The King's Confidante: The Story of the Daughter of Sir Thomas More (10 page)

Meanwhile her mother was talking in a loud voice:

“This place is not healthful. I'll swear it's damp. No wonder you are not feeling well, Mistress More. But you take a little of this posset, and you'll feel the better for it.”

Jane said it was good of her to call; she repeated her thanks, for, as she said again and again, she did not know how she would have reached home without the help of Mistress Middleton.

“You would have reached home, I doubt not. That which we must do, we find means of doing…. So I always say.” And Mistress Middleton smiled as though to imply: And what I say—by the very fact that I say it—it is bound to be right.

Jane was glad that Thomas should come in so that he could thank the widow personally for her kindness.

“Thomas,” she said, “this is Mistress Middleton, the kind lady who brought me home.”

“Right glad I am to meet you, Mistress Middleton. My wife has told me many good things of you.”

Mistress Middleton eyed him shrewdly. A lawyer! A scholar! she believed. She had not much respect for scholars; she doubted they did as well as mercers of London and merchants of the Staple of Calais.

“A pity, sir, that you had not the time to take your wife and children into the streets to see the sights.”

“A great pity, madam.”

“Thomas,” cried Jane. “The King … he received you?”

Thomas nodded.

“My husband,” Jane explained, “is a writer.”

A smile curved Alice Middleton's lips. A writer? A writer of words? What was the use of words? Give her good bales of cloth. That was what people wanted to buy. Who wanted to buy words?

Thomas, grateful to the widow, could not help but be amused by her obvious contempt and her refusal to pretend anything else.

“I perceive,” he said, “that you do not worship at the shrine of Literature.”

“I worship in church like all good people, and in no other place. And Literature? Tilly valley! What is that? Will it build a house? Will it weave a cloth? Will it look after your wife when she falls fainting in the streets?”

“It might inspire a man or a woman to build a house, madam. And before a man builds a house he must have the will to do so. So might it make a man—or should I say a woman?—so long to possess
a new gown that she will weave the cloth. As for its looking after a fainting wife: Well, suppose a lady could read of a great pageant, her imagination, enhanced by literature, might be such that she would feel it unnecessary to stand in a press of people in order to see with her eyes that which she could conjure up by a mental effort.”

“Here's clever talk!” said Alice. “And my eyes are good enough for me. I can weave with the best, and I don't need words to help me. If I can't build a house I can keep one clean. And as for this Latin the scholars talk one with another, I manage quite well, sir, with my native tongue.”

“May I say, madam, that I am convinced you manage … you manage admirably.”

“But my husband is a poet,” said Jane in mild reproof.

“Poetry won't bake bread. Nor make a man wealthy, so I've heard.”

“Who speaks of wealth, madam?”

“I do, sir. For in this world it is a useful thing to have. And no matter what you tell me, riches come through work and thrifty living … not through writing poetry.”

“True riches belong to the spirit, madam, which uses its own resources to improve itself. We can only call a man rich if he understands die uses of wealth. Any man who piles up endless wealth, merely to count it, is like the bee who labors in the hive. He toils; others eat up the honey.”

“I speak of money not of honey, Master More. It seems you are a man who cannot keep to the point. You may smile. Methinks I should be the one to smile.”

A faint color showed in the cheeks of Alice Middleton. She liked the man; that was why she was giving him what she would call the edge of her tongue; she would not bother to waste that on those she considered unworthy of it.

His face was pleasant and kindly, she concluded. A clever man, this; yet in some ways, helpless. She would like to feed him some
of her possets, put a layer of fat on his bones with her butter. She'd warrant he gave too much thought to what went into his head and not enough to what went into his stomach.

“His verses were dedicated to the King,” said Jane. “And did the King accept them, Thomas?”

“He did. He took them in his own hands and complimented me upon them.”

His lips were smiling. Margaret left the little girls to come and stand close to him. She was so happy because this King loved him. They had nothing to fear from this King. She took his hand and pressed it.

