The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  “I’ll wait till dinner,” she decides.

  I sit with the queen until the king comes with his friends to escort her and her ladies to dinner. I plan to greet Arthur with a smile, whisper a warning, and meet with him later. But when the double doors are thrown open and Henry strides into the room, handsome, laughing, and makes his bow to the queen, Arthur does not stroll in behind him.

  I curtsey, a smile pinned on my face like a mask, a cold sweat starting to trickle on my spine. They are all there: Charles Brandon, William Compton, Francis Bryan, Thomas Wyatt. Everyone whom I can think of is there, none of them missing, all laughing at some private joke that they swear they will tell when it is composed into a sonnet; but no Arthur Pole. My son is missing, and no one remarks on it.

  One of the maids-in-waiting drops a book that she has been reading, and bends to pick it up. She makes a low curtsey to the king, the book clasped to her bodice, emphasizing her love of study and drawing the eye to the warm, inviting skin of her neck and breasts. I see dark hair shining under the French hood and the flash of a gold initial B with three creamy pearl drops tied low at her neck; but the king bows over his wife’s hand and does not notice her at all.

  The ladies flutter into their order of precedence behind the queen. I see Mary Boleyn jostling, elbows to ribs with Jane Parker, but as I smile at them, though I look everywhere, I do not see my son Arthur, and I do not know where he is tonight.

  Thomas More is waiting at the entrance to the dining room as the ladies and gentlemen of the court take their places, his fleshy face downturned, deep in thought. He will be waiting for his master the cardinal; he may be working on the case against my sons.

  “Councillor More,” I say politely.

  He turns with a start and sees me.

  “I am sorry to interrupt your meditations. One of my sons is a scholar and I have seen him deep in thought, just like you. He scolds me if I interrupt him.”

  He smiles. “I would hesitate before I interrupted Reginald’s thinking, but you are safe with me. I was daydreaming. But still, he should not scold his mother. A child’s obedience is a holy duty.” He smiles, as if he is amused at himself. “I keep telling my children this. It is true, of course, but my daughter accuses me of special pleading.”

  “Do you have any news of my other sons, Montague and Arthur?” I ask quietly. “I don’t see Arthur here tonight.”

  And then the worst thing happens. He does not look at me with contempt for raising traitors, he does not look at me with anger for trying to plead their case to him. He looks at me with great sympathy, as you would look at a woman who is bereaved. The steady gaze of his dark eyes tells me that he thinks of me as a woman who has lost her sons, whose children are already dead.

  “I was sorry to learn that Lord Montague is under arrest,” he says quietly.

  “And Arthur? You don’t speak of Arthur?”

  “Banished from court.”

  “Where is he?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know where he has gone. I would tell you if I knew, your ladyship.”

  “Sir Thomas, my son Montague is innocent of anything. Can you speak for him? Can you tell the cardinal that he has done nothing?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “Sir Thomas, the king must not be advised that the law is his for the taking. Your master is a great thinker, a wise man, he must know that kings should live under the law, like all their people.”

  He nods as if he agrees with me. “All kings should live under the law; but this king is learning his power. He is learning that he can make the law. And you cannot tell a grown man to show childlike obedience. Once he is a man, can he be a child again? Who will order a king when he is no longer a prince? Who will command a lion when he has learned he is no longer a cub?”

  The cardinal sits at the king’s left hand at dinner, the queen on the other side. Nobody watching the king’s intent conversation with the cardinal and his occasional pleasantry to the queen could doubt who is his principal advisor now. The men talk head to head as if they are alone.

  I am seated with the ladies of the queen’s household. They chatter among themselves, their gaze always flicking over the king’s friends, their voices high and affected, their heads turning this way and that, always trying to exchange a glance with the king, to catch his eye. I want to grab hold of any one of them, shake her for her stupidity, say to her: “This is not an ordinary night. If you have influence with the king, you must use it for my boys. If you dance with him, you must tell him that my boys are innocent of anything. If you have been such a foolish slut as to sleep with him, then you must whisper to him in bed to spare my boys.”

  I grit my teeth and swallow my anxiety. I look up at the king and when he glances towards me, I nod my head slightly, like a princess, and I smile at him warmly, full of confidence. His gaze rests on me, indifferently, for a moment, and then he looks away.

  After dinner there is dancing, and a play. Someone has composed a masque and then there is a joust of poetry, with people turning lines one after another. It is a cultured, amusing evening, and usually I would frame a line or a rhyme to play my part in the court; but this evening I cannot muster my wits. I sit among it all as if I am mute. I am deafened by my fear. It feels like a lifetime before the queen smiles at the king, rises from her chair, curtseys formally to him, kisses him good night, and leaves the room, her ladies trailing behind her, one or two of them clearly leaving as a matter of form, but planning to sneak back later.

  In her rooms, the queen sends everyone away but Mary Boleyn and Maud Parr, who take off her headdress and her rings. A maid unlaces her gown and sleeves and stomacher, another helps her into her embroidered linen night shift, and she pulls a warm robe around her shoulders and waves them away. She looks tired. I remember that she is no longer the girl who came to England to marry a prince. She is thirty-five years old, and the fairy-tale prince who rescued her from poverty and hardship is now a hardened man. She motions me to sit on a chair beside her at the fireside. We put up our feet on the fender like we used to do at Ludlow, and I wait for her to speak.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me,” she says slowly. “You know, I’ve never seen him like this before.”

