The King's Curse Read online

  “I think she’ll have to,” Geoffrey says. “I think we all will. Because I think they will call it treason to refuse to swear.”

  “They can’t put a man to death for speaking the truth.” I cannot imagine a country where the hangman would kick out a stool from under a man who was telling a truth that the hangman knows as well as his victim. “The king is determined, I see that. But he wouldn’t do this.”

  “I think it will happen,” Geoffrey warns.

  “How can she swear that she’s not the princess, when everyone knows that she is?” I repeat. “I can’t swear that, nobody can.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1534

  I am summoned with the other peers of the realm to the Privy Council at the Palace of Westminster where the Lord Chancellor, the newly great Thomas Cromwell, stepping into the shoes of Thomas More like a Fool dancing in his master’s boots, is to administer the oath of succession to the nobility of England, who stand before him like puzzled children waiting to recite their catechism.

  We know the truth of the matter, for the Pope has publicly ruled. He has announced that the marriage of Queen Katherine and King Henry is valid, and that the king must set aside all others and live in peace with his true wife. But he has not excommunicated the king, so though we know that the king is in the wrong, we are not authorized to defy him. We each must do what we think best.

  And the Pope is far away, and the king claims that he has no authority in England. The king has ruled that his wife is not his wife, that his mistress is queen, and that her bastard is a princess. The king says that by his declaring this, it is so. He is the new pope. He can declare that something is so; and now it is. And we, if we had any courage or even a sure grasp on the material world, would say that the king is mistaken.

  Instead, one by one we walk up to a great table and there is the oath written out, and the great seal above it. I take up the pen and dip it in the ink and feel my hand tremble. I am a Judas, a Judas even to take the pen into my hand. The beautifully transcribed words dance before me; I can hardly see them, the paper is a blur, the table seems to sway as I lean over. I think: God save me, I am sixty years old, I am too old for this, I am too frail for this, perhaps I can faint and be carried from the room and spared this.

  I glance up, and Montague’s steady gaze is on me. He will sign, and Geoffrey will sign after him. We have agreed that we must sign so that no one can doubt our loyalty; we will sign hoping for better days. Quickly, before I can find the courage to change my mind, I scrawl my name, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, and so I renew my allegiance to the king, I pledge my loyalty to the children of his marriage with the woman who calls herself queen, and I acknowledge him as head of the Church in England.

  These are lies. Every single one of these is a lie. And I am a liar to set my hand to it. I step back from the table and I am no longer wishing I had pretended to faint, I am wishing that I had the courage to step forward and die as the queen told the princess that she must be ready to do.

  Later they tell me that the saintly old man, confessor to two Queens of England, and God knows a good friend to me, John Fisher, would not sign the oath when they pulled him out of his prison in the Tower and put it before him. They did not respect his age, nor his long loyalty to the Tudors; they forced the oath on him and when he read and reread it and finally said that he did not think he could deny the authority of the Pope, they took him back to the Tower. Some people say that he will be executed. Most people say that no one can execute a bishop of the Church. I say nothing at all.

  Thomas More refused the oath also, and I think of the warm brown eyes and his joke about filial obedience and his pity for me when Arthur went missing. I wish that I had stood beside him when he told them, like the scholar he is, that he would sign a rewritten version of the oath, that he did not disagree with much of it, but that he could not sign it exactly as it stands.

  I think of the sweetness of his spirit that led him on to say that he did not blame those who had drawn up the oath, nor did he have one word of criticism for those who had signed it; but for the sake of his own soul—just his—he could not sign.

  The king had faithfully promised his friend Thomas that he would never put him to the test on this. But the king does not keep his word to the man that he loved, that we all love.

  BISHAM MANOR, BERKSHIRE, SUMMER 1534

  I go back to Bisham, Geoffrey to Lordington. I have a bad taste in my mouth every day on waking and I think it is the odor of cowardice. I am glad to get away from London, where my friend John Fisher and Thomas More are held in the Tower, and where Elizabeth Barton’s honest eyes stare from a spike on London Bridge until the ravens and the buzzards peck them away.

  They create a new law, one that we never needed before. It is called the Treason Act, and it rules that anyone who wishes for the king’s death, or wills it, or desires it in either speech or writing or craft, or who promises any bodily harm to the king or his heirs, or who names him as a tyrant, is guilty of treason and will be done to death. When my cousin Henry Courtenay writes to me that this act has been passed and we must take great care in everything we commit to paper, I think that he need not warn me to burn his letter; burning writing is nothing, now we have to learn to forget our thoughts. I must never think that the king is a tyrant, I must forget the words his own mother said when she and his grandmother Queen Elizabeth wished for the end of his line.

  Montague travels with the king as he goes on a long progress with his riding court of friends, and Thomas Cromwell sends out his own progress: a handful of his trusted men to discover the value of every religious house in England, of every size and order. Nobody knows exactly why the Lord Chancellor would want to know this; but nobody thinks that it bodes well for the rich, peaceful monasteries.

  My poor princess hides in her bedroom at the palace of Hatfield, trying to avoid the bullying of Princess Elizabeth’s household. The queen has been moved again. Now she is imprisoned in a castle, Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire, a newly built tower with only one way in and out. Her governors, they might as well call them jailers, live on one side of the courtyard, the queen and her women and small household on the other side. They tell me she is ill.

  The woman who calls herself queen stays at Greenwich Palace for the birth of her child, in the same royal apartments where Katherine and I endured her labors, hoping for a boy.

  Apparently, they are certain that this one will be a son and heir. They have had physicians and astrologers and prophecies and they all say that a strong little boy baby is waiting to be born. They are so confident that the queen’s apartments at Eltham Palace have been converted into a grand nursery for the expected prince. A cradle of solid silver has been forged for him, and the maids-in-waiting are embroidering his linen with gold thread. He is to be called Henry, after his all-conquering father; he is to be born in the autumn and his christening will prove that the king is blessed by God and the woman who calls herself queen is right to do so.

  My chaplain and confessor, John Helyar, comes to me as they are getting the harvest in. The great stacks are being built in the fields so that we will have hay for the winter; the corn is being brought by the wagonload to the granaries. I am standing at the granary door, my heart lifting with every load that pours down from the cart like golden rain. This will feed my people through the winter, this will make a profit for my estate. This material comfort is so great to me that it feels like the sin of gluttony.

  John Helyar does not share my joy; his face is troubled as he begs me for a private word. “I can’t take the oath,” he says. “They’ve come to Bisham church, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Geoffrey did,” I say. “And Montague. And me. We were the first to be called in. We did it. Now it is your turn.”

  “Do you believe, in your hearts, that the king is the true head of the Church?” he asks me very quietly.

  They are singing as the wagons come up the lane, the big oxen pulling in harness now