The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  “I am glad to meet, your ladyship, for you are doing God’s work, guarding the heir to England who will be queen,” she says simply with a soft country accent.

  “I am guardian to the Princess Mary,” I say carefully.

  She steps towards me into the candlelight. She is dressed in the robes of the Benedictine Order, an undyed wool gown of soft cream tied at the waist with a soft leather belt. A scapular of plain gray wool over the robe falls to the ground at front and back, and her hair is completely covered by a wimple and veil that shade her tanned face and her brown, honest eyes. She looks like an ordinary country girl, not like a prophetess.

  “I am commanded by the Mother of Heaven to tell you that Princess Mary will come to her throne. No matter what happens, you must assure her that this will come to pass.”

  “How do you know this?”

  She smiles as if she knows that I have dozens of young women who look just like her working for me on the land, in the dairies or in the laundries of my many houses.

  “I was an ordinary girl,” she says. “Just as I appear to you. An ordinary girl like Martha in the sacred story. But God in His wisdom called on me. I fell into a deep sleep and spoke of things that I couldn’t remember when I woke. One time I was speaking in tongues for nine days, without food or drink, like one asleep but awake in heaven.”

  “Then I could hear my voice and understand what I was saying, and knew it to be true. My master took me to the priest and he called great men to see me. They examined me, my master and my priest, and the Archbishop Warham, and they proved that I was speaking the word of God. God commands me to speak with many great men and women, and nobody has disproved me, and everything that I have said has always come true.”

  “Tell her ladyship about your predictions,” Geoffrey urges.

  She smiles at him, and I see why people are following her in their thousands, why people listen to her. She has a smile of sweetness, but immense confidence. To see that smile is to believe her.

  “I told Cardinal Wolsey to his face that if he helped the king to leave his wife, if he supported the king’s proposal to marry Mistress Anne Boleyn, then he would be completely destroyed and die ill and alone.”

  Geoffrey nods. “And it happened.”

  “Alas for the cardinal, it did come to pass. He should have told the king he must cleave to his wife. I warned Archbishop Warham that if he did not speak out for the queen and her daughter the princess he would die ill and alone, and poor man, poor sinner, he too has gone from us, just as I foresaw. I warned Lord Thomas More that he must take his courage and speak to the king, tell him that he must live with his wife the queen and put his daughter the princess on the throne. I warned Thomas More what would happen if he did not speak out, and that has yet to come.” She looks quite stricken.

  “Why, what will happen to Thomas More?” I ask very quietly.

  She looks at me and her brown eyes are dark with sorrow as if sentence has been passed. “God save his soul,” she says. “I will pray for him too. Poor man, poor sinner. And I spoke to your son Reginald, and told him that if he was brave, braver than anyone else has been, his courage would be rewarded and he would come to be where he was born to be.”

  I take her arm and lead her away from my two sons. “And where is that?” I whisper.

  “He will rise through the Church and they will call him Pope. He will be the next Holy Father and he will see Princess Mary on the throne of England and the true religion as the only religion of England once again.”

  I can’t deny it, this is what I have thought and prayed for. “Do you know this for a certainty?”

  She meets my eyes with such a steady confidence that I have to believe her. “I’ve been honored with visions. God has honored me with sight of the future. I swear to you that I have seen all this come to pass.”

  I cannot help but believe her. “And how shall the princess come to her own?”

  “With your help,” she says quietly. “You were appointed by the king himself to guard and support her. You must do that. Never leave her. You must prepare her to take the throne, for, believe me, if the king does not return to his wife, he will not reign for long.”

  “I can’t hear such things,” I say flatly.

  “I am not telling them to you,” she says. “I am speaking the words of my vision, and you can listen or not as you wish. God has told me to speak, aloud; that is enough for me.”

  She pauses. “I say nothing to you that I have not said to the king himself,” she reminds me. “They took me to him so that he might know what my visions were. He argued with me, he told me that I was wrong; but he did not order me to be silent. I shall speak, and whoever wants to learn may listen. Those who want to stay in the darkness, worming through the earth like the Moldwarp, can do so. God told me, and I told the king that if he leaves his wife, the queen, and pretends to marry any woman, then he will not live not one day, no, not one hour after his false wedding.”

  She nods at my aghast face. “I said those words to the king himself, and he thanked me for my advice and sent me home. I am allowed to speak such things, for they are the words of God.”

  “But the king is not turned from his path,” I point out. “He may have listened, but he did not come back to us.”

  She shrugs. “He must do as he thinks fit. But I have warned him of the consequences. The day will come, and when that day comes, you must be ready, the princess must be ready, and if her throne is not offered to her, then she will have to take it.” Her eyelids flutter, and for a moment I can see only the whites of her eyes as if she is about to faint. “She will have to ride her horse at the head of her men, she will have to fortify her house. She will come into London on a white horse and the people will cheer her.” She blinks, and her face loses its entranced dreamy look. “And your son”—she nods her head to Montague, waiting at the back of the chapel—“he will be at her side.”

  “As her commander?”

