Tudor Throne

by Purdy, Brandy

  Philip thrust me from him and I fell backward onto the floor.

  “That is no valid excuse and is not grounds for absolution either!” he said sharply. “You let her do this to you; you let a girl young enough to be your daughter get the better of you by provoking you to behave thus, to cry, and rage, and weep, and carry on like a madwoman instead of comporting yourself like the Queen you are.”

  Calmly, as if nothing were amiss, he folded his hands behind his back, and resumed his absorbed contemplation of Elizabeth’s portrait.

  “Until we have a son, she is second in line to the throne, and as such must be treated with respect. Send for her. I am curious, I want to meet her. Now go to your room and dry your tears and take off that hideous dress; that collar makes you look like the giraffe in my father’s menagerie.”

  And, without giving me a chance to answer, he turned his back on me and walked away, leaving me sitting on the floor before Elizabeth’s portrait.

  “I rue the day you were born!” I hissed at it, and it was all I could do not to fly at it, screaming my hate, and rip the canvas to shreds with my fingers.

  But my husband was right. He was harsh, and brutally honest; he barked orders at me as if he were a general and I a common foot-soldier, but he was right to do so, to teach me and help me learn, to make me a better woman, and, God willing, a better queen. I could not continue to dispense mercy with such largesse; it grew commonplace and people came to expect it of me. It made me appear predictable, as well as womanly and weak, but with Philip’s help, if I could grow a callus on my heart, when I deigned to show mercy the gesture would be much more precious and seem all the more spectacular. It would also be more appreciated for its rarity. Philip was right—appearances really were important. I must do better. Then he would be proud of me and love me. His love would be my reward. And with those thoughts in mind, I stood up, dried my tears, and went to change my gown. When I reached my room Philip was waiting for me, naked, before the mirror. “Creep to me on your knees, Mary, just as you would creep to the Cross at Easter,” he directed.

  36

  Elizabeth

  At Woodstock, I languished in boredom. Upon arrival we discovered that the old palace was too decrepit to inhabit, and were forced to make do as best we could crammed into the two-story, four-room guest house, itself in none too good repair.

  I chafed at being kept in such close confinement. Sir Henry was a man entirely lacking in leniency and imagination. He governed me strictly by the rules that the Council and my sister had laid down, denying himself the liberty of interpretation.

  If I asked for anything that was not explicitly allowed or denied me in their instructions, he would dutifully write a letter of inquiry, and then would begin the long dull, dreary delay while we waited for an answer.

  I was allowed nothing to read except books of Catholic instruction and prayer sanctioned by Mary. When I asked for an English Bible I was given one in Latin instead; Sir Henry ventured that since I was so skilled in reading Latin I might prefer to read in that language lest my skills grow rusty. My servants were separated from me and forced to lodge elsewhere, most of them taking rooms in a nearby tavern. And I was allowed no writing materials so that I might directly address my sister and the Council, nor was I allowed to speak to anyone, not even the maid who was charged to attend me, out of Sir Henry’s hearing. And when my laundry was returned to me he himself searched it meticulously for hidden messages. And I was compelled, by Mary’s orders, to attend Mass, said in Latin, twice daily.

  I festered with fury, boredom, and impatience. It seemed my life was being wasted and whiled away. My days were spent waiting for night so that I might retire to lie restless beneath the blue ceiling painted with silver stars above my bed, and my uneasy nights were spent in restless waiting for the day to arrive. All I was doing was waiting and marking time.

  “I am only following orders, Princess, nothing more and nothing less!” Sir Henry would wail each time I rounded on him and railed at him for being overly strict.

  Time and again I would point an accusing finger at him and scream, “Gaoler!”

  And in response, Sir Henry would, despite the difficulty presented by his great bulk, drop to his knees and implore me not to call him such a harsh and deplorable name. “For I am your officer, appointed to take care of you and protect you from any harm.”

  I was allowed to walk in the orchard daily, but only with Sir Henry trudging along, puffing and blowing, red-faced and panting, struggling to keep up with me. He was a man clearly unaccustomed to brisk exercise. In angry frustration, I would quicken my pace and lash my riding crop at the high-grown weeds.

