The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  “I think he asks everyone. But he doesn’t listen to anyone, except perhaps the Bishop Wolsey. It’s natural that he should, my lord being so wise and knowing the will of God and everything.”

  “At any rate, don’t tell him that his marriage is invalid,” I say bluntly. “I would never forgive you, Bessie, if you said something like that. It would be wicked. It would be a lie. God would never forgive you for such a lie. And the queen would be hurt.”

  Fervently, she shakes her head and the pearls on her new headdress bob and shine in the candlelight. “I never would! I love the queen. But I can only tell the king what he wants to hear. You know that as well as I.”

  I go back into the confinement chamber and stay with Katherine through her labor until the pains come faster and faster and she hauls on a knotted cord and the midwives throw handfuls of pepper in her face to make her sneeze. She is gasping for breath, the tears pouring down her face, her eyes and nostrils burning with the harsh spice, as she screams in pain and with a rush of blood the baby is born. The midwife pounces on him, hauls him out like a wriggling fish, and cuts the cord. The rocker enfolds him in a pure linen cloth and then a blanket of wool, and holds him up for the queen to see. She is blinded with tears and choking with the pepper and with the pain. “Is it a boy?” she demands.

  “A boy!” they tell her, in a delighted chorus. “A boy! A live boy!”

  She reaches out to touch his little clenched fists, his kicking feet, though this time, she is afraid to hold him. But he is strong: red in the face, hollering, loud as his father, as self-important as a Tudor. She gives an amazed, delighted little laugh, and holds out her arms. “He is well?”

  “He is well,” they confirm. “Small, because he is early, but well.”

  She turns to me and gives me the great honor: “You shall tell the king,” she says.

  I find him in his rooms, playing cards with his friends Charles Brandon, William Compton, and my son Montague. I am announced just ahead of a scramble of courtiers who were hoping to gather the news from the maids at the doorway and get to him with the first tidings, and he knows at once why I have come to him. He leaps to his feet, his face bright with hope. I see once more the boy I knew, the boy who always hovered between boasting and fearfulness. I curtsey and my beam, as I rise up, tells him everything.

  “Your Grace, the queen has been brought to bed of a bonny boy,” I say simply. “You have a son, you have a prince.”

  He staggers, and puts his hand on Montague’s shoulder to steady himself. My own son supports his king and is the first to say: “God bless! Praise be!”

  Henry’s mouth is trembling, and I remember that despite his vanity he is only twenty-three, and his ostentation is a shield over his fear of failure. I see the tears in his eyes and realize he has been living under a terrible dread that his marriage was cursed, that he would never have a son, and that right now, as people outside the room cheer at the news and his comrades slap him on the back and call him a great man, a bull of a man, a stallion of a man, a man indeed, he is feeling the curse lifting from him.

  “I must pray, I must give thanks,” he stammers, as if he does not know what he is saying, he does not know what he should say. “Lady Margaret! I should give thanks, shouldn’t I? I should have a Mass sung at once? This is God’s blessing on me, isn’t it? Proof of His favor? I am blessed. I am blessed. Everyone can see that I am blessed. My house is blessed.”

  Courtiers crowd around him. I see Thomas Wolsey elbowing his way through the young men, and then sending a message for the cannons to fire and all the church bells in England to peal, and a thanksgiving Mass to be said in every church. They will light bonfires in the streets, they will serve free ale and roast meats, and the news will go out all around the kingdom that the king’s line is secure, that the queen has given him a son, that the Tudor dynasty will live forever.

  “She is well?” Henry asks me over the babble of comment and delighted congratulation. “The baby is strong?”

  “She is well,” I confirm. No need to tell him that she is torn, that she is bleeding terribly, that she is almost blinded by the spices they threw in her face and exhausted by the labor. Henry does not like to hear of illness; he has a horror of physical weakness. If he knew the queen was ripped and bleeding, he would never bring himself to her bed again.

  “The baby is lusty and strong.” I take a breath and I play my strongest card for the queen. “He looks just like you, sire. He has hair of Tudor red.”

  He gives a shout of joy and at once he is jumping round the room like a boy, pounding men on the back, embracing his friends, ebullient as a young tup in the meadow.

  “My son! My son!”

  “The Duke of Cornwall.” Thomas Wolsey reminds him of the title.

  Someone brings in a flask of wine and slops it into a dozen cups. “The Duke of Cornwall!” they bellow. “God bless him! God save the king and the Prince of Wales!”

  “And you will watch over the nursery?” Henry calls over his shoulder to me. “Dear Lady Margaret? You will care for and guard my son? You are the only woman in England I would trust to raise him.”

  I hesitate. I was to be Lady Governess to the first son, and I am afraid to undertake this again. But I have to consent. If I do not, it looks as if I doubt my abilities, it looks as if I doubt the health of the child whom they are putting into my keeping. All the time, every day of our lives, every minute of every day, we have to act as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing can go wrong, as if the Tudors are under the exceptional blessing of God.

  “You could not choose more tender care,” my son Montague says quickly as I hesitate. He gives me a look as if to remind me that I must respond, and promptly.

  “I am honored,” I say.

