So much mystery, so much gossip, and here was William Butts, by nature and profession a searcher-out of truth, with one of these letters in his possession. Unsealed, too, being written in such haste; merely folded and the ends tucked in.
He looked around quickly. The sick man’s wife was upstairs, his sister had gone back to cry in the kitchen, Jack had taken his bread and bacon and ale out into the yard and was talking to the boy of the house in the watery sunshine.
Without any great feeling of guilt, since the human mind is capable of entertaining only one predominant emotion and his at the moment was curiosity, Dr. Butts unfolded the letter.
Sentences leaped up at him.
“The most displeasing news that could occur came to me suddenly at night.” “I would willingly bear half of what you suffer to cure you.” (Not the whole, part of Dr. Butt’s mind observed; well, at least Henry was honest!) “My physician in whom I have most confidence is absent…from want of him I send you my second, and hope that he…”
Dr. Butts read no further.
He was always warning people about the dangers of rage which could send a red mist swimming before the eyes, set the heart battering, swell one’s brain, lead, uncontrolled, to death; but now his own rage was ungoverned.
“My second.” In God’s name then, who was his first? Wotton? Cromer? Yes, Cromer the Scot, the bumptious oaf; just because he’d done part of his training in Paris. It was nothing short of disgraceful, it was disloyal. Everybody knew that Scots and Frenchmen always joined together against Englishmen. Every time England went to war with France, the Scots came over the border, raiding and burning. The Battle of Flodden Field was only now sixteen years past. It was abominable to think that a Scot…
It was no comfort to Dr. Butts to have his money refused, to be told that at any time whenever he passed the St. Peter and the Keys he was welcome to the best the house could provide.
He rode in rage toward Greenwich and was almost there before he could think, wryly, of the old proverb that said that eavesdroppers never heard any good spoken of themselves. Likewise people who opened other people’s letters deserved to take a knock on the nose. But all the way his horse’s hooves seemed to beat out the hateful rhythm, my second best, my second best, my second best.
XI
Beauty and sprightliness sat on her lips.
Sanders
GREENWICH. JUNE 1528
DR. BUTT’S CAREFUL BALANCING OF his professional integrity against the welfare of England had all been wasted. Mistress Anne Boleyn had passed the crisis when he arrived. She was alive, she was conscious, she had been handled wisely. She was covered with a warm, light blanket and on a table near the bed stood a tall jug of water and a Venetian glass goblet. And one of those middle-aged, hard-faced, short-spoken women who, in Dr. Butts’s experience, made the best nurses of all, was in attendance.
The lady looked, naturally, very ill still, and he addressed her in the soothing voice the situation demanded.
“His Grace sent me, my lady, as soon as he had word of your sickness.”
Anne moved her head a little, and the fraction of the pillow thus exposed showed dark and damp with sweat.
“Emma!” The single word held accusation.
The woman said, “Yes. Yes, I did. It was only right he should know. You’re mending now, thanks be to God, but suppose…With everything so disordered I took it on myself.”
Anne said in a small thin voice, the words separated by indrawn breaths,
“I was afraid that he might feel that he should come. And he has such horror of any sickness.”
“His Grace recognizes his importance to the state,” Dr. Butts said, almost rebukingly. Then he remembered that he was addressing a patient and changed his manner. “His Grace will be delighted to hear that you are recovering.”
A great many people in England and in other places would be sorry, he thought; and wondered again at the mystery of things; strong lusty men struck down and dead in a few hours, a creature as frail seeming as this surviving. Though of course it was early yet to tell; there was always the chest…
He said, “If your woman supported you, could you bear to be raised a trifle? Half a minute, no longer.”
So Emma held her while he laid his ear to her chest, and then to her back, alert for the little crackle, like a piece of paper being crumpled, which would betray the most dreaded complication of all, one which often killed people who had survived the sweating and the coma. There was no sign of it.
Emma said, “If you could hold her for another half minute, sir, I could slip in a fresh pillow; this one’s drenched.”
So, for half a minute Dr. Butts held between his hands the body which had caused such an upset.
He’d seen her often enough, but never close to, and never without the ornate clothing, the jewels, the headdress which lent bulk and importance. He was amazed to see how small she was. He allowed for the dramatic wastage of this disease and judged by the bones; they were like a kitten’s, or a bird’s; and her neck! He’d only once seen a neck so slender, and that was on a ten-year-old who was dying of the lung rot, and was not so long by two inches. Dr. Butts, whose personal taste ran to plump, buxom females, wondered anew what a great hearty man like the King could possibly see in this woman. And if his true aim in all this tomfoolery was to get himself a good strong boy he could hardly have picked a less likely breeder.
Emma slipped in the fresh pillow, and almost gratefully Dr. Butts released his hold and moved toward the foot of the bed.
“You will recover, my lady,” he said. “The worst is over. I shall prescribe certain strengthening and heartening medicines; and you must keep warm, and quiet, and eat and drink well. I shall stay for a day or two, just to keep an eye on you.”
