I see he is genuinely distressed. I pour him a glass of wine and press him into a chair at the fireside. “Sit. Sit, my son. Take a breath.”
“They called the queen into court and she was magnificent. She completely ignored the cardinals sitting in judgment and she walked past them and knelt before the king—”
“She did?”
“Knelt and asked him in what way she had displeased him. Said that she had greeted his friends as her own, done whatever he wanted, and if she had not given him a son it wasn’t her fault.”
“My God—she said that in public?”
“Clear as a tolling bell. She said that he had found her an untouched virgin, as she was when she came from Spain. He said nothing. She asked him in what way she had ever failed him as a wife. He said nothing. What could he say? She has been everything to him for twenty years.”
I find I am smiling at the thought of Katherine speaking the truth to a king who has become accustomed to a diet of flattering lies.
“She asked if she could appeal to Rome, and then she rose to her feet and walked out, and left him silenced.”
“She just walked out?”
“They shouted her name to call her back into court, but she walked out and went back to her rooms as if she thought nothing of them. It was the greatest moment. Lady Mother, she has been a great queen all her life but that was her finest moment. And everyone outside the court, all the common people, were cheering and blessing her name and cursing the Lady for a whore who has brought nothing but trouble. And all the people inside the court were just stunned, or longing to laugh, or wanting to cheer too—but not daring while the king sat there, looking like a fool.”
“Hush,” I say at once.
“I know,” he says, snapping his fingers as if irritated at his own indiscretion. “Sorry. This has shaken me more than I thought. I felt . . .”
“What?” I ask. Montague is not Geoffrey; he is not ready with his feelings, quick to tears, quick to anger. If Montague is distressed, then he has witnessed something very great indeed. If Montague is distressed, then the whole court will be rocked with emotion. The queen has let them see her sorrow, she has shown them her heartbreak, and now they will be as troubled as children who see their mother cry for the first time.
“I feel as if something terrible is happening,” he says wonderingly. “As if nothing will ever be the same again. For the king to try to end his marriage to a faultless wife is somehow . . . if the king loses her he will lose . . .” He breaks off. “How will he be without her? How will he behave without her advice? Even when he does not consult her, we all know what she thinks. Even when she doesn’t speak, there is still the sense of her at court, we know she is there. She is his conscience, she is his exemplar.” He pauses again. “She’s his soul.”
“He hasn’t listened to her advice for years.”
“No, but even so, even so, she doesn’t have to speak, does she? He knows what she thinks. We know what she thinks. She’s like an anchor that he has forgotten, but still it keeps him steady. What is the Lady but just another of his fancies? He’s had half a dozen of them, but he always goes back to the queen, she always welcomes his return. She’s his haven. Nobody believes that this time is any different. And to distress her like this . . .”
There is a little silence as we think what Henry would be without Katherine’s loving, patient constancy.
“But you yourself said that she should consider stepping aside,” I accuse him. “When this all started.”
“I see that the king wants a son and heir. Nobody can blame him for that. But he can’t put a wife like this aside for a woman like that. For a princess from Spain or France or Portugal? Yes, then she should consider it. Then he might propose it to her, and she might consider it. But for a woman like that? Driven by nothing but sinful lust? And to try to trick the queen into saying that they were never married? Asking everyone of their opinion?”
“It’s wrong.”
“Very wrong.” Montague rests his face in his hands.
“So what happens now?”
“The hearing goes on. I should think it will take days, maybe weeks. They’re going to hear from all sorts of theologians, and the king has books and manuscripts coming in from all over Christendom to prove his case. He’s commissioned Reginald to find and buy books for him. Sent him to Paris to consult with scholars.”
“Reginald is going to Paris? Why, when will he leave?”
“He’s gone already. The king sent him the moment that the queen walked out of the court. She’s going to appeal to Rome, she won’t accept Wolsey’s judgment in an English court. So the king will need foreign advisors, admired writers from all over Christendom. England won’t be enough. That’s his only hope. Otherwise, the Pope will say that they were married in the sight of God, and nothing can put them apart.”
My son and I look at each other, as if the world we know is changing beyond recognition.
“How can he do this?” I ask simply. “It’s against everything he has ever believed in.”
Montague shakes his head. “He’s talked himself into it,” he says shrewdly. “Like his love poems. He strikes a pose and then he persuades himself it’s true. Now he wants to believe that God speaks to him directly, that his conscience is a greater guide than anything else; he’s talked himself into love with this woman, and he has talked himself out of marriage, and now he wants everyone to agree.”
“And who will disagree?” I ask.
“Archbishop Fisher might, Thomas More probably not, Reginald can’t,” Montague says, ticking off the great scholars on his fingers. “We should,” he says, surprisingly.
“We can’t,” I say. “We’re not experts. We’re just family.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1529
The king, bitterly disappointed by Wolsey and the cardinal he brought from Rome to try to find a compromise, goes on progress without the queen. He takes a riding court, Anne Boleyn among them. They are said to be very merry. He does not send for his daughter, and she asks me if I think she will be summoned to join him and her mother this summer.
