The King's Curse

by Philippa Gregory

  I smile, but I take care to say nothing.

  “And is your son Reginald coming soon with a holy army?” he says in the lowest whisper. “It would make the commons glad to know it.”

  “Soon,” I say, and he bows and leaves.

  We have eaten the venison, and made pasties, and made soup from the bones, and given the bones to the hounds before we get news from Doncaster where the lords, gentry, and commons of the North drew up in battle order against the king’s army, my two sons on the wrong side, biding their time, ready to cross over. Montague sends a messenger to me.

  The pilgrims brought their demands to Thomas Howard. He was lucky that they agreed to parlay; if they had fought he would have been destroyed. There must have been more than thirty thousand of them, and led by every gentleman and lord in Yorkshire. The king’s army is hungry and cold, the countryside around here being very poor and no man wishing us well. I have been given no money to pay my men, and the others are marching for even less than I have promised. The weather is bad too, and they say there is pestilence in the town.

  The pilgrims have won this war and now present their demands. They want the faith of our fathers to be restored, that the law should be restored, that the noble advisors to the king should be restored, and that Cromwell, Richard Riche, and the heretic bishops be banished. There is not a man in the king’s army, including Thomas Howard, who does not agree. Charles Brandon encourages them also. It’s what we’ve all been thinking since the king first turned against the queen and took Cromwell as his advisor. So Thomas Howard is to ride to the king with the pilgrims’ request for general pardon, and an agreement to restore the old ways.

  Lady Mother, I am so hopeful.

  Burn this.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1536

  I should be preparing Bisham Manor for Christmas, but I cannot settle to anything when I think of my two sons, the king’s army behind them and the pilgrims before them, waiting for the king’s agreement to the truce. In the end I take Montague’s children—Katherine, Winifred, and Harry—and go to London, hoping for news.

  I do not promise them the treat of attending a full coronation, but they know that the king has promised to crown his wife, and the ceremony should take place on All Hallows’ Day. My own belief is that he will not be able to afford a great coronation while he is sending men and arms north, and he will be furious and frightened all at once. He will not be able to stride out in confidence before a crowd, and let everyone admire him and his beautiful new wife. This rebellion has shaken him, and while he is like this, thrown back into his childhood fears that he is not good enough, he simply will not be able to plan a great ceremony.

  As soon as I have arrived and prayed in my chapel I go to my presence chamber, to meet with all the tenants and petitioners who want to see me, bid me a merry Christmas, make their requests, and pay their seasonal fines and rents. Among them is a man I recognize, a priest and friend of my exiled chaplain, John Helyar.

  “You can leave me,” I say to my grandson Harry.

  He looks up at me, his face bright and willing. “I can stay with you, Lady Grandmother, I can be your page. I’m not tired of standing.”

  “No,” I say. “But I could be here all day. You can go down to the stables and you can go out into the streets; you can have a look around.”

  He gives a little bow and shoots from the room like a loosed arrow, and only then do I nod to Helyar’s friend in greeting and indicate to my steward that he can step forward and speak with me.

  “Father Richard Langgrische of Havant,” he reminds me.

  “Of course,” I smile.

  “I have greetings from your son, Geoffrey. I have been with him in the king’s army in the North,” he says.

  “I am glad to hear of it,” I say clearly. “I am glad that my son is prospering in the king’s service. Is my son well?”

  “Both your sons are well,” he says. “And confident that these troubles will soon be over.”

  I nod. “You can dine in hall tonight, if you wish.”

  He bows. “I thank you.”

  Someone else steps forward with some complaint about the cost of ale in one of my tenant alehouses and the steward steps to my side and takes a note of the problem.

  “Get that man to my chamber before dinner,” I say quietly. “Make sure no one sees him.”

  He does not blink. He merely writes down the claim that the ale has been watered and that the jugs are not full measure and waves the next petitioner forward.

