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

by Erickson, Carolly

  I thought often about what my duenna had told me years earlier. It troubled me, for whatever her faults, Doña Elvira was not generally given to lying and I too had heard the rumors about my mother’s forcing her niece aside and using any and every means to fight off her opponents. I had never wanted to believe the rumors. I wanted to continue to believe, as I had when I was a child, that my dear, revered mother was blameless, a great and heroic queen, entirely without sin or fault.

  I also remembered Doña Elvira’s having said that my mother truly believed that she had been born to do the Lord’s bidding, to carry out his work. If doing his bidding meant setting aside his teachings and committing sins, that was none of her concern. She was merely the Lord’s instrument, and because she was, everything she did was done in his name, for his good purposes.

  I wondered where in the Scriptures it was written that evil could be done in the name of good, and how often such reasoning was followed. I remembered the story of how all the young boys in Bethlehem were killed on the orders of King Herod, so that the newborn King of the Jews would not survive. Surely those children were innocent victims—yet they had to be sacrificed. It was all part of a divine plan.

  Puzzling, troubling thoughts gnawed at me every time I saw the helpless little Henry Fitzroy, carried proudly in my husband’s arms. Was I meant to be the Hand of Vengeance of the Lord to strike down Henry Fitzroy? And even if I succeeded, wouldn’t Bessie have another of the king’s sons to take his place?

  As I turned these thoughts over in my mind, I felt chastened, reproved by my own conscience. I had insisted that Elizabeth Boleyn’s wayward daughter Anne confess her sins. How much more, I thought, ought I to confess mine. I had far greater sins to confess, with my thoughts of harm.

  I sought out my own confessor and poured out my heart, was shriven, and felt somewhat better.

  * * *

  My nephew Charles was coming to visit me.

  He would be traveling from Spain to his new realms far to the north, and on his way would land at Dover, and we would commune together there.

  I hurried to prepare for our meeting, eager to see him and talk with him, now that he had taken on new powers and titles no one in my family had ever imagined he might one day acquire. For Charles had become not only King of Spain when my father Ferdinand died but Emperor of the German-speaking lands as well. He bore the exalted title Holy Roman Emperor, and what was even more important, as ruler of Spain and the empire, he not only commanded thousands of skilled fighting men but was exceedingly wealthy, his treasury enlarged each year by newfound riches from the Americas. I had heard my husband say that my nephew Charles had the fattest treasury of any monarch, certainly far fatter than his own.

  The last time I had seen Charles was when he was a solemn, taciturn little boy of six or seven, traveling with his mother, my beautiful sister Juana. I remembered his reserve, and that he did not smile. What would he be like now, I wondered. Would he remember me, and be glad to see me?

  I rose at dawn on the day he was due to arrive, and watched from the castle parapet for a ship bearing the arms and pennons of Spain. The port was windy on that winter’s day, and full of ships, among them the immense four-masted Great Harry, my husband’s magnificent flagship. Henry was once again bound for France, not to make war this time but to meet with King Francis in grand tourneying, amid much splendor and display.

  The feats of arms, it was said, would be less impressive than the gorgeous pageantry surrounding them. Henry and Francis would compete in the lists, and would wrestle with one another, and vie for the honor of most skilled horseman, and their knights and chief gentlemen would compete against one another in the same fashion. But there was another, more significant purpose in the event; it was to be a celebration of unity. Our daughter Mary was betrothed to Francis’s son, and the expectation was that England and France were to be allied, putting an end to the warfare that had drained England’s treasury and led to much grumbling in Parliament and among the people of both realms. It was only fitting, Henry thought, that a magnificent tournament should be held to celebrate the peaceable union.

  I waited, there on the parapet, for nearly an hour, watching for my nephew Charles to arrive. At last the large imperial ship was sighted on the horizon, and her guns fired a greeting. I continued to watch while the pilot brought the vessel into port and dropped anchor. My nephew, his hound, and a dozen of his attendants were rowed ashore and before long made their way to the castle.

