17
Mary
C
ome what may, whether it meant the best or the worst for me, in England I must remain, so I decided to be brave. I assembled all my household, my servants, guards, and loyal retainers, and every staunch Catholic who would follow me, and bade them dress in deepest black velvet and bloodred satin, and hang round their necks their crucifixes, and either carry in hand or wear at their waist their well-fingered rosaries, and mount their horses and ride with me to London. And all six of my priests, despite the great risk to them, took up staves topped with gleaming gold and silver crosses, and donned their godly vestments, and accompanied us to serve as God’s standard-bearers. And so we took to the road, a thousand strong and devout Catholics.
The common folk lined the parched and dusty roads to watch us pass, stiff-backed and unyielding. Despite the sweltering August heat and our heavy velvets and stultifying satins, we never for an instant faltered, and rode with calm dignity to London. The humble people could not fail to be impressed and raised their voices to bless and cheer us as we passed. Some would later swear that they saw in the clouds above us a phantom army of medieval Crusaders, wearing armor and the red cross on their white tunics, riding right in step with us. When I heard, it gladdened my heart, and I hoped fervently that it was true. Surely it was a sign from God, and it gave me comfort and courage to believe that those brave men and women who had gone to the Holy Land, some never to return, were with us in spirit.
“If God is for us,” I told my people in proud, ringing tones, “none can be against us!”
And with those words I nudged my mount with my booted heel, stiffened my spine, held my head up high, and rode through the gates of Whitehall to meet my brother and settle this matter once and for all. I was weary beyond words of living in fear, and of being harassed, hounded, and threatened by godless men whose only religion was gold, who tried to mold my conscience as if it were made of clay to suit their avaricious ambitions.
They did not want to let me see Edward, but I insisted. Curiously, the royal bedchamber stank of rotting fish, but the moment I spied my brother I forgot all about it. He looked so small lying there in that great bed, the one that had belonged to Father. His face was nearly as white as the pillows his head lay upon. Up close, I could see the fading marks of measles and smallpox standing out starkly against his pallor. He wore a gold-embroidered nightcap to hide the fact that he had lost all his hair.
My nose crinkled and my stomach lurched; the rotting fishy odor that pervaded the room was stronger about the bed and impossible to ignore. Forcing myself to sniff it out, to discover its source, I moved around the bed, and at the foot I braced myself and turned back the covers. I gasped and leapt back, clutching both my hands over my mouth to stifle my scream. I staggered and swayed and had to clutch one of the great gilded bedposts to keep from falling. I feared I would vomit at the sight that lay before me. Tied tight to the soles of my brother’s feet with rough twine that bit most cruelly into his flesh were a pair of rotting fish, so far gone that in places I could actually glimpse the white of bone. And there was worse, much worse—the condition of my brother’s feet made me gag and want to turn away and run. What were the men entrusted with the care of him thinking? Every toenail had fallen out and against the pale white skin there were red streaks and mottled black and green sores rimmed in red and oozing yellow pus, and there was dried blood caked around the twine.
Edward opened his eyes and looked at me, and I was startled to see how large they looked; the fever lent them an unexpected brightness and made them seem even bluer than they ever had before.
“Oh my
poor, poor
brother!” I wailed, and, heedless of the proper ceremony due his station, I rushed to his side, and sank down onto the bed beside him, facing him. When I reached beneath the purple velvet coverlet and white sheets and tried to take his hand in mine I discovered that he was wearing white silk gloves, stained with the same telltale yellow pus.
My eyes must have looked like pools of pity for he said to me, “I do not want your pity, Mary.”
A fit of coughing convulsed him, and he struggled to pull himself up higher upon the pillows, scowling at me when I came to help him, proudly disdaining to proffer any thanks. His hand flailed out blindly to grope for a handkerchief on the bedside table. When I picked it up and offered it to him he glared at me and snatched it from my hand but nonetheless clutched it to his lips. When the coughing subsided and he lowered it I saw it was stained with blackish-red bile.
“And do you also disdain your sister’s love, Edward?” I asked gently. Then, without waiting for an answer, I continued, gesturing down at his ruined feet, “Oh, Edward, what have they done to you?”
“When the doctors failed to cure me with medicines and herbs, blistering and bleeding, Northumberland, in desperation to save my life, and to save England from
you
and your papist ways, sought the advice of others—quacks, charlatans, miracle workers, wise men and women, even witches in the service of Satan—all tempted by the promise of riches if they could effect a cure and sworn to secrecy on pain of a horrible and lingering death. And it was the opinion of one wise-woman Northumberland consulted that a pair of fish should be bound live, one each, to the soles of my feet, securely with twine lest they in their death throes thrash free, and as they rotted the pestilence and putrescence that afflicts my lungs would be drawn down through my limbs and out through the soles of my feet into the rotting carcasses of the fish as like attracts like, and then, when nothing but bones was left, I would be cured.”
“But that is absurd!” I cried, horrified to learn that any quack who wished to was allowed to attempt to restore the King’s health.
