The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  I felt grateful to Uncle William and it was with that strong feeling of gratitude that, half an hour later, I reentered the room where we had left the others, Will’s hand still in mine.

  At once I was aware that something had changed.

  My mother looked troubled, and Uncle William, when I looked in his direction, avoided my eyes.

  “What is it?” I cried, dropping Ned’s hand.

  My mother rose and came over to me. “Cat,” she said evenly, “your uncle and Lord Thomas”—she meant Middle Burgh—“have come to an agreement. You are to be the wife of John, Lord Burgh, the head of the family, who admires you and wishes to share his life with you.”

  It took me a moment to realize that she meant the old man, who was smiling broadly and wetly and reaching out toward me from where he sat.

  Startled, I looked at Ned, who was dumbfounded.

  “But I thought—”

  Mother was swift to hush my words.

  “No!” I cried out, appealing to Uncle William. “It can’t be!”

  “Excuse us,” mother said to the others and hustled me, protesting, to a curtained alcove where she spoke to me very seriously.

  “Cat, listen to me. You must accept what has been arranged for you without argument. This is an excellent match. Lord Burgh is a gentleman in his final years. He wants nothing more than a young wife of gentle blood to warm his bed. You will be well treated—and of course, the marriage will not be a long one. You will soon be free—and well-to-do. Now, we are going back to join the others, and I expect you to be sensible. And obedient.”

  Frowning in dismay, I followed mother back into the room. I looked at Ned. His face was dark.

  “Catherine,” Uncle William said, “if your father were here today he would be very pleased. You are to be Lady Burgh, the lady of Gainesborough Hall.”

  Boldly I walked to Ned’s side and grasped his hand.

  “The young lord has asked for my hand in marriage, and I have accepted him.”

  The others drew in their breath sharply.

  Uncle William walked up to us, took hold of our joined hands and firmly separated them.

  “Since you are not yet of age, Catherine, and your wardship belongs to your mother, the decision is hers. She has already made it.”

  Ned knelt before my mother, as respectful children always do before their parents when asking a special favor or a blessing.

  “Milady,” he said, “I would be greatly honored if you will allow me to wed your lovely and courageous daughter. Our fate is in your hands.”

  I knelt beside Ned. “Please, mother. Listen to Ned. I know young girls are often given in marriage to older men. But not men that are practically dropping dead!”

  “Who’s dropping dead?” Old Burgh shouted. “Anyone I know?”

  There were tears in mother’s eyes. Ignoring Lord Burgh’s agitated query, she rose.

  “Catherine, my decision is made. I must defer to your uncle’s judgment. You will be the wife of Lord Burgh. The wedding will be held at Shrovetide.” Her eyes grew soft as they rested on the man kneeling beside me.

  “Young Ned, I thank you for your loyalty. I am very glad our two families are to be joined in marriage.”

  “Yes,” Uncle William said, ignoring our act of rebellion. “We will all profit from this union.” He went to the elderly Lord Burgh and congratulated him.

  I was aware of murmurous sounds in the room, and of a relaxation of the tension that had been so oppressive a moment earlier. My heart was pounding and my cheeks felt hot.

  Our guests were leaving. I got to my feet and managed to say a curt and civil goodbye to Lord Thomas and to the aged Lord Burgh, who grasped my hand eagerly and kissed it.

  Ned looked at me sorrowfully, thoughtfully.

  “Thank you for showing me the garden, Cat,” he said. “It should be lovely tomorrow, even if it rains.”

  It seemed an odd thing to say—until I realized that he was giving me a message, telling me to meet him in the garden the next day.

  “Yes, it should be.” Ned’s message gave me a flicker of hope. We would meet. We would try to find a way to change the betrothal arrangements. Ned wanted it as much as I did.

  After the three men had gone I heard Uncle William talking to my mother.

  “She must be made to obey, Maud.”

  “I understand that. She is a good girl. She will see reason.”

