The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (23 page)

The little prince stirred, reaching out with his hands, clasping and unclasping them. The king gave him one of his own large fingers to hold.

“I had a little son once, many years ago. Catherine’s son. We named him Henry, but we called him Harry—while he lived.” He shook his head in sad remembrance. “We held tournaments in his honor, he had a grand christening—I seem to remember that he did—but he lived such a short time! Then the Lord took him.”

“I am praying that you will never have such a disappointment again,” I offered, not knowing what else to say.

“If all goes as I hope, your prayers will be answered.”

We left Shaddesburgh with hope that Prince Edward would continue to recover from his fever, and with the promise from the royal physicians that messengers would be sent daily to the traveling court, wherever we were, with news of the prince’s health. Then my husband, who had been fretting at being cooped up with no exercise, went hunting.

And I, fretting inwardly over my own very private concerns, sent a messenger of my own—to my household at Whitehall, to ask that Joan Bulmer be dispatched to join us, as swiftly as possible, as I had need of her.

ELEVEN

WHEN
my friend Joan joined our traveling court my husband was away at a hunting lodge deep in the forest, and I was staying at a comfortable manor house half a day’s ride away. The king had taken many in our household with him, and expected to be gone for several days.

“Dear Joan!” I burst out when she was shown into my bedchamber. “I am so very glad to see you!”

She knelt, then rose at my signal and looked at me quizzically. “And why is that, pray, Your Highness, when you have seen me so recently? I am one of your chamberers, after all. And you have not been away from the palace very long.”

We sat together companionably, I on the edge of my bed, Joan on a soft cushion.

“I have no one else to talk to—about certain things. And you are very knowledgeable.”

She continued to regard me with her level gaze.

“First, I must tell you that I am not with child, and never really thought that I was.”

She nodded. “I knew you were dissembling. Your face did not fill out, your cheeks didn’t become plumper as they would have had you been telling the truth. Also you lacked the glow of the woman with child. I know those signs—and I saw immediately that you lacked them.”

“I hope no one else saw through my deception—Grandma Agnes for instance.”

Joan guffawed. “She is the master dissembler! She would have applauded you.”

I confided to Joan all that had gone on between Tom and me. I told her that we wanted to marry, but that the king’s proposal to me—in reality a command—had taken precedence. But that we hoped to wed in the future.

“After Prince Edward becomes king, you mean.”

I nodded. Clever Joan had avoided mentioning the unmentionable—the king’s eventual death.

“You did what you had to do. And now you are married to a man with a severe affliction. Those legs of his! With such awful weeping sores. I have heard the laundresses complain that they cannot wash the smell of the pus from his hose. Is it true he rubs his sores with an ointment he makes from powdered pearls?”

I nodded. “I have watched him prepare it. Mixing potions and ointments is something he really enjoys. He shuts himself up in his closet, and spreads out his pots of herbs and flasks of fluids, and carefully prepares each tonic and physick. He has studied the works of the alchemists, actually he seems quite learned.”

“Nonsense. He seems learned to you, because you know nothing. He imagines that he knows more than the apothecaries, but I assure you, Catherine, he does not. His own potions may be the death of him!” I flinched, hearing her speak those forbidden words.

I moved closer to Joan, and, keeping my voice low, I told her about how Prince Edward had recently been taken ill.

“He was pale as ashes, when we first saw him. Such a little thing! All curled up, hardly breathing. The king was beside himself with worry. He stayed by the prince’s cradle for hours each day, until he appeared to be getting better.”

“Was it a fever?” Joan wanted to know.

“Yes. Thank heaven he was not struck with plague. But Joan! He looks to me like such a weak child, not at all what you would expect a son of King Henry to look like. I thought he would be large and sturdy, with strong limbs and a clamorous disposition. Instead he was small and fragile. He looked up at us with such mournful eyes the day we left him. As if to say, don’t leave me, I will only be sick again.