  As spring rolled into summer, word reached us of the Spanish bridegroom’s arrival and, at summer’s end, an announcement that Mary was expecting a child.

  In deep despair, fearing that the rest of my life would be spent in captivity and the crown would never be mine, I opened my copy of St. Paul’s Epistles and upon the flyleaf wrote, “I walk many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I pluck up the goodlisome herbs of sentences, that, having tasted their sweetness, I may less perceive the bitterness of this miserable life.”

  One rainy afternoon, when I must stay inside, I took a diamond ring from my finger and used it to etch onto the windowpane a little verse of my own making:

  MUCH SUSPECTED OF ME,

  NOTHING PROVED CAN BE.

  QUOTH ELIZABETH, PRISONER

  Seeing it, Sir Henry frowned and, for the umpteenth time exclaimed, “I am only following orders, Princess, nothing more and nothing less!”

  “Gaoler!” I screamed shrilly at the top of my lungs, putting all my anger, fear, and frustration into that solitary word, and flung my book at his head.

  37

  Mary

  And then God choose to vouchsafe me another miracle, the greatest a woman can receive regardless of whether she be commoner or queen. My monthly bleeding had always been painful and erratic. It was not unusual for me to go one, or even two, months without bleeding whilst I suffered the bloated agony of the pent-up blood that refused to flow. “Strangulation of the womb,” the doctors called it, and often had to resort to bleeding me from the bottom of my foot to bring on my courses. But three whole months without that agony or even a cramp or the tight pressure and ache in the small of my back? I sent for my doctors; they quizzed me about my symptoms. Was there any tenderness or swelling about my breasts? Had I been sick of the mornings upon rising? They felt my pulse and stood huddled by the window with their heads together over the urine in my chamberpot to scrutinize and sniff. And then they confirmed it—I was with child, and they expected me to be delivered in May.

  God had given me the most precious miracle of all and the means to vanquish all my enemies. I wished I could see Elizabeth’s face when she found out that she was to be supplanted, that now she would never be queen. Thus far, I had managed to put off bringing her to court. The truth was, I did not want Philip to see her. I did not want him to look first at her and then at me and make comparisons that were not in my favor, to gaze at her smooth, flawless white face and then at my lined and yellowed countenance, and her thick and glossy mane of brazen harlot red hair as bright as the flames of Hell and then compare it with my own limp and thin rusty-gray tresses. Already he had a hurtful habit of reminding me that I was old enough to be Elizabeth’s mother and I didn’t want to make it worse. Every time he said that it was like a stab through my heart that kept on bleeding and aching without killing me, condemning me to live in perpetual pain. Anne Boleyn’s daughter had inherited her mother’s witchlike wiles, and I was afraid that he too would fall under her spell; Elizabeth had a way of harnessing men’s hearts. But now, in my womb, I had the means to break her!

  She was making quite a nuisance of herself at Woodstock, and it was time to put a stop to it. Nearly every day brought some new request submitted to the Council by Sir Henry Bedingfield, as plodding and diligent in his duty as a plow horse,
and I myself must rule whether to accede to her request or deny it. Every day it was Elizabeth wants this, Elizabeth wants that! And Sir Henry, a careful and capable gaoler he might be, but I swear the man was utterly incapable of making even the smallest, slightest decision, no matter how trivial, on his own. He must instead defer all to me. I was a new wife, and now, by the manifold blessings of God, a mother-to-be, and I should not have been bothered with such things. But none of them cared, none of them wanted me to be happy, they were all against me, they all wanted to spoil it for me, to slap my hands as if I were a naughty child and wrest all my joy away from me, and many wanted to take my crown too, and Elizabeth was the mastermind behind it all, even though my Council protested there was no evidence, not a shred of clear and certain proof. But I didn’t need evidence, I knew. Elizabeth was like a great spider sitting at the heart of her web, spinning her schemes, concocting ways to rob me of my happiness and steal my crown away from me. She thought she was clever, but I could see through her as if she were made of glass!

