Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (197 page)

It is the second day of the inquiry to conclude whether my marriage to the king is legal or not. If I were not so low in my spirits I would laugh at them sitting down in solemn convocation to sift the evidence they have themselves fabricated. We must all know what the result will be. The king has not called the churchmen, who take his pay and serve in his own church, who are all that is left now the faithful are hanging on scaffolds all around the walls of York, for them to tell him that he is inspired by nothing but lust for a pretty face, and that he should go down on his knees for forgiveness of his sins and acknowledge his marriage to me. They will oblige their master and deliver a verdict that I was pre-contracted, that I was never free to marry, that our marriage is therefore annulled. I have to remember that this is an escape for me, it could have been so much worse. If he had decided to put me aside for misconduct, they would still have heard evidence, they would still have found against me.

I see an unmarked barge coming up to the great pier and I see the king's messenger, Richard Beard, leap ashore before the ropes are even tied. Lightly he comes up the pier, looks towards the palace and sees me. He raises his hand and comes briskly over the lawns towards me. He is a busy man, he has to hurry. Slowly, I go to meet him. I know that this is the end for my hopes of being a good queen
for this country, a good stepmother to my children, a good wife to a bad husband.

Silently, I hold out my hand for the letter he carries for me. Silently he gives it to me. This is the end of my girlhood. This is the end of my ambitions. This is the end of my dream. This is the end of my reign. Perhaps it is the end of my life.

Who would have thought she would take it so hard? She has been crying like a broken-hearted girl, her useless ambassador patting her hands, and muttering to her in German like some old dark-feathered hen, that ninny Richard Beard standing on his dignity but looking like a schoolboy, agonisingly embarrassed. They start on the terrace where Richard Beard gives her the letter, then they bring her into her room when her legs give way beneath her, and they send for me as she cries herself into a screaming fit.

I bathe her face with rosewater, and then give her a glass of brandy to sip. That steadies her for a moment and she looks up at me, her eyes as red-rimmed as those of a little white rabbit.

‘He denies the marriage,' she says brokenly. ‘Oh, Jane, he denies me. He had me painted by Master Holbein himself, he chose me, he asked for me to come, he sent his councillors for me, he brought me to his court. He excused the dowry, he married me, he bedded me, now he denies me.'

‘What does he want you to do?' I ask urgently. I want to know if Richard Beard has a guard of soldiers coming behind him, if they are going to take her away tonight.

‘He wants me to agree to the verdict,' she says. ‘He promises me a …' She breaks into tears on the word ‘settlement'. These are hard
words for a young wife to hear. ‘He promises fair terms if I cause no trouble.'

I look at the ambassador, who is puffed up like a cockerel at the insult, and then I look at Richard Beard.

‘What would you advise the queen?' Beard asks me. He is no fool, he knows who pays my hire. I will sing to Henry's tune, in four-part harmony if need be, he can be sure of that.

‘Your Grace,' I say gently. ‘There is nothing that can be done except to accept the will of the king and the ruling of his council.'

She looks at me trustingly. ‘How can I?' she asks. ‘He wants me to say that I was married before I married him, so we were not married. These are lies.'

‘Your Grace.' I bend very low to her and I whisper, so that only she can hear. ‘The evidence about Queen Anne Boleyn went from an inquiry, just like this one, to the court room and then to the scaffold. The evidence about Queen Katherine of Aragon went from an inquiry just like this one, took six years to hear, and in the end she was alone and penniless and died in exile from her friends and from her daughter. The king is a hard enemy. If he offers you any terms, any terms at all, you should take them.'

‘But …'

‘If you do not release him he will be rid of you anyway.'

‘How can he?' she demands.

I look at her. ‘You know.'

She dares me to say it. ‘What will he do?'

‘He will kill you,' I say simply.

Richard Beard moves away so that he can deny he ever heard this. The ambassador glares at me, uncomprehending.

‘You know this,' I say.

In silence, she nods.

‘Who is your friend in England?' I ask her. ‘Who will defend you?'

I see the fight go out of her. ‘I have none.'

‘Can you get a message to your brother? Will he save you?' I know he will not.

‘I am innocent,' she whispers.

‘Even so.'

I cannot, I cannot believe it: but it is so. My grandmother has just told me, and she has just had it from my uncle Norfolk, and he was there, and so he knows. They have done it. They have examined all the evidence and announced that the king's marriage to Queen Anne of Cleves was never valid and they are both free to marry someone else, as if they had never been married to each other at all.

