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

by Erickson, Carolly

  He stood there, gazing down at me, and I struggled to stand, coughing as I did so. He hesitated—but only for a moment—then offered me his arm. His chivalry was stronger than his pride—or his inner torment. Without saying a word, he led me out of the chapel, amid the whisperings and murmurings of the mourners. He waved his attendants away, and led me into the sunlit chapel garden, full of the scent of flowers and new-mown grass.

  We had not spoken for many months. The silence between us was awkward. I dared to break it.

  “We made a pact once,” I said softly, “you and I. We agreed that whatever others said or did, we would not let it sunder us.”

  I could see that my words pierced his heart, torn as he was by strong emotions just then—grief, loss, perhaps even regret. He shook his head. He did not look at me, not even when I coughed and faltered as we slowly walked past the flowering stalks and bushes.

  “I remember well,” he muttered under his breath, then added, “I should never have let you come here today.”

  “Had Anne been here, I would not have come.”

  He shrugged. “She is ill.”

  He paused as we were walking, and drew out of his plain black doublet a miniature portrait. I recognized it at once. It was of Mary, as a young woman, her dark curling hair framing her lovely face, smiling and happy.

  “She was twenty when this was painted,” he said. “And today she is buried at thirty-seven. And still so beautiful.”

  “The Lord in his wisdom—” I started to say.

  “No! I’ll have none of that drivel about how we each have a given span of years!” He shook his head, a lion shaking his mane. “She was weak, she sickened. I was not kept informed. I would have sent every physician in the realm to save her!”

  Startled by the sudden sharpness in his tone, I swayed on my feet, and he helped me to a stone bench where we both sat down. I noticed that some of the royal guards were watching us from a respectful distance, and wondered whether they might interrupt our conversation. But Henry had more to say.

  “Such a waste! All that beauty, that sweetness. Brandon did not let me know how ill she was. I thought, when she kept to her bed these last few months, that it was a ruse. I thought she was avoiding coming to court. I knew she objected to my marrying Anne.”

  She objected to your treatment of me, I wanted to say, but held my tongue. Instead I asked the question that was uppermost in my mind.

  “If I may, I would like to ask a boon. Buckden is cold and full of drafts. I am quite miserable there. If you would allow it, I would like to return to London. To Durham House.”

  He looked at me, scrutinizing my pale face. Thinking, I had no doubt, that if I did move back to the capital, I would not be there long, as I was in my last weeks or months. He looked away then, and for the first time I saw a fleeting smile cross his lips.

  “Crum won’t like it, but yes, you may.”

  I sighed with relief. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  Within a week I was installed once again at Durham House in the Strand.

  * * *

  It was not long before Henry came, alone, to see me in my new residence. I wondered at first whether he had come in hopes of finding me in extremis, with a priest at hand to administer the last rites. But it soon became apparent that my state of health was far from being his main concern. He had come to talk, confident that he would find me to be—despite all—a sympathetic listener.

  I sent my servants away and prepared to hear what he had to say, keeping in mind that he believed me to be weak and suffering.

  “Sometimes, Catherine, I imagine that there is indeed a curse on my house. I thought that it would lift when I married Anne. Instead—”

  “Instead?”

  He shrugged.

  “Mary has died. Your nephew Charles and his armies are at my doorstep. The accursed Bishop of Rome has condemned me—not that his condemnation has the effect he thought it would. I am being forced to find another way to worship.”

  I could not help wondering what that other way might be. I looked at Henry expectantly.

  Gripping his cane, he got to his feet. “There is to be a new church,” he said. “A revitalized church. One free of the bonds of Rome. One with the sovereign himself at its head. An English church, not an Italian one.”

  I thought, what breathtaking arrogance! To take to himself the leadership of the faith. Is he to tell us all what and how to believe? Is he to be the chief theologian?

  “It is time the old ways of Rome were discarded,” he was saying. “The ruler of the realm will be the ruler of the church as well.”

