The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife

by Erickson, Carolly

  The grooms could not manage to start fires in our braziers. We shivered under heaped blankets, after eating a cold supper, the king drinking a great deal of ale. Finally, hours later, we did our best to sleep.

  But the following morning the rain continued. When our servants brought us food from the kitchen tents, their boots and clothing were muddy. Water trickled along the poorly covered floor of our tent and down the walls. Dry firewood was found, but not until late in the day. And by then the king’s mood was foul indeed.

  There was no going on while the storms and rains continued. We were stuck in sparsely populated countryside not far from London. And knowing full well that the fen country lay ahead of us, as the next stage in our journey, the decision was made to stay where we were, in order to avoid traveling through the flooded marsh.

  We played cards, we read, we made music, but everything we did was half-hearted and unsatisfying. We could not go out of our tents lest we become mired in the sucking, stinking mud—thick, clinging dark brown mud that made an ugly slurping sound as the servants slogged through it.

  Bored and confined, we became bad tempered. The king remained in the large tent we had been sharing, and ordered a second one put up and furnished for me. I could hear him carousing and laughing with his privy chamber gentlemen, the noise becoming more raucous as the day went on. I saw him only at mass—he sometimes heard three masses a day in those tedious initial days of our journey. He did not come to my bed at night. I could not help but wonder whether, in secret, he was arranging to have other women brought to him in the dark hours. Tom assured me that he wasn’t, but I worried anyway. Tom might not know everything that was going on, especially since, on some nights, he was spending a few hours with me.

  I said that I was feeling ill, and as women with child were often ill, I was believed. Only a few of my women were allowed in my tent—Joan, and Catherine Tylney, and Lady Rochford, who quickly proved to be both discreet and skilled in the art of concealing midnight meetings. She told me that she had often done this for my cousin Anne, when she was one of Anne’s ladies. Now she seemed more than willing to do the same for me, to be my go-between with Tom, who was in full agreement that I needed to become pregnant as quickly as possible.

  My new footman Englebert was also allowed to come into my tent, to be the one to supply the braziers with dry firewood (not an easy thing to find in those wet days), to bring in food and drink from the tent kitchens. I have to say he was an excellent servant, quiet—indeed almost noiseless, save for the sucking sound of the mud as he approached the tent—respectful, his eyes downcast, his murmured words few. Anna had been right about him. I was glad she had sent him to me.

  Heavy clouds moved across the windswept skies above us, dark clouds that brought more rain each day, until the ploughed fields were reduced to sucking mudpits and we began to wonder whether we would ever be able to resume our traveling. All my clothes were damp, there was no way to dry them. My food was damp as well, and often cold. Worst of all, my monthly flux arrived and I knew that I had not yet conceived a child. I continued to wear the relic of the holy tear of the Virgin around my waist, praying that it would work a miracle for me, but a second week passed and there was no sign that I was pregnant.

  It was during these weeks of tedium that I received an unwelcome visit from Anna, who had come from her palace at Richmond to visit me. She brought with her the woman we had called Mama Lion, who had been in charge of us when I was in Anna’s household as a maid of honor. There was another woman with her as well, a hard-faced, meanly dressed older woman with a bulbous nose and pitted skin and a truculent expression.

  Englebert brought Anna and the others into my tent, muddy boots and all, and went to find some refreshment for them. Anna and her two companions curtseyed deeply to me, then seated themselves at my invitation.

  “Such a rain!” Anna began. “And so cold, even in July. This is more like Cleves than England!” She smiled, a wan smile, not a bright or eager one. Perhaps, I thought, her journey from Richmond has tired her.

  She looked at my belly. “How many months is it now?”

  “No more than two,” came the gruff voice of the unknown older woman. “If—”

  “Yes, Else, we will come to that. Mère Lowe, the gifts, if you please.”

  From under her cloak Mama Lion brought out a small carved wooden chest with a gilt clasp and laid it on the table. “For you,” she said curtly.

  I thanked her and opened the chest. Inside were small blankets, elaborately embroidered with the Tudor rose, and a very small cloak of purple velvet trimmed in gold.

