Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII

by Geraldine Evans

  ‘Madam, please. You must eat something for your health’s sake.’ The voice came from far away and Mary ignored it. But the rough hands that began to shake her could not be so easily ignored. They finally managed to drag her back to an unwelcome recognition that she still lived.

  Her maid, Susan, stood by her, her eyes red from weeping. Mary’s heart softened at the sight. Susan had loved Harry well and mourned him truly. But Mary didn’t want to be cajoled back to life by Susan or anyone else. ‘Eat, you say?’ Mary now demanded. ‘The thought of food sickens me. My health or lack of it is of no importance now that I have lost my only son.’

  ‘You still have two daughters,’ Susan reminded her. ‘What of them? They need you, madam.’

  ‘Cannot you attend to their wants, Susan?’ Mary wanted only to be left alone with her grief. ‘I have lost my son. Can you not understand what that means to me?’

  ‘Of course I do. We all loved young Harry. But now he has no need of us or our love. Your daughters though, do. But most of all they need their mother. Think you, madam, they have been unaffected by their brother’s death?’

  ‘What would you have me do, Susan?’ Mary challenged. ‘Order dark gowns for them so they may mourn their brother respectably clad?’ Mary could hear the bitterness in her voice, but why should she not feel bitter? Life, seemingly every aspect of it, had turned irredeemably sour. Now her maid chose to nag her. Why couldn’t the woman leave her be?

  ‘Dark gowns? Nay, my lady. So many have died in the city I’d be hard-pressed to find someone to make them even if I dared attempt the search.’ Her voice became wheedling. ‘Come now, eat some broth to please me.’

  Knowing she would get no peace otherwise, Mary submitted to her maid’s pleading with ill-grace. And although she only managed to eat half a bowl of broth Susan was satisfied. She took the half-emptied dish from Mary’s grasp and glided silently from the chamber.

  Apart from the whistle of wind through the eaves, the house was as silent as the tomb. All it lacked was the corpse, for in spite of Mary’s protests, Harry’s little body had been removed in its hastily-constructed coffin and buried. Susan it was, who had insisted that the coffin and its precious, golden treasure must be taken away. She had tried to insist also that they pack up and leave for the country, but Mary had refused. Now though, no doubt encouraged by her success with the broth, she returned, looking for another victory.

  ‘We must get away from here, my lady,’ she told Mary in a voice that was becoming more insistent. ‘London is still full of the sickness.’

  ‘That again? Why can you not leave me be?’ A little of Mary’s old spirit returned. ‘This was my son’s room. I can still smell his special scent, still feel his presence, yet you would have me leave him here all alone. I cannot.’

  ‘You can and you must, my lady. What you feel in this room is your own longing, nothing more. Harry is with the Lord. Part of him remains in your heart and always will, no matter where you be.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mary had replied. ‘He’s in my heart. But he’s here also. Can you not feel him, Susan?’

  Susan had sighed, but had told her patiently enough, ‘You shouldn’t turn this room into a shrine, my lady. Remember the Lord’s words. ‘You shall not set up false images?’ She knelt imploringly by Mary’s side. ‘People are dying by the score, by the hundred. One moment they had life and the next they had nothing. You were ill for a time. Do you want the same sickness to claim your daughters also?’

  Mary turned away from her maid’s entreaties. ‘You are cruel, Susan. Can you not let me mourn my son?’

  ‘I could let you remain here and mourn your son. If your desire is to mourn your daughters also. You think me cruel, but the sweating sickness is crueller still. It doesn’t recognise a house of mourning and will intrude amongst your grief and cause you more if it is given the chance. You can mourn in the country, my lady, where the air is sweet. Everything’s packed. We’re just waiting for you.’