  How like Henry, to try to conquer what he cannot control. To conquer it—or to destroy it.

  “Whatever changes you make, Your Grace,” I began to say, “you will still have the Lord’s displeasure to contend with.” As soon as I said the words, I feared that I had said too much. But I could tell right away that he had come to the same conclusion, and was fearful. Presently he asked me, “Do you know the story of the Mouldwarp?”

  “I have heard the servants relating it, yes.”

  “The old prophecy from the days of King Arthur, and his wizard Merlin. The prophecy of the cursed king who brings on himself the punishment of God.” He was trembling as he spoke, there was a catch in his voice. Still he forced himself to go on. His words came in gasps.

  “The Mouldwarp—was a great hero to his people—a champion—a defender against all the enemies of the realm.” He began to shout. “He was strong, valiant—”

  “But doomed to fail,” I went on, as Henry began shaking his head and crying, “No, no, it must not be! It cannot be!”

  In his anguish he shook his head more and more violently, like a beast shaking off a heavy harness, or a bear being baited by dogs, trying in vain to free itself from their tormenting jaws.

  “Yes, doomed to fail,” I repeated. “Because he surrendered all to his pride. His lust. He was vain and willful. He took to himself a woman unworthy of him at his best. A woman who will lead him to destruction! Or so the servants say, when they speak of the Mouldwarp. But that is only legend, only servants’ talk when they go to their pallets at night, and cannot sleep.”

  He swallowed, blinking rapidly and attempting to recover himself. He did not look at me. “I—” he began, but could not go on. I waited for his sense of panic to ease.

  “I tell you, Catherine,” he said after a long minute of silence, “I cannot remember when I last slept the night through.” At last he slapped his knees and got to his feet, evidently about to leave.

  “I—” he began again, then thought better of it, and bade me a swift farewell.

  * * *

  Living as I now was at Durham House, it was not difficult at all for me to remain in close contact with my former gentleman usher Griffith Richards, who served in Anne’s household and who was often sent on errands to all corners of the capital. He made certain that his route came near my residence, so that he had an excuse to bring me news and encouragement. He had never ceased to be loyal to me, despite his unwanted position in service to Anne. And because my own guardians had become much more lax in their oversight of me and my visitors than they had been in the past, Richards was a frequent and welcome visitor.

  He could not wait to tell me all that was going on in Anne’s chambers.

  “If only you could see how she flaunts herself, Your Majesty,” he said one warm afternoon as we sat overlooking the river. And oh how it warmed me to be called by my former title, instead of the demeaning one of Princess Dowager!

  “She shames herself,” he went on, “with her fat belly, dressing in her long red silk court gowns and wearing masses of jewels. Some of them yours, Your Majesty, I’m very sorry to say.

  “And the way she talks and laughs, it is so unmannerly, so brazen. She boasts about how your nephew Charles doesn’t dare bring his armies ashore, for fear her own relatives would raise an even larger army and defeat him.

  “‘Let them come,’ she sa
ys. ‘Let them try to take our land. The Howards will put ten thousand fighting men into the field and fight them and kill them all.’ Her taunts are rude and braggardly. Not at all fit for a royal chamber.

  “She has ordered hundreds of workmen to renovate her apartments, and hundreds more to build her a new hall and gallery where she entertains. And such pastime it is! With dancing and music, merrymaking and flirtation going on hour after hour, and on into the night. I tell you, Your Majesty, such scenes would never have gone on in your apartments, in your gracious presence.”

  “What sort of scenes?”

  He lowered his voice. “There is not only laughter and merrymaking, but secret meetings, hidden pledges of love. Furtive mutterings in corners. Betrayals of love and honor. I have seen men of a goodly age visit Anne’s rooms without their wives, and meet there the young girls who are their lovers. I tell you, it is worse than anything that ever went on in the Maidens’ Bower, there beside the river, where the king met his favorites, far from the eyes of his chamber gentlemen—”

  “Or his wife,” I put in, reminding Richards that Henry had had more than his share of liaisons with other women while married to me. And that I knew all about them.

