Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All

by M. T. Anderson

  “Why do you come, Greta? Why do you haunt me?” I ask her.

  She grows sombre. “Because there is a thing left undone.”

  Her words trouble me. They echo Holbein’s. “What thing?” I ask, anxious to know. “I have settled my affairs. I have…”

  But my words trail off as Greta transforms from a corpse into the beautiful young woman she once was, and the kitchen falls away like a painted stage set, and I find myself in the courtyard of my family’s castle in Düsseldorf, capital city of the Duchy of Berg.

  I look down and see that my nightclothes are gone. I’m wearing a velvet gown now, and underneath it a fine woollen kirtle. A fur-lined cloak hangs from my shoulders. Gold chains and a jewelled pendant lie heavy against my chest. God only knows how my mother procured them. My family is not wealthy, but a good impression must still be made.

  I remember this place, this day, so well. I am twenty-four, and leaving to marry Henry. I tell myself that this, too, is only a poppy-dream, but my heart swells with happiness to see my homeland again.

  It is November. Early snow falls like sugar through a sieve. It dusts the castle’s turrets and towers, eddies over the cobblestones. The smell of woodsmoke hangs in the air.

  Greta is standing next to me. “Hurry, Maus, go,” she tells me. “If good-byes are to be said, they must be said quickly.”

  I start with an endless line of German nobles. Some I’ve known since I was a child, others I’ve never met. They bow and curtsey. Wish me godspeed. Some press sweets into my hands, or good-luck charms. I want so much to make them proud of me.

  I linger too long with them, dreading the thought of saying good-bye to my mother and sisters because I fear I will never see them again. And to my brother, Wilhelm, because there is always the possibility, however slight, that I will.

  I curtsey to him first, as I must. He is not only my brother but also my lord, the Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg—though that is a mouthful and most call him simply Duke of Cleves. He rules our father’s ancestral lands—Cleves and Mark, as well as our mother’s—Jülich and Berg. He is a strutting rooster of a man who loves to pick fights. He battled over toys with me when we were children. Now he battles over Guelders with Spain.

  Wilhelm smiles as I rise. He embraces me and kisses my cheek. It’s all for show. As he holds me close, he whispers to me in an assassin’s voice.

  “Do not disgrace Cleves, Anna. Do not fail in your duties. And do not think you can come back here if you do. I will banish you to some draughty castle, after I beat you silly. Remember how lucky you are that I made this match for you, for you are no spring rose. Remember, too, that Henry may be a powerful king, but he is also a man, and like all men, he requires only two things of a woman: that she keep her legs open and her mouth shut.”

  “Good-bye, Wilhelm,” I say, hoping the crowd will think it is only the cold that reddens my cheeks.

  I bid my sisters farewell next—lovely Sibylle, the eldest, who married Johann Friedrich of Saxony, and Amalia, the youngest, who is not yet betrothed.

  Mali cries and makes me promise to send her something pretty from England. Sibby kisses me stiffly. She still has not recovered from the fact that I made a better match than she did when she is so much prettier.

  Then comes my mother. I curtsey to her, then falter. My shaking legs will not allow me to rise.

  “Get up, Anna,” she commands.

  How can I? How can I stand and walk away? I have only memories of my father, who died a few months ago. But even when he was alive, it was my mother who was my sun.

  When I was a child, I was always at her elbow, and she was everywhere all at once. She is still this way. Up before dawn, not abed until midnight. Her days are spent receiving nobles, hearing complaints, and hosting banquets, as a duchess must, but she also corresponds with our ambassadors, mixes medicines, and pokes in the soup pot.

  No one can match her pace or live up to her expectations. It is she who runs the castles, the duchies, our lives. Wilhelm only thinks he does.

  “Up, child. Now.” There is a warning note in her voice, one I know well. I master my emotion and rise.

  She takes my hands in hers. “Give the English king many fine sons and daughters. Obey him in all you do. Bring honour to your brother and your country….”