“I don’t think so,” I say gently. “I don’t think that they are traveling together this year.”
“Then may I go and stay with my mother, the queen?”
She looks up from her sewing, where she is doing blackwork embroidery on a shirt for her father, just as her mother taught her to do.
“I will write to ask,” I say. “But it may be that your father prefers you to stay here.”
“And not see him or my mother?”
It is impossible to lie to her when she looks at me with that straight, honest York gaze.
“I think so, my dear,” is all I say. “These are difficult times. We have to be patient.”
She folds her lips together as if to stop any word of criticism escaping. She bends a little lower over her work. “Is my father to be divorced from my mother?” she asks.
That word in her mouth is like a blasphemous oath. She looks up at me as if she expects me to correct her speech, as if the very word is dirty.
“The case has been referred to Rome,” I say. “Did you know that?”
A little nod tells me that she heard this from somewhere.
“The Holy Father will make a judgment. We just have to wait and see what he thinks. God will guide him. We have to have faith. The Holy Father knows what is right in this; God will speak to him.”
She gives a little sigh, and shifts in her seat.
“Are you in pain?” I ask, seeing her bend forward a little, as if to ease a cramp in her belly.
At once she straightens up, her shoulders down, her head held like a princess. “Not at all,” she says.
My son Geoffrey is honored as the court leaves London. He is knighted for his services to the king in Parliament. Geoffrey becomes Sir Geoffrey, as he should be. I think how proud my husband would be, and I cannot stop myself smiling all day at the honor done to his son.
&
nbsp; Montague travels with the court as they ride down the sunlit valley of the Thames, calling at the great houses, hunting every day, dancing every night. Anne Boleyn is the mistress of everything she sees. He writes me one scribbled note:
Stop paying Wolsey’s bribe, the Lady has turned against him and he’s certain to fall. Send another of your little notes to Thomas More, I bet you a noble that he’ll be the new Lord Chancellor.
The princess knows that a messenger has come from court, and sees the gladness in my face. “Good news?” she asks.
“It is good news,” I tell her. “This day a very honest man has come into your father’s service, and he, at least, will advise him well.”
“Your son Reginald?” she asks hopefully.
“His friend and fellow scholar,” I say. “Thomas More.”
“What has happened to Cardinal Wolsey?” she asks me.
“He has left court,” I say. I don’t tell her that the Holy Maid of Kent predicted he would die miserably alone if he encouraged the king to leave his wife; and now the cardinal is all alone, and his health is failing.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1529
Dressed in her best gown, wrapped in furs, I take Princess Mary by royal barge down the river to Greenwich for Christmas, and we go straight to her mother’s rooms.
The queen is waiting for us. Her ladies smile as Princess Mary runs through the presence chamber into the private rooms and mother and daughter hold each other tightly, as if they cannot bear to be parted ever again.
Katherine looks over her daughter’s bowed head to me, and her blue eyes are filled with tears. “Why, Margaret, you are raising a beauty for me,” she says. “Merry Christmas, my dear.”
I am so moved by the sight of the two of them, together after such a long time, that I can barely reply.
“Are you all right?” is all that the little princess asks her mother, pulling back to look at her weary face. “Mama? Are you all right?”
She smiles, and I know that she is going to lie to her daughter, as we all do these days. She is going to tell a brave lie in the hope that this little girl will grow to be a woman without the heartbreak of knowing that her father is wrong in his thoughts and wrong in his life and wrong in his faith.
“I am very well,” she says emphatically. “And more importantly, I am sure that I am doing the right thing in the sight of God. And that must make me happy.”
“Does it?” the little princess asks doubtfully.
“Of course,” her mother says.
It is a great feast, as if Henry is trying to show the world the unity of his family, his wealth and power, and the beauty of his court. He leads the queen to her throne with his usual grace, he talks most charmingly to her as they dine, and nobody seeing them seated side by side smiling would dream that this was an estranged couple.
His children, the bastard and the true heir, are honored equally in an insane subverting of the rules of precedence. I watch as Princess Mary enters the great hall with a nobody: the ten-year-old boy, Bessie Blount’s bastard. But they make a handsome pair. The princess is so dainty and slight and the boy so handsome and tall for his age that they walk at the same pace, their copper heads aligned. Little Henry Fitzroy is referred to everywhere as the Duke of Richmond; this brass-headed, smiling child is the greatest duke in the country.
Princess Mary holds his hand as they enter for the Christmas feast, and when he opens his New Year’s gift from his father the king—a magnificent set of gilt cups and pots—she smiles and applauds as if she is pleased to see him so highly rewarded. She glances across at me and sees my small nod of approval. If a princess of England is required to treat her father’s bastard as an honored half brother, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the head of the Council of the North, then my little princess—the true princess of England, Wales, Ireland, and France—can rise to this ordeal.
The Lady is not present, so we are spared her pushing in front of her betters; but there is no need for anyone to hope that the king is tired of her yet, for her father is everywhere, flaunting his new title.
