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

by Erickson, Carolly

  “Greed, sheer greed,” it was whispered. “He was not content to wed the girl to his son. He had to have her money himself. And he a man in his later years, and she a mere stripling!”

  Despite the gossip and the censure, many of Anne’s maids of honor were attending to their finery for the wedding, making ready to garb themselves quickly on the following morning. They hoped for wealthy matches of their own, and a wedding such as this, between the Duke of Suffolk and his ward, was certain to bring together dozens of eligible young women and men with good fortunes and titles, looking for fruitful, compliant young wives.

  I had thought that my presence would cause more of a stir in the busy rooms. I was far from ignored, to be sure; I received many soft words of welcome and even a few guarded, whispered predictions of doom for Anne and her child. But I was far from being the center of attention, much less a disruptive presence. Indeed I found myself in the midst of increasing strain as gossip flew: about the child soon to be born, about the likelihood of war, and above all, about the king’s new favorite, a young charmer said to be not much older than Catherine Willoughby. A young girl-child who was the opposite of Anne in every way: gentle, softspoken, obedient. Blond and simpering, artless and undemanding.

  Before long the gossip gave way to greater excitement. Anne, awaiting her feared birth pains, and maddened by jealousy of this unknown favorite (Henry kept her in the Maidens’ Bower, away from the palace but nearby), shouted her complaints to the empty air, imagining that Henry would be on the other side of the chamber door. Her shouts grew louder, her language more rude. A temporary hush fell. Activity in the room slowed.

  Then all at once there was a terrible shriek from the birth chamber: Anne’s labor had begun.

  19

  Anne’s screams grew louder and more anguished. I confess that I took pleasure in hearing her cries, knowing well how much she must be suffering. The pain of childbed is the worst pain of all—just ask any mother. I endured it many times, only to endure, when it ended, the cruel distress of loss.

  Knife-sharp pain, a sword-thrust in the belly, each assault worse than the one before: that was the good hour, the hour of childbirth. Pain past all bearing, so cruel and unsparing that even death seemed a comfort. I knew it well. I remembered it well. And each time I heard Anne scream I smiled inwardly.

  Time passed and the mild fall afternoon turned to evening. Plates of comfits, ripe apples and sugared cakes were brought in and the hearth fires lit, and still Anne’s moans continued. Tension rose in the small rooms while we waited there. Every cry, every gasp from the birth chamber was met with nods or frowns. The first baby always takes longest to be born, the women were saying, nodding in agreement with one another. “And boys take longer than girls.”

  Evening lengthened into night, and still we heard no newborn cry. Fresh logs were laid on the fire and I closed my eyes, overcome by drowsiness despite all.

  It was near to dawn when I was awakened by loud shouts. Anne was groaning and weeping, now crying out for her mother, now damning the midwives and cursing the day she had first met the king.

  The king! He was nowhere to be seen, though his councilor Thomas Cromwell entered and left the room at intervals, looking to see who had arrived and who had left over the lengthening hours.

  “What of the wedding?” I heard people murmuring as the first light of dawn filtered in through the high windows. “How can they be wed, while the queen endures her pains and the prince is likely to be born at any time?” Still I noticed that, even as the question was asked, those who asked it were dressing in their wedding finery, preparing to witness the marriage of the Duke of Suffolk and his young bride.

  My legs and back were stiff, I was hungry and needed to eat and then to walk until my legs were free of cramping pains. No sound came from beyond the guarded door of Anne’s chamber. All had gone quiet. I wondered why. Was it possible that Anne had fainted, or that—just possibly—she had given birth to a stillborn baby? All at once the door of the birth chamber was flung open and the head midwife emerged, her apron bloody and her arms and face dripping with sweat. She called loudly and insistently for the surgeon.

  I heard Anne gasp and then begin to moan and grunt like an animal shying from the slayer’s knife. Shrieks of torment. High-pitched screams. Then silence once again. The wedding guests were filing out, on their way to the chapel.

