The Spanish Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

by Erickson, Carolly

  Arthur! How he crept into my thoughts. So often, so very often …

  But Henry was saying something to me, breaking my train of thought.

  “There is a troublemaker at the French court, spreading false rumors,” he was saying. “A Spaniard. Thomas tells me she is the mistress of the French prince, that long-nosed jackanapes who imagines he can joust and wrestle and run against the strongest men in his father’s kingdom. He has no idea how much less formidable he is than an older, stronger opponent—such as myself.”

  The long-nosed French prince was Francis, heir to his father’s cousin King Louis XII and married to the king’s daughter Claude. But who was the Spanish troublemaker? I was soon to find out.

  * * *

  “Catherine! My sweet sister! Is there nothing you can do to help me?”

  It was Mary, in tears, imploring my aid. I wanted very much to help her, but for the moment at least there was nothing to be done but listen to her despairing plea.

  “But he promised me that I could choose for myself!” she was saying. “He swore to me, on the very day he returned from France, that I would be free! And he knew very well who I would choose! I have never loved anyone but my dearest Charles!” Her lovely face was flushed. I had never seen her in such distress.

  Henry had indeed given his word to his favorite sister Mary that he would not in future put her under any obligation to marry, as I and all my sisters had and as her own widowed sister Margaret had, in order to seal a bargain between kingdoms. I knew this to be true. Yet I also knew that in the year since his return, Henry had changed.

  He had never relished the work of governing, or of making decisions about how to conduct the business of dealing with foreign monarchs. What he enjoyed was pageantry and show, renown and admiration. Most of all he savored pleasure, courtly pastimes, being surrounded by music and laughter and in the company of charming young women—young women such as Bessie Blount.

  “I’m sure he meant to keep his promise—” I began.

  “Then why has he ordered me to go to France and marry that hideous wrinkled old man! He’s so feeble he can barely walk, and his face is full of ugly pockmarks, and he must be at least sixty years old!” Her voice rose and became a thin wail.

  “Because, Mary, he now relies on the archbishop to advise him, and nothing is as it was.”

  Hearing myself refer to Thomas Wolsey as the archbishop still sounded odd, I continued to think of him as the king’s almoner. Yet during the past year he had risen not only to being Archbishop of York but to being Henry’s foremost adviser, the dominant voice on the royal council.

  It seemed to me, and to most others, that Thomas Wolsey had taken over the burdensome task of making most of the important decisions in the realm. He had taken over—and Henry relied heavily on him to continue to do so.

  Mary was at first puzzled, then crestfallen at my words. Then her tearstained face grew set and determined.

  “I will not have my future ruined by some lowborn clerk who imagines himself worthy to be an archbishop!”

  I saw then how useless it would be to reason with my sister-in-law in her present state of mind and heart. How little good it would do to explain that Thomas had decided—with Henry adopting his decision—that it would be best to ally with the French rather than fight them, and that Mary’s betrothal to the aged French King Louis was to be among the prizes awarded to bind that alliance.

  Mary was set on marrying her beloved Charles Brandon, and it would do no good to try to tell her what I believed to be true: that her loved and trusted brother was choosing to rely on the stronger will and more focused intelligence of the newly appointed Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, to determine her future.

  Still, it pained me to see her suffer, and it hurt all the more the day I watched her leave for her new home. On her wedding day she would become Queen of France, an honor she had never sought. But she would despise Thomas Wolsey for the rest of her life—and she would never trust her brother again.

  Meanwhile I had my own inner battle to wage, also over questions of marriage and trust. For Thomas had cautioned me that the king was looking into the possibility of putting me aside.

  “If you had a son it would be quite a different thing,” he said in his usual blunt-spoken way, “but since there is no heir, and not likely to be one, after so many failures—”

  “Hush! Never speak of the Lord’s will in terms of failure. If I have not yet brought my husband a son who lived, it is in accordance with His divine purpose.”

