The King's Curse Read online

  “One hundred twenty nobles only takes us to Christmastide. And what happens after that?” I ask my steward.

  He just looks at me. He knows that he is not expected to have an answer to this. He knows that I have no answer. He knows there is none.

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SPRING 1505

  Christmas comes and goes with no feast for the tenants, and Twelfth Night goes by with only the smallest of gifts for the children. I announce that we are still mourning the loss of my husband, but they mutter in the village that it is not how things should be done, and it was better in the old days when the gentle knight Sir Richard ordered a good feast for the household and all the tenants, and remembered that these are the cold and hungry months and that a good dinner is helpful for people with many mouths to feed, and free firewood should be sent out too.

  Geoffrey the baby thrives with his wet nurse but I find I am wondering when he can be weaned from her, as she is such an extra expense in the nursery. I cannot let the boys’ tutor go—these are my father’s grandsons, the grandsons of George, Duke of Clarence, the best-read nobleman of an exceptional court; these are Warwick children, they have to be able to read and write in three languages at least. I cannot let this family slide down into ignorance and dirt; but teaching and cleanliness are terribly expensive.

  We have always lived off the produce from the home farm and we sell some of our surplus at the local markets. We make cheeses and butter, we harvest fruit, and we salt down meat. Our spare food we send to the local market for sale, any extra grain I sell to the miller, and hay and straw I sell to a local merchant. The mills on the river pay me a fee every time they grind, the local potters pay me for firing their wares in my kiln, and I sell wood from the forest.

  But the tail end of winter is the worst time of year; our horses are eating our summer crop of hay and there is no extra to sell, the beasts are eating the straw and if they finish it before the spring grass comes, they will have to be killed for meat and then I will have no livestock. Once the household has been fed there is no surplus food left to sell for cash; indeed, we rely on the tenants giving us our share of their crops, as we cannot grow enough on our own fields.

  Princess Katherine writes to condole with me on the loss of my husband. She too has suffered a terrible loss. Her mother wrote to her rarely, and seldom with any warmth, but Katherine never stopped looking for her letters, and missed her every day. Now Isabella of Spain is dead, and Katherine will never see her mother again. Even worse than this, the death of her mother means that her father no longer jointly rules all of Spain, but only his own kingdom of Aragon. His wealth and position in the world have been halved, worse than halved, and his oldest daughter Juana has inherited the throne of Castile from her mother. Katherine is no longer the daughter of the monarchs of Spain, she is the daughter of mere Ferdinand of Aragon—a very different prospect. I am not surprised to read that Prince Harry and his father no longer visit her as they used to do. She survives on little gifts of money from the king and sometimes they are less than she expected, and sometimes the royal exchequer forgets to pay altogether. The king is insisting that her full dowry must be paid by Spain to him before the marriage to Prince Harry can go ahead, and in riposte Katherine’s father Ferdinand is demanding that her widow’s jointure be paid by the king to her, in full and at once.

  Will you write for me to My Lady and ask her if I can come to court? Will you tell her that I am sorry but I cannot seem to manage my household bills and that I am lonely and unhappy here? I want to live in her rooms as her granddaughter, as I should.

  I reply and tell her that I am a widow, as she is, and that I too am struggling to pay my way in the world. I say that I am sorry, but I have no influence over My Lady. I will write to her, but I doubt she will be kind to Katherine at my bidding. I don’t say that My Lady said she would never forgive me for refusing to bear witness against Katherine, and that I doubt any word from me, any word from anyone, would make her act kindly to the princess.

  Katherine replies quite cheerfully that her duenna, Doña Elvira, is so bad-tempered that she sends her out to the market to haggle with traders and her angry broken English wins them bargains. She writes this as if it is funny, and I laugh aloud when I read her letter and tell her about the quarrel I have with the farrier about the cost of horseshoes.

  It is not grief that will deprive me of my wits but hunger. I go round the kitchen under the pretense that there must be no waste; but really I am getting so low that I shall start licking the spoons and scraping the pots.

  I turn away as many as I can of the household staff as soon as we get to the end of the quarter at Lady Day. Some of them cry as they leave and I have no quit money to give them. Those who are left have to work harder and some of them don’t know how the work is done. The kitchen maid now has to lay the fire and sweep the grate in my room and she constantly forgets to bring the wood or spills the ash. It’s heavy work for her and I see her struggle with the log basket and I look away. I put myself in charge of the dairy and learn to make cheese and skim milk and send the dairymaid back to her family. I keep the boy in the malthouse but I learn to make ale. My son Henry has to ride out in the fields with the steward and watch them sowing the seed. He comes home afraid that they are scattering it too thickly, that the carefully measured scoops of grain are not covering the ground.

  “Then we’ll have to buy more somehow,” I say grimly. “We have to have a good crop or there will be no bread next winter.”

  As the evenings get lighter I give up using wax candles altogether, and tell the children they must do all their studying before dusk. We live in the guttering shadows and stink of the rush lights and the tallow drips on the floors. I think that I will have to marry again, but no man of any wealth or position would consider me, and My Lady will not order one of her relations to the task this time. I am a widow of thirty-one years with five young children and growing debts. When I remarry, I will lose all rights over the estates, as they will all go to the king as Henry’s guardian, so I would come to a new husband as a pauper. Very few men would see me as a desirable wife. No man who wants to prosper at the Tudor court would marry a widow with five children of Plantagenet blood. If My Lady the King’s Mother will not make a marriage for me with someone whom she can command, then I cannot see how to raise my children and feed myself.

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SUMMER 1505

  It all comes back to her. It all comes back to her favor and her influence. In the summer I realize that however good the harvest, however high the price of wheat, we will not make enough to get through another winter. I am going to have to raise the money to go to London and ask her for help.

  “We could sell Sir Richard’s warhorse?” my steward John Little suggests.

  “He’s so old!” I exclaim. “Who would want him? And he served Sir Richard so well for so long!”

  “He’s no use to us,” he says. “We can’t use him on the plow, he won’t go between the shafts. I might get a good price for him in Stourbridge. He’s well known as Sir Richard’s horse; people know he’s a good horse.”

  “Then everyone will know that I can’t afford to keep him,” I protest. “That I can’t afford to keep him for Henry to ride.”

  The steward nods, his eyes on his boots, not looking at me. “Everyone knows that already, my lady.”

  I bow my head at this new humiliation. “Take him then,” I say.

  I watch the big horse being saddled up. He lowers his proud head for the bridle and stands still while they tighten the girth. He may be old, but his ears come forward when the steward steps off the mounting block to swing a leg over his back and sit in the saddle. The old warhorse thinks he is riding out to battle once more. His neck arches, and he paws the ground as if he is eager to go to work. For a moment I nearly cry out: “No! Keep him! He’s our horse, he’s served my husband well. Keep him for Henry.”

  But then I remember that there is nothing to feed him unless I can get h