The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (24 page)

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We journeyed back to London just as the leaves were turning to rich reds and yellows and the air was cool and crisp. Peasants in the villages we passed through brought us apples, I remember, and the sweet taste of them was a pleasure to me. I tried my best to savor the pleasures of those days, and to keep my spirits buoyant, knowing how the king disliked it when I showed even the least sign of dejection. I tried to look forward to seeing Jonah again—I had not thought it wise to take him along on progress—and to rejoining my full household. But I could not help worrying. I was failing in my chief task as queen. I could not help but bear the stigma of my failure. And I had to find a way to overcome it, and soon.

On All Hallows’ Eve I noticed my husband limping more heavily than usual, and grimacing with each step. The following morning he did not get out of bed, but lay where he was, the stink of his sore leg strong about him.

“Shall I call for Dr. Chambers and Dr. Butts?” I asked him.

He waved his hand no, and sent me away. He did not speak, his breath was rasping in his throat.

I did not want to anger him, so I left the room but alerted Master Denny who went in at once to do what he could for him.

Hour after hour his condition worsened (Master Denny kept me informed) until by late afternoon the physicians were sent for. Soon the entire court knew that my husband was once again suffering from a painful eruption from his ulcer, and prayers were being said every hour in the palace chapel for his recovery.

Somewhat to my surprise, Master Denny came to tell me, on the following day, that my husband had ordered me to leave Whitehall for Greenwich.

“He wants you to travel downriver on your barge,” I was told. “Enjoy your journey. Invite your favorite companions. Feast yourselves!”

“But how can I do that when he is here suffering?”

Master Denny leaned lower to talk to me quietly. “He doesn’t want you to see him in his suffering state. He wants to spare you the sight of all that.”

“But I have never asked to be spared. He has my sympathy.” And it was true. Though it was also true, I must confess, that my hopes were raised—my hopes that my marriage to the king would soon turn to widowhood.

As queen I had my own barge, a brightly painted, beflagged vessel rowed by twenty-six bargemen. There were twenty other servants to spread rushes on the deck and scent them with rosemary and clean the small interior chambers, laundresses to wash the curtains that provided privacy and cooks to prepare the modest collations I was expected to offer to my guests. I had hardly ever had an opportunity to even go aboard my barge, let alone ride in it for an extended trip, but it seemed that now was the moment. Besides, I thought—uncharitably, given my husband’s condition—besides, I could take Tom with me.

“I don’t believe Your Highness has traveled aboard your barge before,” I heard a rasping voice say. Lady Rochford had come up behind me, unseen, and now was talking to me, having curtseyed rapidly.

Lady Rochford had been thrust on me as one of my ladies in waiting—a command from the king. I would not have chosen her to be a part of my household, not only because she was too closely related to my disgraced cousin Anne (she was the widow of Anne’s brother, my disgraced and executed cousin George Boleyn) but because she irritated me. She sidled. She wheedled. She insinuated. There was nothing straightforward about Jane Rochford, and besides, she was unattractive and old. Nearer forty than thirty years old. She was tall and bony and wore her hair in three unbecoming curly clumps, poorly covered by her headdress.

I gave her a begrudging glance.

“I assure you, I can make your first voyage aboard your barge a very pleasant one.”

I glared at her. “Nothing in life is pleasant to me as long as my husband is in pain.”

“Of course, Your Highness. A most commendable sentiment.”

But not one you would share, I thought. When your husband George was accused of incest with his sister Anne (an accusation long thought to be false), it was your testimony that condemned him. How you must have hated him! Or did you testify against him in order to avoid being executed yourself? In either case, you were heartless and selfish.

“But I am certain the king would want you not to worry over him unduly. He would not want you to be in anguish, but to be distracted by a pleasant river journey, among friends.”

I certainly did not consider Lady Rochford a friend. But perhaps she could be useful to me.

“And are you familiar with this vessel? If I were to go downriver to Greenwich, and even beyond, could you take charge of the servants and make certain everything would go smoothly?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” She smiled an oily smile, showing her darkened teeth.