  Langgrische is waiting for me by the little fire in my bedroom, concealed like a secret lover. I can’t restrain a smile. It’s been a long time since there was a man waiting for me in my bedroom; I have been a widow now for thirty-two years.

  “What’s the news?” I sit in my chair at the fireside and he stands before me.

  Silently, he shows me a small piece of cloth, a token like a man might sew to his collar. It is the match of the badge that Tom Darcy gave me, the five wounds of Christ and a white rose above it. Silently, I touch it as if it were a relic of faith, and return it to him.

  “The pilgrims have dispersed most of their force, waiting for the king to agree to their terms. The king sent a dishonorable command to Tom Darcy, to meet with the pilgrim leader Robert Aske as if to talk in honor, kidnap him, and hand him over to Cromwell’s men.”

  “What did Tom say?”

  “He said that his coat should never have such a spot on it.”

  I nod. “That’s Tom. And my sons?”

  “Both well, both releasing men from their force to the pilgrim army every day, but both sworn to the king’s force and no one suspecting different. The king has asked for more details of the pilgrim demands and they have explained them.”

  “Do Montague and Geoffrey think that the king will grant the demands?”

  “He’ll have to,” the man said simply. “The pilgrims could overwhelm the royal army in a moment, they’re only waiting for an answer because they don’t want to make war on the king.”

  “How can they call themselves loyal subjects? In battle array? When they hang his servants?”

  “There have been remarkably few deaths,” he says. “Because hardly anyone disagrees with them.”

  “Thomas Legh? Well worth hanging, I agree.”

  He laughs. “They would have hanged him if they had caught him but he got away. He sent out his cook in his place like a coward, and they hanged him instead. The pilgrims don’t attack the lords or the king. They blame only his advisors. Cromwell must be banished, the destruction of monasteries reversed, and you and your family restored to the king’s council.”

  He looks at me almost slyly and smiles. “I have news of your other son, Reginald, too.”

  “Is he in Rome?” I ask eagerly.

  He nods. “He is to be made a cardinal,” he says, awestruck. “He is to come to England as a cardinal and restore the Church to its glory, as soon as the king agrees to the pilgrims’ demands.”

  “The Pope will send my son home to restore the Church?”

  “To save us all,” Langgrische says devoutly.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, DECEMBER 1536

  This year we will keep the twelve days of Christmas in the old ways. The priory at Bisham may still be closed, but here in London I open up my chapel and set Advent lights in the window and keep the door open so that anyone can come in and see the altar dressed with cloth of gold, the chalice and the crucifix gleaming in the incense-scented darkness, the shine of the crystal monstrance holding the mystery of the Host, the chapel lined with the smiling, confident painted faces of saints and draped in the banners of the Church and my family. In the darkness of the corner of the chapel the banner of the white rose palely gleams; opposite is the rich pansy of the Pole family in papal imperial purple. And I kneel and bury my face in my hands and think that there is no reason that Reginald should not become Pope.

  This Christmas is a great one, for our family and for England. Perhaps this will
be the year that my son Reginald comes home to restore the Church to its rightful position, and my sons Montague and Geoffrey restore the king to his true royal place.

  I know from a note from my cousin Gertrude, from a messenger from the Spanish ambassador, and from my own people in London that the king has been persuaded there will be no ruling any of England, let alone the North, unless he forges an agreement with the pilgrims. They have told him, simply and respectfully, that the Church has to return to Rome, and the old noble advisors to his chambers. The king may complain that nobody has the right to tell him who to consult, but he knows, as the lords know, as the gentlemen know, as the commons know, that nothing has gone well with his reign since he put lowly clerks in the highest office and pretended to marry the daughter of my steward.

  Finally, blustering and angry, he consents—he can do nothing but consent—and Thomas Howard rides back north through flurries of snow in freezing weather, carrying the king’s pardon, and has to wait in the cold outside Doncaster while the Lancaster herald offers the king’s pardon to the thousands of patient northerners in their massed and silent ranks. Robert Aske, the leader who came from almost nowhere, kneels before his thousands of pilgrims and tells them that they have won a great victory. He asks them to release him from his post as captain. When they agree, he tears off the badge of the five wounds and promises that they all will wear no badge but that of the king.

