The King's Curse Read online

  “I felt . . .” she begins, and then she suddenly scoops the skirts of her gown towards her, as if she would hold the baby inside her womb by sheer force. “Get the midwives,” she says very low and quiet, as if she is afraid that someone might hear. “Get the midwives, and close the door. I’m bleeding.”

  We rush hot water and towels and the cradle into the room, while I send a message to the king that the queen has gone into labor, weeks early of course, but that she is well and we are caring for her.

  I dare to hope; little Mary is flourishing in her nursery, a clever two-year-old, and she came early. Perhaps this will be another frighteningly small baby who will surprise us all by strength and tenacity. And if it were to be a tough little boy . . .

  It is all that we think about, and nobody says it aloud. If the queen were to have a boy, even at this late stage of her life, even though she has lost so many, she would be triumphant. Everyone who has whispered that she is weak or infertile or cursed would look a fool. The grand newly made papal legate Wolsey himself would take second place to such a wife who had given her husband the one thing that he lacks. The girls who accompany the queen when she dines with the king, or walks with him or plays cards with him, always with their eyes modestly downturned, always with their hoods pushed back to show their smooth hair, always with their gowns pulled down in front to show the inviting curve of their breasts, those girls will find that the king has eyes only for the queen—if she can give him a son.

  At midnight she goes into full labor, her gaze fixed on the holy icon, the communion wafer in the monstrance on the altar in the corner of the room, the midwives pulling on her arms and shouting at her to push, but it is all over too quickly, and there is no little cry, just a small creature, hardly visible in a mess of blood and a rush of water. The midwife picks up the tiny body, shrouds it from the queen’s sight in the linen cloth that was supposed to be used to swaddle a lusty son, and says: “I am sorry, Your Grace, it was a girl, but she was already dead inside you. There’s nothing here.”

  I don’t even wait for her to ask me. Wearily she turns to me and silently gives me a nod to send me on my errand, her face twisted with grief. Wearily, I get to my feet and go from the confinement chamber, down the stairs, across the great hall, and up the stairs to the king’s side of the palace. I dawdle past the guards who raise their pikes in a salute to let me through, past a couple of courtiers who drop into a bow and stand aside to let me by, through the outer doors of the presence chamber, through the whispering, staring crowds who are waiting and hoping to see the king. A silence falls all around as I enter the room. Everyone knows what my errand is, everyone guesses that it is bad news from my stony face, as I walk through the doors of the privy chamber, and there he is.

  The king is playing at cards. Bessie Blount is his partner; there is another girl on the other side of the table, but I can’t even be troubled to look. I can see from the pile of gold coins before Bessie that she is winning. This new inner court of friends and intimates, dressed in French fashions, drinking the best wine in the early morning, boisterous, noisy, childish, looks up when I come into the room, reads with perfect accuracy the defeat in my face and the droop of my shoulders. I see, I cannot miss, the avid gleam of some who scent heartbreak and know that trouble brings opportunity. I can hear, as the hubbub of the room drops to silence, someone tut with impatience as they see I have brought bad news again.

  The king throws down his cards and comes quickly towards me as if he would silence me, as if he would keep this as a guilty, shameful secret. “Is it no good?” he asks shortly.

  “I am sorry, Your Grace,” I say. “A girl, stillborn.”

  For a moment his mouth turns down as if he has had to swallow something very bitter. I see his throat clench as if he would retch. “A girl?”

  “Yes. But she never breathed.”

  He does not ask me if his wife is well.

  “A dead baby,” is all he says, almost wonderingly. “It is a cruel world for me, don’t you think, Lady Salisbury?”

  “It is a deep sorrow for you both,” I say. I can hardly make my lips frame the words. “The queen is very grieved.”

  He nods, as if it goes without saying, almost as if she deserves sorrow; but he does not.

  Behind him, Bessie rises up from the table where they were playing cards while his wife was laboring to give birth to a dead child. Something about the way she turns attracts my attention. She averts her face and then she steps backwards, almost as if she were trying to slip away and avoid my notice, as if she were hiding something.

  Unseen, she curtseys to the king’s back and steps away, leaving her winnings as if she has quite forgotten them, and then, as she turns to sidle through the opening door, I see the curve of her belly against the ripple of the rich fabric of her gown. I see that Bessie Blount is with child, and I suppose that it is the king’s.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1518

  I wait until the queen is ready to return to court, her grief forced down, churched, bathed, and dressed. I think I will try to speak to her in the morning after Matins, as we walk back from her chapel.

  “Margaret, do you not think that I can see that you are waiting to speak to me? Don’t you think after all these years I can read you? Are you going to ask to go home and get your handsome boy Arthur married?”

  “I will ask you that,” I agree. “And soon. But I don’t need to talk to you about it now.”

  “What then?”

  I can hardly bring myself to wipe the smile from her face when she is trying so hard to be merry and carefree. But she does not know quite how carefree and merry the court has become.

  “Your Grace, I am afraid I have to tell you something which will trouble you.” Maria de Salinas, now Countess Willoughby, steps to her side and looks at me as if I am a traitor to bring distress to a queen who has already suffered so much.

  “What now?” is all she says.

  I take a breath. “Your Grace, it is Elizabeth Blount. While you were in confinement she was with the king.”

  “This is old news, Margaret.” She manages a careless laugh. “You’re a very poor gossip to bring me such an ancient scandal. Bessie is always with the king when I am with child. It’s a sort of fidelity.”

  Maria says a word under her breath and turns her face away.

  “Yes, but—what you don’t know is that now she is with child.”

  “It is my husband’s child?”

  “I suppose so. He hasn’t owned it. She’s not drawing any attention to herself except that her gowns are growing tight across her belly. She didn’t tell me. She is making no claims.”

  “Little Bessie Blount, my own lady-in-waiting?”

  Grimly, I nod.

  She does not cry out, but turns from the gallery into an oriel window, and puts Maria’s supporting hand aside with one little gesture. She looks out of the small panes of glass at the water meadows that are gray with sheets of ice and driven snow. She looks towards the cold river, seeing nothing but a memory of her mother, sobbing, facedown on her pillows, breaking her heart over the infidelity of her husband, the King of Spain.

  “That girl has been with me since she was twelve years old,” she says wonderingly. She finds a hard little laugh. “Clearly, I cannot have taught her very well.”

  “Your Grace, it was impossible for her to refuse the king,” I say quietly. “I don’t doubt her affection for you.”

  “It’s no surprise,” she says levelly, as if she were as cold as the flowers of frost on the windowpanes.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Does the king seem very pleased?”

  “He has said nothing about it. And she’s not here now. She—Bessie –withdrew from court as soon as she . . . as soon as it . . .”

  “As soon as everyone could see?”

  I nod.

  “And where has she gone?” the queen asks without much interest.

  “To a house, the Priory of St. Lawrence,