She wrote to me again, this time in desperation. The king had changed. Where he once treated her like a sister, he now treated her like a leper. Princess Mary was coming back to court soon, and the queen needed me there to reason with the king on their behalf.
“Perhaps the princess gives us a chance?” Álvaro said over a breakfast of herby-lentils and nettle tea. “As a bargaining tool, I mean.”
Reginald Pole was in Italy on papal matters, and I realised that I couldn’t go home yet; nothing had been achieved. The princess was coming, and the king would go to see his daughter in court—more quickly if Anne Boleyn found a reason to be there, too. I had to exploit this, and so we hatched a plan.
* * *
“Tutor!” The princess shouted down the long gallery of Greenwich Palace. She raced towards me with wide-open arms, bigger and ruddier than before.
“You’ve been in Wales,” I said. “My goodness, how did you find it?”
“I think you’d love it because it’s full of trees and birds, and you always talk about trees and birds.”
“And what do they sing of, these birds in the trees?”
“They sing of Christ and his passion.”
“Do they also sing of freedom, liberty, of the joy of the forest? Of how foolish men are??
“No,” she replied, scrunching her eyes.
If she couldn’t see the true beauty of creation and how it resonated with God, she would be a dangerous monarch. I had work to do.
We made our way down the gallery with its portraits of the kings long gone. Here was the Lionheart, there the Conqueror. Of course, we had maids and guards listening to every word, but I wasn’t frightened. “We can learn from them, mostly how not to do things,” I said, pointing at the portraits.
Her lady-in-waiting, Agnes, with soft cheeks and a sweet smile, moved forwards. I was enveloped in the scent of rose water. My pulse raced for a minute and I found myself wiping my brow.
She said with her soft, whispery voice, “Gently, sir.”
I talked with the princess, loud enough for all to hear. Reginald Pole had kept her in isolation in Ludlow, and I couldn’t have that.
“I’ll be your tutor again, at least over the winter months in court, my lady. I’ve been thinking that learning is always better shared, so we’re going to bring in other young ladies to our classes.”
She stopped still. Was she frightened by that prospect?
“Yes,” she said at last. “I think it would be good. I would enjoy that.”
I worked hard over the next few weeks finding her the companions who’d help her, but also finding companions who’d draw in the king and Anne. I got plump Frances Brandon, her ten-year-old cousin, who bustled into the room with little thought of learning and was concerned with her next pastry. There was Margaret Douglas, slightly older, a cousin for whom I held out more hope. She was stern, yet open to new ideas. Red-haired and ruddy-faced, she and the princess could well have been twins. There was pretty Mary Shelton, who wore perfumes from Paris and threw her hair back with a toss as if she was doing magic with it. And there was eight-year-old Mary Howard, the bemused daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who brought out the princess’s early mothering spirit. Both Marys, Shelton and Howard, were cousins to Anne Boleyn.
These minds, though, were a long way from my challenging boy-scholars. To get some fire going, I persuaded Álvaro to take me to his printing press in Holborn one Sunday morning. We slipped through the streets, covered in snow and ice, sometimes clinging only to window ledges. Then we unlocked the heavy oak door and set about our work in his magical cave. We kept the shutters fixed to the windows so as not to arouse suspicions. We worked by candlelight so that our eyes strained and ached. We made out a poem for each of the girls and put their own names on each one. It was from the hand of the king himself.
As the holly groweth green
And never changeth hue,
So I am, and ever hath been,
Unto my lady true.
As the holly groweth green,
With ivy all alone,
When flowers cannot be seen
And green-wood leaves be gone,
Now unto my lady
Promise to her I make:
From all other only
To her I me betake.
With the fruits of our labour scrolled tightly in my leather satchel, we slid back to The Flying Horse as innocuously as if we’d just emerged from Sunday Mass. As we entered the inn, Benjamin Elisha rushed to me with a worried smile on his rabbinic face: “There is a letter from overseas in your room.”
Who could it be from but my wife?
I climbed the stairs and there it was. As I opened it, another fell out. There were no secret codes, and there was no book with notes hidden in it. It was a simple message, clear and desperate.
Brother,
My world descends into the darkness. The others have abandoned me. I am accused of witchcraft and Judaism.
Will you come for me, speak for me, get someone to speak for me?
You know where I am. I wait for you.
I live in hope.
Beatriz
What new torture was this? I guessed the others were safe, even if they had abandoned everything.
The other letter was from my wife.
Juanito,
The house grows cold and lonely without you. Why will you not forget the struggle? We need you, here. You are our guiding light. This is your home. Can you see your letter from your sister? I could have burned it, but Juanito, you can’t go. We need you in the land of the living.
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you make your flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one turned aside by the flocks of thy companions?
Come home, Juanito. Forget about your grand plans. We can pray that God brings your sister home. There is nothing more you can do.
Your Loving Wife,
Marguerite
She and Zeek needed me. But I was so close. I was soon to be with the king. If I pushed a little farther, surely, I could save them all.
30 December 1528
Back at court, in the stateroom hung with tapestries of David and Goliath, I gave the girls their printed sheets. With gasps that sounded like they were coming from angels, they noticed their names on the poem from King Henry.