I am amazed. All that wedding, and the gown, and the beautiful jewels and gifts, and us all carrying the train and the wedding breakfast and the archbishop … none of it counted. How can that be? The sables! They didn't count either. This is what it is to be king. He wakes up in the morning and decides he is to marry and he does. Then he wakes up the morning after and decides he doesn't like her, and
voilà!
(this is French, it means something like: gracious, look at that!),
voilà!
He is not married. The marriage was never valid and they are now to be seen as brother and sister. Brother and sister!

Only a king could do such a thing. If it were done by an ordinary person you would think him a madman. But since he is king nobody can say that this is madness, and not even the queen (or whatever she happens to be now) can say this is madness. We all say: ‘Oh, yes, Your Majesty', and he comes to dinner with my grandmother and me tonight and he will propose to marry me and I will say: ‘Oh, yes, Your Majesty, thank you very much', and never, never
say that this is mad, and the work of a madman, and the world itself is mad that it does not turn on him.

For I am not mad. I may be very stupid, and I may be very ignorant (though I am learning French,
voilà!
) but at least I don't think that if you stand in front of the archbishop and say ‘I do', then that doesn't count six months later. But I do see that I live in a world that is ruled by a madman and governed by his whims. Also, he is the king and head of the church, and God speaks to him directly, so if he says that something is the case then who is going to say no to him?

Not I, at any rate. I may have my thoughts (however stupid I am assured they are), I may have my stupid thoughts in – what did she say? – ‘a head that can only hold one nonsensical idea at a time'; but I know that the king is mad, and the world is mad. The queen is now to be his sister, and I am to be his wife and the new queen. I am to be queen of England. I, Kitty Howard, am to marry the King of England and to be his queen.
Voilà
indeed.

I cannot believe it is true. And, I wish someone had thought of this: what real gain is there in it for me? For I have thought about this now. What should prevent him waking up one morning and saying that I too was pre-contracted and that our royal marriage is not valid? Or that I am unfaithful, and he had better behead me? What should prevent him taking a fancy to a stupid, pretty maid in waiting of mine, and putting me to one side for her?

Exactly! I don't think this has occurred to anyone but me. Exactly. Nothing can prevent him. And those people like my grandmother, who are so free with their insults and their slaps, who say that it is a tremendous honour and a fine step up for a ninny like me, might well consider that a fool can be jumped up, but a fool can also be thrown down; and who is going to catch me then?

I have written to say that I agree with the findings of the inquiry, and they have all witnessed it, one after another, the great men who came here to argue with me, the ladies that I had called my friends when I was Queen of England and they were desperate to serve in my court. I have admitted that I was pre-contracted, and not free to marry, I have even apologised for this.

This is a dark night for me in England. The darkest night I have ever faced. I am not to be queen. I can stay in England at the king's unreliable favour, while he marries the little girl who was my maid in waiting, or I can go home penniless, to live with my brother whose spite and negligence has brought me to this. I am very much alone tonight.

This is the most beautiful palace in the kingdom, overlooking the river in its own great park. It was built by the king's father as a great show palace in a peaceful, beautiful country. This wonderful place is to be part of the payment the king offers to be rid of me. And I am to have the Boleyn inheritance, their family house: the pretty castle of Hever. No-one but me seems to find this amusing: that Henry should bribe me with the other Queen Anne's childhood home, which he owns only because he beheaded her. Also, I can have a generous allowance. I shall be the first lady of the kingdom, second only to the new queen, and regarded as
the king's sister. We shall all be friends. How happy we shall be.

I don't know how I shall live here. To tell the truth, I cannot imagine how my life will be after tonight, this dark night. I cannot go home to my brother, I should be shamed as a whipped dog if I were to go home to him and say that the King of England has put me aside, calling in archbishops to get his freedom from me, preferring a pretty girl, my own maid in waiting, to me. I cannot go home and say this. I cannot go home and face this shame. What they would say to me, how I would live as spoiled goods at my brother's court, I cannot imagine. It is not possible.

