The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  The king is desperate to go to war and determined to punish the French for their advances in Italy, determined to defend the Pope and his lands. In the summer my cousin Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, leads an expedition to take Aquitaine but can do nothing without the support of the queen’s father, who refuses to play his part in their joint battle plans. Thomas is blamed for this and for the misconduct of his troops, and a shadow falls, once again, over his reputation as a Tudor supporter and our family.

  “The fault is not in your cousins, Your Grace, but in your father-in-law,” the blunt-spoken northern lord Tom Darcy tells the king. “He did not support me when I went on crusade. He has not supported Thomas Grey. It is your ally, not your generals, who is at fault.”

  He sees me watching him, and he gives me a small wink. He knows that all my family fear the loss of Tudor favor.

  “You might be right,” Henry says sulkily. “But the Spanish king is a great general and Thomas Grey is certainly not.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1513

  Not even such a setback can permanently diminish the king’s enthusiasm for a war against France, driven on by his conscience which assures him that he is defending the Church and by the promise of the title “King of France.” The Pope is clever enough to know that Henry longs to win back the title that other English kings have lost, and show himself as a true king and a leader of men.

  This summer the court and my boys can think of nothing but harnesses and armor, horses and provisions. The king’s new advisor Thomas Wolsey proves to be uniquely able to get an army on the move, ordering the goods where they are needed, controlling the mustering of troops, commanding the smiths to forge pikes and the saddlers to make jackets of leather. The detail, the constant orders about transport, supplies, and timing—which no nobleman can be bothered to follow—is all that Wolsey thinks about, and he thinks about nothing else.

  The ladies of the queen’s chamber sew banners, keepsakes, and special shirts made from tough cloth to wear under chain mail; but Katherine, herself the daughter of a fighting queen, raised in a country at war, meets with Henry’s commanders and talks to them about provisions, discipline, and the health of the troops they will take to invade France. Only Wolsey understands her concerns, and she and the almoner are often closeted together, discussing routes for the march, provisions along the way, how to establish lines of messengers and how one commander can communicate with another and be persuaded to work together.

  Thomas Wolsey treats her with respect, observing that she has seen more warfare than many of the noblemen at court, since she was raised at the siege of Granada. The whole court treats her with a secret smiling pride, for everyone knows that she is with child again, her belly starting to grow hard and curved. She walks everywhere, refusing to ride, resting in the afternoons, a plump, shining confidence about her.

  CANTERBURY, KENT, JUNE 1513

  We set off for the coast with the army, traveling slowly through Kent, and stop at the glorious shrine at Canterbury, dripping in gold and rubies of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, where we pray for victory for England.

  The queen takes my hand as I kneel to pray beside her, and passes me her rosary, pressing it into my hand.

  “What’s this?” I whisper.

  “Hold it,” she says. “While I tell you something bad. I have to tell you something that will distress you.”

  The sharp ivory crucifix digs into my palm like a nail. I think I know what she has to tell me.

  “It’s your cousin Edmund de la Pole,” she says gently. “I am sorry, my dear. I am so sorry. The king has ordered that he be put to death.”

  Even though I am expecting this, even though I have known it must come, even though I have waited for this news for years, I hear myself say: “But why? Why now?”

  “The king could not go to war leaving a pretender in the Tower.” I can tell from the guilt in her face that she remembers the last pretender to the Tudor throne was my brother, killed so that she would come to England and marry Arthur. “I am so sorry, Margaret. I am so sorry, my dear.”

  “He’s been imprisoned for seven years!” I protest. “Seven years and there has been no trouble!”

  “I know. But the council advised it too.”

  I bow my head as if in prayer, but I can find no words to pray for the soul of my cousin, dead under a Tudor axe, for the crime of being a Plantagenet.

  “I hope you can forgive us?” she whispers.

  Under the soaring chant of the Mass I can hardly hear her. I grip her hand. “It’s not you,” I say. “It’s not even the king. It’s what anyone would do to rid themselves of a rival.”

  She nods, as if she is comforted; but I put my head in my hands and know that they have not rid themselves of Plantagenets. It is impossible to be rid of us. My cousin Edmund’s brother, Richard de la Pole, his heir, now the new pretender, has run away from England and is somewhere in Europe, trying to raise an army; and after him, there is another and another of us, unending.

  DOVER CASTLE, KENT, JUNE 1513

  The queen says good-bye to her husband at Dover Castle and he honors her with the title of Regent of England—she will rule this country with the authority of a crowned king. She is a monarch of England, a woman born to rule. He gently rests his hand on her belly and asks her to keep his country and his baby safe until he returns.

  I can think of nothing but my boys, especially my son Montague, whose duty will keep him at the king’s side and whose honor will take him into the heart of any battle. I wait till his warhorse is loaded on the ships and he comes to me and bends his knee for my blessing. I am determined to say a smiling good-bye, and try to hide my fear for him.

  “But take care,” I urge.

  “Lady Mother, I am going to war. I am not supposed to take care. It would be a very poor war if we all rode out taking care!”