  “For the prince,” Anna said. “When do you expect him?” She looked at me sharply. “What do your midwives say?”

  I thought quickly. “My husband has not chosen to make that announcement yet,” I finally said. “And I have been ill—”

  Before I knew what was happening the hard-faced woman thrust out her hand and nearly succeeded in touching my belly. I drew away quickly and went to the door flap of the tent, intending to call for the guardsmen.

  “Do not take alarm,” I heard Anna call out. “Else is a midwife. She is here to help you.”

  But I was already through the door flap and out in the rain, sloshing through the mud, headed for the king’s tent. I dashed inside. My husband was sitting in the midst of his councilors, engrossed in conversation.

  “Catherine!” he exclaimed. “What is it! You are flushed! You should be staying quietly in bed.” And he began to give orders to Master Denny to take me back to my tent.

  “If you please, Your Majesty, I cannot go back there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Please, I must speak to you.”

  He frowned, but asked his councilors to leave us alone. They left, glancing at me with sour faces as they passed me.

  “It’s Anna,” I said.

  “Ah.”

  “She’s come here. With a midwife. The midwife tried to touch me. I ran.”

  “She is envious! She wants to destroy our child!” He got to his feet and called out for Master Denny, who came quickly at his summons.

  “Take the queen into the purveyor’s tent and stay there with her. Don’t let anyone else come near her. Send two guardsmen to escort the Lady Anna from the queen’s tent and see that she does not return. And make sure anyone with her is removed as well. And Denny—”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “Tell them to be courteous, but firm.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  I felt safe with Master Denny, who took me to a tent stocked with sacks of grain and barrels of ale, beef carcasses and freshly killed rabbits and large jars of quince marmalade. We stayed there until he received a message from the king that I could return to my tent; Anna, he said, would not bother me again.

  * * *

  The rain did not stop, and the king, irritated and discouraged, was prepared to give the order for everything to be packed up into the carts again and returned to the capital. The progress, with its elaborate climax in York when the two kings were to meet, was to be called off.

  But then Uncle Thomas rode in, wet and covered in the grime of the road and the sodden marsh, and told us that he and his scouts had found a way to traverse the fen country without the risk of accident. He described the route in detail, and was persuasive. He had indeed found a way through. The king did not respond at first, but after a time gave in—with a grimace of dissatisfaction—and the next day our progress northward resumed.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of Lincoln my husband was in better spirits. Nothing pleased him more than a disguising, and he put on a jacket and hose of Lincoln green, a jaunty hat with a green feather, and had his gentlemen put emerald green buckles on his shoes. I was told to dress myself from head to toe in green as well, and thus arrayed we went to greet the citizens.

  Every house in the town, it seemed, was hung with colorful cloths and carpets. Choristers in bright garments sang for us, town officials in all t
heir robes and chains of office made speeches in Latin and English, and we processed along the streets with heralds announcing us and soldiers and gentlefolk surrounding us. Two great warhorses, their magnificent caparisons flashing with gold, were led before us while the sword of state proclaimed the king’s authority.

  Only a few short years earlier, Lincoln had been in rebellion. Now the town appeared to be loyal to the last man, and I heard no voices raised in mockery or defiance as we passed along between crowds of cheering citizens. It was hard to believe that so very recently, hundreds of rebels were hanged, their bodies left to rot along these same streets, the severed heads of those who had defied the royal authority set on spikes and put on display for all the townspeople to see.

  The speeches we heard spoke of concord and harmony between the crown and the king’s subjects, of loyalty and steadfastness. When we reached the towering ancient cathedral, and knelt to kiss the crucifix, I prayed that nothing would occur to disrupt that loyalty—and prayed as well that I would be able to find a way to tell my husband that I was not pregnant any longer.

  For I could no longer maintain the deception. He had believed me to be carrying a child in April. Now it was August and I did not have the rounding belly, the full cheeks, the expanding breasts of a pregnant woman. I had to tell him, once again, that I had lost the child. That I had miscarried. But how was I to do this without arousing my husband’s anger?