  “To be sure, Your Highness, to be sure. And we must acknowledge that His purpose may be to replace you with a different wife for King Henry. One who will be fertile, one whose father will keep his word instead of breaking it. One whose valor in war will be less like her mother Queen Isabella and more like, perhaps, the Archduchess Margaret, who did not attempt to lead armies and whose deeds did not threaten to surpass those of her husband.”

  I was accustomed to Thomas’s adroit logic—he had after all been an outstanding scholar at his Oxford college—though I admit that on this occasion he took me by surprise. For the moment I was silent.

  “I wonder if you know what this is,” he said after a time, drawing a document from an inner pocket of his robe and starting to peruse it.

  I shook my head.

  “The king asked me to study it, to see whether it might suggest a path for him to follow, in finding his way to a new wife.”

  “Only the Lord can determine that,” I insisted stubbornly. But Thomas did not argue with me. He went on reading.

  I became impatient. Finally my curiosity got the better of me.

  “What is this document, and where did it come from?”

  “From Sir Charles Brandon,” was the astonishing reply. The strong, vigorous master of the joust and my husband’s staunch friend. The man my sister-in-law had hoped in vain to wed. Not, I would have thought, a man of keen mind, or given to composing lengthy writings. But then, perhaps the document had come from one of his clerks or men of law.

  “Did you know, Your Highness, that Sir Charles has been married three times?”

  “I did not.” The thought was unsettling. Did Mary know this about him?

  Thomas was shaking his head, apparently in wonderment, as he went on reading.

  “Brandon is as cunning at marriage, it would seem, as he is skillful at the joust.” He gave a rare low chuckle. My worry grew.

  “First he married a girl named Anne who brought him a bit of land, and gave him sons, but then he had his marriage declared no marriage at all—he had it nullified, as the canon lawyers would say—because he had a clever plan. He went about it all very carefully, you understand. I have to admire his cleverness!”

  Thomas cleared his throat, then proceeded.

  “It all had to do with the mingling of blood and flesh. I have heard it said by those learned in the law of the church that any marriage can be nullified if only there has been mingling of blood or flesh. Which is to say, if there are ties of blood or uniting of bodies.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sir Charles found out that his young wife had an aunt named Margaret who was much older and very much richer. He wanted her fortune. So he had his clerks argue that he had never really been married to Anne, and once he was free of her, he married Margaret—and as her husband, he was entitled to her treasure.

  “Then he pretended that his conscience would not allow him to go on being Margaret’s husband once he realized that this marriage too was null, because Margaret and Anne were aunt and niece. So he went back to Anne and remarried her—taking all Margaret’s money with him!”

  Thomas burst into laughter. “And now, it is said, he wishes to marry yet again. This time his wife will be his young ward—but she won’t have him!”

  Hearing this tale of calculating greed appalled me. How much had Brandon told Mary about his past? Or was it possible she knew it all, and cared only that she loved him?

  I had known Mary for
most of her eighteen years and she had always been a reckless, impulsive girl, inclined to take risks and follow sudden whims. Only her love for Brandon was no whim, it had lasted too long and meant too much to her.

  But what of his true feelings for her? She was after all the king’s beautiful sister, a rare prize. If he married her Brandon would not only be far more wealthy than ever, he would become a dominant figure at court, at least as dominant as Thomas and with far greater power—always provided Henry trusted and favored him.

  For though the realization was a dreadful one, I had to admit that there was a chance that if Mary was to marry her beloved, and not King Louis, it was possible that Brandon might be the father of the next king of England. Was that his hope and intent?

  I wondered whether I ought to warn Mary. But she was already gone, embarked for France and her elderly wrinkled bridegroom with his pockmarked face and his unsteady legs. And I, if I wasn’t careful, was on my way to being put aside.

  * * *

  As it turned out, my charming sister-in-law was not only beautiful, she was fortunate.

