The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  He is uncertain, and pulls on the rein; the horse, sensing the change of his mood, flicks his ear, listening.

  “You are like a knight of Camelot,” I say hastily. “Nobody will have seen anything like it since the golden age.”

  He smiles at that, and it is almost as if the sun comes out and birds start to sing. “I am a new Arthur,” he agrees.

  I ignore the pang I feel at the casual use of the name of the prince we loved, whose little brother is still striving to better him. “You are the new Arthur of the new Camelot,” I repeat. “But where is your other horse, Your Grace? Your lovely black mare?”

  “She was disobedient,” he throws over his shoulder as he rides out of the ring. “She defied me. She would not learn from me.”

  He turns and gives me his most charming smile, all sunshine once again. I think that he is the most adorable young man as he says lightly: “I sent her for baiting. The hounds killed her. I can’t bear disloyalty.”

  It is the greatest joust that I have ever seen, that England has ever seen. The king is everywhere, no scene is complete without him in a new costume. He leads the procession of the Master of the Armory, the trumpeters, the courtiers, the heralds, the court assistants, the poets, the singers, and at last, the long line of jousters. Henry has announced a tournament in which he will take on all comers.

  He rides his great gray warhorse and he wears cloth of gold, interleaved with the richest blue velvet, gleaming in the bright spring sunshine as if he were a king newly minted. All over his jacket, his hat, his riding breeches, his trappings are sewn little gold K ’s as if he wants to show the world that he is hers, that she has set her initial all over him. Above his head is the standard he has chosen for this day: Loyall. His tournament name is Coeur Loyall, Henry is Sir Loyal Heart and as Katherine glows with pride he rides his horse around the ring and shows the tricks that he practiced before me, a perfect prince.

  We all share her joy, even the girls who would welcome the attentions of the perfect prince themselves. Katherine sits in a throne with the sunlight shining through the cloth of gold canopy making her skin rosy and golden, smiling on the young man whom she loves, knowing that their first child, their son, is safe in his golden cradle.

  But only ten days later, they go to pick him up and he is cold, and his little face is blue, and he is dead.

  It is as if the world has ended. Henry withdraws to his rooms; the queen’s rooms are stunned and silent. All of the words of comfort that can be given to a young woman who has lost her first child dissolve on the tongue in the face of Katherine’s bleak horror. For day after day no one says anything to her. There is nothing to say. Henry falls into silence, and won’t speak of his lost child; he does not attend the funeral or the Mass. They cannot comfort each other, they cannot bear to be together. This loss in their new marriage is so terrible that Henry cannot comprehend it, cannot try to comprehend it. A darkness spreads over the court.

  But even in grief, Katherine and I know that we have to be watchful, all the time. We have to wait for the next girl whom Henry takes to his bed, who will wind her arms around his neck and whisper in his ear that look! see! God does not bless his marriage. It has been only twenty months and yet there have been three tragedies: one miscarriage, one child vanished clear away from the womb, one baby dead in its cradle. Is this not proof, building, growing proof, that the marriage is against the will of God, but she—a virgin of healthy English stock—might give him a son?

  “And which of my ladies-in-waiting should I suspect?” Katherine asks me bitterly. “Who? Who should I watch? Lady Maud Parr? She’s a pretty woman. Mary Kingston? Lady Jane Guildford? Lady Elizabeth Boleyn? She’s married of course but why should that prevent her seducing the king? You?”

  I am not even offended by her outburst. “The queen has to be served by the most beautiful and wealthiest ladies of the kingdom,” I say simply. “It’s how a court works. You have to be surrounded by beautiful girls, they are here to find a husband, they are determined to shine, they are bound to catch the eye of the courtiers and the king.”

  “What can I do?” she asks me. “How can I make my marriage unassailable?”

