The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  Her bravery is poorly rewarded. She is greeted without sympathy, for nobody is much interested in the return to court of a childless bride. Something far more intriguing is going on; the court is agog with scandal.

  It is William Compton, my former suitor, who seems to have comforted himself by flirting with my second cousin, Anne, one of the two beautiful sisters of the Duke of Buckingham, newly married to Sir George Hastings. I failed to see this foolish affair develop as I was absorbed in Katherine’s grief, and I am sorry to learn that matters have gone so far that my cousin Stafford has had high words with the king at the insult to his family, and taken her away from court.

  This is madness from the duke, but typical of his prickly sense of pride. There is no doubt in my mind that his sister will have been guilty of almost any indiscretion; she is the daughter of Katherine Woodville, and like most Woodville girls she is outstandingly beautiful and willful. She is unhappy with her new husband, and he will apparently allow any misdemeanor. But then, as the court continues to whisper of nothing else, I begin to think that there must be more to this than a courtier’s escapade, an episode of courtly lovemaking, playacting desire which went beyond the rules. Henry, who is normally pompous about the rules of courtly love, seems to side with Compton, who declares himself insulted by the duke. The young king flies into a rage, orders Buckingham to stay away from court, and goes everywhere arm in arm with Compton who looks both sheepish and rakish all at once, like a young tup in a lush field full of ewes.

  Whatever has been taking place here seems to be more troubling than William Compton playing fast and loose with the duke’s sister. There must be some reason that the king supports his friend and not the cuckolded husband; there must be some reason that the duke is disgraced but the seducer is in favor. Someone is lying, and someone is hiding something from the queen. The ladies of her household are no use, they are not going to tell tales. My cousin Elizabeth Stafford maintains an aristocratic discretion since it is her kinswoman who is the center of the scandal. Lady Maud Parr says she knows nothing more than common gossip.

  Katherine sends for the books of the household and sees that while she was confined, waiting for a baby that she knew was long gone, the court was making merry and it was Anne Hastings who was Queen of the May.

  “What is this?” she asks me, pointing at the payment for a choir to sing under Anne’s window on May Day morning. “What is this?”—the wardrobe accounts for Anne’s costume in a masque.

  I say I don’t know; but I can read the accounts as well as she can. What I see, what I know she sees, what anyone would see, is a small fortune from the royal treasury being spent for the amusement of Anne Hastings.

  “Why would the royal household pay for William Compton’s choir for Lady Anne?” she asks me. “Is this usual, in England?”

  Katherine is the daughter of a king whose philandering was well known. She knows that a king can take lovers as he wishes, that there can be no complaint, least of all from his wife. Queen Isabella of Spain broke her heart over the love affairs of her husband, and she was as royal as he was, no mere wife crowned as a favor, but a monarch in her own right. Even so, he never mended his ways. Isabella suffered hell’s own torments of jealousy and her daughter Katherine saw it, and resolved that she would never feel such pain. She did not know that this young prince who told her that he loved her, that he had waited for her for years, would turn out like this. She did not imagine that while she was in the dark loneliness of confinement, knowing that she had lost her baby and that nobody would let her grieve, her young husband was starting a flirtation with her own lady-in-waiting, a young woman in her service, in her rooms, a kinswoman of mine, a friend.

  “I’m afraid that it’s what you’re thinking,” I say bluntly to her, telling her the worst and getting it over with. “William Compton pretended to court Anne; everyone saw them together, everyone knew they were meeting. But he was a shield. All the time she was meeting with the king.”

  It is a hard blow for her, but she takes it like a queen.

  “And there’s worse than this,” I say. “I’m sorry to have to tell you of it.”

  She takes a breath. “Tell me. Tell me, Margaret, what can be worse than this?”

  “Anne Hastings told one of the other ladies-in-waiting that it was not a flirtation, not a May Day courting, over and forgotten in one day.” I look at her pale face, the folded resolute line of her mouth. “Anne Hastings said that the king had made promises.”