  When I hear that, I take the badge that Tom Darcy gave me from my pocket, and I kiss it, and put it at the back of an old chest in my wardrobe rooms. I don’t need it as a secret reminder of my loyalty anymore. The pilgrimage is over and the pilgrims have won; we can all put our badges away and my sons, all my sons, will be coming home.

  London is filled with joy at the news. They ring the church bells for the Christmas service but everyone knows they are pealing out that we have saved the country, and saved the Church, and saved the king from himself. I take my household to watch the court progress from Westminster to Greenwich, and we laugh and walk on the frozen river. It is so cold that the children can slip and slide on the ice and my grandchildren Katherine, Winifred, and Harry cling to my arms and beg me to tow them along.

  The court, in its golden Christmas glory, walks in the center of the river, the bishops in their copes with their miters on their heads and their jeweled crooks sparkling in the light of a thousand torches. The men-at-arms hold back the crowds so that the horses in their special ice shoes with sharp studs can take to the center of the river as if it were a great white road curving its way through an ice city, as if they could ride all the way to the Russias. All the roofs of London are crusted with snow; every thatch has a fringe of glistening icicles. The prosperous citizens and their children are brightly dressed in holly colors of red and green, throwing their rosy bonnets in the air and shouting: “God save the king! God save the queen!”

  When the Princess Mary comes out, dressed in white on her white horse, she gets the greatest roar the crowd can raise. “God save the princess!” My grandson Harry is thrilled to see her, he jumps on the spot and cheers, his eyes bright with loyalty. The people of London don’t care that she is to be called Lady Mary, and is a princess no longer. They know that they have restored the Church, they have no doubt but that they will restore the princess too.

  She smiles as I taught her to smile, and turns her head left and right so that no one is neglected. She raises her gloved hand, and I see that she has beautifully embroidered white leather gloves, sewn with pearls; at last she is being kept as a princess should be. Her horse has trappings of deep green, her saddle is green leather. Over her head her standard flaps in the icy wind, and I smile to see that she is flying the Tudor rose, with the red of the center so small that it looks like a white rose, and she flies her mother’s flag too, the pomegranate.

  She has the prettiest bonnet on her head, silvery white with a sweeping feather; she has a rich jacket of white embroidered with silver thread and stitched with pearls. Her deep, full skirt is white too, falling either side of the saddle, and she rides well, her reins held firmly in her hand, her head up.

  At her side, riding alongside on a little bay pony as if she had a right to be there, is the three-year-old Boleyn girl, her pretty face bright under a scarlet hat, waving her hand to everyone. Mary speaks to her from time to time. It is obvious that she loves her little half sister Elizabeth. The crowd applauds her for it. Mary has a tender heart, and she is always looking for someone to love.

  “Can’t I make a bow? Can’t I bow to her?” Harry demands.

  I shake my head. “Not today. I will take you to her another time.”

  I step back so that she does not see me. I don’t want to be a reminder of harder days, and I don’t want her to think that I am seeking her attention on this, the day of her triumph. I want her to feel the joy that she should have had from childhood, I want her to be a princess with no regrets. She has had few happy days, none since the coming of the Boleyn whore, but this is one. I don’t want it overshadowed by her sorrow that she cannot have me by her side, that still we are parted.

  I am content to watch her from the riverbank. I think that at last the king is coming to his senses and we have endured some strange years of mad cruelty, when he did not know what he was doing, when he did not know what he was thinking, and there was no one with the courage to stop him. But now the people themselves have stopped him. With the courage of the saints, the common people have stood up and warned Henry Tudor that his father conquered the country but cannot take their souls.