  I am twisting my fingers together. “Take care with your food at least, and don’t lie on wet ground. Make sure that your squire always puts a leather cloak down first. And never take your helmet off if you are anywhere near—”

  He laughs and takes my hands in his own. “Lady Mother, I will come home to you!” He is young and lighthearted and thinks that he will live forever, and so he promises the thing that in truth he cannot: that nothing will ever hurt him, not even on a battlefield.

  I snatch at a breath. “My son!”

  “I’ll make sure Arthur is safe,” he promises me. “And I’ll come home safe and sound. Perhaps I shall capture French prisoners for ransom, perhaps I shall come home rich. Perhaps I shall win French lands and you will be able to build castles in France as well as England.”

  “Just come home,” I say. “Not even new castles matter more than the heir.”

  He bends his head for my blessing and I have to let him go.

  The war goes better than anyone dreams possible. The English army, under the king himself, take Therouanne, and the French cavalry flee before them. My son Arthur writes to me that his brother has ridden like a hero and has been knighted by the king, for his bravery in battle. My son Montague is now Sir Henry Pole—Sir Henry Pole!—and he is safe.

  RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1513

  It is encouraging news for us in London; but far graver things are happening at home than the easy progress of the king’s campaign. Almost as soon as Henry’s fleet sets sail, and despite the fact that the King of Scotland is sworn to a sacred permanent peace sealed by his marriage to an English princess, our own Princess Margaret, the king’s sister, James IV of Scotland invades, and we have to defend the kingdom with our army in France and our king playing at commander overseas.

  The only man left in England able to command is Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the old dog of war whom Henry left behind for his queen to deploy as she thinks best. The seventy-year-old warrior and the pregnant queen take over the presence chamber at Richmond, and instead of sheets of music and plans of dances spread on the table, there are maps of Engla
nd and Scotland, lists of musters, and the names of landlords who will turn out their tenants for the queen’s war against Scotland. The queen’s ladies go through their household men and report on their border castles.

  Katherine’s early years with her parents who fought for every inch of their kingdom shows in every decision she and Thomas Howard make together. Though everyone left in England complains that they are guarded by an old man and a pregnant woman, I believe that these two are better commanders than those in France. She understands the dangers of a battle ground and the deploying of a troop as if it were the natural business of a princess. When Thomas Howard musters his men to march north, they have a battle plan that he will attack the Scots in the north, and she will hold a second line in the Midlands, in case of his defeat. It is she who defies her condition to ride out to the army on a white horse, dressed in cloth of gold, and bawls out a speech to tell them that no nation in the world can fight like the English.

  I watch her, and I can hardly recognize the homesick girl who cried in my arms at Ludlow. She is a woman indeed, she is a queen. Better than that, she is a queen militant, she has become a great Queen of England.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1513

  Their battle plan is astoundingly successful. Thomas Howard sends her the bloodstained coat of James IV. The king’s own brother-in-law and fellow monarch is dead, we have widowed Princess Margaret and made her a dowager queen with a seventeen-month-old baby in her arms, and Scotland is ours for the taking.

  Katherine is filled with bloodthirsty delight, and I laugh as she dances round the room, singing a battle song in Spanish. I take her hands and beg her to sit, be still and be calm; but she is completely her mother’s daughter, demanding that the head of James of Scotland be sent to her, until we persuade her that an English monarch cannot be so ferocious. Instead, she sends his bloodstained coat and torn banners to Henry in France, so that he shall know she has guarded the kingdom better than any regent has ever done before, that she has defeated the Scots as no one has ever done before, and London celebrates with the court that we have a heroine queen, a queen militant, who can hold the kingdom and carry a child in her womb.

  She is taken ill in the night. I am sleeping in her bed and I hear her moan before the pain breaks through her sleep. I turn and raise myself up on one elbow to see her face, thinking that she is having a bad dream, and that I will wake her. Then I feel under my bare feet the wetness in the bed, and I flinch from the sensation, jump out of bed, pull back the sheets, and see my own nightgown is red, terribly stained with her waters.

  I tear to the door and fling it open, screaming for her ladies and for someone to call the midwives and the physicians, and then come back to hold her hands as she groans as the pains start to come.

  It is early, but it is not too early; perhaps the baby will survive this sudden urgent, fearful rush. I hold Katherine’s shoulders as she leans forward and then I sponge her face as she leans back and gasps with relief.

  The midwives shout for her to push, and then suddenly they say, “Wait! Wait!” And we hear, we all can hear, a tiny gurgling cry.

  “My baby?” the queen asks wonderingly, and then they lift him, his little legs writhing, the cord dangling, and rest him on her slack, quivering belly.

  “A baby boy,” someone says in quiet wonderment. “My God, what a miracle,” and they cut the cord and wrap him tightly and then fold the warmed sheets across Katherine and put him into her arms. “A baby boy for England.”

  “My baby,” she whispers, her face alight with joy and love. She looks, I think, like a portrait of the Virgin Mary as if she held the grace of God in her arms. “Margaret,” she says in a whisper. “Send a message to the king . . .”