  “Do you know where my son Arthur is?”

  “Sent from court.”

  “Not under arrest?”

  “No.”

  I nod. Please God he has gone to his home at Broadhurst, or to mine at Bisham. “And Montague?”

  “It was as if Henry’s father was speaking all over again,” she says wonderingly. “It was as if his father was speaking through him, as if this Henry has not had years of love and honor and safety. I think he is becoming afraid, Margaret. He is afraid just like his father was always afraid.”

  I keep my gaze on the red embers in the grate. I have lived under the rule of a fearful king and I know that fear is a contagion, just like the Sweat. A frightened king first fears his enemies and then his friends and then he cannot tell one from the other until every man and woman in the kingdom fears that they can trust no one. If the Tudors are returning to terror, then the years of happiness for me and for my family are over.

  “He cannot fear Arthur,” I say flatly. “He cannot doubt Montague.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s the duke,” she says. “Wolsey has convinced him that the Duke of Buckingham has foreseen our death, the end of our line. The duke’s confessor has broken his vow of silence and told of terrible things, predictions and manuscripts, prophesying and stars in the sky. He says that your cousin the duke spoke of the death of the Tudors and a curse laid on the line.”

  “Not to me,” I say. “Never. And not to my sons.”

  Gently, she puts her hand over mine. “The duke spoke with the Carthusians at Sheen. Everyone knows how close your family is to them. Reginald was brought up by them! And the duke is close to Montague, and he is your daughter’s father-in-law. I know that neither you nor yours would speak treason. I know. I told Henry so.
And I will talk to him again. He will recover his courage, I know that he will. He will come to his senses. But the cardinal has told him of an old curse on the Tudors which said that the Prince of Wales would die—as Arthur died—and the prince who came after him would die, and the line would end with a girl, a virgin girl, and there would be no more Tudors and it would, after all this, all have been for nothing.”

  I hear a version of the curse that my cousin Elizabeth the queen once made. I wonder if this is indeed the punishment laid on the murderers of the boys in the Tower. The Tudors killed my brother for sure, killed the pretender for sure, perhaps killed the princes of York. Shall they lose their sons and heirs as we did?

  “Do you know of this curse?” my friend the queen asks me.

  “No,” I lie.

  I send a warning to Arthur by four of my most trusted guardsmen, to each of my three houses, and to Arthur’s wife, Jane, at Broadhurst. I tell him, wherever he is now, to go to Bisham and wait there with his brother Geoffrey. If he thinks there is any danger at all, if any Tudor soldiers arrive in the neighborhood, he is to send Geoffrey to Reginald in Padua and then escape himself. I say that I am doing everything I can for Montague. I say that Ursula is safe with me in London.

  I write to my son Reginald. I tell him that suspicion has fallen on our family and that it is vital he tell everyone that we have never questioned the rule of the king and never doubted that he and the queen will have a son and heir who will in time become Prince of Wales. I add that he must not come home, even if he is invited by the king and offered safe conduct. Whatever is going to happen, it is safer for him to stay in Padua. He can be a refuge for my boy Geoffrey if nothing else.

  I go to my bedroom and I pray before the little crucifix. The five wounds of the crucified Lord show brightly on His pale painted skin. I try to think of His sufferings, but all I can think is that Montague is in the Tower, Ursula’s husband and father-in-law imprisoned with him, my cousin George Neville in another cell, Arthur exiled from court, and my boy Geoffrey at Bisham. He will be frightened, not knowing what he should do.

  There is a tap on my bedroom door in the cool grayness of a spring dawn. It is the queen, returning to her room after Lauds. She is terribly pale. “You are dismissed as Mary’s governess,” she says shortly. “The king told me as we prayed together. He would listen to no argument. He’s gone hunting with the Boleyns.”

  “Dismissed?” I repeat, as if I don’t understand the word. “Dismissed from Princess Mary?”

  I cannot possibly leave her; she is only five years old. I love her. I guided her first steps, I trimmed her curls. I am teaching her to read Latin, English, Spanish, and French. I kept her steady on her first pony and taught her to hold the reins, I sing with her and I sit beside her when her music master comes to teach her to play the virginal. She loves me, she expects me to be with her. She will be lost without me. Her father cannot, surely cannot, say that I am not to be with her?

  The queen nods. “He would not listen to me,” she says wonderingly. “It was as if he could not hear me.”

  I should have thought of this, but I did not. I never thought that he would take me from the care of his daughter. Katherine looks blankly at me.

  “She is accustomed to me,” I say weakly. “Who will take my place?”

  The queen shakes her head. She looks frozen with distress.

  “I’d better go then,” I say uncertainly. “Am I to leave court?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “I’ll go to Bisham, I’ll live quietly in the country.”

