The King's Curse Page 8

  “One hundred twenty nobles only takes us to Christmastide. And what happens after that?” I ask my steward.

  He just looks at me. He knows that he is not expected to have an answer to this. He knows that I have no answer. He knows there is none.

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SPRING 1505

  Christmas comes and goes with no feast for the tenants, and Twelfth Night goes by with only the smallest of gifts for the children. I announce that we are still mourning the loss of my husband, but they mutter in the village that it is not how things should be done, and it was better in the old days when the gentle knight Sir Richard ordered a good feast for the household and all the tenants, and remembered that these are the cold and hungry months and that a good dinner is helpful for people with many mouths to feed, and free firewood should be sent out too.

  Geoffrey the baby thrives with his wet nurse but I find I am wondering when he can be weaned from her, as she is such an extra expense in the nursery. I cannot let the boys’ tutor go—these are my father’s grandsons, the grandsons of George, Duke of Clarence, the best-read nobleman of an exceptional court; these are Warwick children, they have to be able to read and write in three languages at least. I cannot let this family slide down into ignorance and dirt; but teaching and cleanliness are terribly expensive.

  We have always lived off the produce from the home farm and we sell some of our surplus at the local markets. We make cheeses and butter, we harvest fruit, and we salt down meat. Our spare food we send to the local market for sale, any extra grain I sell to the miller, and hay and straw I sell to a local merchant. The mills on the river pay me a fee every time they grind, the local potters pay me for firing their wares in my kiln, and I sell wood from the forest.

  But the tail end of winter is the worst time of year; our horses are eating our summer crop of hay and there is no extra to sell, the beasts are eating the straw and if they finish it before the spring grass comes, they will have to be killed for meat and then I will have no livestock. Once the household has been fed there is no surplus food left to sell for cash; indeed, we rely on the tenants giving us our share of their crops, as we cannot grow enough on our own fields.

  Princess Katherine writes to condole with me on the loss of my husband. She too has suffered a terrible loss. Her mother wrote to her rarely, and seldom with any warmth, but Katherine never stopped looking for her letters, and missed her every day. Now Isabella of Spain is dead, and Katherine will never see her mother again. Even worse than this, the death of her mother means that her father no longer jointly rules all of Spain, but only his own kingdom of Aragon. His wealth and position in the world have been halved, worse than halved, and his oldest daughter Juana has inherited the throne of Castile from her mother. Katherine is no longer the daughter of the monarchs of Spain, she is the daughter of mere Ferdinand of Aragon—a very different prospect. I am not surprised to read that Prince Harry and his father no longer visit her as they used to do. She survives on little gifts of money from the king and sometimes they are less than she expected, and sometimes the royal exchequer forgets to pay altogether. The king is insisting that her full dowry must be paid by Spain to him before the marriage to Prince Harry can go ahead, and in riposte Katherine’s father Ferdinand is demanding that her widow’s jointure be paid by the king to her, in full and at once.

  Will you write for me to My Lady and ask her if I can come to court? Will you tell her that I am sorry but I cannot seem to manage my household bills and that I am lonely and unhappy here? I want to live in her rooms as her granddaughter, as I should.

  I reply and tell her that I am a widow, as she is, and that I too am struggling to pay my way in the world. I say that I am sorry, but I have no influence over My Lady. I will write to her, but I doubt she will be kind to Katherine at my bidding. I don’t say that My Lady said she would never forgive me for refusing to bear witness against Katherine, and that I doubt any word from me, any word from anyone, would make her act kindly to the princess.

  Katherine replies quite cheerfully that her duenna, Doña Elvira, is so bad-tempered that she sends her out to the market to haggle with traders and her angry broken English wins them bargains. She writes this as if it is funny, and I laugh aloud when I read her letter and tell her about the quarrel I have with the farrier about the cost of horseshoes.

  It is not grief that will deprive me of my wits but hunger. I go round the kitchen under the pretense that there must be no waste; but really I am getting so low that I shall start licking the spoons and scraping the pots.

  I turn away as many as I can of the household staff as soon as we get to the end of the quarter at Lady Day. Some of them cry as they leave and I have no quit money to give them. Those who are left have to work harder and some of them don’t know how the work is done. The kitchen maid now has to lay the fire and sweep the grate in my room and she constantly forgets to bring the wood or spills the ash. It’s heavy work for her and I see her struggle with the log basket and I look away. I put myself in charge of the dairy and learn to make cheese and skim milk and send the dairymaid back to her family. I keep the boy in the malthouse but I learn to make ale. My son Henry has to ride out in the fields with the steward and watch them sowing the seed. He comes home afraid that they are scattering it too thickly, that the carefully measured scoops of grain are not covering the ground.

  “Then we’ll have to buy more somehow,” I say grimly. “We have to have a good crop or there will be no bread next winter.”