  The king himself presses a goblet of wine into my hand. “Dear Lady Margaret,” he says. “You will raise the next King of England.”

  And so it is me the nurse calls first, when she lifts the little baby from his golden enamelled crib and finds that he is blue and lifeless. They were in the room next door to the queen’s bedroom; the nursemaid was sitting beside the cradle, watching him, but she had thought that he was very quiet. She put her hand on his soft head and felt no pulse. She put her fingers down inside his lawn nightgown and found him still warm. But he was not breathing. He had just stopped breathing, as if some old curse had gently rested a cool hand over his little nose and mouth, and made an end to the line that killed the princes of York.

  I hold the lifeless body as the nurse weeps on her knees before me, crying over and over again that she never took her eyes off him, he made not a sound, there was no way of knowing that anything was wrong—and then I put him back into his ornate crib as if I hope that he will sleep well. Without knowing what to say, I walk through the adjoining door between the nursery and the confinement room where the queen has been washed and bandaged and dressed in her nightgown, ready for the night.

  The midwives are turning down the fresh sheets on the big bed, a couple of ladies-in-waiting are seated beside the fire, the queen herself is praying at the little altar at the corner of the room. I kneel beside her and she turns her face to me and sees my expression.

  “No,” she says simply.

  “I am so sorry.” For a terrible moment I think I am going to vomit, I am so sick to my belly and so filled with horror at what I have to say. “I am so sorry.”

  She is shaking her head, wordlessly, like an idiot at the fair. “No,” she says. “No.”

  “He is dead,” I say very quietly. “He died in his cradle while he was sleeping. Just a moment ago. I am so sorry.”

  She goes white and sways backwards. I give a shout of warning and one of her ladies, Bessie Blount, catches her as she faints. We pick her up and lie her on the bed and the midwife comes to pour a bitter oil onto a cloth and clamps it to her nose and mouth. She chokes and opens her eyes and sees my face. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me that was a terrible dream.”

  “It’s true,”
I say, and I can feel my own face is wet with tears. “It’s true. I am so sorry. The baby is dead.”

  On the other side of the bed I see Bessie’s aghast face as if her worst fears have been confirmed, as she slides to her knees and bows her head in prayer.

  The queen lies in her glorious bed of state for days. She should be dressed in her best, reclining on golden pillows, receiving gifts from godparents and foreign ambassadors. But nobody comes, and in any case, she would not see them. She turns her face into her pillow and lies in silence.

  I am the only one who can go to her and take her cold hand and say her name. “Katherine,” I whisper as if I am her friend and not her subject. “Katherine.”

  For a moment I think she will stay mute, but she moves a little in the bed and looks at me over her hunched shoulder. Her face is etched with pain; she seems far older than her twenty-eight years, she is like a fallen statue of sorrow. “What?”

  I pray for a word of encouragement to come to me, for a message of Christian patience, for a reminder that she has to be brave as her mother, that she is a queen and has a destiny laid on her. I think perhaps I might pray with her, or cry with her. But her face like white Carrara marble is forbidding, as she waits for me to find something to say as she lies there, curled up, clenched around her grief.

  In the silence I understand that there are no words to comfort her. Nothing can be said that would bring her comfort. But still, there is something that I have to tell her. “You’ve got to get up,” is all I say. “You can’t stay here. You’ve got to get up.”

  Everyone wonders, but no one speaks. Or perhaps: everyone wonders, but no one speaks just yet. Katherine is churched and returns to the court and Henry greets her with a sort of coolness that is new to him. He was raised to be a boisterous boy, but she is teaching him sorrow. He was a boy confident of his own good luck, demanding of good fortune, but Katherine is teaching him doubt. Man and boy he has striven to be the best at everything he does; he has delighted in his own strength, ability, and looks. He cannot bear failure in himself or in anyone near him. But now he has been disappointed by her, he has been disappointed by her dead sons, he has even been disappointed by God.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1514

  Bessie Blount goes everywhere with the king, all but hand in hand as if they were a young husband and his pretty wife. The Christmas festivities take place with a silent queen presiding over it all like one of the statues that the court delightedly shapes out of the thick snow in the white gardens. She is a perfect version of the queen, in all her finery, but cold as ice. Henry talks to his friends seated on his left at his dinner, and often he steps down from the dais and strolls around the hall with his easy, cheerful manner, speaking to one man and another, spreading the royal favor and greeted at every table with laughter and jokes. He is like the most handsome actor in a masque, drawing admiration everywhere he goes, playing the part of a handsome man, beloved by everyone.

  Katherine sits still on her throne, eating almost nothing, showing an empty smile that fails to illuminate her hollow eyes. After dinner they sit side by side on their thrones to watch the entertainments and Bessie stands beside the king and leans in to hear his whispered comments, and laughs at everything he says, every single thing that he says, in a ripple of girlish laughter as meaningless as birdsong.

