“He hasn’t listened to her advice for years.”
“No, but even so, even so, she doesn’t have to speak, does she? He knows what she thinks. We know what she thinks. She’s like an anchor that he has forgotten, but still it keeps him steady. What is the Lady but just another of his fancies? He’s had half a dozen of them, but he always goes back to the queen, she always welcomes his return. She’s his haven. Nobody believes that this time is any different. And to distress her like this . . .”
There is a little silence as we think what Henry would be without Katherine’s loving, patient constancy.
“But you yourself said that she should consider stepping aside,” I accuse him. “When this all started.”
“I see that the king wants a son and heir. Nobody can blame him for that. But he can’t put a wife like this aside for a woman like that. For a princess from Spain or France or Portugal? Yes, then she should consider it. Then he might propose it to her, and she might consider it. But for a woman like that? Driven by nothing but sinful lust? And to try to trick the queen into saying that they were never married? Asking everyone of their opinion?”
“It’s wrong.”
“Very wrong.” Montague rests his face in his hands.
“So what happens now?”
“The hearing goes on. I should think it will take days, maybe weeks. They’re going to hear from all sorts of theologians, and the king has books and manuscripts coming in from all over Christendom to prove his case. He’s commissioned Reginald to find and buy books for him. Sent him to Paris to consult with scholars.”
“Reginald is going to Paris? Why, when will he leave?”
“He’s gone already. The king sent him the moment that the queen walked out of the court. She’s going to appeal to Rome, she won’t accept Wolsey’s judgment in an English court. So the king will need foreign advisors, admired writers from all over Christendom. England won’t be enough. That’s his only hope. Otherwise, the Pope will say that they were married in the sight of God, and nothing can put them apart.”
My son and I look at each other, as if the world we know is changing beyond recognition.
“How can he do this?” I ask simply. “It’s against everything he has ever believed in.”
Montague shakes his head. “He’s talked himself into it,” he says shrewdly. “Like his love poems. He strikes a pose and then he persuades himself it’s true. Now he wants to believe that God speaks to him directly, that his conscience is a greater guide than anything else; he’s talked himself into love with this woman, and he has talked himself out of marriage, and now he wants everyone to agree.”
“And who will disagree?” I ask.
“Archbishop Fisher might, Thomas More probably not, Reginald can’t,” Montague says, ticking off the great scholars on his fingers. “We should,” he says, surprisingly.
“We can’t,” I say. “We’re not experts. We’re just family.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1529
The king, bitterly disappointed by Wolsey and the cardinal he brought from Rome to try to find a compromise, goes on progress without the queen. He takes a riding court, Anne Boleyn among them. They are said to be very merry. He does not send for his daughter, and she asks me if I think she will be summoned to join him and her mother this summer.
“I don’t think so,” I say gently. “I don’t think that they are traveling together this year.”
“Then may I go and stay with my mother, the queen?”
She looks up from her sewing, where she is doing blackwork embroidery on a shirt for her father, just as her mother taught her to do.
“I will write to ask,” I say. “But it may be that your father prefers you to stay here.”
“And not see him or my mother?”
It is impossible to lie to her when she looks at me with that straight, honest York gaze.
“I think so, my dear,” is all I say. “These are difficult times. We have to be patient.”
She folds her lips together as if to stop any word of criticism escaping. She bends a little lower over her work. “Is my father to be divorced from my mother?” she asks.
That word in her mouth is like a blasphemous oath. She looks up at me as if she expects me to correct her speech, as if the very word is dirty.
“The case has been referred to Rome,” I say. “Did you know that?”
A little nod tells me that she heard this from somewhere.
“The Holy Father will make a judgment. We just have to wait and see what he thinks. God will guide him. We have to have faith. The Holy Father knows what is right in this; God will speak to him.”
She gives a little sigh, and shifts in her seat.
“Are you in pain?” I ask, seeing her bend forward a little, as if to ease a cramp in her belly.
At once she straightens up, her shoulders down, her head held like a princess. “Not at all,” she says.
My son Geoffrey is honored as the court leaves London. He is knighted for his services to the king in Parliament. Geoffrey becomes Sir Geoffrey, as he should be. I think how proud my husband would be, and I cannot stop myself smiling all day at the honor done to his son.
Montague travels with the court as they ride down the sunlit valley of the Thames, calling at the great houses, hunting every day, dancing every night. Anne Boleyn is the mistress of everything she sees. He writes me one scribbled note:
Stop paying Wolsey’s bribe, the Lady has turned against him and he’s certain to fall. Send another of your little notes to Thomas More, I bet you a noble that he’ll be the new Lord Chancellor.
The princess knows that a messenger has come from court, and sees the gladness in my face. “Good news?” she asks.
“It is good news,” I tell her. “This day a very honest man has come into your father’s service, and he, at least, will advise him well.”
“Your son Reginald?” she asks hopefully.
“His friend and fellow scholar,” I say. “Thomas More.”
“What has happened to Cardinal Wolsey?” she asks me.
“He has left court,” I say. I don’t tell her that the Holy Maid of Kent predicted he would die miserably alone if he encouraged the king to leave his wife; and now the cardinal is all alone, and his health is failing.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1529
Dressed in her best gown, wrapped in furs, I take Princess Mary by royal barge down the river to Greenwich for Christmas, and we go straight to her mother’s rooms.
The queen is waiting for us. Her ladies smile as Princess Mary runs through the presence chamber into the private rooms and mother and daughter hold each other tightly, as if they cannot bear to be parted ever again.
Katherine looks over her daughter’s bowed head to me, and her blue eyes are filled with tears. “Why, Margaret, you are raising a beauty for me,” she says. “Merry Christmas, my dear.”
I am so moved by the sight of the two of them, together after such a long time, that I can barely reply.
“Are you all right?” is all that the little princess asks her mother, pulling back to look at her weary face. “Mama? Are you all right?”
She smiles, and I know that she is going to lie to her daughter, as we all do these days. She is going to tell a brave lie in the hope that this little girl will grow to be a woman without the heartbreak of knowing that her father is wrong in his thoughts and wrong in his life and wrong in his faith.
“I am very well,” she says emphatically. “And more importantly, I am sure that I am doing the right thing in the sight of God. And that must make me happy.”
“Does it?” the little princess asks doubtfully.
“Of course,” her mother says.
It is a great feast, as if Henry is trying to show the world the unity of his family, his wealth and power, and the beauty of his court. He leads the queen to her throne with his usual grace, he talks most charmingly to her as they dine, and nobody seeing them seated side by side smiling would dream that this was an estranged couple.