Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII (30 page)

‘Please Charles, don’t be angry. They’re so in love, it seemed a shame to keep them apart.’ Her expression softened. ‘They’re so happy together. So young and tender. Who could deny them?’

Charles could scarcely believe his ears at such soft-hearted folly. It seemed that, whatever he did, no matter how often he was forced to abase himself, he would still end up in the wrong and in danger. Exasperated, he swore a mighty oath and begged the heavens to save him from love and its follies. ‘It’s to be hoped the king will be tender with me when he discovers this.’ He scowled. ‘You can be sure Wolsey will make the most of it.’ Fear made his voice turn cold. ‘It seems that once again you make me break the king’s trust. Is it not enough that I’m forced from the court by debt? Do you wish me to be thrown into the Tower as well, Madam?’ Furious, he banged the table. Mary jumped. ‘What possessed you to do such a thing? You realise that once Wolsey knows of it the marriage won’t be permitted to stand?’

He saw her face fall at this. For the first time he felt the twelve years difference in their ages. Mary, young and romantic, seemed still to believe that all the world loved a lover. Whereas he— He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up as if to meet the headsman’s axe. Desperately, he searched for excuses that would prove pleasing to the king and found none. ‘That woman must have bewitched you. Her and those silly soft-eyed lovers. I tell you again it won’t be permitted to stand. They’ll be separated, despite their great love and tender feelings.’ In his fury he was pleased to see how his words had upset her. He strode to the window and turned his back on her. Outside, the day was as dark as the deepest dungeon. The thought made him shiver, made the hairs on the back of his neck rise again. He had hurried home, eager to see his wife and son, not even stopping for a meal. He was cold, wet, hungry and in need of comfort. Instead he found anything but comfort. What a homecoming this was turning out to be. He would have done better to remain at court and do a little advance cringing to the king and the Cardinal.

He turned back to the room with a scowl and went to warm himself at the log fire crackling in the hearth. Steam rose from his sodden garments. He wrenched his cloak from his shoulders and threw it on a coffer. ‘Now, I suppose I’ll have to write more begging letters to Wolsey, seeking his intercession. As if I’ve not written enough of those since our marriage.’

His words dismayed her, he could see. It was small enough recompense for this latest trouble in which she had embroiled him. He couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction that during the next few days Mary would likely creep about the house like a disgraced housewife rather than a Dowager Queen. Charles, ever conscious of his lowly status, for the first time felt that he was truly master in his own home.

While they awaited the Cardinal’s reply to their letters, Charles enjoyed a rise in status as Mary did all she could to please him; ordering his favourite meals and keeping the quarrelsome servants in order. Above all, she made sure to keep Mistress Jerningham from his sight - after his tongue-lashing, she crept about the place like a whipped pup, her matchmaking arrangements about to be put asunder.

It was a relieved Charles who learned the king had believed his protestations of innocence. But it was galling that the world must think he had little authority over his own wife and household. It would do nothing to raise his standing at court, nothing, either, to encourage the king to seek his counsel.

Mary had been much chastened by Charles’s reaction to the marriage she and Mistress Jerningham had encouraged. She realised how foolish she had been to allow herself to be carried away by the romance of it all. As Charles had told her, her heart was too soft where young lovers were concerned. So she was glad for Charles’s sake when, with the arrival of spring, Henry summoned them to court to join in the May-Day celebrations. It would be a chance to explain in person and to make sure any blame rested with her rather than her husband. She knew how much Charles chaffed at the bit to get back to court. Mary just hoped their many creditors didn’t succeed in waylaying him when they got there.

But, as it turned out, even their creditors soon had their minds occupied by things other than money.

Mary, Charles and their household had barely had a chance to settle into the courtly round at Richmond before riots started up in the capital.

