The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  I know that this is a lie. Lady Margaret wants to send her home.

  “The marriage between Prince Arthur and the princess was consummated, was it not?” The grip on my arm tightens as if she would squeeze a confession from the marrow of my bones. We have reached the end of the room, but instead of turning to stroll back again through the crowd of petitioners, she nods to her liveried servants on the double doors to throw them open, and we pass through into her private rooms and the doors close behind us. We are alone; nobody can hear my answer but her.

  “I cannot say,” I say steadily, though I find I am frightened of her, here in this empty room with guards on the doors. “Your ladyship, I told you, my husband took the prince to her bedchamber; but she told me that he was not able.”

  “She said that. I know what she said.” There is a grating impatience in her voice, but she manages a smile. “But, my dear Margaret, what do you believe?”

  More than anything else I believe that this is going to cost me my post as lady-in-waiting and my son his education. I rack my brains to think of something I can say to satisfy her that will not betray the princess. She is waiting, hard-faced. She will be satisfied with nothing but the words she wants to hear. She is the most powerful woman in England and she will insist that I agree with her. Miserably, I whisper: “I believe Her Grace the Dowager Princess.”

  “She thinks that if she is a virgin untouched, we will marry her to Prince Harry,” My Lady says flatly. “Her parents asked for a dispensation from the Pope and told him the marriage was not consummated. He gave them a dispensation that leaves it deliberately unclear. It is typical of Isabella of Castile to get a document that can be read any way she wants. Even after death she tricks us. Apparently, her daughter is not to be challenged. She must not even be questioned. She thinks that she can walk into our family, walk into our house, walk into these very rooms—my rooms—and make them her own. She thinks to take the prince and everything away from me.”

  “I am sure Prince Harry will be well suited—”

  “Prince Harry will not choose his bride,” she declares. “I shall choose her. And I will not have that young woman as my daughter-in-law. Not after this lie. Not after her attempt to seduce the king in the very first days of his grief. She thinks that because she is a princess born and bred she can take everything that I have won, everything that God has given to me: my son, my grandson, my position, my whole life’s work. I spent the best years of my life bringing my son to England, keeping him safe. I married to give him allies, I befriended people that I despised for his sake. I stooped to . . .” She breaks off as if she does not want to remember what she stooped to do. “But she thinks she can walk in here with a lie in her mouth because she is a princess of royal blood. She thinks she is entitled. But I say that she is not.”

  I realize that when Katherine marries Prince Harry, she will precede My Lady in every procession, every time they go to Mass or to dinner. She will have these very rooms, she will command the best gowns from the royal wardrobes, she will outrank the king’s mother, and if the court follows the tastes of the king—and courts always do—then they will empty out from My Lady’s rooms and flock to the pretty young princess. Princess Katherine will not step back and yield to My Lady as my cousin the queen yielded to her. Katherine has grit. If she ever becomes Princess of Wales, then she will make My Lady give her precedence, everywhere, in everything. She will wrest her dues from this possessive old woman and repay her enmity.

  “I have told you everything I know,” I say quietly. “I am yours to command, My Lady.”

  She turns her back on me, as if she does not care to see my white face and my pleading eyes. “You have a choice,” she says shortly. “You can be my lady-in-waiting and your son can be a companion to Prince Harry. You will be generously paid and there will be gifts and grants of land. Or you can support the dowager princess in her monstrous lie and her disgusting ambition. It is your choice. But if you collude in tempting the Prince of Wales, our prince, our only prince, into marriage with that young woman, then you will never come to court for as long as I live.”

  I wait until dusk before I go to visit Princess Katherine. I go on foot with one lady companion and a manservant, and my steward leads the way with a cudgel in his hand. The beggars are everywhere in London nowadays, desperate men driven from their farms by higher rents, made homeless when they could not pay fines, made paupers by the king’s taxes. Some of my own tenants may be sleeping in the doorways of the London churches and begging for food.