“I believe the boy nearly died when he was first born, though the midwives and physicians were sworn to tell no one. I only found out because my cousin was attending one of the midwives.”

Joan went on to tell me more about the prince’s birth, how he had had to be pulled out feet first and how his face was blue and it took him a long time to begin to cry the way a newborn should. She had heard that Queen Jane had developed a fever right away, and pains and swelling in her head and her arms. She had been bled many times, Joan said, but the bleeding did not ease the fever, which only became worse until it killed her, only days after giving birth. Gradually we came around to the subject of the prince’s fragile health once more.

“King Henry fears that no son of his can survive,” I told Joan. “He relies on me most urgently to give him more sons. I must not disappoint him. But Joan!” Now I became more urgent. “How can we create a child, when he—has such difficulties! You know so much about how babies are made, and what we women must do to avoid them. I need your help. I need you to teach me what to do to ensure that I become pregnant.”

Joan laughed. “No one has ever come to me with that problem before!” But she quickly became serious again.

“Tell me about his difficulties.”

“So often he seems—unable to complete the act of love. This has happened more and more since the little prince’s grave illness. He tries again and again, so very urgently that his face turns scarlet and I’m afraid he will burst. He quite wears himself out with his efforts—and once in a while he succeeds. But most of the time he fails. And then he gets angry, and humiliated too, I can tell. And he is afraid, so very afraid.”

“Afraid of what, exactly?”

“His greatest fear, I have discovered, is the fear that God is punishing him for some sin. He believes that his weakness, his inability, may be a curse from God.”

“I see.”

“I believe he thought, when he married me, that with a very young and healthy woman as his wife he could succeed in overcoming the curse—especially a woman whose mother he loved so very much in his youth. There are times, late at night, when he has drunk a good deal of wine, that I am sure his memory betrays him. He thinks I am my mother. I am told I resemble her.”

Joan shook her head. “This is too much! You are asking for my help with a knotty tangle of problems.” As she spoke I thought of how my husband, before our marriage, had referred to his entanglements, the web of obstacles that lay in his way to prevent him from marrying me.

“You are married to a deluded old man, all but incapable in body, ill, who knows he may die at any time—and beyond this, an old man who believes himself to be cursed! There is no physick to heal such a man! Only a miracle could do that.” She grew quiet, continuing to shake her head. But after a moment she began again, as I hoped she would.

“Still, there are tonics to restore a man’s potency. I can prepare one. But you will have to convince the king to drink it.”

*   *   *

On into the fall our progress continued, with the hot rainless days following one another and the sad devastation of the countryside continuing. My husband hunted with vigor, pursuing deer and boar and waterfowl of many kinds. Nearly every town of any size held a banquet in my honor, to welcome me as their new queen consort. I learned to comport myself with dignity, to straighten my back and hold my head high as I entered the banqueting hall, dressed in my costly finery and with a fortune in jewels at my neck and wrists. It pleased my husband to see how I was admired, how the women came forward to feel the stuff of my skirts and the men became tongue-tied and ill at ease when I came among them.

And they all, men and women alike, stared at my belly, as I was only too aware.

Tom and the other privy chamber gentlemen were present to assist at these banquets, undertaking small tasks and large, standing behind the king’s bench and mine, escorting local officials in and out of the hall, overseeing the passage of platters of meat and fish, vegetables and custards from the kitchens to the dining chamber.

I watched for a signal from Tom, or for the briefest of notes, pressed into my hand during the meal, to indicate when and where we might be able to meet and exchange a few words and a kiss—or sometimes more. The later the hour, the more likely we were to find a way to be together, for my husband ate and drank until he was almost insensible, and after such a heavy meal and so great a quantity of wine he began to fall asleep and had to be helped to bed. He had no awareness of what I did or where I went.

I felt torn—between wanting to be with Tom and needing to continue my nightly habit of pouring some of Joan’s tonic into my husband’s bedside wine—which I invariably did late at night, after the banquet’s end.

