The Fifth Queen (31 page)

‘Sir,’ she pleaded more urgently, ‘the night draws near. Before morning I would be upon my road to Calais.’

He looked at her interestedly, and questioned in a peremptory voice:

‘Upon what errand? I have heard of no journeying of yours.’

‘I am not made for courts,’ she repeated.

He said: ‘Anan?’ with a sudden, half-comprehending anger, and she quailed.

‘I will get me gone to Calais,’ she uttered. ‘And then to a nunnery. I am not for this world.’

He uttered a tremendous: ‘Body of God,’ and repeated it four times.

He sprang to his feet and she shrank against the wall. His eyes rolled in his great head, and suddenly he shouted:

‘Ungrateful child. Ungrateful!’ Then he lost words; his swollen brow moved up and down. She was afraid to speak again.

Then, suddenly, with a light and brushing step, the Lord Privy Seal was coming towards them. His sagacious eyes looked from one to the other, his lips moved with their sideways motion.

‘Fiend,’ the King uttered. ‘Give me the letter and get thee out of earshot.’ And whilst Cromwell was bending before his person, he continued: ‘I have pardoned this lady. I would have you both clasp hands.’

Cromwell’s mouth fell open for a minute.

‘Your Highness knoweth the contents?’ he asked. And by then he appeared as calm as when he asked a question about the price of chalk at Calais.

‘My Highness knoweth!’ Henry said friendlily. He crumpled the letter in his hand, and then, remembering its use, moved to put it in his own pouch. ‘This lady has done very well to speak to me who am the fountain-head of power.’

‘Get thee out of earshot,’ he repeated. ‘I have things as to which I would admonish this lady.’

‘Your Highness knoweth …’ Privy Seal began again, then his eye fell upon Winchester, who still stayed by the chapel door at the far end of the corridor. He threw up his hands.

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Traitors have come to you!’

Gardiner, indeed, was gliding towards them, drawn, in spite of all prudence, by his invincible hatred.

The King watched the pair of them with his crafty eyes, deep seated in his head.

‘It is certain that no traitors have come to me,’ he uttered gently; and to Cromwell: ‘You have a nose for them.’

He appeared placable and was very quiet.

Winchester, his black eyes glaring with desire, was almost upon them in the shadows.

‘Here is enough of wrangling,’ Henry said. He appeared to meditate, and then uttered: ‘As well here as elsewhere.’

‘Sir,’ Gardiner said, ‘if Privy Seal misleads me, I have somewhat to say of Privy Seal.’

‘Cousin of Winchester,’ Henry answered. ‘Stretch out your hand, I would have you end your tulzies in this place.’

Winchester, bringing out his words with a snake’s coldness, seemed to whisper:

‘Your Highness did promise that Privy Seal should make me amends.’

‘Why, Privy Seal shall make amends,’ the King answered. ‘It was his man that did miscall thee. Therefore, Privy Seal shall come to dine with thee, and shall, in the presence of all men, hold out to thee his hand.’

‘Let him come, then, with great state,’ the bishop stuck to his note.

‘Aye, with a great state,’ the King answered. ‘I will have an end to these quarrels.’

He set his hand cordially upon Privy Seal’s shoulder.

‘For thee,’ he said, ‘I would have thee think between now and the assembling of the Parliaments of what title thou wilt have to an earldom.’

Cromwell fell upon one knee, and, in Latin, made three words of a speech of thanks.

‘Why, good man,’ the King said, ‘art a man very valuable to me.’ His eyes rested upon Katharine for a moment. ‘I am well watched for by one and the other of you,’ he went on. ‘Each of you by now has brought me a letter of this lady’s.’

Katharine cried out at Gardiner:

‘You too!’

His eyes sought the ground, and then looked defiantly into hers.

‘You did threaten me!’ he said doggedly. ‘I was minded to be betimes.’

‘Why, end it all, now and here,’ the King said. ‘Here is a folly with a silly wench in it.’

‘Here was a treason that I would show your Highness,’ the Bishop said doggedly.

‘Sirs,’ the King said. He touched his bonnet: ‘God in His great mercy has seen fit much to trouble me. But here are troubles that I may end. Now I have ended them all. If this lady would not have her cousin to murder a cardinal, God, she would not. There are a plenty others to do that work.’