  “She had better. I won’t have a rebellious foolish girl upset all my plans. If she does not obey, by all that’s holy I’ll smash her head against the wall until it’s as soft as a boiled apple.”

  3

  I THOUGHT OF RUNNING AWAY.

  I thought of joining a convent, only I knew that no convent would admit me as an oblate unless my mother took me there in person and presented me to the sisters—along with a large dowry.

  And then I thought of going to the king.

  King Henry, who knew what it meant to be married to a woman he no longer loved, and kept from marrying his beloved. Surely King Henry would help me.

  I found him in the tiltyard the following morning, riding up and down in the lists against an opponent. I recognized the king by his size—he was always taller and more muscular than his jousting partners—and by the fact that he won every encounter, shattering the other man’s wooden lance and laughing with pleasure afterward each time.

  I stood off to one side, under the eave of the stables, waiting for the exercise to end. Grooms came and went, attending to the horses, carrying buckets of water and bags of oats and lengths of harness leather. No one questioned my presence, though some of the grooms looked at me admiringly before continuing on with their work.

  After an hour or more the sound of heavy hoof beats ceased and in a few moments two burly men approached the stables, their armor having been removed and their splendid physiques covered only by thin linen shirts and trousers of rough brown cloth. Their boot heels crunched the small stones underfoot as they walked.

  “I’ve sent Knyvet to Lille for tilting horses,” the king was saying to his companion, who I now recognized as his black-haired, roguishly handsome brother-in-law Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. “There are none to be had in this country.”

  “Ireland, that’s the place for horses,” Brandon was replying as the two men caught sight of me, and the king stopped short.

  “You’re the Parr girl,” the king said, looking at me keenly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you, your majesty,” I said with a deep curtsey.

  “For me?”

  “Please help me. You’re the only one who can.” I spoke up, but my voice cracked and I felt my upper lip beginning to quiver.

  “Brandon, this appears to be a private matter,” King Henry told his friend with a wink. The duke grinned and went off, calling loudly for a cup of ale which sent the stable boys running to do his bidding.

  The king showed me into a tack room filled with the rich aroma of saddle leather. Logs were stacked in the hearth but there was no fire, as it was summertime and the air outside was warm. The one small window let in only a little light, and the king shut the door firmly.

  “No one will bother us here,” he said, looking over at me with a glimmer of something—was it humor?—in his eyes.

  “Now, my girl, what is it you ask of me?”

  He took a step toward me and, preoccupied though I was with my plight, I could not help but feel the magnetism of his presence. He towered over me, broad-shouldered and blond and hearty, exuding health and vigor. His smooth skin, showing through the sweat-stained linen of his shirt, gave off a ruddy glow.

  “Don’t be afraid. Many of my subjects make free to ask a boon of their king.”

  “Sire, I am to be married.”

  “Yes?”

  “But to the wrong man!” The words burst from my mouth. I could not stop them. “My uncle William has betrothed me to Lord Burgh, who is terribly old and can’t even stand up by himself. I want to
marry his grandson, Ned, who is young and strong and would make a fine husband.”

  “And who has no title and no income.”

  “But he will have, in time.”

  “Ah, the old dilemma! The old man can afford a wife but lacks the strength to enjoy her, while the young man can take pleasure with a wife but lacks the means to afford her. In a just world, the old man would graciously step aside, cede his title and all his goods to his grandson, and wander off into the wilderness to die. However, the world is unjust, and old men do cling to their titles and their possessions.”

  He began pacing up and down, lost in thought. I heard him mutter to himself, something about wardship, then a moment later, he said, “The Calais Spears, the Calais Spears, I wonder—”

  He stopped pacing and came over to stand in front of me.

  “Your uncle William, he was a soldier in my father’s time, was he not?”

  “He boasts of his service.”

  “Good. I shall offer him the post of Lieutenant of the Calais Spears, in return for his agreeing to reconsider your betrothal. He will agree, because the post brings fifty pounds a year. I will suggest a match between you and young Ned. He will say Ned is without lands or income. So I will have to find an estate and a post for Ned as well. Now, seeing all the trouble you put me to, what am I to have in return?”

