The King's Curse Read online

  Henry, usually traveling between his rich palaces, mostly by barge, always heavily guarded, has not heard the rumble of a thousand critical whispers before. It’s like a distant thunder, low and yet ominous. He looks around, but he cannot see one person speaking against him. Abruptly, he laughs out loud at nothing, as if he is trying to demonstrate that he is not troubled by this sulky welcome, and he swings himself heavily down from his horse, throws the reins to a groom, and stands stock-still, his arms akimbo, a fat block of a man, as if daring anyone to speak against him. He can see no one to challenge. There is no scowling face in the crowd, no one is going to stand up to be martyred. If Henry saw an enemy, he would cut him down where he stood; he has never lacked courage. But there is no one opposing him. There is just a dull sourceless whisper of discontent. The people don’t like their king anymore, they don’t trust him with their Church, they don’t believe that his will is given to him by God, they miss Queen Katherine, they were horrified by the stories of the guilt and the death of Queen Anne. How can such a woman ever have been the choice of a godly king? He chose her to prove that he was the best, that he could marry the best. Since she is now shown to be the worst, what does that say about him?

  They don’t know anything about Queen Jane, but they have heard that she danced on the night of the execution and married the king eleven days after he beheaded his former wife, her mistress. They think she must be a woman quite without pity. To them, the king is no longer the prince whose coming makes all things right, he is no longer the young man whose follies and sports were a byword for joyous excess. Their love for him has grown doubtful, their love for him has grown fearful; in truth, their love for him has gone.

  Henry looks around and tosses his head as if he despises the little town and the lowered heads of the silent pilgrims. He reminds me, for one moment, of the way his father used to look, as if he thought we were all fools, that he had taken the throne and the kingdom by his own quick and cunning wits, and that he despised us all for having allowed it. Henry glances down at Jane who stands at his side, waiting to walk with him through the wide-open doors of the inn. His face does not soften at the sight of her blond bowed head. He looks at her as if she is another fool who is going to do exactly as he wants, even if it costs her life.

  We are following slavishly behind, when there is a disturbance in the crowd outside, horsemen riding down the road and trying to push their way through. I see Montague, following the king, looking back at the noise. It is one of Henry Fitzroy’s servants, his horse nearly foundered, looking as if it has been ridden hard, perhaps all the way from St. James’s Palace, the young duke’s London home.

  A small nod of Montague’s head as he goes into the darkness of the inner hall of the inn prompts me to wait outside and discover the news that has made Fitzroy’s servants ride so hard. The man pushes his way through the crowd, while his groom waits behind holding the horse.

  At once people gather around him clamoring for news, and I stand back to listen. He shakes his head and speaks quietly. I clearly hear him say that nothing could be done, the poor young man, and nothing could be done.

  I go into the inn, where the king’s presence chamber is filled with the court, talking and wondering what has happened. Jane is seated on the throne, trying to look unconcerned and talking with her ladies. The door to the king’s private room is closed, with Montague nearby.

  “He went in there with the messenger,” Montague says to me quietly. “Shut everyone out. What’s happened?”

  “I think Fitzroy may be dead,” I say.

  Montague’s eyes widen and he gives a little exclamation, but he is such a trained conspirator now that he gives little away. “An accident?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There is a great bellow from behind the closed door, a terrible roar, like a bull will give when a mastiff has fastened on his throat and he drops to his knees. It is the noise of a man mortally wounded. “No! No! No!”

  Jane whirls around at the cry, jumps to her feet, and sways indecisively. The court falls completely silent, and watches her, as she sits back down on her throne and then rises up again. Her brother speaks quickly to her and she obediently goes to the door to the privy chamber, but then she steps back and makes a little gesture with her hand, stopping the guards from opening it. “I can’t,” she says.

  She looks across at me, and I go to her side. “What should I do?” she asks.

  There is a single loud sob from inside the room. Jane looks quite terrified. “Should I go to him? Thomas says I must go to him. What’s happening?”

  Before I can answer Thomas Seymour is at his sister’s side, his hand in the small of her back, literally thrusting her towards the closed door. “Go in,” he says through his teeth.

  She digs in her heels, she rolls her eyes towards me. “Shouldn’t Lord Cromwell go in?” she whispers.

  “Not even he can raise the dead!” Thomas snaps. “You’ve got to go in.”

  “Come with me.” Jane reaches out and grabs my hand as the guard swings the door open. The messenger stumbles out and Thomas Seymour pushes us both in and slams the door behind us.

  Henry is on his knees, on the floor, hunched over a richly padded footstool, his face buried in the thick embroidery. He is sobbing convulsively like a child, hoarse-voiced as if his grief is tearing out his heart. “No!” he says when he catches his breath, and then he gives a great groan.

  Cautiously, like someone approaching a wounded beast, Jane goes towards him. She pauses and bends down, her hand hovering above his heaving shoulders. She looks at me, I nod, and she pats his back so lightly that he will not feel it through the wadding of his jacket.

  He rubs his face one way and another against the knots of gold and sequins on the footstool; his clenched fist thumps the stool and then the wooden planks of the floor. “No! No! No!”

  Jane jumps back at this violence, and looks at me. Henry gives a little scream of distress and pushes the footstool away and flings himself facedown on the floor, rolling from one side to the other in the strewing herbs and the straw. “My son! My son! My only son!”

  Jane shrinks back from his flailing arms and kicking legs, but I go forward and kneel at his head. “God bless him and keep him, and take him into eternal life,” I say quietly.

  “No!” Henry rears up, his hair stuck with herbs and straw, and screams into my face. “No! Not into eternal life. This is my boy! He is my heir! I need him here.”

  He is terrifying in his red-faced frustrated rage, but then I see where the footstool cover has scratched his face, torn his eyelid, so blood and tears are running down his face, I see the desperate child that he was when his brother died, when his mother died only a year later. I see Henry the child who had been sheltered from life and now had it breaking into his nursery, into his world. A child who had rarely been refused and now suddenly had everything he loved snatched from him.

  “Oh, Harry,” I say, and my voice is filled with pity.

  He wails and pitches himself into my lap. He grips around my waist as if he would crush me. “I can’t . . .” he says. “I can’t . . .”

  “I know,” I say, I think of all the times that I have had to come to this young man and tell him a son has died, and now he is as old as I was then, and once again I have to tell him that he has lost a son.

  “My boy!”

  I grip him as tightly as he is holding me, I rock him and we move together as if he were a great baby, crying in his mother’s lap with the heartbreak of childhood.

  “He was my heir,” he wails. “He was my heir. He was the very spit of me. Everyone said it.”

  “He was,” I say gently.

  “He was handsome as I was!”

  “He was.”

  “It was as if I would never die . . .”

  “I know.”

  A new burst of sobbing follows, and I hold him as he weeps heartbrokenly. I look over his heaving shoulders to Jane. She is simply aghast. She stares at the king,