A Fortress of Feathers

VIGINTI UNUS [21]

The place we were sent to was bland and hardly memorable. The More castle it was called. The grounds were tidy but plain, hard brush interrupted by the occasional tattered rose. The walls of the living spaces were drab and gray, the smell of damp stone haunting the halls. The journey had aged Catherine. Her separation from her daughter Mary had aged her even more. Her fiery orange hair had turned dull and was shot with ashy grey, and many of her once well-tailored dresses hung off of her frame.

We had received some news from the palace. White Margaret's long time friend John, the smith she had met on in our youth, had been arrested for shouting at Anne Boleyn in court. The castle we had once known and loved had died, and with it, the only home I had known since my childhood.

King Henry married Anne Boleyn secretly a few years after we arrived in our first glorified prison. Their marriage was legitimized on the basis that Henry's marriage to Catherine was a sin, due to her previous marriage to his brother Arthur. The celebrations from the marriage were said to have been grand and jovial, the new, young, beautiful queen charming all who laid eyes on her. Finally, a crown was placed on her head, the bulk of it heavy upon her pale, swan-like neck.

Henry requested that Catherine give the crown jewels to Anne Boleyn. Her answer was decisive. "I shall not give them to a person who is the scandal of Christendom and a disgrace to you," she wrote back, hands shaking with her anger.

Mary and Catherine were not allowed visitation, nor correspondence of any kind. That did not stop Catherine's supporters. They smuggled letters back and forth, and Margaret, Molly, and I would take turns going out to the gates to receive them. Other letters that arrived were from the King. According to Mary, she received similar letters. In them, the King bargained that Mary and Catherine may be reunited in a grander palace, if they only recognize Anne Boleyn as the true queen. Both refused.

Their relationship was confined to paper, words scratched in black ink by the light of a candle deep in the night, their love for each other etched into each secretive syllable.

I believe Henry grew suspicious that Catherine had made too many friends at the More castle. We were forced to relocate to the Kimbolton castle, a stately mansion that had fallen into disrepair. It was located in a region where the fog rarely cleared, and a slicing cold wind blew throughout the year. Upon arrival, Catherine located her chambers and lay down on the dusty pillows. We moved her belongings into the room. Catherine never again left that room, except for mass.

Her skin grew gaunt, and her eyes turned grey and hooded. She was frequently ill, the weather of the fenlands taking a toll on her health. She fasted frequently, and prayed near constantly. We were with her at nearly all times of the day, but we hardly spoke anymore. The three of us shared a small room directly across the hall from Catherine, but often found ourselves sleeping on the floor of her room, for fear that she would leave in the night.

We only ever called her Queen Catherine. We used her full title more than we ever had when we lived in the castle. She still signed her letters with her royal seal. I now have to wonder whether it would have been better for her to have given up. Her constant faith only kept her scrabbling for a string of hope that had long since slipped away.

In the winter of 1536, her health grew worse than usual. She desperately wrote to Mary, writing new letters nearly every day. One day, she penned one to the king.

"My most dear lord, king and husband,
The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles.
For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also.
For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired.
I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three.
For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for.
Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
Katharine the Quene"

It is in this way that I am still cared for now, through Catherine's forethought and compassion. Catherine passed from this life in late spring, the chill of winter exiting her body in a final puff of breath. There was no grand funeral, as would have been fitting for a queen so loved by her people, who had ridden into battle for her country and beliefs, in more ways than just the literal. Catherine was dead, and our lives had, effectively, come to an end. We were forever tied to Catherine, and in her absence, there was little left to do but wait for our time to come. Because of Catherine, we were able to do so comfortably, in a place by the sea, the radiance of the sun reflecting off of our skin, the gloom of the years past too strong upon us to allow for any warmth in our hearts.

Anne Boleyn would go on to be one of the most infamous queens in history, executed by Henry on charges of incest. Whether there was truth to these charges, none may ever know. She too failed to produce a male heir for the king, perhaps leading to his quick disposal of her. Henry would marry a total of six times, never producing a surviving heir. Henry FitzRoy, the son of Bessie Blount, would die in young adulthood. Anne Boleyn's single daughter, Elizabeth, and Catherine's daughter Mary, would also become famous queens of England. Far, far into the future, the Kimbolton castle would become a school, and student's would share tales of the spirit of Catherine of Aragon haunting the halls.

It was a pleasure to serve Queen Catherine, and a horror to watch her torn down by the greed and lust of others. I await my reunion with her, and Lucy, who was lost so long ago, upon my own passing. May Catherine's tale of faith, love, and duty, live on long past myself and my friends.

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