  Less than two months after she married King Louis, he died. She became Mary, Queen of France and a widow. She was free to marry again—and she did not hesitate.

  She married her beloved Charles Brandon in a swiftly arranged, private ceremony in Paris. And then, on a sunny May morning with much of our English court in attendance, she married him again, this time at Greenwich.

  I am happy to say that my misgivings about my jovial, good-tempered new brother-in-law Charles turned out to be groundless. Mary herself reassured me when I asked her about her husband’s past.

  “Ah, dear Catherine, but all that was long ago! Who can say why he chose to act as he did! His children love him, I love him. And I assure you most heartily that he loves me, and no one but me!”

  Her radiantly happy face, the laughing way she dismissed my few rejoinders, above all her reminder that Thomas Wolsey was no friend of Charles Brandon’s but rather his rival, all combined to lessen my worries, and in the end, dissolve them.

  “You should have heard the way my brother tried to persuade Charles to marry that dragon Archduchess Margaret!” she told me with a smile. “He had a grand plan, one I now know was not his, but Thomas Wolsey’s. I was to wed King Louis, and Charles would become Archduke of Savoy and lord of the lowlands. How he would have hated that!”

  Mary was eager to tell me what I had wanted most to find out: who the troublemaker was that was spreading false rumors at the French court. It was Maria Juana.

  “I might have known she would be the one,” I said as soon as I heard Mary say my half-sister’s name. “She hates me and begrudges me every happiness, every success.”

  “She tells the most vile lies about you,” Mary said.

  “Does she say that my maid of honor Bessie Blount has borne the king a bastard child?” Mary nodded. “And that I caused her mother’s death?” At this she nodded even more vigorously.

  “I assure you, none of what she says is true.”

  “She will say or do anything to injure you. To become your equal, to surpass you even. She is not content merely to be the mistress of King Francis. Her aim is to become his queen!”

  “But he is already married to Queen Claude,” I put in. The young king’s wife, I had been told, was a feeble, stunted creature with twisted limbs, yet she had given her husband several children. And she had a kind heart and a generous nature.

  “There are those at the royal court who fear that Maria Juana will contrive to poison her, so that she can take her place. Maria Juana is not only a liar, she is an intriguer. I wonder you don’t send her back to Spain where she belongs.”

  “I cannot. My father protects her. He has ordered me never to thwart her or oppose her, no matter what she does or says. I must obey him.”

  Mary shook her head. “I shall ask my brother to command her to return to Spain, before she does even more harm.”

  “If only he would,” I murmured, more to myself than to Mary. But I knew that Henry was dissatisfied with me, and that, if Thomas Wolsey was to be believed, he was even pondering how to rid himself of me. This was not the time for Mary to ask anything of him on my behalf.

  “Not now,” I said. “Please, not now.”

  Unsure of what I ought to do, I decided to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham to pray for guidance. Women had been visiting the holy place for many centuries, especially those who, like me, hoped to bear sturdy sons.

  Once there, I knelt before the golden altar in the dim chapel. I soon discovered that I had much more to pray for than the grace to bear a strong, vital heir to the throne.

  “Please Lord,” I prayed, “don’t let my earthly pilgrimage be for naught! Don’t let me disgrace my mother’s memory, or let it be tarnished by the lies of my envious half-sister! Don’t let my husband put me aside!”

  I prayed, most earnestly, for a very long time.

  And my prayers were answered. For like my lovely sister-in-law Mary, I too was fortunate in that year, the Year of Our Lord 1515. Not long after her marriage to Charles Brandon at Greenwich, I knew that I was once again carrying the king’s child. And I felt certain that we would be blessed at last with a strong, healthy son.

  * * *

  Rain pelted down on the palace rooftops on the winter night my child was born, and a cold wind brought in the dawn. My labor was long and painful, and through it all I shivered with the cold. Yet no mother had ever been happier than I was to hear my baby’s first loud cries, and when the midwife put her into my arms she warmed me at once.