  She smiles at me. “As king consort.” Her words drop into the hushed silence of the chapel. “He is the white rose, he carries royal blood, he is the kinsman of every duke in the kingdom, he is the first among equals, he will marry her and they will be crowned together.”

  I am stunned. I turn from her, and Montague is at my side at once. “Take her away,” I say. “She says too much. She speaks dangerous truths.”

  She smiles, quite unperturbed. “Don’t speak of my sons,” I order her. “Don’t speak of us.”

  She bows her head; but she does not promise.

  “I’ll take her back to Syon,” Geoffrey volunteers. “They think much of her at the abbey. They are studying with her, old documents, legends. And hundreds of people come to the abbey doors to ask her advice. She tells them what is true. They speak of prophecies and curses.”

  “Well, we don’t,” I say flatly. “We don’t ever speak of such things. Ever.”

  RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1532

  It is a hard morning when I come back from London and tell the princess that her father is going to a great council in France in October and taking his court; but not her.

  “I am to follow later?” she asks hopefully.

  “No,” I say. “No, you are not. And your mother, the queen, is not attending either.”

  “My father is taking only his court?”

  “Mostly noblemen,” I temporize.

  “Is the Lady going?”

  I nod.

  “But who will meet her? Not the French queen?”

  “No,” I say awkwardly. “The queen won’t, because she’s kinswoman to your mother. And the king’s sister will not either. So our king will have to meet with the French king alone, and Mistress Boleyn will stay in our fort of Calais and not even enter into France.”

  She looks puzzled by this complicated arrangement, as indeed anyone would be. “And my father’s companions?”

  “The usual court,” I say uncomfortably. Then I have to tell the truth to her pale, hurt fac
e. “He’s taking Richmond.”

  “He is taking Bessie Blount’s boy to France but not me?”

  Grimly, I nod. “And the Duke of Richmond is to stay in France for a visit.”

  “Who will he visit?”

  It is the key question. He should visit the French king’s mistress. He should be put in a household with noble bastards. He should be paired, like to like, just as we all send our boys to serve as squires to our cousins and friends, so that they can learn their place in a household the match of their own. By all the rules of courtesy Richmond should go to a household that is the match of his own, a noble bastard’s house.

  “He is going into the king’s household,” I say through gritted teeth. “And the King of France’s son will come and stay at our court.”

  I would not have thought it possible for her face to go any whiter, and her hand creeps to her belly, as if there is a sudden twist in her gut. “He goes as a prince then,” she says quietly. “He travels with my father as a prince of England, he stays with the French king as an acknowledged heir; but I am left at home.”

  There is nothing to say. She looks at me as if she hopes I will contradict her. “My own father wants to make me into a nobody, as if I had never been born to him. Or never lived.”

  We are silent after this conversation. We are silent when the furrier from London brings Mary her winter cloak and tells us that the king sent to the queen demanding her jewels for Lady Anne to wear in Calais. The queen first refused to give them up, then explained that they were Spanish jewels, then claimed that they were her own jewels given to her by her loving husband, and not part of the royal treasury; and then, finally defeated, she sent them to the king to show her obedience to his will.

  “Does he want mine?” Mary asks me bitterly. “I have a rosary which was a christening gift; I have the gold chain he gave me last Christmas.”

  “If he asks, we will send them,” I say levelly, conscious of the listening servants. “He is the King of England. Everything is his.”

  As the furrier leaves, discouraged by the bleak response to the story of the jewels, he tells me that the Lady did not sweep the board, for she sent her chamberlain to get the queen’s barge, and he stole it away from its moorings, and had the beautiful carved pomegranates burned off it, and Anne’s crest of the falcon imposed in its place. But apparently that was a step too far for the king. He complained that her chamberlain should never have done such a thing, that Katherine’s barge was her own possession, that it should not have been taken from her, and the Boleyn woman was forced to apologize.

  “So what does he want?” the furrier demands of me, as if I have an answer. “What does he want, in God’s name? How is it well and good to take the old lady’s jewels but not her barge?”

  “You don’t call her the old lady in my house,” I snap at him. “She’s the Queen of England, and she always will be.”

  RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, AUTUMN 1532

  Neither Montague nor Geoffrey writes me so much as one private note from France. I get a cheerful unsealed letter from Montague talking about the magnificent clothes and the hospitality and the success of the talks. They all swear to one another that they will mount a joint crusade against the Turk, they are the best of friends, they are on their way home.

  It is not until Montague comes to Richmond Palace to pay his respects to the princess that he can tell me on their way back from France they stopped for the night at Canterbury, and Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, walked through crowds of thousands of people and through the guards to the garden where the king was strolling with Anne Boleyn.

  “She warned him,” Montague says to me gleefully. We are standing in an oriel window in the princess’s rooms. The room is unusually quiet; the princess’s ladies are getting ready for dinner, the princess is in her dressing room with her maids choosing her jewels. “She stood in front of him and then went down on her knees, very respectful, and warned him for his own good.”

  “What did she say?”

