The King's Curse Read online

  Those who are not afraid of war are afraid of the rising of the dead from their graves. The shallow graves at Bosworth Field, at Towton, at St. Albans, at Towcester throw up trophies of silver and gold, badges and keepsakes, tokens and livery buttons. Now they say that the quiet earth itself is disturbed in these old battlefields, as if they are being secretly harrowed in darkness, and the men who died for the Yorks have been released from the damp earth and are standing up, brushing off the clinging soil, mustering in their old troops, and coming back to fight again for their princess and for their Church.

  Some fool comes to the stable door and tells the grooms that he has seen my brother, his head back on his shoulders, handsome as a boy, knocking at the door of the Tower of London and asking to come back in. Edward is supposed to have cried out that the Moldwarp, a wicked, dark animal King of England, has crawled onto his throne; and these are his years. A dragon and a lion and a wolf will have to rise up to defeat him, and the dragon will be the Emperor of Rome, the wolf will be the Scots, and the lion will be our own true princess who, like a girl in a story, will have to kill her wicked father to set her mother and her country free.

  “Get that treasonous, foul-mouthed old gossip out of the yard and throw him in the river,” I say shortly. “And then lock him up in the guardhouse and ask the Duke of Norfolk what he wants done with him. And make sure that everyone knows I never want to hear a word of lions or moles or flaming stars again.”

  I speak with such cold fury that everyone obeys me; but that night, as I close the shutters on my bedroom window, I see above our own palace roof a flaming star, like a blue crucifix, above the princess’s bedroom, as if St. Jude, the saint of the impossible, is shining down on her a sign of hope.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, SUMMER 1532

  Montague and Geoffrey ask me to meet them at our London house, L’Erber, and I make an excuse to the princess that I need to see a physician, buy some warmer tapestries for the walls of the palace, and get her a winter cloak.

  “Will you see anyone in London?” she asks.

  “I may see my sons,” I say.

  She glances around to be sure that we cannot be overheard. “Can I give you a letter for my mother?” she whispers.

  I hesitate for only a moment. Nobody has told me if the princess and her mother may exchange letters; but equally no one has forbidden it.

  “I want to write to her and know no one else reads it,” she says.

  “Yes,” I promise. “I’ll try to get it to her.”

  She nods and goes to her private chamber. A little while later she comes out with a letter with no name on the front and no seal on the back and gives it to me.

  “How will you get it into her hands?” she asks.

  “Better that you don’t know,” I say, kiss her, and walk through the gardens and down to the pier.

  I take our barge downriver to the water stairs above London Bridge and walk though the City, surrounded by my personal guards, to my London home.

  It seems like a long time since I was pruning back the vine and hoping for English wine. It was a sunny day when Thomas Boleyn warned me of the danger that my cousin the Duke of Buckingham was running into headlong. I could almost laugh now at the thought of Boleyn’s fearful caution, when I think how high he has risen, and how much more danger we are all in as a result of his own ambition—though back then, he was warning me of mine. Who would have thought that a Boleyn could advise the king? Who would have thought that the daughter of my steward should threaten the Queen of England? Who would ever have dreamed that a King of England would overthrow the laws of the land and the Church itself to get such a girl into his bed?

  Geoffrey and Montague are waiting for me in my privy chamber, where there is a good fire in the grate and mulled ale in the jug. My house is run as it should be, even though I am here only rarely. I see that everything is just so with a little nod of approval, and then I take the great chair and survey my two sons.

  Montague looks far older than his forty years. The task of serving this king, as he goes determinedly down the wrong road against the wishes of his people, against the truth of his Church, against the advice of his councillors, is draining my oldest son. It is exhausting him.

  Geoffrey is thriving on the challenge. He is where he loves to be, at the center of things, pursuing something he believes in, arguing the tiniest detail, clamoring for the greatest of principles. He appears to serve the king in Parliament, bringing information to the king’s clever servant, Thomas Cromwell, chatting to men who have come up from the country, puzzled and anxious with no idea of what is happening at court, and he meets with our friends and kinsmen of the Privy Council and speaks for the queen whenever he can. Geoffrey loves an argument; I should have sent him to be a lawyer and then perhaps he would have risen as high as Thomas Cromwell, whose plan it is to set the Parliament against the priests and so divide them to their ruin.

  They both kneel and I put my hand on Montague’s head and bless him, and then rest my hand on Geoffrey’s head. His hair is still springy under my palm. When he was a baby, I used to run my fingers through his hair to see the curls lift up. He always was the prettiest of all my children.

  “I have promised the princess to get this into her mother’s hands,” I say, showing them the folded paper. “How can we do this?”

  Montague puts out his hand for it. “I’ll give it to Chapuys,” he says, naming the Spanish ambassador. “He writes to her in secret, and he delivers her letters to the emperor and the Pope.”

  “Nobody must know that it has come by us,” I caution him.

  “I know,” he says. “Nobody will.” He tucks the single page inside his doublet.

  “So,” I say, gesturing that they can sit. “We will have been observed, meeting like this. What are we to say we have been discussing, should anyone ask?”

  Geoffrey is ready with a lie. “We can say that we are troubled by Jane, Arthur’s widow,” he says. “She has written me a letter, asking to be released from her vows. She wants to come out of Bisham Priory.”

  I raise an eyebrow at Montague. Grimly, he nods. “She wrote to me too. It’s not the first time.”

  “Why didn’t she write to me?”

  Geoffrey giggles. “It’s you she blames for putting her inside,” he says. “She has taken it into her head that you want to secure the fortune of your grandson Henry by keeping her locked up and out of sight forever, her dower lands in your keeping, his inheritance safe from her. She wants to come out and get her fortune back.”

  “Well, she can’t,” I say flatly. “She took a vow of poverty for life of her own free will; I won’t restore her dower and have her in my house, and Henry’s lands and fortune are in my safe-keeping until he is a man.”

  “Agreed,” Montague says. “But we can say that is why we met and talked here.”

  I nod. “And so why did you want to see me?” I speak with determination. My boys must not know that I am weary and frightened by the world that we live in now. I did not think that I would ever see the day when a Queen of England did not sit on her throne at her court. I never dreamed that I would see the day when a king’s bastard took titles and wealth and paraded himself as an heir to the throne. And nobody, surely nobody in the long history of this country, ever thought that a King of England could set himself up as an English Pope.

  “The king is to go to France again, another meeting,” Montague says briefly. “He hopes to persuade King Francis to support his divorce with the Pope. The hearing is set for Rome this autumn. Henry wants King Francis to represent him. In return, Henry will promise to go on crusade for the Pope against the Turk.”

  “Will the King of France support him?”

  Geoffrey shakes his head. “How can he? There is neither logic nor morality to it.”

  Montague gives a weary smile. “That might not discourage him. Or he might promise it, just to get the crusade started. The point is that the king is taking Richmond.”

  “Henry Fitzro