Scary Stories

108

Bloody Mary, Quite Contrary

A Legend of Mary Tudor, Queen of England

retold by S.E. Schlosser

"Mary, Mary..." the half-heard whisper woke her in the darkness before dawn.
Darkness. How appropriate. These days, it seemed as if her whole life was in darkness.

It had not always been this way. She was born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England on February 18, 1516. As the eldest daughter and only surviving child of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Mary was baptized a Catholic shortly after her birth.

Mary lived the life of a privileged Princess in the English court. Then things began to go wrong. The King wanted a son to rule after him. So Henry the VII changed his religious affiliations from Catholic to Protestant, annulled his marriage to Mary's mother and married Anne Boleyn in the hopes that this new Queen would bear him a son.

Mary was embittered by her father's treatment of her mother and angered by his blatant religious heresy. It was not right that the King and his people should abandon the Catholic Church just because the King's wished to annul an unwanted marriage. To Mary's further outrage, Queen Anne - following the birth of her daughter Elizabeth - pressed for an act of Parliament to declare Mary illegitimate. This placed the former princess outside the succession to the throne. To add insult to injury, Mary was forced to serve in the household of her young step-sister as a reminder of her new status as an illegitimate child. The memory made Mary's stomach roil. She rolled over in bed and pulled the pillow over her head.

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary..." the dream whisper came again. Mary clapped her hands over her ears to block it out. The dream voice had plagued her sleep ever since her father's annulment. It was true she felt contrary most of the time, these days. Angry with her parents. Angry with the country that would change its religion at the whim of their King. Angry at everything.

As the sky outside the window turned gray with the approaching dawn, Mary continued to brood on the bloody reign of her royal father. In 1536, Henry had Anne Boleyn beheaded and married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who gave birth to Edward, the long-desired male heir. Jane Seymor insisted that the king make amends with his daughter Mary, and so she re-entered the royal court. But Mary was an outsider now. She was a faithful Catholic and everyone around her was a despised Protestant.

"How does your garden grow," the dream voice murmured soothingly to Mary as the sun rose over the horizon.

When her father died, Mary's half-brother, Edward VI, took the throne. He was a consumptive young man, and Mary knew his reign would not - could not last. But Edward was a Protestant and did not want his Catholic half-sister to take the throne. At the contrivance the powerful Duke of Northumberland, Edward had his cousin Lady Jane Grey appointed as the heir to the throne. When Edward died, Lady Jane would be the new Queen of England, and the Duke could control her through his son.

Edward fell very ill at the age of 15. Mary was on her way to visit her dying half-brother, when a breathless spy hailed Mary's entourage and told Mary her brother had died and that the Duke of Northumberland had seized control of the Tower of London and its armory. He had posted a double line of armed guards round Greenwich Palace to prevent news of the King's death from becoming known and had ordered out a cavalry troop to capture Mary.