Katherine says: “Take him! Save him!” and bounds forward in the bed, thrusting him out to the midwife. “What’s wrong with him? What’s the matter?”
The midwife clamps her mouth over his nose and mouth, sucks and spits black bile on the floor. Something is wrong. Clearly, she does not know what to do, nobody knows what to do. The little body retches, a pool of something like oil spills from his mouth, from his nose, even from his closed eyes where little dark tears run down the tiny pale cheeks.
“My son!” Katherine cries.
They upend him like a drowned man from the moat, they slap him, they shake him, they put him over the nurse’s knees and pound his back. He is limp, he is white, his fingers and little toes are blue. Clearly he is dead and slapping will not return him to life.
She falls back on the bed, she pulls the covers over her face as if she wishes she were dead too. I kneel at the side of the bed and reach for her hand. Blindly, she grips me; “Margaret,” she says from under the covers as if she cannot bear that I should see her lips framing the words. “Margaret, write to the king and tell him that his baby is dead.”
As soon as the midwives have cleared up and gone, as soon as the physicians have given their opinion, which is nothing of any use, she herself writes to the king and sends the news by Thomas Wolsey’s messengers. She has to tell Henry, the homecoming conqueror in his moment of triumph, that although he has won proof of his valor; there is no proof of his potency. He has no child.
We wait for his return; she is bathed and churched and dressed in a new gown. She tries to smile, I see her practice before a mirror, as if she has forgotten how to do it. She tries to seem joyful for his victory, glad of his return, and hopeful for their future.
He does not look closely enough to observe that she is only pretending to joy. She plays a masque of delight for him and he barely glances her way, he is so full of stories of the battle and the capture of villages. Half of his court have been awarded their spurs, you would think he had taken Paris and been crowned in Rheims; but nobody mentions that the Pope has not given him the promised title of “Most Christian King of France.” He has ridden so far, and done so much, and won next to nothing.
To his queen he shows a sulky resentment. This is their third loss and this time he seems more puzzled than grieved. He cannot understand why he, so young, so handsome, so beloved, and this year so triumphant, should not have a child for every year of his marriage, like the Plantagenet king Edward. By this accounting he should have four children by now. So why is his nursery empty?
The boy who had everything that a prince might want, the young man who came to his throne and his bride in the same year, acclaimed by his people, cannot understand that something should go so wrong for him. I watch him and see him puzzling over disappointment, as a new and disagreeable experience. I see him seeking out the men who were with him in France to relive their triumphs, as it to assure himself that he is a man, the equal of any, superior to all; and then again and again, his glance goes to the queen as if he cannot understand how she, of the whole world, will not give him what he wants.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1514
The court can think of nothing but when they can go to war against France again. Thomas Howard’s triumph against the Scots is not forgotten—he is rewarded with the restoration of his dukedom of Norfolk. I see him coming towards us, with his dogged limp, as the queen and I and her ladies are walking beside the river one icy spring afternoon and he smiles at me and bows low to her.
“It seems I too am restored,” he says bluntly, falling in beside me. “I am myself again.” He is no courtier, the old soldier, but he is a good friend and the most loyal subject in the kingdom. He was a henchman of my uncle King Edward, and a faithful commander for my uncle King Richard. When he asked for pardon from Henry Tudor, he explained that he had done no wrong but served the king. Whoever sits on the throne has Howard’s loyalty; he is as uncomplicated as a mastiff.
“He has made you duke again?” I guess. I glance towards his wife, Agnes. “And my lady will be a duchess?”
He bows. “Yes, Countess,” he says with a grin. “We all have our coronets back.”
Agnes Howard beams at me.
“I congratulate you both,” I say. “This is a great honor.” It is true. This raises Thomas Howard to be one of the greatest men in the kingdom. Dukes are inferior only to the king himself; only Buckingham—a duke with royal blood—is greater than Norfolk. But the new duke has gossip for me that takes the shine off his triumph. He catches my arm and takes a halting step beside me. “You’ll have heard that he’s going to ennoble Charles Brandon too?”
“No!” I am genuinely scandalized. The man has done nothing but seduce women and amuse the king. Half the girls of the court are in love with him, including the king’s youngest sister, Princess Mary, though he is nothing more than a handsome rogue. “Why? What has he ever done to earn it?”
The old man’s eyes narrow. “Thomas Wolsey,” he says shortly.
“Why would he favor Brandon?”
“It’s not that he loves Charles Brandon so much, but he wants a power to set against that of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. He wants a friend in power to help pull the great duke down.”
I take this in, glancing forward to see that the queen is out of earshot. “Thomas Wolsey is growing very great,” I observe disapprovingly. “And that from very small beginnings.”
“Since the king stopped taking the queen’s advice he is prey to any clever talker who can put an argument together,” the duke says scathingly. “And this Wolsey has nothing to boast of but a library of books, and the mind of a goldsmith. He can tell you the price of anything, he can tell you the names of every town in England. He knows the bribe for every member of Parliament and every secret that they hide. Anything that the king desires, he can get for him, and now he gets it for him before the king even knows that he wants it. When the king listened to the queen, we knew where we were: friends with Spain, enemies with France, and ruled by the nobility. Now that the king is advised by Wolsey we have no idea who is our friend or our enemy, and no idea where we’re going.”
I glance ahead, to where the queen is leaning on Margery Horsman’s arm. She looks a little weary already, though we have walked for only a mile.
“She used to keep him steady,” Howard grumbles in my ear. “But Wolsey gives him whatever he wants and urges him on to want more. She’s the only one that can say no to him. A young man needs guidance. She has to take back the reins, she has to guide him.”
It is true that the queen has lost her influence with Henry. She won the greatest battle that England has ever seen against the Scots but he cannot forgive her for losing the child. “She does all that she can,” I say.
“And d’you know what we are to call him?” Howard growls.
“Call Thomas Wolsey?”
“Bishop it is now. Bishop of Lincoln, no less.” He nods at my surprise. “God knows what that’s worth to him annually. If she could only give him a son, we would all be the richer for it. The king would attend to her if she gave him an heir. It’s because she fails in this one thing that he cannot trust her in anything else.”
“She tries,” I say shortly. “No woman in the world prays more for the blessing of a son. And perhaps . . .”
He raises a craggy eyebrow at my discreet hint.
“It’s very early days,” I say cautiously.
“Please God,” he says devoutly. “For this is a king without patience, and we cannot afford to wait long.”
ENGLAND, SUMMER 1514