The Fifth Queen Series

  Udal picked up his cap and came up to his feet before them; he had beneath his gown a little book, and one long finger between its leaves to keep his place where he had been reading. For he had forgotten a saying of Thales, and was reading through Cæsar’s Commentaries to find it.

  ‘As Seneca said,’ he uttered in his throat, ‘advancement is doubly sweet to them that deserve it not.’

  ‘Why,’ the King said, ‘we advance thee on the deserts of one that finds thee sweet, and is sweet to one doubly sweet to us, Henry of Windsor that speak sweet words to thee.’

  The lines on Udal’s face drooped all a little downwards.

  ‘Y’are reader in Latin to the Lady Mary,’ the King said.

  ‘I have little deserved in that office,’ Udal answered; ‘the lady reads Latin better than even I.’

  ‘Why, you lie in that,’ Henry said, ‘ ’a readeth well for she’s my daughter; but not so well as thee.’

  Udal ducked his head; he was not minded to carry modesty further than in reason.

  ‘The Lady Mary—the Lady Mary of England—’ the King said weightily—and these last two words of his had a weight all their own, so that he added, ‘of England’ again, and then, ‘will have little longer need of thee. She shall wed with a puissant Prince.’

  ‘I hail, I felicitate, I bless the day I hear those words,’ the Magister said.

  ‘Therefore,’ the King said—and his ears had caught the rustle of Margot’s grey gown—‘we will let thee no more be reader to that my daughter.’

  Margot came round the green silk curtains that were looped on the corner posts of the pavilion. When she saw the Magister her great, fair face became slowly of a fiery red; slowly and silently she fell, with motions as if bovine, to her knees at the Queen’s side. Her gown was all grey, but it had roses of red and white silk round the upper edges of the square neck-place, and white lawn showed beneath her grey cap.

  ‘We advance thee,’ Henry said, ‘to be Chancellier de la Royne, with an hundred pounds by the year from my purse. Do homage for thine office.’

  Udal fell upon one knee before Katharine, and dropping both cap and book, took her hand to raise to his lips. But Margot caught her hand when he had done with it and set upon it a huge pressure.

  ‘But, Sir Chancellor,’ the King said, ‘it is evident that so grave an office must have a grave fulfiller. And, to ballast thee the better, the Queen of her graciousness hath found thee a weighty helpmeet. So that, before you shall touch the duties and emoluments of this charge you shall, and that even to-night, wed this Madam Margot that here kneels.’

  Udal’s face had been of a coppery green pallor ever since he had heard the title of Chancellor.

  ‘Eheu!’ he said, ‘this is the torture of Tantalus that might never drink.’

  In its turn the face of Margot Poins grew pale, pushed forward towards him; but her eyes appeared to blaze, for all they were a mild blue, and the Queen felt the pressure upon her hand grow so hard that it pained her.

  The King uttered the one word, ‘Magister!’

  Udal’s fingers picked at the fur of his moth-eaten gown.

  ‘God be favourable to me,’ he said. ‘If it were anything but Chancellor!’

  The King grew more rigid.

  ‘Body of God,’ he said, ‘will you wed with this maid?’

  ‘Ahí!’ the Magister wailed; and his perturbation had in it something comic and scarecrowlike, as if a wind shook him from within. ‘If you will make me anything but a Chancellor, I will. But a Chancellor, I dare not.’

  The King cast himself back in his chair. The suggested gibe rose furiously to his lips; the Magister quailed and bent before him, throwing out his hands.

  ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘if—which God forbid—this were a Protestant realm I might do it. But oh, pardon and give ear. Pardon and give ear—’

  He waved one hand furiously at the silken canopy above them.

  ‘It is agreed with one of mine in Paris that she shall come hither—God forgive me, I must make avowal, though God knows I would not—she shall come hither to me if she do hear that I have risen to be a Chancellor.’

  The King said, ‘Body of God!’ as if it were an earthquake.

  ‘If it were anything else but Chancellor she might not come, and I would wed Margot Poins more willingly than any other. But—God knows I do not willingly make this avowal, but am in a corner, sicut vulpis in lucubris, like a fox in the coils—this Paris woman is my wife.’

  Henry gave a great shout of laughter, but slowly Margot Poins fell across the Queen’s knees. She uttered no sound, but lay there motionless. The sight affected Udal to an epileptic fury.

  ‘Jove be propitious to me!’ he stuttered out. ‘I know not what I can do.’ He began to tear the fur of his cloak and toss it over the battlements. ‘The woman is my wife—wed by a friar. If this were a Protestant realm now—or if I pleaded pre-contract—and God knows I ha’ promised marriage to twenty women before I, in an evil day, married one—eheu!—to this one—’

  He began to sob and to wring his thin hands.

  ‘Quod faciam? Me miser! Utinam. Utinam—’

  He recovered a little coherence.

  ‘If this were a Protestant land ye might say this wedding was no wedding, for that a friar did it; but I know ye will not suffer that—’ His eyes appealed piteously to the Queen.