  I see the same things in her eyes now that I’ve always seen when she looks at me. Pride. Worry. Love. And disapproval. Over my needlework. My hair. My fondness for pretty gowns. We girls received more slaps from her than kisses. More black looks than smiles. But it was she who picked out our Christmas presents, who told us fairy tales at bedtime, who taught us how to choose the best plums for jam. I love her and fear her. I can’t stand to leave her, but I can’t bear to stay. I can’t breathe without her, yet she suffocates me.

  “Above all, Anna, remember what I’ve always told you: Life deals the cards—”

  “—but it is up to us how we play them,” I finish.

  I remember the first time she said this to me. How could I forget? I was small, and playing Landsknecht with Wilhelm. We bet walnuts instead of coins. After he won for the third time in a row, I burst into tears and ran to my mother, sobbing that he got all the lucky cards and I got none.

  What I wanted was sympathy and soft words. What I got was a slap. My mother took me by the ear and marched me straight back to the nursery.

  “You will sit back down with your brother, Anna, and resume the game,” she scolded. “You will not get up again until you win. Life deals the cards, but it is up to us how we play them. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”

  Wilhelm was allowed to get up for supper. To get a drink. To relieve himself. I was not. It took me five hours. I was hungry. Tired. I wet myself and had to sit in it. But just before nightfall, I beat him. I won.

  “Of all the things I taught you, that is the most important,” my mother says now. “Never forget it.”

  I nod. It’s all I can do.

  My mother pulls me into her arms. My fingers dig into her back. I can’t let go.

  As always, it is she who does what needs to be done. “It’s time,” she says, releasing me.

  “Come, Anna! The carriage is ready!” Greta calls. I hear excitement in her voice and it pulls at me.

  “Go now, child,” my mother says.

  I tell myself I will see her again. I will. And then I turn away before she can glimpse my tears, and hurry to Greta. A chariot has been prepared—a small, fleet carriage covered in cloth of gold. We are to ride out of Düsseldorf and through the lowlands to Calais. From there, we will sail across the channel to England.

  A servant hands me up. I settle myself next to Greta. Mother Lowe, supervisor of my German ladies and a fierce old battle-axe, is with us, too, to ensure good behaviour.

  My retinue is over two hundred sixty people, with almost as many horses. All along the line, drivers shout to the grooms. The horses stamp and snort and shake their bells. Cheers go up. A whip cracks and the outriders set off. The chariot lurches forwards and picks up speed. Faces pass by in a blur. I look back, desperate for a last glimpse of my mother.

  I spot her. The rest have rushed forwards to send me off. She stands back, alone. Her face is resolute, but her cheeks are wet, and I know then that I will never see her again.

  An instant later, we are out of the keep. The castle disappears behind us, and then Düsseldorf’s narrow streets, its market square, the tower of Saint Lambertus, the Rhine. I grip the side of the chariot with one hand to steady myself. Everything I’ve ever known is falling away.

  Greta takes my other hand. “No looking back,” she says. “From now on, only forwards.”

  And then, as quickly as it came, the vision fades and I am back in my kitchen.

  “Do you remember that day?” Greta asks me.

  “I do,” I say.

  “What do you remember most? The crowds in the towns we passed through, cheering and waving? The handsome outriders, so dashing in their uniforms
?”

  “No, not those things.”

  “What, then?”

  I try to tell her, but emotion wells up inside me and I cannot speak.

  I remember facing forwards in the chariot, as Greta said I must. Away from my past, towards my future. I remember that the snow stopped and the skies lightened.

  I remember pressing a hand to my chest to feel my heart.

  It was beating so hard.

  It was breaking.

  It was singing.

  * * *

  —

  Alice calls for me, but I cannot answer.

  I am made of pain.

  My bones and vitals, my skin, fingernails, each strand of my hair. I taste pain. See it. Hear it.

  I am curled up on the stairs, unable to move. The wolf woke while I was in the kitchen and tore into my belly. I tried to return to my bedchamber, but my legs gave way.

  Blood from my womb has soaked through the rags between my legs, through my nightclothes. It pools underneath me. Am I to meet my doom here on the cold stone steps?