  His tone changed as he spoke these last words. I felt a subtle threat, and at the same time an unfamiliar excitement as his eyes traveled downward from my modest white peaked cap to my lips to my bare throat and the low neckline of my new green damask gown.

  “You will have my deepest gratitude, sire,” I said, my voice husky. I did feel gratitude, and great relief. I believed that the king would do as he said, and that all would be well. Then came the shock of his next words.

  “You are a virgin,” he murmured. “Virgins excite me.”

  I stepped back in alarm, remembering the firmly locked door, the solitude in which we found ourselves. I had told no one where I was going when I left home earlier that morning. Not even mother knew where I was.

  The king took hold of me and, slowly and deliberately, traced the line of my cheek with one pink finger, all the while looking into my eyes. His eyes, I noticed, were a clear light blue flecked with gold.

  “So you are to be a bride. No doubt you are familiar with the droit de seigneur.”

  It was an old term from feudal days. When a man married, his feudal overlord had the right to deflower his bride.

  “As king, I am Ned’s feudal lord. If I desire it, his bride shall be mine first, then his.”

  I suddenly felt cold.

  “I have been to many weddings, sire. I have never seen that old outworn custom observed.”

  “Perhaps I shall revive it—in your case.”

  I was trembling now. He was so much stronger than I was, and his will ruled all. He was no ordinary man. He was the king.

  I looked into his face and perceived, to my unspeakable relief, that he was toying with me, enjoying my fear. He was savoring his power over me, though the underlying threat of erotic possession was real enough. I was in his power. I was trapped. That, it seemed, was enough for him.

  After a long moment, during which I mentally said every prayer I knew, he opened the door and sent me out into the bright sunlight. I blinked, and stumbled out into the stable yard, filled with activity and the warm, rich scent of horses and hay. I was free.

  “Don’t forget, girl,” he called out as I left, “that you are in my debt.”

  4

  HOW CAN I WRITE OF THE HAPPIEST YEAR OF MY LIFE?

  Of my married life with Ned, in the great mansion called Gainesborough Hall that his grandfather deeded to him at the request of the king?

  Of the immense chestnut tree in the park where we used to go to picnic when the weather was warm, and the deer came down to take apples out of our hands?

  If I say that no woman was ever happier, the words will sound empty—except that in my case, they were true.

  I was just seventeen when Ned and I married, and he was only two years older. King Henry appointed him Deputy Warden of the Marches and gave him several lucrative wardships so we had enough to live on, plus the crops and animals on the estate which provided all our food and which our estate manager sold at a profit.

  Our first Christmas together we gave a feast for all the tenants on the estate. Long trestle tables were laid out in the great hall which was green with ivy and holly branches. Our cooks roasted six oxen and untold numbers of pigs and chickens, and there was plum pudding and cider and sweet Christmas cakes. Our tenants came in their best clothes, stamping their feet and blowing on their mittened fingers as the night was very cold. They brought live rabbits and ducks and baskets of eggs and fresh cheese wrapped in cloth. Ned explained to me that the exchanging of gifts was a custom in rural Lincolnshire and I distributed caps and petticoats to the women while Ned gave out hoes and bags of seed to the men. For the children there were sugared almonds and comfits and wooden toys that clacked in the strong December wind.

  “Joys of the season to you, young master sir,” the tenants said as they came up to greet us, the men removing their hats respectfully and the women bobbing curtseys, “and to your lady.”

  I made an effort to learn their names but there were far too many of them and in the end the most I managed to do was to join in their country dancing while the fiddlers played and the snow whirled against the long windows and drifted in underneath the doors.

