The King's Curse Read online

  I take this in, glancing forward to see that the queen is out of earshot. “Thomas Wolsey is growing very great,” I observe disapprovingly. “And that from very small beginnings.”

  “Since the king stopped taking the queen’s advice he is prey to any clever talker who can put an argument together,” the duke says scathingly. “And this Wolsey has nothing to boast of but a library of books, and the mind of a goldsmith. He can tell you the price of anything, he can tell you the names of every town in England. He knows the bribe for every member of Parliament and every secret that they hide. Anything that the king desires, he can get for him, and now he gets it for him before the king even knows that he wants it. When the king listened to the queen, we knew where we were: friends with Spain, enemies with France, and ruled by the nobility. Now that the king is advised by Wolsey we have no idea who is our friend or our enemy, and no idea where we’re going.”

  I glance ahead, to where the queen is leaning on Margery Horsman’s arm. She looks a little weary already, though we have walked for only a mile.

  “She used to keep him steady,” Howard grumbles in my ear. “But Wolsey gives him whatever he wants and urges him on to want more. She’s the only one that can say no to him. A young man needs guidance. She has to take back the reins, she has to guide him.”

  It is true that the queen has lost her influence with Henry. She won the greatest battle that England has ever seen against the Scots but he cannot forgive her for losing the child. “She does all that she can,” I say.

  “And d’you know what we are to call him?” Howard growls.

  “Call Thomas Wolsey?”

  “Bishop it is now. Bishop of Lincoln, no less.” He nods at my surprise. “God knows what that’s worth to him annually. If she could only give him a son, we would all be the richer for it. The king would attend to her if she gave him an heir. It’s because she fails in this one thing that he cannot trust her in anything else.”

  “She tries,” I say shortly. “No woman in the world prays more for the blessing of a son. And perhaps . . .”

  He raises a craggy eyebrow at my discreet hint.

  “It’s very early days,” I say cautiously.

  “Please God,” he says devoutly. “For this is a king without patience, and we cannot afford to wait long.”

  ENGLAND, SUMMER 1514

  The queen grows big with her child, riding in a litter drawn by two white mules when we go on progress. Nothing is too luxurious for this most important pregnancy.

  Henry no longer comes to her bedroom at night. Of course, no good husband beds his wife during her pregnancy; but neither does he come to her for conversation or advice. Her father is refusing to go to war in France again, and Henry’s fury and disappointment with Ferdinand of Aragon overflows onto Ferdinand’s daughter. Even the marriage planned for Henry’s little sister Princess Mary with Archduke Charles is overthrown as England turns from Spain and all things Spanish. The king swears that he will take advice from no foreigner, that no one knows better than he what good English people desire. He scowls at the queen’s Spanish ladies and pretends he cannot understand them when they bid him a courteous good morning. Katherine herself, her father, her country, are publicly insulted by her husband as she sits very still and very quietly under the cloth of estate and waits for the storm to pass, her hands folded on her rounded belly.

  Henry loudly declares that he will rule England without advice or help from anyone, but in fact he does nothing; everything is read, studied, and considered by Wolsey. The king barely glances at documents before scrawling his name. Sometimes he cannot even find the time to do that, and Wolsey sends out a royal command under his own seal.

  Wolsey is an enthusiast for peace with the French. Even the king’s current mistress is a French woman, one of Princess Mary’s maids of honor, a young woman very ill-suited for a decent court, a notorious whore from the French court. The king is dazzled by her reputation for wickedness, and seeks her out, following her around court as if he were a young hound and she a bitch in season. Everything French is in fashion, whores and ribbons and alliances alike. It seems that the king has forgotten all about his crusade and is going to ally with England’s traditional enemy. I am not the only skeptical English subject who thinks that Wolsey is planning to seal the peace with a marriage—Henry’s sister Princess Mary, the daintiest princess who ever was, will be sacrificed like a virgin chained on a dragon’s rock to the old French king.

  I suspect this; but I don’t tell Katherine. I will not have her worried while she is carrying a child, perhaps even carrying a son. Fortune-tellers and astrologists constantly promise the king that this time a son will be born who is certain to live. For sure, every woman in England prays that this time Katherine will be blessed and give the king his heir.

  “I doubt that Bessie Blount prays for me,” she says bitterly, naming the new arrival at court whose childish blond prettiness is much admired by everyone, including the king.

  “I am certain that she does,” I say firmly. “And I’d rather have her as the center of attention than the French woman. Bessie loves you, and she is a sweet girl. She can’t help it if the king favors her above all your other ladies. She can hardly refuse to dance with him.”

  But Bessie does not refuse. The king writes her poems and he dances with her in the evenings; he teases her and she giggles like a child. The queen sits on her throne, her belly heavy, determined to rest and be calm, beating the time of the music with her heavily ringed hand, and smiling as if she is pleased to see Henry, flushed with excitement, dancing like a boy, while all the courtiers applaud his grace. When she makes the signal to leave, Bessie withdraws with the rest of us, but it is common knowledge that she sneaks back to the great hall with some of the other ladies-in-waiting and that they dance till dawn.

  If I were her mother, Lady Blount, I should take her away from court, for what can a young woman possibly hope to gain from a love affair with the king but a season of self-importance and then a marriage to someone who will accept a royal cast-off? But Lady Blount is faraway in the west of England, and Bessie’s father, Sir John, is delighted that the king admires his girl, foreseeing a river of favors, places, and riches flowing in his direction.

  “She is better behaved than some would be,” I remind Katherine quietly. “She asks for nothing, and she never says a word against you.”

  “What word could she say?” she demands with sudden resentment. “Have I not done everything a wife could do, did I not defeat Scotland while he was not even in the country? Have I not worked at the ruling of the kingdom when he cannot be bothered? Do I not read the papers from the council so that he is free to go out hunting all day? Do I not constantly choose my words to try to keep the treaty with my father when Henry would break his oath every day? Do I not sit quietly and listen while he abuses my father and my own countrymen as liars and traitors? Do I not ignore the shameful French mistress and now the new flirtation with Mistress Blount? Do I not do everything, everything I can, to prevent Thomas Wolsey from forcing us into an alliance with the French, which will be the ruin of England, my home, and Spain, my motherland?”

  We are both silent. Katherine has never spoken against her young husband before. But he has never before been so openly guided by his vanity and selfishness.

  “And what does Bessie do that is so charming?” Katherine demands angrily. “Write poems, compose music, sing love songs? She is witty, she is talented, she is pretty. What does this matter?”

  “You know what you have not done,” I say gently. “But you will put that right. And when he has a child, he will be loving and grateful and you can bring him back into alliance with Spain, out of Thomas Wolsey’s pocket and away from Mistress Blount’s smiles.”

  She puts her hand on her belly. “I am doing that now,” she says. “This time I will give him a son. God Himself knows that everything depends on it, and He will never forsake me.”

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1514