  She nods, her lips trembling. Without another word we move into each other’s arms and we cling to each other. “You will come back,” she promises in a whisper. “I will see you soon. I will not allow us to be parted. I will get you back.”

  “God bless and keep you,” I say, my voice choked up with tears. “And give my love to Princess Mary. Tell her I will pray for her and see her again. Tell her to practice her music every day. I will be her governess again, I know it. Tell her I will come back. This will all come right. It has to come right. It will be all right.”

  It does not come right. The king executes my kinsman Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, for treason, and my friend and kinsman old Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, pronounces the sentence of death with the tears pouring down his face. Right up to the last moment we all expect Henry to grant a pardon, since the duke is his kinsman and was his constant companion; but he does not. He sends Edward Stafford to his death on the scaffold as if he were an enemy and not the greatest duke in the realm, the king’s grandmother’s favorite, and his own greatest courtier and supporter.

  I say nothing in his defense, I say nothing at all. So I too perhaps should be blamed for what we all see this year—the strange shadow that falls over our king. As he turns thirty he becomes harder in the eyes, harder of heart, as if the Tudor curse were not about heirs, but about a darkness that slowly creeps over him. When I pray for the soul of my cousin the Duke of Buckingham, I think that perhaps he was an accidental victim of this coldness where there once was warmth. Our golden prince Henry has always had a weakness: a hidden fear that he is not good enough. My kinsman, with his pride and his untouchable confidence, caught the king on the raw, and this is the terrible outcome.

  BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, 1521

  Our king is not angry for long. He is not like his father the tyrant. The duke is the only one of our family who pays the great price of his life. His son is attainted, he loses his fortune and his dukedom, but he is released. My son Montague is released, without charge. Henry does not pursue suspicion through the generations, he will not commute a death sentence into a fatal debt. He arrested my son, he banished us all from court in a moment of fear, fear of what we might be saying, or fear of who we are. But he does not pursue us, and once we are out of sight he returns to calmness, he is himself again. I have no doubt that the boy I loved in his childhood will summon me back to his side again. He will let me go back to his daughter.

  Once he was a golden prince that we thought could do no wrong. This was folly, too high a standard for any young man to reach. But still he is our Henry, he will come right. He is his mother’s son and she was the bravest, steadiest, most loving woman I have ever known. It is not possible that my cousin Queen Elizabeth could have borne and raised a boy who was anything less than loving and trustworthy. I don’t forget her. I believe that he will recover.

  BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, 1522

  Thinking this, I live quietly, almost invisibly, at my manor at Bisham, secure on my lands, contented with my fortune. I write to no one and I see only my sons. My cousin George Neville is back at his home at Birling Manor in Kent and he writes nothing to me but the occasional letter with the most anodyne of family news, not even sealing it in case a spy traces its passage and wants to see the contents. I reply that we have grieved at the loss of Ursula’s little boy, who died of a fever at less than a year, but that Montague’s wife has had a girl and we have named her Katherine for the queen.

  My older boys live quietly with their wives in their grand houses. Arthur is nearby with his wife, Jane, at his house at Broadhurst; Montague is only four miles away at Bockmer and we visit each other every month or so. My son Geoffrey I keep at home for these last precious years of his boyhood. I find I am treasuring him even more as he grows stronger and more handsome and reaches manhood. When we sit together in the evening, we never lower our voices; even when we are alone and the servants have left, we never say anything about the king, about the court, about the princess that I am not allowed to serve. If anyone is listening at the chimney, under the eaves, at the door, they hear nothing but the ordinary talk of a family. We never even agree upon this pact of silence. It is like an enchantment, like a fairy story, we have become mute as if by magic. A silence has fallen on us; we are so quiet that no one would bother to listen.

  Reginald is safe in Padua. Not only has he completely escaped the king’s ill will but he is in high
favor for the help he gave the king and Thomas More as they write a defense of the true faith against the Lutheran heresy. My son helps them with research into scholarly documents held at the library at Padua. I advise Reginald that he keep away from London, however much he, the king, and Thomas More agree on Bible texts. He can study just as well in Padua as in London, and the king likes having an English scholar working abroad. Reginald may want to come home, but I am not putting him at risk while there is any shadow over the reputation of our family. Reginald assures me that he has no interest in anything but his studies; yet the duke had no interest in anything but his fortune and his lands and now his wife is a widow and his son disinherited.

  Ursula writes to me from a new, modest home in Staffordshire. When I made her marriage, I predicted that she would be the wealthiest duchess in England. Never did I think that the great family of the Staffords could be all but ruined. Their title is taken from them, their wealth and their lands quietly absorbed by the royal treasury on the judicious advice of the cardinal. Her great marriage, her wonderful prospects were cut off on Tower Hill with the head of her father-in-law. Her husband does not become Duke of Buckingham, and she will never be a duchess. He is mere Lord Stafford with only half a dozen manors to his name and a yearly income in only hundreds of pounds. She is Lady Stafford and has to turn the panels of her gowns. His name is disgraced and all his fortune is forfeited to the king. She has to manage a small estate and try to make a profit from dry lands when she thought she would never see a plowshare again, and she has lost her little boy so there is no son to inherit the little that there is left.