Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (68 page)
Read Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Online
Authors: Philippa Gregory
‘Alas, Alhama!’, ‘Riders gallop through the Elvira gate…’ and ‘There was crying in Granada…’ are traditional songs, quoted by Francesca Claremount in
Catherine of Aragon
(see book list below).
‘A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa’, is by Abd al Rahman, translated by D. F. Ruggles and quoted in Menocal,
The Ornament of the World
(see book list below).
The following books have been most helpful in my research into the history of this story:
Bindoff, S. T.,
Pelican History of England: Tudor England,
Penguin, 1993
Bruce, Marie Louise,
Anne Boleyn,
Collins, 1972
Chejne, Anwar G.,
Islam and the West: The Moriscos – A Cultural and Social History,
State University of New York Press, 1983
Claremont, Francesca,
Catherine of Aragon,
Robert Hale, 1939
Cressy, David,
Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual Religion and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England,
OUP, 1977
Darby, H. C.,
A New Historical Geography of England before 1600,
CUP, 1976
Dixon, William Hepworth,
History of Two Queens,
vol. 2, London, 1873
Elton, G. R.,
England under the Tudors,
Methuen, 1955
Fernandez-Arnesto, Felipe,
Ferdinand and Isabella,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975
Fletcher, Anthony,
Tudor Rebellions,
Longman, 1968
Goodwin, Jason,
Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire,
Vintage, 1989
Guy, John,
Tudor England,
OUP, 1988
Haynes, Alan,
Sex in Elizabethan England,
Sutton, 1997
Loades, David,
The Tudor Court,
Batsford, 1986
Loades, David,
Henry VIII and His Queens,
Sutton, 2000
Lloyd, David,
Arthur Prince of Wales,
Fabric Trust for St Laurence, Ludlow, 2002
Mackie, J. D.,
Oxford History of England: The Earlier Tudors,
OUP, 1952
Mattingley, Garrett,
Catherine of Aragon,
Jonathan Cape, 1942
Menocal,
The Ornament of the World,
Little, Brown, 2002
Mumby, Frank Arthur,
The Youth of Henry VIII,
Constable, 1913
Núñez, J. Agustín, (ed.),
Muslim and Christian Granada,
Edilux SL, 2004
Paul, E. John,
Catherine of Aragon and Her Friends,
Burns & Drates, 1966
Plowden, Alison,
The House of Tudor,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976
Plowden, Alison,
Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners,
Sutton, 1998
Randall, Keith,
Henry VIII and the Reformation in England,
Hodder, 1993
Robinson, John Martin,
The Dukes of Norfolk,
OUP, 1982
Scarisbrick, J. J.,
Yale English Monarchs: Henry VIII,
YUP, 1997
Scott, S. P.,
The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe,
vol. 1, Ams Pr, 1974
Starkey, David,
Henry VIII: A European Court in England,
Collins & Brown, 1991
Starkey, David,
The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics,
G. Philip, 1985
Starkey, David,
Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII,
Vintage, 2003
Tillyard, E. M. W.,
The Elizabethan World Picture,
Pimlico, 1943
Turner, Robert,
Elizabethan Magic,
Element, 1989
Walsh, William Thomas,
Isabella of Spain,
Sheed & Ward, 1935
Warnicke, Retha M.,
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn,
CUP, 1991
Weir, Alison,
Henry VIII: King and Court,
Pimlico, 2002
Weir, Alison,
The Six Wives of Henry VIII,
Pimlico, 1997
Youings, Joyce,
Sixteenth-Century England,
Penguin, 1991
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
For Anthony
I could hear a roll of muffled drums. But I could see nothing but the lacing on the bodice of the lady standing in front of me, blocking my view of the scaffold. I had been at this court for more than a year and attended hundreds of festivities; but never before one like this.
By stepping to one side a little and craning my neck, I could see the condemned man, accompanied by his priest, walk slowly from the Tower towards the green where the wooden platform was waiting, the block of wood placed centre stage, the executioner dressed all ready for work in his shirtsleeves with a black hood over his head. It looked more like a masque than a real event, and I watched it as if it were a court entertainment. The king, seated on his throne, looked distracted, as if he was running through his speech of forgiveness in his head. Behind him stood my husband of one year, William Carey, my brother, George, and my father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, all looking grave. I wriggled my toes inside my silk slippers and wished the king would hurry up and grant clemency so that we could all go to breakfast. I was only thirteen years old, I was always hungry.
The Duke of Buckinghamshire, far away on the scaffold, put off his thick coat. He was close enough kin for me to call him uncle. He had come to my wedding and given me a gilt bracelet. My father told me that he had offended the king a dozen ways: he had royal blood in his veins and he kept too large a retinue of armed men for the comfort of a king not yet wholly secure on his throne; worst of all he was supposed to have said that the king had no son and heir now, could get no son and heir, and that he would likely die without a son to succeed him to the throne.
Such a thought must not be said out loud. The king, the court, the whole country knew that a boy must be born to the queen, and born soon. To suggest otherwise was to take the first step on the path that led
to the wooden steps of the scaffold which the duke, my uncle, now climbed, firmly and without fear. A good courtier never refers to any unpalatable truths. The life of a court should always be merry.
Uncle Stafford came to the front of the stage to say his final words. I was too far from him to hear, and in any case I was watching the king, waiting for his cue to step forward and offer the royal pardon. This man standing on the scaffold, in the sunlight of the early morning, had been the king's partner at tennis, his rival on the jousting field, his friend at a hundred bouts of drinking and gambling, they had been comrades since the king was a boy. The king was teaching him a lesson, a powerful public lesson, and then he would forgive him and we could all go to breakfast.
The little faraway figure turned to his confessor. He bowed his head for a blessing and kissed the rosary. He knelt before the block and clasped it in both hands. I wondered what it must be like, to put one's cheek to the smooth waxed wood, to smell the warm wind coming off the river, to hear, overhead, the cry of seagulls. Even knowing as he did that this was a masque and not the real thing, it must be odd for Uncle to put his head down and know that the executioner was standing behind.
The executioner raised his axe. I looked towards the king. He was leaving his intervention very late. I glanced back at the stage. My uncle, head down, flung wide his arms, a sign of his consent, the signal that the axe could fall. I looked back to the king, he must rise to his feet now. But he still sat, his handsome face grim. And while I was still looking towards him there was another roll of drums, suddenly silenced, and then the thud of the axe, first once, then again and a third time: a sound as domestic as chopping wood. Disbelievingly, I saw the head of my uncle bounce into the straw and a scarlet gush of blood from the strangely stumpy neck. The black-hooded axeman put the great stained axe to one side and lifted the head by the thick curly hair, so that we could all see the strange mask-like thing: black with the blindfold from forehead to nose, and the teeth bared in a last defiant grin.