  I shake my head. We both know that the only way she can prove that God has blessed her marriage is to give birth to a live son. Without him, without that little savior, we are all waiting for the moment that the king starts to interrogate God.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1512

  The king, as he emerges from his grief for his baby, is good to me, and I am advised that I should apply for the return of my brother’s fortune and lands. I should even ask for the return of my family title. Having spent my life pretending that my name was nothing and my fortune was lost, I am bidden to claim them both.

  It is a heady experience, like coming out of the cold nunnery to the springtime court once again, like coming out of darkness, blinking into light. I list the great fortune that my brother lost when this king’s father tore him from the schoolroom and bundled him into the Tower. I name the titles that I commanded when I walked away from them down the aisle to marry a lowly Tudor knight. Tentatively, at first, as if I am taking a great risk, I state my great name, estimate my great fortune, and say that it was my own, all my own, that the Tudors wrongly took it from me, and that I want it back.

  I think of my angry prayers in Syon Abbey, and I put my temper to one side and write a careful petition to the king, framing my request in such a way that it is no criticism of that grasping tyrant, his father, but a measured claim for what is my own. A claim for my sons that they should have what is ours. I want to be restored to my greatness, I want to be a Plantagenet again. Apparently, the time has come that I can be a Plantagenet. Apparently, at last, I can be myself.

  Amazingly, the king grants it. Freely, generously, sweetly, he grants me everything that I ask, and tells me that since I am by birth and by disposition one of the greatest ladies of the kingdom I should enjoy the greatest fortune. I am to be what I was born to be: Margaret Plantagenet, as wealthy as a princess of York.

  I ask the queen for permission to be away from court for the night. “You want to tell your children,” she smiles.

  “This changes everything for us,” I say.

  “Go,” she says. “Go to your new house and meet them there. I am glad that you have justice, at last. I am glad that you are Margaret Plantagenet once more.”

  “Countess of Salisbury,” I say, sweeping her a deep curtsey. “He has given me my family title, in my own right. I am Countess of Salisbury.”

  She laughs with pleasure and says: “Very grand. Very royal. My dear, I am glad for you.”

  I take Ursula, who is now a tall girl of thirteen years, and her younger brother, Geoffrey, in the royal barge down the river to L’Erber, the beautiful Plantagenet palace on the riverside, near to the Tower, that the king has returned to me. I make sure that the fire is lit in the grand hall and the flames are burning in the sconces so that when my boys come in, the place is warm and welcoming, and my new household can see, lit as brightly as players in a pageant, these York boys coming into their own.

  I wait for them, standing before the huge fire of wood in the great hall, Ursula at my side, seven-year-old Geoffrey’s hand in mine. Henry comes in first, as he should, kneels for my blessing, and kisses me on both cheeks then steps aside for his brother Arthur. Side by side they kneel before me, their height and their strength obscured by their deference. These are boys no longer, they are young men. I have missed five, nearly six years of their lives, and no one, not even a Tudor king, can restore that to me. This is a loss that can never be made up.

  I raise Henry to his feet and I smile at my pride as he goes up and up. He is a tall, well-built young man of nearly twenty. He overtops me by a head, and I can feel the strength in his arms. “My son,” I say, and I clear my throat so that my voice does not tremble. “My son, I have missed you, but we are returned to one another now, and to our place in the world.”

>   I raise Arthur and kiss him too. At seventeen he is nearly as tall as his older brother, and broader, stronger. He is an athlete, a great rider. I remember that my cousin George Neville—Lord Bergavenny—promised me that he would make this boy into a great sportsman: “Put him at the king’s court and they will fall in love with him for his courage at the joust,” he told me.

  Next in line, Reginald rises to his feet as I step towards him but though I hold him close he does not put his arms around me, he does not cling to me. I kiss him and I step back to look at him. He is tall and lean, with a narrow face as sensitive and mobile as a girl’s, his brown eyes very wary for an eleven-year-old, his mouth firm as if closed by enforced silence. I think he will never forgive me for leaving him at the monastery. “I am sorry,” I say to him. “I didn’t know how to keep you safe, I didn’t even know how to feed you. I thank God that you are restored to me now.”