  I decided to wait until he was in his best humor, after a successful hunt.

  As we went on northward the royal huntsmen were alert for good hunting sites. Near Hatfield they gathered hundreds of stags and does for the king to shoot, and he spent a day killing many of them. At the same time birds were shot in the nearby marshes, and fishermen swept the ponds for pike and bream. Many of the day’s prizes were cleaned and roasted on the spit at once, and a banquet was prepared. The king and I welcomed hundreds of villagers and townspeople living in the vicinity, and offered them a bounteous meal. It went on for hours, with all of us eating and drinking our fill. Afterwards my husband was more than content. He had had a very good and pleasurable day.

  Then just at dusk his contentment was shattered when a messenger arrived with news from the building site of Nonsuch. He had left orders with all his workmen that they should send him word of the progress on each building project during our journey. All the reports he had received had so far been satisfactory. Now he heard of a disaster.

  The tall tower at Nonsuch, the tower he had spoken of with such feeling as his future refuge, his shelter, had collapsed. Five workmen had been killed and a number of others injured. No repair seemed possible.

  On reading the message the king called at once for his astrologer, a thick-set, rather awkward man, clumsy in his movements, with tumbled, uncombed black hair and a mournful mouth.

  “The stars are unfavorable, Your Majesty,” the astrologer announced. “This is a day of disaster and loss. The collapse of the tower is an omen. I fear there is worse to come.”

  The king was crestfallen.

  “Will my progress end in failure then?”

  “It may—unless countervailing influences arise. I cannot say at present. This I can say: you face possible adversity until the end of the year.”

  “Or possible good fortune—am I right?”

  The astrologer lifted an eyebrow. “Prediction is difficult. But today is a day of disaster and loss.”

  The king waved the man away. “I could have told you that. Now leave me—before I predict disaster for you!”

  I decided that my moment had come to tell the king I was not carrying a child.

  “Your Majesty,” I began, interrupting his grumbling about how the astrologer was a weasel, always squirming out of making a definite prediction for the future, “I fear the tower’s collapse may indeed be an omen. A tragedy has occurred.”

  “What tragedy?”

  “As Your Majesty knows, I was very much alarmed by Anna’s sudden visit recently. When her midwife all but attacked me—”

  “Yes, yes. I trust she has not returned.”

  “No, Your Majesty. But ever since that frightening attack I have had pains in my belly. I did not want to alarm you, so I have kept this affliction to myself. Today my pains became worse, and when I visited the house of easement I bled. I fear—I have lost our child.”

  He looked stricken. My words had clearly touched him to the quick.

  “Is there no remedy?”

  “I fear not.”

  “But Catherine—” He did not say more, yet his wretched expression told me all. I had wounded him beyond imagining.

  “But I wanted to show you off to King James. I wanted him to see that I would soon have another son. That my lineage is secure. It will not fail.”

  “And so it will not, sire. Your first queen, Queen Catherine, lost many children in her womb, and yet she bore you a living child.”

  “A daughter, not a son,” he said softly.

  “My cousin Anne miscarried more than once, did she not, yet she too bore you a living child.”

  “Another daughter,” even more softly.

  “And my mother? Was her child not a son?”

  He shook his head. “I know not.”

  “I believe it was a boy. My mother’s family produced many sons. More sons than daughters, Uncle William says. My heart tells me her child was a boy. Just as my heart tells me that the next time, you and I will have a strong son. I am young and healthy. There is plenty of time. Perhaps on this progress, as our pleasures increase, and we feel the support of Your Majesty’s subjects, I will conceive another child.”

  He looked at me, his face drawn and weary, the face of an old man.

  “Or perhaps Dr. Chambers is right,” he said at length. “Perhaps you are barren.” And he turned his face away.

  * * *

  Eighty archers with drawn bows escorted us on our entry into Pontefract, and all the bells of the town rang in celebration. The sun shone brightly on us, flowers and greenery decorated the narrow streets and above all loomed the grey bulk of Pontefract Castle, forbidding in its strength, its thick walls a reminder that the king was sovereign and no rebels dared oppose him.