  “But this is different,” my former gentleman usher insisted. “This is bold and outrageous, as if Anne is daring the whole world to rebuke her and all those who serve her. Offering the most shocking example to everyone. She is without a shred of modesty or dignity.” He shook his head. “It cannot last,” he said. “It must not.”

  What Griffith Richards was telling me went a long way to explaining Henry’s disturbed, confused state of mind. Anne was acting in a way that upstaged him. He had always been the most flamboyant, the most dramatic figure in any room he entered, anywhere; now, it would seem, his starring role had been taken over by his consort. (I cannot bear to write, “by his wife.”) And the effect of her supplanting him was damaging, far more damaging than he had imagined. He knew, to be sure, that Anne was domineering and importunate, that she insisted on having her own way. But her newfound arrogance was leading to a harshly adverse result; it was undoing all that he had done to elevate the tone and power of his rule.

  Anne, Richards was telling me, was cheapening the good name of the court by besmirching the wholesome reputation of the queen’s household—a reputation I had shaped and guarded over many years. She was inviting the taint of scandal to dirty the court, overshadowing it with her own ill-behaved style, her loose, sensual attitudes and tastes. Everything from her bearing, the careless way she carried herself, to her likes and dislikes in music and dancing and dress. Her entire sensibility was wayward and ill suited to the dignity necessary in a queen. She was as headstrong as a child, with a child’s fickle, contrary demands and passions. Henry had seen this, I was sure, but he had shut his eyes to it—until now. And he found it to be both confusing and galling to his pride.

  “She is giving the gossip-mongers a great deal to talk about,” Richards was saying.

  And giving all the courts of Europe a reason to look down on England, I was thinking. Lowering the repute of the king, the awe in which he had formerly been held. His prowess in the tournament and the chase, his good looks and high spirits, his courtly accomplishments. Everything that had set him apart, indeed above, his royal peers. Now he would be ridiculed as his new queen’s fool. Unless, of course, she presented him with a son.

  “She is blamed for setting an immoral example. It is even whispered that she brought her own wizards to court to cast spells on the king, to make him do her bidding. How else could she have captured his heart and broken his will, and made him turn his back on you, Your Highness?”

  Richards described Anne’s own new favorite, the sweet-faced little singer Mark, who was always by her side. “She treats him like the fool he is. He dotes on her.”

  “Does the king never intervene in these—these entertainments?” I asked.

  “He is ill at ease there.”

  “But surely he is pleased about Anne’s child.”

  “Indeed yes. He has brought in soothsayers and conjurors to read the boy’s future. They all agree—all but one, an old hag from Norfolk named Mabel Brigge, who tried to kill the king with her witchcraft—that he will be handsome and strong like his father, and will live to vanquish all his enemies.”

  I could not help but ask what happened to the witch from Norfolk.

  “The king had her seized and thrown into his dungeons, where she rots. Meanwhile Anne has ordered all those who serve her to wear her new livery.” He removed his heavy outer garment. Beneath it he wore a doublet of blue and purple silk, embroidered with Anne’s motto: the words “La Plus Heureuse.” “The Most Happy.”

  “And is she, do you think?” I asked. “Is she truly the most happy woman at the court?”

  “I cannot say. She is certainly the most giddy. The most prideful. The most insolent—”

  I interrupted his list of vices to ask whether Anne had yet taken her chamber. It was August, and the birth could not be far off. I had always followed the long-established custom that a queen should retire into her birth chamber a month before her baby was expected—and Anne’s child was said to be due in September.

  “She has not,” my former chamberlain told me, “but I will be certain to bring you word when she does.”

  As it happened, word of Anne’s withdrawal into seclusion was not long in reaching me—but it came in a surprising form. I was ordered to provide, for the new baby, the christening mantle and robes that Princess Mary had worn at her own christening seventeen years earlier.