  No sooner were Charles and I settled in comfort in a warm, firelit upper room, food and drink spread before us and our servants sent away, than he began to speak plainly of his suspicions about the French.

  “Warn King Henry,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse and marred by a lisp, “that the French are fortifying Ardres. At least four thousand fighting men are concealed there and in nearby villages. They are not there for tourneying, but to invade England.”

  He came closer, leaning toward me so that he did not need to raise his voice above a whisper. “King Francis means to seize the English realm within the year and make it his own. My scouts are keeping watch at all the ports. French ships disguised as Hansa freight vessels are waiting for the signal to make the crossing, while King Henry disports himself at Guines.”

  The announcement took me by surprise, but I lost no time in sending word on to the captain of the Great Harry, confident that he would in turn make certain that my husband received this news.

  It sounded dire. The tourneying was to be held in the Val Doré, between the towns of Guines and Ardres. If the French should indeed invade England in force while King Henry and his most skilled knights were in France, unable to mount a defense, and if Henry himself were to be captured—I could only imagine what harm would result. Clearly my nephew had become an astute observer, watchful and wary of armed might, whatever its source, despite his youth and inexperience in war.

  I looked at him with new interest, even respect. His body was still stout, his face square, though a dark beard circled his chin and his once blond hair had darkened to a rich brown. When he moved he lacked my husband’s grace and agility, and his speech was thick, his jaw unnaturally slack. He resembled more his late father Philip than my sister Juana. But there was an unmistakable air of majesty, even of command, about him—or did I imagine it, knowing the titles he bore and the powers he held? Either way he impressed me, and I thought for a moment how proud Juana would be if she could see him now, wearing his authority with ease, his hound crouched beside him with its head on his knee.

  I hesitated to ask the question that was uppermost in my own mind, then decided to go ahead.

  “What news of your mother?”

  He frowned, then sighed as if resigned to telling me what he knew I was anxious to hear, though it was both sad and distasteful.

  “She lives in comfort, in the Alhambra, with physicians and priests to attend her,” he began, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, “but she is hardly aware of where she is or who is watching over her. She imagines that my father is still alive, asleep in his coffin—”

  “His coffin?” I interrupted. “But he has been entombed for years.”

  Charles nodded. “She refuses to believe that. When she first moved into her apartments in the palace, she demanded that he be brought to her, to share her dwelling. So a coffin was brought—an empty coffin.”

  He paused before going on. “She is in distress unless she is allowed to care for him. She orders food and wine brought to her, and imagines that she feeds him. She has medicines brought by the apothecaries when she says he is ill, and blankets thrown into the empty coffin when she insists he is cold. She ministers to him as if he were a helpless child. It soothes her to do this. Otherwise she screams and cries without ceasing.”

  “Does she know you?” I asked after a moment. “Would she know me if I went to visit her?”

  He shook his head.

  “Can nothing be done?”

  “A companion was found f
or her who seems to soothe her. A healer from Ghent who is known as the Great Woman of Flanders. They talk to one another, after a fashion, and when the healer is there, mother is able to sleep. Before the woman was found and sent to our court, mother never slept at all. Instead she spent every hour pacing and ranting, and had to be kept from running out to the verandah and jumping to her death.”

  We continued our meal in silence for a time, though after hearing about poor Juana I had no appetite and simply sat, trying not to imagine my sister in her private torment, throwing herself down from the heights of the Alhambra onto the sharp rocks below and ending her life. Now and then I took a sip of wine, while Charles consumed three courses and afterward belched loudly in satisfaction, throwing the scraps to his hound.

  We strolled together in the private garden, braving the wind as Charles talked further about what he had seen on his recent journey, and what his informers had told him about the treachery of King Francis. Our talk left me with much to ponder.

  The following morning Charles surprised me once again by asking to see a portrait of Princess Mary.

