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

by Erickson, Carolly

  The meaning of this challenge to Anne’s rank and title was not lost on the crowds of silent Londoners who watched as she was carried through the narrow streets from Fenchurch and Gracechurch to Leadenhall and then along Fleet Street and the Strand to Westminster. Musicians played to her, the Tower cannonry saluted her and loud trumpet fanfares demanded respect for the very pregnant, very bilious Anne as she was borne past in her regal litter, covered in a white satin canopy and drawn by two patient long-eared mules with gilded saddles.

  There were hundreds in the procession, the noblewomen in gowns of cloth of gold that glinted in the sunlight, the lord chancellor and royal councilors, even the members of the leading guilds (whose livelihoods were being choked off by the stark decline in trade with Flanders) in velvet and gold chains. A seemingly endless procession winding past the silent crowds.

  “We were kept behind staunch barriers,” Maria wrote to me. “We could not have disrupted the procession, even if we had wanted to—and there were many who wanted to very much. I heard them murmuring to one another, cursing Anne under their breath.

  “When I finally saw the harlot Anne, sitting in her litter, with her hair hanging down like a virginal young girl, and her gown sewn with emeralds and rubies, I wanted to reach out and snatch away all her finery. I saw that some of her ladies in their crimson gowns and ermines looked as aggrieved and outraged as I felt—or so I imagined. None of them wanted to be there, appearing to support the imposter who had stolen the king’s affections and brought harm to the good queen, Queen Catherine.

  “All the fanfares and grandeur in London could not make any of us greet Anne,” my dresser Maria let me know in her message, sent to me at Buckden. “She is hated. And she looked as if she was about to be sick.”

  I had warned Maria that the coronation ceremony, held the following day, would be lengthy and tiring. I remembered my own coronation well, how I became very hungry and thirsty after three or four hours of prayers and anointing and knowing that the end was not yet in sight.

  But I had not been carrying a child on that long day, and Anne was.

  “The longer it all went on, the more pale she became,” Maria wrote in her last message to me, sent at the end of the coronation day. “I overheard people commenting on how she looked as if she were going to faint. No one wanted to be there, or to take part in creating her queen. She didn’t deserve it. Imagine! A commoner raised to be anointed queen! And all of us forced to watch each anointing and robing and praying over her.

  “I could tell how much she liked it all, even though she was feeling so poorly. Every now and then I saw her smile. When the Duke of Suffolk brought the crown, and it was placed on her head amid singing and praying, she could not have looked more pleased. I think what pleased her was the humiliation of the others, all of them of higher birth, forced to pay homage to her and show that she had attained the highest rank possible for a woman, next to being born a queen, of course.

  “She stumbled and nearly fell when her father led her out of the abbey after she had been crowned. Oh, she was tired! But he held on to her arm very so tightly that I saw her grimace, and made sure she managed to walk the length of that long aisle while he held her in his grip. The choristers burst into loud song and the trumpeters blew more loudly than ever and we all felt more and more tired ourselves.”

  Thanks to Maria I was able to imagine the ceremony, and almost felt my own stomach churn as I read over her account. She wrote how afterward, there was much talk of midwives having been in the abbey just in case Anne went into labor during her crowning.

  No one seemed to know when the child would be born. It was being said that the king had brought to court astrologers and seers to predict the date and time when Anne would give birth. That the baby would be a prince no one doubted, though according to Maria, not every conversation she overheard or every comment made to her was very astute.

  “You would think the king would have had the courtesy to wait until she was delivered before making her go through all this!” was one remark she heard again and again.

  “Of course he couldn’t wait!” was the usual answer. “Had he waited, her child would not have been born to a king and his anointed queen. His claim to the throne would have been questioned. Princess Mary’s claim would have been better—or even Henry Fitzroy’s!”

  Other remarks, made in low tones by Anne’s enemies, were more astringent. “Why make a queen of such a woman! And she of such low birth! Why not crown the girl who feeds the pigs!”

