The Concubine (10 page)

“Jade,” Emma said. “Or better still, bloodstone.”

“Then I’ve wasted my dear little ring, and have in exchange this, which is far too big for me.”

Emma eyed the emerald coldly. Another piece of bribery and corruption. Oh, she thought, he may have taken her poor trinket in exchange, but who is deceived by
that
? Emma knew what was afoot; she had noted Sir Thomas’s complaisance, Lady Boleyn’s helplessness; it was a simple, ordinary situation, except for Anne’s behavior. Emma thought that Anne was holding out for some secret reason of her own, making some condition which, up to the present, the King had been unwilling to meet. He would; he was hopelessly infatuated, and since Mistress Boleyn would never give in, he must. He’d give in, and Mistress Boleyn would yield, and on the day when she did, Emma Arnett would quit her service. She had no intention of being a participant in a backstairs intrigue.

She had only stayed at Hever to suit herself. Once she had brought Anne there her work was done, but she had stayed to help nurse her through her cold, and by that time country life had made its appeal to her country blood. And Lady Lucia, rather surprisingly, had not seemed anxious to have her back. So she had stayed on, never quite settled, telling herself that she might move after Christmas, or in the New Year, and then deciding that Hever Castle was as good a place as any in which to winter.

Then one day she went into a haberdasher’s shop at Edenbridge, where the haberdasher’s wife, in the act of measuring off a yard of ribbon, suddenly threw it down, said, “My gingerbread!” and fled to the living quarters. When she returned she apologized and they began to talk about cake making and presently Emma was invited into the room behind the shop to taste the new gingerbread and drink a glass of small beer.

People of the same breed have methods of communication that have little or nothing to do with words; within ten minutes both women felt that they had found a congenial friend and by their third meeting they knew that they shared their beliefs. Emma found herself introduced to a small circle in which the name of her old master, Richard Hunne, was not only remembered but revered as that of a martyr, in which the Pope and all Cardinals and most priests were ill thought of, in which the Bible in English was read by those who could read to those who could not, and was regarded as the final arbiter on every question of belief and behavior. With these people Emma was instantly at home and in their company she was happier than she had been since the dispersal of her family.

In Hever, especially after the King became so frequent a visitor, she was less happy. She, like Norris, felt that the outcome was inevitable, and deplored it, not from any feeling for Anne, but on moral grounds.

Yet even she was puzzled. Tonight, for instance, there lay the great emerald, a gift too costly to have been promoted by any good motive; and there were many others, for which Anne seemed to care little, and which she only wore when the donor was expected. And here was the recipient of such gifts, going in good time to her maidenly bed.

Of the ring she said, “Put it away, it is too big for me.”

Probing, Emma said, “But His Grace will expect you to wear it. It could be made smaller, mistress.”

“I don’t think the King will visit us much in future. He is going to be much occupied by affairs.”

She spoke with as little feeling as though mentioning tomorrow’s weather, and Emma, even more puzzled, put away the emerald and took up the brush and began to brush the long black hair. From her position she could catch, now and again, a glimpse of Anne’s face in the glass. It told her nothing. The eyes wore their look of seeing something far away, and there was sadness in them, but then there always was, even when she was gay and smiling. Under Emma’s hands the hair sprang, warm and lively, and below it was the narrow little skull which housed whatever knowledge, thoughts, and feelings the girl had. What was she thinking?

It had started with the words, “too big for me.” All this talk of great matters, appeals to the Pope, the supplanting of Catherine; even the weight of Henry’s passion seemed too heavy…She thought—Oh, I would so much rather have been Harry’s Countess than Henry’s Queen.

A
T THE END OF THE
hot May day which had seen the overturning of the world, the Pope lay on a bed in a high room overlooking the Tiber. In the streets of Rome the Emperor’s German troops, drunken and completely out of control, were sacking the city more thoroughly that ever the barbarians had done in ancient times.

Clement himself was safe enough. The Castle of San Angelo, built thirteen centuries earlier by the Emperor Hadrian, had proved, before this, to be an impenetrable fortress; and it had food and water for a year. So he lay there, safe in one stony cell in a honeycomb of masonry, with the outer rooms filled with his Cardinals and chaplains and secretaries and chamberlains, and with every entrance and doorway guarded by Swiss soldiers, the most reliable mercenaries in the world. But he could not be thankful, even for safety. He wept, thinking of the Hell let loose in the streets, and of his own helplessness; he, the Pope, the direct successor to St. Peter whom Christ had adjured to be a shepherd to his sheep; he lay here, safe, while the wolves ravaged the flock.

His self-esteem, at no time a very sturdy growth, wilted and died. Why had he failed? He could truly say, even in this stripped-down moment, that he had done his best. He had recognized that these were dangerous times, and one of his first acts as Pope had been to issue an appeal to all the Kings and Princes of Christendom to live in peace, as brothers. Much good that had done! Greed, jealousy and hatred, ambition, rivalry, stupidity and sheer wickedness had made peace impossible.