In a peeved, angry tone, Edward went on to tell me that he had also been made to eat thrice daily a broth made from a black cat thrown into a kettle and boiled alive and left constantly to stew and simmer. He had even been given minute doses of poison in the theory that it would murder the disease and save, rather than take, his life; unfortunately one of the effects of this had been the loss of all his hair and nails. And to cure the resulting gangrene, a blood-charmer had been brought in who had danced newborn-naked, with his skin painted like a heathen’s with strange symbols, round and round Edward’s bed, shrieking some shrill gibberish, and then bathed my brother’s ruined feet and hands with the urine of fair-haired virgins that had been collected at dawn on May Day morning and bottled and saved to treat conditions such as this. Another suggested drinking nightly before bed a large goblet of red wine with twenty or so crickets floating and drowning in it. Another put my poor brother on a strict diet of nothing but boiled carrot mush for each of his three daily meals to restore his strength and vigor augmented by a spoonful of honey in which a little brown mouse was preserved every hour upon the hour to cure his cough. Another tried to burn his fever out by packing his frail little body in slivers of boiled onions so densely that only his eyes, nose, and mouth were left uncovered. And when that failed, another quack insisted that a sure cure for consumption could be wrought by swallowing seven live baby frogs each morning before breakfast. One afternoon my brother even awoke from a drugged slumber to find a circle of smiling nude men and women wearing antlers and animal masks and garlands of wildflowers surrounding his bed holding hands and chanting. Before they departed, they propped Edward up in bed and gave him a sweet, soothing drink with a very pleasant taste and showered him with flowers and festooned his bed and chamber with wreaths and garlands until it looked a very garden and threw wide the windows to let the sunshine in. Another time, a more sinister naked coven cut the throat of a black cock at the stroke of midnight and drained it into a chalice which Northumberland, almost weeping and begging God to forgive them all, implored Edward to drink for England’s sake. And two of their members lay down naked beside Edward in his bed and copulated, explaining that to save his life they must make a new life which, out of their devotion to the King they would, when the time for its birth drew nigh, come to have birthed in this very chamber, in Edward’s bed beside him, just as it was conceived, so the moment it emerged from the mother’s womb Edward might lay his hands on the infant and let it absorb his illness so that he might recover and reign happy, prosperous, and long over England; for the King and the gold Northumberland was paying them, they were willing to make the sacrifice. And on the advice of yet another the Duke of Northumberland himself had tenderly taken up my brother’s weak, emaciated body in his own arms, as Edward was no longer able to walk, and carried him through a flock of sheep as they left their pen in the morning to go out to graze and laid him down to rest in their hay, still warm from their wooly bodies. And later that day, after he had slept, Edward was made to suckle the milk directly from a sheep’s teats as if he were indeed a little lamb. But all to no avail. My brother was clearly dying and the remedies they subjected him to were barely better than torture.
As I sat and listened to this catalog of horrors, tears poured down my face.
“Oh, Edward!” I shook my head and the lump in my throat prevented me from saying more.
“So, Mary,” Edward said, “you have come to vex me further about that papist pother you cling to so tenaciously. My Council tells me that you refuse to obey and conform to my laws, and have, by your example, encouraged others to likewise ignore and flout my laws. By doing so you deny my sovereignty . . .”
“Edward, no, I . . .”
“
Silence!
I am King and I am speaking and you
will
listen!” Raising his voice brought on another bout of coughing and he grudgingly accepted another handkerchief from me, which, like the other, came away stained black and red. Trying to pretend nothing had happened, he went on speaking. “Your nearness to us in blood, your greatness in estate as a daughter and sister of kings, and the tumultuous and precarious conditions of our time, make your fault all the greater. And now I will say no more”—he shut his eyes and leaned back, looking all the more pale and weak—“because my duty would compel me to use much harsher words, which you deserve, but which I, out of love for you as my sister, will spare you, suffice it to say that I am king of this realm and I will see my laws obeyed and those who break them shall be punished if they do not mend their ways.”
“But Edward, dear, it was the faith I was raised in, and I am too old and ill to change my ways!” I insisted.
“Ill?”
He arched his brows at me and with a movement of his eyes indicated the condition of his body, then glared hard at me.
I shut my eyes at my ill-chosen words; indeed, compared to Edward I was in glowing health, even with my megrims, toothaches, and cramping monthly agony. I knew nothing I could say would erase them, so I pressed on. “Brother, you did agree not to take the Mass away from me!” I reminded him.
“But only temporarily,” Edward insisted, “so that you might be weaned from your imbecility while you learned to embrace the Protestant faith.”
“That I can
never
do! Brother”—I softened my tone and reached out for his hand, which he jerked away—“although Our Lord has blessed you with greater gifts and knowledge superior to others of your tender years, it is not possible that at your age you can be a judge in matters of religion. When you have attained riper and fuller years . . .”
I gasped, realizing what I had just said, as Edward glared at me. Gulping hard and inwardly kicking myself for the insensitivity of my words, I rushed on. “In the last resort there are only two things that matter: the body and the soul. And my soul belongs to God, but I gladly offer my body to Your Majesty, better that you take my life than take away the religion I was brought up in and desire to live and die in.”
“Go away, Mary. You weary me!” Edward sighed, making a shooing motion with his hand as he slumped back against the pillows and closed his eyes. “You may have your Mass if you must, provided you go about it quietly and without grandiose show and display. Later, when—if—” he hastily amended, “I am better and have attained riper and fuller years”—there was a cruel mockery in his voice as he repeated my poorly chosen words—“we will discuss this further, but for now, go and leave me in peace.”
Softly I tiptoed back and bent over the bed and pressed a gentle kiss onto his feverish brow. “Thank you, brother dear,” I whispered. “Rest assured, you are in my thoughts and prayers; I shall pray every hour for your recovery. Please, give no credit to any person who might desire to make Your Grace think evil of me. I am, as I have always been and always will be, your humble, obedient, and unworthy, but
always
loving, sister.”
“Go away, Mary!”
Edward groaned feebly.
And then I left him to sleep, knowing that soon, no matter how hard or often I prayed, unless it pleased God to work a miracle, Edward would soon be sleeping eternally in his grave.
The next morning, before I embarked on the return journey, I went to bid Edward farewell, but the Duke of Northumberland was there, barring the door against me with his own stocky determined body.