Secrets of the Tudor Court (6 page)

“Yes,” I say for lack of anything else. I cannot imagine Henry married. This means I am not far behind. A thrill of excitement surges through me. “I wish it were me,” I blurt.

“Getting married? Whatever for?” Norfolk’s tone leaves its monotony to become incredulous. “Marriage is a tedious thing.”

“Maybe not for everyone,” I tell him, stroking my pup’s silky ear. “I heard that the king’s own sister has married for love before.”

“And has been repaid by nothing but misery for it,” Norfolk says. “One doesn’t marry for love, Mary. One marries for advantage. There are only two kinds of people in this world: the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Everything you do, every choice you make, is to ensure that you remain in the former group. Getting caught up in love and lust and such nonsense are distractions the advantaged cannot afford if they want to retain their position.”

“But King Henry loves Anne,” I say in a small voice.

Norfolk is silent a long moment. “Go to bed, Mary.” I turn and trudge out, carrying my soiled wrap balled up under one arm and my puppy wriggling under the other. “And don’t bring that
creature
in here again,” he adds.

I keep my head down as I walk through the halls, hoping not to run into anyone I know. All I want to do is snuggle under the covers with my new puppy, who is worthy of being called more than a
creature
. I want to think about love and marriage and my brother Surrey.

I want to believe that love can exist, even for the advantaged.

Time does not pass at court as it would in what I now refer to as “the outside world.” Out there, time ebbs and flows like the tides—it surges, it slows. Here it is always surging, forging ahead, constant. If you slow your pace you are drowned. I am caught up, carried along by the current of the other ladies, of Anne, of my father.

We go on progress to visit the many great castles and palaces in the realm. We go on hunts. We have masques, and King Henry leaps out at us in disguise. Norfolk instructs Anne that she is under no circumstances to ever admit that she knows it is Henry—he loves believing he is fooling everyone. I laugh, but I think it is a little ridiculous. How could a grown man, and one as distinctive in manner and height as he, ever believe he can be shrouded in anonymity? I decide that he needs to believe it the way I need to believe in the faerie folk and love matches: anything to take you away.

Poor old Cardinal Wolsey, whose obesity and pomposity had been the source of much amusement, dies that November. He keeled over on the road on his progress to London for his execution for treason, so I felt a little better. I am certain he would rather have died on the road than by the axe. I can only imagine how many times it would have taken to strike through that thick neck. I cringe at the thought.

Anne cheers when she hears the news. “Rid of the old fool at last!” she cries.

At my obvious puzzlement regarding her joy over what I consider tragic and pathetic, Madge Shelton, ever the informer, pulls me aside.

“He was one of the parties responsible for breaking her betrothal to Lord Henry Percy,” she explains.

“She was betrothed?” I ask, incredulous. Betrothal was as good as marriage; many took to the pleasures of the bed as soon as their troth was pledged.

Madge nods, eager to be the deliverer of this gossip. “How could you not know? Your father helped dispel the match with the zeal he’d exert in putting down a Scottish rebellion!” She shrugs then. “But I forget how young you are. You were at Kenninghall when all that happened.” She casts a sidelong look at our tempestuous cousin. “But our Anne never forgot Wolsey’s part in it all, and some think it was her more than anyone who pushed the king to have Wolsey executed. I think King Henry was just as content to have him left where he was.”

My heart sinks to hear such news of my pretty cousin. I am too young to understand what heartbreak does to a person, how it embitters and twists them. I can only think with sympathy of poor fat Wolsey, dying on a muddy road.

“It’s a good thing he passed,” Anne herself chimes in from where she sits at the window seat of her grand apartments. She had been tuning her lute, but we should have known she didn’t care a fig whether it was in tune; she was too attuned to our conversation. “That man was after the pope’s tiara and nothing more. He would have tried to hold us back as long as he lived.”

I shudder at the venom in her tone.