  “You kept the others safe enough,” he says shortly, his voice unreliable, sometimes a boyish treble and sometimes cracking and going low. He glances at Geoffrey at my side, who tightens his grip on my hand when he hears the hostility in his brother’s voice. “They didn’t have to live like silent hermits, alone among strangers.”

  “Come now!” Henry surprisingly interrupts his brother. “We are together again now! Our Lady Mother has won back our fortune and our title. She has rescued us from a lifetime of hardship. What’s done is done.”

  Ursula comes close to me, as if to defend me from Reginald’s resentment, and I hold her to my side. “You’re right,” I say to Henry. “And you’re right to command your brother. You are the man of the family, you will be Lord Montague.”

  He flushes with pleasure. “I am to have the title? They give me your title too? I am to carry your family name?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “But you will have it. I shall call you Son Montague from now on.”

  “Are we all to call him Montague and not Henry?” Geoffrey pipes up. “And do I have a new name too?”

  “Surely you’ll be an earl at the very least,” Reginald remarks unpleasantly. “If they don’t find a princess for you to marry.”

  “And will we live here now?” Ursula asks, looking round the great hall with the high painted beams and the old-fashioned fireplace in the center of the room. She has learned a taste for good things and the life of the court.

  “This will be our London house but we’ll stay at court,” I tell her. “You and I in the queen’s chambers, your brother Geoffrey as the queen’s page. Your brothers will continue to serve the king.”

  Montague beams, Arthur clenches a fist. “Just what I was hoping for!”

  Reginald’s face lights up. “And me? Am I to come to court too?”

  “You’re lucky,” I tell him. “Reginald is to go to the university!” I announce to the others, as his smile dies.

  “The king himself has offered to pay your fees,” I tell him. “You are fortunate in his favor. He is a great scholar himself, he admires the new learning. It is a great privilege. I have told him you were studying with the Carthusian brothers, and so he is giving you a place at Magdalen College, Oxford. This is a great favor.”

  He looks down at his feet, his dark eyelashes shielding his eyes, and I think he may be struggling not to cry. “So I have to live away from home again,” he observes, his voice very small. “While you are all at court. All of you together.”

  “My son, it is a great privilege,” I say, a little impatiently. “If you have the king’s favor and rise through the Church, who knows where you might end?”

  He looks as if he might argue, but his brother interrupts him. “Cardinal!” Montague exclaims, ruffling his hair. “Pope!”

  Reginald cannot even find a smile for his brother. “And now you are laughing at me?”

  “No! I mean it!” Montague replies. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” I agree. “Everything is restored to us, everything is possible.”

  “And what do we have?” Arthur asks. “Exactly? Because if I am to serve the king I shall need to buy a horse, and a saddle and armor.”

  “Yes, what has he given us?” Montague asks. “God bless him for putting everything to right. What have we got?”

  “Only what was our own, returned to us,” I say proudly. “I petitioned the king for what was rightfully mine, the title and the lands that were taken from me when my brother was wrongfully executed. He agreed that my brother was no traitor, so he is restoring our fortune. It’s justice, not charity.”

  The boys wait, like children waiting for New Year’s gifts. All their lives they have known of the shadowy existence of an uncle whose name must not be mentioned, of a past so glorious that we had to conceal it, of wealth so great that we could not bear to discuss what had been lost. Now it is as if their mother’s dream is proven real.

  I take a breath. “I have the earldom back,” I say. “My family name, my title is restored to me. I shall be Countess of Salisbury.”

  Montague and Arthur, who understand the scale of this privilege, look astounded. “He gives you, a woman, an earldom?” Montague asks.

  I nod. I know that I am beaming, I cannot hide my joy. “In my own right. And the lands. All my brother’s lands are returned to us.”

  “We’re rich?” Reginald suggests.

  I nod. “We are. We’re one of the richest families in the whole kingdom.”

  Ursula gives a little gasp and clasps her hands together.

