Hampton Court, Autumn 1541
Hampton Court, Autumn
WHEN WE HEAR of the death of the king’s sister, Margaret Tudor the Dowager Queen of Scotland, I think it is an omen for her brother, our king.
Margaret was his senior by only two years, the nearest in age of the family of four, the one most like him in her impulsive defiance and relentless optimism.
Now, he is the only one left of the four Tudor children – the last living child of Henry Tudor, the self-made king.
Surely, he must feel this! He must have a sense of his generation passing, of his own mortality.
But he does not even order the court into mourning; we do not wear black for the last Tudor princess of her generation.
He hugs his anger to himself and denies death, as he always does.
He cannot forgive her son’s snub at York, or that she kept Scotland proud and independent when she was queen regent.
He blames her for dying – for bringing the thought of death into his mind where even to speak of his death is illegal.
In life, he envied her as a rival Tudor.
In death, she is immediately forgotten. Nobody even remarks on the loss of Princess Margaret Queen of Scotland; except her daughter, poor Lady Margaret Douglas, trapped at the court of a vindictive uncle, still unmarried, still courting Charles Howard in secret in hidden corners.
She will get little comfort from him. Charles Howard is a young man with a light heart and a lighter understanding.
In her secret grief for her mother, Lady Margaret turns to her friends, the princess Lady Mary, and Mary Howard; and the three of them refuse to dance for a week and absent themselves from hunting to pray for the soul of the Tudor queen.
The ladies of the queen’s room wordlessly give Lady Margaret field forget-me-nots, stems of rue, and little silver crosses.
We all know that there is to be no word spoken at the Tudor court; but we sorrow with her.
Nobody even asks why the death of a royal queen should go unmourned, unrecognised by her home court.
Nobody asks why we cannot speak of death.
But I believe it is the conundrum that my father identified: how shall a man completely absorbed in himself ever imagine that he could be no more?
How can a man who imagines himself as half a god think of his own mortality?
How can a man, so vested in his material life, so heavily corporeal, imagine the death of that thick body?
The king cannot grieve for his sister; he cannot even acknowledge that she is gone. When someone he loves has died, they have – for him – abandoned and betrayed him, and the only way he can bear their loss is to persuade himself that they were never really there at all.
As if to insist that he is a young man, not an old one and the last of his generation, as if to be as young as his child bride, the king declares that instead of a service of mourning for his dead sister, we will hold a service of thanksgiving for his young wife.
To make it blindingly clear that he is not thinking of the sister he has lost, he chooses All Hallows’ Eve to celebrate his young queen – as if her youth and beauty can exorcise ghosts.
‘Is he going to announce my coronation?’ Kitty asks me urgently, as she dresses in one of her progress gowns of cloth of silver.
She will wear the gown with Tudor green sleeves and a green hood.
‘Is he? And what should I do? What do I do when people give thanks for me? Is it like a toast – do I return it and say a prayer to reply to them?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, smiling at the thought. ‘No, it’s not like a toast. I think you should lower your head and close your eyes as if you were praying, too.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asks earnestly. ‘You know I like to do things exactly right. What did any of the others do? What did Jane Seymour do?’
‘He never held a service for thanksgiving for Jane Seymour,’ I say and watch her face light up at a greater honour than a queen who went before her.
‘He didn’t? Not for sainted Jane?’
‘No. This is special for you. You will pray when everyone prays, and at the end of the prayer, rise up and curtsey to him. Very low.’
At once, she calls for a chair, and I have to be the king in his gallery, and she is the queen, with her maids-of-honour and the ladies-in-waiting as congregation. ‘No giggling,’ Kitty says sternly. ‘We have to get this right.’
Alice Restwold is the priest, and she says: ‘La la la,’ for the prayers and the end blessing, and then Kitty rises and turns to the gallery, where I am the king. She curtseys to the ground before me.
‘Quite right,’ I say. ‘And watch for him beckoning you to his gallery. He might want you to kneel before him in fealty or kiss his cheek.’
‘But which?’ she demands. ‘How do I know which?’
I show her the gesture with his hands out that will cue her to kneel and put her hands together in prayer before him, and the outstretched gesture that invites her to kiss his cheek.
‘Shall I wear my hair down?’
‘She always wants to wear her hair down – ready for bed,’ Alice Restwold jokes, and everyone laughs but Kitty, who waits solemnly for my decision.
‘Yes,’ I decide, thinking that it will look like a coronation. ‘Coronet on and hair down.’
‘Is it going to take very long?’ she asks. ‘Is it instead of usual mass or as well as it?’
‘Probably as well,’ I say. ‘But no worse than Good Friday or the Easter services. No longer than that. You’ll be seated, not kneeling.
It can’t go on too long, because the king .
. .’ I break off. There is no need to say that the king’s attention span has shortened and he cannot bear to spend too long anywhere but the dining table.
His bowels move unexpectedly; he sometimes farts loudly and has to be hurried to the stool room.
Nobody needs to tell the preacher or the celebrant when the king is getting bored; they keep a wary eye on him and speed up the service or cut the sermon at the first sign of restlessness.
‘And you all wear my badge.’ Kitty turns to her maids-of-honour.
‘And pray in thanksgiving for me.’ She looks sternly at Catherine Tilney, who looks ready to giggle with Alice Restwold.
‘You will give thanks for me! You of all people should be glad I’m queen.
Nobody else would employ you – God knows. ’