  As the evenings get lighter I give up using wax candles altogether, and tell the children they must do all their studying before dusk. We live in the guttering shadows and stink of the rush lights and the tallow drips on the floors. I think that I will have to marry again, but no man of any wealth or position would consider me, and My Lady will not order one of her relations to the task this time. I am a widow of thirty-one years with five young children and growing debts. When I remarry, I will lose all rights over the estates, as they will all go to the king as Henry’s guardian, so I would come to a new husband as a pauper. Very few men would see me as a desirable wife. No man who wants to prosper at the Tudor court would marry a widow with five children of Plantagenet blood. If My Lady the King’s Mother will not make a marriage for me with someone whom she can command, then I cannot see how to raise my children and feed myself.

  STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SUMMER 1505

  It all comes back to her. It all comes back to her favor and her influence. In the summer I realize that however good the harvest, however high the price of wheat, we will not make enough to get through another winter. I am going to have to raise the money to go to London and ask her for help.

  “We could sell Sir Richard’s warhorse?” my steward John Little suggests.

  “He’s so old!” I exclaim. “Who would want him? And he served Sir Richard so well for so long!”

  “He’s no use to us,” he says. “We can’t use him on the plow, he won’t go between the shafts. I might get a good price for him in Stourbridge. He’s well known as Sir Richard’s horse; people know he’s a good horse.”

  “Then everyone will know that I can’t afford to keep him,” I protest. “That I can’t afford to keep him for Henry to ride.”

  The steward nods, his eyes on his boots, not looking at me. “Everyone knows that already, my lady.”

  I bow my head at this new humiliation. “Take him then,” I say.

  I watch the big horse being saddled up. He lowers his proud head for the bridle and stands still while they tighten the girth. He may be old, but his ears come forward when the steward steps off the mounting block to swing a leg over his back and sit in the saddle. The old warhorse thinks he is riding out to battle once more. His neck arches, and he paws the ground as if he is eager to go to work. For a moment I nearly cry out: “No! Keep him! He’s our horse, he’s served my husband well. Keep him for Henry.”

  But then I remember that there is nothing to feed him unless I can get h
elp from My Lady the King’s Mother in London, and that the price of the horse will pay for my journey.

  We take our own horses and we stay in the guesthouses of the nunneries or abbeys along the way. They are positioned along the road to help pilgrims and wayfarers, and I am comforted every time I see a bell tower on the horizon and know there is a place of refuge, every time I step into a clean lime-washed room and feel the sense of holy peace. One night there is nowhere to go but an inn, and I have to pay for myself, for my lady companion, and for the four men-at-arms. I have spent nearly all my money by the time we see the spires of London coming out of the afternoon mist and hear the dozens of bells tolling for None.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1505

  The court is at Westminster, which is a blessing for me because there are always extra rooms in the huge rambling palace. Once I used to sleep in the best room, in the bed of the queen to keep her company through the night; now I am allotted a small room, far away from the great hall. I note how quickly and accurately the steward of the household observes the fall in my fortunes.

  This palace is like an enclosed village, set inside its own great walls inside the city of London. I know all the twisting alleyways and the little walled gardens, the backstairs and the hidden doorways. This has been my home since childhood. I wash my face and hands and pin on my hood. I brush the dust from my gown and hold my head high as I walk through the little cobbled streets to the great hall and the queen’s rooms.

  I am just about to cross the queen’s gardens when I hear someone call my name, and I turn to see Bishop John Fisher, confessor to My Lady, and an old acquaintance of mine. When I was a little girl, he used to come to Middleham Castle to teach us our catechism and hear our confessions. He knew my brother, Teddy, as a small boy, as the heir to the throne; he taught me the psalms when the name in my psalter was Margaret Plantagenet, and I was niece to the King of England.

  “My lord bishop!” I exclaim, and I drop a little curtsey, for he has become a great man under the pious rule of My Lady.

  He makes the sign of the cross over my head, and bows as low to me as if I were still the heiress to the royal house. “Lady Pole! I am sorry for your loss. Your husband was a fine man.”

  “He was indeed,” I say.

  Bishop Fisher offers me his arm and we walk side by side on the little path. “It is rare that we see you at court, my daughter?”

  I am about to say something lighthearted about wanting to buy new gloves when something in his friendly, smiling face makes me want to confide in him.

  “I have come for help,” I say honestly. “I am hoping that My Lady will advise me. My husband left me with next to nothing, and I cannot manage on my dower rents.”

  “I am sorry to hear it,” he says simply. “But I am sure she will hear you kindly. She has many worries and much work, God bless her; but she would never neglect one of her family.”

  “I hope so,” I say. I am wondering if there is any way in which I can ask him to plead my case with her, when he gestures towards the open doors of the gallery before her presence chamber. “Come on,” he urges me. “I’ll go in with you. There’s no time like the present, and there are always many people waiting to see her.”

  We walk together. “You will have heard that your former charge, the Dowager Princess of Wales, is to go home to Spain?” he asks me quietly.

  I am shocked at the news. “No! I thought she was betrothed to marry Prince Harry.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not widely known, but they cannot agree on the terms,” he says. “Poor child, I think she is very lonely in her big palace with no one but her confessor and her ladies. Better for her to go to her home than live alone here, and My Lady does not wish her to come to court. But this is between the two of us. I don’t know that they have even told her yet. Will you go to see her while you are in London? I know she loves you very much. You might advise her to accept her destiny gladly and with grace. I truly think that she would be happier at home than waiting and hoping here.”