  The little windowpanes reflect our faces. I turn away in case someone outside in the darkness is looking in.

  “She told him that if he put the queen to one side and married the Boleyn woman there would be plagues and the Sweat would destroy us all. She said that he would not live for more than seven months after the wedding and it would be the destruction of the country.”

  “My God, what did he say?”

  “He was afraid.” Montague’s voice is so quiet that I can hardly hear him. “He was very afraid. I have never seen him like that before. He said: ‘Seven months? Why would you say seven months?’ and he looked at Anne Boleyn as if he would ask her something. She stopped him with one glance, and then the Maid was taken away. But it meant something terrible to the king. He said ‘Seven months’ as they took her away.”

  I feel sick. I see the panes of glass before me sway and then recede as if I am about to faint.

  “Lady Mother, are you all right?” Montague demands. I feel him get hold of me and seat me in a chair, while someone opens the window and the cold air blows into the room and into my face and I gasp as if I cannot breathe.

  “I swear that she’s told him she’s with child,” I whisper to Montague. I could weep at the thought of it. “The Boleyn whore. She must have lain with him when he made her a marquess and promised him a boy—seven months from now. That’s what the date means to the king. That’s why he was so shocked by the words seven months. He’s heard them from her. He thinks his child will be born in seven months, and now the Maid has told him he will die at the birth. That’s why he’s afraid. He thinks he’s cursed and that he and his heir will die.”

  “The Maid speaks of a curse,” Montague says, rubbing my icy hands in his big palms. “She says that you know of a curse.”

  I turn my head away from his anxious face.

  “Do you, Mother?”

  “No.”

  We don’t speak privately again until after dinner, when the princess complains of weariness and a pain in her belly. I send her to bed early and take a glass of warm spiced ale to her bedside. She is praying before her crucifix, but she gets up and slides between the sheets that I hold open for her. “Go and gossip with Montague,” she says, smiling. “I know he is waiting for you.”

  “I’ll tell you everything that is entertaining in the morning,” I promise her, and she smiles as if she too can pretend that news of her father and his mistress triumphant in France could possibly be amusing.

  He is waiting for me in my privy chamber, and I order wine and sweetmeats before sending everyone away. He gets up and listens at the door and then he goes down the little stair to the stable yard. I hear the outer door click and then he comes into the room with Geoffrey and I lock the door behind them.

  Geoffrey comes to me and kneels at my feet, his face bright with excitement. “I do hope you’re not enjoying this too much,” I say dryly. “It’s not a game.”

  “It’s the greatest game in the world,” he says. “For the highest stakes there are. I have just been with the queen. I went to her the moment we landed, to tell her the news.” He draws a letter from his shirt. “I have this from her to the princess.”

  I take it and slip it down the top of my gown. “Is she well?”

  He shakes his head, his excitement draining away. “Very sorrowful. And I had no joy to bring her. The king has forged an alliance with the French king, and we think they’ll propose an agreement to the Holy Father: Thomas Cranmer to be made archbishop, and given the power to hear the divorce in England. So the king gets his divorce. In return, he calls off the ruin of the Church, and the monasteries can keep their fortunes and send their fees to Rome. Henry must forgot his claim to be head of the Church, that will be all forgotten.”

  “A massive bribe,” Montague says with distaste. “The Church wins its safety by abandoning the queen.”

  “Would the Pope allow Cranmer to put the king’s marriage on trial?”

  “Unless Re
ginald can change his mind before the King of France gets there,” Geoffrey says. “Our brother is working with Spain, he is working with the queen’s lawyers. He completely persuaded the scholars at the Sorbonne. He says he thinks he can do it. He has the law of the Church on his side, and the Spanish and God.”

  “Henry will insist on a divorce whatever the scholars say, if the Lady is with child,” Montague points out. “And everyone thinks he’s married her already, without waiting for the Pope’s license. Why else would she give herself now, after holding out so long?”

  “A haystack wedding,” Geoffrey says scornfully. “A secret wedding. The queen says that she will never regard such a marriage and none of us is to recognize it either.”

  I take this terrible news in silence. Then I ask: “What else does Reginald say? And how does he look?”

  “He’s well,” Geoffrey says. “Nothing wrong with him, don’t worry about him, going between Rome and Paris and Padua, dining with the best, everyone agreeing with him. He’s at the very heart of all of this, and everyone wants his opinion. He’s very influential, very powerful. He’s the one that the Holy Father listens to.”

  “And what does he advise us?” I ask. “When you told him that we are ready to rise?”

  Geoffrey nods, suddenly sobering. “He says that Emperor Charles will invade to defend his aunt and we must rise and march with him. The emperor has sworn that if Henry publicly marries the Boleyn woman and sets the princess aside, then he will invade to defend the rights of his aunt and his cousin.”

  “Reginald says it is certain to come to war,” Montague says quietly.

  “Who is with us?” I ask. I have a sense of everything rushing towards us too quickly, as if, like the prophetess Elizabeth Barton, I can see a future and it is suddenly here and now.