“There is no further news of your marriage,” said the Queen firmly. “Nor do I think there will be. These friendships with foreign countries are flimsy. They come and go.”
“It would be so much better if I were married to someone at home here,” said Mary.
“Perhaps that may happen,” replied the Queen soothingly. “Who shall say?”
Mary turned and lifted a radiant face to her mother. “You see Mother, not only should I marry someone who was of my own country…speaking my own language, understanding our ways…but I should be with you. Imagine, forevermore we should be together! Perhaps I should not always live at Court. Perhaps I should have a house in the country; but you would come and visit me there…and often I should be at Court. When my children are born you would be beside me. Would that not be so much happier than our being separated and your hearing the news through messengers?”
“It would be the happiest state which could befall us both.”
“Then you will tell my father so?”
“My darling, do you think I have any influence with your father?”
“Oh…but you are my mother.”
The Queen’s brows were drawn together in consternation and, realizing that she had let a certain bitterness creep into her voice, she said quickly: “Kings are eager to make marriages of state for their sons and daughters. But depend upon it, Mary, that if I have any influence it shall be used to bring you your heart’s desire.”
They were silent for a while and the Queen wondered whether Mary was really thinking of Reginald Pole when she talked of marriage, and whether it was possible for one so young to be in love with a man.
While they sat thus the King came into the apartment. He was alone, which was unusual, for he rarely moved about the Palace without a little cluster of attendants. He was more somberly clad than usual and he looked like a man with a private sorrow.
The Queen and Princess rose, and both curtseyed as he approached.
“Ha!” he said. “So our daughter is with you. It is pleasant to see you back at Court, daughter.”
“I thank Your Grace,” murmured Mary.
“And you play the virginals as well as ever, I believe. You must prove this to us.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Do you wish me to now?”
“No…no. I have a matter of some importance to discuss with your mother, and I am going to send you away. Go and practice on the virginals so that you will not disappoint me when you next show me your progress.”
As Mary curtseyed again and went away, Katharine was thinking: What can I say to him now, knowing what I do? How can anything ever be the same between us again?
As soon as Mary had left them, Henry turned to her, his hands clasped behind his back, on his face an expression of melancholy, his mouth tight and prim, the general effect being that before Katharine stood a man who had forced himself to a painful duty.
He began: “Katharine, I have a grievous matter to discuss with you.”
“I am eager to discuss that matter with you,” she answered.
“Ah,” he went on, “I would give half my kingdom if by so doing I could have prevented this from happening.”
“I pray you tell me what is in your mind.”
“Katharine, you were poor and desolate when I married you; you were a stranger in a strange land; you were the widow of my brother, and it seemed that there was no home for you in the country of your birth nor here in the country of your adoption.”
“I shall never forget those days,” she answered.
“And I determined to change all that. I was young and idealistic, and you were young too, then, and beautiful.”
“Both qualities which I no longer possess.”
The King turned his eyes to the ceiling. “That could be of no importance in this matter. But it seems that learned men…men of the Church…have examined our marriage…or what we believed to be our marriage…and they have found that it is no true marriage.”
“Then they deceive you,” she said fiercely.
“As I told them. But they are learned men and they quote the law to me. They read the Bible to me and tell me that I have sinned against God’s laws. We have both sinned, Katharine.”
“This makes no sense,” retorted Katharine. “How could we have sinned by marrying?”
“It is so clear to me now. It is in the Bible. Read it, Katharine. Read the twenty-first verse of the twentieth chapter of Leviticus. Then you will see that ours was no true marriage and that for all these years we have been living in sin.”
Katharine stared at him blankly. This was no surprise to her, but to hear it from his own lips, to see that stubborn determination which she knew so well, light up his eyes, shocked her more deeply than she had ever been shocked before.
“I know,” went on the King, “that this is a matter which distresses you, even as it distresses me. I will admit to a temptation to turn my back on this, to scoff at my critics, to say, Let us forget that I married my brother’s wife. But I can hear the voice of God speaking to me through my conscience…”
“When did your conscience first begin to trouble you?” she asked.
“It was when I heard the suggestion made by the Bishop of Tarbes; when he questioned Mary’s legitimacy.”
At the mention of her daughter, Katharine’s bravado crumpled; she looked older suddenly and a very frightened woman.
“You see,” went on the King, “much as this distresses me, and indeed it breaks my heart to consider that we can no longer live together…”
“Which we have not done for some time,” she reminded him. “We had ceased to be bedfellows before your conscience was troubled.”
“Your poor state of health…my consideration for you…my fears that another pregnancy would be beyond your strength…”
“And your interest in others…,” murmured Katharine.
But Henry went on as though he had not heard her: “What a tragedy when a King and Queen, so long married, so devoted to each other, should suddenly understand that their marriage is no marriage, and that they must separate. I have given this matter much thought I have said to myself, What will become of her? For myself, I have not cared. But for you, Katharine…you whom I always, until this time, thought of as my wife…” He paused, pretending to be overcome by his emotions.
She wanted to shout at him that she despised him, that she knew it was not his conscience that was behind this dastardly plot but his desire for a new wife. She wanted to say: How dare you cast insults at a Princess of Spain? And what of our daughter? Will you, merely that you may satisfy your lust in the sanctity of a marriage bed, cast me off and proclaim our daughter a bastard!
It was the thought of Mary which was unnerving her. Her usual calm had deserted her; she could feel her mouth trembling so that it would not form the words she wanted to utter; her limbs were threatening to collapse.
Henry went on: “Knowing your serious nature, your love of the Church and all it stands for, it seemed to me that you would wish to enter a convent and there pass the rest of your days in peace. It should be a convent of your choosing and you should be its abbess. You need have no fear that you would lose any of the dignity of your rank…”
A voice within her cried: Do you think you could strip me of that? You have insulted me by telling me that I lived with you for all these years when I was not your legal wife; and now you dare tell me—the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand—that you will not rob me of my rank!