  I showed him the portrait miniature I always kept with me.

  “I only wish she were here with us,” I said as he looked at the likeness, his features softening, a slight smile on his lips.

  “So this is the little Queen of France, that is to be,” he murmured.

  “Henry calls her his prize possession. He is fond of carrying her in his arms and showing her off to everyone at court.”

  “As he does with his other child, so I am told. The one he calls Henry Fitzroy.”

  I nodded.

  “His mistress’s son,” he added. He did not spare me, but looked me squarely in the eye, as if to say, “The son you should have had.” What he did and said was disrespectful, but it was no more than the truth. It was I, Catalina, who should have borne the son who would inherit the throne of the Tudors.

  “Your nursery is still full of empty cradles, then,” my nephew remarked, handing me back the miniature portrait of Mary. “Uncle Ferdinand was beside himself with anger when you failed to bring sons into the world, year after year—”

  “I continue to pray that the Lord will send me sons,” was my curt reply. I surprised myself by the bitterness in my tone.

  “You are thirty-four years old, are you not?

  I nodded.

  “You cannot expect to conceive many more times. Sons born to aged women are small and weak. Or if they are strong, the mothers die. As the midwives say, boys are much harder on their mothers than girls, from labor onwards.”

  Charles paced the floor, his brow wrinkled, whether in thought or worry I could not tell. The hound kept pace with him, looking up at him from time to time.

  “Does the king continue to come to your bed?” Charles asked after a moment.

  “He does,” I insisted. “And I have twice felt babes leap in my womb, since Mary was born. But both times they were lost.” I hung my head. “I could not carry either of them for more than a few months.”

  “Perhaps it is as well. At least you have your daughter. She will reign in good time.” He slapped his thigh, making the hound yelp and jump, putting its great paws on the wide golden panels of Charles’s brocade coat. “Yes, she will reign. All the more reason to make certain she does not marry the French dauphin.”

  “But the grand celebration of unity, the tourneying—” I began, thinking of all the months of preparation, all the costly arrangements, that had gone into the meeting of the two kings, Henry and Francis. The meeting that would soon take place, unless …

  “As to that, leave everything to Cardinal Wolsey and his minions. And to the diplomats and secretaries who even now are meeting, aboard my ship, to undo all the agreements and renounce them. The real celebration will come after the tournament is over, on the day the world is told that Princess Mary is betrothed, not to the French prince, but to me.”

  11

  “The eighth wonder of the world! That’s what it is.”

  “There’s never been another tourney to match it. And never will be again!”

  “They say it is costing eight thousand ducats a day, and more, to pay all those men.”

  “The king swears he won’t cut his beard until the day the tourney begins.”

  In windswept Picardy, on a plain called the Golden Valley, a wonderment was indeed in the making. Day after day, hundreds of carpenters and joiners, plasterers and bricklayers worked in wearisome shifts to build the king’s imposing palace and rig the tents, paint the walls and hang the tapestries to adorn them. Our court was always full of mutterings and predictions, but that spring the talk was louder than ever and the expectations high indeed.

  While we watched, from our hastily erected tents, a splendid gatehouse took form, turrets and battlements arose, choristers were heard singing in the palace chapel and the smells of spices and roasting flesh and freshly baked loaves began to reach us from the kitchens and bakehouse. Stables were built, horses exercised and groomed, and raised stands, sheltered from the sun and wind, constructed for the crowds expected to watch the jousters as they couched their lances and lowered their visors and thundered down the lists.

  As my nephew Charles had predicted, Cardinal Wolsey ordered all, with the sergeant painter and the chief designer of pageants—an impatient Italian—as his deputies. The cardinal let it be known that the workmen must build the entire tourneying site in twenty-two days, whatever delays might arise from storms or plagues or quarreling between the English and French craftsmen. Unless this deadline was met, no one would be paid.

