Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII (47 page)

‘My father honours her,’ Frances was quick to remind her. ‘We both know he desires you to do likewise. Surely, it is your place to obey your husband, Mother?’

‘Pray do not lecture me on the requirements of duty or obedience,’ Mary forced out through teeth gritted against the returning pain; the respite had been brief. ‘I think I can be trusted to know both better than you. Your father is a man grown and makes his own decisions. It is his choice if he chooses to honour Anne Boleyn, the same as it is mine, as a woman grown, to choose not to.’

‘Surely, you mean the Queen, mother? For that is what she is. She has been crowned and royally anointed.’

‘I know what I mean,’ Mary retorted, wishing only that her argumentative daughter would leave her and let her have some peace. ‘For me, Catherine is still Queen and always will be, no matter if the Bullen woman is crowned a thousand times. The Lady Anne is a common harlot; an usurper. Likely, if she fails to bear my brother a son, there’ll be another to take her place. The Lord knows the court teems with harlots aplenty. She has made many enemies with that sharp tongue of hers. Even your father, who has no reason to love the lady, hopes she’ll goad Henry too far one day. If that day comes, then she’ll suffer the same fate as poor Catherine.’

‘Surely an’ you speak treason, Mother?’

‘Treason? It is no treason. How can it be, when I am only speaking of Lady Anne Boleyn. She is not the Queen, that title is rightfully Catherine’s. You should not be so ready to honour harlots, Frances. It is shameful and reflects on your own character and lack of judgement.’

Mary’s lecture did nothing to improve Frances’ humour and she scowled. ‘My father would say your judgement was wrong in this. You know it well.’

‘I think you can trust me to know my own husband best. Would that I could be sure you will be able to say the same for your own.’

Frances’ gaze narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing. Simply that he is weak and likely to be easily-led. Such men do not make the best or most reliable of husbands as I tried to convince your father. But you are happy enough with his choice, I think?’ Frances nodded. ‘Anyway, you will go your own road, I doubt not. I am too late to influence you to the right or wrong way to behave. Perhaps it is possible your husband will do that when he becomes a man.’ Mary thought it unlikely. Henry Grey needed someone to guide and influence him and would have no spare wisdom for Frances.

Fleetingly, Mary wished her husband were here to give her some comfort; but then she faced the reality; they were no longer the impetuous lovers they might once have been. Mary gave a bitter, self-mocking laugh. She had felt their great love could overcome anything. How foolish she had been. Charles, when it came down to it, had always loved ambition more. Who was to say that he wasn’t right so to love? She had brought him many problems during their marriage, not least the resentment of many on the king’s Council as well as a depleted and often unreliable dower income. If she had not pushed him into marriage Henry would have found his great friend a rich heiress; had he not once tried for Archduchess Margaret, for him?

How long she had clung to the illusion that theirs was a great love, a shared love. Yet where was he now, when she was so sick, but off courting Henry’s new Queen? There had been early indications enough of what fickle a thing was the love of Charles Brandon. Self-delusion had clouded her vision. But it was clear enough now.  Could she not see Charles’s love of ambition reflected in her daughter’s eyes? It was odd, Mary thought, that she had long believed Frances to resemble Margaret—and so she did in some ways. But she resembled her father more, much more. Charles had shown himself as lacking in sympathy as his eldest daughter. Time made such sad alterations. Charles’s own daughters from his first marriage were kinder to her than Frances. It was Frances, always Frances, who must torment her.

The pain in her side stabbed her again. It was stronger than ever now. Frances’ embittered face blurred. Mary longed for her dead son and the comfort he would have given her. They were of a kind, she and Harry, sentimental and loving.

Mary lapsed in and out of consciousness all through the long, summer afternoon. The evening shadows were lengthening when she thought she heard her son calling her. Strange that he should do so now, for it had been about this time of day that he had died. She could see his face so clearly. He was smiling. After witnessing the extent of his suffering before his death it was good now to see him looking so happy. Mary’s lips turned up in response. He had always been her favourite child, now she gladly acknowledged the fact.

She remembered her bitter grief when she had lost him and fresh tears welled in her eyes. Her vision of the world was still misty, but she could still see Harry as clear as clear. He called her again, arms outstretched in greeting. Mary struggled to reach him through waves of pain. He turned away, thinking, no doubt, that she ignored him. Distraught, Mary called to him. ‘I’m coming, Harry. I’m coming, my son. Do not leave me again,’ she pleaded on a sob. To her great joy he turned back to her.

She seemed to be floating down a long tunnel filled with light. Harry stood at the end of the tunnel, outlined in a shimmering haze. At last she reached him and embraced him with a happy sigh. Softly, she murmured his name.

After the previous restlessness, Mary’s sudden stillness alerted the watchers in the chamber.

Frances abandoned her sullen watching post by the window and crossed to the bed, suddenly frightened, no longer the confident young woman who would have her ‘rights’. She gazed down at her mother. She could have sworn she had heard her mutter her brother’s name. But no, her mother lay, quiet and still, her golden hair cascading over her pillows. As she would now forever lay.

Frances stood back from the bed and beckoned her sister forward. ‘The Queen of France is dead,’ she said.