  For I saw at first glance that she was a true daughter of Castile.

  “Isabella,” I whispered to her. “I shall call you Isabella, for you have the look of your grandmother, and I know you will have her strength.”

  Thinking back to that happy dawn, I wonder even now why I felt no disappointment that my baby was not the son I had been sure would be born to us. Why I felt such immediate and complete contentment in my daughter.

  All I know is that my happiness was full, and nothing, not even Henry’s sharp words, could lessen it.

  “What name, sire? What name shall I give to the herald?”

  My chamberlain William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was respectful, but insistent. The baby had to be proclaimed, her name and title announced.

  “Mary, I suppose,” I heard Henry respond irritably, his voice hoarse, his eyes dull and red-rimmed. He had been spending the long winter nights at the Maidens’ Bower, I was told. Or by the fireside among his favorite male companions, where they drank and laughed and pummeled one another like boys. He was always restless in winter, he needed to be active, riding or hunting or just tramping along in the open air, fending off boredom and anxious thoughts. Henry had never been one to take his ease.

  “But my lord—” I began.

  “Her name is Mary,” he snapped. To the chamberlain he said, “Have the christening as soon as you can. With as little show or fuss as possible. Thomas will arrange it.”

  He glanced down into the gilded cradle with its royal crest and drape of purple velvet. Our tiny daughter slept quietly, undisturbed by his loud voice and the sudden stir of activity in the room.

  “From the look of her, he’d better do it quickly, before she—while she still lives.”

  “Ah, but she is strong, my little Isabella,” I spoke up, more passionately than I meant to. “She has a lusty loud cry, she eats well, see how pink and plump her cheeks are—”

  “Did you say Isabella?” Henry asked irritably.

  I nodded, smiling.

  “Her name is Mary.” He spoke slowly, giving each word emphasis and leaving me and the others in the room in no doubt that his decision was final.

  “Could she not be called Mary Isabella?” I asked, nothing daunted. After all, royal and highborn children were always given a long list of names.

  “She could not. I want no more reminders of Spain! No sneering or jibes a
bout my Spanish wife who can fight like a man but cannot breed sons!”

  His voice shook, he trembled with anger. The baby woke, and began to cry.

  I let Henry sputter on, without contradicting him, until I heard him say, in a gruff tone, “At least your traitor father can’t complain any longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you no longer have a father.”

  Stunned, and not certain I had heard him correctly—baby Isabella did indeed possess a loud and lusty wailing cry—I hesitated.

  “But he sent me his most skilled physician, and a midwife from Granada, only last month. They were with me throughout my long hours of pain!”

  My protest went unheard. Henry was not listening to anything I said, he was moving toward the doorway, hands over his ears, pausing only to glance into the gilded cradle with a grimace of distaste. All but ignoring our daughter who so resembled her grandmother Isabella, and deserved to be given her name.

  “The traitor Ferdinand is dead!” he snarled. “And a good thing too!”

  * * *

  It was true. My father had died, and no one had told me of his death for fear of upsetting me. For fear that the shock would so alarm me that I would lose my child.

  Yet now that she had arrived, she continued to be my chief source of contentment, despite all. I persisted in vain to persuade Henry to add Isabella to her long row of names. He continued to insist that she be called Princess Mary, and that no one allude to her Spanish grandparents.

  He blamed my father and his failure to serve as a loyal ally in war for weakening the crusade against the French, and spread a grotesque story (which may have been true) about his death. A story he told and retold, much to my discomfort.

  “The old lecher began to go wobbly at the knees,” Henry began, with a laugh, “and then he shook all over, like a lame horse with a quinsy, and then he screamed like a madman until his grooms had to tie him to the bed.”

  The others in the room, especially his fireside companions, laughed with him, the men heartily, the women uneasily, and some of them gave me fleeting looks of sympathy. I remained calm as Henry went on.