Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII (40 page)

‘The king has become convinced that the Emperor spends his time planning how best to ruin his hopes. He has had Francis in his power for a year-and-a-half, now he also has the Pope. As if that was not enough, we have learned that Francis has agreed to a Treaty between himself and the Emperor and is to marry the Emperor’s sister. Your brother is most displeased.’

‘And taking it out on Catherine, I doubt not.’

Charles had the grace to look abashed. He admitted that a furious Henry had confronted the unfortunate Catherine. ‘He told her that he felt they had been living in sin for the entire duration of their time together and that theirs was no marriage. He told me that Catherine burst into tears.’

Who could blame the poor queen? thought Mary. Worn down by constant humiliation, told her long marriage was no marriage at all, even Catherine’s great dignity must fall before such an onslaught.

‘I confess I felt sorry for the poor lady,’ Charles told her. ‘For all that her stubbornness has vexed the king’s hopes.’

Would that Henry would fall out of his obsession with Anne Boleyn, thought Mary. But there was no sign of such a thing. Her brother’s days of calling himself ‘Sir Loyal Heart’ were long gone. His anger against the Emperor and his untimely triumphs rebounded spitefully on Catherine. Mary knew that Henry felt that Catherine and her family had brought him nothing but troubles and disappointments. Not only had she failed in her duty to get a son, but her Hapsburg relatives had, one after the other, let him down. According to Henry, he had been cheated or disappointed of help in his French ambitions in turn, by Ferdinand, Maximilian and now Charles. He had had enough. That his hopes for a divorce should be delayed once more by the actions of Catherine’s nephew was the final straw. Henry’s grievances didn’t make him any kinder to his wife.

Mary sighed. Where would it all end? In civil war and invasion as she feared? She knew her brother. He was not the man to long endure having his wants denied. He had been remarkably patient thus far. But it was clear that Henry’s short stock of patience was rapidly coming to an end. And with Anne Boleyn pushing him, who knew to what travails he would put them all before he had his desire?

But Mary’s fears about her brother and what he would do were now set aside by an enemy even more deadly than the Emperor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The sweating sickness had returned to London. Its evil, clutching fingers groped their insidious way into Mary’s home, intent on destruction.

Her beloved son, Harry caught the contagion. Mary was appalled and terrified for him. She had shared the common belief that children didn’t get the sweat unless they heard their elders talking about it. It was considered a male disease mostly and an English one; women and Frenchmen caught the contagion as rarely as children were said to.

But Mary had no time to ponder who might have spoken of it to her son and so placed him in its way. She nursed him herself, not trusting anyone else to care for her boy. She wiped his hot forehead as the fever took him and cuddled him close when he shivered. The fever had wracked his little body and left him exhausted. He called piteously for his father, who was from home.

‘Where is he?’ he asked Mary. ‘When shall he come?’

Mary had sent urgent messages to Charles, but with the sickness raging, she couldn’t be sure they had reached him. Desperate to soothe Harry, Mary had to calm her anguish before she could reply. ‘Soon. I have sent for him. Hush now. Lie still, sweeting. Save your strength so you have some to greet your father on his return.’

Harry quietened and slept a little. But soon the fever broke out again and he lapsed into semi-consciousness, tossing and turning as though trying to shake off some devil. One minute he was burning up, the next shivering with cold. He couldn’t long continue like that; his little body would not have the strength. And so it proved.

The crisis came that evening as the shadows were falling. It had been a beautiful day and was turning into a lovely evening. Mary could still see the last, fading sunlight on the drawn curtain. The beauty of the day seemed to mock her. Her son’s suffering was the more unbearably poignant that it should occur on such a day when he should be running and jumping in the sunshine.

In another of his rarer lucid moments, he complained, ‘It’s getting dark, mother. I don’t like the dark.’

‘Mama will make it as bright as day, sweeting.’ Mary called for candles, masses of them. Soon it was, indeed, almost as bright as day, but Harry still complained of the dark, his voice small and frightened. With the directness of youth, he asked her, ‘Mother, am I going to die?’

Mary denied it, to herself as much as to her child. To her shame, her sudden tears at his artless question mocked her denial. She was unable even to protect her child from the cruel knowledge of his own imminent death.

