“And what does he think would become of his children? And what about his wife? And what about his lands?”
Montague smiles. “Oh, you know what he’s like. He flared up and said he would go, and then he thought again and said he would stay and hope for better times. He knows that if another of us were to go into exile it would be even worse for those who stay. He knows he would lose everything if he went.”
“Who took your message to Reginald?”
“Hugh Holland, Geoffrey’s old steward. He’s set up in shipping wheat in London.”
“I know him.” This is the merchant who trades with Flanders and shipped John Helyar to safety.
“Holland was taking over a load of wheat, and wanted to see Reginald and serve the cause.”
We walk down the little hill, and arrive at the river. A sharp flash of blue like a winged sapphire skims downriver, faster than an arrow, a kingfisher.
“I could never leave,” I say. “I never even think of leaving. I feel as if I have to bear witness here. I have to be here even when the monasteries are gone, even when the bones of the saints are taken from the shrines and rolled in the gutters.”
“I know,” he says sadly. “I feel the same. It’s my country. Whatever it has to suffer. I have to be here too.”
“He can’t go on forever,” I say, knowing that the words are treason, but I am driven to treason. “He has to die soon. And he has no true heir but our princess.”
“Don’t you think that the queen might give him a son?” Montague asks me. “She’s far on. He held a great Te Deum at St. Paul’s, and then sent her off to Hampton Court for the birth.”
“And our princess?”
“At Hampton Court too, attending the queen. She is kept in her true estate.” He smiles at me. “The queen is tender to her, and Princess Mary loves her stepmother.”
“And is the king not staying with them?”
“He’s afraid of the plague. He’s gone off with a riding court.”
“He left the queen to her confinement?”
Montague shrugs. “Don’t you think that if this baby dies too, he would rather be far away? There are enough people saying that he cannot have a healthy son. He won’t want to see another baby buried.”
I shake my head at the thought of a young woman left alone to bear her first child and her husband distancing himself from her in case it dies, in case she dies.
“You don’t think she will have a healthy boy, do you?” Montague challenges me. “The pilgrims were all saying that his line is cursed. They said he would never get a living prince because his father had the blood of innocents on his head, because he killed the princes of York, our princes. Is that what you think? That he killed the two York princes and then your brother?”
I shake my head. “I don’t like to think of it,” I say quietly, turning to walk along the little path beside the river. “I try never to think of it.”
“But do you think the Tudors killed the princes?” he asks, very low. “Was it My Lady the King’s Mother? When she was married to the Constable of the Tower and had her son waiting to invade? Knowing that he could have no claim to the throne while they were alive?”
“Who else?” I reply. “No one else gained anything from their deaths. And for sure, we see now that the Tudors have a strong stomach for almost any sin.”
L’ERBER, LONDON, AUTUMN 1537
I am in my great bed in London, with the curtains drawn against the autumn chill, when I hear the bells start to peal, a triumphant clangor that starts up with a single bell and then rings all around the city. I struggle up and wrap a robe around my shoulders as my bedroom door opens and my maid comes in, a candle shaking in her hand in her excitement. “Your Grace! There is news from Hampton Court! The queen has had a boy! The queen has had a boy!”
“God bless her, and keep her safe,” I say, and I mean it. Nobody could ill-wish Jane Seymour, the mildest of women and a good stepmother to my beloved princess. “Do they say if the baby is strong?”
The girl smiles and silently shrugs. Of course, under the new laws it is impossible even to ask if the royal baby is well, since this casts a doubt on the king’s potency.
“Well, God bless them both,” I say.
“Can we go out?” the girl asks. “Me and the other girls? There is dancing in the streets and they’ve built a bonfire.”
“You can go as long as you all stay together,” I tell her. “And come home at dawn.”
She beams at me. “Shall you get dressed?” she asks.
I shake my head. It feels as if it is a long, long time since I stayed up all night to watch by the royal bed and took the news of a baby to the king. “I’ll go back to sleep,” I say. “And we’ll say prayers for the health of the queen and the prince in the morning.”
Regular news comes from Hampton Court: the baby is well and thriving, he has been christened Edward, Princess Mary carried him during the ceremony. If he lives, he is the new Tudor heir and she will never be queen; but I know—and who knows better than I, who shared Queen Katherine’s four heartbreaks?—that a healthy baby does not mean a future king.
Then we hear, just as I had feared, that the queen’s physicians have been called back to Hampton Court. But it is not for the baby; it is the queen who is ill. In those dangerous days after the birth, it seems that the shadow fell on the mother. I go at once to my chapel and pray for Jane Seymour; but she dies that night, only two weeks after the birth of her little son.
They say that the king is devastated, that he has lost the mother of his child and the only woman he truly loved. They say that he will never marry again, that Jane was matchless, perfect, the only true wife he ever had. I think that she has achieved in death the perfection that no woman could show in life. His own perfection is wholly imaginary, now he has an imaginary perfect wife.
“Can he love anyone at all?” Geoffrey asks me. “This is the king who ordered women tried for treason for the crime of cutting down their husband’s corpses and giving them a proper burial. Can he even imagine grief?”
I think of the boy who went white-faced for a year after the death of his mother, but less than a month after the death of his wife he is looking for a new one: a princess of France, or from Spain. Montague, dressed in full mourning, comes to me at L’Erber struggling not to laugh out loud to tell me that the king has asked all the princesses of France to come to Calais so that he can choose the prettiest to be his next bride.
The French are deeply insulted, since it is as if the royal ladies of France were heifers on market day, and no princess is eager to be the fourth queen to a wife killer; but Henry does not understand that he is no longer highly desirable. He does not realize that he is no longer the handsomest prince in Christendom, famous for his learning and devout life. Now he is aging—forty-six at the last birthday, fatter every day, and the sworn enemy of the Holy Father, head of the Church. And yet he cannot understand that he is not beloved, not admired, not the center of all attention.
“Lady Mother, there is one good thing that has come from the death of the queen. You’ll find it hard to believe this; but he is restoring the priory,” Montague says.
“What priory?” I ask.
“Ours.”
I don’t understand at all. “He is giving us back Bisham Priory?”
“Yes,” Montague says. “He called me to his side in the chapel. I went to the royal gallery at Hampton Court, where he sits above the chapel in his own little room so he can see the altar. He reads and signs his papers while the priest celebrates the Mass below. He was praying for once, not working, and he crossed himself, kissed his rosary, and turned to me with a pleasant smile and said that he wants prayers for Jane’s soul and would you oblige him and restore the priory as a chantry for her?”