“And as far as Henry Percy is concerned, I’d prefer if you did not mention his name again!” she cries. “Let him rot in misery up in Northumberland with his pasty-faced wife.” She tosses back her head and laughs, that chilling, immoderate laughter that causes me to avert my head as though I am witnessing someone’s private insanity. She glares at Madge and me with wild eyes. “I am assured he is miserable,” she says, breathless. “Which serves him well. He was weak and God curse weak men!”

That curse must not be entirely sincere, I think to myself. She must prefer her current Henry to be weak, else she wouldn’t have been able to manipulate him into authorizing the execution of Wolsey. Wisely, I do not give voice to this theory.

Time, that raging river, keeps surging. Thomas More, another close friend of the king and a man quite unyielding in his convictions, becomes lord chancellor. My gut immediately lurches with fear for the quiet man; friends this close to the king do not seem to fare well.

In 1531 Parliament makes King Henry supreme head of the Church of England; now we are an island in more ways than geography. We are like a separate entity. We are accused of Lutheranism, but that is not the king’s intent. He wishes to uphold Catholic ideology: he just does not want to acknowledge papal authority. He truly believes it is his divine right to rule over Church and state. I wonder if this is so. All my life I have been told that the king’s authority is second to God, but there is something about His Majesty…something that does not seem altogether godlike to me. I dare think that neither he nor the pope is fit to assume such a heady role. But I never say so; the consequences of such opinions are grave.

That year two people are banished from court. The first is my mother, a figure I saw so rarely she may as well have not been there to begin with. Her crime was offending Anne by playing go-between for Queen Catherine and her ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, hiding messages in baskets of oranges. The king, displeased that Mother caused such a ruckus, sends her home to Kenninghall.

She does not say good-bye to me. Though I did not see but glimpses of her at most, the thought of being left completely alone, with none but my father as the guiding force in my life, is a daunting one. And Mother’s crime…could it really have deserved expulsion from the life she so loved? Now what would become of her? She is as devoted to Queen Catherine as I am to Anne. To be deprived of the one person she believes in more than anything would be the worst kind of punishment—and Mother knows enough of that simply by being wed to Norfolk.

I find to my surprise that I will miss her. Or, at least, the idea of her.

The second person to be banished is Queen Catherine herself. In July she is exiled to the North. The Anne faction celebrates and the palace is aswarm with youth and vigor.

“No more do we have to see
her
haunting the halls with her rosary and hair shirt!” Anne says in triumph. We are assembled in Norfolk’s privy chamber. Gathered about are Mary Carey, George Boleyn, and their parents, my uncle Thomas, and aunt Elizabeth.

“We are so close!” Anne cries out. “Almost five years I’ve been waiting…”

“Do you listen, Anne?” Norfolk hisses from across the table. “The pope has granted nothing—we are but a tiny step toward getting what we want. Dowager Princess Catherine has a great deal of support in the North; she could still win. As far as the king is concerned—” He folds his hands and cocks his head, eyeing Anne as carefully as he eyes me during my nightly reports. I am grateful that I am not the only one to be examined so critically. “He could have an attack of his infamous ‘conscience’ and take her back in less than a fortnight. Which means it is vital that you stay the course.” He tilts a brow.

Anne scowls at him and folds her arms across her chest. “You think you know what’s best—”

In a movement so swift it is almost over before it begins Norfolk is on his feet, slamming his fist on the table with a resounding
thump
. “I don’t
think
. I
know
. And if you know what’s good for you, you will listen.” His voice is never raised, not even a note. Perhaps it would be less frightening if it were not so controlled. It would make him more real.

He sits back down and eyes Mary Carey. “You’re still instructing her on how best to keep him…intrigued?”

A smile plays on George’s mouth. Apparently he has been privy to these discussions and perhaps shared some knowledge of his own.

“Yes, of course,” says the much more agreeable Mary. A slight flush colors her cheeks and Norfolk waves a hand.

“Don’t play the modest spring maiden to me,” he says. “We all know well what you are.”

Mary Carey bows her head. I want to reach out to her but do not dare. I remain silent, taking everything in with a racing heart. I am ashamed of my fear and bow my own head.

“Never forget the people’s reaction to you, Anne,” Norfolk continues. “‘We want no Nan Bullen.’” He lets the words of the rioting peasants fill her ears. She covers them and squeezes her eyes shut.

