Three Sisters, Three Queens

STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1531

I learn what happens next in England from the ambassador, though he is almost struck dumb by the circumstances he should report.

He comes to me in my privy chamber, hoping to avoid any public audience for what he has to say. He bows and says that he will speak to my son presently; he thought he would speak to me first. He almost asks me how he is to broach the subject with James. First he has to consider what he will say to me.

“I have grave news from England,” he begins.

At once, my hand goes to my mouth as I think: Is Katherine dead? It is easy to think of her fasting herself to the point of starvation, her hair shirt rubbing her fine skin into infected sores, dying of a broken heart. But then I think—not her: she would never leave her daughter Mary without a protector. She will never retire to a convent or surrender to death. She will never give up on herself or her cause. Harry would have to drag her from the throne, God would have to drag her to heaven; she will never willingly go. Then I think: is Archibald safe? This is a man who has spent his life on the borders between safety and danger, Scotland and England. Where is he now, and what is he doing? These are questions I am never going to ask aloud.

“What news?” I ask levelly. The musicians choose that moment to fall silent and all my ladies, and the pages at my side, and the servants at the cupboard and the doors, wait for his answer. He has to speak out into the quiet room.

“I am sorry to say that the Holy Father has overstepped his authority and made a mistake,” he tells me.

“The Holy Father is in error?” I repeat his heresy.

“Exactly so.”

He had better not try this tack with James. The Pope is guided by God, he cannot make a mistake. But the archdeacon serves a king who says that he too hears God’s voice, and that the king hears more clearly than any other; the king knows better than the Pope.

“The Holy Father has finally ruled on the matter of my brother’s marriage?” I ask.

He bows. “No ruling yet, the Holy Father is still considering; but in the meantime, before the ruling is published, he has demanded that the king take up residence with the dowager princess.”

“What? With who?”

The archdeacon all but winks at me to convey his meaning. “The dowager princess, Katherine of Aragon.”

“The Pope calls her that? Not queen?”

“No, no, it is the king who has said that we must all call the lady by that title. I speak so in obedience to him. He himself calls her his sister.”

“She has lost her title?”

“Yes.”

I absorb this. “So what does the Holy Father say?”

“That the king must avoid the company of a certain lady.”

“And she is?” As if I don’t know.

“Lady Anne Boleyn. The Pope says that the king must renounce her and live with the qu . . . qu—” He bites off the banned word. “The dowager princess.”

“The Pope is ordering my brother to live with Katherine, though my brother swears that she is not his wife?”

“Quite so. That is why we are considering that the Holy Father has been misinformed and made a mistake.”

“We?”

“England,” he says. “You too, Your Grace, as an English princess. You are required to call Katherine of Aragon the dowager princess. You are required to say that the Holy Father has made a mistake.”

Levelly, I look at him, as he presumes to tell me what I am to think, what Harry wants me to say.

“His Grace the King of England has decided that the Holy Father cannot rule the Church in England,” the archdeacon goes on, his smooth voice dropping lower on this outrageous news. “Since the king is ruler in his kingdoms there can be no other ruler. The king is therefore going to be Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Pope is understood to be a bishop, a spiritual ruler, not a worldly one: the Bishop of Rome.”

This is incomprehensible to me. I look quite blankly at him. “Would you repeat that?”

He does.

“Harry has asked you to tell me this? He is announcing it to all the foreign courts? He is telling the Pope that the Pope does not rule the Church?”

The archdeacon nods as if words fail him too.

“And he has told the Church itself? The clergy?”

“They agree with him.”

“They can’t do,” I contradict him. I think of my lady grandmother’s confessor. “Bishop Fisher will never agree. He took his oath to be obedient to the Pope. He won’t change that because Harry does not want the Pope’s opinion.” I think of the great churchman, scourge of heretics, Thomas More. “And others. The Church cannot possibly agree.”

“It is not a question of the Pope’s opinion, but of his traditional right,” the archdeacon parrots at me.

“Apparently he had the right to rule when Harry asked him to send a cardinal.”

“Not now, not now,” the archdeacon says.

I look at him with horror. “This is heresy,” I whisper. “Worse, it is madness.”

He shakes his head. “It is the new law,” he says. “I am hoping to explain to your son the advantages . . .”

“Like what?”

“Tithes,” he mutters. “The Church’s fruits. Pilgrimages, the great riches of the Church. They now belong to the crown in England. If your son came to the same holy decision he too could rule his own Church, he too could be Supreme Head, and then he would receive the Church’s wealth. I know the taxes of Scotland are insufficient . . .”

“You want the King of Scotland to deny the Pope too?”

“He would find it an advantage, I feel sure.”

“James is not going to steal from the Church,” I snap. “James is devout. He’s not going to set himself up as a Scottish pope.”

“The king is not setting himself up,” the archdeacon tries to correct me. “He is restoring the traditional rights of the kings of England.”

“What next?” I demand. “What other traditional rights? The rule over women? The subjection of Scotland?”

The flicker of his eye as the archdeacon bows in silence tells me that Harry will claim these too if he ever can. That woman has inspired him to be the spoiled boy that he was born to be. I believe she is making a terrible mistake. She is showing Harry his power. Will she also show him where he must stop?

The archdeacon is as unsuccessful with James as I knew he would be.

“He dared to suggest to me that we might reform the Church in Scotland,” my son rages. He comes storming into my privy chamber before dinner when I am alone but for a couple of ladies, one of whom I know for a fact is James’s lover. She takes herself off to the window seat and out of hearing. Anything he wants her to know he will tell her later. Now he wants to talk to me.

“The Pope has been a good friend to Scotland,” he says. “And your brother had no complaint about the rule of Rome until he wanted them to declare his marriage invalid. He is so obvious! He’s so shamefully obvious! He’s tearing the Church apart so that he can marry his whore.”

I can’t argue with my son when he is angry like this.

“And what is going to happen to the Church? Not every clergyman will consent. What is your brother going to do to those who refuse to accept him as Supreme Head? What is going to happen to the monasteries? To the abbeys? What if they don’t bow to his rule?”

I find I am trembling. “Perhaps they will be allowed to retire,” I say. “The archdeacon said there would be an oath. Everyone will have to take an oath. Perhaps those that don’t agree will be allowed to retire.”

James looks at me. “All of them? You know that can’t happen,” he says scornfully. “Either there’s an oath or there isn’t. If they won’t take the oath then he’ll have to call it treason, or heresy to his Church, or both. You know the punishment for treason and heresy.”

“Bishop Fisher will have to leave England,” I whisper. “He’ll have to go away. But he would never leave Katherine without a confessor, without a spiritual advisor.”

“He won’t go,” James predicts grimly. “He’s a dead man.”