  The court puts on a Christmas pageant and Bessie is dressed as a lady of Savoy in a blue gown with her face masked. In the dance, she and her companions are rescued by four brave masked knights, and they all dance together, the tall redheaded masked man dancing with the exquisitely graceful young woman. The queen thanks them for a delightful entertainment, and smiles and gives out little gifts, as if there is nothing that can give her more pleasure than seeing her husband dance with his mistress to the acclaim of a drunken court.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1515

  My son Arthur and the young Princess Mary do not stay long in France. Only two months after the wedding of the most beautiful princess in Christendom to the oldest king, Louis of France is dead and Princess Mary is now Dowager Queen. The English wedding party have to stay in France until they are certain that she is not with child—the scandalmongers say gleefully that she cannot be pregnant since the old king killed himself in the attempt—and then they all have to wait a few weeks longer; for the little madam has married Charles Brandon sent by the king to fetch her home, and they have to beg the king’s pardon before they can return.

  She was always a self-willed child, as passionate and headstrong as her brother. When I hear that she has married for love, against the wishes of the king, I smile, thinking of her mother, my cousin Elizabeth, who also fell in love and swore she would marry her choice, and of her mother who married in secret for love, and of her mother before her who was a royal duchess and married her dead husband’s squire and caused a scandal. Princess Mary comes from three generations of women who believed in pleasing themselves.

  Henry has been outwitted by the pair of them or perhaps, more truly, the two men were outwitted by the young woman. Henry knew that she was head over heels in love with Charles Brandon and made his friend promise that he would escort her safely home as a widow and not dream of speaking to her of love—but as soon as Charles arrived from England, she wept and swore that she would marry him or go into a convent. Between hot tears and temper she completely seduced him, and made him marry her.

  She has wrong-footed her brother too, as he cannot blame her for holding him to his word. When he insisted on the French marriage, she agreed that she would marry his choice for her first husband if she might choose her second—and now she has done so. Henry is furious with her, and with his dear friend Charles, and there are many who say that Brandon is guilty of high treason for marrying a princess without permission.

  “He should be beheaded,” old Thomas Howard says bluntly. “Better men than he, far better, have gone to the block for far less. It’s treason, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think this is a king for executions,” I say. “And thank God for it.”

  It is true. Unlike his father, Henry is a king neither for the Tower nor the block, and he craves the love and admiration of his court. Quickly, he forgives both his beloved young sister and his oldest friend, as they return to court in triumph and plan a second, public wedding in May.

  It is one of the few happy events this spring, when the king and the queen are united in their affection for his naughty pretty sister, and their joy in her return to court. Apart from this, they are cool with each other and Princess Mary, the Dowager Queen of France, finds the court much changed.

  “Does he not take the queen’s advice at all?” she asks me. “He never comes to her rooms like he used to do.”

  I shake my head and nip off a thread from my sewing.

  “Does he listen to no one but Thomas Wolsey now?” she persists.

  “No one but Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York,” I say. “And the archbishop, in his wisdom, favors the French.”

  The archbishop has taken the place of the queen in Henry’s private councils; he has taken the place of all the other advisors in the council chambers. He works so hard that he can gobble up the places and fees of a dozen men, and while he goes between offices and treasure rooms Henry is free to play at falling in love and the queen can do nothing but smile and pretend that she does not mind.

  The king still visits Katherine’s bed from the continuing need for an heir, but he takes his pleasure elsewhere. Katherine’s praise means less to him now that she is no longer the beautiful widow of his older brother, the woman he was forbidden to marry. He thinks less of her father since he failed against France; he thinks less of her for not giving him an heir. They are still side by side at every dinner, of course she is honored as Queen of England at every great event, but he is Sir Loyal Heart no longer, and everyone can see it now, not just the alert ladies of the queen’s rooms and their opportunistic families.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, MA
Y 1515

  I don’t like Charles Brandon; even on his official public wedding day to our Princess Mary I cannot warm to him, but that is the fault of my caution. When I see a man whom everyone adores, whose ascent to the highest places in the land has been like an upward flying spark, I always wonder what he will do with all this heat and light, and whose thatch will he burn down?

  “But at least this is a marriage for love for our Princess Mary,” the queen says to me as I stand behind her, holding her coronet as the lady-in-waiting pins her hair. It is still the rich auburn that Prince Arthur loved with just a few threads of gray.

  I smile at her. “On her side certainly there is love; but you are making the assumption that Charles Brandon has a heart.”

  She shakes her head at me in smiling reproof, and the lady snatches at a falling pin. “Oh, sorry,” the queen says, and sits still. “I see that you are not in favor of love, Lady Margaret,” she smiles. “You have become a cold old widow.”

  “I am indeed,” I say cheerfully. “But the princess—I mean the Dowager Queen of France—has enough heart for both of them.”

  “Well, I for one am glad to have her back at court,” Katherine says. “And I’m glad that the king has forgiven his friend. They’re such a handsome couple.” She slides a sidewise smile at me. Katherine is never a fool. “The Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, was in favor of the match?” she confirms.

  “He was indeed,” I say. “And I am sure Charles Brandon is grateful for his support. And I am sure it will cost him.”

  She nods in silence. The king is circled by favorites like wasps around a tray of jam tarts, set on a windowsill to cool. They have to outdo each other in buzzing compliments. Wolsey and Brandon are united against my cousin the Duke of Buckingham; but every lord in the land is jealous of Wolsey.