“Very well then. We will leave tomorrow.”

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Apart from the servants and bargemen, only Joan and Tom and Lady Rochford came with me on our excursion. We did not go directly to Greenwich, but moored wherever we chose along the way, taking on fresh provisions, stopping when the tides were strong or the skies poured down rain—most welcome rain, after the long drought.

Tom and I reveled in being together; we had not been able to enjoy one another without fear of discovery since our weeks in Calais. We did not have to hide our feelings from Joan, for she knew of our love, I had confided in her. And as for Lady Rochford, she seemed to understand without being told that Tom and I were eager to be together. To the bargemen and servants, Tom was nothing more or less than the king’s privy chamber gentleman, sent on the barge in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the queen. At least I hoped that that was what they assumed.

When we reached Greenwich we did not stop there, going on as far as we could downriver until the currents and tides were too strong, then we turned back and the oarsmen rowed us upriver, by slow stages, all the way to Hampton Court. A small private chamber in the center of the vessel enclosed us each night, and I found myself wishing we could spend every night there, so happy were our hours in the small bed, lying in each other’s arms.

To recall those nights fills me with joy even now, remembering how Tom held me, covered me with kisses, whispered soft words in my ear. He was a passionate lover, giving himself up heart and soul to sharing his body with me. But he was playful as well, we snuggled and snuffled like happy children even as we became aroused and amorous. He always helped me to lay aside my dark thoughts and worries. And he told me I did the same for him. We lost ourselves in each other, as lovers, and we shared ourselves, as loving friends. My dearest, dearest Tom, how precious you were to me then!

But all too soon we were informed that the king’s swollen leg was improving, and that he was asking for me. The barge took us back to Whitehall, and I had to hurry ashore.

In the Advent season it seemed to me that, far from acting like a man who had just had a brush with mortality, my husband sprang back to life and health quickly and with more vigor than in the past. He went riding each morning, ignoring the frost that hung from the eaves and the wintry wind. He called for the musicians to play after supper each night and tried, for the first time since our wedding, to dance—though he tired quickly and his leg began to throb and he soon had to sit down again.

He was full of plans for the Christmas festivities. He designed a pageant car and wrote a masque he called “The Seven Virtues” for me and my ladies to perform in. I was cast as Fruitfulness, Malyn as Graciousness, Joan as Truth, Charyn as Honor, Alice as Fidelity, Catherine Tylney as Generosity and—when another of my maids of honor fell ill, Lady Rochford took her place as Mercy.

The seven of us, clad in shining garments of cloth of gold, took our places on an artificial mountain glittering as if sprinkled with diamonds. We each recited verses—written by the king—in praise of our particular quality, then descended to dance with seven gentlemen representing Chivalry, Nobility, Integrity, Courage, Steadfastness, Loyalty and Strength. The pageant, though it was a great deal like others I had witnessed, was very well received, and my husband, as its author, bowed again and again to his cheering courtiers.

Every day he gave me new gifts: a stunning necklace of twenty-seven matched diamonds interwoven with clusters of rubies, a diamond and ruby brooch said to be worth a fortune, a jeweled muffler with sables, sewn with thirty-eight large rubies and hundreds of smaller stones. The muffler, he said, was to replace the one he had given to me and I had given to Anna, on the day he first glimpsed her.

“She was never meant to have it,” he said, chiding me. “It was for you.”

But my husband’s overflowing generosity did not stop there. For in that Advent season he made over to me all the castles and manors that had belonged to Queen Jane—a legacy beyond price—and in addition, all of the late Lord Cromwell’s lands, and others besides.

To say that I was now mistress of a large fortune would be a foolish understatement; with those gifts my husband made me a very wealthy woman, one of the wealthiest in the land, I was told by envious officers in my household. I never saw a reckoning of value of the properties that became mine, but I am certain that, had I seen such a reckoning, I would have been astonished.

But the king’s most significant gift to me by far was a marvelous bed, a bed like no other I had ever seen or even imagined. It was made so cleverly that it appeared to be crafted entirely of pearl, and it glowed softly, as if giving off a shadowy iridescent light.

