“Then Her Grace must wear them,” he says. He draws me a little closer. “She is well, do you think? We might be lucky this time? She tells me she has missed her course.”
“It’s very early days, but I hope so,” I say steadily. “I pray so. And she prays every day for the blessing of a child, I know.”
“So why does God not hear us?” he asks me. “Since she prays every day, and I pray every day, and you do too? And half of England as well? Why would God turn his face away from my wife and not give me a son?”
I am so horrified at him speaking this thought aloud to me, with Thomas Wolsey within earshot, that my feet stumble as if I am wading in mud. Henry slowly turns me to face him and we stand still. “It’s not wrong to ask such a question,” he insists, defensive as a child. “It’s not disloyal to Her Grace whom I love and always will. It’s not to challenge God’s will, so it’s not heretical. All I am saying is: why can any fat fool in a village get a son and the King of England cannot?”
“You might have one now,” I say weakly. “She might be carrying your son right now.”
“Or she might have one that dies.”
“Don’t say that!”
He shoots a suspicious glance at me. “Why not? D’you fear ill-wishing now? Do you think she is unlucky?”
I choke on my words. This young man asks me do I believe in ill-wishing when I know for a fact that his own mother cursed his father’s line, and I remember very clearly going down on my knees and praying God to punish the Tudors for the harm they have done to me and mine. “I believe in God’s will,” I say, avoiding the question. “And no woman as good and as dear and as holy as the queen could be anything but blessed.”
He is not comforted; he looks unhappy, as if I have not said enough for him. I cannot think what more he could want to hear. “I should be blessed,” he reminds me as if he were still a spoiled boy in a nursery that revolved around his childish will. “It is me that should be blessed. It can’t be right that I cannot have a son.”
ENGLAND, SUMMER 1515
The court goes on progress to the west, the queen traveling with them in a litter so that she does not get too tired. The king, eager as a boy, gets up at dawn every morning to go hunting, and comes back to wherever we are staying, shouting that he is starving! Starving to death! The cooks serve a huge breakfast at midday, sometimes in the hunting field where they put up a village of tents as if we were on campaign.
Thomas Wolsey travels with us, always riding a white mule as did the Lord, but his modest mount is tacked up in the best leather of cardinal red which I don’t believe was the preference of Jesus. The clerk from humble beginnings has made the greatest jump that any churchman can make, and now has a cardinal’s hat and is preceded everywhere by a silver cross and a household in full livery.
“The greatest ascent possible, unless he can persuade them to make him Pope,” the queen whispers through the curtains of her litter as I ride alongside her.
I laugh, but I cannot help but wonder what answer the cardinal would make if the king asked him why God did not bless him with a son. A churchman—so near to Rome, so well read, so high in the Church—must surely have an answer for the master who raised him up just because he could answer any question. I am certain that Henry will ask him. I am certain that his answer will be what Henry wants to hear; and I do wonder what that is.
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1515
At last we hear from Scotland. The king’s sister the dowager queen Margaret has escaped from the country that she so markedly failed to rule and collapsed in a northern castle to give birth to a little girl, to be called Lady Margaret Douglas. God help the child, for her mother is in exile and her father has run back to Scotland. The dowager queen will have to make her way south to safety with her brother, and Queen Katherine sends her everything she could want for the journey.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1516
We are preparing the queen’s rooms for her confinement. Her ladies watch while the servants hang the rich tapestries from wall to wall, blotting out all light from the windows, and supervise the arranging of the gold and silver cups and plates in the cupboards. They will not be used by the queen, who will eat off her usual gold plates, but every confinement chamber has to be richly stocked to honor the prince who will be born here.
One of the ladies, Elizabeth Bryan now Carew, oversees the making of the huge bed of state with creamy white linen sheets, and the overlaying of the rich velvet spreads. She shows these careful preparations to the girls who are newly come to court; they have to know the correct rituals for the confinement of a queen. But it is no novelty to Bessie Blount and the other ladies, and we go about our work quietly, without excitement.
Bessie is so subdued that I stop to ask her if she is well. She looks so troubled that I draw her into the queen’s private chamber, and the dipping flame of the candle on the little altar throws her face alternately into golden light and shadows.
“It just feels like a waste of time for us, and grief for her,” she says.
“Hush!” I say instantly. “Take care what you say, Bessie.”
“But it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s not just me saying it. Everyone knows.”
“Everyone knows what?”
“That she will never give him a child,” Bessie whispers.
“Nobody can know that!” I exclaim. “Nobody can know what will happen! Perhaps this time she will give birth to a strong, bonny boy and he will be Henry, Duke of Cornwall, and grow to be Prince of Wales, and we will all be happy.”
“Well, I hope so, I’m sure,” she replies obediently enough; but her eyes slide away from me, as if the words in her mouth mean nothing, and in a moment she slips through the arched doorway and is gone.
As soon as the rooms are prepared, the queen goes into confinement, her lips folded in a grim line of determination. I go into the familiar shadowy rooms with her and, cravenly, I confess to myself that I don’t think I can bear to go through another death. If she has another son, I don’t think that I can find the courage to take him into my care. My fears have become so great that they have quite drowned out any hopes. I have become convinced that she will give birth to a dead child, or that any baby she has will die within days.
I feel only more gloomy when the king calls me to his side after Prime one morning, and walks with me in the early morning darkness back to the shadowy confinement chamber. “The queen’s father, King Ferdinand, has died,” he says to me shortly. “I don’t think we should tell her while she’s in confinement. Do you?”
“No,” I say instantly. There is an absolute rule that a queen in confinement should be kept from bad news. Katherine adored her father, though nobody can deny that he was a hard master to his little daughter. “You can tell her after the birth. She must not be distressed now.”
“But my sister Margaret went into confinement in fear of her life from the rebels,” he complains. “She barely got over the border to take refuge. And yet she had a healthy girl.”
“I know,” I say. “Her Grace the Queen of Scotland is a brave woman. But nobody could doubt the courage of our queen.”
“And she is well?” he asks, as if I am a physician, as if my assurance counts for anything.
“She is well,” I say stoutly. “I am confident.”
“Are you?”
There is only one answer that he wants to hear. Of course I say it: “Yes.”
I try to act as if I am confident as I greet her brightly every morning and kneel beside her at the grille where the priest comes three times a day to pray. When he asks for God’s blessing on the fertility of the mother and the health of the baby, I say “Amen” with conviction, and sometimes I feel her hand creep into mine as if she seeks assurance from me. I always take her fingers in a firm grip. I never allow a shadow of doubt in my eyes, never a hesitant word from my mouth. Even when she whispers to me: “Sometimes, Margaret, I fear that there is something wrong.”