  I still had the treasured garments; I had preserved them in a carved wooden chest lined with purple satin. I had been hoping—indeed I had not yet quite given up hope—that they would be worn by Mary’s firstborn when she married and bore her first child.

  I lifted the gold hasp of the chest and brought out the small robes. They smelt faintly of oil, their crimson cloth of gold shone in the candlelight. The long ermine-trimmed mantle looked as fresh and new as it had the day Mary’s christening ceremony had taken place.

  No, I said aloud. Anne’s ill-begotten child shall not wear these precious garments. I will not allow it.

  I called for my supper and put the small clothes back into their chest. Later, however, as I ate, lingering over my meal as I had very little appetite, a thought occurred to me. Why not agree to provide the christening gown and mantle after all—but on condition that Henry allow me to join the throng that awaited the birth once Anne’s labor began? My grief would be lessened, I could say, by passing on the christening garments that Mary had worn to the new heir to the throne. I would be enhancing my dignity, not lessening it.

  I sent my groom Francisco Phelipe to the keeper of the queen’s chamber with this message, and the following day I was given permission to bring the garments to the palace myself.

  * * *

  I found all in turmoil at Greenwich, where in the rooms anterior to Anne’s dark, stuffy birth chamber many a drama was playing itself out.

  The astrologers Henry had summoned to court were in one anteroom, the visionaries who had received divine messages about the coming birth in another. The two groups disagreed about the disposition and character of the prince who would soon be born, the astrologers certain that he would be a stern, serious judge, commanding in his power and authority, while those who heard heavenly voices were equally certain that he would be an avenging angel, God’s warrior, quick to strike the enemies of the church and the realm.

  While royal guards kept watch at the birth chamber door, relieved at intervals by tall halberdiers, Anne’s maids of honor and chamber women busied themselves with preparations for the masques and banquets soon to be held to celebrate the prince’s birth. New garments had to be sewn, new headgear designed and fitted, dances practiced and music learned. And all of it carried out with an ear kept cocked for the sounds of Anne’s impending delivery from the other side of the thick oak door.

  The royal
herald paced nervously back and forth before the door, waiting to make his announcement of the new heir to the throne who, it was said, would be given the name Edward or Henry. Scribes sat waiting to fill in the birth proclamations, messengers to carry them on the first stage of their journey to far-off courts. My nephew Charles would receive such a proclamation, I thought to myself. He had sworn to descend on England to seize the throne should Anne’s child be named heir instead of Princess Mary.

  Henry Fitzroy too was close by, in case Anne’s child died at birth or proved to be a malformed, freakish thing, more monster than child. I had seen such births, they were not at all rare. Griffith Richards had told me how much Anne hated to have Henry Fitzroy at court, let alone in her apartments. She called him an albatross, a bird of ill omen, and swore that he would bring her bad luck. But Henry insisted that young Fitzroy be on hand, along with his fiancée Mary Howard, Anne’s cousin, and according to Richards, Anne’s objections only strengthened Henry’s resolve.

  Having never before been part of this activity outside the birth chamber—I was always the royal mother-to-be, awaiting my labor pains and then undergoing my good hour, as the agony of labor was known—I had not realized how crowded and full of movement and exertion the outer rooms were, with seamstresses coming and going, tailors and shoemakers fitting garments and taking measurements. So many voices called out across the rooms, conveying urgent messages. Servants were berated, scribes and secretaries put to urgent tasks. The king’s armorer was summoned, and told to await the order to repair and polish His Highness’s jousting armor in time for the tourneying. Grooms from the stables were sent for and informed that the warhorses ordered from Flanders had been lost when the ship that was carrying them went down in a storm; more large, strong horses had to be found to replace them, and quickly.

  And as if this was not enough, preparations were under way for the wedding of Charles Brandon with his ward Catherine Willoughby, a wedding to be held the following morning. I heard much criticism of this marriage. After all, Brandon’s wife Mary had only been laid in her tomb a short time before, and he was marrying young Catherine (who was barely fourteen) because she was a wealthy heiress.