Mary, Bloody Mary

by Meyer, Carolyn, 1935-

  "The executioner waited for her, his face, save for his eyes, concealed by a black hood. His great sword glinted in the midday sunlight. She removed her cloak and the golden net that held her hair and handed them to a maid, who ran away in tears. She knelt by the wooden block, scrubbed clean but still wet. She was offered a linen bandage by the executioner's assistant, and she accepted it.

  "We had expected her to speak, to protest her innocence, but she did not. Her face was like marble, white and expressionless. She leaned forward and placed her head upon the block. Then she seemed to realize that her long hair was an impediment to the work of the executioner's blade, and with both hands she swept it up over her head, exposing her white neck. We waited, scarcely daring to breathe.

  "Madam, I have witnessed many executions, more than anyone could wish, but I have never seen one quite like this. The executioner raised his sword, and it was as if the world stood still, the sun hung motionless in the sky, every bird stopped its wingbeat, every child silenced its voice. Then the blade flashed downward. We heard the dreadful sound—there is none like it in all this world—^as it cut through bone and flesh. The head rolled from the body and was caught by the executioner's assistant. He lifted it up by that hank of black hair, Anne's pride, and carried it to the four sides of the scaffold to exhibit the grisly evidence. The black eyes seemed to stare at the crowd. It was done. Queen Anne was dead."

  Chapuys sighed. For some time neither of us spoke. Suddenly the sweet scent of roses overcame me, and I stood and began to walk back to the palace.

  "It is over then," I said finally. "My enemy is dead."

  Chapuys, matching his steps to mine, shook his head sadly. "Anne is dead, that is true. But you are far from safe. Your life remains in peril." Suddenly Chapuys bent forward and seized my cold hands in both of his. "You must sign the oaths, madam. Obey your father's wishes."

  "I obey only God's wishes!" I insisted, trying to pull my hands free.

  But Chapuys held on tightly. His dark eyes gazed directly into mine. "Listen to me, Mary. If you do not sign, Anne's fate will be yours. The king is a violent man, and he has become more brutal than ever before. It might sadden him to have you executed. It might even break his heart. But he will do it. It is his will against yours, and you cannot win.'" Chapuys released his tight grip on my hands but continued to hold them lightly in his clasp. "I cannot bear to see you harmed," he said hoarsely. "I beg you, Mary—for God's sake, sign the oaths."

  "Help me to escape from here!" I cried. "I would cross the Channel in a sieve if I could but leave England behind me!"

  Chapuys shook his head sadly. "I would give my life to help you, madam. But I can do nothing. Forgive me." The ambassador bowed and left me at the palace door.

  After the ambassador had gone, I climbed to my chamber, rested my head on my writing table, and closed my eyes. I was utterly alone and surrounded by enemies. There was no way out.

  At that moment my strength collapsed. My courage deserted me. I tried to pray but found no words.

  In this state I groped for my hidden supply of writing materials and composed a note, addressed to Cromwell: Send me the documents. I shall sign the oaths.

  CHAPTER 21: The New Enemy

  Cromwell himself brought the documents and watched as I scrawled my signature, Mary Tudor, leaving off the tide I still believed was rightfully mine: Princess.

  I acknowledged King Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church of England.

  I acknowledged the rights of my father's legitimate children to inherit the throne.

  Most difficult, I acknowledged that I was the illegitimate child of an incestuous marriage.

  When I was done Cromwell witnessed my signature with his own inky flourish.

  Once the oaths were signed and sealed, I was tormented by guilt. I had betrayed my mother. I had failed to hold fast to my principles and suffer the consequences. Many still refused to sign, and the number of executions increased. Dozens of heads rotted on pikes set along Traitors' Gate at the Tower, a sickening sight. Many of the dead were monks whose monasteries had been seized. Others were simple country folk, deeply religious, who believed that the king was wrong. They held out, but I had given in. They had remained strong while I had weakened, broken, yielded! The torments increased at night, when I lay sleepless. During the day headaches troubled my eyesight, so that I could not read or tend to my needlework.

  Exhausted, half-blind, and in despair, I knelt in the palace chapel and gazed up at the suffering Christ on the cross. "Miserere mei, Deus" (Have mercy on me, O God), I prayed. "Salvum me fac, Deus" (Save me)..."

  In the gloomy silence of the chapel, I thought I heard a whisper, a murmur, as if the figure on the cross were speaking to me. I peered up at the face of Jesus, but my sight was too weak to make it out clearly. Yet the voice was distinct: You must live, Mary, the voice said, for one day you shall be queen. You shall bring the church corrupted by the king back to the True Church of Christ in Rome, Now go in peace.