  “What? What could he promise?”

  I ignore protocol and sit beside her and put my arm around her shoulders as if she were still a homesick princess and we were back at Ludlow. “My dear . . .”

  For a moment she lets her head droop and rests it on my shoulder and I tighten my grip. “You’d better tell me, Margaret. I had better know everything.”

  “She says that he swore he was in love with her. She told him that her vows could be annulled and, more importantly, she said that his were invalid. They spoke of marriage.”

  There is a long, long silence. I think, please God she does not become queenly and leap to her feet and rage at me for bringing her such bad news. But then I feel her soften, her whole body yields, and she turns her hot face with her cheeks wet with tears to my neck, and I hold her while she cries like a hurt girl.

  We are silent for a long time, then she pulls back and rubs her eyes roughly with her hands. I give her a handkerchief and she wipes her face and blows her nose.

  “I knew it,” she sighs as if she is weary to her very bones.

  “You knew?”

  “He told me some of this last night, and I guessed the rest. God forgive him: he told me he was confused. He told me that when he bedded her she cried out in pain and said that she could not bear it. He had to take her gently. She told him that a virgin bleeds when it is her first time.” She makes a little face of disgust, of derision. “Apparently, she bled. Copiously. She showed him all that, and convinced him that I was no virgin on our wedding night, that my marriage to Arthur had been consummated.”

  She holds herself very still and then she gives a deep shudder. “She suggested to him that his marriage to me is invalid, because I was wedded and bedded by Arthur. That in the sight of God, I will always be Arthur’s wife, and not Henry’s. And God will never give us a child.”

  I am aghast. I look at her blankly. I have no words to defend our secret, I can only marvel at this nonchalant unraveling of our old plot.

  “She’s a married woman herself,” I say flatly. “She’s been married twice.”

  Katherine finds a mournful smile at my incredulity.

  “She’s put it into his head that our marriage is against the will of God and that is why we lost the baby. She told him that we will never have a child.”

  I am so appalled that I can only reach for her again. She takes my hand, pats it, and puts it aside.

  “Yes,” she says thoughtfully. “Cruel, isn’t she? Wicked, isn’t she?”

  And when I don’t reply, she says: “This is serious. She told him that my belly was swollen but since there was no child, it was a message from God that there will never be one. Because the marriage is against the word of God. That a man should not marry his brother’s widow, and if he does, their marriage will be without issue. It’s written in the Bible.” She smiles without humor. “She quoted Leviticus to him. ‘And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness: they shall be childless.’ ”

  I am quite stunned at Anne Hastings’s sudden interest in theology. Someone has prepared her to whisper this poison into Henry’s ear. “The Pope himself gave a dispensation,” I insist. “Your mother arranged it! Your mother made sure that the dispensation provided, whether you had been bedded by Arthur or not. She made sure of it.”

  She nods. “She did. But Henry has been filled with fears by that old grandmother of his. She quoted Leviticus to him before we were married. His father l
ived in terror that his luck would not hold. And now this Stafford girl turns his head with lust, and tells him it is God’s will that I should lose a baby and that another should disappear from my womb. She says our marriage is cursed.”

  “It doesn’t matter what she says.” I am furious with the wicked girl. “Her brother has taken her from court, you need never have her back in your service. For God’s sake—she has a husband of her own! She is married and cannot get free! She can’t marry the king! Why cause all this trouble? And Henry cannot really believe that she is a virgin! She’s been married twice! Are they mad to talk like this?”

  She nods. She is thinking, not railing against her circumstances, and I suddenly realize this must be the woman that her mother was, a woman who in the middle of a disaster could assess her chances, look at the odds, and plan. A woman who, when her camp of tents burned down, built a besieging camp of stone.

  “Yes, I think we can get rid of her,” she says thoughtfully. “And we’ll have to make peace with her brother the duke and get him back to court; he’s too powerful to be an enemy. The old Lady Mother is dead, she can’t frighten Henry anymore. And we have to silence this talk.”