  ‘Why, then,’ he said, ‘it is not upon my head that I do not wed this wench. You be my witness that I would wed; it gores my heart to see her look so pale. It tears my vitals to see any woman look pale. As Lucretius says, “Better the sunshine of smiles—” ’

  A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.

  ‘It is you, your Grace,’ he said, ‘that make me thus tied. If you would let us be Protestant, or, again, if I could plead pre-contract to void this Paris marriage it would let me wed with this wench—eheu—eheu. Her brother will break my bones—’

  He began to cry out so lamentably, invoking Pluto to bear him to the underworld, that the King roared out upon him—

  ‘Why, get you gone, fool.’

  The Magister threw himself suddenly upon his knees, his hands clasped, his gown drooping over them down to his wrists. He turned his face to the Queen.

  ‘Before God,’ he said, ‘before high and omnipotent Jove, I swear that when I made this marriage I thought it was no marriage!’ He reflected for a breath and added, at the recollection of the cook’s spits that had been turned against him when he had by woman’s guile been forced into marriage with the widow in Paris, ‘I was driven into it by force, with sharp points at my throat. Is that not enow to void a marriage? Is that not enow? Is that not enow?’

  Katharine looked out over the great levels of the view. Her face was rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard. The King took his cue from a glance at her face.

  ‘Get you gone, Goodman Rogue Magister,’ he said, and he adopted a canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. ‘A marriage made and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing. You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you have lost your preferment, and I am glad of it. Another and a better than thou shall be the Queen’s Chancellor, for another and a better than thou shall wed this wench. We will get her such a goodly husband—’

  A low, melancholy wail from Margot Poins’ agonised face—a sound such as might have been made by an ox in pain—brought him to a stop. It wrung the Magister, who could not bear to see a woman pained, up to a pitch of ecstatic courage.

  ‘Quid fecit Cæar,’ he stuttered; ‘what Cæsar hath done, Cæsar can do again. It was not till very lately since this canon of wedding and consummating and blessing by a holy friar hath been derided and contemned in this realm. And so it might be again—’

  Katharine Howard cried o
ut, ‘Ah!’ Her features grew rigid and as ashen as cold steel. And, at her cry, the King—who could less bear than Udal to hear a woman in pain—the King sprang up from his chair. It was as amazing to all them as to hunters it is to see a great wild bull charge with a monstrous velocity. Udal was rigid with fear, and the King had him by the throat. He shook him backwards and forwards so that his book fell upon the Queen’s feet, bursting out of his ragged gown, and his cap, flying from his opened hand, fell down over the battlement into an elm top. The King guttered out unintelligible sounds of fury from his vast chest and, planted on his huge feet, he swung the Magister round him till, backwards and staggering, the eyes growing fixed in his brown and rigid face, he was pushed, jerking at each step of the King, out of sight behind the green silk curtains.

  The Queen sat motionless in her purple velvet. She twisted one hand into the chain of the medallion about her throat, and one hand lay open and pale by her side. Margot Poins knelt at her side, her face hidden in the Queen’s lap, her two arms stretched out beyond her grey coifed head. For a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully—

  ‘What, child? What, child?’

  Margot moved her face sideways so that her mouth was towards Katharine.

  ‘You can unmake it! You can unmake the marriage,’ she brought out in huge sobs.

  Katharine said—

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘You unmade a King’s marriage,’ Margot wailed. Katharine said—

  ‘No! No!’ She started and uttered the words loudly; she added pitifully, ‘You do not understand! You do not understand!’

  It was the more pitiful in that Margot understood very well. She hid her face again and only sobbed heavily and at long intervals, and then with many sobs at once. The Queen laid her white hand upon the girl’s head. Her other still played with the chain.

  ‘Christ be piteous to me,’ she said. ‘I think it had been better if I had never married the King.’

  Margot uttered an indistinguishable sound.

  ‘I think it had been better,’ the Queen said; ‘though I had jeoparded my immortal part.’

  Margot moved her head up to cry out in her turn—

  ‘No! No! You may not say it!’

  Then she dropped her face again. When she heard the King coming back and breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand upon her shoulder.

  ‘Sha’t have a better mate,’ he uttered. ‘Sha’t be a knight’s dame! There! there!’ and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out, and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went across the terrace, a loud one and then a little echo, a loud one and then two more.

  ‘Before God!’ the King said, ‘that knave shall eat ten years of prison bread.’

  His wife looked still over the wooded enclosures, the little stone walls, and the copses. A small cloud had come before the sun, and its shadow was moving leisurely across the ridge where stood the roofless abbey.

  ‘The maid shall have the best man I can give her,’ the King said.

  ‘Why, no good man would wed her!’ Katharine answered dully.

  Henry said—

  ‘Anan?’ Then he fingered the dagger on the chain before his chest.

  ‘Why,’ he added slowly, ‘then the Magister shall die by the rope. It is an offence that can be quitted with death. It is time such a thing were done.’

  Katharine’s dull silence spurred him; he shrugged his shoulders and heaved a deep breath out.

  ‘Why,’ he said, ‘a man can be found to wed the wench.’