Master Denny told me in confidence that my husband had brought a master artisan all the way from Paris to work on the remarkable creation, and that he had been working in secret for months to ensure that my bed would be finished by Christmas.

Never had the king been so lavish in his gifts to me—and never, gossip said, had I been less worthy of his generosity. Dr. Chambers, it seemed, had been indiscreet; in order to prevent people from suspecting that my husband might be incapable of fathering a child, the physician had been saying quite openly that I was barren. There were titters from the crowd when I portrayed Fruitfulness in the masque of “The Seven Virtues,” and now I realized why. The irony of a barren woman representing Fruitfulness! No wonder they laughed.

I did my best to brazen out the humiliation of it, glaring at those who chortled and ridiculed me, holding my head erect and acting as if I was indifferent to all the unkind gossip. But inwardly my vanity was wounded, and I was afraid. For when the king presented me with the beautiful pearl bed, he took me into another chamber fitted out as a nursery, with exquisite tapestries on the walls and a cupboard full of lace-trimmed infant clothing and—at the center of the room—a glowing pearl cradle.

“For our son,” the king said pleasantly, “who I have no doubt will arrive in the new year.” His words were not menacing, but I was left in no doubt as to their underlying meaning. I was expected to fulfill my task. My urgent, primary, one and only task. And if I did not, well, who could say what fate awaited me?

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On New Year’s Day we had a surprise. Lady Anna, the king’s beloved sister, as she was officially known, came in her cloth-of-gold-covered carriage from Richmond to visit us.

She brought only one maidservant with her, and a tall, lanky footman who seemed to anticipate her every need. He was instantly in place to help her down from her carriage. He dogged her footsteps. He gave orders to the carriage driver and to our grooms—rather presumptuously, I thought. And once Anna had been welcomed and brought into my suite, he stayed near her, always within reach, watching for her least need or request.

I was pleasantly surprised at the change I saw in Anna. She was softer, more flatteringly dressed than in the past in a peach-colored gown, and she had exchanged the spaniel-eared Clevan headdress for a face-framing French hood of the kind I favored. She looked, I realized, more English. And why not? She had been in England for a year, and by all accounts was well regarded by the country folk who lived near her palace. When I first saw her in Cleves she had been uncharitable, now, however, she chattered away to us about the alms she gave daily to the beggars and poor discharged soldiers who came to her gate.

It was still true that she could not by any means be called pretty—Charyn would have been merciless in appraising her few charms and reducing them to cinders. Nor was she appealingly feminine. She was too tall and ungainly, her shoulders too broad, her gait too striding, and worst of all, her complexion had not improved. But she no longer pursed her lips in disapproval, or clenched her face. She seemed more open, more ready to be herself. It was a welcome change.

And yet, as I soon realized, she had not come on a sociable visit. She had come to gloat.

“What then, Catherine! No babies yet?” she trilled. Her English pronunciation had improved, though her accent was still strong.

“What has happened! Does the king decide he does not like you after all? My dear mama said he would grow tired of you. Perhaps he goes to search for a different wife!” She laughed at her own joke. “Perhaps he goes to Cleves to look for one!”

“We have not yet been blessed with children, Anna,” I said evenly. “They will come when the Lord sends them.” I turned the conversation to the weather, the state of the roads, the recent Christmas festivities and our masque. But Anna seemed bored by all these topics.

“Do you still have your monkey?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, Jonah is well and flourishing.”

Anna tittered. “Perhaps he will be your only son. That monkey!”

The king joined us, leaning on his cane as he came into the room. He was overly polite, as if he felt he had to compensate Anna for an injury done her. And indeed that was precisely the case: he had injured her. He had changed the entire course of her life by his rejection of her. But looking at her as she had become after living among us for a year, I could only conclude that the change had been for the better.

“What about a game of cent?” he said, and at once Anna’s face brightened. I remembered how she liked to play cards, how engrossed she became in the petty losses and victories of the game. How she loved risk, and found it at the card table.