  While Susan’s words had little effect, it took the sight of a man collapsing on the far side of the river to penetrate her resistance. Once, he tried, feebly to rise, but then he fell back and was still. As still as Harry. For the first time this thought did not make her retreat into the numbness she had felt for so long. Instead, it energised her. Susan was right. She had lost her son, but she still had two daughters. What had she been thinking of to let them linger in this unhealthy city with the sickness raging? They must get away. It was too dangerous to remain any longer. She heard Charles’s voice shouting some order to a servant and hurried down to speak to him. He readily agreed that they must leave - had he not been entreating her to agree to this course for some days? Thanks to Susan, the house was pretty well packed up already. All Mary had to do was allow her weakened body to be helped into the waiting litter. The horses were whipped up and they drove through London’s near-deserted streets, away from the raging pestilence, to Westhorpe.

  It was a place that held many memories of Harry. Too many perhaps, for as she wandered through the rooms, these memories served only to remind Mary of her loss. Harry’s doings and laughter filled the place. He had been as lively and full of mischief as any boy. Everywhere Mary’s gaze rested she found yet another reminder of her sorrow.

  There was the tree he had climbed on his seventh birthday, nearly breaking his neck when he had fallen. There was his first pony, placidly grazing in the field, as uncaring as the tree that Harry was gone.

  Even when she looked in the glass she must be reminded. Everyone had remarked on Harry’s likeness to herself. Now, it seemed that his blue-grey eyes stared back at her from under the golden hair. For the first time in days Mary acknowledged that hers was not the only heart grieving. Charles, too, felt the pain and now that she had come out of her inward retreat sufficiently to notice him again they began to grow close once more. He became again the attentive husband he had been before Henry’s desire for a divorce and Charles’s determination to help him get it had come between them. And as their mutual grief deepened with the days the importance of the divorce seemed to lessen, its significance in the scheme of things reduced beside the great leveller of death.

  Although Mary’s grief for her son was an ever-present ache, the shock had receded, but it didn’t bring acceptance in its wake. It brought only despair. Even Catherine, fond of her as Mary was, had been relegated to the back of her mind. Her grief was selfish and could spare no compassion just yet for the pain of another.

  The days turned to weeks. The quiet of the country was as a soothing balm, gradually it calmed the worst of her grief. Perhaps God would grant them a second son to try to fill some of the hollow space in her heart.

  The court had at last ventured to return to London. Charles, much as he loved his wife and truly mourned his son, felt he needed to bring some normality back to his life. He wanted to see fresh faces. Happy, smiling faces. At Westhorpe, the servants still crept about as though they might somehow disturb Harry’s ghost. Charles was weary of the unremitting gloom that hung over the house. It oppressed him. Much as he had loved his son, he was now dead. Charles didn’t feel, as Mary seemed to, that he should devote the rest of his life to mourning the boy. He wanted to return to court. Mary did not. It was inevitable that their renewed closeness wasn’t to last. When some unguarded remark revealed how harsh had been his treatment of Catherine, Mary withdrew from him again. He had hoped she would feel able to return to court once the sickness was over, but, unable to endure a court with Anne Boleyn in it, Mary insisted on remaining in the country. Nowadays, she had little taste for court life, certainly not one where Anne Boleyn was treated as its queen. A court where all who wished to remain in Henry’s favour must pay homage to the Lady Anne.

  He knew that Mary, with her remembrance of Catherine’s many kindnesses, couldn’t bring herself to accept the supremacy of her brother’s mistress. They had argued about it. In his anger, Charles had revealed he did not share her scruples on the matter. Ambition had demanded h
e dance attendance on the lady. He had become snappy and irritable, champing at the bit to be back at court.

  Mary watched Charles with growing resentment. His sorrow over the loss of their son was, she realised, but a weak thing beside her own.

  At last, unable to watch his growing restlessness, Mary turned on him. ‘Go then. You are obviously eager to be off. It’s plain you have no desire to be here with me and your daughters.’ Her angry words brought a matching anger.

  ‘Can you wonder at it?’ he demanded. ‘You spend more time fondling Harry’s old pony than you do me. What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Go back to court and Henry’s harlot. You obviously find her and her wicked ways more to your taste than me.’

  ‘At least she’s lively and amusing. All you do is mope about the place nursing your grief. Harry’s dead. You should try to accept it, as I have, instead of wallowing in morbid thoughts. It isn’t good for you to remain brooding in this backwater.’