  During the uneasy silence that followed, I ate, sparingly, from a plate of food brought to me and drank from a cup. I hardly tasted the food, I was too tense, wondering why those of us in the outer rooms were not hearing any further sounds of labor, yet no announcement of the royal birth had been made.

  All the noisy bustle and even the murmured talk around me had subsided. Everyone was listening, keenly, for the newborn’s cry. What had happened? All those around me were whispering the same questions, giving voice to the same fears. Was Anne still alive? Had the baby choked and strangled in her womb? Or was it a freak, a pitiful misshapen thing, without sense or feeling? What had happened? Was Anne growing weaker? Was there, after all, a curse on the king and on the Tudor line of kings?

  I had the christening robes with me, I was glad no one had asked me for them. If Anne’s child died, or was unfit to reign and likely to die, then I would not have to give up the robes. To give them up would be a symbol of defeat.

  My mind went back to another September day, to that terrible, bloody day almost exactly twenty years earlier when I had urged on my men, my warriors, out into battle against the fearsome savage Scots on Branxton Moor near Flodden Field. They had come pouring out of their camp in their thousands, their sharp iron pikes gleaming in the dull morning light, to face our English bills, our guns and arrows.

  We stood strong against them that day! We were invincible. How I wish I could have led the men myself, in the vanguard, as my mother did when she rode into battle against the Moors. But I could not. I was carrying a child in my womb, and hoped to give Henry a son. I did not dare risk the baby’s life. Still, I did the best I could to stand among the valiant English, mounted on Griselda, waving the men on and encouraging them as rain fell and the ground under Griselda’s hooves turned to mud and gore.

  Though two decades had passed I could still recall how bravely the men fought, what great deeds we did that day. How I saved my husband’s throne, or so the soldiers said. I saved England. And in truth we were stalwart, merciless. We met and overcame and pursued the enemy Scots, and turned them back.

  I knew glory then, and great pride. Yet I also knew great sorrow and loss. For what was left, at the end of that battle, but broken swords and shattered bills, bleeding men and dying horses. Banners torn. Mounds of bodies. The overwhelming stink of death. On the bloodstained field men lay writhing and gasping and dying horses pawed the air and whinnied piteously. The memory made me recall what my mother had once told me.

  “To fight on,” she said, “no matter what the odds, is a valorous thing. But in any retreat, the wounded are left behind. It cannot be otherwise. Their suffering is the price of victory.”

  Remembering her words I shivered, and felt a chill. I drew closer to the hearth and grasped the christening robes and held them against me. I wished I had never come to the palace.

  On Flodden Field, at the end of the long day of battle, it had been the Earl of Surrey who brought me the torn surcoat of the Scots king James, bloody and sweat-stained, and I sent it to Henry in Tournai. The christening robes my daughter Mary had worn were destined to become my symbol of defeat, when they were handed over to be worn by Anne’s child. Unless—

  An hour passed, then another. At last, as the wedding guests began to return to Anne’s apartments, we heard agonizing cries, the worst so far. The chief midwife opened the door of the birth chamber and at that moment we heard a cough, then a high-pitched cry that grew steadily louder. A cry such as I had heard when my son, the New Year’s Boy, was born. My weak, shortlived son.

  The midwife, looking more frightened than exhauste
d, beckoned to the herald who was waiting beside the door.

  He cleared his throat, then announced loudly and evenly that the queen had given birth to a princess.

  * * *

  I clutched the box with Mary’s christening robes tightly to my chest. I could hardly breathe. Anne had failed. My prayers had been answered.

  The courtiers, shocked and silent, seemed hardly able to move. Ashen-faced, the astrologers and soothsayers filed out, murmuring apologies and excuses, humiliated that their predictions had not come to pass. The baby princess continued to wail and cry as the herald proclaimed her name and title.

  “A princess! A princess! It is a princess!”

  The word was carried from the birth chamber out into the corridor beyond, I heard running feet and cries of surprise and vexation.

  “Does it live?”