  But what Maria overheard most often were loud grumbles from the overtaxed Londoners complaining that they had to pay for all the lavish pageantry and finery, the tourneying and banqueting, the costly gowns and even for the wine that flowed freely from the public fountains. How could they be expected to bear, in silence and without complaint, the burden of such a high price for the elevation of a brazen, insolent woman to the rank of queen? How, when the docks were all but empty of merchant ships and the merchants’ coffers empty of coins, could Londoners accept Anne Boleyn as the true wife of King Henry? Especially when the Holy Father in Rome had made his extreme disapproval known?

  For he had most certainly done so. Even before the archbishop had placed the crown on Anne’s unworthy head, Pope Clement threatened to declare the marriage annulled and to excommunicate Henry.

  * * *

  When the last of my dresser Maria’s messages had reached me, and she herself had returned to Buckden to give me an even more lengthy report on all that she had seen and heard, I was dejected. I could not help but mourn the loss of what had been mine—for how could it not be a loss, now that Anne had her crown and—what was much more important—now that she had the next Prince of Wales in her belly?

  I began to make plans to leave England, to return to Castile and devote myself to a quiet retirement from the world. It seemed the right, the dignified thing to do. I even thought, for the length of one wet afternoon, of wearing a hair shirt under my gown as my mother had done. I would found a convent, and visit the nuns on each holy day to ensure that they were not falling into lives of sin as so many monks and nuns were said to do.

  But if I went to live in Spain, I would have to leave my beloved daughter Mary behind. Mary, I felt certain, would soon be wed to a prince or nobleman. When her own new household was formed, would she permit me to join it? Or would my own notoriety as Henry’s rejected wife and Anne’s humiliated rival haunt any court I joined, and overshadow Mary’s own legitimacy?

  Whatever move I made, it would have to be one that preserved my dignity and my independence. I would need quiet time to pray and ponder. To survey the land, so to speak, as any wise commander does before returning to the fray.

  Even as I thought over these things, I resisted inwardly. I was never one to leave the field. To retreat was not in my nature. Not until I had used every weapon at my command, every fighter loyal to me, to regain what I had lost. Still, I wanted to make a wise decision, not a hasty one.

  To this end I asked Ambassador Chapuys to visit me again, and he was soon back at Buckden.

  “I have been thinking of leaving England, of going to live in Castile, perhaps even in the Alhambra or nearby,” I told him when we sat once again before the hearth fire in my rooms.

  “I could rest in quiet there, it seems a fitting way to remove myself with dignity from all that has happened.”

  The ambassador looked at me searchingly.

  “Why would you enter a convent now, when you refused to earlier?”

  I had no answer for that. The ambassador went on.

  “If you imagine that you could retire from life, or hide yourself away like a recluse, you couldn’t be more wrong, if I may say so. You have become a cause, a symbol.”

  This took me by surprise. “What sort of symbol?” I asked him.

  “Why, of resistance to the king’s vanity, his dishonoring of his marriage, his refusal to submit to the authority of the church. Consider the harm he is doing to the kingdom by
attempting to put you aside, knowing full well he would bring on himself and his subjects the ire of the Emperor Charles. You, Catherine, represent stability and safety. The king has put his people in peril.

  “And no monarch dares do such grave injury to his people without suffering many a penalty,” he added, his tone becoming ominous. “Why, you ought to have heard the slanders and insults flung at Anne behind her back—and at the king as well. I heard many a tavern oath to ‘No queen but our Good Queen Catherine!’ on the eve of the coronation—and after it was over.”

  I remembered what Maria de Caceres had written to me about the silence of the crowds that watched Anne process through the capital. I questioned Ambassador Chapuys about this.

  “True enough, they were silent when her procession went by. But it was not out of respect. They were withholding their shouts of loyalty. They were denying her their fealty. They were refusing to offer her their heartfelt support and love.”