  Womb. Doom. Funny how they rhyme in English.

  One’s body is one’s fate. A woman is nothing, only a vessel. Hollow. Empty. Useless. Until a man fills her up and she brings forth sons.

  That is what we are told. But it is not what I know.

  For all but six months of my life, I had no man. But I never felt empty. I never felt useless.

  My womb was never full, no; but my head was. I had so many thoughts and ideas, they made me dizzy. Ideas for the laying out of gardens and the making of cheese. The keeping of bees and raising of sheep.

  My heart was full, too. I loved my mother and Sibby and Mali. Greta, too. I loved the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Little Edward. Horses and cows. Music and honey and apple trees.

  I was a woman alone, yet never lonely. I was enough for myself. Nay, more than enough; I was a feast.

  Had Henry known, I would surely have gone to the block.

  To be happy without him was the highest of treasons.

  * * *

  —

  “Oh, dear God. Oh, Mother Mary.”

  I feel Alice’s hands cup my face. There is fear in her voice.

  “My lady, what has happened? Speak to me, please!”

  “I was hungry…did not want to disturb you…”

  “It is much more disturbing to find you thus!” she cries.

  My maid Lettie comes. She screams. Her noise brings the cook, the scullery girl, two milkmaids, and Rafe, the boy who turns the spit.

  “We must get her to her bedchamber! Help me lift her to her feet!” Lettie shouts.

  Alice turns on her like a vixen defending a kit. “Do not touch her,” she warns. “Rafe, fetch my father, and then the physician. Jane, Betsy, bring hot water to Lady Anna’s bedchamber.”

  As the servants mammer and fret, Alice takes my hands and whispers soothing words. A moment later, John the gardener rushes in.

  “She is too weak to stand, Father,” Alice says. “Can you carry her?”

  “God’s wounds, how can there be so much blood and she still be alive?” John says softly.

  He lifts me easily and carries me upstairs. Alice spreads several old sheets over the bed. He places me on it. Jane and Betsy have already brought the water.

  Alice ushers everyone out, then doses me with pennyroyal to stanch the bleeding. After I have swallowed that, she feeds me poppy syrup. Then she attends to the mess. The sodden dressing is thrown into a basin. My clothing follows it. I am washed, every inch of me, and a new dressing is applied.

  Finally, I am put into fresh nightclothes and propped up in my bed. Little by little, the poppy pushes the wolf back into its den. I close my eyes, exhausted, as Alice replaces the bloodied sheets with fresh ones and tucks soft blankets around me.

  “Take the pillows away, child,” I say. “I wish to sleep.”

  “No, my lady.”

  My eyes open wide. “No? No?”

  I am more than at Death’s door, I have one foot over his threshold, but even so, I bristle at being told No by my own servant.

  “You must not sleep,” Alice says anxiously. “You have lost a great deal of blood, and I fear if you close your eyes, you will not open them again. Tell me the rest of the story.”

  “What story?” I snap. I am so weary I would give this manor, and everything in it, for five minutes’ rest.

  “The one about you and King Henry. You said you made your face a mirror when it should have been a mask. What happened, my lady?”

  I shake my head.

  “You will not sleep,” Alice vows. “If I have to fetch pot lids from the kitchen and crash them together, I shall.”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “Threats now? You are a proper little termagant, mistress. I shall not forget this.”

  She ignores my dire tone. “You made your face a mirror, when it should have been—” she prompts.

  “—a mask,” I say.

  The merciless girl keeps prodding. “Why a mask, my lady? Were you at court? Was it a masquerade?”

  I rasp out a bitter laugh. “When is court not a masquerade?”

  “A young princess, a mighty king, mirrors and masks…it sounds like a fairy tale,” Alice says.

  “It was. A very dark one.”

  Alice makes a face. “I do not like the dark ones. They tell of monsters.”

  “Yes, they do, child. But they also tell how to beat them.”

  I sit forwards, possessed of new strength. To my amazement, I want to talk. I want to tell the story.