  “This is ours?” Arthur confirms, looking round. “This house?”

  “It was my mother’s house,” I say proudly. “I shall sleep in her great chamber, where she lay with her husband, the king’s brother. It’s as big a palace as any in London. I can just remember it, when I was a little girl. I can remember living here. Now it is mine again, and you shall call it home.”

  “And what country houses?” Arthur asks eagerly.

  I see the avidity in his face, and I recognize my own greed and excitement. “I’m going to build,” I promise him. “I’m going to build a great house of brick, a castle fitted out as richly as any palace, at Warblington in Hampshire. It’ll be our biggest house. And we’ll have Bisham, my family house, in Berkshire, and this house in London, and a manor at Clavering in Essex.”

  “And home?” Reginald asks. “Stourton?”

  I laugh. “It’s nothing compared with these,” I say dismissively. “A little place. One of our many other houses. We have dozens of houses like Stourton.” I turn to Montague. “I shall arrange a great marriage for you, and you shall have a house and lands of your own.”

  “I’ll marry,” he promises. “Now that I have a name I can offer.”

  “You’ll have a title to offer your bride,” I promise him. “Now I can look around and find someone suitable. You have something to bring to a marriage. The king himself calls me ‘cousin.’ Now we can look for an heiress whose fortune will match yours.”

  He looks as if he might have a suggestion, but he smiles and keeps it to himself for the moment.

  “I know who,” Arthur teases him.

  At once, I am alert. “You can tell me,” I say to Montague. “And if she is wealthy and well bred I will be able to arrange it. You can take your pick. There’s not a family in the kingdom who would not think it an honor to be married into ours, now.”

  “You’ve gone from pauper to princess,” Reginald says slowly. “You must feel as if God has answered your prayers.”

  “God has sent me nothing more than justice,” I say carefully. “And we must, as a family, give thanks for that.”

  Slowly, I become accustomed to being wealthy again, as I had to become accustomed to being poor. I order builders into my London home, and they start to transform L’Erber from the great palace that it is into an even more imposing house, paving the forecourt, carving beautiful wooden panels for the great hall. At Warblington I commission a castle, with a moat and a drawbridge and a chapel and a green, everything just as my parents would have had, just like Mi
ddleham Castle in my childhood, when I had known I was born for greatness and never dreamed that it could all disappear overnight. I build the equal of any castle in the land, and I create beautiful guest rooms for when the king and court come to stay with me, their great subject in her own great castle.

  Everywhere I put my coat of arms, and I have to confess every day to the sin of pride. But I don’t care. I want to declare to the world: “My brother was no traitor, my father no traitor either. This is an honorable name, this is a royal standard. I am the only countess in England holding a title in my own right. Here is my stamp upon my many houses. Here am I. Alive—no traitor. Here am I!”

  My boys enter court life like the princes they are. The king immediately takes to Arthur for his courage and skill at the joust. My kinsman George Neville served my sons well when he brought them up and taught them everything they needed to know to be popular courtiers. Montague is easy and elegant in the royal rooms; Arthur is one of the bravest jousters at a court that cares for nothing more than bravery. He is one of the few men who dare ride against the king, one of the very, very few who can beat him. When Arthur unseats the King of England, he flings himself off his own horse, brushing past pages to help Henry to his feet, and Henry bellows with laughter and holds Arthur in his arms. “Not yet, Cousin Plantagenet! Not yet!” he shouts and they roar together as if a fallen king is a great joke, and a Plantagenet standing over an unseated Tudor can only be a fine, comradely jest.

  Reginald studies at the university, Ursula serves beside me in the queen’s rooms at court, Geoffrey stays at the nursery rooms in L’Erber with his tutors and companions and sometimes comes to court to serve the queen. I cannot bring myself to send him away to the country, not after the grief of losing my older boys, not after the lasting pain of Reginald’s exile. This boy, my youngest boy, my baby, I will keep at home. I swear I will have him by my side until he is married.