“Will you let His Grace know that there is no cause for anxiety?”
“Indeed I shall. He bade me let him have news three times each day.”
Then he remembered the letter.
He was tempted, really tempted to take it away and dispose of it. “My second best.” Cruel, undeserved humiliation. Where was the need to have said such a thing? Why not, “I send you my physician,” or “one of my physicians,” or “Dr. Butts”?
Horribly mortified, he produced the letter and said, curtly,
“He sent you this.”
And he thought—William Butts, if you hadn’t pried this bad moment would have been spared you. And a worse moment might be on its way; suppose she asked him to read it to her! In what voice, with what manner did one announce one’s own second-rate status?
He laid the letter within reach of her hand and would have made for the door, but the weak voice halted him.
“Wait, please. There may be something which should be answered, and if so, you could send word with your other message. Emma, lift me again.”
He turned to the window and tried to think sensible thoughts. It is something to be second physician to a great King. Better that than to be first physician to the Duke of Norfolk. But he failed to convince himself. The truth had been spoken centuries ago by some Roman whose name Dr. Butts had forgotten. Standing in some small provincial Italian town, the man had said that he would sooner be first man there than second man in Rome. And he had spoken for all men, at all times, everywhere.
He heard the sound of paper being handled; he heard Anne’s voice say, “Lay me down.” Now he must turn. His face felt stiff and there was a stinging sensation at the back of his eyes.
She said, “Dr. Butts.”
He turned.
“Thank you for waiting. There is a message. Tell the King that I am recovering, that I hope his health continues good, and say that I thank him heartily for sparing me his best physician at such a time.”
His best! But the letter clearly said “my second,” and she couldn’t know, unless she was the witch that people said she was, that he had read the letter and been so hurt. She couldn’t know…
He looked at her and noticed her eyes for the f
irst time. Beautiful, wonderful eyes, looking at him with apparent candor, but behind the candor there was depth upon depth of mystery, and secrecy and understanding, and something else, a distant-seeing look, as though she saw more, knew more…
He pulled himself together and said in a harsh voice,
“My lady, either the King miswrote or you misread. Dr. Cromer holds pride of place. I have the honor to be His Grace’s second physician.”
She smiled and he realized that she had a beautiful mouth as well.
“Who can judge of that? Does it go by seniority? No matter. To me you are first, and will be, always.”
His natural vanity—the thing which must be fed from without or it will turn and devour the inner man—seized on the word “seniority.” That explained all. Those other words, “in whom I have most confidence,” might never have been written; he wanted to forget them, and he did, promptly. Of course, everything in and around the Court had to be governed by some form of protocol or another. Seniority! And he’d never even thought of it. He’d worked himself into a stupid rage over nothing, nothing at all. He could have brought on an apoplectic fit!
He forgot that she was the cause of all the turmoil; that all the way from Tittenhanger he had hoped to find her past aid. He forgot everything except that she, lying flat and exhausted, had hit upon the magic, restorative word. Seniority. When he came to make the medicines that would fortify her, he would see that they were well-flavored and palatable.
And he no longer wondered what it was that the King saw in Mistress Anne Boleyn, because he saw it himself. All the way down the stairs he tried to put a name to it. And failed.
XII
I will do my utmost to persuade the King though I feel sure it will be in vain.
Campeggio in a letter to Salviata
It is useless for Campeggio to think of reviving the marriage.
Wolsey in a letter to Casale
SUFFOLK HOUSE. OCTOBER 22ND, 1528
HENRY WAS COMING TO SUPPER with Anne in her fine new house. Having an establishment of her own gave her immense pleasure, not lessened by the knowledge that the house itself had been one of the Cardinal’s possessions. He had offered it, Henry said, and in that offer there was a hint that at last her position was being recognized, and that even Wolsey found it expedient to please her.
The joy of entertaining in her own house was still new, and this evening was, in a way, a celebration. Cardinal Campeggio had at last arrived in England, and now things would move. Disabled by his gout and exhausted from the journey he had taken to bed immediately upon arrival, but today he was to have had his first audience of the King who was now so confident of success that he was talking of being married within a year.
Henry arrived in a glum mood, one of those which he had himself, speaking in the garden at Hever, described as black. Such moods were more frightening and more difficult to deal with than his more frequent roaring rages, which, like bonfires, quickly burned themselves out.
She was relieved to feel, from the warmth of his kiss and the force of his embrace, that she was in no way the cause of his gloom, and set herself to cheer him, but without her usual success.
At last she said, “Something is troubling you. What is it?”
“One of my headaches.” But that, she knew, was not the full explanation. He was subject to severe headaches, from time to time, but ordinarily when thus afflicted, he was rather pitiable, childishly suing for sympathy and for comfort, pleased to have his head rubbed and stroked, and to be offered a sniff of her hartshorn or to have a cold wet handkerchief held over his eyes.