“Look! My name!”
“Mine, too.”
“It’s magic!”
“My young ladies! Enough of the wonder. Let’s read.”
We read aloud. Then I felt a vibration, and then another thump. Heavy footsteps were stamping down the long gallery. The pretty little faces looked up as if scanning each other for comfort. What terror was this? What invasion? There was a rap on the door, and before we had a chance to respond, the doors were flung open.
In strode the royal party. My trap had sprung, for I’d printed another sheet, put the name of Anne Boleyn on it, and sent it to her with a date and a time. There was the king, the queen, and the Lady Willoughby, frail, gaunt and fiddling incessantly with a Psalter. Between the lady and the queen, with her swan-like neck, was Anne Boleyn. Holding Anne’s hand beside the king was a man who I guessed was her brother.
“Master Lewis, we are here to inspect these ladies’ lessons,” boomed the king, who strode forward, codpiece underneath a golden tunic.
I caught the thick smell of red wine on his ginger beard. He gave no regard to his own daughter. She could have been a flower girl from Spitalfields.
“Well, man,” he said with eyes almost crossed, “what’s the lesson of the day?” I showed him the pamphlets I had made for the girls.
“Ha, my own work! You are good! Lessons in English. We will have no more bloody Spanish, for we know what they do! All lessons are to be in English, Latin, or Greek. Or Hebrew even. Anything but Spanish.”
The queen, carrying rosary beads in her hands, was dressed in layers of black. It was as if the demon of exclusion had entered the room and made her its target—and Anne its champion. Anne was dressed in gold and white, with ermine that must have come from Milan or Florence. She stood between her brother and the king as if she had always belonged there.
Suddenly, with a stammer at first, a voice welled from within the throat of the queen. “But Castilian Spanish—it is the tongue of our daughter’s heritage.”
“Curse heritage,” the king snapped, pointing at me. “Look what it did to this man’s family.”
Anne Boleyn’s eyes sparkled even more brilliantly.
The princess ran to her mother, sniffing. The queen held her with the love that only a mother could muster. The king reacted with a string of curses, and in the confusion, Anne sidled over and fixed me with her raven eyes, chuckled and said, “Interesting how she leans upon a Jew in her hour of need.”
I stammered, “I am a Nuevo Cristiano, señorita, not a Jew.”
She laughed like a harpy and added, “The Nuevo Cristianos need the king, not the queen.”
The king turned to her and said, “Anne, enough meddling. Now, what would you have these daughters of England sing?”
“Something English, something romantic,” she said. “How about ‘Love me Brought’?”
The king nodded and stormed around the room, taking the princess’s hand and guiding her away from the queen. He told her to sit on his knee while he played on the lute. “Sing for Mistress Anne.”
This was too much for the princess. She leapt off her father’s knee, turned to Anne Boleyn, and shouted, “I will never sing for you.”
The king threw down the lute, and it smashed with a horrible noise. I thought for a moment that he might strike his young daughter dead. George Boleyn sniggered like a girl. Anne looked at the princess, tossed her head back, and laughed like a sorceress.
The king raised his hand high above his daughter’s head. At the last moment, when all seemed lost, the queen shouted, “Enrique, no!”
“Go to your room, child,” he said. “And Kate, sister, do not follow her.”
The princess left weeping, her lady, Agnes beside her. Though I wanted to comfort her, I needed to stay. Maria Salinas rushed to the queen with a lace kerchief, but she pushed her aside, looked directly, at the king and said, “I am your true wife, not your sister.”
In that moment, I think he believed her. He must have remembered the good times, the passion, and the babies who never lived.
“It’s God’s punishment,” he muttered. “You were my brother’s wife. Vives knows that. And Lady Anne, who understands a few words of Spanish, knows it as well.”
The king walked over to the young ladies. “I see you belong to my family or to Lady Anne’s. The daughters of the realm don’t whine. Sing for me and for your mistress, Anne!”
They tried. There was a murmur here, a crackle there, and finally a throaty melody from Shelton, but without Princess Mary to lead them, they were like lost lambs.
This is what I had wanted, what I had planned. I turned to Anne Boleyn, and said, “Esta claro, no descansaras hasta que destroces esta familia.” Clearly, you will rest at nothing until you have destroyed this family.
She turned and said in the very Spanish I had once taught her: “Si Señor, y darle la voz de reforma.” Yes, sir, and shown it the voice of reform.
She rolled her head back and laughed. It was a shrill laugh, a venomous laugh. She seemed like a viper about to feast.
I realised her power and heard a voice in my head. She will change this nation forever. If this voice is true, I must change it with her.
When the girls stopped singing, we all clapped our hands, except the queen. She looked at me like I was a traitor.
The king looked at me. “Master Lewis, I have matters to discuss with you this season. I need to pick at your ancestral memories.” Anne nodded to him and smiled at me. The party turned around and left.
* * *
The next day was bitterly cold, though it didn’t snow. It hung in the clouds, waiting, as everything in the realm was waiting. I expected the king to call me, but nothing happened. I also expected the queen to dismiss me for bringing the princess together with Anne Boleyn’s cousins, for I know she would have preferred to keep her in isolation. In the meantime, I stayed close by the princess.