  * * *

  —

  Alice sits down in the chair by my bed. Her gaze settles on me. She is intelligent, this girl. Not easily swayed or upset. She would make a good physician. A good lawyer or magistrate or mayor or a thousand other things she’ll never be.

  “You said the King was afraid,” she says sceptically.

  A smile twitches at my mouth. “You do not believe me.”

  “You are but a woman, my lady. How could you make a king afraid?”

  I look at Alice, but instead of seeing her, I see myself. Eager. Anxious. Hopeful of a handsome prince. It was seventeen years ago. How is that possible? How can the moments of a life last forever, while the years go by in a heartbeat?

  “It happened on a winter’s day, at the Bishop’s Palace in Rochester,” I begin. “I’d been travelling for weeks through Germany and the Low Countries on my way to London. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Wherever I stopped—Antwerp, Bruges, Dunkirk—trumpeters played and bonfires blazed. I was given sweetmeats, jewels, gold. My voice was hoarse from talking, my cheeks ached from smiling. I was overwhelmed, but I remembered my mother telling me to bring honour to Cleves, and no matter how tired I was, or how much of a struggle it was to understand the English, and to make myself understood to them, I was always cheerful and gracious.”

  Alice leans forwards, her elbows on her knees.

  “When I reached the port of Calais, the celebrations there dwarfed everything that had come before. Though Calais bordered France, Henry controlled it, and in entering it, I was entering England. He wished my first sight of his realm to be spectacular, and it was. His Lord Admiral, with many other nobles, rode out to meet me. They were accompanied by yeomen in blue and crimson and mariners in Bruges satin. Throngs of people lined the road. There were so many guns firing and cannon going off, I could barely see a foot in front of me for the smoke.”

  Alice’s eyes are shining. “This is a good fairy tale, my lady!” she exclaims.

  “I have not done telling it,” I say ominously. “Henry sent fifty ships to collect us, festooned with banners. They made one of the loveliest sights I’ve ever seen. There were two days of feasts and jousts, but then, when we were to set sail, foul weather delayed us. It wasn’t until after Christmas that we finally made our crossing. After a rest in Dover, we rode on in a storm and arrived at Rochester on New Year’s Eve. We were to spend two nights there, then cont
inue to London.”

  “Why, there is no darkness to this tale at all!” Alice says happily.

  “I could barely sleep that night, thinking how the morning would bring not only a new year—1540—but a new life. I should have been so happy that night, but I wasn’t.”

  Alice’s smile fades. “Why not?”

  I pause, remembering the enormous bed I’d tossed and turned in. The wind howling around the palace. The hail beating at the windows.

  “I was exhausted from travelling. I’d caught a cold. Worst of all, I was homesick,” I tell her. “I dared not say so, though. It would have been an awkward way for a guest to behave, and I was awkward enough already.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Alice.

  “Have you ever attended a feast or revel and there’s a girl in the corner in an ugly dress who can’t seem to say or do the right thing no matter how hard she tries?”

  Alice lowers her eyes. “I have. That girl is usually me.”

  “She was me, too,” I say. “To begin, my clothes were all wrong. The English ladies followed French fashions. Their necklines were square and low; their bodices cut close. My gowns had high necklines, puffed sleeves, and such wide skirts that I looked like a beer barrel in them.”

  Alice tries to smother her giggles. I tell her not to bother.

  “My jewels were pretty,” I continue, “but not as pretty as those of the Lord Admiral’s wife. The English ladies’ headpieces were sleek and elegant; mine made me look like a spaniel. No one said anything to me, but I caught the glances and the smirks. When you can’t speak the language, your eyes make up for your ears. And as bad as my clothing was, it wasn’t the worst of my problems.”

  “What was?” asks Alice.

  “My lack of accomplishments. The English ladies danced and sang. They played instruments and told jokes. They knew French and Latin. They were swans and I a clumsy duck. I’d never been taught to sing or play music. In Cleves, having such skills marked a woman as frivolous. I could read and write, but only German. Wilhelm was the one who received an education.”