And what could any man, however clever, however well-meaning, do to manage a world where what was called the Holy Roman Empire contained such discordant elements as Spain, most conservatively pious of all countries, and the German states where the Lutheran heresy had spread like plague? Charles V, head of this grossly overgrown Empire, had let his troops loose in Northern Italy, acting out of rivalry with Francis of France who also coveted that territory. Clement had written to him, sharply one day, appealingly the next, but Charles had done nothing and in the end, when Florence, his birthplace, was threatened, it had seemed to Clement not only good sense but the only possible policy to ally himself with France, and with England, against the Emperor. The King of England had recently been angered by Charles’s breaking of his troth with the Princess Mary and marrying instead another of his cousins, Isabella of Portugal—a mercenary act, for Isabella had a dower of a million ducats.

So it had come to war and the French had been defeated by the Emperor’s forces. And the English, where were they?

Lukewarm from the beginning. And Clement knew why.

Tossing uneasily on the bed the Pope admitted that where Henry of England was concerned, he might possibly have managed things better. Henry was a good churchman and very orthodox; in Leo’s time, when Luther first published his protests and criticisms, Henry had written a book which refuted his arguments and Leo had rewarded him with the title Defender of the Faith. He might, in this war, today so disastrously ending, have done more to live up to that title if Clement had been more obliging.

It was almost two years now since the Pope had first received the information that Henry Tudor believed his marriage to be incestuous and wished to have it annulled. And the request could not have come at a more awkward time, for Clement was then still hoping to make a settlement with Charles, and Charles was nephew to the woman whom Henry wished to put away. It would have been insane to
provoke
Charles while trying to negotiate with him.

And there was another aspect too; less obvious, but fully as important. With heresy spreading every day, it would surely have been a fatal move to admit that a former Pope had been wrong to allow Henry and Catherine to marry. That would have started the so-called reformers screaming that dispensations and annulments were like pardons, on sale to anyone who could pay.

He’d had all the relevant papers brought out of the archives and studied them carefully. Arthur Prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon had been young, he fourteen, she fifteen, and the boy already sick of consumption, so fragile that the records hinted at advice given that the marriage should not be consummated for a year, or two. Clement could not blame Julius for deciding, on the face of such evidence, that Catherine was free to marry Arthur’s brother; he’d have done the same himself.

So to Henry’s pleas he had returned noncommittal answers, wishing to anger no one; and as a result, when it came to war with the Emperor he’d had little help from the English.

He was sorry for that, now. A company or two of English archers might well have turned the tide of the battle today. Still, he did not see how he could have acted otherwise.

Presently he began to think about the future. In the long history of the Church there had been one almost exactly comparable incident, when, more than two hundred years ago, Boniface VIII had quarreled with the French King and had been taken prisoner. For the next seventy years the Papal Court had been not in Rome, but in a dusty little French provincial town named Avignon. Clement very much doubted whether, if he left his safe refuge and surrendered to Charles, he would be allowed to set up his Court in some dusty little Spanish town. There was less respect for the Church, less chivalry in these days. Besides, those seventy years had been immensely troubled; at times there had been two Popes. A repetition of that kind of thing could be fatal just now.

He contemplated staying inside the safe fortress of San Angelo for a year; that would give him twelve months to negotiate and hope for a change in the general situation; but what a year it would be; a state of siege, every message having to be smuggled in or out; the constant watching for signs of the pestilence which invariably appeared when too many men were crowded together for too long. And outside, the world going on without a Pope. Imagine the gloating joy of the heretics! No Pope for a whole year, they would say, and who had missed him?

No, he must get out. He must get out and contrive, with God’s help, to placate Henry Tudor without too grossly offending the Emperor.

The often-used, pious phrase, “with God’s help” slid through his mind and then turned and came back and leered at him. Where had God been all day? Where was He
now
while the drunken Lutheran soldiers raped the city and the Vicar of Christ cowered helpless? To face such things with a steadfast mind demanded the faith of a saint; and even the saints had known their moments of black disbelief and despair. One must believe that what happened on this earth was permitted to happen by God’s will; yet who could believe that this overthrow of holy things, this bloodshed, this triumph of evil was in accord with the will of God?

He should pray; he knew that, but in these last months he had prayed with the utmost fervor; the set stylized prayers of the Rubric and the other sort, the simple humble appeals from the heart. Yet this had happened…

He rose, slipped on a thin silk robe and prostrated himself before his prie-dieu.

Some long time later he stood up, still uncomforted, and knew that it was useless to go to bed again. So he rang a bell and sent someone to look for Cardinal Campeggio, who was one of those who had fled with him to San Angelo; that in itself proved Campeggio’s allegiance; several Cardinals, in sympathy with the Emperor, had thought it safe to stay in the city. Clement liked Campeggio, a singularly levelheaded man, capable alike of silence and of outspokenness.

“If he is awake,” Clement said, considerately, “I wish to see him. If he is asleep, leave him be.”

