In January, the king’s envoy to the Pope returns home wreathed in smiles and with the news that the Holy Father has approved the king’s choice for the Archbishop of Canterbury. In place of William Warham, a holy, thoughtful, gentle man, tortured by what the king was doing to his Church, we are to have the Boleyn family chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, whose reading of the Bible so conveniently agrees with the king’s and who is nothing less than a heretic Lutheran, like his mistress.
“It’s the very agreement that Reginald predicted,” Montague says gloomily. “The Pope accepts the Boleyn chaplain but he saves the English Church.”
Thomas Cranmer does not look like much of a savior. With the sacred cope of Archbishop of Canterbury around his shoulders he uses his first ever sermon to tell the court that the king’s marriage to the queen is sinful, and that he must make a new and better union.
I cannot keep this from the princess, and anyway, she has to be prepared for bad news from London. It is as if the slow ringing of the bell in my mind has become so loud that I think she must hear it too.
“What does it mean?” she asks me. Her blue eyes have violet shadows under them. She cannot sleep for the pain in her belly, and nothing I can do seems to cure it. When she has her monthly courses, she has to go to bed, and she bleeds heavily, as if from a deep wound. Other times she does not bleed at all, and I fear for her future. If grief has made her sterile, then the king has enacted his own curse. “What does it mean?”
“I think your father the king must have secretly obtained the permission of the Holy Father to leave your mother, and Thomas Cranmer is announcing this. Perhaps he will make the marquess his wife but not crown her as queen. But it makes no difference to your estate, Your Grace. You were conceived in good faith, you are still his only legitimate child.”
I do not say, your mother requires you to swear this, whatever the cost. I cannot bring myself to repeat the order. I know that I should, but I fail in my duty. I cannot tell a young woman of seventeen years that to say her name may cost her life; but she must take that risk.
“I know,” she says, in a very small voice. “I know who I am, and my mother knows that she never did a dishonorable act in her life. Everyone knows that. The only unknown thing is the marquess.”
We learn a little more in spring, when I get a series of notes from Montague in London. They are unsigned, unsealed. They appear at my plate, or pinned to my saddle, or tucked in my jewel box.
The new archbishop has ruled that the marriage of the king to the queen is, and always has been, invalid. Bishop John Fisher argued all day against it, and at the end of the day they arrested him. Burn this.
The king is to send the Duke of Norfolk to the queen to tell her that she is now to be known as the Dowager Princess, and that the king is married to Lady Anne, now called Queen Anne. Burn this.
I know what must happen next. I wait for the arrival of the king’s herald, and when he arrives I take him to the princess’s rooms. She is seated at a table with the bright spring sunshine pouring over her bent head, transcribing some music for the lute. She looks up as I come in, and then I see her smile die as she sees the liveried messenger behind me. At once she ages, from a happy young woman to a bitterly suspicious diplomat. She rises to her feet and observes his bow. He bows as low as a herald should bow to a princess. Cautiously, she inspects the name on the front of the sealed letter. She is correctly addressed as Princess Mary. Only then, when she is sure that he is not attempting some trickery of disrespect, does she break the royal seal and impassively read the king’s brief scrawl.
From my place at the door I can see it is a few words, signed with a swirling H. She turns and smiles broadly at me, and hands me the letter. “How very good His Grace is to tell me of his happiness,” she says, and her voice is perfectly steady. “After dinner I shall write to congratulate him.”
“He is married?” I ask, copying her tone of pleased surprise for the benefit of the herald and the ladies-in-waiting.
“Indeed, yes. To Her Grace the Marquess of Pembroke.” She recites the newly invented title without a quaver.
June—I saw her crowned, it’s done. Geoffrey was her servitor, I followed the king. I carved at her coronation dinner. The meat choked me. There was not one cheer along the whole procession route. The women cried out for the true queen. Burn this.
Geoffrey comes upriver in a hired boat, wearing a dark cape of worsted and a hat pulled down over his face. He sends my granddaughter Katherine to bring me to him and waits for me by the little pier that the townspeople use.
“I’ve seen the queen,” he says shortly. “She gave me this for the princess.”
Silently, I take the letter, sealed with wax, but the beloved insignia of the pomegranate is missing. “She’s forbidden to write,” he says. “She’s not allowed to visit. She’s almost kept as a prisoner. He’s going to reduce her household. The Boleyn woman won’t tolerate a rival court and a rival queen.”
“Is Anne with child?”
“She carries herself leaning backwards, as if she had twins in there. Yes.”
“Then Charles of Spain must invade before the birth. If it is a son . . .”
“He’ll never have a son,” Geoffrey says contemptuously. “The Tudors aren’t like us. There’s my sister Ursula with another boy in the cradle, me with another baby on the way. Any Tudor child will be stillborn for sure. The Maid of Kent has sworn it won’t happen, there’s a curse on the Tudors. Everyone knows it.”
“Do they?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1533
The Duke of Norfolk himself writes to tell me that the princess’s household is to move to Beaulieu, and that we will not be returning to Richmond Palace.
“This is to diminish me,” she says bluntly. “A princess should live in a palace. I have always lived in a palace or a castle.”
“Beaulieu is a great house,” I remind her. “In beautiful countryside, it is one of your father’s favorite—”
“Hunting lodges,” she finishes for me. “Yes, exactly.”
“Your mother is to move as well,” I tell her.
She starts up, her face filled with hope. “Is she coming to Beaulieu?”
“No,” I say hurriedly. “No, I’m very sorry. No, my dear, she isn’t.”
“He’s not sending her back to Spain?”
I had not known that she had feared this.
“No, he’s not. He’s sending her to Buckden.”
“Where’s that?”
“Near Cambridge. I am sorry to say it’s not an adequate house for her, and he has dismissed her court.”
“Not all of them!” she exclaims. “Who will serve her?”
“Only a few,” I say. “And her friends, like Maria de Salinas, Lady Willoughby, are not allowed to visit. Even Ambassador Chapuys is not allowed to see her. And she can only walk in the gardens.”
“She is imprisoned?”
I answer her honestly, but it is a terrible thing to say to a girl who loves her mother and honors her father. “I am afraid so. I am afraid so.”
She turns her head away. “We had better pack our things then,” she says quietly. “For if I don’t obey him, perhaps he will imprison me too.”