He ate hardly any of the special supper she had ordered, throwing so much to Urian that finally even that greedy dog was sated and flopped down in a corner with his stomach bulging like a whelping bitch’s.
“What is the news?” she asked, at one point.
“No news. There’s a joke though. I’ll share it with you later.”
She dared warrant that the joke would be a sour one.
It was.
They were alone, by the fire, and she was just about to break the heavy silence that had settled, when he said,
“I gave audience to Campeggio this afternoon. Do you know what he did, the moment he had kissed hands and gone through the formalities? He said—and he spoke as though he were offering me the sun, the moon, and all the stars to play with—that Clement was prepared to make good whatever was lacking in Julius’s dispensation, so that I could go back to Catherine, with an untroubled conscience.”
And he’d taken the offer; that was why he was so surly. He was dreading the task of breaking to her the news that he could now never keep his promise, or make good his troth. She was, after all, to be flung aside, like Mary.
“After all this delay,” Henry said, still in that dull, heavy voice, “when at last I thought Clement was moving on my behalf, he sends me this indubitable proof of what he thinks of my case. And the man who has come all this way to act as an impartial judge reveals his bias the first time he opens his mouth. A fine, fair trial that promises, doesn’t it?”
So there was still to be a trial! He had not accepted the offer.
“What did you say?” she asked. Her voice had gone small and thin.
“I said that even tailors knew that a botched job couldn’t be mended by a bit more botching. I said I should await the verdict of the Court.”
Relief from fright made her speak vehemently,
“You should have sent him home. Straight back to Rome. As you say, it promises a fine fair trial when one of the judges is the Pope’s man, and brings such an offer! It might as well never begin!”
Henry winced and put his hand to his head.
“It’s not quite as bad as that,” he protested. “It’ll be an English Court, composed of English clerics. And Wolsey has equal power with Campeggio. This may just have been Clement’s last attempt to evade…He can now assure himself, and the Emperor, that he has tried everything.”
“Oh no!” she said. “Oh no! He’ll have another trick up his sleeve, and after that another and another. While we sit here and grow old!”
The last words rang out with a passionate intensity. She had developed such a preoccupation with the passing of time, with the waste of time, that she dreaded each change in the name of the month, thinking, there’s June gone, thinking, yet another November. And New Year’s Day was always so sorry a festival that she could take no pleasure in her presents. Another year!
The last two years, outwardly so glittering and gay, so enviable, had been years of strain, a walking of a tightrope whose end receded as one approached it. Always just a little longer to wait. Hope, disappointment, hope, delay. It had been such a great day when the Pope had agreed to send Campeggio to judge the case in England; and then Campeggio had made the journey more slowly than ever a man had made that journey in the whole history of time. Now this!
And Catherine was still at Court; still proud and stubborn; still calling herself Queen, and being treated as such by everyone save Henry.
And there were the London crowds, watchful, jeering, uncivil.
There was the sharp division of all those about the Court; two parties, hers and Catherine’s, and one would have to be very blind or very stupid not to see that of the two Catherine’s was the more devoted, the more steadfastly loyal. Catherine’s party was rooted in solid rock, tradition, personal affection, her own upon the shifting sand of Henry’s favor and political expediency.
And always there was Henry himself. Up to a point he had tried to keep his promise about not demanding anything; but as time dragged on she could see that he often regretted it. Day after day she had faced the almost impossible task of making herself attractive enough to hold him, but not attractive enough to inflame his passion. This called for constant vigilance and self-control on her part, and those did not make for beauty. Often she wondered whether others saw the change in her that she saw when she faced her glass.
Henry heard in her voice a n
ew note, a shrillness that displeased him. It made him say, perversely,
“Oh no! That was Clement’s last shifty little trick. It didn’t work, he won’t try any more.”
“He will. He must. What Campeggio offered you today shows what the Pope wants, what they all want—your reconciliation with the Queen.”
“She is not my Queen. She is the Princess Dowager.”
“What does it matter how you name her? Let’s face the truth for once. In the eyes of the world yours was a good marriage and only the Pope can annul it. He hasn’t any intention of doing so. He daren’t. The Emperor would box his ears or stand him in the corner. If you wait for the Pope to free you, you’ll wait forever.”
“What else can I do?”
“Send Campeggio packing. This is an English matter and you are King of England. The English bishops are anxious to please you. They’d give you the verdict you wish for. If indeed that is your wish. Sometimes I wonder.”
“And what in God’s name do you mean by that?”
“You say you are free, you also say that the one person who can set you free is the one person who will never do it. You must know by now that you cannot have me and the Pope, yet at every turn you choose him.” The relief of speaking frankly at last was as intoxicating as wine. “Why not accept the Pope’s last generous offer. Catherine has waited for this; go back to her. I shan’t hold you to anything you promised me. All I ask is to be left in peace and have done with this everlasting waiting and promises that are as empty as blown eggshells.”