The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  I am about to argue but suddenly I see her as the queen she may become. She will be formidable. This girl was raised to be Queen of England from the age of three. It seems she will be Queen of England however the luck runs against her.

  “I don’t know what’s the right thing to do,” I say uncertainly. “If I were you . . .”

  She shakes her head, smiling. “Lady Margaret, if you were me, you would go home to Spain and hope to live your life in quiet safety, because you have learned to keep your distance from the throne; you were raised in fear of the king, any king. But I was raised to be Princess of Wales and then Queen of England. I have no choice. They called me the Princess of Wales from the cradle! I can’t just change my name now and hide from my destiny. I have to do what I promised to Arthur. You have to help me.”

  “Half the court saw you put to bed together on your wedding night.”

  “I’ll say that he was incapable if I have to.”

  I gasp at her determination. “Katherine! You would never shame him?”

  “It’s no shame to him,” she says fiercely. “It is a shame on anyone who asks me. I know what he was to me and what I was to him. I know how he loved me and what we were to each other. But nobody else need know. Nobody else will ever know.”

  I see her passion for him still. “But your duenna . . .”

  “She’ll say nothing. She doesn’t want to go back to Spain with spoiled goods and a half-spent dowry.”

  She turns to me and smiles her fearless smile, as if it will be easy. “And I’ll have a son with Harry,” she promises. “Just as Arthur and I hoped. And a girl called Mary. Will you look after my children for me, Lady Margaret? Don’t you want to care for the children that Arthur wanted me to have?”

  I would have been wiser to say nothing, though I should have told her that women have to change their names and silence their own wills, though I could have told her that destinies are for men. “Yes,” I say reluctantly. “Yes. I do want to care for the children you promised him. I do want to be Mary’s governess. And I’ll never say anything about you and Arthur. I knew nothing for sure, I was not even there at your wedding night, and if you are truly determined, then I will not betray you. I will have no opinion.”

  She bows her head, and I realize that she is deeply relieved at my decision. “I am doing this for him,” she reminds me. “For love of him. Not for my own ambition, not even for my parents. He asked it of me, and I am going to do it.”

  “I’ll help you,” I promise her. “For him.”

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, AUTUMN 1502

  But there is little I can do for her. I am no longer the wife of the guardian of the Prince of Wales, because there is no longer a court for the Prince of Wales or a Welsh household. The new prince—Harry—is declared to be too precious to be sent away. While my cousin the queen grows big with a child which everyone says must be a boy, their only living heir, Harry, is raised at Eltham Palace near Greenwich with his sisters Margaret and Mary, and though he is a sturdy, strong eleven-year-old, old enough to take up his duties as a royal heir, old enough to have his own council and learn from them to make careful judgments, My Lady the King’s Mother demands that he be kept at home like his sisters, the adored and indulged lord of the nursery kingdom.

  He has the best of tutors, the finest musicians, and the best horsemen to teach him all the arts and skills of a young prince. My cousin his mother ensures that he is a scholar and tries to teach him that a king cannot have everything his own way; but My Lady insists that he must never be exposed to any danger.

  He must never go near a sick person, his rooms must be constantly cleaned, he must be attended always by a physician. He must ride wonderful horses, but they must be broken by his horsemaster and guaranteed safe for their most precious rider. He can ride at the quintain, but he may never face an opponent in the joust. He can row on the river but never if it looks like rain. He can play tennis, though nobody ever beats him, and sing songs and make music, but he must never be overexcited or flushed too hot, or strain himself. He is not taught to rule, he is not even taught to rule himself. The boy, already indulged and spoiled, is now the only Tudor stepping-stone to the future. If they were to lose him, they would lose everything they have fought and plotted and worked for. Without a son and heir to follow the Tudor king there is no Tudor dynasty, no House of Tudor. With the death of his brother, Harry is now the only son and heir. No wonder they wrap him in ermine and serve him off gold.

  They cannot see him take a step without being dizzily aware that he is their only boy. The Tudor family is so few: our queen facing the ordeal of childbirth, a king who is plagued with quinsy and cannot draw a breath without pain, his old mother, two girls, and only one boy. They are few and they are fragile.

  And nobody remarks it, but we Plantagenets in the House of York are so many. They call us the demon’s brood and indeed we breed like the devil. We are rich in heirs, headed by my cousin Edmund, gaining followers and power all the time at the court of the Emperor Maximilian, his brother Richard, and scores of kinsmen and cousins. Plantagenet blood is fertile; they named the family for the Planta genista, the broom shrub, which is never out of flower, which grows everywhere, in the most unlikely soil, which can never be uprooted and even when it is burned out will thrive and grow again the very next spring, yellow as gold though it is rooted in the blackest charcoal.

  They say that when you behead one of the Plantagenets, there is another that springs up, fresh in the green. We trace our line back to Fulk of Anjou, husband to a water goddess. We always bear a dozen heirs. But if the Tudors lose Harry, they have nothing to replace him with but the baby my cousin carries low and heavy in her belly that drains her face of color and makes her sick every morning.