  Listening to the ambassador, I took heart. So my support among the people was growing stronger, not weaker. I stood, and began pacing back and forth. I felt more tenacious, more determined to stand my ground. Still, I thought, this ever widening support for me means that I am a growing threat to the future peace of the realm and the restoration of good order, and to the authority of the king and his new wife. I said as much to Ambassador Chapuys.

  “Ah, but that is where you are wrong. You are no threat at all if he believes, or at least he constantly tells others, that he does not expect you to live much longer.”

  Caught unawares by the ambassador’s blunt words, I had to catch my breath. “Is that what he truly believes?” I asked at length.

  Instead of answering me directly, he asked me whether I had not noticed that little attention was being paid to who came to visit me, or to how often my physician and apothecaries came and went, giving me medicines and offering advice on my illness?

  I agreed that I had noticed this, and with some surprise. I sat down again.

  “He has convinced himself that your illness will soon put an end to your life. Which, I assure you, none of us who support you believe, or want to believe. You will recover. You will enjoy a long life. But I urge you, Your Majesty, do not think of leaving England. Not just yet.”

  “But there is no place in England for a dethroned queen.”

  “The more supporters you have, the more defenders will protect you.”

  A collation was brought in, and we supped and drank in subdued silence as the summer dusk fell and the logs crackled in the hearth. He had given me a great deal to consider, and I found myself somewhat at a loss over what to make of all that he had revealed to me. I knew that ambassadors were prone to exaggeration, and to viewing events and circumstances in a way that benefited their own interests. Yet what if he was right? What if Anne’s position as queen was more tenuous than I imagined? Kings and queens had been dethroned by their angry subjects in the past. Royal fortunes were altered by war, or mischance, or—as the Holy Scriptures show clearly—by the hand of God.

  Suddenly I felt more hungry than I had in a very long time. I ate what was before me and called for more. I drank my wine. I felt my spirits rise within me.

  “Do not think of leaving, not just yet,” Ambassador Chapuys told me before he left. “Things are far too unsettled. The people are fractious and unruly. They are as displeased with Anne as the king is pleased with her. It is best that you remain here in England—at least for a few months.”

  “Until Anne delivers her child, you mean.”

  “At least until then, yes.” He hesitated, then added, “Or until the king realizes just how strong a daughter of Castile and Aragon can be.”

  Pondering all that I had seen and heard that night, and smiling, I went to bed, but it was a long time before I could get to sleep.

  * * *

  The blow fell in that warm, sunny summer of the Year of Our Lord 1533. The Holy Father in Rome declared that Henry’s marriage to Anne was not a valid union—and that his marriage to me was the only true one. The child Anne was carrying would be born a bastard.

  Everything that had been done since the start of the year—Henry’s marriage to Anne, my removal from court, Anne’s crowning and assumption of the rights and role of queen—all had to be undone immediately, and the former royal hierarchy of the court restored.

  I rejoiced. Henry was irate, and truculent. He refused to do as Pope Clement ordered.

  This was something the soothsayers and astrologers had not foreseen, just as they had failed to predict the death of my sister-in-law Mary, Henry’s younger sister and my longtime friend. Mary, Henry’s favorite sister and wife of his companion and jousting partner Charles Brandon, had died only a scant few days before the papal ruling was issued.

  It was another omen, those in my household said. Another dark foretaste of things to come, like the wonders in the sky and the rumblings and quaking of the earth. A sign—as if more signs were needed—that the time was out of joint, with divine disfavor at work among us.

  Caught between anger and mourning, Henry received his sentence of excommunication with ill grace, his foul temper fueling his bitterness.

  I had no doubt that he knew the nature of the eternal torment he faced: to be cut off forever from the church of Rome, the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the source of all Christian order, law and belief. To be driven from the community of Christian believers. To be denied the blessings conferred by the sacraments, and burial in consecrated ground. And—most terrible of all—to be condemned, after death, to endure the agony of neverending terror and anguish, without hope of relief.