There had long been ill-feeling against all the foreigners in the country. The May revels had often in past years been the opportunity for mischief-makers to be about their work. This year they excelled themselves. The London apprentices ran amok, rioting through the streets, attacking foreigners and sacking their houses, accusing them of greedily taking money from the people. The mob insulted the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors and threatened death to the mayor and aldermen. They even had the temerity to threaten Wolsey in like manner and his London palace was swiftly fortified.

Tempers cooled with the evening’s breezes. Miraculously, no one had been killed, though many were injured. The ringleaders were summarily executed, their quartered bodies displayed throughout the city. The rest languished in prison where they had leisure to repent their folly during what was termed ‘Evil May-Day’.

Mary, like Catherine, so recently a mother, felt only compassion when they learned of the youth of the prisoners. They both felt sorry for their poor mothers, terrified about what would befall their sons for what had probably, for them, started as no more than boyish high spirits and love of mischief and they agreed to beseech the king to show mercy.

Henry, at first, would have none of it. But then Catherine dropped to her knees before him and begged him to spare their lives. ‘They are young and foolish, your Grace, led astray by evil counsel. They’ve learned a harsh lesson and know your power. They’ll not rise up in like manner again.’

Mary, watching her brother, saw he was enjoying himself. At almost twenty-six, he still had much of the boy in him. But now the boy, for all his still-indulged love of play-acting, had come to enjoy playing the tyrant more. He kept Catherine on her knees before him, while he played the role of all wise, all-forgiving monarch. It was a role Mary recognised. Hadn’t she been on the receiving end of it while in France writing letters pleading for his forgiveness for her secret marriage? As on that occasion, her brother meant to extract as much as he could from the situation. Where now the elder brother from their nursery days? That Henry she had loved, adored even. But this one? This one she feared and feared for. Of what would he become capable as the flattery of courtiers encouraged his vanity and growing love of power? It saddened Mary to see how that power was beginning to corrupt him.

While Henry still continued to indulge his play-pondering, his head on his hand as he surveyed his queen, Mary grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her to the floor beside Catherine so the sister-queens could add their pleas to Catherine’s. What matter, thought Mary, if the entire court had to grovel on their knees before him? She pictured again the terror and grief of the boys’ mothers as they waited to learn what would be their sons’ fate. The picture lent her eloquence.

‘Come, brother,’ she pleaded earnestly. ‘I know how kind and forgiving your heart can be and how loving.’ Feverishly, Mary searched her memory for the words that had proved most useful when she had sought his forgiveness herself. ‘We know your power, but please, your Grace, show the world your wisdom so they can also appreciate your justice and mercy. They are but silly children, after all, as Queen Catherine said. For love of our long-dead mother, think of the mothers of these poor misguided wretches this day. News of the mercy of great King Henry will resound throughout the world. Come brother,’ Mary softened her voice and held her hand to her now-swollen belly, ‘Forgive your children and obtain their joyful thanks.’

Mary held her breath as her brother’s mind turned over her words and those of his queen. She had been at pains to touch on all the things that would most appeal to him; she had extolled his wisdom, his justice and mercy, his power and how the news would be received abroad. She had also appealed to that streak of sentiment which had ever formed part of her brother’s character. Would it be enough?

The entire court seemed to hold its breath. Then Henry, evidently believing he had extracted as much drama and praise as possible, told the hushed court that he was indeed pleased to spare the prisoners’ lives. He did so at a splendid public ceremony at Westminster Hall. Handcuffed and chained by the neck, the prisoners were paraded past this modern-day Solomon, as Henry sat, looking suitably wise. He listened to their cries for mercy and graciously inclining his head, ordered their release, though not before even the powerful and corpulent Wolsey bent the knee to his sovereign lord on their behalf.

It seemed to Mary that summer as she awaited the birth of her second child that barely was one drama over than another must raise its head. The news that Cardinal Wolsey was sick unto death raced round the court. Mary begged Charles not to display too much glee at the news, at least in public. Fortunately, given her condition, he was at pains not to upset her and Mary heard few reports of her husband proclaiming what joy the death of Wolsey would give him. But it didn’t stop him dreaming, she knew; she often caught him in quiet moments, staring into space, a slight smile playing about his lips and needed few guesses as to its cause.