“She’s a witch sent by Luther,” she said the next morning.
And after that, there was no further talk of social justice or toleration. My plans to take her to visit Bedlam and walk among the craftsmen of London were abandoned. The princess was on fire. “I will have them burnt. As Reginald Pole told me, ‘Don’t suffer them. Burn them.’ ” She said it like a chant.
“Your Highness, we must teach, not burn,” I replied, clenching my fist inside the long arm of my velvet jacket.
“When I’m queen, I’ll burn their heresies and lies.”
“No, no, no. Do you want to be remembered for that?”
She was silent for a minute, but I could already smell crackling human flesh. I tried closing my ears to the terrible groans of my childhood, but, how could I? I wondered in that moment if she saw the truth in me—saw in me the enemy and not the friend.
“Then so be it” was the last thing I remember hearing. It was my own voice, but it felt distant, like woodsmen chattering deep in the forest.
An hour later, I found myself alone in my chamber save for the little man with the pick trying to break out of my skull. Shivers travelled up and down my spine like lightning flashes. A river of sweat drained down the lines that framed my wizened jowl.
I was paralysed in my own bed, cold compresses all around. There was a green jacket and a note from the queen, who must have visited me. Was this good? I stared out the window to the distant river, alive with wherries and skiffs carrying families home for Christmas. Would they ever carry Jews home for Chanukah? Am I a fool to even dream it? Though I knew that I was of no use to my poor sister hiding in a cave outside of Valencia or to my wife in Bruges, there was absolutely nothing I could do. It wasn’t until the third day that I got out of bed.
Clarity re-entered, although her visit would be brief. Christmas was here. Everyone would act as if there was no trouble in this world. One by one, the great and the good arrived at Greenwich. I watched as the king’s butchers came in three barges laden with carcasses and caged birds. I watched the special delivery of oranges from the king of Spain, his men carrying their flags. I guessed there were also dates and spices in the sealed crates. Perhaps there were gifts from the New World.
I made my way down as the palace filled up. There was a gathering of statesmen in the great hall. I dragged myself upright and tried to put a sparkle in my eye. Here was the new Spanish ambassador, the tall, blue-eyed Iñigo López de Mendoza who replaced one-eyed Louis de Praet, now back in Flanders. I wasted no time and introduced myself.
He bowed low to me. “Your reasoning is ahead of its day, señor, and for your sadness, I am truly sorry. Spain still lags,” he said with a saddened look in his eyes. He beckoned a girl to give us mulled wine and sugared fruit. “Please, eat. You look so thin. I was expecting a bear of a man.”
“Spain lags,” I said, “but is she still beautiful to the eye?” I remembered fiestas and cartwheels off the quay. I recalled leading a girl named Ana into the hayloft.
He nodded and it was if he could see into my soul and was not displeased with what he found there. But this man, I knew, was once Isabella’s page. He was now late in years and must have seen many Jewish families. I’d heard that he was not a man of the sword or the torch. But the ways of the Spanish king were clever! One day they gave you sugared fruit; the next, they took you away with a sanbenito on your head.
“Tell me, don Zuniga, you must know of the queen’s position,” I said, hoping to ge
t a notion of the progression of affairs, for three days was a long time in court.
“You know that the pope is now a captive of the queen’s nephew and of the awful massacre in Rome?”
I did not know. It was a Spanish massacre executed at the command of the Spanish king, her nephew Charles V. The pope’s hands were tied, and he would have to side with the queen.
“And poor Reginald Pole. He survived?”
“Thankfully. He was by the pope’s side throughout.”
“It’s a bloody world, no?” I said, trying not to let my disappointment show. “But this is good news for Her Majesty.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, Cardinal Campeggio is on his way to London to hear her case and the king’s.”
“If he sides with the queen, will she be safe?” I asked. The log fire was roaring, and all around the room bright eyes were watching us. Perhaps the way forward for the king and Anne Boleyn was not so clear.
“Unless the king breaks with Rome. What then for our faith, our future?” Before I could comment, he held out his left hand and touched mine. “I know the fate of your father and mother. May their memory be for a blessing.” Was this the cleverest inquisitor of all?
“Señor, there is a favour I must ask you,” I said. Before I mentioned the name Beatriz Vives, there was a clash of an almighty bell, the playing of pipes. Dinner was served. I said something else entirely. “Can you get me an audience with the king of England?”
“I would if I could,” he replied.
Though I wanted to run, though I was aching to get my Jewish bones out of there, I knew I had to stay, for who else had a chance with the king? We moved into the hall, and Sir Thomas and Alice were surrounded by their children. Were we still friends? I counted them: Elizabeth, Cicely, Anne, and John. I caught a glimpse of William Roper, and there was Meg Giggs, his adopted ward, but where was my Meg? I excused myself and crossed the floor, brushing past jugglers and fire-eaters.
“Brother,” Sir Thomas said, his countenance flat. “It is too sad.”
The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives Page 20