  I remember nothing more, for I fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  SLOWLY MY LIFE began to improve. Shelton and Clere were dispatched. New nursemaids arrived to care for Elizabeth, who continued to live at Hatfield, and I was able to enjoy her company without being her servant. I was restored to comfortable chambers, free to come and go as I pleased, and permitted the company of ladies-in-waiting as well as servants as needed. Cromwell sent me a gift, a frisky little black mare, which I rode out into the countryside nearly every day. My headaches lessened. I slept at least a few hours each night, although I could not forget the heavy price I had paid.

  King Henry had taken a new wife: Jane Seymour.

  "They were betrothed the day after Anne's beheading and wed ten days later, at Whitsuntide," Chapuys reported. "The king and his bride were both dressed from head to foot in dazzling white. Henry is investing a great deal of hope in this new marriage."

  At summer's end I received word that King Henry and Queen Jane were coming to Hatfield.

  They arrived with all the usual pageantry on a late August morning in 1536. Everything had been prepared for their stay. What I was not prepared for was the sight of the enormous fat man Umping slowly across the courtyard. In my mind I still envisioned my father as I remembered him from my childhood: tall, strong, boldly handsome, with his red-gold hair and beard, his merry blue eyes and winning smile—the portrait of a man in his prime. But that memory was nearly fifteen years old.

  This King Henry appeared much older than his forty-five years. He no longer strode boldly but leaned heavily on a golden cane, dragging one leg. He blamed the limp on a fall from a horse, but it was rumored that he suffered a canker on his thigh that would not heal and caused him constant pain.

  At Henry's side, pale-skinned and fair-haired, her mouth pursed primly, hovered his new wife, Queen Jane.

  I was afflicted with such an attack of nerves that I could scarcely stop trembling when later in the day I was summoned to the king's chambers.

  The page announced me: "Your Majesties, presenting Lady Mary." I dropped to both knees. Then I rose and approached my father and knelt a second and a third time, each time bowing deeply until my forehead touched my bent knee.

  "My precious Mary," said the king, "arise."

  I obeyed. The king remained seated so that as I stood I looked directly into his eyes, bloodshot and rheumy and sunk into mounds of fat. Purple veins marbled his swollen nose. His red-gold hair had faded to a drab brown streaked with gray. Then he smiled; several teeth had been drawn.

  I could scarcely hide my revulsion at what he had become. It was as though all his cruelty and corruption were revealed in his face. Surely Anne had been the cause of this change. Anne might not have poisoned his body, but she had poisoned his soul. He held out his hand to me, and still trembling, I bent to kiss it.

  Then I turned to Queen Jane, who smiled at me most sweetly. "Mary," Jane murmured, and reached out fluttering fingers.

  Perhaps this woman w
ill heal him, I thought, forcing myself to smile in return. Perhaps she can undo Anne's witchcraft. But I did not truly believe it possible. It was too late.

  The king and queen stayed at Hatfield for several days, taxing the means of the cook and his kitchen helpers to provide meat and drink for the royal entourage. To my surprise the king never inquired about Elizabeth, only days short of her third birthday. Surely he was aware that Elizabeth had been at least partly in my care since soon after her birth. But it was as though the little girl didn't exist. She reminded him of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth, too, had been declared a bastard. Now neither of us could inherit the throne. Elizabeth and I had been equally rejected.

  The evening before their departure, Queen Jane gave me a diamond ring as a token of friendship, and the king made me a gift of a thousand crowns to refresh my wardrobe, although that was scarcely enough, considering the ragged state of my gowns and petticoats.

  "We shall enjoy your presence at court this Yule-tide," Jane told me.

  "Time to find you a suitable husband, Mary," my father boomed. "You are how old now?"

  "Twenty, Your Majesty," I replied, and made a graceful curtsy.

  "High time! High time!" chortled the king in a high, childish voice, and he attempted a little capering dance that ended in a groan. His face was transformed once more. "Would you like a man in your bed, little daughter?" he asked with a leer. "You would, do not deny it—I know you would! And you shall have him!" The king laid a fat finger aside his temple, feigning deep thought. "Aha! Aha aha aha!" he cackled. "I have the perfect husband for you! We shall launch the plans immediately!"

  "Who is it, Your Majesty?" I asked, barely above a whisper. Stunned by his behavior, I glanced anxiously at Jane, who had taken up a piece of needlework and seemed to be paying scant attention to her husband's lunatic rantings.

  "Cromwell! My vicar general thinks well of you. He has said it often. Sent you a little mare, as I recall. What say you, daughter? I think it a perfect match!"

  I longed to say, "I would prefer death," but I could not. Instead I replied, "It is as the king wishes."

  TO MY GREAT relief, nothing further was said about marriage to Cromwell. Other possible husbands were proposed, but none suited the king—or found me suitable. I was, after all, a bastard. And King Henry refused to offer a dowry large enough to make up for my lack of a tide.

  At twenty I saw my life passing, empty and useless: I had neither husband nor child nor crown. I was a prisoner of the king's madness as surely as I had been a prisoner of his anger. But I clung to the memory of the voice that had spoken to me in the chapel: One day I would reign as queen of England, and I would restore the True Church. That would be my mission.

