Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [316]
Why then should King Henry’s business have been the cause of a quarrel between Cecily and her husband? The truth was that she hardly knew herself. It had begun so innocently, too, with a chance remark from her one day that it hardly seemed right that the king should be putting away his loyal wife after all these years.
“Ah,” he had looked at her with a trace of condescension, “but you must consider his difficulty. He only has a daughter, and he needs a son.”
“So if I only give you daughters,” she demanded, “will you be putting me away?”
“Don’t be foolish, Cecily,” he said. “I am not a king.”
Why was it that his manner irritated her? Was it the trace of smugness in his voice? Since he had been making a name for himself in the guild, he had become a little bit self-important sometimes, in her view.
“His daughter could be queen. There have been reigning queens in their own right before now,” she pointed out correctly.
“You don’t understand the situation in England,” he replied, dismissively. There was no doubt of it now. He was talking to her as if she were a fool. She stared at him furiously. Who did he think he was? But then hadn’t there always been a trace of contempt in his attitude towards her, ever since that foolish incident with the saffron scarf, before they were even married? However, she had no wish to quarrel with her husband, and so she did not reply.
As time went by, the events in England became more shocking. Every kind of pressure was put on the poor queen to make her give up her position, but her Spanish pride and her piety made her declare, quite rightly, that she was King Henry’s loyal wife until the Holy Father told her otherwise. Meanwhile the king, it was said, was bewitched by a young lady called Anne Boleyn, and wanted to marry her as soon as possible. But though the Pope agreed to look into the matter, he still had not granted King Henry his annulment even though the king had begun to hint that he might go ahead anyway. Cecily had been shocked.
“How can the king even think of marrying his whore”—this was how many people referred to Boleyn, despite Anne’s well-known refusal to give her body to the king without a wedding ring—“until the Holy Father has issued his ruling?” she asked.
“You have not considered the Pope’s position,” Tidy replied, in a somewhat pompous tone. And he explained how the new King of Spain, who was Queen Catherine’s nephew, had also inherited the huge Hapsburg family dominions in other parts of Europe, together with the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Hapsburg family pride was too strong. The Emperor would never allow his aunt to be cast aside by the upstart Tudor king of little England. “The Pope dare not offend the Emperor, so he can’t give Henry his annulment,” Tidy explained. “Everyone knows that,” he added, unnecessarily.
But to Cecily, this wasn’t the point. King Henry was defying the Pope. And when King Henry declared that he was Supreme Head of the English Church instead of the Pope, and told the Holy Father that if he excommunicated him “I care not a fig,” her outrage and contempt for the king were complete. The English Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, resigned at once. “More at least is a true Catholic,” she declared. But what of the rest of Henry’s subjects? What of the English Catholics of Dublin and the Pale?
“It was you and your friends,” she