The King's Curse Read online

  Now that we have our fortune and our name restored he is the most eligible bachelor in England. I will match him only to a great heiress whose fortune will enhance ours, or to a girl with a great name. Of course, I don’t have to look very far. Montague spent his childhood in the nursery of my cousin George Neville, Lord Bergavenny, and was with his cousin Jane almost every day. The boys were educated together as young noblemen should be, they did not share lessons with the daughters of the house; but he saw her at dinner, at church, and at the great feast days and holidays. When the dancing master came, they were paired together; when the lute master played, they sang duets. When the household went hunting, she followed his lead over hedges and stiles. He was thoughtlessly fond of her, as young boys can be, and she set her heart on him, as silly young girls will.

  When they grew older, living in the same household, traveling from one great palace to another, she emerged from the schoolroom and he saw her make that transformation, almost alchemical, from a little girl, a playmate, an uninteresting creature, rather like an inferior brother, into a young woman: a thing of mystery, a beauty.

  It is Montague who asks me what I think of a match between him and Jane. He does not demand it like a fool, for he knows what is due to his name. He suggests it, cautiously, and tells me that he likes her better than any other young woman he has seen at court.

  I ask: “Better than Bessie Blount?” who is popular with all the young men of the court for her sweetness and radiant beauty.

  “Better than anyone,” he says. “But it is for you to judge, Lady Mother.”

  I think it a happy ending to a hard story. Without the help of her father, my cousin, I could not have fed my children. Now, I am happy that he should profit from his loyalty and care for me and my family by making his daughter Lady Pole, with a jointure of two hundred pounds for now and the prospect of my fortune and title after my death. In marrying my son she nets herself a great title and vast lands. And she is an heiress in her own right, she will bring a fortune as her dowry, and on the death of my cousin George she will inherit half of his wealth. My cousin George Neville is growing old and he has only two girls; it happens that Montague’s fancy has lit on a great heiress and hers on him.

  Their children will be Plantagenets from both sides, doubly royal, and will be ornaments to the Tudor court and supporters of their Tudor cousins. Without a doubt they will have handsome children. My son is a tall, good-looking young man of twenty-five, and his bride matches him, her fair head coming up to his shoulder. I hope she is fertile, but as my cousin George says as he signs the detailed marriage contract: “I think we can be confident—eh, Cousin? No Plantagenets ever failed to make a son.”

  “Hush,” I say without thinking as I put sealing wax into the candle flame and impress it with the insignia on my ring, the white rose.

  “Actually, the king remarks on it himself. He asks everyone why a man as lusty and strong and handsome as himself should not have a son in the nursery by now. Three or four sons in the nursery by now. What do you think? Is it some weakness in the queen? She comes from good breeding stock, after all. What can be wrong? Can it be that the marriage is not blessed?”

  “I won’t hear of it.” I make a gesture with my hand as if to halt an army of whispers. “I won’t hear of it, and I won’t speak of it. And I tell all her ladies that they are not to discuss it. Because if it were to be true: what would happen? She’s still his wife, baby or no baby, she’s still Queen of England. She bears all the pain and sorrow of their losses, must she bear the blame as well? To gossip about it and to slander her can only make it worse for her.”

  “Would she ever step aside?” he asks very softly.

  “She can’t,” I say simply. “She believes that God called her to be Queen of England and made great and terrible changes so that she took the crown beside the king. She has given him a princess, and God willing they will have a son. Otherwise, what are we saying? That a marriage should end because a man does not have a son in eight years? In five years? Is a wife to be a leasehold that he can cancel on quarter day? It is ‘in sickness and in health, till death us do part,’ it is not ‘until I have doubts.’ ”

  My cousin smiles. “She has a staunch defender in you,” he says.

  “You should be glad of it.” I gesture at the contract. “Your daughter will marry my son and they will swear to be parted only by death. Only if marriage lasts without doubt till death can your daughter, or any woman, be sure of her future. The queen would not overthrow the safety of every woman in England by agreeing that a husband can put a wife aside at will. She would be no good queen to the women of England if she did that.”

  “He has to have an heir,” he points out.

  “He can name his heir,” I point out. I allow myself the smallest of smiles. “After all, there are heirs,” I say. My cousin’s daughter is marrying one of them, my son Montague. “There are many heirs.”

  My cousin is silent for a moment as he thinks of how close we are to the throne. “The return of the Plantagenets,” he says very quietly. “Ironic, if after all this, it should come back to one of us.”

  WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, SPRING 1518

  Christmas comes and goes; but the king does not return to his capital city, nor does he summon the court to his feast. I visit the baby princess in her nursery at Greenwich and find the palace free from any disease and the little girl chattering and playing and learning to dance.

  I spend a happy week with Mary, hand-clasped, obeying her imperious demands to dance up and down the long galleries, while it grows colder and colder and finally snows outside the windows that overlook the river. She is an adorable child, and I leave her with a pile of gifts and the promise to return soon.

  The queen writes that they have moved to Southampton, so they can buy provisions that come in from the Flanders merchants; the king does not want English goods, fearing that they are contaminated. He will not let his hosts’ servants go to the town market.

  We see no one but the king’s closest friends that he cannot do without. The king will not even receive letters from the City for fear of the disease. Cardinal Wolsey writes to him on special paper from Richmond Palace and is living there, ruling like a king himself. He hears pleas from all over the country and decides on them in the royal presence chamber, seated on a throne. I have urged the king to return home to Westminster and open the court for Easter but the cardinal is firmly against me, and the king listens to no one else. The cardinal fills his letters with warnings of disease and the king thinks it safer to stay away.

  I burn the queen’s letter to me, from the old habit of caution, but her words stay with me. The thought of the court of England, my family’s court, hiding like outlaws from the natural lords and advisors, living near a port so they can buy food from foreigners rather than honest fare in the English markets, taking advice only from one man, and he not a Plantagenet, not even a duke, nor a lord, but a man dedicated to his own rise, troubles me very deeply as I celebrate the turn of the year at the heart of my newly built home, and ride around the fields where my people are walking behind the plow, and the plowshare is turning over the rich earth.

  I would not choose to live anywhere but on my own lands, I would not eat anything that we have not grown. I would not be served by anyone but my own people. I am a Plantagenet born and bred in the heart of my country. I would never willingly leave. So why does the king, whose father spent his life trying to get to England and risked his life to win it, not feel this deep, loving connection to his kingdom?

  BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, EASTER 1518

  We celebrate the feast of Easter at Bisham, with just our family. The royal court, still closed to everyone but Henry’s inner circle and the cardinal, is now traveling near Oxford. I begin to wonder if they will ever come home to their capital city.

  The cardinal is trusted with all the business of the realm, as no one can see the king; he will not even receive documents. Everything goes to Wolsey and