The Jenny Wilson Show (featuring Henry VIII and his six wives) (6 page)

“You blame me?”

“Who else?”

“What did you do?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I kept to my rooms and would not be seen in public. I told my father the baby had been born dead and that I would not allow anyone else to write to him.”

“Of course,” said Henry, “the chances are he knew anyway. His ambassador had made many suggestions about the queen’s diet and I knew he had upbraided her physicians for allowing a woman who was having her monthly bleeding to believe she was pregnant.”

I looked at Catherine in amazement. “Had you not been educated about pregnancy and birth?”

She waved a hand, dismissing my question.

“Did the silly cow know whether she was pregnant or not?”

“Shut up Julian! Don’t you get it – if she was that bloody ignorant she might not have known whether or not her marriage to Arthur was consummated – and that changed English history: no, world history. Just think her whole argument might have depended on her not knowing about the birds and the bees.”

I could hear the excitement in Ruth’s voice.

“Or she could just have lied,” said Julian.

I desperately wanted them to cut to a break so I could ask them not to argue in my ear. I was finding it very distracting. Fortunately, Catherine intervened.

“It was bad,” she said, “but I really was pregnant soon after and the child was a boy, born alive. I had achieved my destiny and the first time could be forgotten.”

“Except that we were still celebrating his birth when he died,” said Henry quietly.

They looked at each other, forgetting to bait one another: clearly remembering their eldest child.

Henry sighed, “Had Prince Henry lived, everything would have been different. I might have achieved what I set out to achieve at the start of my reign.”

“We still had hope,” said Catherine.

“And at the time,” added Henry brightly, “we had war.”

“Against France,” said Catherine. “And, in the event, Scotland.”

“We broke the treaty with France, allied ourselves with King Ferdinand and Emperor Maximilian and, after a few difficulties over victuals and our allies, I was able to lead my army to war in France, put the French nobles to flight and capture two French cities,” said Henry importantly. “Meanwhile, my brother-in-law the Scottish king decided to take advantage of our absence and invade.”

“But my husband had already thought of that,” said Catherine, “and had left behind the Earl of Surrey who rode north and defeated him. I mustered my own troops and led them for part of the way, reminding them that the Lord smiled on those who defended their territory. I had written to Henry promising to send him the Scottish king after he sent me his prisoner the Duc de Longueville and the keys to the towns he’d captured but in the event I could only send the shirt he was wearing when he was killed.”

“Isn’t that a little blood-thirsty?”

She stared at me, “I am the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. I spent my childhood on campaign. It was a perfectly natural way to demonstrate success.”

“Shows how times change,” I said. “In my day you’d be considered insane to do something like that,”

“I doubt I’d think much of victory celebrations in your day.”

I turned to Henry, “Did you feel she had outdone you? A king must be worth more than a couple of towns and a duke, surely?”

“The battle was won by men. English men proving that England could stand alone. A queen couldn’t take to the field in the way I, as a king, could. Our victories in France and against Scotland meant we were a force to be reckoned with. And Wolsey, who was the coming man at the time, made that his policy.”

“France and Spain were evenly matched,” said Catherine.

“So whichever England allied herself with was the more powerful,” smirked Henry. “Besides, we were expecting another child. All was going well in England at that time.”

“You need to ask her whether Henry was a good husband,” said Ruth. “After all, it’s what Katherine wants to know!”

“Would you have said Henry was a good husband to you at that time?” I obediently asked.

She nodded. “He had made me regent, was very attentive when I was with child. I had nothing to complain about for myself. But you must understand that whether Henry was a good husband or not did not matter: it was my destiny to be queen of England, it was what I was born to do. These things are always better if the couple can be happy but to my mind it did not matter. I was born to be queen, I was queen and whatever happened, nothing could alter that fact. I would die as queen.”

“Stubborn beyond the grave,” muttered Henry.

Catherine ignored him. “Our marriage was not just between two people, it was about keeping the English and Spanish alliance intact. I miscarried that child and it was not long after that Henry completely broke his alliance with my father.” She waved unpleasant thoughts away. “I could not complain: I knew what my father was like and what he had done…”

“The wily old fox,” interrupted Henry.

“But with no heir and no alliance, I could not honestly say I had a successful marriage – I was fulfilling my destiny but I was not fulfilling it well. Do you understand?” She paused for a second, as if waiting for an answer. None came.

“Henry berated me with the sins of my father and the only thing I could do was do my best to ignore what was going on around me. My own father had encouraged me to become English, so when Henry made peace with France and married his sister to King Louis instead of my nephew, I appeared at the ceremony and I smiled, ignoring the rumours that he meant to put me aside because I had not borne him a healthy child. I was not worried, I was able to conceive children – there was no danger of being put aside when his sister was married as I was with child again.”

“Miscarried again,” said Henry.

“And to make matters worse, my confessor and advisor Fray Diego was sent back to Spain.”

“About time too, should have gone years before. He was a menace.”