The End

HISTORICAL NOTES 1

One of the intriguing aspects of England’s Tudor siblings is just how closely-entwined are their lives and those of their children and grandchildren.

Mary Tudor, the ‘Reluctant Queen’ of the novel, was the younger sister of Henry VIII, whom history tells us was to go on to become the infamously much-married monarch of six wives, leaving behind him a tangled and disputed succession.

Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry, Mary and Margaret Tudor, was the elder sister of the ‘Princes in the Tower’, murdered, so history has it, by their wicked paternal uncle, Richard III, who was slain, in his turn, by the forces of Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field. Bosworth was the deciding battle in the long-running wars between the rival factions of York and Lancaster (The Wars of the Roses, the name given to their battles came from the adopted emblems of each side—the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster). The marriage between Elizabeth of York and Henry of Lancaster was meant to finally put an end to this rivalry for the throne.

Mary Tudor’s granddaughter (by her and Charles Brandon’s daughter, Frances), was the tragic Lady Jane Grey, whose father plotted to put her on the throne in place of Henry VIII’s daughter (another Mary Tudor). Tragically, the sixteen-year-old Jane Grey was beheaded, along with her young husband and father, after the plot to oust Henry VIII’s eldest daughter failed. Thus, Lady Jane Grey, the ‘Reluctant Queen’s’ granddaughter, was beheaded on the orders of Mary’s niece, who was the cousin of Jane Grey herself. The Tudors certainly believed in keeping everything in the family—even executions.

Mary and Henry’s elder sister, Margaret, who, in her early teens, had been married to James IV of Scotland in an attempt to put a stop to the interminable hostilities between England and Scotland, was the grandmother of the equally tragic Mary Queen of Scots, who was beheaded by
her
cousin, Elizabeth I (Henry VIII’s daughter by his second marriage, to Anne Boleyn).

Margaret’s granddaughter by James IV, Mary Queen of Scots, married, as her second husband, Henry, Lord Darnley. Lord Darnley was another of Margaret Tudor’s grandchildren, this time, by her second husband, Archibald Douglas.

A terrible husband, Darnley – Margaret’s grandson by her second marriage - was killed in a plot that implicated Mary Queen of Scots – Margaret’s granddaughter by her first marriage to James IV.

HISTORICAL NOTE 2

Henry VII (the father to Mary, Margaret and Henry VIII), had no real hereditary claim to the throne of England. His claim to the throne (and that of his son, Henry VIII), was shaky, to say the least, which explains why Henry VIII was so keen to get a son that he set off on his notorious serial marriages.

Catherine of France, the twenty-year-old widow of Henry V, had fallen in love with a gentleman of her guard, Owen Tudor, and secretly married him.

Edmund Tudor, the son of Catherine and Owen, married the eleven-year-old Margaret Beaufort, the granddaughter of an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, who had afterwards been legitimised by an Act of Parliament. Just thirteen, Margaret Beaufort gave birth to her only child, a son, who was to become Henry VII.

So what claim did Henry Tudor, Duke of Richmond, have to England’s throne? He never clearly stated what it was. Hardly surprising, as the claim was so unsatisfactory. If by hereditary succession from Edward III, through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, there were other claimants with a far better title than he—including his mother, who was still very much alive at the time he ascended the throne as Henry VII.

In any case, the patent which legitimised the children of John of Gaunt and his one-time mistress, Catherine Swynford, had clearly stated that they were ineligible to succeed to the throne.

Equally, he did not claim the throne through the rights of his wife, Elizabeth of York, the Yorkist heiress, as he didn’t marry her till three months after he had been crowned king. In any case, she and the rest of Edward IV’s children by Elizabeth Grey (including the two boys, Edward and Richard, the ‘Princes in the Tower’) had been declared illegitimate by their paternal uncle, Richard III, by virtue of Edward IV’s pre-contract of marriage to Eleanor Butler.

Henry Tudor did not even claim the throne by right of conquest. Perhaps this was wise, given that his invading army had been composed chiefly of the hated French. The Act of Parliament merely declared that he alone was the rightful king, while Henry himself announced that he was king by just hereditary title and by the Judgement of God revealed by his victory on the battlefield of Bosworth.

HISTORICAL NOTE 3

From my research, there seems to be some confusion as to the actual date that Mary’s son, Henry died. Some books I have consulted had him dying around the age of 11 and others had him dying around the age of 18, some nine months after Mary. For the purposes of greater drama, I have taken the earlier date as the date of her son’s death.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Geraldine Evans is a multi-published author of mystery novels. Reluctant Queen is her first historical.

PRAISE FOR RELUCTANT QUEEN

'A very readable account of a fascinating woman who dared to stand up to Henry VIII and survived. It is thoroughly researched, admirably written and the author's love of the Tudor period shines through.'

REVIEW FROM HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

Geraldine Evans is mostly-known for her popular mystery series: Rafferty & Llewellyn and Casey & Catt.

Geraldine Evans has been writing since her twenties and has had eighteen novels traditionally published (Macmillan, St Martin’s Press, Worldwide (pb), Severn House, Hale, Isis Soundings (audio), F A Thorpe (lp), but in 2010 took the momentous decision to leave the world of traditional publishing behind and turn indie.