The King's Curse Read online

  The courtiers are fluttering around a new attraction like midges around a sweaty face. I learn that much from my dressmaker, who comes to Richmond Palace to fit me with a velvet gown in dark red for the winter feasts, telling me proudly that she can barely find the time to make it, as she is fully engaged by all the ladies at Suffolk House in Southwark. I stand on the stool and the dressmaker’s assistant is pinning the hem, as the dressmaker tightens the bodice.

  “The ladies at Suffolk House?” I repeat. This is the home of the Dowager Queen of France, Mary, and her utterly worthless husband, Charles Brandon. While she has always been dearly loved by the court, I can’t imagine why they should be so busy and popular all of a sudden.

  “Mademoiselle Boleyn is staying there!” she says delightedly. “Holding court, and everyone visits, the king daily, and they dance every night.”

  “At Suffolk House?” This can only be Charles Brandon’s doing. The Dowager Queen Mary would never have allowed the Boleyn girl to hold court in her own house.

  “Yes, she has quite taken it over.”

  “And the queen?” I ask.

  “She lives very quietly.”

  “And the plans for the Christmas feast?”

  The dressmaker notes in silence that I have not received an invitation. Her arched eyebrows rise a little higher and she tweaks a fold at my waist, as if it is hardly worth making an expensive gown that will never be worn before the king. “Well,” she remarks, preparing to share scandal, “I am told that the Lady will have her own set of rooms, right next door to the king, and she will hold court there, to her many, many well-wishers. It will be like two courts in the same palace. But the king and queen will celebrate Christmas together, as always.”

  I nod. We exchange one long look and I know that the dressmaker’s expression—a sort of grim smile, the natural expression of a woman who knows that her own best years are past—is mirrored on my face.

  “Perfect,” she says, and helps me down from the stool. “You know, there’s not a woman in England over thirty who does not feel the queen’s pain.”

  “But the women over thirty will not be asked for their opinions,” I say. “Who cares what we think?”

  I am sitting with my ladies listening to Princess Mary practice on the lute and singing. She has composed the song, which is a reworking of an old reapers’ ballad about a merry lad going sowing. I am glad to hear her sing with a lilt in her voice and a smile on her face, and she is looking well; the regular trial of her monthly pains has passed and she has color in her cheeks and an appetite for her dinner. I watch her, bent over the strings, looking up to sing, and I think what a blessedly pretty girl she is and that the king should go down on his knees and thank God for her, and raise her as a princess who will some day rule England, secure in her position, and confident of her future. He owes that to her, he owes that to England. How can it be that Henry, the boy who was the darling of the nursery, cannot see that here is another Tudor heir as precious and as valuable as he was?

  The knock at the door startles all of us, and Princess Mary looks up, her fingers still pressed on the strings, as my steward bows, comes into the room, and says: “A gentleman at the gate, your ladyship. Says he is your son.”

  “Geoffrey?” I get to my feet with a smile.

  “No, I would know the master, of course. He says he is your son from Italy.”

  “Reginald?” I ask.

  Princess Mary rises and says quietly: “Oh, Lady Margaret!”

  “Admit him,” I say.

  The steward nods and steps aside and Reginald, tall, handsome, dark-eyed, and dark-haired, comes into the room, takes in everyone in one swift glance, and kneels at my feet for my blessing.

  I put my hand on his thick dark hair and whisper the words, and then he stands taller than me and bends down to kiss me on both cheeks.

  At once I present him to the princess and he sweeps her a deep bow. The color flushes into her cheeks as she puts out both hands to him. “I have heard so much about you, and your learning,” she says. “I have read much of what you have written with such admiration. Your mother will be so happy you are home.”

  He throws me a smile over his shoulder, and I see at once the darling little boy whom I had to give to the Church, and the tall, composed, independent young man that he has become through years of study and exile.

  “You will stay here?” I ask him. “We are about to go in to dinner.”

  “I was counting on it!” he says easily. To the princess he says: “When I miss England I miss my childhood dinners. Does my mother still order a lamb pie with a thick pastry crust?”

  She makes a little face. “I am glad you are here to eat it,” she confides. “For I disappoint her all the time by not being a hearty eater. And I observe all the fast days. She says I am too rigorous.”

  “No, you are right,” he says quickly. “The fast days are for our observation, both for the good of man and the glory of God.”

  “You mean for our good? That it is good to go hungry?”

  “For those who go fishing,” he explains. “If everyone in Christendom ate nothing but fish on Friday, then the fishermen and their children would eat well the rest of the week. God’s will is always for the greater good of men. His laws are the glory both of heaven and earth. I am a great believer in deeds and faith working together.”

  Princess Mary shoots a naughty little smile at me as if to score the point. “That’s what I think,” she says.

  “And let us talk about filial obedience?” I suggest.

  Reginald throws up his hands in joking protest. “Lady Mother, I shall obediently come to dinner and you shall command what I eat and what I say.”

  It is a talkative and merry meal. Reginald says grace in Greek for the court and listens to the musicians who play as we eat. He talks with the princess’s tutor Richard Fetherston, and they share their enthusiasm for the new learning and their belief that Lutheranism is nothing but heresy. Reginald admires the dancing, and Princess Mary takes Constance’s hand and dances with her ladies before him, as if he were a great visitor. After dinner, I see Mary to her prayers and as she climbs into the big four-poster bed she beams at me.

  “Your son is very handsome,” she says. “And very learned.”

  “He is,” I say.

  “Do you think my father will appoint him to be my tutor when Dr. Fetherston leaves us?”

  “He might.”

  “Don’t you wish that he would? Don’t you think he would be such a good tutor, so wise and thoughtful?”

  “I think he would make you study very hard. He is teaching himself Hebrew right now.”

  “I don’t mind study,” she assures me. “It would be an honor to work with a tutor like him.”

  “Well, time to go to sleep, anyway,” I say. I am not going to encourage any girlish dreams about Reginald from a young woman who is going to have to marry whoever her father appoints, and who, at the moment, seems to have no prospects at all.

  She raises her face for my kiss, and I am moved to deep tenderness by her dainty prettiness and her shy smile.

  “God bless you, my little princess,” I say.

  Reginald and I go alone to my privy chamber and I tell the servants to set the chairs before the fireside and leave us with a glass of wine, some nuts, and dried fruits to talk alone.

  “She’s delightful,” he says.

  “I love her as if she were my own.”

  “Tell me the family news, my brothers and sister.”

  I smile. “All well, thank God, though I miss Arthur more than I thought possible.”

  “And how is Montague’s boy?” he asks with a smile, identifying at once the child who will be my favorite as he will carry our name forward.

  “He’s well,” I say with a gleam. “Chattering, running around, strong as any Plantagenet prince. Willful, cheeky.” I stop myself from listing his latest sayings. “He’s funny,” I tell him. “He’s the image of Geoffrey at his age.”