“We were on the barge,” she whispers, reliving her ordeal. “The poxy fishwives called it out from shore…” She shakes her head as though trying to banish the disturbing images. “And they mobbed me.” Tears gather at the corners of her black eyes. She blinks. George wraps a protective arm about her shoulders, drawing her close. The movement creates a pang of longing for my own brother.

“You have to try to endear yourself to them, Anne,” Norfolk says. “You have to make them love you and long for you as their queen. The king may weaken under the rejection of his subjects—he may decide you’re not worth all this bother with the pope and Catherine of Aragon’s supporters. Supporters like Charles of Spain.”

“He wants an heir,” Anne says, her voice taut with determination. “I can give him what he most desires. No one will deter him.”

“Everyone can deter him,” Norfolk argues. “Who do you think you are? You’re the lady of the moment. Even should this succeed you will only be useful to him till he gets his heir. And then? Then it is a mistress.”

“Not with me,” Anne says with a proud but joyless smile. “He’d never dare.”

“Oh, wouldn’t he? He dared with Catherine,” says the duke.

“He didn’t love Catherine.”

“He loved her dearly.” My father’s voice bears an edge of danger in it, and I find my fingernails are digging into my palms, sharp as a cat’s claws.

“Anne, you are always dispensable, remember that. If you don’t believe it, take a look at your own sister.” He indicates poor Mary Carey with a careless nod.

Anne draws in a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug of one shoulder. I know it is a false sentiment. Anne is all about Anne; even I can perceive that. She will not take kindly to rivals. “
I
will be queen, won’t I?”

“If you play this right,” Norfolk says. “Which means you listen to me. Do you understand, girl?”

Anne draws her expression into one of serene dignity, offering him the slightest of nods. I call this her “queen’s face.” I practice this one when I’m alone, along with her smiles and looks of surprise and coquettish anger. To me she is the quintessence of charm and cultivation.

We are dismissed and prepare to go to supper, but Anne remains a moment, standing in front of my father with her small shoulders squared, a hint of a smile on her face.

“You are an old son of a bitch, Thomas Howard,” she says.

I am awed by the words. I expect my father to strike her for her insolence but instead, after the briefest of pauses, he says with a small smile of his own, “As are you, Anne.” He pats her elbow as he guides her from the room. “Take it as a compliment.”

Anne’s laughter peals forth as she quits the room.

I don’t know why, but I am jealous. Certainly not at the exchange of insults. Perhaps it is of the familiarity, the fact that they can vex each other and still retain some strange favor with one another. Of course Anne is very useful to my father…

I sigh, chastising myself for these uncharitable thoughts as I, too, quit the room, trying to chase away the feeling that I really am not useful at all.

I have mixed feelings. I begin to suspect that I am not on the right side. I think of the queen not as the princess dowager, as we are told to refer to Catherine of Aragon now, but as the queen—the sad, gentle queen who greeted me at Westminster when I first arrived. Now she is alone in her northern castle, suffering as it seems her fate to do. She is denied almost everything and retains the smallest of courts; a handful of loyal maids whose devotion I applaud. She is further punished for her stubbornness by being kept separated from her daughter, who is also in exile until she agrees to sign a document acknowledging the invalidity of her mother and father’s marriage and thus naming herself a bastard.

I am expected to make merry at the expense of such misery. I am not to express even the smallest amount of sympathy for the dethroned monarch or her poor rejected daughter. I am to celebrate the victory of the Howards.

Our victory seems so precarious. What is viewed as triumph one day can be looked upon as tragedy the next; everyone’s fate depends on the fluctuating moods of the increasingly cantankerous king.

“And what would you do if you were Queen Catherine?” asks Madge Shelton one night as we draw the covers over us. My dog, Fitz, sleeps between us; he is spoiled and content, innocent of treachery or plotting.

I do not answer right away. The queen has no friends here, and it would do me no good to offer sympathy of any kind. I measure my words with care. “I would grant the king his divorce; say what needs to be said even if it isn’t true, just to have peace.”