  “It lives, it breathes!”

  “What of the queen?”

  “She lives.”

  Mortified, Henry strode into the birth chamber just as I was making my way out into the outer hallway. The midwives fled at his approach. As I left, the christening robes secure under my arm, I heard his voice boom out.

  “Cancel the tournaments! Cancel them all, I tell you! Bring Fitzroy forward! No, let it be called Elizabeth, after my mother. It will have to do until there is a prince!”

  As proud as on the day of our victory on Branxton Moor, I made my way to the river stairs, where my bargemen waited to take me back to Durham House.

  20

  “You realize what this means, do you not?” Ambassador Chapuys was gloating, rubbing his hands together and looking very pleased with himself. “The king has an excuse to take you back. God is punishing him for putting you aside, and marrying a heretic. She is unable to give him a prince. It is a clear sign of divine displeasure. Worse punishment will no doubt follow.”

  I had never seen the grim, determined ambassador look so impassioned, so convinced of his purpose. He spoke crisply, decisively. There was no doubt in his mind that everything had changed, especially my future. He had come to see me at Durham House on the day following the birth of Anne’s daughter. In his overjoyed state he forgot his usual deference to me, and was speaking with me on very familiar terms—which, just then, I did not mind. I was as hopeful as he was.

  The Londoners had exploded into noisy protest on hearing the news of Anne’s giving birth. Almost from the moment the Tower cannons began to roar their acknowledgment of Anne’s baby, the clamor in the streets began.

  “The Great Whore has foaled a Little Whore!” came the shouts of the unruly crowds in the streets near the river. “Get rid of the whore Nan Bullen! Take your wife back! Take back Good Queen Catherine!” They laughed and stomped and cried out long into the night, and repeated “Ha ha ha!” in derision. Banners and crests with the initials H and A—for Henry and Anne—had been mounted in many parts of the capital ever since Anne’s coronation. Now they gave rise to laughter and taunting. A reminder that Henry and Anne, together, had produced, not a prince, but a weak princess.

  No one had asked me for the christening robes for Anne’s daughter. The christening itself was accorded little attention, held early one morning and without many members of the court in attendance. The event came and went quickly, all but overlooked except by those forced to attend because of their rank and nearness to the throne. It did not seem to matter that the gown and mantle the baby princess wore at the ceremony were not the ones my daughter Mary had worn seventeen years earlier.

  Henry’s attention shifted to his bastard son Henry Fitzroy, Bessie Blount’s son, and to the boy’s forthcoming marriage to Mary Howard, Anne’s cousin. Young Fitzroy would succeed to the throne if Anne had no son. Anne’s daughter, the tiny, red-faced princess who had been given the name Elizabeth, was thought to be too weak to survive, like my own baby son Henry, who had died after only a few brief weeks of life.

  “She isn’t likely to live long, little slip of a thing that she is,” the ambassador told me. “The nursemaids complain that she won’t suckle. Odds are she’ll be dead in a week.

  “The rude folk say it is the curse of the Mouldwarp,” he went on. “The accursed king of old story who cannot pass on his kingdom to a son. He is condemned to reign as year by year his realm withers, his subjects suffer. Then invaders come, and drive him out. The Mouldwarp must lay down his crown and flee. King Henry, they say, is this accursed being come to life. You, Catherine, must prove them wrong—by becoming his true wife once again. You must counteract the curse and remove it.”

  I knew well what the ambassador was envisioning, and I confess that it gladdened my heart. I could save the throne and the kingdom from ruin. I could resume my place at Henry’s side, Mary would once again be recognized as his heir. Mary’s husband, when she married, would be at her side to reign; their son would continue the Tudor line of kings.

  All this would be sure to come about—if only Anne continued to fail at her task of providing the realm with a prince.

  * * *

  I was not the only one thinking these thoughts, to be sure. I learned from Griffith Richards that Anne was dreading the very outcome that I hoped for, and blaming me for her failure.