  She moved one hand and uttered—

  ‘I would not wed her to such a man!’ as if it were a matter that was not much in her thoughts.

  ‘Then she may go into a nunnery,’ the King said; ‘for before three months are out we will have many nunneries in this realm.’

  She looked upon him a little absently, but she smiled at him to give him pleasure. She was thinking that she wished she had not wedded him; but she smiled because, things being as they were, she thought that she had all the authorities of the noble Greeks and Romans to bid her do what a good wife should.

  He laughed at her griefs, thinking that they were all about Margot Poins. He uttered jolly grossnesses; he said that she little knew the way of courts if she thought that a man, and a very good man, might not be found to wed the wench.

  She was troubled that he could not better read what was upon her mind, for she was thinking that her having consented to his making null his marriage with the Princess of Cleves that he might wed her would render her work always the more difficult. It would render her more the target for evil tongues, it would set a sterner and a more stubborn opposition against her task of restoring the Kingdom of God within that realm.

  Henry said—

  ‘Ye hannot guessed what my secret was? What have I done for thee this day?’

  She still looked away over the lands. She made her face smile—

  ‘Nay, I know not. Ha’ ye brought me the musk I love well?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It is more than that!’ he said.

  She still smiled—

  ‘Ha’ ye—ha’ ye—made make for me a new crown?’

  She feared a little that that was what he had done. For he had been urgent with her, many months, to be crowned. It was his way to love these things. And her heart was a little gladder when he shook his head once again and uttered—

  ‘It is more than that!’

  She dreaded his having made ready in secret a great pageant in her honour, for she was afraid of all aggrandisements, and thought still it had been better that she had remained his sweet friend ever and not the Queen. For in that way she would have had as much empire over him, and there would have been much less clamour against her—much less clamour against the Church of her Saviour.

  She forced her mind to run upon all the things that she could wish for. When she said it must be that he had ordered for her enough French taffetas to make twelve gowns, he laughed and said that he had said that it was more than a crown. When she guessed that he had made ready such a huge cavalcade that she might with great comfort and safety ride with him into Scotland, he laughed, contented that she should think of going with him upon that long journey. He stood looking at her, his little eyes blinking, his face full of pride and joy, and suddenly he uttered—

  ‘The Church of God is come back again.’ He touched his cap at the sacred name. ‘I ha’ made submission to the Pope.’

  He looked her full in the face to get all the delight he might from her looks and her movements.

  Her blue eyes grew large; she leaned forward in her chair; her mouth opened a little; her sleeves fell down to the ground. ‘Now am I indeed crowned!’ she said, and closed her eyes. ‘Benedicta sit mater dei!’ she uttered, and her hand went over her heart place; ‘deo clamavi nocte atque dië.’

  She was silent again, and she leaned more forward.

  ‘Sit benedicta dies haec; sit benedicta hora haec benedictaque, saeculum saeculûm, castra haec.’

  She looked out upon the great view: she aspired the air.

  ‘Ad colles,’ she breathed, ‘levavi oculos meos; unde venit salvatio nostra!’

  ‘Body of God,’ Henry said, ‘all things grow plain. All things grow plain. This is the best day that ever I knew.’

  IV

  THE LADY MARY OF ENGLAND sat alone in a fair room with little arched windows that gave high up on to the terrace. It was the best room that ever she had had since her mother, the Queen K
atharine of Aragon, had been divorced.

  Dressed in black she sat writing at a large table before one window. Her paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach of pewter, books bound in wooden covers and locked with chains, books in red velvet covers, sewn with silver wire and tied with ribbons. It ran beneath a huge globe of the world, blue and pink, that had a golden pin in it to mark the city of Rome. There were little wooden racks stuck full with written papers and parchments along the wainscoting between the arched windows, but all the hangings of the other walls were of tinted and dyed silks, not any with dark colours, because Katharine Howard had deemed that that room with its deep windows in the thick walls would be otherwise dark. The room was ten paces deep by twenty long, and the wood of the floor was polished. Against the wall, behind the Lady Mary’s back, there stood a high chair upon a platform. Upon the platform a carpet began that ran up the wall and, overhead, depended from the gilded rafters of the ceiling so that it formed a dais and a canopy.

  The Lady Mary sat grimly amongst all these things as if none of them belonged to her. She looked in her book, she made a note upon her paper, she stretched out her hand and took a piece of bread, putting it in her mouth, swallowing it quickly, writing again, and then once more eating, for the great and ceaseless hunger that afflicted her gnawed always at her vitals.

  A little boy with a fair poll was reaching on tiptoe to smell at a pink that depended from a vase of very thin glass standing in the deep window. The shield of the coloured pane cast a little patch of red and purple on to his callow head. He was dressed all in purple, very square, and with little chains and medallions, and a little dagger with a golden sheath was about his neck. In one hand he had a piece of paper, in the other a pencil. The Lady Mary wrote; the child moved on tiptoe, with a sedulous expression of silence about his lips, near to her elbow. He watched her writing for a long time with attentive eyes.