  I walk with my hood pulled over the betraying bronze of my hair, and I look all around me in case we are being followed. There are more spies in England than there have ever been before, as everyone is paid to report on their neighbor, and I would rather that My Lady did not know that I am visiting the home of the princess that she calls “that young woman.”

  There is no light burning at her doorway, and it takes a long time for anyone to respond to the quiet tap that my steward makes on the double wooden doors. There is no guard to open them but only a page boy who leads us across the cold great hall and knocks on the door of what used to be the grand presence chamber.

  One of Katherine’s remaining Spanish ladies peeps around the door and, seeing me, straightens up, brushes down her gown, sweeps a curtsey, and leads me through the echoing presence chamber and into the privy chamber where a small group of ladies huddle around a mean fire.

  Katherine recognizes me as soon as I put back my hood, jumps up with a cry, and runs towards me. I am about to curtsey but she flings herself into my arms and hugs me, kisses me on one cheek and then the other, leans back to study my face, and then hugs me again.

  “I have been thinking and thinking of you. I was so sorry when I heard of your loss. You will have had my letters? I was so sorry for you, and for the children. And for the new baby! A boy, God bless him! Is he thriving? And you? Could you get the price of horseshoes down?”

  She draws me towards the light of the single sconce of wax candles, so that she can look into my face.

  “Santa Maria! But you are so thin, and my dear, you look so weary.”

  She turns and shoos away her ladies from the fireside seats. “Go. All of you. Go to your bedrooms. Go to bed. Lady Margaret and I will talk alone.”

  “To their bedrooms?” I query.

  “There’s not enough firewood for a fire anywhere but here and the kitchen,” she says simply. “And they’re all too grand to sit in the kitchen. So if they don’t sit here, they have to go to bed to keep warm.”

  I look at her in disbelief. “They are keeping you so short of money that you cannot have a fire in the bedrooms?”

  “As you see,” she says grimly.

  “I have come from Westminster,” I say, taking a stool beside her chair. “I had a terrible conversation with My Lady.”

  She nods, as if this does not surprise her.

  “She questioned me as to your marriage with . . .” Even now, three years on, I cannot easily say his name. “With our prince,” I amend.

  “She would do. She is very much against me.”

  “Why, do you think?” I ask curiously.

  She slides her mischievous girl’s smile towards me. “Oh, was she such a loving mother-in-law to your cousin the queen?” she asks.

  “She was not. We were both terrified of her,” I admit.

  “She’s not a woman who enjoys the company of women,” she remarks. “With her son a widower and her grandson unmarried, she’s mistress of the court. She doesn’t want a young woman coming in and being merry and loving and happy, making it a true court of learning and elegance and pleasure. She’s not even very kind to her granddaughter Princess Mary because she’s so very pretty. She’s always telling her that looks mean nothing and that she should strive for humility! She doesn’t like pretty girls, she doesn’t like rivals. If she lets Prince Harry marry at all, it will be to a young woman that she can command. She’ll marry him off to a child, someone who can’t e
ven speak English. She doesn’t want someone like me who knows how things should be done, and will see they are done and the kingdom put to rights. She doesn’t want anyone at court who will try to persuade the king to rule as he should.”

  I nod. It is exactly what I have been thinking.

  “She tries to keep you from the court?”

  “Oh, she succeeds, she is triumphant.” She gestures at the threadbare hangings of the room and the gaps on the walls where the frames for rich tapestries are bare. “The king doesn’t pay my allowance; he makes me live off the things that I brought with me from Spain. I have no new gowns, so when they invite me to court I look ridiculous in Spanish fashions that are darned all over. My Lady hopes to break my will and force me to ask my father to take me home. But even if I were to ask him, he would not have me back. I am trapped here.”

  I am horrified. The two of us have fallen from such prosperity to such poverty in such a short time. “Katherine, what will you do?”

  “I’ll wait,” she says with quiet determination. She leans close to me and puts her mouth to my ear. “He is forty-eight, he’s in poor health, he can hardly breathe for the quinsy. I’ll wait.”