  But first, before I dealt with Elizabeth, there was something even more important I must do. I took up my pen and wrote to my old friend Cardinal Pole, beseeching him to return to England as Papal Legate and officially mend the break with Rome that The Great Whore had brought about. Now that I was with child, it was more important than ever that England be reconciled with Rome. And I begged him to come quick and help me bring my greatest work to fruition; I wanted my son to be born in a land that knew no other religion than the true one.

  I wanted the people to share my joy, so I donned my royal robes of crimson and ermine, and put on my crown and, with heralds to announce my good fortune, I rode through the streets of London, carried gently upon a well-cushioned golden litter, at a pace no faster than a walk in deference to my condition. I reclined against the velvet cushions, my hands protectively clasping the gentle swell of my stomach, with my robe open to let the people see that within my body I was carrying their savior. Philip rode beside me on the fine white horse I had given him, and from time to time I reached out to take his hand in mine and a smile of triumph would pass between us. Together we had made a son who would be heir to the greatest empire in the world. In fact, he would rule half the world, and I expected before his hour came to leave it he would have conquered the whole of it.

  Many of the people cheered us; there seemed this time to be less opposition to Philip, and I heard many comment on what a handsome man he was. But there were some heretics in the crowd who cried out to God “to either turn the heart of Queen Mary from Papist idolatry or else shorten her days.” I gave orders for my guards to arrest them, but in the dense crowd that had assembled to watch us pass, it was impossible to ascertain who the offenders were and none were willing to betray them.

  Philip and I had our portrait painted together, clad in black and gold, reminiscent of the portrait I had commissioned of my parents sitting lovingly together, though ours was less sentimental and Philip insisted on standing. He thought it would appear weak and unmanly for him to sit and hold hands with me, like a pair of lovers. If he stood while I was seated, Philip explained, he would appear as a pillar of strength beside me. And I agreed, for he truly was my pillar of strength. He helped me atone for my womanly weaknesses and made me seem and feel stronger. He also decreed that the painter should disregard the signs of my condition, my undone laces and the extra panels of material inserted into my skirts, and paint me as though I were not with child. This was an official portrait about power and appearances, Philip said, and it would be inappropriate to portray something so intimate. Such things were better left to allegorical or mythical paintings, if they must be painted at all, but were certainly not appropriate for formal, dignified portraits of kings and queens. But he agreed with me that space should be left in the foreground where our child, or, God willing, children, could be painted in later as family portraits bespoke power and we, God willing, were laying the foundation for a dynasty.

  Philip still persisted in asking to meet Elizabeth. “Bring her to court. I want to meet this brazen red-haired heretic,” he would say. But I continued to delay sending for her. Every time I stood before my mirror I thought of Katherine Parr and wondered if she too had stood thus and compared her age and appearance to that of vibrant, young Bess, the stepdaughter whom she had trusted and lavished so much fond attention upon, who would nonetheless scheme to steal her husband and hard-won happiness from her. With Elizabeth it was “All or Nothing,” just as it had been with her mother. Would Anne Boleyn’s bastard brat do the same to me? I could not help but wonder.

  Philip and I were there to welcome Cardinal Pole at the top of the grand staircase at Whitehall as all the church bells in London chimed to welcome the first Papal Legate to set foot in England since Cardinal Campeggio had come to try to persuade Father to honor his vows to my mother and cast off The Great Whore.

  The moment he set his red-slippered foot upon the first step I felt my child leap for joy within my womb. I felt as if an invisible angel had just whispered in my ear, “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.” I knew it to be a sign, certain proof that I was carrying the son who would be England’s, and the true religion’s, savior.

  With my face wreathed in smiles, I reached out my hands to my dear old friend, remembering that our mothers had once fondly cherished the hope that we would grow up to marry. Now we would form a different sort of alliance, a union devoted to restoring the Church to its former might and glory here in England and, holding both his hands in mine, I impetuously confided what had just occurred.

  “My friend, the moment I laid eyes upon you I felt my child move for the very first time!”