He pressed one hand on Cromwell’s chest and pushed him backwards gently.

‘Get thee gone, now,’ he said, ‘out of earshot. I shall speak with thee soon.—And you!’ he added to Winchester.

‘Body of God, Body of God,’ he muttered beneath his breath, as they went, ‘very soon now I can rid me of these knaves,’ and then, suddenly, he blared upon Katharine:

‘Thou seest how I am plagued and would’st leave me. Before the Most High God, I swear thou shalt not.’

She fell upon her knees.

‘With each that speaks, I find a new traitor to me,’ she said. ‘Let me begone.’

He threatened her with one hand.

‘Wench,’ he said, ‘I have had better converse with thee than
with man or child this several years. Thinkest thou I will let thee go?’

She began to sob:

‘What rest may I have? What rest?’

He mocked her:

‘What rest may I have? What rest? My nights are full of evil dreams! God help me. Have I offered thee foul usage? Have I pursued thee with amorous suits?’

She said pitifully:

‘You had better have done that than set me amongst these plotters.’

‘I have never seen a woman so goodly to look upon as thou art,’ he answered.

She covered her face with her hands, but he pulled them apart and gazed at it.

‘Child,’ he said, ‘I will cherish thee as I would a young lamb. Shalt have Cromwell’s head; shalt have Winchester in what gaol thou wilt when I have used them.’

She put her fingers in her ears.

‘For pity,’ she whispered. ‘Let me begone.’

‘Why,’ he reasoned with her, ‘I cannot let thee have Cromwell down before he has called this Parliament. There is no man like him for calling of truckling Parliaments. And, rest assured,’ he uttered solemnly, ‘that that man dies that comes between thee and me from this day on.’

‘Let me begone,’ she said wearily. ‘Let me begone. I am afraid to look upon these happenings.’

‘Look then upon nothing,’ he answered. ‘Stay you by my daughter’s side. Even yet you shall win for me her obedience. If you shall earn the love of the dear saints, I will much honour you and set you on high before all the land.’

She said:

‘For pity, for pity. Here is a too great danger for my soul.’

‘Never, never,’ he answered. ‘You shall live closed in. No man shall speak with you but only I. You shall be as you were
in a cloister. An you will, you shall have great wealth. Your house shall be advanced; your father close his eyes in honour and estate. None shall walk before you in the land.’

She said: ‘No. No.’

‘See you,’ he said. ‘This world goes very wearily with me. I am upon a make of husbandry that bringeth little joy. I have no rest, no music, no corner to hide in save in thy converse and the regard of thy countenance.’

He paused to search her face with his narrow eyes.

‘God knows that the Queen there is no wife of mine,’ he said slowly. ‘If thou wilt wait till the accomplished time.…’

She said:

‘No, no!’ and her voice had an urgent sharpness.

She stretched out both her hands, being still upon her knees. Her fair face worked convulsively, her lips moved, and her hood, falling away from her brows, showed her hair that had golden glints.

‘For pity let me go,’ she moaned. ‘For pity.’

He answered:

‘When I renounce my kingdom and my life!’

From opposite ends of the gallery Winchester and Cromwell watched them with intent and winking eyes.

‘Let us go pray,’ the King said. ‘For now I am in the mood.’

She got upon her legs wearily, and, for a moment, took his hand to steady herself.

T
HE
M
AGISTER
U
DAL
sat in the room of his inn in Paris, where customarily the King of France lodged such envoys as came at his expense. He had been sent there to Latinise the letters that passed between Sir Thomas Wyatt and the King’s Ministers of France, for he was esteemed the most learned man in these islands. He had groaned much at being sent there, for he must leave in England so many loves—the great, blonde Margot Poins, that was maid to Katharine Howard; the tall, swaying Katharine Howard herself; Judge Cantre’s wife that had fed him well; and two other women, with all of whom he had succeeded easily or succeeded in no wise at all. But the mission was so well paid—with as many crowns the day as he had had groats for teaching the Lady Mary of England—that fain he had been to go. Moreover, it was by way of being a favour of Privy Seal’s. The magister had written for him a play in English; the rich post was the reward—and it was an ill thing, a thing the magister dreaded, to refuse the favours of Privy Seal. He consoled himself with the thought that the writing of letters in Latin might wash from his mouth the savour of the play he had written in the vulgar tongue.