  CHAPUYS CAME ONE last time to say good-bye. The ambassador was returning to the Continent for a visit and a rest, although he promised to return within the year. We walked together in the Knot Garden, strolling among the artful forms and lovely blooms. Little Elizabeth was with us. Pretty as a picture, she dashed along the path ahead of us, snatching flowers off their stems and poking them into her red-gold hair. She ran back to us, laughing.

  "I am the queen!" she crowed, striking a pose. "Look at me! I am the queen!"

  Chapuys and I looked at her and then at each other. "Mark you well," Chapuys whispered. "Your new enemy has declared herself."

  I stared at him, shocked by his words. "She is but a child!"

  "The child of Anne Boleyn," he said.

  I thought him wrong. The child was so charming! I held out my arms and she ran into them.

  But years later I would remember that day and understand the truth and the wisdom of his words. My sister would become my nightmare, my enemy.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  In July of 1536, two months after Anne's execution, King Henry's bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, died at the age of sixteen.

  On the twelfth of October 1537, Queen Jane accomplished what two wives before her had failed to do: She presented King Henry with a healthy son. They named him Edward. A week later Queen Jane was dead of childbed fever.

  Two years after Jane's death, Cromwell arranged a marriage for Henry with a German princess, Anne of Cleves, sight unseen. But Henry found his new wife so ugly that he quickly divorced her. Anne of Cleves retired to a pleasant country life, but the king sent Cromwell to the scaffold for his mistake,

  A few months later Henry married yet again. He was forty-nine now, and his bride, Catherine Howard, whom he called his "rose without a thorn," only nineteen. It went badly from the beginning. Henry accused his fifth wife of immoral conduct, and within a year Catherine Howard had gone to the executioner's block.

  Henry's sixth and last marriage was to a twice-widowed woman in her thirties. Catherine Parr had a calming influence on him, and this marriage endured until Henry's death seven years later.

  Until the end of his life Henry continued to hunt down and execute his enemies. Mary became accustomed to the bloodshed—with two exceptions. Her tutor. Master Fetherston, who had done so much to help her, was sentenced for treason and burned alive. The second was the countess of Salisbury.

  The king imprisoned Mary's beloved friend and governess in the Tower and kept her there for nearly three years. Salisbury's son, Reginald Pole, had never ceased to criticize the king, not only for Henry's divorces and remarriages but for his treatment of the monks. It was rumored that Reginald was plotting to kill Henry and put Mary on the throne, and that Salisbury had a role in it.

  Mary wrote to the king, begging for clemency on behalf of the countess. There was no reply. In May of 1541, the countess was brought to Tower Green. Weeping hysterically, hardly knowing where she was, Salisbury tried to flee from the executioner. The inexperienced axman slashed at her over and over, until he managed to hack her to pieces.

  Shocked by this horror, Mary vowed never to dip her hands in innocent blood and promised to atone for the blood of martyrs spilled by her father.

  King Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547, at the age of fifty-six. He left three heirs: Mary, nearly thirty-one; Elizabeth, thirteen; and Edward, nine years old. According to his will, the crown was to go first to his son, and then, if they outlived Edward, to his daughters—first Mary and then Elizabeth, who were no longer to be considered bastards.

  Edward VI became king with a lord protector to rule for him, but within six years Edward was dead of consumption. Now it was Mary's turn to rule. But then came the intrusion of Lady Jane Grey, a young girl whose ambitious family had managed to persuade the dying Edward to change the succession laws in order to put his distant cousin Lady Jane on the throne. Lady Jane was queen for only nine days. Supporters of Mary imprisoned the fifteen-year-old Lady Jane, her father, and her husband. Mary herself signed the order for their execution. At last Mary was crowned queen of England in 1553.

  Mary was thirty-seven and still unmarried when she ascended the throne, but she soon fell passionately in love with Philip, the son of her Spanish cousin. Emperor Charles. Philip was eleven years younger than Mary. When he was not crowned king of England, as he desired, Philip left Mary and sailed for the Netherlands. They had been married little more than a year.

  Once again Mary was alone and lonely. Intent upon restoring the Catholic Church to Protestant England, she launched a reign of terror. She did not behead her opponents on charges of treason, as her father had; instead, she burned them for heresy. During her five-year reign, Queen Mary I persecuted countless hundreds for their religious beliefs and condemned more than three hundred heretics to burn at the stake. Convinced that her popular younger sister planned to overthrow her, Mary sent Elizabeth to the dreaded Tower of London as a prisoner.

  Mary reigned for five years. She died on November 17, 1558, at the age of forty-two. She was succeeded by her twenty-five-year-old sister, Elizabeth I, who ruled England for the next forty-five years.

  While Mary has often been described as a gentle, merciful person, because of the brutality of her reign—although no more brutal than those of
many European monarchs—history remembers her as "Bloody Mary."

  —CM.