The King's Curse Read online

  “I’ll wait till dinner,” she decides.

  I sit with the queen until the king comes with his friends to escort her and her ladies to dinner. I plan to greet Arthur with a smile, whisper a warning, and meet with him later. But when the double doors are thrown open and Henry strides into the room, handsome, laughing, and makes his bow to the queen, Arthur does not stroll in behind him.

  I curtsey, a smile pinned on my face like a mask, a cold sweat starting to trickle on my spine. They are all there: Charles Brandon, William Compton, Francis Bryan, Thomas Wyatt. Everyone whom I can think of is there, none of them missing, all laughing at some private joke that they swear they will tell when it is composed into a sonnet; but no Arthur Pole. My son is missing, and no one remarks on it.

  One of the maids-in-waiting drops a book that she has been reading, and bends to pick it up. She makes a low curtsey to the king, the book clasped to her bodice, emphasizing her love of study and drawing the eye to the warm, inviting skin of her neck and breasts. I see dark hair shining under the French hood and the flash of a gold initial B with three creamy pearl drops tied low at her neck; but the king bows over his wife’s hand and does not notice her at all.

  The ladies flutter into their order of precedence behind the queen. I see Mary Boleyn jostling, elbows to ribs with Jane Parker, but as I smile at them, though I look everywhere, I do not see my son Arthur, and I do not know where he is tonight.

  Thomas More is waiting at the entrance to the dining room as the ladies and gentlemen of the court take their places, his fleshy face downturned, deep in thought. He will be waiting for his master the cardinal; he may be working on the case against my sons.

  “Councillor More,” I say politely.

  He turns with a start and sees me.

  “I am sorry to interrupt your meditations. One of my sons is a scholar and I have seen him deep in thought, just like you. He scolds me if I interrupt him.”

  He smiles. “I would hesitate before I interrupted Reginald’s thinking, but you are safe with me. I was daydreaming. But still, he should not scold his mother. A child’s obedience is a holy duty.” He smiles, as if he is amused at himself. “I keep telling my children this. It is true, of course, but my daughter accuses me of special pleading.”

  “Do you have any news of my other sons, Montague and Arthur?” I ask quietly. “I don’t see Arthur here tonight.”

  And then the worst thing happens. He does not look at me with contempt for raising traitors, he does not look at me with anger for trying to plead their case to him. He looks at me with great sympathy, as you would look at a woman who is bereaved. The steady gaze of his dark eyes tells me that he thinks of me as a woman who has lost her sons, whose children are already dead.

  “I was sorry to learn that Lord Montague is under arrest,” he says quietly.

  “And Arthur? You don’t speak of Arthur?”

  “Banished from court.”

  “Where is he?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know where he has gone. I would tell you if I knew, your ladyship.”

  “Sir Thomas, my son Montague is innocent of anything. Can you speak for him? Can you tell the cardinal that he has done nothing?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “Sir Thomas, the king must not be advised that the law is his for the taking. Your master is a great thinker, a wise man, he must know that kings should live under the law, like all their people.”

  He nods as if he agrees with me. “All kings should live under the law; but this king is learning his power. He is learning that he can make the law. And you cannot tell a grown man to show childlike obedience. Once he is a man, can he be a child again? Who will order a king when he is no longer a prince? Who will command a lion when he has learned he is no longer a cub?”

  The cardinal sits at the king’s left hand at dinner, the queen on the other side. Nobody watching the king’s intent conversation with the cardinal and his occasional pleasantry to the queen could doubt who is his principal advisor now. The men talk head to head as if they are alone.

  I am seated with the ladies of the queen’s household. They chatter among themselves, their gaze always flicking over the king’s friends, their voices high and affected, their heads turning this way and that, always trying to exchange a glance with the king, to catch his eye. I want to grab hold of any one of them, shake her for her stupidity, say to her: “This is not an ordinary night. If you have influence with the king, you must use it for my boys. If you dance with him, you must tell him that my boys are innocent of anything. If you have been such a foolish slut as to sleep with him, then you must whisper to him in bed to spare my boys.”

  I grit my teeth and swallow my anxiety. I look up at the king and when he glances towards me, I nod my head slightly, like a princess, and I smile at him warmly, full of confidence. His gaze rests on me, indifferently, for a moment, and then he looks away.

  After dinner there is dancing, and a play. Someone has composed a masque and then there is a joust of poetry, with people turning lines one after another. It is a cultured, amusing evening, and usually I would frame a line or a rhyme to play my part in the court; but this evening I cannot muster my wits. I sit among it all as if I am mute. I am deafened by my fear. It feels like a lifetime before the queen smiles at the king, rises from her chair, curtseys formally to him, kisses him good night, and leaves the room, her ladies trailing behind her, one or two of them clearly leaving as a matter of form, but planning to sneak back later.

  In her rooms, the queen sends everyone away but Mary Boleyn and Maud Parr, who take off her headdress and her rings. A maid unlaces her gown and sleeves and stomacher, another helps her into her embroidered linen night shift, and she pulls a warm robe around her shoulders and waves them away. She looks tired. I remember that she is no longer the girl who came to England to marry a prince. She is thirty-five years old, and the fairy-tale prince who rescued her from poverty and hardship is now a hardened man. She motions me to sit on a chair beside her at the fireside. We put up our feet on the fender like we used to do at Ludlow, and I wait for her to speak.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me,” she says slowly. “You know, I’ve never seen him like this before.”

  “Do you know where my son Arthur is?”

  “Sent from court.”

  “Not under arrest?”

  “No.”

  I nod. Please God he has gone to his home at Broadhurst, or to mine at Bisham. “And Montague?”

  “It was as if Henry’s father was speaking all over again,” she says wonderingly. “It was as if his father was speaking through him, as if this Henry has not had years of love and honor and safety. I think he is becoming afraid, Margaret. He is afraid just like his father was always afraid.”

  I keep my gaze on the red embers in the grate. I have lived under the rule of a fearful king and I know that fear is a contagion, just like the Sweat. A frightened king first fears his enemies and then his friends and then he cannot tell one from the other until every man and woman in the kingdom fears that they can trust no one. If the Tudors are returning to terror, then the years of happiness for me and for my family are over.

  “He cannot fear Arthur,” I say flatly. “He cannot doubt Montague.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s the duke,” she says. “Wolsey has convinced him that the Duke of Buckingham has foreseen our death, the end of our line. The duke’s confessor has broken his vow of silence and told of terrible things, predictions and manuscripts, prophesying and stars in the sky. He says that your cousin the duke spoke of the death of the Tudors and a curse laid on the line.”

  “Not to me,” I say. “Never. And not to my sons.”

  Gently, she puts her hand over mine. “The duke spoke with the Carthusians at Sheen. Everyone knows how close your family is to them. Reginald was brought up by them! And the duke is close to Montague, and he is your daughter’s father-in-law. I know that neither you nor yours would speak treason. I know. I told Henry so.