Mary writes me a Christmas letter, but it is nothing but an anguished list of the gifts that Harry has given to Anne. She does not ask after me, nor Henry, her new brother-in-law; she does not ask after my son as he takes his power as king. As always, Mary misses the point. She is full of the glorious rooms that Anne has usurped at Greenwich Palace, and how everyone visits her and neglects Katherine. She says that Anne is wearing borders of gold set with precious stones, and heart-shaped jewels set in headpieces like coronets. Her bracelets are the talk of the court; apparently I would be grieved to my heart if I saw her rubies. Mary says nothing about our brother’s distress and worry nor the state of his soul.
Katherine is not well served in her rooms and the Boleyn and Norfolk ladies do not even attend her now. Our brother the king does not dine with her, nor does he ever spend the night in her bed.
I feel so impatient with Mary. Why should the king spend the night with Katherine? It’s not as if he is going to get a Prince of Wales from sleeping in her barren bed. It may be that the papal legate advises that they are not husband and wife at all. Why should Katherine be served by duchesses? If she is a dowager princess of Wales then she is not a queen and should not have that service. Mary—a dowager queen herself—might consider that rules of the court are there to be kept. Katherine has gloried in her title and her position, she humbled the rest of us while she queened around. Perhaps now the world is changing. My world has changed a hundred times with no help from her. Now her world is changing too and I cannot find it in my heart to pity her. She ruined me once, now she is facing ruin herself.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1529
Of course, my son James turns against any idea that he might marry his cousin, Princess Mary. If there is any chance at all that her mother is merely a dowager princess and the girl a royal bastard, then she is completely unsuitable as a wife for a king. We are completely agreed on this, and then we hear a rumor that Archibald is advising Harry in favor of the marriage and a peace with Scotland. James flares up and says that he needs neither unreliable peace nor a doubtful princess. He says that he wants to ally with France and marry a French princess.
“James, please,” I say to him. “You can’t suddenly decide things like this. Nobody knows what will happen in England.”
“I know that my uncle has never honored you or me,” he says tersely. “I know that he has always preferred Archibald Earl of Angus to you and to me, and he is doing so now.”
“I am sure he will honor both the peace and the betrothal,” I say.
James, a boy who looks like a man, a boy with a man’s task to do, blames me, whenever it is Archibald causing trouble. “So you say! But when has he honored his word, to a country or to a woman? Your brother the king does exactly as he wants and then glozes it with sanctity. You wait and see what he will do with the cardinals at his court. He will get his way and then make out that it is God’s will. Well, he does not gloze over me.”
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1529
I am waiting for a letter from Mary; I know that she will want to be first to tell me of the decision of the legatine court on our brother’s case. When they bring me the letter, tied both ways with ribbons and heavily sealed to prevent anyone reading it, I hardly know whether to hope that the cardinals have declared Harry’s marriage void, or that they have ordered him to stay with Katherine. There is no doubt where Mary’s loyalties lie: she has always been Katherine’s little follower. She has never had anything from Katherine but tenderness and support. They have been true sisters to each other. For me, Katherine has been less of a blessing. It is not disloyalty to a sister that makes me wonder if I really want her as Queen of England forever. She has made this estrangement between us, over and over again. When she was in power she was terribly destructive to me, until she started falling, and then she demanded that I help her.
Anne Boleyn is exceeding her position in every way!
Mary starts without a word of greeting, a crisscrossed page of indignation. I spread the sheet on my knees and I look out of the window at the loch and the hills behind it. James is out riding for the day; he will not be home until dinner. I have all the time in the world to decipher Mary’s scrawl.
This Easter she blessed cramp rings for the poor as if she had the divine touch. She lives as high as the queen herself—far better actually, since Katherine fasts completely every Friday and every saint’s day. The Boleyn woman did not dare to attend the legatine court, I think if she had done there would have been a riot in favor of the queen. The women of the City and all of England are up in arms that the Boleyn whore (as they call her!) should dream of trying to take the place of our queen. If Harry gets the decision he wants from the court I really doubt that the people will allow the woman to be crowned. It is too dreadful. I cannot even speak to him about it, he consults no one but her and Wolsey.
You will have heard of the proceedings of the court from the archdeacon, I suppose; but what he may not tell you is that Bishop John Fisher, who was so dear to our lady grandmother, stood up in the court and swore that he had not signed a warrant that all the churchmen had agreed. Harry said there was his seal and signature and he said it was neither his seal nor his hand. It was very dreadful, very shocking, everyone could see that his consent had been forged. Harry said it didn’t matter, but it did matter, Margaret. It mattered to everyone. It shows that the Boleyns will do anything.
Anne Boleyn herself has gone to Hever and Katherine spends all her time praying. Charles says that calling in cardinals is a waste of time and Harry would do better to bed Anne at once and hope for boredom soon. Everyone says something different except dear John Fisher, who says that Katherine’s marriage was good, everyone knew it was so, and he will never say different.
I can’t say because I was too young. You had better say nothing, whatever you think. Everyone has an opinion, everyone talks about nothing else. It has got so bad that servants in the royal livery are getting booed in London and even my household has mud thrown at their horses. I think Harry will ruin this family in order to please that woman. Worst of all, John Fisher repeated in front of everyone what Harry said to you when you started the whole divorce idea (and how sorry you must be that you did!). Do you remember? “This marriage of the king and queen is dissolvable by no power, human or divine.” So now, once again, everyone is pointing to you and speaking of your divorce and saying that if you can divorce then so can Harry—why should he not? So it is as bad as I warned you, and people are speaking of you again and Katherine is very upset.
I say little to James about this letter when he comes home from riding, starving hungry and shouting that dinner must be served at once, as soon as he has washed and changed his clothes. I say only that the legatine court has opened in London and that, no doubt, Archdeacon Magnus will tell us more. It is Henry who asks me, as he sits beside me at dinner: “Do they speak of us at all?”
“No,” I say. “Just of my divorce and how Harry was so against it.”
He nods. “I would rather they did not speak of us.”
I shake my head. “There is so much scandal attached to the name of Tudor now, I would rather they did not speak of any of us.”
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1529
We come back to Edinburgh before making a summer progress up the coast, and meet with the English ambassador.
“You have news from London?” I ask him. “Have the cardinals decided on the king’s great matter?”
“The court is adjourned,” he says. “Cardinal Campeggio tells us now that it has to be decided in Rome, by the Pope. He says that the legatine court has no authority to rule.”
I am thunderstruck. “Then why did he come and open it?”
“He gave us to understand that he had authority,” Thomas Magnus says weakly. “But we think now that he came only to persuade the queen to withdraw to an abbey and take her vows. Since she refuses, he has to take the evidence back to Rome for a decision.”
“But the hearing?”
“It was partial,” he concedes. “The queen would not be questioned.”
I cannot believe that Katherine defied the Pope’s court, she has always been so determinedly obedient to Rome. “She never refused to appear before two cardinals?”