A Confession in Six Parts
I. Catherine of Aragon
You were the first, Catherine,
to lie in that great bed,
your body a map of Spain
spread out on English sheets.
Did you feel the weight of empire
pressing down on your belly?
Did you count the stars on the canopy
as Henry rutted above you,
praying for a son?
Twenty years you tried,
your womb a battlefield
of lost hopes and bloody moons.
How many times did you wash the sheets,
scrubbing away the evidence
of your failure?
They say you went to your grave
still calling yourself queen.
I wonder, did the title taste
like ashes in your mouth?
Or was it sweet,
like the memory of pomegranates
from a home you'd never see again?
II. Anne Boleyn
Witch, they called you, Anne.
As if ambition in a woman
must be magic.
Your eyes, dark as sin,
your laugh, a siren's call.
Did you know, as you danced
in that French-perfumed whirlwind,
that you were dancing towards the scaffold?
Did you feel the axe's kiss
in every touch of Henry's hand?
They say you had six fingers.
I count them in my dreams sometimes:
one for each year of your reign,
one for each charge against you,
and the last... ah, the last
for the daughter you left behind.
Elizabeth, lioness of England.
Your greatest gift and your revenge.
I wonder if you saw her future
in those last, frantic moments.
A queen in her own right,
no man to chain her to a bed
or judge her by her womb.
III. Jane Seymour
Sweet Jane, they called you.
Modest Jane. Gentle Jane.
As if a woman must be sweet
to swallow such a bitter pill.
Did you know, as you took Anne's place,
that you were stepping into a dead woman's shoes?
Did you feel her ghost watching
as Henry pawed at your virginal white?
You gave him what he wanted:
a son, an heir, a prince.
Edward, golden boy,
future king of a new Protestant realm.
Was it worth it, Jane?
The childbed fever, the creeping rot,
the death that came for you
just days after your greatest triumph?
They say Henry loved you best.
I wonder if it's easier to love
a woman safely dead,
forever young, forever fertile,
forever compliant.
IV. Anne of Cleves
Anne, my Flanders Mare,
you were the cleverest of us all.
You came wrapped in Holbein's lies,
a diplomatic gift Henry couldn't wait to unwrap.
But when he saw the truth,
you didn't fight, didn't cry.
I see you sometimes, in my dreams,
laughing behind your hand
as you traded a queen's crown
for a queen's ransom.
Rich divorcée, king's beloved sister,
you outlived us all.
Tell me, Anne, in those later years,
as you watched the others fall,
did you ever regret your escape?
Or did you raise a glass each night,
toasting the phantom pain
of a head still firmly attached?
V. Katherine Howard
Oh, Katie, sweet Katie,
child playing in a woman's game.
Did they tell you the rules
before they pushed you onto the board?
Did anyone warn you
that a queen can fall just as hard as a pawn?
I see you dancing down the hall,
practicing for your own beheading.
Seventeen and terrified,
but still a queen to the last.
They say your ghost still haunts Hampton Court,
screaming for mercy that never came.
You could have been me, Katie.
In another life, another time,
just another girl with stars in her eyes
and a powerful man in her bed.
But you drew the short straw,
and paid for it with your pretty head.
VI. Catherine Parr
Last and lasting,
you closed the book on his story.
Widow, wife, survivor,
you walked through fire
and came out tempered steel.
I see you poring over your books,
quill scratching out your own story
in the margins of history.
Did you taste freedom in the ink?
Did you feel the weight lift
when Henry breathed his last?
But even you couldn't escape, could you?
Thomas Seymour, dashing and deadly,
Love's last gamble that came up snake eyes.
Childbed took you in the end,
just like Jane, just like so many of us.
A common end for uncommon women.
Epilogue:
Six women, six queens,
six sides of a cursed die.
We rolled into his bed one by one,
some by choice, most by chance,
all of us gambling with our lives.
Divorced, beheaded, died,
Divorced, beheaded, survived.
A schoolyard rhyme to sum up
the bloodstained years,
the lost babies, the stolen lives.
They call us Henry's wives,
as if we were nothing more
than extensions of his will,
branches of his stunted family tree.
But we were more, weren't we?
We were oceans, containing multitudes.
We were fire, reshaping the world.
We were women, which was always
going to be our greatest crime.
I dream of us sometimes,
gathered around a table like knights,
our crowns battle-dented but bright.
Catherine with her faith,
Anne with her wit,
Jane with her son,
Anne with her freedom,
Katherine with her youth,
Catherine with her books.
And there at the head of the table,
an empty chair, a tarnished crown.
Henry, the great prize we all won,
the booby prize that cost us everything.
Let them remember him as they will:
King, tyrant, reformer, fool.
But remember us too:
Not as wives, not as wombs,
But as queens of ourselves,
Authors of our own tales.
For we were more than history writes,
More than the bed we shared,
More than the blood we shed.
We were women. We are women still.
And our story isn't over yet.
…
Hampton Court Palace
1 September 2024
Absolutely stunning MissGloria loved this so much
Sitting out in my garden at 6:30 in the morning I read your beautiful writing. I felt the tears for those queens, for all women actually, while still waiting for the fates of our daughters and granddaughters as powerful white men still control their noose.