The Heretic Wind: The Life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England by Judith Arnopp (best ereader for students TXT) 📕

“Whore!”

I sit boltupright, screaming the word at the ring of white, frightened faces. I see myown madness reflected in their eyes but I cannot stop it.

How can shebe gone? How can the world still be turning? I tilt back my head, open mymouth and wail like a lost infant, howl like an abandoned puppy. I want mymother. I need my mother.

I am alone. I havelost the fight and am fatally wounded. I will never be the victor now. Myresistance against the king is futile. With her gone, there is no point incontinuing to stand against him and claim the marriage was false. It will serveno purpose. Mother will not come back; my father and she will never bereconciled. Whether I admit to it or not, I am a bastard, and Elizabeth isthe princess now. I can never win.

The onlyrefuge I find is in my bed. I refuse to let them draw back the heavy curtainsor open the shutters. I merge into the darkness until it becomes part of me. Thebed hangings screen me from unkind prying eyes and in a small way, theblackness soothes the pain that daylight makes unbearable. The darkness helpsme see clearly.

A miserableyear. While the king and his concubine celebrate my mother’s death and thecourtiers kneel to their every wish, I am left at Hatfield while Elizabeth issummoned to court.

Cruel as ever,Anne Shelton ensures the stories of Father’s contentment filter back to me. Ibattle to conceal my hurt but when Chapuys tells me how the king paraded mysister before the company while Anne Boleyn, fat with child again, looked on assmugly as a cat, I feel my heart will break. Nothing will ever be right again.

While thecourt dances and the Boleyn woman grows larger, preparation for my mother’sinterment is carried out.

I am forbiddento attend.

With her gone,I no longer belong here. I have no place in England. I need to escape. Thisland is not safe. It is the domain of Boleyn, not Spanish princesses. I have noplace here among them and I never will. Chapuys promises to write to my kin inSpain and urge them to help me escape. I prepare for a life of exile.

“If thisfails, sir, then you must help me to a nunnery where I might take the veil, buteven then I will not be safe from the concubine. She will not rest until I amdead. She will get me in the end.”

I hear thehysteria in my own voice and breathe deep and slow in an attempt to calmmyself. His cool dark eyes look into mine.

“Have peace,my princess. I will do all in my power to free you from this place. In the meantime,very soon you are to be moved to Hunsdon; perhaps things will be better there.”

“I pray it isso, Chapuys. I pray that is so.”

The twenty-sixthday of January dawns bright and cold. I have left my chamber and crept to the terracewhere I once waved farewell to my father. With a shawl clutched tightly aboutmy shoulders, I watch the sun rise. Slowly, the park lightens. I see an owlflap silently home, and I am still standing there when the first rabbits emergeto dance in the pink mist. The household is just beginning to stir when I turnaway and make the stealthy journey through the corridors to my chamber.

Today, mymother is to be interred at Peterborough Cathedral; the name that marks thegrave will make no mention of the twenty or more years she spent as Queen ofEngland, no mention of her victory at Flodden, or the proud day she sent thehead of the defeated Scottish king to my father in France. No mention of her unfalteringdevotion to a country that mistreated her in youth, and again in age andsickness. No mention of me.

For the firsttime, revulsion for my father consumes me. He could have stopped this any timehe desired. He could, even now, curb the actions of his detested wife andreconcile himself with me. I close my eyes and, as I picture my mother’s coffinlowering into the eternal darkness of her tomb, I feel I am buried with her. Ifonly I had the power to curse the name of Boleyn, and cast a hex of misery uponthe king.

The very nextmorning, a messenger arrives from court. He slides from his mount and hurriesinto the great hall where Anne Shelton has been haranguing me over some smallmisdemeanour. She snatches the letter. I see her face turn white and her handcreeps to cover her mouth. The message falls to the floor and I pick it up.

Father hasfallen from his horse. His life is despaired of and his whore, for fear oflosing him, has miscarried of a son.

 I turnstunned eyes upon the messenger. He grows discomforted beneath my glazed starebut cannot seem to look away. It is as if I have been turned to stone. Lastnight I wished misfortune on them both and now it has come to pass, but … I amno witch.

“The – theking will live?”

I mean it as aquestion but it emerges as a statement. The messenger shuffles his feet.

“I understandso. His physician is hopeful, and my lord of Norfolk is furious that word ofthe accident was taken to the queen without his leave. She lost the child, buther…”

“I have nointerest in the state of her health unless…”

I want to add‘unless she should die’ but I know my words will be carried to the king, so Iallow the sentence to trail away.

My mouth turnsup at the corner. The king has been spared and the heir she carried, thehub of all her hopes, is dead. I remember again my bad-wishing of her yesterdayand bite my lip, momentarily fearful of my own powers, but then I shake myshoulders and emit a puff of breath. If I were a sorceress, the concubine wouldnot merely be bereaved of a son. She’d be dead.

In the weeksthat follow I feel as if God, who was certainly deaf to my entreaties before,can suddenly hear my prayers. It is as if Mother is sitting at His right hand,whispering directly