“So the King likes verses!” said Mistress Middleton, her voice softening a little.

“Ah, madam,” said Thomas. “What the King likes today, may we hope Mistress Middleton will like tomorrow?”

“And he accepted them … from your hands?” demanded Mistress Middleton.

“He did indeed.” Thomas was remembering it all. It was only about his writing that he was a little vain; he made excuses for his vanity. Artistic talent, he was wont to say, is a gift from God. But he was conscious of his vanity, and he mocked himself while he treasured words of praise. And now at this moment he could not help recalling with pleasure the King's delight in his verses.

As for Alice Middleton, she was looking at him with new respect.

For a lawyer and a scholar she had little to spare; for a man who had spoken with the King she had much.

THE NEXT
two years were eventful ones for Margaret. For one thing, two people became very important to her. Both of these were visitors to the house; although one of these was a neighbor and a constant caller, the other lived with them as one of the family.

The first was Alice Middleton who made regular calls. Margaret
did not love Mistress Middleton, although she recognized that lady's wish to be kind. Mistress Middleton believed that everyone who did not do as she did must surely be wrong. If any household task was not done according to Mistress Middleton's rule, it was not done in the right way. She would teach them how to bake bread in the only way to bake the best bread, and that was the way she always did it; she would show them how to salt meat in order to make the best of it. She would show how children should be brought up. They should be obedient to their elders; they should be whipped when stubborn; they should be seen and not heard, and not talk in heathen tongues which their elders could not understand.

What disturbed Margaret more than anything was the fact that her father did not feel as she did toward Mistress Middleton. She had watched his face as he listened to her tirades, and had seen the amused twitch of his lips; sometimes he would talk with her, as though he were luring her on to taunt him. She was a rude and stupid woman; yet he seemed to like her rudeness and her stupidity. And Margaret, who followed her father in most things, could not do so in this.

The other person was the exalted Erasmus.

Him, Margaret regarded with awe. He was now more famous than he had been in the days when he had first come to England. He was known all over the world as the greatest Greek scholar, and he was preparing to write a critical edition of the Greek text of the New Testament.

Margaret
could
understand her fathers affection for this great man, for Erasmus was worthy of his regard and friendship as Madam Alice could never be.

This Erasmus was a sick man. There were days when he could do nothing but lie abed. On such days Margaret would wait upon him, bringing to him the books he asked for. He had a great affection for Margaret and she was pleased that this should be so, largely because of the delight it gave her father. Thomas would
openly sue for praise for his daughter as he never would for himself and Margaret felt very tender toward him as she watched his delight in the compliments Erasmus paid her.

Once Erasmus said: “I do not believe there is another girl—or boy—of this child's age who can write and speak the Latin tongue as she does.” And afterward her father said to her: “Meg, this is one of the happiest days of my life. It is a day I shall remember on the day I die. I shall say to myself when I find death near me: ‘The great Erasmus said that of my daughter, my Meg.’”

She thought a good deal about Erasmus. He might be a greater scholar than her father—though she doubted this—but she did not believe he was such a brave man. There was a certain timidity in his manner; this had been apparent once when Alice Middleton was present and had spoken quite sharply to him—for Alice was no respecter of scholars, and the fame of Erasmus had not reached her ears. She obviously did not believe that a poor wisp of a man who, as she said, looked as though a puff from the west wind could blow him flat, was as important as they seemed to think. “Scholar! Foreigner!” she snorted. The sort of men she respected were those like the King: more than six feet tall and broad with it; a man who would know what to do with a baron of beef and a fat roast peacock… aye, and anything a good cook could put before him. She liked not this sly-looking man with his aches and pains. Greatest scholar in the world! That might be. But the world could keep its scholars, declared Mistress Alice.

Margaret said to Mercy: “No; he has not Father's bravery.
He
would not have stood before Parliament and spoken against the King.”

“He has not Father's kindness,” answered Mercy. “He would mock where Father pitied.”

“But how could we expect him to be like Father!” cried Meg; and they laughed.