Harry seemed to accept his mortality and find it more easy to bear than did his mother. Exhaustion gave him an unnatural calm. His blue-grey eyes, so like her own, regarded her with a sad, almost fatalistic solemnity. ‘Why has my father not come? I do so long to see him once again before I die.’

His resignation to his fate tormented Mary. Again she denied he was dying, this time forcing the tears to remain unshed. She was thankful that Charles returned home shortly after to share her sad vigil. He and Mary sat either side of Harry’s bed, clinging to his hands, ready to drag him back from the icy clutches of death.

Charles was as distraught as Mary. She knew how well he loved the boy. But although he loved his son for his own sake, she knew he could never forget that he was the king’s nephew also. He had held high ambitions for this rare, Tudor boy of whom the king was so fond. Charles had dreamed such dreams for his son; Mary suspected his hopes had gone as high as the crown, in spite of the birth of the Princess Mary, in spite of his own low birth which would have made his son’s acceptance in such a role difficult. Her sister, Margaret also now had only the one son; her other boy by James IV having died before he was two, but Henry had never had the chance to know them as he had their boy.

Mary was glad to see Charles’s ambition forgotten for once. When he had finally reached home he had come immediately to the bed-chamber, taken his son in his arms most tenderly and rocked him from side to side as gentle as any nursemaid. He was so affected that he even pleaded with God to only let his son live and he would finish with ambition. ‘Would that I could give you my strength, my son,’ he had murmured against Harry’s sweat-drenched hair.

But, of course, he hadn’t been able to do that, so they sat and watched the life drain out of the boy, while the physicians Mary had summoned could only stand and wring their hands. They both knew that the end was fast approaching, but even though neither was willing to acknowledge it, still it came, darkly creeping, so silent they didn’t recognise its arrival, an arrival heralded by the tiny smile that appeared on Harry’s face and was as quickly gone.

Mary clutched Charles’s arm. ‘He smiled, Charles. Did you see?’ Eagerly, Mary gazed down at her son. She stroked his soft cheek. But his stillness made her draw back in sudden fear. She couldn’t bring herself to feel if his heart was still beating; Charles, a soldier with all too much experience of death, did that.

He closed Harry’s eyes and turned to Mary. ‘He has gone. Our boy has gone.’ He broke down then, huge, wracking sobs burst from him and he gathered his son’s frail body in his strong arms for the last time.

Strangely, Mary felt unable to shed any more tears. Instead, she sat numbly as though turned to stone. If tears fell they fell inside where no one could see them. She could only gaze, unblinking at her weeping husband. Her boy was dead. The pride and delight of her heart lay still. Soon, he would have the chill of the earth about him. Mary couldn’t bear it. Only twelve, he had been about to flower into young manhood. Instead, the sweating sickness had claimed him for the grave. Never again would he ride like the wind. Never again would the sun catch his bright hair and cause her to catch her breath at its golden beauty.

At last Charles’s sobs quieted. He leant across the bed to Mary, seeking comfort in questions. ‘Why Harry? Why our son?’

Mary had no answers for him. Her body was as still as that of her boy. She didn’t notice when Charles, abandoning the attempt to reach her, left the room, calling for her maid. But the maid was also unable to reach her. Shock had made Mary retreat into herself. She had found a sanctuary from bitter reality and none were to be allowed to wrest her from it.

As usual, the court had fled London, retreating before the sweating sickness. For once, Charles had the leisure to spend time with his family. But although he continually attempted to comfort his wife, to get through to her, she paid him no heed. He was at a loss. He did not know what to do when her eyes looked through and beyond him. In the end he gave up and left her to her silent grieving.

The king’s no longer ‘secret’ matter had occupied much of his time before Harry’s death. Henry’s frustration was making him increasingly vindictive. His desperation for the divorce forced him to push his sympathisers more firmly into his own camp. You were either with him or against him, and Charles had long since chosen his side. Henry expected his followers to treat Catherine as harshly as he did himself. Although Charles loathed this brutal duty, he did it, helped to become inured to it by the very stubbornness of Catherine’s will. The sweating sickness brought but a brief respite from such pressures.

‘Madam, please. You must eat something for your health’s sake.’ The voice came from far away and Mary ignored it. But the rough hands that began to shake her could not be so easily ignored. They finally managed to drag her back to an unwelcome recognition that she still lived.