  Ned’s father and grandfather came too, as guests of honor, and sat with us at a special table. Lord Burgh was so frail he had to be carried in a chair, but he waved his soup spoon in the air with abandon in time to the fiddle music and appeared to be enjoying himself to the full. Ned’s father Thomas, unconcerned with Christmas, spent his time querying the farmers about the size of their fall harvests and the yields on neighboring estates, while eyeing the plump young peasant girls and now and then reaching a searching hand under a full petticoat.

  To judge from his behavior toward us, Thomas appeared to bear no grudge against Ned or me, even though we now occupied the mansion that would have been his on his father’s death had the king not intervened to change things within the family. Thomas was buying up the neighboring properties and already owned a dozen large farms that bordered the Gainesborough estate.

  In fact from the time of my marriage my father-in-law Thomas looked at me with newfound respect. He knew that I had a special influence with the king, though how I acquired it he could not fathom. I was not a royal mistress, as Mary Boleyn and Bessie Blount and others before them had been. I was a loyal, faithful wife to Ned. Yet the king’s favor appeared to be mine to command.

  It did not escape Thomas’s notice that after our splendid Christmas celebrations at Gainesborough, we went to the royal court for New Year’s. There Ned and I were granted a very special royal privilege: we were invited to take part in a masque, performed before the entire court. It was called “The Fountain of Youth” and the king himself took part. I played the part of Innocence and rode on a horse trapped all in gold. Ned was a gargoyle holding up the fountain as it spewed water high in the air. The king, wearing a disguise, was the Fountain Master who dispensed the youth-giving waters to the onlookers.

  My brother Will and his wife Anne were at the New Year’s celebrations, Will enlivening the feasting and making the diners laugh. I noticed, however, that Anne, who at one time had laughed almost harder than anyone at Will’s joking, now seemed indifferent to him. She turned away from him at the banqueting table and gave her attention to others—especially the king’s lecherous friend Charles Brandon.

  I had seen little of Anne since my own wedding, having spent all my time with Ned at Gainesborough while Anne and Will were with the king in the capital or nearby. Anne looked different to me, harder in her manner and more wanton in her dress. She had ordered her dressmaker to cut her gowns in the style then current in France, with necklines that were darin
gly low and skirts that rose coquettishly to reveal layers of frothy underskirts. She whitened her skin and rouged her lips and cheeks, and when she danced, it was not with grace and elegance like Anne Boleyn but with wanton abandon.

  One day during the New Year’s festivities when I was on my way to visit my mother in the queen’s apartments I passed along a seldom-used corridor. A door was slightly ajar. Behind it I could hear sounds, indistinct sounds, suppressed laughter and muffled gasps.

  Curious, I tentatively moved closer to the door and peered in, ignoring the sound of my mother’s remembered voice in my ear that repeated, never spy on others! Spying went on in the palace constantly, I reminded myself. Servants eavesdropped on their masters, and on each other. Husbands spied on wives, brothers on brothers, even children on parents. It was a way of life.

  What I saw through the slight crack in the door made me turn away in dismay.

  My sister-in-law, her bodice lowered to her waist and her skirt raised to her thighs, stood pressed against the wall by a burly, bearded Charles Brandon!

  I ran down the corridor, eager to reach the queen’s rooms where a sense of calm and order was always to be found. Mother was there, in attendance on the queen, and when she saw me it was plain to her that I was upset. I took comfort from her but did not tell her the reason for my distress. I was concerned, above all, for Will and wanted to protect him from scandal. Did he know about Anne’s infidelity? Had he guessed? And was Charles Brandon Anne’s only adulterous lover, or were there others?

  Adultery was the great unspoken preoccupation at court that year and the king was the chief adulterer and was leading us all astray. King Henry was treating Anne Boleyn as his wife, and forcing us all to pay honor to her. Yet in the eyes of the church he was still legally married to Queen Catherine, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not manage to get his marriage to the queen annulled. It was embarrassing—and many of us felt very sorry for the poor queen, who was a good woman and blameless. Some of the Londoners hated Anne Boleyn so much that one afternoon they gathered at the riverbank and pursued her and tried to kill her.