  She had found out that I was among those in the rooms just beyond the birth chamber during her long hours of labor. She had become convinced that I was there to savor my triumph and her great disappointment—otherwise why would I have come at all? I must have been certain that her child would not be the prince Henry so greatly desired. Therefore, I must have brought the sad outcome about, by some means or other.

  “She finds it very satisfying to blame you,” the ambassador had told me. “You can well imagine why.”

  I could indeed. Anne resented my very existence, of that I was certain. She resented the loyalty and support the people continued to show for me, a loyalty she herself did not command. No doubt she resented Henry’s visits to me, the influence I continued to have, such as it was.

  But there was more than mere jealousy at work, of that I felt sure. Anne had always been inclined to imagine things, to fear and dread the worst. That fear was lurking beneath any confidence she managed to acquire. I had seen her tremble when she ought to have been at her most secure. I had heard the quaver in her voice when she tried to speak most firmly. It was not hard to guess that when her daughter was born, all her fears leapt up within her more forcefully than ever, and she had to find someone to blame. She chose to blame me.

  Richards told me that Henry found a more convenient victim: Mabel Brigge, the hag from Norfolk. She had said all along that the child would not be a prince. She had cast spells and brought about the catastrophe. He had the woman stretched on the rack, her torment all but unendurable, but she did not confess to bewitching Anne or her child to ensure that the baby would be a girl. Then he called back as many of the astrologers and soothsayers as he could find (though he was too late in this, as they had been among the first to flee the court when the birth of a princess was announced) and had them punished.

  I was told that when one of the unfortunate prognosticators tried to insist that although the princess had the form of a girl, she had a man’s heart and strength, Henry became so infuriated that he had the man castrated.

  “There!” he shouted. “Now you see what it is like to have the form of a woman! Now tell me of your heart and strength!”

  Strange and ominous happenings continued to surprise and alarm us all in those uncertain days. It seemed as if the very earth itself, and all that was in it and around it, was calling us to wakefulness. Warning us to be aware of the unsettled times we were living through and the dangers that threatened.

  One night not long after the princess’s birth I watched the most vivid sunset I had ever seen. Layers of rosy light turned to fiery red, then to scarlet, crimson, and at last to a purplish hue, the color of dried blood. For an hour and more the intense color lingered, and when at last it faded, I could not help falling to my knees in wonder, convinced that I had
seen a marvel. What it meant I could not have said, but I believed that the hand of God was at work, and that I must heed His message.

  And there was something else, something equally disturbing: the people were once again rising in aggrieved groups, outraged by the tyranny of the court. The king was oppressing and betraying his loyal subjects, they said. He was ill-using his rightful wife (by which they meant me, of course), even inviting heresy into the realm. The grievances, as relayed to me by Ambassador Chapuys and Griffith Richards and the few others daring enough to visit me, were diffuse and fitful, but they went well with the odd events and unsettling sights of that fall and winter.

  I continued to pray for understanding of all that was happening, and for further signs that would lead me aright in all that I said and did.

  Then, with the new year, came another jolt. Anne, it was said, was once again carrying the king’s child. She hoped for a boy this time. By April the midwives were nodding in approval of her goodly belly, and saying that the Princess Elizabeth would have a brother by harvest time.

  Once again preparations were made at court for the lying-in of the royal consort (even now I cannot bear to write “for the lying-in of the queen”). New midwives were engaged, lest the ones who had delivered the princess be found inadequate. Most important, a surgeon was brought from Pisa who, Henry was assured, had never yet attended a birth where either the mother or the baby died. Much hope was placed in this surgeon, I was told, especially by Henry. The midwives were said to resent the Pisan but their complaints were ignored.

  The birth chamber was made ready, the golden cradle put in place as it had been the previous fall. But this time I was not asked to provide Mary’s christening robe or mantle for the new baby, and when Griffith Richards came to Durham House he told me that Anne was insistent that I be kept as far away from the birth chamber as possible. There must be no excuse for me to bewitch the child or impair it in any way.