Thomas Boleyn, the man who was once very glad to serve me as steward of my lands, is now the Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde, while his handsome but quite useless son George is Lord Rochford, appointed to the privy chamber with my cousin Henry Courtenay—where I doubt they will agree. The thankfully absent daughter becomes Lady Anne, and the previous Boleyn whore, Mary Carey, now serves in two contradictory posts: chief companion and sole confidante to her sister, and as a rather sheepish lady-in-waiting to the queen.
Montague tells me that at the banquet held before Christmas, to celebrate Thomas Boleyn’s remarkable rise, his daughter Anne walked before a princess born: the Dowager Queen of France, Mary. I cannot imagine the king’s mistress walking ahead of the king’s sister, the daughter of my steward preceding a dowager queen. My only comfort when Montague tells me of this is that I know Anne Boleyn has made herself a formidable enemy. The dowager queen is accustomed to being the first at court for rank, beauty, and wit, and no Norfolk-born slut is going to take that off her without a battle.
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1530
The first sign of the royal visit is the arrival of the household: the grooms with the cantering horses, ridden four abreast, the man in the king’s livery at the center, holding four sets of reins, the horses going steadily forward. Behind them come the men-at-arms, first the mounted riders in light riding armor, then—after a long pause—the slower carts carrying the hawks for hunting, with the hounds running alongside, a cart for the little dogs and pets, and then the household goods. The king’s luxuries go before him, his linen, his furniture, his carpets, his tapestries, the great riches of the treasury. The Lady’s gowns, headdresses, and jewels take two carts of their own, and her serving women ride alongside, not daring to take their eyes off her wardrobe.
Behind them come the cooks with all the utensils for the kitchens, and the stores for today’s feast and tomorrow.
Princess Mary, standing beside me on the tower at Richmond Palace, looking down at this winding cavalcade as it heads towards us, says hopefully: “Is he staying for a long time?”
I tighten my arm around her waist. “No. He’s going on from here. He’s just coming for the day.”
“Where’s he going?” she asks, forlorn.
“He’ll travel this summer,” I guess. “There’s news of the Sweat in London. He’ll go from one place to another again.”
“Then will he send for my mother and for me and it will be like the year when it was just us?” She looks up at me, suddenly hopeful.
I shake my head. “Not this year, I don’t think,” I say.
The king is determined to be charming to his daughter, you would almost think he wanted to win her to his side. From the moment his barge draws up to the pier with a shout of trumpets, to the moment he leaves at dusk, he is beaming at her, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, his head cocked to hear her speech. He looks as if he is sitting for a portrait entitled “A Loving Father,” he looks as if he is an actor performing in a masque, and his role is “The Righteous Parent.”
He has only a handful of companions with him: his usual friends, Charles Brandon and his wife, Mary, the Dowager Queen of France, my cousin Henry Courtenay and his wife, Gertrude, my son Montague and a few other gentlemen of the privy chamber. The Boleyn men are on the royal barge but there is no mention of either of the Boleyn whores, and the only ladies who dine with us are those in attendance on the king’s sister.
As soon as the king arrives, his breakfast is served, and he himself cuts the best meats and pours the sweetest watered wine for Princess Mary. He commands her to say grace for him and she does so quietly, in Greek, and he praises her learning and her composure. He nods his thanks to me. “You are polishing my jewel,” he says. “I thank you, Lady Margaret, you are a dear friend and kinswoman. I don’t forget that you have been watching over me and mine, like a loving mother, from my childhoo
d.”
I bow. “It is a pleasure to serve the princess,” I say.
He smiles roguishly. “Not like me, when I was her age,” he twinkles, and I think, how urgently you move the conversation to you. How eagerly you prompt praise.
“Your Grace was the finest prince in the nursery,” I respond. “And so naughty! And so beloved!”
He chuckles and pats Mary’s hand. “I loved sport,” he says. “But I never neglected my studies. Everyone said that I excelled at everything I did. But,” he stages a shrug and a little laugh, “people always praise princes.”
They take the horses and go out hunting, and I command a picnic to be ready for them when they are tired. We meet in the woods to dine, and the musicians, hidden in the trees, play music that has been composed by the king himself. He asks the princess to sing for him and she makes a little curtsey to her aunt, the dowager queen, and sings a song in French, to please her.
The dowager queen, who was once a Princess Mary herself, rises from the table and kisses her niece, and gives her a gold and diamond bracelet. “She’s a delight,” she says quietly to me. “A princess through and through,” and I know we are both thinking of the little boy who is not and never can be a prince.
There is dancing after they have dined, and I find Montague at my side, as we watch the princess with her young ladies. “The queen stays at Windsor Castle,” he says. “But we have to go on. We are to meet up with the Lady and her court tonight.”
“But nothing changes?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing changes. This is how it is now: the queen at court and us trailing around with the Lady. There’s no joy in the summer anymore. It’s as if we are children who have run away from home. We’re tired of the adventure, but we have to endlessly pretend that we are having a wonderful time.”
“Is he not happy? Does she not make him happy?” I ask hopefully. If the king is not satisfied, then he will look.