“You taunted him,” I accuse Reginald.
He keeps his face down, he shakes his head.
“You must have driven him to anger.”
“I did nothing! He went in a moment,” he mutters.
“Was he drunk?” I ask Montague.
Montague is grim as if he took the blow himself. “No. The Duke of Norfolk practically threw Reginald into my arms. Dragged him out of the privy chamber and thrust him at me. I could hear the king roaring behind him like an animal. I really think the king would have killed him.”
I cannot imagine this, I cannot believe it.
Reginald looks up at me, the bruise darkening on his cheek, his eyes horrified. “I think he is gone mad,” he says. “He was like a man insane. I think our king has gone mad.”
We bundle Reginald into the Carthusian monastery at Sheen where he can pray in silence among his brothers and let his bruises fade. As soon as he is well enough to travel we send him back to Padua, without a word to the court. There was some thought that he might be made Archbishop of York; but this will not happen now. He will never be the princess’s tutor. I doubt that he will ever come to court or live in England.
“Better that he’s out of the country,” Montague says firmly. “I don’t dare speak of him to the king. He’s in a state of fury, all the time. He curses Norfolk for driving Wolsey to his death; he curses his own sister for her affection for the queen. He won’t even see the Duchess of Norfolk, who has declared her loyalty to the queen; he won’t ask Thomas More’s opinion for fear of what he would say. He says he can trust nobody, none of us. Better for our family and for Reginald himself that he should be out of sight and forgotten for a little while.”
“He said that the king has run mad,” I say very quietly.
Montague checks that the door behind us is tightly closed. “In truth, Lady Mother, I think the king has lost his wits. He loves the queen, he has relied on her judgment and he has always done so. She has been at his side without fail since he first came to the throne at seventeen. He cannot imagine being king without her. He’s never done it without her. But he is madly in love with the Lady, and she torments him night and day with desire and arguments. And he’s not a youth, he’s not a boy who can fall lightly into love and out again. He’s not a good age for greensickness. This isn’t poetry and singing songs under her window. She tortures him with her body and her brain. He’s beside himself with desire for her, there are times when I think he’s going to injure himself. Reginald caught him on the raw.”
“The more pity for us,” I say, thinking of Montague at court, Ursula struggling with the Stafford name, and Geoffrey, always at odds with his neighbors, trying to lead Parliament where they are more frightened and troubled than they have ever been. “It would have been better if we had gone unnoticed for a little while.”
“He had to report,” Montague says firmly. “And it took great courage to say the truth. But he’s better out of the country. Then at least we’ll know that he can’t upset the king again.”
WINDSOR CASTLE, BERKSHIRE, SUMMER 1531
Princess Mary and I, with our ladies, travel to Windsor to visit her mother while the king is on progress with his riding court. Once again the court is divided; once again the king and his mistress rattle around the great houses of England, hunting all day and dancing all night and assuring each other that they are wonderfully happy. I wonder how long Henry will tolerate this. I wonder when the emptiness of this life will drive him home to his wife.
The queen meets us at the castle gate, the great door behind her, the portcullis hanging above her, and even at a distance, as we ride up the hill to the great gray walls, I can see there is something about the straightness of her bearing and the turn of her head that tells me she has gripped tight onto her courage and that is all that is sustaining her.
We dismount from our horses and I drop into a curtsey, while the queen and her daughter cling to each other wordlessly, as if Katherine of Aragon, the doubly royal queen, does not care for formality anymore but wants to hold her daughter in her arms and never let her go.
She and I cannot talk privately until after dinner when Princess Mary has been sent to say her prayers and to bed; then Katherine calls me into her bedroom as if to pray together, and we draw up two stools to the fireside, close the door, and are quite alone.
“He sent the young Duke of Norfolk to reason with me,” she says. I see the humor in her face, and for a moment, forgetting the horror of her situation, we both smile, and then we laugh outright.
“And was he very very brilliant?” I ask.
She holds my hand and laughs aloud. “Lord, how I miss his father!” she says, heartfelt. “He was a man with no learning and much heart. But this duke, his son, has neither!” She breaks off. “He kept saying: ‘Highest theological authorities, highest theological authorities,’ and when I asked him what he meant, he said: ‘Levitiaticus, Levitiaticus.’ ”
I gasp with laughter.
“And when I said that I thought it was generally accepted that the passage from Deuteronomy indicated that a man should marry his deceased brother’s wife, he said: “What? Deuteronomous? What, Suffolk? Do you mean Deuteronomous? Don’t talk to me about scripture, I’ve never damn well read them. I have a priest to do that. I have a priest to do that for me.”
“The Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon, was here too?” I ask, sobering quickly.
“Of course. Charles would do anything for the king,” she says. “He always has done. He has no judgment at all. He’s torn, of course. His wife the dowager queen remains my friend, I know.”
“Half the country is your friend,” I say. “All the women.”
“But it makes no difference,” she says steadily. “Whether the country thinks I am right or wrong can make no difference. I have to live my life in the position that God appointed. I have no choice. My mother said I should be Queen of England when I was a little girl of no more than four, Prince Arthur himself chose this destiny for me from his deathbed, God placed me here at my coronation. Only the Holy Father can command me differently and he has yet to speak. But how d’you think Mary is taking this?”
“Badly,” I say truthfully. “She bleeds heavily with her courses, and they give her much pain. I have consulted with wise women and even spoken to a physician, but nothing they suggest seems to make any difference. And when she knows that there is trouble between you and her father, she can’t eat. She is sick with distress. If I force her to eat anything, she vomits it up again. She knows something of what is happening, Our Lady alone knows what she imagines. The king himself spoke of it to her as you failing in your duty. It’s terrible to see. She loves her father, she adores him, and she is loyal to him as the King of England. And she cannot live without you, she cannot be happy knowing that you are fighting for your name and your honor. This is destroying her health.” I pause, looking at her downturned face. “And it goes on and on and on, and I cannot tell her that there will be an end to it.”
“I can do nothing but serve God,” she says stubbornly. “Whatever it costs, I can do nothing but follow His laws. It blights my life too, and the king’s. Everyone says he is like a man possessed. This isn’t love, we’ve seen him in love. This is like a sickness. She does not call to his heart, to his true, loving heart. She calls to his vanity and she feeds it as if it were a monster. She calls to his scholarship and tricks him with words. I pray every day that the Holy Father writes simply and clearly to the king to tell him to put that woman aside. For Henry’s sake now, not even for mine. For his own dear sake, for she is destroying him.”