But his work in Paris was ended—for with the flight of Cardinal Pole, who had left Paris precipitately upon news that the King of England had sent a drunken roisterer to assassinate him, it was imagined that soon now more concord between
Francis and England might ensue, and the magister sat in his room planning his voyage back to Dover. The room was great in size, panelled mostly in wood, lit with lampwicks that floated in oil dishes and heated with a sea-coal fire, for though it was April the magister was of a cold disposition of the hands and shins. The inn—of the Golden Astrolabe—was kept by an Englishwoman, a masterful widow with a broad face and a great mouth that smiled. She stood beside him there. Forty-seven she might have been, and she called herself the Widow Annot.

The magister sat over his fire with his gown parted from his legs to warm his shins, but his hands waved angrily and his face was crestfallen.

‘Oh, keeper of a tavern,’ he said. ‘It is set down in holy writ that it is not good for a man to be alone.’

‘That a hostess shall keep her tavern clean is writ in the books of the provost of Paris town,’ the Widow Annot answered, and the shadow of her great white hood, which she wore in the older English fashion, danced over the brown wooden beams of the ceiling.

‘Nay, nay,’ he answered, ‘it is written there that it is the enjoined devoir of every hotelier to provide things fitting for the sojourners’ ease, pleasure and recreation.’

‘The maid is locked in another house,’ the hostess answered, ‘and should have been this three week.’ She swung her keys on a black riband and gazed at him masterfully. ‘Will your magistership eat capon or young goat?’

‘Capon will have a savour like sawdust, and young goat like the dust of the road,’ the magister moaned. ‘Give me the girl to wait upon me again.’

‘No maid will wait upon thee,’ she answered.

‘Even thou thyself?’ he asked. He glanced across his shoulder and his eyes measured her, hers him. She had large shoulders, a high, full stomacher, and her cheeks were an apple-red. ‘The maiden was a fair piece,’ he tittered.

‘Therefore you must spoil the ring of the coin,’ she answered.

He sighed: ‘Then eat you with me.
“Soli cantare periti Arcades.”
But it is cold here alone of nights.’

They ate goat and green leeks sweetened with honey, and wood thrushes pickled in wine, and salt fish from the mouth of the Beauce. And because this gave the magister a great thirst he drank much of a warmed wine from Burgundy that the hostess brought herself. They sat, byside, on cushions on a couch before the warm fire.

‘Filia pulchra mater pulchrior!’
the magister muttered, and he cast his arms about her soft and plump waist. ‘The maid was a fair skewer, the hostess is a plumper roasting bit.’ She took his kisses on her fire-warmed cheeks, but in the end she thrust him mightily from her with a large elbow.

He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:

‘Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,’ and rearranged her neckercher. When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.

‘You have tried and tasted,’ she said. ‘A fuller meal you must pay for.’

He stood before her, lean and lank, his gown flapping about his calves, his eyes smiling humorously, his lips twitching.

‘Oh soft and warm woman,’ he cried, ‘payment shall be yours’; and whilst he fumbled furiously in his clothes-press, he quoted from Tully:
‘Haec civitas mulieri redimiculum prae-buit.’
He pulled out one small bag: ‘
Haec in collum.’
She took another.
‘Haec in crines!’
and he added a third, saying: ‘Here is all I have,’ and cast the three into her lap. Whilst she counted the coins composedly on the table before her he added: ‘Leave me nevertheless the price to come to England with.’

‘Sir Magister,’ she said, turning her large face to him. ‘This is not one-tenth enough. You have tasted an ensample. Will you have the whole meal?’

‘Oh, unconscionable,’ he cried. ‘More I have not!’ He began
to wave his hands. ‘Consider what you do do,’ he uttered. ‘Think of what a pest is love. How many have died of it. Pyramus, Thisbe, Dido, Medea, Croesus, Callirhoe, Theagines the philosopher … Consider what writes Gordonius:
“Prognosticatio est talis: si non succuratur iis aut in maniam cadunt: aut moriuntur.”
Unless lovers be succoured either they fall into a madness, either they die or grow mad. And Fabian Montaltus: “If this passion be not assuaged, the inflammation cometh to the brain. It drieth up the blood. Then followeth madness or men make themselves away.” I would have you ponder of what saith Parthenium and what Plutarch in his tales of lovers.’