The King's Curse Read online

  Montague, trying to be cheerful, orders the servants to bring the food and invites us to table as a merry family party, and then Geoffrey sets the musicians to play loudly in the hall while we step into the private room behind the great table and close the door.

  “I have a letter from our Lisle cousins,” Henry Courtenay says. He shows us the seal and then carefully tucks it into the fire, where it blazes and the wax sputters and then it is nothing but ash. “Arthur Plantagenet says that we have to protect the princess. He will hold Calais for her against the king. If we can get her out of England, she will be safe there.”

  “Protect her against what?” I ask flatly, as if daring them to say. “The Lisles are safe in Calais. What do they want us to do?”

  “Lady Mother, the next Parliament is going to be offered a Bill of Attainder against the queen and the princess,” my son Montague says quietly. “Then they’ll be taken to the Tower. Like More and Fisher. Then they’ll be executed.”

  There is a shocked silence, but everyone can see the truth in Montague’s bleak misery.

  “You’re sure?” is all I say. I know that he is sure. I don’t need his agonized face to tell me that.

  He nods.

  “Do we have enough support to deny the bill in Parliament?” Henry Courtenay asks.

  Geoffrey knows. “There should be enough men for the queen to vote it down. If they dare to speak their minds, there are enough votes. But they have to stand up and speak.”

  “How can we make sure that they speak out?” I ask.

  “Someone has to take the risk and speak first,” Gertrude says eagerly. “One of you.”

  “You didn’t stand up for so very long,” her husband remarks resentfully.

  “I know,” she admits. “I thought I would die in the Tower. I thought that I would die of cold and disease before I was tried and hanged. It’s terrible. I was there for weeks. I would be there still if I had not denied everything and begged forgiveness. I said I was a foolish woman.”

  “I am afraid that the king is ready to make war on women now, foolish or otherwise,” Montague says grimly. “Nobody will be allowed that excuse again. But my cousin Gertrude is right. Someone has to speak up. I think it has to be us. I’ll approach every friend that I have and tell him that there can be no attainder against the queen or the princess.”

  “Tom Darcy will help you,” I say. “John Hussey too.”

  “Yes, but Cromwell will be ahead of us,” Geoffrey warns. “Nobody manages Parliament better than Cromwell. He’ll have been before us, and he has deep pockets, and people are terrified of him. He knows some secret about everybody. He has a hold on everyone.”

  “Can’t Reginald persuade the emperor to come?” Henry Courtenay asks me. “The princess is begging to be rescued. Can the emperor at least send a ship and take her away?”

  “He says that he will,” Geoffrey replies. “He promised Reginald.”

  “But there are guards on both houses. Kimbolton is almost impossible to even get near without being observed,” Montague cautions him. “Would the princess go without the queen? And from the start of this month all the ports will be guarded. The king knows well enough that the Spanish ambassador is plotting with the princess to try to get her away. She’s closely watched, and there’s not a port in England that doesn’t have a Cromwell spy on duty. I really don’t think we can get her out of the country; it will be hard enough to get her out of Hunsdon.”

  “Can we take her into hiding in England?” Geoffrey asks. “Or send her to Scotland?”

  “I don’t want her sent to Scotland,” I interrupt. “What if they keep her?”

  “We may have to,” Montague says and Courtenay and Stafford nod in agreement. “One thing is for certain: we can’t let her be taken to the Tower, and we have to stop Cromwell’s Parliament passing a Bill of Attainder and sending her to her death.”

  “Reginald is working for the king’s excommunication to be publicly declared,” I remind them.

  “We need it now,” Montague says.

  WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, WINTER 1535

  Geoffrey goes visiting all the substantial landlords who live around Warblington or around his own house at Lordington, and speaks to them of the Bill of Attainder against the queen and princess and how it must not come to Parliament. In London Montague speaks discreetly to selected friends at court, mentioning that the princess should be allowed to live with her mother, that she should not be so closely guarded. The king’s great friend and companion Sir Francis Bryan agrees with him, suggesting that he speak with Nicholas Carew. These are men at the very heart of Henry’s court, and they are starting to rebel against the king’s malice to his wife and daughter. I begin to think that Cromwell will not dare to propose the arrest of the queen to the Parliament. He will know that there is a growing opposition; he will not want an open challenge.

  The autumn progress has done its work and she is with child again. No word from Rome, and the king feels safe. He is in and out of her rooms flirting with her ladies; but she does not care. If she has a boy, she will be untouchable.

  WARBLINGTON CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, JANUARY 1536

  Dearest Lady Mother,

  I am sorry to tell you that the Dowager Princess is gravely ill. I have asked Lord Cromwell if you may go to her and he says that he is not authorized to allow any visitors. The Spanish ambassador went just after the Christmas feast, and Maria de Salinas is on her way. I don’t think we can do any more?

  Your obedient and loving son,

  Montague.

  L’ERBER, LONDON, JANUARY 1536

  I ride up the cold roads to London with my cape over my head and dozens of scarves wound round my face in an effort to keep warm. I fall from the saddle at the doorway of my London house, and Geoffrey catches me in his arms and says kindly: “Here, you’re home now, don’t even think of going on to Kimbolton.”

  “I have to go,” I say. “I have to say good-bye to her. I have to beg her forgiveness.”

  “How have you failed her?” he demands, guiding me into the great hall. The fire is lit in the grate; I can feel the flickering heat on my face. My ladies gently lift the heavy cloak from my shoulders and unwind the scarves, take the gloves from my chilled hands, and pull off my riding boots. I am aching from cold and weariness. I feel every one of my sixty-two years.

  “She left me in charge of the princess, and I didn’t stay at her side,” I say shortly.

  “She knew you did everything that you could.”

  “Oh, damn everything to hell!” I suddenly break out in blasphemy. “I have done nothing for her as I meant to do, and we were young women together and it seems just yesterday, and now she is lying near death and her daughter is in danger and we cannot reach her and I . . . I . . . am just a foolish old woman and I am helpless in this world. Helpless!”

  Geoffrey kneels at my feet and his sweet face is torn between laughter and sorrowful pity. “No woman I know is less helpless in the world,” he says. “Not one more determined or powerful. And the queen knows that you are thinking of her and praying for her even now.”

  “Yes, I can pray,” I say. “I can pray that at least she is in a state of grace and without pain. I can pray for her.”

  I heave myself to my feet, leave the temptation of the fire and the glass of mulled ale, and go to my chapel, where I kneel on the stone floor, which is how she always prayed, and I put the soul of my dearest friend Katherine of Aragon into the hands of God in the hopes that He will care for her better in heaven than we have cared for her here on earth.

  And that is where Montague finds me when he comes to tell me that she is gone.

  She went like a woman of great dignity; this has to be a comfort for me and for her. She prepared for her death, she had a long talk with her ambassador, and she had the company of dearest Maria, who rode through the winter weather to get to her. She wrote to her nephew and to the king. They tell me that she wrote to Henry that she loved him as she had always done and