  “We can,” I say. “We will.”

  “Will you write to the duke?” she asks. “He’s your cousin, isn’t he?”

  “Edward is my second cousin,” I specify. “Our grandmothers were half sisters.”

  She smiles. “Margaret, I swear you’re related to everyone.”

  I nod. “I am. And he’ll come back. He’s loyal to the king and he’s fond of you.”

  She nods. “He’s not my danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father was famous for his philandering; everyone knew, my mother knew. But everyone knew that the women were his pleasure; nobody ever spoke of love.” She makes a little face of disgust, as if love between a king and a woman is always disreputable. “My father would never have spoken of love to anyone but his wife. Nobody ever doubted his marriage, nobody ever challenged my mother, Queen Isabella. They were married in secret without a papal dispensation at all—their marriage was the most uncertain one in the world, but nobody ever thought that it would not last until death. My father bedded dozens of other women, probably hundreds. But he never said one word of love to any one of them. He never let anyone think for even a moment that there was any other possible wife for him, any other possible Queen of Spain but my mother.”

  I wait.

  “It is my husband who is my danger,” she says wearily, her face a hard mask of beauty. “A young fool, a spoiled fool. He should be old enough now to take a lover without falling in love. He should never allow anyone to question our marriage. He should never think for a moment that it might be set aside. To do that is to destroy his own authority as well as mine. I am Queen of England. There can be only one queen. There can be only one king. I am his wife. We were both crowned. That should never be questioned.”

  “We can make sure that this never goes further,” I suggest.

  She shakes her head. “The worst damage has already been done,” she says. “A king who speaks of love to anyone but his wife, a king who questions his marriage is a king who rocks the foundations of his own throne. We can stop this nonsense going further, but the damage was done when it entered his stupid head.”

  We sit in silence for long moments, thinking about Henry’s handsome golden head. “He married me for love,” she observes wearily, as if it were a long time ago. “It was not an arranged marriage, it was one of love.”

  “It’s a bad precedent,” I say, the daughter of an arranged marriage, the widow of an arranged marriage. “If a man marries for love, does he think he can get the marriage annulled when he loves no more?”

  “Does he not love me anymore?”

  I cannot answer her. It is such a painful question from a woman who was so deeply loved by her first, dead husband, who would never have bedded another woman and spoken of love to her.

  I shake my head because I don’t know. I doubt that Henry himself knows. “He’s young,” I say. “And impulsive. And powerful. It’s a dangerous combination.”

  Anne Hastings never comes back to court; her husband packs her off to a nunnery. My cousin Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, her brother, recovers his good temper and rejoins us. Katherine wins Henry back to her side and they conceive another child, the boy that is to prove that God smiles on their marriage. The queen and I behave as if her realization that her husband is a fool had never happened. We don’t conspire in this. We don’t have to discuss it. We just do it.

  RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, JANUARY 1511

  We are blessed, we are redeemed, and Katherine in particular is saved. She gives the king a Tudor son and heir and overturns in one act the rumors that were growing about the curse that sits on the Tudor family, the questioning of the marriage.

  I have the honor to go to the young king and tell him that he is father to a boy, and I find him exultant among the young men of his court who drink to his great triumph. Katherine, confined in her rooms, leaning on the pillows in the great bed of state, is exhausted and smiling when I return.

  “I did it,” she says quietly to me as I lean to kiss her cheek.

  “You did it,” I confirm.

  The next day, Henry sends for me. I find his rooms still crowded with men shouting congratulations and drinking the health of his son. Above the noise and the cheering he asks me if I will be the prince’s Lady Governess, and set up his household and appoint his staff and raise him as heir to the throne.

  I put my hand on my heart and I curtsey. When I come up, Henry the boy pitches into my arms and I hug him in our shared joy. “Thank you,” he says. “I know you will guard him and raise him and govern him as if you were my mother.”