Erasmus spent his days writing what he called an airy trifle, a joke to please his host who loved a joke, he knew, better than anything. He was too tired, he told Margaret, to work on his Testament.
He must perfect his Greek before he attempted such a great task. He must feel sure of his strength. In the meantime he would write
In Praise of Folly.

He read aloud to Thomas when he came home; and sometimes Thomas would sit by his friends bed with Margaret on one side of him, Mercy on the other; he would put an arm about them both, and when he laughed and complimented Erasmus so that Erasmus's pale face was flushed with pleasure, then Margaret believed that there was all the happiness in the world in that room.

Erasmus poked fun at everybody… even at the scholar with his sickly face and lantern jaws; he laughed at the sportsman for his love of slaughter, and the pilgrims for going on pilgrimages when they ought to have been at home; he laughed at the superstitious who paid large sums for the sweat of saints; he laughed at schoolmasters who, he said, were kings in the little kingdoms of the young. No one was spared—not even lawyers and writers, although he was, Margaret noted, less severe with the latter than with the rest of the world.

And this was written with the utmost lightness, so that it delighted not only Thomas, but others of their friends, to picture Folly, in cap and bells, on a rostrum addressing mankind.

He stayed over a year in the house, and while he was there Thomas was made Under-Sheriff of the City of London, which was an honor he greatly appreciated. Alice Middleton, still a constant visitor, was delighted with this elevation.

“Ah,” Margaret heard Thomas say to her, “how pleasant it is to enjoy the reflected honors! We have neither to deserve them nor to uphold them. We bask in the soft light, whilst the other toils in the heat. The temperate rather than the torrid zone. So much more comfortable, eh, Mistress Middleton?”

“Tilly valley! I know not what you mean,” she told him sharply. “So you but waste your breath to say it.”

He explained to Margaret as he always explained everything: “The Mayor of London and the Sheriffs are not lawyers; therefore they need a barrister to advise them on various matters of law.
That my Margaret, is the task of the Under-Sheriff who is now your father.”

And when he dealt with these cases he refrained, if the litigants were unable to pay them, from accepting the fees which had always previously been paid. This became known throughout the City. It was about this time that the people of London began to love him.

Margaret was very happy during those two years; she had learned the meaning of fear, and that lesson had made her happier, for with it had come the joy of being without fear. But there was another lesson to learn: It was that nothing in life was static.

First, Erasmus left for Paris, where he hoped to publish
In Praise of Folly;
and that was the end of the pleasant reading and discourse. Then Margaret's mother took to her bed with a return of that weakness which had rarely left her since the birth of little Jack.

What they would have done during this time but for Alice Middleton, no one could say. Alice swept through the house like a fresh east wind, admonishing lazy servants, administering possets and clysters to Jane, boxing the ears of maids and menservants and the children when it seemed to her that they needed such treatment.

Gone was their gentle mother, and in her place was bustling and efficient, though sharp-tongued and heavy-handed, Dame Alice.

The children looked at each other with solemn eyes.

“Will our Mother get well?” asked four-year-old Cecily.

Jack cried at night: “Where is our Mother? I want our Mother.”

“Hush,” said Margaret, trying to comfort him. “Mistress Middleton will hear your crying, and box your ears.”

When he fell and cut his knees, or whenever any of the children hurt themselves, it was Mercy who could bind up the wound or stop the bleeding. Mercy had the gentlest of hands, and the very caress of them could soothe a throbbing head.

“I should like to study medicine,” she confided to Margaret. “I believe it is the one thing I could learn more easily than you could. In everything else I believe you would do better than I. But not in that, Margaret.”

And Mercy began growing herbs at the back of the house; and she became very skilful in these matters. Thomas called her: “Our young doctor”!

But nothing Mercy grew in her border, and nothing she could do, made Jane well.

ONE DAY
Jane called her eldest daughter to her.

Jane seemed to have grown smaller during the last few days; she looked tiny in the four-poster bed; and her skin was the same color as the yellow thread in the tapestry of the tester.