  For twenty days and more the hammering, sawing and pounding continued, amid shouts of encouragement and threats from those in charge. Then, on the twenty-third day, we awoke to find that the noise had stopped. All the structures appeared to be complete, each one decorated with carved ornaments and painted blazons and pennons waving in the Tudor colors of green and white.

  A large winged statue of Cupid symbolized the enduring love between the English and French. Not far away a statue of fat, smiling Bacchus symbolized enduring drunkenness—and offered conduits of free-flowing red and white wine below the inscription “Let all who will, make good cheer.”

  Cheer indeed there was—and not a few jibes. For the hastily erected palace was quickly given the name “Palace of Illusion” by those who mocked its flimsy construction, the walls painted to look as though they were made of bricks, the timbers too weak and insubstantial to withstand even the mildest of winter winds. Some of the Flemish artisans were overheard to mutter that the amity between England and France was also illusory, for had King Henry not ordered his builders to construct a secret passageway through which he could escape should the French attack while the tournament was under way?

  Escape seemed the farthest thing from my husband’s mind as he rose each morning before dawn to hunt, returning in time to have his new armor fitted—proud of the lithe slender figure he made when wearing it—and then sat at his desk, open books spread around him, composing his treatise to refute the teachings of the heretic monk Martin Luther. He met with his lutenists and organist and shawm-players and had them write out a song he had composed about friendship, “Let me then rest, among those I love best.” And not until he had done all this did he take time to talk with the cardinal and his secretaries and attend to the letters and papers that required his signature.

  I was less and less a part of his daily concerns in those weeks, though he did sometimes boast to me about the number of birds his falcons killed and the dozens of hares he had supplied to the kitchens after he returned from the hunt. I rode my cherished jennet Griselda, taking care not to tire her as she was no longer in her prime and easily winded, and sometimes I dismounted and walked, Griselda trailing obediently along behind me, enjoying the fitful sunshine in the low hills and the spring green and early flowers along the riverbank.

  Then one afternoon my dresser Maria de Caceres brought me a large, finely wrought basket and said th
at it was a gift from the king.

  I could tell from her delighted expression that the basket must contain something extremely pleasing. Maria could never keep a secret for long. Inside the basket, wrapped in a length of fine soft yellow silk, was a swansdown gown, so light it seemed all but weightless. The bodice was of white velvet, the sleeves and wide skirt were entirely covered in soft feathers.

  “Ah! How lovely!” I cried, and let Maria fasten the delicate gown over my kirtle, pinning back my hair with a swansdown-trimmed comb. I looked in the pier glass and smiled with satisfaction. For despite the tufts of gray at my temples and the lines at the corners of my eyes, in the pristine gown I felt like a girl again, aglow with happiness, and when the king unexpectedly entered my apartments and saw me wearing his gift, I could tell that he was more than pleased.

  In fact he was vaguely mystified. He waved the servants away and took both my hands in his.

  “Catalina,” he said, in a voice I had not heard him use in a long time. “You look—like another woman entirely.”

  Our embrace lasted until evensong, and beyond, and when we finally sat down to supper the swansdown gown had been laid aside, to be kept for another tryst.

  I was to treasure that long and pleasurable afternoon, for after the grand tourney in the Golden Valley ended and the prizes had gone to the victors, I had a prize of my own: I was once again carrying the king’s child, and my hopes rose as I imagined that this time I would give my husband a son.

  * * *

  It was about this time, when I was sure that I was once again with child, that my half-sister Maria Juana came back to our court.

  She arrived at the palace drawn in a golden litter, borne by eight handsome Aragonese youths in coats of cloth of gold and black velvet, the gilded spurs on their red leather boots polished to a high shine.

  “The Lady Maria Juana Ruiz de Iborre y Alemany!” her attendants cried, drawing back the spangled curtains of the litter to reveal my slender, veiled half-sister who looked, I must admit, far younger than her thirty-five years.