  “Don’t say another word,” I say nervously. I glance towards the closed door and at the shadows on the walls.

  “Did My Lady ask you to swear that Arthur and I had been lovers?” she asks me bluntly.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you answer?”

  “At first I told her that I had seen no signs of it, and that I couldn’t say.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She promised me a place at court and a place for my son and the money that I need if I would tell her what she wants to hear.”

  She hears the anguish in my voice, takes my hand, and looks at me steadily with her level blue gaze. “Oh Margaret, I can’t ask you to be poor for me. Your sons should be at court, I know that. You don’t have to defend me. I release you from your promise, Margaret. You can say what you wish.”

  I am due to ride home, but I go in my riding dress once more to the queen’s rooms, where My Lady is listening to a psalm being read before going to dinner in the great hall at Westminster.

  She sees me the moment I come quietly into the room, and when the psalm is finished, she beckons me to her side. Her ladies fall back and pretend to be looking at each other’s neat headdresses. Clearly, after yesterday’s meeting, they know that she has quarreled with me and they think I have come to surrender.

  She smiles at me. “Ah, Lady Margaret. Can we can make our arrangements for you to come to court?”

  I take a breath. “I should be very glad to come to court,” I say. “I should be very glad for my son to go to Prince Harry at Eltham Palace. I beg of you, My Lady, to favor him with that. For the sake of his father, your half cousin who loved you so well. Let Sir Richard’s son be raised as a nobleman. Let your little kinsman come to you, please.”

  “I will, if you will serve me in this one thing,” she says steadily. “Tell me the truth, and you will be saving us, your family, from a dishonorable bride. Tell me something that I can take to my son, the king, and prevent him marrying the Spanish liar to our innocent boy. I have prayed over this and I am certain Katherine of Aragon will never marry Prince Harry. You must be loyal to me, the mother of the king, and not to her. I warn you, Lady Margaret, take care what you say. Fear the consequences! Think very carefully before you consult your own will.”

  She glares at me, her dark eyes boggling, as if to ensure that I understand the threat she promises, and at once I have a contrary reaction. My fear dissolves when she bullies me. I could almost laugh at her words. Fool that she is! Wicked old cruel fool that she is! Has she forgotten who I am, when she threatens me like this? Before God, I am a Plantagenet. I am a daughter of the House of York. My own father broke sanctuary, murdered a king, and was killed by his own brother. My mother followed her father into rebellion and then changed sides and waged war with her husband against him. We are a house of men and women who always follow our own wills; we cannot be made to fear consequences. If you show us danger we will always, always go towards it. They call us the demon’s brood for our devilish willfulness.

  “I cannot lie,” I say to her quietly. “I don’t know if the prince was able with his wife or not. I never saw any signs. She told me, and I believed her, that they were not lovers. I believe her to be a virgin as she was when she came to this country. I believe that she can marry any suitable prince that her father approves. Myself, I think she would make a very good wife to Prince Harry, and a very good Queen of England.”

  Her face grows dark and I can see a vein pulse at her temple, but she says nothing. With a quick, angry gesture she beckons her ladies to line up behind her. She is going to lead them into dinner, and I will not be eating at the high table ever again.

  “As you wish.” She spits out the words as if they were venom. “I do hope that you can manage on your widow’s jointure, Lady Margaret Pole.”

  I drop into a deep curtsey. “I understand,” I say humbly. “But my son? He is a royal ward, he is the son of your half cousin, he is a fine boy, Your Grace . . .”

  She sweeps past me without a word, and all her ladies follow. I stand up to watch them go. I have had my moment of pride, I have charged down my own Ambion Hill to Bosworth Field and found nothing but defeat. And now I don’t know what I am going to do.