Her maid, Susan, stood by her, her eyes red from weeping. Mary’s heart softened at the sight. Susan had loved Harry well and mourned him truly. But Mary didn’t want to be cajoled back to life by Susan or anyone else. ‘Eat, you say?’ Mary now demanded. ‘The thought of food sickens me. My health or lack of it is of no importance now that I have lost my only son.’

‘You still have two daughters,’ Susan reminded her. ‘What of them? They need you, madam.’

‘Cannot you attend to their wants, Susan?’ Mary wanted only to be left alone with her grief. ‘I have lost my son. Can you not understand what that means to me?’

‘Of course I do. We all loved young Harry. But now he has no need of us or our love. Your daughters though, do. But most of all they need their mother. Think you, madam, they have been unaffected by their brother’s death?’

‘What would you have me do, Susan?’ Mary challenged. ‘Order dark gowns for them so they may mourn their brother respectably clad?’ Mary could hear the bitterness in her voice, but why should she not feel bitter? Life, seemingly every aspect of it, had turned irredeemably sour. Now her maid chose to nag her. Why couldn’t the woman leave her be?

‘Dark gowns? Nay, my lady. So many have died in the city I’d be hard-pressed to find someone to make them even if I dared attempt the search.’ Her voice became wheedling. ‘Come now, eat some broth to please me.’

Knowing she would get no peace otherwise, Mary submitted to her maid’s pleading with ill-grace. And although she only managed to eat half a bowl of broth Susan was satisfied. She took the half-emptied dish from Mary’s grasp and glided silently from the chamber.

Apart from the whistle of wind through the eaves, the house was as silent as the tomb. All it lacked was the corpse, for in spite of Mary’s protests, Harry’s little body had been removed in its hastily-constructed coffin and buried. Susan it was, who had insisted that the coffin and its precious, golden treasure must be taken away. She had tried to insist also that they pack up and leave for the country, but Mary had refused. Now though, no doubt encouraged by her success with the broth, she returned, looking for another victory.

‘We must get away from here, my lady,’ she told Mary in a voice that was becoming more insistent. ‘London is still full of the sickness.’

‘That again? Why can you not leave me be?’ A little of Mary’s old spirit returned. ‘This was my son’s room. I can still smell his special scent, still feel his presence, yet you would have me leave him here all alone. I cannot.’

‘You can and you must, my lady. What you feel in this room is your own longing, nothing more. Harry is with the Lord. Part of him remains in your heart and always will, no matter where you be.’

‘Aye,’ Mary had replied. ‘He’s in my heart. But he’s here also. Can you not feel him, Susan?’

Susan had sighed, but had told her patiently enough, ‘You shouldn’t turn this room into a shrine, my lady. Remember the Lord’s words. ‘You shall not set up false images?’ She knelt imploringly by Mary’s side. ‘People are dying by the score, by the hundred. One moment they had life and the next they had nothing. You were ill for a time. Do you want the same sickness to claim your daughters also?’

Mary turned away from her maid’s entreaties. ‘You are cruel, Susan. Can you not let me mourn my son?’

‘I could let you remain here and mourn your son. If your desire is to mourn your daughters also. You think me cruel, but the sweating sickness is crueller still. It doesn’t recognise a house of mourning and will intrude amongst your grief and cause you more if it is given the chance. You can mourn in the country, my lady, where the air is sweet. Everything’s packed. We’re just waiting for you.’

While Susan’s words had little effect, it took the sight of a man collapsing on the far side of the river to penetrate her resistance. Once, he tried, feebly to rise, but then he fell back and was still. As still as Harry. For the first time this thought did not make her retreat into the numbness she had felt for so long. Instead, it energised her. Susan was right. She had lost her son, but she still had two daughters. What had she been thinking of to let them linger in this unhealthy city with the sickness raging? They must get away. It was too dangerous to remain any longer. She heard Charles’s voice shouting some order to a servant and hurried down to speak to him. He readily agreed that they must leave - had he not been entreating her to agree to this course for some days? Thanks to Susan, the house was pretty well packed up already. All Mary had to do was allow her weakened body to be helped into the waiting litter. The horses were whipped up and they drove through London’s near-deserted streets, away from the raging pestilence, to Westhorpe.