So I shall have to stay here. There is no refuge for me anywhere else. I cannot go to France or to Spain or even to a house of my own somewhere in Germany. I have no money to buy such a place and if I leave England I will have no rich allowance, they will pay me no rents. My lands will be given to someone else. The king insists that I live on his generosity in his kingdom. I cannot hope for another husband to offer me a home either. No man will marry me, knowing that I have laid under the king's heavy labourings for night after night and that he could not bring himself to do it. No man will find me desirable knowing that the king's manhood shrivelled at the sight of me. The king has volunteered to his friends that he was repelled by my fat belly and by my slack breasts and by the smell of me. I am shamed to the ground by this. Besides, since every churchman in England has agreed that I was bound to marry the son of the Duke of Lorraine, that will be an obstacle to any marriage I might want in the future. I will have to face a single life, without lover, or husband, or companion. I will have to face a lonely life, without family. I will never have a child of my own, I will never have a son to come after me, I will never have my own daughter to love. I will have to be a nun without a convent, a widow with no memories, a wife of six months and a virgin. I will have to face life in exile. I will never see Cleves again. I will never see my mother again.

This is a hard sentence for me. I am a young woman of only
twenty-five. I have done nothing wrong. And yet I shall be alone forever: undesirable, lonely and in exile. Truly, when a King is a god to himself and follows his own desires, the suffering falls on others.

It is done. It took all of six days. Six days. The king has rid himself of his queen, his lawfully wedded queen, so that he can now marry me. My grandmother says I should prepare myself for the greatest position in the land and consider what ladies I shall choose to serve me, and who I shall favour with the places and fees at my disposal. Clearly, my Howard relations must come first. My uncle says that I must remember to take his advice in all things and not be a stupid jade like my cousin Anne. And I must remember what happened to her! As if I am likely to forget.

I have looked sideways under my eyelashes at the king, and smiled at him, curtseyed bending forwards so that he can see my breasts, and worn my hood back so he can see my face. Now everything has gone faster than I could have imagined, everything is happening too fast. Everything is happening whether I want it or not.

I am to be married to King Henry of England. Queen Anne has been put aside. Nothing can save her, nothing can stop the king, nothing can save me – oh, I shouldn't have said that. I should have said: nothing can prevent my happiness. That is what I meant to say. Nothing can prevent my happiness. He calls me his rose. He calls me his rose without a thorn. Whenever he says it, I think it is just the sort of pet-name that a man might give to his daughter. Not a lover's name. Not a lover's name at all.

And so it is over. Unbelievably, it is over. I have put my name to the agreement that says I was pre-contracted and not free to marry. I have agreed that my marriage should be annulled and suddenly it is no more. Just like that. This is what it is to be married to the voice of God when He speaks against you. God warns Henry that I am pre-contracted. Henry warns his council. Then the marriage is no more, though he swore to be my husband and came to my bed and tried – how hard did he try! – to consummate the marriage. But it turns out it was God preventing his success (not witchcraft but the hand of God), and so Henry says it will not be.

I write to my brother at the king's command and tell him that I am no longer married and that I have consented to my change of state. Then, the king is not satisfied by my letter and I am ordered to write it again. If he wants, I will write it a dozen times. If my brother had protected me as he should have done, as my father would have wanted him to do, this could never have happened. But he is a spiteful man and a poor kinsman, he is a bad brother to me; and I have been unprotected since the death of my father. My brother's ambition made him use me, his spite let me fall. He would not have let his horse go to such a buyer as Henry of England, and be broken so.

The king has commanded me to return his wedding ring to him.
I obey him in this as I do in all things. I write a letter to go with it. I tell him that here is the ring he gave to me and that I hope he will have it broken into pieces for it is a thing which has no force or value. He will not hear my anger and my disappointment in these words for he does not know me nor think of me. But I am both angry and disappointed and he can have his wedding ring, and his wedding vows, and he can have his belief that God speaks to him, for they are all part of the same thing: a chimera, a thing which has no force or value.

And so it is over.

And so it begins for little Kitty Howard.

I wish her joy of him. I wish him joy of her. A more ill-matched, ill-conceived, ill-starred marriage could hardly be imagined. I cannot envy her. From the bottom of my heart, even tonight, when I have so much to complain of, when I have so much to blame her for: even now I do not envy her. I can only fear for her, poor child, poor, silly child.

I may have been alone, without friends, before the indifference of the king, but God knows the same will be true of her. I was poor and humble when he chose me and the same is true of her. I was part of a faction of his court (though I did not know it) and the same is even more true of her. When another pretty girl comes to court and takes his eye, how shall she make him cleave to her? (And be very sure they will send their pretty girls by the dozen.) When the king's health fails him and he cannot get a child on her, will he tell her that it is the failing of an old man, and ask her forgiveness? No, he will not. And when he blames her, who will defend her? When Lady Rochford asks her, who can she call on as a friend?, what will she answer? Who will be Katherine Howard's friend and protector when the king turns against her?