Was the tonic having any effect? Sometimes I thought it was, but for the most part the king continued to struggle in the vain attempt to spill his seed inside me.

Toward the end of September we were staying at the manor of Morefield. It was late at night. My husband had been playing cards with Lord Delaney and some of his gentlemen. They were still playing when I retired, and as I did each night, I poured a little of the tonic into the flagon of wine by our bedside.

My husband surprised me by coming into the bedchamber suddenly, with several of his hunting dogs at his heels.

He saw what I was doing.

With a howl he limped toward me and knocked the flagon to the floor.

“What are you about, woman?”

The dogs began lapping at the spilled wine. Shouting “No!” the king slapped them on their haunches and sent them whining out of the room.

“I asked you, what are you about? What were you doing?”

I sighed and hung my head.

“I was putting a potion into your wine, Your Majesty.”

“Yes? And what kind of potion?” He was glowering.

“It was—a tonic. To—increase your desire.”

“A love philter? What need do I have of a love philter?”

“Not that, it is a potion that increases your ability to—to complete the act of love.”

“By the teats of the Virgin!” he cried. “So you are not satisfied? Are you insatiable then? You want me to lie with you every hour of the day and night!”

I was trembling with fear.

“My lord and my love,” I managed to say, “please understand. It was not for my sake that I put the potion into your wine, it was for yours.”

“Ah.” He raised his eyebrows. He understood—or at least I thought he did. I was greatly relieved, for having to talk of this issue between us was intensely embarrassing to me. I did not know how much talk he would tolerate. He saw how frightened I was and patted me reassuringly.

“Yes, I see. You and I are both hoping for the same thing, that you will soon feel yourself with child.”

The incident passed, and my husband continued to take his nightly dose of Joan’s tonic. Perhaps he thought he was humoring me—or perhaps he was in earnest, and truly hoped that it might have a good effect.

I decided that it was time to talk to Dr. Chambers.

He came in response to my summons. He was a very old man, much older than the king, and his wrinkled face was always dour. Yet on this afternoon he looked, for once, quite pleased and expectant.

“Am I to hope that Your Highness has good news? Have you summoned me because your monthly flux has ceased?” He searched my face, no doubt looking for the fullness Joan had not been able to detect there.

“Dr. Chambers,” I began, feeling more than a little uncertain what words to use, “I am concerned that I—that His Majesty and I—have not yet created a child together.”

“But if you are not with child, why have you summoned me?”

“I hope that if I confide in you, you may be able to advise us.”

The doctor looked stern.

“I advise you to be fertile, madam.”

I was quite taken aback, not only by the physician’s frankness, but by his reprimand. And his assumption that any deficiency lay with me rather than with my husband.

“You should be talking to a wise woman, or a midwife,” Dr. Chambers went on. “Women know how to heal other women.”

“But I need no healing!” I exclaimed.

“Of course you do. You must. And I may as well tell you,” he added, “that everyone thinks so.” He stressed “everyone” in such a way that I knew he meant to include the king.

I was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me that while I was assuming our deficiency was due to the king’s inability, he was assuming the reverse.

“But I—” I began.

Dr. Chambers silenced me.

“There is no need to say more. You must seek healing for your infertile womb. The king has proved his own soundness, his manly capability, many times. He has had children by others. You are barren! Barren!”

No one had spoken to me in this way since I became queen. What gave Dr. Chambers the right to become my accuser? For that is how his scathing words felt.

After I sent him away I kept thinking of what he had said. I was barren! And he was right. I had never been with child. With Francis and Tom I had always been careful to use the preventatives Joan had taught us at Horsham. With the king I used none. But in fairness, I had to at least consider the possibility that I might, in fact, be barren. My first thought, on considering that terrible possibility, was that I would never be able to have children with Tom, once we were married. My second thought, however, was a more immediately frightening one: that the king would discard me. Or would he do worse? Would he blame me, as the bearer of a divine curse? And would he then have me executed, as he had my cousin Anne?