  ‘This backwater, as you call it, is my home. And yours, though you are so eager to depart from it.’

  ‘You have a home in London,’ he reminded her. ‘You should try sharing it with me. Your son may be dead, but you still have a husband.’

  His harsh words upset her. His voice became softer, ‘You should come with me to court. You’ll forget your sorrow more easily there.’

  ‘Forget it?’ Incredulously, she stared at him. ‘I do not wish to forget it. I will mourn my son till the day I die. How could my sorrow be eased at a court where that woman rules? Would you have me fawn over her as you do?’ Mary turned away. ‘I’ll not do it. Catherine deserves my loyalty. My brother might spurn her, but I shall not. I think too much of the queen to seem to sanction Henry’s union, which my return to court would surely do. I’m ashamed that you do not feel the same.’

  ‘Then damn you and Catherine. I’m the king’s man. First and last. Remember it.’

  Soon after, he had flung out of the house, throwing orders left and right. Mary had watched through the bed-chamber window as he climbed on his horse and rode fast for London. He had not paused to say goodbye. A tear escaped and tracked its solitary path down her cheek. I have lost him, she thought. Lost him to Anne Boleyn and my brother. And all because I pushed so hard for him to marry me that I forced him to live for weeks in terror of Henry’s vengeance. The act that I thought would ensure my happiness turns out to have been the act that denies me that which I most desire. For Charles had sworn never again to incur her brother’s anger. His fawning over Anne Boleyn was the result.

  She turned away from the window as Charles disappeared from sight. She sank down on the bed. Oh cruel life, to have come full circle and encircled me in my own machinations. Because although she was indeed, married to Charles, it was Anne Boleyn, not she, who held him fast. It was a bitter realisation. And one she was coming more often to think she deserved.

  So ended their brief reunion. It struck Mary, as dreary day followed dreary day, that her family were not destined to long enjoy the pleasures of marital harmony. She had heard that her sister, Margaret, had finally obtained her divorce from Archibald Douglas, her second husband, and was free to marry her lover, Henry Stewart. If Henry had his way he wouldn’t be far behind his elder sister’s faithless example.

  It seemed to Mary that she, too, had lost her husband. Charles was the king’s man now, the king’s and Anne Boleyn’s. The knowledge of their divided loyalties lay between them like an unbridgeable river, with Mary on one side and Charles and the unexplored land of his heart, on the other. Had she ever really known him? Or had he always been capable of the cruelties he and Henry now inflicted on Catherine?

  Perhaps it was so and she had been the only one not to see it, for her sister, Margaret, had thought Charles a marital adventurer, ever seeking the richest booty. Whether that was so or not the love she still felt for him made her consider things from a viewpoint other than her sister’s. It was possible that she did him an injustice and it was simply as she had concluded on his departure, that, after their terrors in Paris, his sworn determination to help Henry fulfil his desires had simply melded with his own ambition. Together these had wrought the change.

  Instead of one, she now had two loved ones to mourn; the old Charles was surely as dead to her as her son. If he had ever existed anywhere other than her own head.

  Frances Brandon was cross. She ignored the droning voice of the tutor and instead amused herself in her favourite fantasy of imagining she was the belle at some court masque. How she longed to be there. She had only just started to taste some of its pleasures when the sweat that had killed her brother had broken out and she had been forced to retire to the country to mourn.

  Frances had done more scowling than mourning, though her scarce-concealed defiance had barely earned her a rebuke. Her mother was still so tied up in her hand-wringing that she had little energy for chastising her elder daughter.

  Though buried in the stultifying tedium that was country life, Frances still heard intriguing snippets of the court’s doings. All sorts of exciting things happened there, most of them thought up by Anne Boleyn. The king’s mistress might not be over-popular, but she knew how to arrange entertainments. Her tutor’s voice droned on, disturbing her fantasy and Frances frowned ferociously at him. She should be at court. She should take a leading role in one of Lady Anne’s cleverly contrived masques. She should be admired and feted as was her due. She was the king’s niece and such was her right. Frances’ lips formed a thin line as she thought of the mother who had denied her such pleasures. The mother whose dark brooding invaded the entire house, making laughter a sin and worldly longings unnatural and somehow deviant. Frances longed for the day she could escape this gloomy prison and go to court like her father. The reminder of what she was denied made her crosser still, made her want to cause pain. She looked at her little sister, sitting so attentively beside her and, on an impulse, she pulled spitefully at Eleanor’s hair.

