The King's Curse Read online

  “He’s still not had her,” Montague says bluntly. “She’s got him dancing on a thread. She’s a prize he has to win. He’s still, night and day, on the hunt, hoping that this day, this night, she will say yes. My God, but she knows how to entrap a man! She is always about to fall, but she keeps always a handbreadth, a moment out of his reach.”

  The king seems to be delighted with the hunting, with the day, with the weather, with the music. The king is delighted with everything but especially with the company of his daughter.

  “How I wish I could take you with me,” he says fondly. “But your mother will not allow it.”

  “I am sure my Lady Mother would allow it,” she says. “I am sure that she would, Your Grace. And my Lady Governess could have my things packed and me ready to leave in a moment.” She laughs, a thin, hopeful, little nervous sound. “I could come at once. You have only to say the word.”

  He shakes his head. “We have had some differences,” he says carefully. “Your Lady Mother does not understand the difficulty that I am in. I am guided by God, my daughter. I am commanded by Him to ask your mother to take up a holy life, a sacred life, a life filled with respect and comfort that would honor her.”

  “Most people would say that she is lucky to be able to leave this troubled world and live at her ease in respect and holiness. I, for one, can’t just give up. I have to stay and struggle in this world. I have to guard the country and continue my line. But your mother could be freed of her duty, she can be happy, she can live a life that would please her. You could stay with her often. Not I. I cannot put down my burden.”

  She folds her lower lip under her little white teeth as if she is afraid of saying the wrong thing. She is frowning with concentration on his words. Henry laughs and chucks her under the chin. “Don’t look so grave, little princess!” he exclaims. “These are worries for your parents, not for you. Time enough for you to understand the heavy burdens that I bear. But, believe this: your mother cannot travel with me while she writes to the Pope and tells him to command me, while she writes to her nephew the emperor and tells him to reprove me. She complains of me to others—that’s not loyal, now, is it? Complains of me when I am trying to do the right thing, God’s will! And so she cannot travel with me, though I would like her to be with me. And you cannot travel with me either. It is very cruel of her to separate us to prove her point. It is not a woman’s role to enter into discourse. It is very cruel of her to send me out on progress alone. And wrong of her, against the commandment of God, to set up her opinion against her husband.”

  “It is hard,” the king continues, his voice deepening with pity for himself. “It is a hard road for me, with no wife at my side. Your mother does not think of this when she sets herself against me.”

  “I am sure . . .” Princess Mary begins, but her father raises his hand for her silence.

  “Be very sure of this: I am doing the right thing for you, for the kingdom, and for your mother,” he interrupts her. “And I am doing God’s will. God speaks directly to kings, you know. So anyone who speaks against me is speaking against the will of God Himself. They all say that—the men of the new learning. They all write it. It is indisputable. I am obeying the will of God and your mother, mistakenly, is following her own ambition. But at least I know I can count on your love and obedience. My little daughter. My princess. My only true love.”

  Her eyes fill with tears, her lip trembles; she is torn between her loyalty to her mother and the intensely powerful charm of her father. She cannot argue against his authority; she curtseys to the father she loves. “Of course,” she says.

  RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, AUTUMN 1530

  The former cardinal, Wolsey, has died on the road to London, before he could face trial, just as the Holy Maid of Kent predicted. Thank God that we are spared the sight of a cardinal on trial. Cousin Henry Courtenay had been told he would have to present the charges of corruption and witchcraft; but God is merciful, and our family will not have his blood on our hands. We could not send a cardinal to the scaffold, though Tom Darcy says he could have done it.

  The Boleyns, brother and sisters, danced in celebration before the court, in a masque of the damned. They looked as if they had come up from hell with sooty faces and hands like talons. God knows what we are coming to. Wolsey was bad enough but now the king’s councillors are a family of nobodies who dress themselves as devils to celebrate the death of an innocent man. Burn this.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, DECEMBER 1530

  We spend Christmas at Greenwich as usual, the king his charming regal self, loving with the queen, doting on Mary, and proudly warm to his son the double duke, young Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond. He is now a boy of eleven years, of soaring importance, and nobody who sees him could mistake him for anyone but his father’s son; he is tall like a York, copper-headed like a Tudor, with the Plantagenet love of sport, music, and learning.

  I cannot imagine what the king means to do with him, unless it is to hold him in reserve as an heir, in case he gets no other. The fortune that is spent on his household and on his goods, even on his New Year’s gifts, shows that he is to be regarded highly, even as royal as the Princess Mary. Worse, it shows that the king wants everyone to see this—and what this means for my princess and her future leaves me puzzled. Every ambassador at court, every foreign visitor knows the princess is the only legitimate child, the daughter of the queen, a little crown on her head, the king’s acknowledged daughter and heiress. But at the same time, walking beside her like an equal, is the king’s bastard, dressed in cloth of gold, served like a prince, seated beside his father. What is anyone to make of this but that the king is training up his bastard child for the throne? And what is to become of his daughter if she is not to be Princess of Wales? And, if Henry Fitzroy is the next king, what is she?

  The queen is outwardly serene, hiding her anguish at the supplanting of her daughter with a nameless bastard. She takes her place on the throne beside her smiling husband and nods to her many friends. The ladies of the court, from the Dowager Queen of France down to Bessie Blount, show her every respect; most of them show her a special tenderness. Every woman knows that if a husband can set his wife aside and say it is the will of God, then not one of them will ever be safe, not even with a wedding ring on her finger.

  The noblemen of the court are scrupulous in their respect. They dare not openly oppose her husband, but the way that they bow when she walks by, and lean towards her to listen when she speaks, shows everyone that they know this is a Princess of Spain and a Queen of England, and nothing can ever change that. Only the Boleyn family avoid her, the Boleyns and their kinsman Thomas Howard, the new young Duke of Norfolk—he has none of his father’s fidelity to the queen, but thinks only of his own family’s growing power. Everyone knows that the Howard interests are bound to the success of the young women whom they have planted in the king’s bed; their opinion of the queen is worthless.

  They keep out of the queen’s rooms but they are everywhere else at court, as if it were their own house, as if the magnificent Greenwich Palace were poky little Hever Castle. I hear from one of the ladies that the Boleyn woman, Anne, has sworn that she wishes all Spaniards were at the bottom of the sea, and that she will never serve the queen again. I think that if refusing to serve is the worst thing that Anne Boleyn can threaten, then we have nothing to fear.

  But the loss of the cardinal and the dominance of the Howard faction at court means that the king has only one good advisor: Thomas More. He is at the king’s side through the day but tries to go home to the City to be with his family. “Tell your son that I am writing a long essay in reply to his,” he informs me one day as he walks to the stable yard, calling for his horse. “Tell him I am sorry to be late in my reply. I have been writing too many letters for the king to write my own.”

  “Do you write everything as he bids, or do you tell him your own opinions?” I ask curiously.

  He gives me a small, wary smile. “I choos