  Her face changes, the baby moves just slightly, his back arches, he seems to choke. “What’s the matter?” she demands. “What’s the matter with him?”

  The wet nurse who was coming forward, undoing the front of her gown, rears back as if she is suddenly afraid to touch the child. The midwife looks up from the bowl of water and the cloth and lunges for him, saying, “Slap him on the back!” as if he has to be born and take his first breath all over again.

  Katherine says: “Take him! Save him!” and bounds forward in the bed, thrusting him out to the midwife. “What’s wrong with him? What’s the matter?”

  The midwife clamps her mouth over his nose and mouth, sucks and spits black bile on the floor. Something is wrong. Clearly, she does not know what to do, nobody knows what to do. The little body retches, a pool of something like oil spills from his mouth, from his nose, even from his closed eyes where little dark tears run down the tiny pale cheeks.

  “My son!” Katherine cries.

  They upend him like a drowned man from the moat, they slap him, they shake him, they put him over the nurse’s knees and pound his back. He is limp, he is white, his fingers and little toes are blue. Clearly he is dead and slapping will not return him to life.

  She falls back on the bed, she pulls the covers over her face as if she wishes she were dead too. I kneel at the side of the bed and reach for her hand. Blindly, she grips me; “Margaret,” she says from under the covers as if she cannot bear that I should see her lips framing the words. “Margaret, write to the king and tell him that his baby is dead.”

  As soon as the midwives have cleared up and gone, as soon as the physicians have given their opinion, which is nothing of any use, she herself writes to the king and sends the news by Thomas Wolsey’s messengers. She has to tell Henry, the homecoming conqueror in his moment of triumph, that although he has won proof of his valor; there is no proof of his potency. He has no child.

  We wait for his return; she is bathed and churched and dressed in a new gown. She tries to smile, I see her practice before a mirror, as if she has forgotten how to do it. She tries to seem joyful for his victory, glad of his return, and hopeful for their future.

  He does not look closely enough to observe that she is only pretending to joy. She plays a masque of delight for him and he barely glances her way, he is so full of stories of the battle and the capture of villages. Half of his court have been awarded their spurs, you would think he had taken Paris and been crowned in Rheims; but nobody mentions that the Pope has not given him the promised title of “Most Christian King of France.” He has ridden so far, and done so much, and won next to nothing.

  To his queen he shows a sulky resentment. This is their third loss and this time he seems more puzzled than grieved. He cannot understand why he, so young, so handsome, so beloved, and this year so triumphant, should not have a child for every year of his marriage, like the Plantagenet king Edward. By this accounting he should have four children by now. So why is his nursery empty?

  The boy who had everything that a prince might want, the young man who came to his throne and his bride in the same year, acclaimed by his people, cannot understand that something should go so wrong for him. I watch him and see him puzzling over disappointment, as a new and disagreeable experience. I see him seeking out the men who were with him in France to relive their triumphs, as it to assure himself that he is a man, the equal of any, superior to all; and then again and again, his glance goes to the queen as if he cannot understand how she, of the whole world, will not give him what he wants.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1514

  The court can think of nothing but when they can go to war against France again. Thomas Howard’s triumph against the Scots is not forgotten—he is rewarded with the restoration of his dukedom of Norfolk. I see him coming towards us, with his dogged limp, as the queen and I and her ladies are walking beside the river one icy spring afternoon and he smiles at me and bows low to her.

  “It seems I too am restored,” he says bluntly, falling in beside me. “I am myself again.” He is no courtier, the old soldier, but he is a good friend and the most loyal subject in the kingdom. He was a henchman of my uncle King Edward, and a faithful commander for my uncle King Richard. When he asked for pa
rdon from Henry Tudor, he explained that he had done no wrong but served the king. Whoever sits on the throne has Howard’s loyalty; he is as uncomplicated as a mastiff.

  “He has made you duke again?” I guess. I glance towards his wife, Agnes. “And my lady will be a duchess?”

  He bows. “Yes, Countess,” he says with a grin. “We all have our coronets back.”

  Agnes Howard beams at me.

  “I congratulate you both,” I say. “This is a great honor.” It is true. This raises Thomas Howard to be one of the greatest men in the kingdom. Dukes are inferior only to the king himself; only Buckingham—a duke with royal blood—is greater than Norfolk. But the new duke has gossip for me that takes the shine off his triumph. He catches my arm and takes a halting step beside me. “You’ll have heard that he’s going to ennoble Charles Brandon too?”

  “No!” I am genuinely scandalized. The man has done nothing but seduce women and amuse the king. Half the girls of the court are in love with him, including the king’s youngest sister, Princess Mary, though he is nothing more than a handsome rogue. “Why? What has he ever done to earn it?”

  The old man’s eyes narrow. “Thomas Wolsey,” he says shortly.

  “Why would he favor Brandon?”

  “It’s not that he loves Charles Brandon so much, but he wants a power to set against that of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. He wants a friend in power to help pull the great duke down.”