until he threw up his beringed hands and cried for Wolsey—the late Cardinal Wolsey—lamenting that Wolsey had always known how to make necessary things happen without bickering and strife.

  Back and forth we went, Henry arguing that I had no further need of my jewels, that I was ill (he was right about that) and could not leave my apartments and in any case, I was no longer queen, as all the experts in the law of the church agreed. Therefore it was only right that I should hand over my jewels to him—in actuality, I was sure, to Anne.

  I in turn argued, fiercely, that Henry was far more ill than I was, that the pain and stinking infection in his sore leg were likely to get worse and that even if he made Anne his wife he was too old and sick to become a father once again.

  I told him, bluntly, what my physician had told me: that with the worsening infection in his leg he might very well die—and soon.

  “You made me regent while you were away fighting in France,” I reminded him. “We were much younger then, to be sure. And I was carrying a child. Do you remember that?”

  He nodded.

  “I fought off the Scots. I lost the child in my womb. I wept—but I did what needed to be done, as ruler and guardian of the realm, in your stead. Do you truly believe that Anne could do the same, should you become ill and unable to rule any longer? Has she the valor, the strength? Would the soldiers fight for her, if the imperial armies of my nephew Charles invaded England?”

  My arguments struck home. Henry knew he was on weak ground, to imagine that Anne could do what I, Queen Isabella’s daughter, had ordered done on Flodden Field.

  He had his answer ready nonetheless.

  “I assure you, madam, that I will not die. Yet if I should, my councilors will serve as my regents until such time as my heir can rule. Now, I will have your jewels—and your traveling chests.”

  “Not while I breathe,” was my own harsh reply.

  “As you wish—but I will have them,” were Henry’s parting words.

  And as sure as night follows day, five of his chamber gentlemen came with royal warrants to retrieve both the jewels and the traveling chests within the hour.

  Henry was indeed taking from me all that I valued: my place at his side, my role as his queen, my dignity. What were a few jewels and traveling chests compared to these?

  Signs and wonders continued to appear in the skies in the autumn of the Year of Our Lord 1532, and Mistress Anne, my husband’s beloved, ordered her wedding clothes sewn and embarked for France.

  * * *

  The Scandal of Christendom, that’s what they were calling her in Calais. The king’s harlot. The Whore of Babylon. So my friend Elizabeth Howard told me in her letters carried by swift messenger during the month of October.

  None of the respectable women of our English court would cross to France, and only a few would serve as Anne’s attendants. As for the women of the French court, only King Francis’s mistress, Mme de Vendôme, would meet or welcome Anne, and that in itself was a scandal and a disgrace.

  Yet according to what the duchess wrote to me, Anne continued to announce that she and Henry would soon wed. They were lodged together in the old Exchequer in Calais, with the handful of women who had attached themselves to Anne’s household in attendance nearby. Elizabeth and Thomas Howard, Anne’s uncle and aunt, were lodged in another part of the old Exchequer, from which vantage point the duchess could observe much of the goings-on.

  “Your half-sister Maria Juana is there as well,” Elizabeth informed me. “Anne has promised to find her a rich French husband. But it will be difficult, as none of the ladies of Calais visit Anne or even acknowledge her presence. How then can Anne find an available wealthy man to marry Maria Juana?

  “Not only do the French ladies ignore Anne, they ignore all of the English women around her,” the duchess wrote. “Apart from the king, who delights in her, Anne is completely on her own. Her serving women obey her commands and gratify her whims; to all others, she is as remote as the moon—and as cold.”

  The duchess described, in her long letters, the atmosphere surrounding Anne during the visit to Calais: the quarreling among the women, the rising resentments and jealousies. According to the duchess, Anne disliked Maria Juana (who was, I must admit, the more graceful and seductive of the two), and was envious of her. The wedding finery created by the Belgian seamstresses displeased Anne, I was told, and the insulting remarks the Belgians made about her appearance displeased her even more.

  “Of course the kirtle doesn’t fit! Her belly is growing bigger and bigger!”

  “By the mass, she’s going to have twins!”

  “And if she does have twins, which one inherits the throne?”

  “The firstborn, you fool!”

  “What if the firstborn is an idiot?”

  “Then the other one!”

  “What if one is a prince, the other a princess?”

  On i
t went, Elizabeth wrote, with much muffled laughter at Anne’s expense. It sounded to me, from the letters and other messages I was receiving, as though Henry was wavering in his decision to make Anne his wife. She was proving to be more fearsome and demanding than he had expected. And less pure.

  The duchess was certain that my husband was sleeping with Anne, just as if they were already married. But according to Henry’s old friend and jousting partner Charles Brandon, Anne was keeping company with another man as well.

  My prayers were being answered. Anne’s true nature was showing itself, and Henry would see through the veil of lustful illusion at last. He would return to me, his true and only wife. He would return to me.

  * * *

  As it turned out, of course, the illusion was mine, not Henry’s. For a few days I expected to have good news in the duchess’s letters, the good news that my husband had seen through Anne’s façade and rejected her. Instead, Anne soon found a way—the most obvious way—to bind him to her with lasting bonds. Her seamstresses were right after all. She was carrying the king’s child.

  This changed everything.

  I was urged, for my own safety and wellbeing, to return to Spain at once. If I stayed on in England I would only be in the way. A troublesome presence at best, at worst, an obstacle to the security of the realm.

  Besides, I was told, I would be sure to suffer, watching Anne preside over court festivities, wearing my jewels, sitting at Henry’s side in the place of honor as I had done for so many years. I would not want to see her married, or crowned, or to hear of the birth of her child. If I left England and returned to Spain I would still know of these events, to be sure, but they would seem less painful.

  Something in me rebelled against leaving. It would be as if I left the field of battle, conceding defeat to the enemy. I was not bred to yield, to give up. I was determined to fight on, quietly, stealthily if I must. But I would not lay down my arms. I would stay and fight on.