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, AUTUMN 1506

  For another year I do everything I can to wring more money out of my lands. When the gleaners go into the field, I confiscate a cup of grain from every basket, breaking the usual rules and upsetting all the older people in the village. I pursue poachers of game into the manor courts, and shock them by demanding cash fines for the minor thieving that they had done since childhood. I forbid the tenants from taking any living thing from the land—even rabbits, even old eggs that the hens have laid away—and I hire a gamekeeper to prevent them taking trout from my rivers. If I catch a child taking eggs from the nests of wild ducks, I fine his parents. If I find a man in the woods with a faggot of kindling and a single twig that is too thick, I take the whole load off him and fine him too. I would fine the birds for flying in the air over my fields or the cocks for crowing if they could pay.

  The people are so poor it goes against the grain to take from them. I find I am starting to count the eggs that I can expect from a woman who has only six hens. I demand our share of honey from a man who has only one hive and has been storing the honeycombs since summer. When Farmer Stride butchers a cow that has fallen in a ditch and broken her neck, I demand every ounce of my share of the meat; I demand tallow from her fat and some of her hide for shoe leather. I am no good lord to him, I am grasping during his disaster, making a bad time worse for him, as the royal treasury is grasping in mine.

  I send the men of my household out after deer, after pheasant, after heron, moorhen, anything that we might eat. The rabbit catcher has to bring in more coneys from the warren, the boy who empties the dove nests learns to expect me at the foot of his ladder. I become terrified that people are stealing from me, and I start to steal from them as I insist on my dues and more.

  I am becoming the sort of landlord I despise; we are becoming a family whose tenants hate them. My mother was the richest heiress in England; my father was brother to the king. They kept followers, retainers, and adherents by constant open-handed generosity. My grandfather fed everyone in London who chose to come to his door. Any man could come at dinnertime and go away with as much meat as he could spear on the blade of his dagger. I am their heir, but I betray their traditions. I think I have become half mad with worry about money, the ache of fear in my belly is sometimes anxiety and sometimes hunger, and I have become so tormented that I can no longer tell which is which.

  I am leaving church one day when I hear one of the village elders complaining to the priest and begging him to intervene. “Father, you must speak to her. We can’t pay our dues. We d
on’t even know what’s owed. She’s looked at every tenancy going back years and found new fines. She’s worse than a Tudor, she’s worse than the king for looking through the laws and turning them to her advantage. She’s starving us.”

  In any case, it is not enough. I cannot buy my boys new riding boots, I cannot feed their horses. I struggle on for a year trying to deny that I am borrowing from myself, robbing my own tenants, stealing from the poor, but then I realize that all of my shabby attempts have failed.

  We are ruined.

  Nobody will help me. My widowhood is against me, my poverty is against me, and my name is against me. Worst of all, the king’s mother is against me and no one will dare to help me. Two of my cousins are still imprisoned in the Tower; they cannot help me. Only my kinsman George Neville replies to the dozens of letters that I send out. He offers to raise my oldest boys at his home, and I will have to send Henry and Arthur away with the promise that I will fetch them as soon as I can, that they will not be in exile forever, that something will happen to bring us back together again, to restore us to our home.

  Like a losing gambler I tell them that good times will come soon, but I doubt either of them believes me. My steward, John Little, takes them to Cousin Neville’s house, Birling Manor in Kent, on the last of the horses, John mounted on the big plow horse, Henry on his hunter, and Arthur on his outgrown pony. I try to smile and wave to them, but the tears are blinding me and I can hardly see them—just their white faces and their big frightened eyes, two boys in shabby clothes, riding away from their home, with no idea of their destination. I don’t know when I will see them again, I will not watch and guard their childhood as I hoped to do. I will not raise them as Plantagenets. I have failed them as their mother and they will have to grow up without me.

  Ursula, at eight too little to be sent away to a great household, has to stay with me, and Geoffrey at nearly two is my baby. He has only just learned to walk, does not yet speak, and is clingy and anxious, quick to tears and fearful. I cannot let Geoffrey go. He has suffered already, born into a house of mourning, fatherless from the day of his birth. Geoffrey will stay with me, whatever it costs me; I cannot be parted from him, his only word is Mama.