  Since Prince Harry is so rare, since he is their singular precious heir, he has to be married, and they succumb to the temptation of Spanish wealth, Spanish power, and the convenience of Katherine, obedient and helpful, waiting for the word in her London palace. They promise Harry in marriage to her, and so she has her way. I laugh out loud when my husband comes back from London and tells me the news, and he looks at me curiously and asks me what is so amusing.

  “Just say it again!” I demand.

  “Prince Harry has been betrothed to the Dowager Princess of Wales,” he repeats. “But I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”

  “Because she had set her heart on it, and I never thought that they would consent,” I explain.

  “Well, I’m surprised that they did. They’ve got to get a dispensation and negotiate a settlement, and then they can’t marry for years. I’d have thought that nothing but the best would have been good enough for Prince Harry. Not his brother’s widow.”

  “Why not, if the marriage was never consummated?” I venture.

  He looks at me. “That’s what the Spanish are saying, it’s all around court. I didn’t contradict it, though I had eyes in my head at Ludlow. I don’t know the truth of it and I didn’t know what to say.” He looks sheepish. “I didn’t know what My Lady the King’s Mother would want to hear. Until she tells me, I’ll say nothing.”

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, FEBRUARY 1503

  Elizabeth my cousin the queen prayed that she was carrying another boy, prayed that the curse she had recited as a young woman of seventeen was nothing but words on the cold wind, prayed that the Tudor line would not die out. But she was brought to bed and she had a girl, a worthless girl, and it cost her her life, and the baby died too.

  “I am sorry,” my husband says gently to me, the letter sealed with black wax trailing black satin ribbons in his hand. “I am sorry. I know how much you loved her.”

  I shake my head. He does not know how much I loved her, and I cannot tell him. When I was a little girl and my world was all but destroyed by the Tudor victory, she was there, pale and afraid like me but determined that we Plantagenets would survive, determined that we would share in the Tudor spoils, determined that we would lea
d the Tudor court, determined that she would be queen and that the House of York would still rule England even if she had to marry the invader.

  When I was sick with fear and utterly at a loss as to how I would keep my brother safe from the new king and his mother, it was Elizabeth who reassured me, who promised me that she and her mother would guard us. It was Elizabeth who barred the way of the yeomen of the guard when they came to arrest my little brother, Teddy, and Elizabeth who swore that they should not take him. It was Elizabeth who spoke to her husband time after time, begging him for Teddy’s release, and it was Elizabeth who held me and cried with me when, finally, the king brought himself to do that one terrible act and kill my brother, Teddy, for the crime of being Edward Plantagenet, for carrying his name, our name, the name that Elizabeth and I shared.

  “Will you come with me to her funeral?” Richard asks.

  I don’t know that I can bear it. I buried her son, and now I have to bury her. One died of the Tudor disease, the other of Tudor ambition. My family is paying a high price to keep the Tudors safe on their throne.

  “They want you there,” he says shortly, as if that simply settles the matter.

  “I’ll come,” I say; because it does.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1503

  My Lady the King’s Mother rules how the funeral of a queen is to be done, as she rules all the great ceremonials of this great court. Elizabeth’s coffin is drawn through the streets of London by eight black horses, followed by two hundred paupers carrying lit candles. Dressed in black, I follow the coffin with her ladies, while the gentlemen of the court ride behind us, robed and hooded in black, through streets that are blazing with torches and filled with mourners, all the way to Westminster Abbey.

  London turns out for the York princess. London has always loved the Yorks, and as I go by, following her coffin, there is a whisper that follows me down the cobbled street, “À Warwick,” like a blessing, like an offer. I keep my eyes and head down, as if I cannot hear my grandfather’s battle cry.

  The king is not here; he has gone upriver to the beautiful palace that he built for her, Richmond; gone into the privy chamber at the heart of the palace, and closed the door, as if he cannot bear to live without her, as if he dare not look to see what friends he has left, now that the princess of the House of York has gone. He always swore that she did not bring him England, he took it on his own account. Now she is gone, he can see what his own account really is: what friends he has, what he holds without her; he can see how safe he feels among her people.

  He does not come out from darkness and solitude till the middle of spring, and then he is still wearing black for her. My Lady, his mother, commands that he end his solitary mourning, nurses him back to health, and Sir Richard and I are at court at her bidding, seated among the knights and their ladies in the great dining hall. To my surprise the king walks down the length of the room, and when I rise to curtsey to him, he leads me away from the ladies’ table to an alcove at the back of the great hall.

  He takes both my hands in his own. “You loved her as I did, I know. I can’t believe that she is gone,” he says simply.

  He looks like a man injured beyond recovery. His face is engraved with new lines of suffering; his gray complexion shows that he is exhausted by grief. The sagging skin under his eyes shows a man who has wept for night after night instead of sleeping, and he stands a little bent, as if to ease the pain in his chest. “I can’t believe it,” he repeats.

  I have no words of comfort because I share his loss, and I am still bewildered at the suddenness of her going. All my life my cousin Elizabeth has been with me, a constant loving presence. I cannot understand that she is here no longer. “God is . . .”

  “Why would God take her? She was the best queen that England could have had! She was the best wife that I could have had.”