  A smile brightened his careworn features. “Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed be the fruit of thy womb. It was the will of God that I should have been so long in coming. God waited until the time, and your womb, was ripe. Now, God willing, you shall have a son to carry on your great work so that none can ever again undo it.”

  My head swimming in elation, I sank to my knees and brought the hem of his scarlet cardinal’s robe up to my lips and kissed it to show my humility and respect. He had come here as the Holy Father’s true representative, and I must welcome him as if it were the Pope himself who stood before me.

  Cardinal Pole knelt down before me. “As is only fitting before the sovereign lady of the realm,” he explained as I continued to smile and clutch the hem of his red robe to my heart.

  With an air of impatience, Philip bent and took each of us by the arm and gently urged us to our feet, saying it was more fitting that we both should stand as equals now that we had paid our respects to one another. Philip always knew the right and proper thing to do; he really was my tower of strength, and I knew I would be lost without him. I loved knowing I could always rely on him whenever I was in doubt or my emotions threatened to get the better of me.

  Together, the three of us walking side by side, with me between these two great men, we went to hear Mass and then on to Parliament, where Cardinal Pole made a stirring speech about forgiveness and reconciliation.

  “I come not to condemn but to reconcile, I come not to destroy but to rebuild,” he said in a firm but warm and reassuring tone like a benign and forgiving father. “Touching all matters past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfulness.” He went on to assure all those who had profited by the dissolution of the monasteries that they would not be punished or forced to make restitution. The Church would not take back their lands; what was now in private hands would, in the spirit of forgiveness, stay in private hands. We would now move forward, and only faith and the Pope’s authority would be restored, for these were far greater treasures than any lands or riches. And what Henry VIII’s lust had destroyed his daughter’s pure heart and courageous spirit would now rebuild.

  The following Sunday in St. Paul’s churchyard Cardinal Pole presided over a public absolution “to welcome the return of the lost sheep,” wherein all who had fors
aken the true faith, for whatever reason, were free to come without fear of punishment and kneel before him and be forgiven and received back into the Church. Nearly twenty thousand people came to kneel and receive his blessing.

  For the first time since my father’s wicked lust and Anne Boleyn’s witchlike ways had plunged our nation into darkness I felt as if the sun were truly shining down on England in warm, golden, healing rays. And as I watched, tears of joy poured down my face. Never before had I felt such pride in my people. I hugged my unborn child and let the warm balm of happiness fill my heart.

  Now, when the time came, I could withdraw from public life into the safe, warm cocoon of my confinement chamber to await the birth of my child, knowing that everything would be all right. God and the Pope were both smiling over England and my people had come running back into the warm and loving embrace of Our Lord and His Church. I could sit back and take my ease and embroider little gowns and caps for my baby knowing that all was right with my world and I had fulfilled my divinely appointed destiny.

  38

  Elizabeth

  At last, my hopes and prayers were answered—a summons came from Mary, bidding me come to court; she wished to see me before she withdrew for her confinement, as was the English custom. I danced a jig for joy, spinning round and round the unsmiling rotund form of Sir Henry Bedingfield, singing out, “To court, to court, I am going to court!”

  We set out for London on a blustery April day. A mighty gust of wind ripped my hood right off my head. Laughing, carefree as a child, I ran after it, skipping and dancing, my violet velvet skirts fluttering and billowing about me, being tugged every which way by the wind, as I pursued my windblown hood, snatching at it and laughing when I missed and the wind carried it farther beyond my reach, with Sir Henry huffing and puffing after me, red-faced and panting from the exertion. I stopped and laughed, with my hair whipping about my head in a wild sea of flame-red waves, and laughingly called back, “Sir Gaoler, I hereby dub thee Sir Huff and Puff!” before I turned and ran on again in pursuit of my hood. When I had caught it, I took shelter under a roadside hedge to tame the wild riot of my tresses and replace my hood while the ever vigilant Sir Huff and Puff stood by, bent over, bracing his hands upon his thighs, and caught his breath, begging me to have mercy on him, and declaring that he was far too old for antics such as these.