“I was a good friend to the queen,” the shout came from somewhere near the back of the audience. Catherine beamed and raised her hand in welcome.

“But then, my father and my husband became friends again and the French king died, leaving Henry’s sister a widow and the throne to Francis,” she said. “And Mary being Mary insisted on marrying her choice of suitor which meant I was not forced to sit and smile through another disagreeable wedding. Such is politics. Tell me, Henry, would you have forgiven them so readily had Charles Brandon not been your best friend?”

Henry shrugged. “I loved my sister and my friend. They paid handsomely enough, although at the time it was tiresome to lose such a valuable bargaining counter. It would have mattered far less if you’d given me living children.”

“I was with child again when my father died,” said Catherine. “And this time, the baby lived.”

“But it was only a girl, which was no use to me without a boy,” said Henry. “I was only the second generation of Tudors, there were still plots against us. I needed a boy to follow me. But Mary’s survival gave me hope that I would have a son.”

“Could you explain to us why it was so important to have a son?” I asked. “In my era women considered themselves the equal of men.”

He nodded. “But in my age a woman was a man’s legal property and her property became his. So, there was a danger that if I only left a daughter then she would marry another ruler and England would be subsumed into another country as her child would inherit both. We saw it when the Emperor Charles inherited Burgundy and Flanders from his father and then Castile and then Aragon from his mother and then his grandfather. I wanted better than that for England. Also a woman cannot lead men into battle.”

“My mother led armies,” Catherine interrupted. “She was the epitome of a successful queen regnant.”

“She didn’t fight, your father did that. Besides, she was not English. The English would not suffer a woman to lead them onto the field, to decide tactics. Pretty speeches, yes, but not to lead an army. The Tudors were a new dynasty, we needed to make our hold on the English crown secure and that meant I needed a son.”

I turned to Catherine. “After Mary was born, did you become pregnant again?”

“Yes, I gave birth to another girl nearly three years afterwards but she died soon after birth.”

“What happened then?”

Catherine sighed. “I knew I had lost my looks, that ambassadors reported back to their princes that I was old and ugly. Royal palaces were arranged so there was a king’s side and a queen’s side and so, with the exception of the great court occasions I was able to keep to my side, while the king hunted, danced and had his mistresses. We’d not be the first couple to lead separate lives. I was still fulfilling my destiny, which was the important thing.”

“I knew the fault in our not being able to have sons lay with the queen because Bessie Blount bore me a son,” said Henry. “But that made my lack of legitimate male heir all the worse. After that, I ensured my mistresses were married women so it could never be clear who was fathering their children.”

“But would the husband of one of your mistresses sleep with his wife while you were doing so?” I thought. I didn’t realise I’d asked the question out loud until Henry raised an eyebrow and suppressed a laugh.

“Probably not,” he acknowledged, “but a man has the right to sleep with his wife and who could say?”

“Apart from the husband?”

“They were well paid. It was considered an honour to be the king’s mistress. Don’t forget, I had the authority to grant them lands and wealth and there were enough greedy, grasping sorts who craved power for me to be able to salve my conscience with a manor or two.”

I wondered whether there had ever been a lack of ‘greedy, grasping sorts’ down the ages.

“Just so the audience is aware,” said Catherine, “it wasn’t his women who got the lands and the titles, it was their families.”

“Shame!” A woman’s voice called from the audience.

Catherine gave an innocent smile.

“But all the time,” continued Henry, ignoring her and the audience, “there was the need for a son. I did consider legitimising Bessie’s son but I knew that after my death that could lead to civil war between the people who supported him and the people who supported Mary. I knew something had to be done but what to do was the question.”

“Meanwhile,” said Catherine, “I found great comfort in my religion and I brought up Mary to be a queen. She was brought up in my household until her staff grew too big and she had to have her own accommodation. I taught her the lessons I’d learned from my mother, I commissioned educational advice from the best scholars and I nursed her when she was ill.”

“We did work together to establish who her tutors should be,” Henry recalled, with a slight air of injury.

“Indeed and you treated her as the Princess of Wales – your lawful heir.” Catherine smiled, “But she was never far away from me.”

“Mary also excelled at music and dancing and as a child was very pretty,” said Henry complacently, “so when it came time to find her a husband I could be sure she would excel. But marrying Mary off was one thing…”

“There were certainly plenty of suitors,” Catherine interrupted, “First she was pledged to the heir to the French throne when she was two, then to my nephew the Emperor Charles four years later.”

“A betrothal which he overthrew,” remarked Henry. “But proud as I was of Mary, the fact remained I still required a son and the queen was incapable of giving me a son. Other men had sons, other men had housefuls of sons who caused them no end of bother. Yet I as king had none. Catalina could have none and so I had to do something about it.”

“Call a break, now!” Ruth shouted in my ear.

Trying not to wince, I turned to the camera and said, “And we’re now going to take a short break, stay tuned and we’ll be right back.”

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