  I say nothing. Of course she was the best queen that England could have had; she was from England’s own royal family that ruled long before he stumbled ashore at Milford Haven. She did not come in with a diseased army and take her crown from a thornbush; she was our own, born and bred an English princess. “And my children!” he exclaims, looking over to them.

  Harry was placed at his father’s side for dinner, and he sits now beside the empty throne, his face turned down to his plate, eating nothing. For him it has been the worst blow a child can suffer; I wonder if he will ever recover. His mother loved him with a steady calmness that his grandmother’s passionate favoritism could not overthrow. Elizabeth saw him for what he was—a highly talented and charming little boy—and yet kept before him a picture of what he must be: the master of himself. Just by walking into his nursery she showed him that it is not enough to be the center of attention; every prince has that from birth. Instead, she required that he be true to himself, that he curb his boastful vanity, that he learn to put himself in others’ shoes, that he practice compassion.

  His sisters, Margaret and Mary, terribly lost without her, are seated beside their grandmother, My Lady the King’s Mother, and Katherine the Spanish princess is beside them. She feels my gaze on her and she looks up and gives me a swift, inscrutable smile.

  “At least they had their childhood with her,” I say. “A mother who truly loved them. At least Harry had his childhood safe in his mother’s love.”

  He nods. “At least they had that,” he says. “At least I had my years with her.”

  “It’s a grave loss for the dowager princess too,” I observe carefully. “The queen was very tender towards her.”

  He follows my gaze. Katherine is seated in a place of honor, but the young princesses are not talking to her as sisters should. Thirteen-year-old Margaret has turned her shoulder and is whispering with her little sister, Mary, their heads close together. Katherine looks lonely at the high table, as if she is there on sufferance. As I look closely, I see that she is pale and anxious, occasionally glancing down the table to where Harry stares blindly at his plate, as if she would like to catch his eye.

  “She’s more beautiful every time she comes to court,” he says quietly, his eyes on her, unaware that this grates on me as an insult on pain. “She’s growing into real beauty. She was always a pretty girl but now she is becoming a remarkable young woman.”

  “Indeed,” I say stiffly. “And when is her marriage to Prince Harry to take place?”

  The look that he slides sideways makes me shiver, as if a cold draft had suddenly blown into the room. He looks roguish, like Prince Harry does when he has been caught stealing pastries from the kitchen, excited and apologetic all at once, knowing that he is naughty, hoping that he can charm his way out of trouble, aware that no one can deny him anything.

  “It’s too soon.” I see him decide not to tell me what has made him smile. “It’s too soon for me to say.”

  My Lady the King’s Mother calls me to her private rooms before Sir Richard and I leave for Stourton. Her rooms are crowded with people seeking favors and help. The king has started to fine people heavily for small misdemeanors, and many people go to My Lady for mercy. Since she works with him on the royal account books and revels in the profit of fines, most petitioners come away unsatisfied, many of them poorer than before.

  My Lady knows well enough that her son will hold England only if he can always put an army in the field, and that armies eat treasure. She and her son are at constant work on a war chest, saving funds against the rebellion that they fear will come.

  She beckons me to her side with a quick gesture and her ladies tactfully rise up from their seats and move away, so that we can talk in private.

  “You were at Ludlow Castle with the young couple, the prince and princess?” My Lady remarks without preamble.

  “Yes.”

  “You dined with them every day?”

  “Almost every day. I was not there when they arrived, but after that, I lived there with them.”

  “You saw them together, as husband and wife.”

  I have a chilly
realization that I do not know where this line of questioning is going, and that My Lady always talks for a purpose.

  “Of course.”

  “And you never saw anything that would suggest to you that they were not married in thought and word and deed.”

  I hesitate. “I dined with them every night in the great hall. I saw them in public. They were a devoted young couple in public,” I say.

  She pauses, her gaze as hard as a fist at my face. “They were wedded and bedded,” she states flatly. “There can be no doubt.”

  I think of Arthur wresting the promise from the princess, his deathbed promise, that she would marry again and be Queen of England. I think that this was his plan and his wish. I remember that I would have done anything for Arthur; I think I would still do anything for him.

  “Of course I cannot know what occurred in Her Grace’s bedchamber,” I say. “But she told me, and others, that the marriage had not been consummated.”

  “Oh, you say that, do you?” My Lady remarks as if it is a matter of cold interest.

  I take a breath. “I do.”

  “Why?” she asks. “Why say such a thing?”

  I try to shrug, although my shoulders are too stiff to move. “It’s just what I observed. Just what I heard.” I try to speak casually, but I am breathless.

  She rounds on me so fiercely that I flinch from her furious face. “What you observed! What you heard! It is what you have made up, between the three of you—her duenna, the Spanish Infanta, and you—you three wicked women, for the downfall of my house and the destruction of my son! I know it! I know you! I wish she had never come to this country! She has brought us nothing but grief!”

  A silence falls; everyone is staring at me in horrified speculation at what I have done to upset My Lady. I drop to my knees, my heart hammering in my ears. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I have done nothing, I would never do anything against you or your son. I don’t understand.”