  “I will. I am so sorry!”

  He nods. “It’s a hard life she has had. Widowed so young and now having to go home again a widow. But My Lady is guided by her prayers. She thinks it is God’s will that Prince Harry should marry another bride. The dowager princess is not for him.”

  The guards stand aside for the bishop and open the doors to the presence chamber. It is crowded with petitioners; everyone wants to meet My Lady and ask her for one favor or another. All of the business of being the queen has fallen on her shoulders, and she has her own great lands to manage too. She is one of the kingdom’s wealthiest landowners, by far the wealthiest woman in England. She has endowed colleges, and chantries and built hospitals, churches, colleges, and schools, and all of them send representatives to report to her or to ask for her favor. I look around the room and calculate that there are about two hundred people waiting to see her. I am one of very, very many.

  But she singles me out. She comes into the room from chapel, with her ladies walking two abreast behind her, carrying their missals as if they were a small exclusive convent of nuns, and she looks around with her sharp, observing gaze. She is more than sixty years old now, deeply lined and unsmiling, but her head is erect under her heavy gable hood, and though she leans on one of her ladies as she walks through the room, I suspect that she does this for show; she could walk equally well on her own.

  Everyone curtseys or bows to her as low as if she were the queen whose rooms she occupies. I sink down but I keep my head up and smiling: I want her to see me. I catch her eye, and when she stops before me, I kiss the hand she holds out to me, and when she gestures that I may rise up and she leans forward, I kiss her soft old cheek.

  “Dear Cousin Margaret,” she says coolly, as if we had parted as good friends only yesterday.

  “Your Grace,” I reply.

  She nods that I am to walk beside her. I take the place of her lady-in-waiting and she leans on my arm as we walk through the hundreds of people. I note that I am being publicly honored with her attention.

  “You have come to see me, my dear?”

  “I am hoping for your advice,” I say tactfully.

  The beaklike nose turns to me, her hard eyes scan my face. She nods. She knows full well I do not need advice but that I am desperately short of money.

  “You have come a long way for advice,” she observes dryly. “Is everything all right at your home?”

  “My children are well and ask for your blessing,” I say. “But I cannot manage on my dower. I have only a small income now that my husband is dead, and I have five young children. I do the best I can, but there is only a little land at Stourton and the estates at Medmenham and Ellesborough only pay fifty pounds a year in rents, and of course I only get a third of that.” I am anxious not to sound as if I am complaining. “It is not enough to pay my bills,” I say simply. “Not to keep the household.”

  “Then you will have to reduce your household,” she advises me. “You are not a Plantagenet now.”

  To use my name to me in public, even so low that no one can hear, is to threaten me.

  “I have not heard that name in years,” I say to her. “And I have never lived like that. I have reduced my household. I want only to live as the widow of a loyal Tudor knight. I don’t look for anything grander than that. My husband and I were proud to be your humble servants, and to serve you well.”

  “Would you like your son to come to court? To be a companion to Prince Harry?” she asks. “Would you like to be a lady-in-waiting to me?”

  I can hardly speak; this is a solution that I had not dreamed of. “I would be honored . . .” I stammer. I am amazed that she should suggest such a favor. This would resolve all my difficulties. If I could get Henry into Eltham Palace, he would have the best education in the world; he would live like a prince, with the prince himself. And a lady-in-waiting gets a fee for her services, is awarded posts when they fall vacant, is tipped for the smallest of tasks
, is bribed by strangers coming to court. A lady-in-waiting gets gifts of jewels and gowns, a purse of gold at Christmas, her keep and that of her household, her horses stabled for free, her servants fed in the royal hall. The thought of dining out of the royal kitchens with my horses in the royal stables eating Tudor hay is like the promise of release from a prison of worry.

  Lady Margaret sees that hope illuminates my face. “It is possible,” she concedes. “After all, it is suitable.”

  “I would be honored,” I said. “I would be delighted.”

  A smartly dressed man steps before us and bows. I scowl at him; this is my time with My Lady. She is the source of all wealth and patronage; she and her son, the king, own everything. This is my only time and my only chance; nobody is going to interrupt us if I can help it. To my surprise, Bishop Fisher puts a hand on the gentleman’s arm before he can present his petition and draws him away with a quiet word.

  “I have to ask you a question that I asked you once before,” Lady Margaret says quietly. “It is about your time at Ludlow, with the Prince and Princess of Wales.”

  I can feel myself growing cold. John Fisher has just told me that they are planning to send Katherine home to Spain. If that is the case, why would they care whether the marriage was consummated or not? “Yes?”

  “We are troubled by a small matter, a legal question, for the dispensation of her first marriage. We have to ensure that we get the right wording of the dispensation so that our dear Katherine can marry Prince Harry. It is in the interest of the princess that you tell me what I need to know.”