  It must have seemed to Henry, in his most fearful hours, as if God himself had turned his face away, and denied him his mercy.

  Certainly his fellow rulers were turning away. One by one they registered their shock and anger that the English king, that very King Henry who had written a treatise against the heretic Martin Luther, had incurred the harshest sentence the Holy Father could impose. One by one they registered their blame and censure. If Christian rulers defied the head of the church in Rome, then there would be no armies of Christian knights to defend Christendom against the advancing Turks.

  I heard Sir Edmund and Sir Edward, my jailers, muttering that “the Turk will get us all in the end!” as they went to and from the guards’ quarters each afternoon. Revolts rose up everywhere: in Ireland, in Scotland and in the borderlands, and increasingly, in London, where, I was assured, my supporters were strong and contempt for Anne greatest.

  It was Anne, people said, who had brought down the punishment of the Holy Father. She had no fear of the eternal torment caused by excommunication. She welcomed the breach with Rome. She was a heretic!

  The king’s new wife was a heretic, the king was an excommunicate, the realm was churning with rebellion and under threat of invasion. It was no wonder my captors shook their heads and condemned the state of things. The time was indeed out of joint, and we all stood in peril—if not from the Turks, then from the avenging sword of the divine.

  18

  I wrote to Henry to ask whether I could be allowed to attend the funeral of his sister Mary, who had been my dear friend. One of the royal secretaries brought me a curt and impersonal response. I would be allowed to attend the burial service. He told me when and where it would be held, at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk in two days’ time.

  Keeping in mind that Henry believed I was close to death, I set out for the burial site, taking my physician and apothecary with me and accompanied by six mounted guardsmen. Although I wore a sober black gown and concealing veil, and no jewels or other indications of my rank as Princess Dowager, still in each settlement I passed, dozens of villagers called out greetings to me and shouts of encouragement.

  Once arrived at the chapel where Mary’s body was to be laid in its tomb, I had to be helped out of my litter and could barely manage to kneel without help as the prayers were said and the final interment made. I coughed, again and again.
I wept freely—heartfelt tears, for Mary’s death saddened me and she had been a strong supporter of mine and opponent of Anne. I’m sure that I was pale in my grief.

  I gave the impression, or hoped I did, that Henry was correct in what he was telling others: that I was very ill and would not live much longer. I wanted to seem an aging, sympathetic figure, one that elicited sympathy.

  While the last of the prayers were being read I looked over at Henry, who as chief mourner was standing close to the bier, leaning on a thick wooden cane. He too looked pale, and tearful. I felt an unaccustomed wave of pity for him as he stood there, wearing sober black just as I was, and shorn of all adornment. I was taken aback by his appearance. His customary jeweled doublet and flashing rings, the gem-laden gold collar he wore around his neck, his fur-trimmed cap with its rubies and pearls, even his gleaming gold dagger: all were missing on this day. He was naked in his grieving, it seemed to me, no longer king but the bereaved brother of a loving sister, one who had brought him much joy in life and who had died far too young.

  There was no sign of Anne. She had not chosen to support him with her presence in his time of sorrow. Or had he commanded her not to attend the burial, preferring to be on his own, without her interference?

  On an impulse I asked my apothecary Philip Grenacre for a scrap of paper and a bit of charcoal, and wrote the words, “We will hold fast.” It was the message Henry and I had exchanged many years earlier, when we were both young and besieged by difficulties, Henry by his father’s cruel constraints, I by the fear and uncertainty of my years of widowhood. We had been drawn together then, we had become allies in our season of distress.

  I asked Philip to give the paper to the king, once the solemnities ended.

  When next I looked up, I found that Henry was standing beside me, looking as vulnerable as I had ever seen him. He was never good at dissembling his grief—only his fear. He had no bravado, no anger to hide behind when in the grip of sorrow.