Others were not so discreet and little knots of excited courtiers would form in corners as they speculated on who would replace the great Cardinal. But Wolsey, with the strong constitution of his peasant forefathers, made a surprising recovery from his brush with death and, to the chagrin of Charles and not a few others, was soon again at the head of affairs.

It didn’t take long, as Charles furiously asserted, for Wolsey to set about the business of ruining him once more.

Mary could only try to console him as his difficult position at court was again brought vividly home to him by the arrival of the ambassadors of the Emperor and the King of Spain for the formal signing of the defensive league against France which had been agreed the previous November.

Mary, feeling sick and cumbersome, could take no part in these formalities. Henry and Wolsey had expended a fortune to make the league possible. They expected the whole court to join in welcoming and entertaining the foreign guests. A costly business, requiring expensive gifts and much finery. Mary wondered how Charles would manage to conceal his anger and put a cheerful face on the proceedings when he was one of those expected to sign the formal documents which would most likely sign away Mary’s dower income from France and with it any hope of avoiding an even more penurious future. It would be something else for Charles to hold against Wolsey. And not just Wolsey. Herself also, she feared. But Mary didn’t blame the Cardinal. In her heart, she knew who was behind the desire for war. Who else but Henry? Where, but on the field of battle, could he find the glory and drama his ever-growing vanity demanded?

Her misgivings and worry about how her husband would comport himself, caused the pangs of labour to surprise her on the road. Mortified that this baby, so keen to enter the world, might force her to give birth at the side of the road, Mary clutched her belly and struggled on towards Hatfield in the neighbourhood of St Albans.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After the previous, bitingly cold winter the weather turned insufferably hot. Mary, still heavily pregnant – for the pangs had been but a false alarm – felt the heat keenly. In the country she at least escaped the unhealthy stink that would hang over London, but it didn’t ease her worry for Charles, Catherine, Henry and the rest of the court.

Her youth had been heavily influenced by Catherine’s charitable instincts and she felt a keen concern for the capital’s poorer citizens, who would find little respite in their windowless hovels. If the weather didn’t break soon, the sweltering heat would bring its unwelcome companion, disease, to town.

And so it proved. Soon, inevitably, people fleeing the sickness that spread with such terrifying swiftness, brought news that had the servants hastily barring the doors from this enemy that could render a person who had been merry at dinner dead by suppertime. Restless, feeling powerless and sick unto death herself, Mary prayed that Charles had had the good sense to leave London, for this, it seemed, was a sickness that had no favourites. Bits of news filtered through to her in her bed-chamber where she had retired to await the birth of her child. As usual, the court had fled to the country at the first hint of disease, but with them they had brought that insidious companion, death. Many died along the road, the rich and powerful as well as the poor. Frantic, with worry for her husband and the rest of her family, Mary forced her bloated body to its knees. All she could do was pray and instruct her servants to leave food and drink by the roadside to succour any passing unfortunate victims.

As the days and the heat wore relentlessly on, Mary learned from news shouted from beyond the barricades her household staff had erected against this insidious death, that Henry and most of the court had fled to the country as she had expected. Next, she learned that some of his Council had fallen ill, that pages that had slept in Henry’s bed-chamber had died. Well could she imagine her brother’s fear that this contagion should have dared to touch him so close. Henry, her big and magnificently built brother, had a mortal fear of illness and disease. He would, she knew, keep on the move from manor to manor, attended only by a few trusted servants.

But where was Charles? Had Henry kept him with him? Or was he, even now, lying ill and abandoned at some roadside with none to aid him? Increasingly distressed as thought piled on horrifying thought, each more unbearable than the one before, Mary at last had news of her husband. He was safe and well, but feared to bring the sickness to her and the rest of the household. His message told her than London was as a dead city. The sick and dying lay in the streets, too feeble to drag themselves home, their cries for succour unheeded.