I sent Christmas fairings for my babies in Anne’s trunk when she went down to Hever. To Catherine I sent a little marchpane house with roof tiles of roasted almonds and windows of spun sugar. I begged Anne to give it to Catherine on twelfth night and tell her that her mother loved her and missed her and would come again soon.
Anne dropped down into her hunter’s saddle as gracelessly as a farmer’s wife riding to market. There was no-one to watch her, there was no benefit to being light and laughing.
‘God knows why you don’t defy them and go down, if you love your babies so much,’ she said, tempting me to trouble.
‘Thank you for your good advice,’ I said. ‘I am sure you meant it for the best.’
‘Well, God knows what they think you can do without me here to advise you.’
‘God knows indeed,’ I replied cheerfully.
‘There are women that men marry and there are women that men don’t,’ she pronounced. ‘And you are the sort of mistress that a man doesn’t bother to marry. Sons or no sons.’
I smiled up at her. I was so much slower in wits than Anne that it was a great joy to me when once in a while a weapon came to my sluggish hand. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I expect you’re right. But there is clearly a third sort and that is the woman that men neither marry nor take as their mistress. Women that go home alone for Christmas. And that seems to be you, my sister. Good day.’
I turned on my heel and left her and she had nothing to do but to nod to the soldiers who were to ride with her and trot out through the gateway and down the road to Kent. A few flakes of snow swirled in the air as she went.
It was clear what would become of the queen as soon as we were settled in Greenwich for the feast of Christmas. She was to be neglected and ignored and everyone in the court knew that she was out of favour. It was a vile thing to see, like an owl being mobbed in daytime by the lesser birds.
Her nephew, the Emperor of Spain, knew something of what was going on. He sent a new ambassador to England, Ambassador Mendoza, a wily lawyer who might be relied on to represent the queen to her husband, and to bring Spain and England into accord once more. I saw my uncle in a whispered conference with Cardinal Wolsey and guessed that he was not smoothing Ambassador Mendoza’s way.
I was right. For all of the Christmas feast the new ambassador was not allowed to come to court, his papers were not recognised, he was not allowed to make his bow to the king, he was not allowed even to see the queen. Her messages and letters were watched, she could not even receive presents without them being inspected by the grooms of the bedchamber.
Christmas went into twelfth night and still the new Spanish ambassador was not allowed to see the queen. Not until mid-January did Wolsey stop his cat-and-mouse game and acknowledge that Ambassador Mendoza was indeed a genuine representative of the Emperor of Spain and might bring his papers to court and his messages to the queen.
I was in the queen’s rooms when a page came from the cardinal to say that the ambassador had asked to attend on her. The colour rose to her cheeks, she leaped to her feet. ‘I should change my gown, but there’s no time.’
I stood behind her chair, the only lady attending her, everyone else was walking in the garden with the king.
‘Ambassador Mendoza will bring me news of my nephew.’ The queen seated herself in her chair. ‘And I trust he will create an alliance between my nephew and my husband. Families should not quarrel. There has been an alliance between Spain and England for as long as I can remember. It’s all wrong when we are divided.’
I nodded and then the door opened.
It was not the ambassador with his retinue, bringing gifts and letters and private documents from her nephew. It was the cardinal, the queen’s greatest enemy, and he led the ambassador into her room as a mountebank might lead a dancing bear. The ambassador was captured. He could not speak to the queen alone, any secrets he might have carried in his luggage had been ransacked long ago. This was not a man who would bring the king back into alliance with Spain. This was not a man who could bring the queen back to her true status at court. This was a man all but kidnapped by the cardinal.
Her hand, when she gave it to him to kiss, was steady as a rock. Her voice was sweet and perfectly modulated. She greeted the cardinal with pleasant courtesy. No-one would ever have known from her behaviour that it was her doom that came in that day, along with the sulky ambassador and the smiling cardinal. She knew at that moment that her friends and her family were powerless to help her. She was horribly, vulnerably, completely alone.
There was a joust at the end of January, and the king refused to ride. George was chosen to carry the royal standard instead. He won for the king, and got a new pair of leather gloves by way of thanks.
That night I found the king in a sombre mood, wrapped in a thick gown before the fire of his chamber, with a bottle of wine half-empty beside him and another empty bottle lolling in the white ash of the fireplace and draining its lees into a red puddle.
‘Are you well, Your Majesty?’ I asked cautiously.
He looked up and I saw that his blue eyes were bloodshot, his face slack.
‘No,’ he said quietly.
‘What’s the matter?’ I spoke to him as tenderly and easily as I might speak to George. He did not seem like a king of terror tonight. He was a boy, a sad boy.
‘I didn’t ride in the joust today.’
‘I know.’
‘And I won’t ride again.’
‘Ever?’
‘Perhaps never.’
‘Oh, Henry, why not?’
He paused. ‘I was afraid. Isn’t that shameful? When they started to strap me into my armour I realised that I was afraid.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s a dangerous business, jousting,’ he said resentfully. ‘You women in the stands with your favours and your wagers, listening to the heralds sound the trumpets, you don’t realise. It’s life or death if you’re down in the joust. It’s not play down there.’
I waited.
‘What if I die?’ he asked blankly. ‘What if I die? What happens then?’
For one dreadful moment I thought that he was asking me about his immortal soul. ‘No-one knows for certain,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Not that.’ He waved it away. ‘What becomes of the throne? What becomes of my father’s crown? He put this country together after years of fighting, no-one thought that he could do it. No-one but him could have done it. But he did it. And he had two sons. Two sons, Mary! So when Arthur died there was still me to inherit. He made the kingdom safe by his work on the battlefield and his work in bed. I inherited a kingdom as safe as it could be: secure borders, obedient lords, a treasury filled with gold, and I have no-one to hand it on to.’
His tone was so bitter that there was nothing I could say. I bowed my head.
‘This business of a son is wearing me down. I walk every day in unholy terror that I will die before I can get a son to put on the throne. I cannot joust, I cannot even hunt with a light heart. I see a fence before me and instead of throwing my heart over and trusting to my horse to jump clean I have this flash before my eyes and I see myself dead of a broken neck in a ditch and the crown of England hanging on a thorn bush for anyone to pick up. And who could do it? Who would do it?’
The agony in his face and in his voice was too much for me. I reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. ‘There’s time,’ I said, thinking how my uncle would like me to say such a thing. ‘We know that you are fertile with me. Our son Henry is the very picture of you.’
He huddled his cape around him a little closer. ‘You can go,’ he said. ‘Will George be waiting to take you back to your room?’
‘He always waits,’ I said, startled. ‘Don’t you want me to stay?’
‘I am too dark in my heart tonight,’ he said frankly. ‘I have had to face the prospect of my own death and it does not make me feel like playing between the sheets with you.’
I curtsied. At the doorway I paused and looked back at the room. He had not seen me go. He was still hunched in his chair, wrapped in his cloak, staring at the embers as if he would see his future in the red ashes.
‘You could marry me,’ I said quietly. ‘And we have two children already, and one of them a boy.’
‘What?’ He looked up at me, his blue eyes hazy with his own despair.
I knew that my uncle would have wanted me to press forward. But I was never a woman who could press forward like that.
‘Goodnight,’ I said gently. ‘Goodnight, sweet prince,’ and I left him with his own darkness.