  I had my women dress me in a gown of crimson velvet for our procession into the town, and the king was garbed in a purple velvet doublet furred with ermine. I did my best to accept the loud acclaim of the onlookers graciously, nodding and smiling as I had grown accustomed to doing. Once or twice I saw the king looking over at me and watching to see what impression I was making. But his look was critical, he was judging me rather than encouraging me as in the past, and that made me very uneasy.

  I knew that he was heartsore over the loss of our child. I did not doubt that he believed what I told him about losing the child, just as he believed without question that I had been pregnant. It was only his pain that was making him distant, I told myself. He wasn’t so much angry at me as he was angry at his fate. His old fear, the fear of being cursed by God, seemed to return. He lost the buoyancy of spirit that had been so strong in him. He seemed tired and listless. When the mayor of the town presented him with the sword and mace, symbols of submission, he accepted them with murmured thanks and a leaden smile, and did not acknowledge me or even glance at me, though I stood right next to him.

  As soon as the procession and the other formalities were at an end, the king went off to hunt, and I was escorted into the castle, where an apartment had been prepared for me.

  My husband had told me earlier that the castle held sad memories for him, because his bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, had lived there during much of his childhood.

  “A fine, well-meaning boy,” he mused. “Not very tall or good-looking, not a very good athlete, though I did try to train him for the tilt. But a boy who tried to please me, and would have made a satisfactory king, had he lived long enough.”

  I knew of Henry Fitzroy, born to the king’s mistress Bessie Blount. He had died young, but no one seemed to know how he died; t
here was a rumor that my cousin Anne had had him killed, not wanting him to be given preference over the son she hoped to have. He had died not long after her execution, and had been given an obscure burial.

  No wonder the king has gone to hunt, I thought. The less time he spends in the castle the better for his mood.

  That evening Lady Rochford appeared at my side, suddenly and noiselessly.

  “All is arranged,” she whispered. “There is a gate. The gatekeeper has been rewarded. He will be there at midnight. Englebert will bring him to you.”

  “He” was of course Tom. I felt a thrill of excitement, knowing I would be with him soon.

  Lady Rochford had been busy. Ever since the start of our progress she had made sure to discover hidden places where Tom could meet me, in secret. She had recruited Englebert to help her make our secret meetings come about.

  We had met a dozen times and more, sometimes for only an hour, sometimes longer. To reward Lady Rochford, and to ensure her loyalty and her silence, I had given her several of my many estates. Englebert had been generously rewarded as well. It was a beneficial arrangement, all around.

  Just after midnight I heard a quiet knock on my bedchamber door. I opened it and let Tom in. He took me in his arms at once and held me close to him. It had been so long since our last meeting. I clung to him, unwilling to let go. I clung to him like a lost child who has found her strong, loving father at last. He was my rock, my shelter. My safe place. The king had had his high tower, until it collapsed—I had Tom. I had not realized, until that moment, just how much I needed Tom and relied on him. I had not realized how frightened I had become.

  The castle was a warren of small chambers connected by narrow winding corridors. I led Tom to a room prepared for us by Lady Rochford. A log fire burned brightly in the stone hearth, twigs snapping and sparks flying upward into the darkness of the ancient chimney. Candles glowed and flickered, shadows were cast on the walls as we reclined on a pile of soft cushions and blankets, resting on the straw of a mattress.

  I knew well enough that our time together had to be limited, yet I sought to forget time entirely as we lay together, disturbed by nothing but the occasional sound of a log collapsing in the hearth, sending out showers of dancing lights. Our passion ebbed and flowed in patterns that had become wonderfully familiar between us. We knew each other’s bodies so well, we fitted together so perfectly. Tom was everything Henry was not; his breath was sweet, his hands were gentle as they roved over my skin. The look in his eyes was loving. He was slim, limber, his movements quick and strong. And he was mine, without any doubt or misgivings. He was mine, forever and for always.