  Wolsey would not do it, the Boleyn girl could not do it, Cromwell never thought to do it, but the people of England have said to their king that he has come to a line they have drawn. He does not have power over everything in the kingdom. He does not have power over the Church, he does not have power over them.

  I don’t doubt that the day will come when he sees that he was wrong over Queen Katherine too, and shows justice to her daughter. Of course he will. He gains nothing by naming her as his bastard now. He will name her as his eldest daughter, he will recall me to her service, and he will make a great marriage for her with one of the crowned heads of Europe. I will go with her, and make sure that she is safe and happy in her new palace, wherever she has to go, whoever she has to marry.

  “I will be her page,” Harry says, chiming with my thoughts. “I shall serve her, I will be her page.” I smile down at him and touch his cold cheek.

  A great bawl goes up from the waiting crowd as the yeomen of the guard come marching along, keeping time though now and then someone slips. Nobody falls; they sometimes have to use the heel of the pike to stay upright but they look brave and bright in their green and white livery, and then finally, at last, there is the king, riding behind them, glorious in imperial purple as if he were the Holy Roman Emperor himself, with Jane beside him, overloaded with furs.

  He is a massive figure now. High on the back of a big horse, almost a plow horse, Henry matches the broad shoulders and the huge rump of the horse with his own brawn. His jacket is padded so thick and fat that he is as wide as two men, his hat trimmed all round with fur, like a great basin on his balding head. He wears his cape thrown back, so that we can all see the glory of his jacket and waistcoat, and yet admire the flow of the cape, a rich purple velvet, sweeping almost to the ground.

  His hands are on the reins in leather gloves glinting with diamonds and amethysts. He has precious stones in his hat, on the hem of his cape, on his very saddle. He looks like a gloriously triumphant king entering his own, and the citizens and the commons and the gentry of London bellow their approval of this larger-than-life giant astride his giant horse as he rides on a great frozen river.

  Jane beside him is tiny. They have dressed her in blue and she looks cold and insubstantial. She has a blue hood that stands high and heavy on her head. She has a rippling blue cloak that catches and jerks her backwards from time to time and makes her clutch at her reins. She is mounted on a beautiful gray horse
but she does not ride like a queen; she looks nervous as the horse slides once on the ice, and finds its feet again.

  She smiles at the loud cheers but she looks around her, almost as if she thinks they are for someone else. I realize that she has seen two other wives respond to the bellow of “God save the queen,” and she has to remind herself that the loyal shout means her.

  We wait till the whole court has ridden by, the lords and their households, and all the bishops, even Cromwell in his modest dark gown lined with hidden rich fur, and then the foreign ambassadors. I see the dainty little Spanish ambassador, but I pull up the hood of my fur-lined cape and make sure that he does not see me. I don’t want any hidden sign from him; this is not a day for plotting. We have won the victory that we needed: this is a day for celebration. I wait with my household until the last of the soldiers have gone by and all that will follow them are the household wagons, and I say: “That’s the end of the show, Harry, Katherine, Winifred. Time to go home.”

  “Oh, Lady Grandmother, can’t we wait till the huntsmen take the hounds by?” Harry pleads.

  “No,” I rule. “They’ll have taken them already, and all the hawks will be on their perches with the curtains drawn against the cold. There’s nothing to see and it’s getting too late.”

  “But why can’t we go with the court?” Katherine asks. “Don’t we belong at court?”

  I tuck her little hand under my elbow. “Next year we will,” I promise her. “I am sure the king will have us back at his side, with all our family, and next year we will have Christmas at court.”

  It is Christmas Eve at L’Erber, and I am in the chapel, on my knees, waiting for the moment when I will hear first one, then another, then a hundred bells chime the hour for midnight, and then break into a full peal to celebrate the birth of Our Lord.

  I hear the outside door suddenly open, then thud shut, and feel the swirl of cold air as the candles bob, and then suddenly my son Montague is bowing to the altar and then kneeling before me for my blessing.