  Eleanor’s cry brought the intervention of their tutor and he began to berate Frances for her behaviour. Francis ignored him and turned from him in scorn; he was a timid man and had already shown himself incapable of reining-in her worst excesses of behaviour. Her sister’s acceptance of her lot enraged Francis still further. ‘How can you be so placid, Eleanor?’ she demanded now as, behind her, unheeded, the tutor twittered on. ‘You sit in this drab schoolroom day after day, attending to these boring lessons as though there were nothing else in life.’

  The tutor’s twitterings were getting on Frances’ nerves. She turned on him in a rage and practically screamed at him. ‘Be silent. Get you gone. I’ll listen to no more of your dreary utterances today.’ Frances dismissed the wretched man from her thoughts entirely as she returned to upbraiding her sister. ‘Do you not wish to be at court with all its excitements before we are too mourning grey to enjoy them?’

  ‘But how can we go to court, Frances?’ Eleanor asked, puzzlement in her pretty face. ‘You know how our mother feels about the Lady Anne. Besides, she still grieves for Harry. Do you not miss him? I do.’

  Much to Frances’ disgust, Eleanor’s face puckered in distress. ‘Do not start that skriking again or I shall box your ears.’ Eleanor’s snivellings dried to a few sniffs. At least she could always get this little sister to do her bidding. The thought mollified somewhat, even if their mother seemed unwilling to bend to her will. With a shrug, Frances cast her brother into the realms of the dead, where he belonged. ‘It is months since he died,’ she sharply reminded the sniffing Eleanor. ‘You and mother should give over your grieving. It is high time our mother remembered she has living daughters and not just a dead son.’

  To her surprise, her timid little sister rebuked her. ‘You’re unkind, Frances. Our mother loves us well. Why must you always have such jealousy in your heart? Did you not love Harry?’ Eleanor frowned and added thoughtfully. ‘You did little enough mourning for him.’

  Frances snorted in that unladylike way
that her mother had failed to correct. ‘Harry? He’d have been well enough, I suppose, if he’d not been the first-born and a boy.’ She stamped her foot. ‘Why should daughters always have to come second? ‘Tis unfair. I should have been the boy. If I was, my mother would not keep me buried in the country, would not prevent me from taking my rightful place at court.’

  ‘But you’re not a boy,’ Eleanor reminded her, before she picked up the book they had been studying and resumed her lesson.

  Francis snatched it from her and flung it to the floor where she commenced to jump on it and damage the delicately painted pictures that adorned the pages. ‘Now, mother’s pet,’ she demanded between each damaging jump, ‘will you give over with your stupid reading and pay attention when I’m speaking to you?’

  ‘Frances! Stop that this instant.’

  Frances hadn’t heard her mother’s entry. She guessed the tutor had run to her, telling tales. She scowled at Eleanor’s back as her sister hurried to their mother and buried her head in her dress. ‘Pick up Eleanor’s book, or I will have you beaten.’

  Resentfully, Francis did as her mother bid, but the way she threw the book heavily down on the desk showed her defiance and her mother’s gaze narrowed.

  ‘Why do you always have to vex me, child? Can you not ever be reasonable and well-behaved like your sister? Eleanor doesn’t cause me a tenth of the trouble that you do, yet she’s so much younger.’

  ‘Why do you not send me to court, then, mother?’ Frances suggested pertly. ‘Then I would be out of your hair and not a continual annoyance to you.’

  ‘You, go to court? You’d have to mend your ill-mannered ways, Frances, before I take you to court. Such behaviour would not be tolerated there, so if you so badly wish to go there you would do well to reflect on the matter.’