  “I will,” I say to him. “I know just how she would have wanted it done, and I will make everything right.”

  The baby is christened at the chapel of the Observant Friars at Richmond; he is to be Henry, of course. He will be Henry IX one day, God willing, and he will rule over a country which will have forgotten that once the rose of England was pure white. His Lady Mistress is appointed and his wet nurse, he sleeps in a cradle of gold, he is swaddled in the finest of linen, he goes everywhere carried breast-high, with two yeomen of the guard preceding his nurse and two behind. Katherine has him brought to her rooms every day, and while she rests in bed she has him laid beside her, and when she sleeps she has his little cradle put at the head of her bed.

  Henry goes on a pilgrimage to give thanks. Katherine is churched and rises up from her bed, takes one of her hot Spanish baths, and returns to her court, glowing with pride in her youth and fertility. Not a girl in her train, not a lady in her rooms hesitates for one moment before bowing low to this triumphant queen. I don’t believe there is a woman in the country who does not share her joy.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1511

  The king, returned from pilgrimage to Walsingham where he gave thanks to Our Lady, or perhaps, in truth, told Her of his achievement, sends for me to come to the jousting arena. My son Arthur comes with a smile and says I am not to tell anyone that I am going to watch a practice for the joust to celebrate the birth of the prince, but to slip quietly away from the queen’s rooms.

  Indulgently, I go to the arena and, to my surprise, I find that Henry is alone, riding a great gray war charger round and round in careful circles, first one way then the other. Henry waves me to sit in the royal box, and I take the seat that his mother would have taken, and know, for I know him so well, that he wants me there, watching over him, as she and I once watched him practice on his pony.

  He brings the horse right up to the balcony and shows me that it can bow, one foreleg extended, one foreleg tucked back. “Hold up a glove or something,” he says.

  I take a kerchief from my neck and hold it up. Henry goes to the other side of the arena and shouts: “Drop!” As it falls he spurs forward and catches it in his hand,
riding around the arena holding it high above his head like a flag.

  He pulls up before me, his bright blue eyes fixed on my face.

  “Very good,” I say approvingly.

  “And there’s this,” he says. “Don’t be frightened. I know what I’m doing.”

  I nod. He turns the horse sideways to my view and makes it rear and then buck, forelegs up then back legs kicking, in a fantastic display. He changes his seat slightly and the horse leaps above the ground, as the Moorish horses do, all legs in the air at once as if it were flying, and then it trots on the spot, raising one leg proudly high and then another. He really is a remarkable rider; he sits completely and beautifully still, holding the reins tightly, his whole body molded to the horse, alert, relaxed, at one with the great muscled animal.

  “Get ready,” he warns me, and then he swings the horse round and it rears up, terribly high, its head as high as me in the royal box built over the arena, and it crashes its front hooves onto the wall of the box, springs back again, and drops down.

  I nearly scream with fright, and then I jump to my feet and applaud. Henry beams at me, loosens the reins, pats the horse’s neck. “Nobody else can do that,” he remarks breathlessly, bringing the horse closer, watching me for my reaction. “Nobody in England can do that but me.”

  “I should think not.”

  “You don’t think it’s too loud? Will she be frightened?”

  Katherine once stood with her mother to face a charge of enemy Arab cavalry, the fiercest horsemen in the world. I smile. “No, she’ll be very impressed, she knows good horsemanship.”

  “She’ll never have seen anything like this,” he claims.

  “She will,” I contradict him. “The Moors in Andalusia have Arab horses, and they ride wonderfully.”

  At once the smile is wiped from his face. He turns a furious look on me. “What?” he demands icily. “What do you say?”

  “She will understand how great is your achievement,” I say, the words tumbling out in my haste to redress the offense. “For she knows good horsemanship from her home in Spain, but she will never have seen anything like this. And no man in England can do this. I have never seen a better horse and rider.”