Campeggio was not asleep. In the whole of Rome that night the only people who slept were babies so young that the security of their mothers’ arms was enough for them, and such of the invading soldiers to whom drinking mattered more than loot or rape and who had by this time fallen into sodden stupor.

In the safe, if not very comfortable room, the two men sat on hard stools and talked; first about the day’s disaster, about which there was nothing new to say; and then about the future which was so vague and speculative. Campeggio, having taken the measure of Clement’s mood, racked his brain for some consoling words, and presently said,

“I am as certain as one can be of anything that this is not the Emperor’s doing. This is the work of the Duke of Bourbon and the Prince of Orange and the rabble who call themselves their followers but refuse to be controlled by them. Charles is a faithful son of the Church, and when he knows what has taken place in Rome this day he will be appalled, and rightly.” He paused for a moment and then added, “The Empire is so vast and so varied; I think it would be wrong to allow those few dissident German states to color one’s view of the whole. For myself, I sometimes doubt if they were ever converted at all. They were the last people to renounce paganism, and now infected by Luther they have reverted. But they are
not
the Empire.”

“You think I should hasten to make peace with the Emperor?”

“I think that the well-being of the world depends upon the unity between the Papacy and the Empire. They are
natural
allies. The French are frivolous and unreliable; and the English have only one interest in Europe—their unrealistic dream of regaining France. The fact that the Turks are in Hungary affects them less, I am sure, than the price of mutton.”

Clement remembered that during his predecessor’s reign Campeggio had been sent to England to ask Henry’s support in a crusade against the Turks. The mission had been a failure, but Campeggio had made himself agreeable, and had been given an English bishopric.

He said, “I have been thinking about the English. You know them. Do you understand them?”

“No. Nobody does. They do not even understand themselves. Of all people they are the most unpredictable—and the most hypocritical. Their King is typical of them all.”

“He failed to send the help he promised,” Clement agreed.

“I was thinking rather about his pious whimperings with regard to his conscience; he doubts the legality of his marriage yet he continues to cohabit with his wife.”

“So he should,” Clement said, gently but firmly. “Until the marriage is declared unlawful he would be wrong to put her aside.”

“Things come to my ears,” Campeggio said, “rumors with which no one would trouble your Holiness. And the latest thing I heard from England is that it is less a matter of his conscience than his liking for another lady—one of his wife’s maids-of-honor.”

“Oh,” Clement said. Rumor could never be relied upon, nor could it be discounted; there was often a grain of truth in the wildest story. “But even so—Kings allow themselves a good deal of latitude in such matters without attempting to overturn a marriage of long standing.”

“And so, no doubt, would he,” Campeggio said drily, “but the lady has some say in the matter. And her ultimate intention is surely signified by the fact that she has for three years resisted all his attempts to seduce her. Or so gossip says.”

“And that is a very unusual form for gossip to take! Do you know her name?”

“She is Anne Boleyn, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, an upstart. On the distaff side the girl is well-connected. And one thing I do know about the English. If the King were ever in a position to marry her, they’d accept her. They think so highly of their Englishness that they’d regard an English commoner as more than the equal of any foreign princess.”

Clement was regarding the thing from a different angle.

“Boleyn. No friend to Wolsey.”

“Wolsey,” Campeggio said, “has no friends. He has henchmen, and tools and sycophants and partisans. But that is by the way. Wolsey is a sound churchman, he is opposed to any change. Thomas Boleyn, like all his kind, would welcome any change which brought them ten pence.”

“Lutheran?”

“No-o-o. That wouldn’t suit the King. He’s shrewd enough. He can see, as any sensible man would, that the logical end of heresy is anarchy. Throw down the Church and how long would the throne stand? This, going on outside there…” the noise came up to them, muted a little, but still clearly enough, for the screams of the victims to be distinguished from the drunken yells of the victors, “that is Luther’s work. Begin by treating your parish priest with contempt and you end by ignoring the orders of your own leader in war. Henry knows that. There’ll be no Lutherans in England while he sits on the throne. But there are many changes, short of that, which might come about if new men like Thomas Boleyn ever had, say, half the power Wolsey now holds. The English,” he hesitated; he had no wish to depress Clement any further; on the other hand an hour of gossip and mere academic discussion might help to divert him. “The English have never, I feel, been fully integrated; they’re Christian, some are even pious, but their Englishness gets in the way; they have this ancient law against receiving instructions from any outside power; it has never been repealed and could at a moment’s notice be considered to apply even to a Papal Bull. There was that London tailor, Richard Hunne, who if he hadn’t lost his nerve and hanged himself before his trial, was prepared to sue his parish priest under that old law, you may remember. They resent paying what they call Peter’s Pence; they resent the payment of annates; they troop in their thousands to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, and one out of every two boys born in England is named for him, but if the same situation arose again and the King fell out with a Bishop—they’d take the King’s side to a man. A very curious people; one has only to watch them keeping Christmas to realize that.”