The Fifth Queen Read online

  Cromwell swept his hand composedly round the half horizon that held the palace, the grey river and the inlands.

  ‘Your Highness may choose among ten thousand,’ he answered.

  The sound of a horn blown faintly to test it within the gatehouse, the tinkle of a lutestring, brought to the King’s lips: ‘Aye. Bring me music that shall charm my thoughts. You cannot do it.’

  ‘A Queen is in the nature of a defence, a pledge, a cement, the keystone of a bulwark,’ Cromwell said. ‘We know now our friends and our foes. You may rest from this onwards.’

  He spoke earnestly: This was the end of a long struggle. The King should have his rest.

  They moved back along the terrace. The woman’s head still lay back, her chin showed pointed and her neck, long, thin and supple. Culpepper was bending over her, sprinkling water out of his cap upon her upturned face.

  The King said to Cromwell: ‘Who is that wench?’ and, in the same tone: ‘Aye, you are a great comforter. We shall see how the cat jumps,’ and then, answering his own question, ‘Norfolk’s niece?’

  His body automatically grew upright, the limp disappeared from his gait and he moved sturdily and gently towards them.

  Culpepper faced round like a wild cat from a piece of meat, but seeing the great hulk, the intent and friendly eyes, the gold collar over the chest, the heavy hands, and the great feet that appeared to hold down the very stones of the terrace, he stood rigid in a pose of disturbance.

  ‘Why do ye travel?’ the King asked. ‘This shall be Katharine Howard?’

  Culpepper’s hushed but harsh voice answered that they came out of Lincolnshire on the Norfolk border. This was the Lord Edmund’s daughter.

  ‘I have never seen her,’ the King said.

  ‘Sh’ath never been in this town.’

  The King laughed: ‘Why, poor wench!’

  ‘Sh’ath been well schooled,’ Culpepper answered proudly, ‘hath had mastern, hath sung, hath danced, hath your Latin and your Greek … Hath ten daughters, her father.’

  The King laughed again: ‘Why, poor man!’

  ‘Poorer than ever now,’ Culpepper muttered. Katharine Howard stirred uneasily and his face shot round to her. ‘Rioters have brent his only house and wasted all his sheep.’

  The King frowned heavily: ‘Anan? Who rioted?’

  ‘These knaves that love not our giving our ploughlands to sheep,’ Culpepper said. ‘They say they starved through it. Yet ’tis the only way to wealth. I had all my wealth by it. By now ’tis well gone, but I go to the wars to get me more.’

  ‘Rioters?’ the King said again, heavily.

  ‘ ’Twas a small tulzie—a score of starved yeomen here and there. I killed seven. The others were they that were hanged at Norwich … But the barns were brent, the sheep gone, and the house down and the servants fled. I am her cousin of the mother’s side. Of as good a strain as Howards be.’

  Henry, with his eyes still upon them, beckoned behind his back for Cromwell to come. A score or so of poor yeomen, hinds and women, cast out of their tenancies that wool might be grown for the Netherlands weavers, starving, desperate, and seeing no trace of might and order in their hidden lands, had banded, broken a few hedges and burnt a few barns before the possé of the country could come together and take them.

  The King had not heard of it or had forgotten it, because such risings were so frequent. His brows came down into portentous and bulging knots, his eyes were veiled and threatening towards the woman’s face. He had conceived that a great rebellion had been hidden from his knowledge.

  She raised her head and shrieked at the sight of him, half started to her feet, and once more sank down on the bench, clasping at her cousin’s hand. He said:

  ‘Peace, Kate, it is the King.’

  She answered: ‘No, no,’ and covered her face with her hands.

  Henry bent a little towards her, indulgent, amused, and gentle as if to a child.

  ‘I am Harry,’ he said.

  She muttered:

  ‘There was a great crowd, a great cry. One smote me on the arm. And then this quiet here.’

  She uncovered her face and sat looking at the ground. Her furs were all grey, she had had none new for four years, and they were tight to her young body that had grown into them. The roses embroidered on her glove had come unstitched, and, against the steely grey of the river, her face in its whiteness had the tint of mother of pearl and an expression of engrossed and grievous absence.

  ‘I have fared on foul ways this journey,’ she said.

  ‘Thy father’s barns we will build again,’ the King answered. ‘You shall have twice the sheep to your dower. Show me your eyes.’

  ‘I had not thought to have seen the King so stern,’ she answered.

  Culpepper caught at the mule’s bridle.

  ‘Y’ are mad,’ he muttered. ‘Let us begone.’

  ‘Nay, in my day,’ the King answered, ‘y’ad found me more than kind.’

  She raised her eyes to his face, steadfast, enquiring and unconcerned. He bent his great bulk downwards and kissed her upon the temple.

  ‘Be welcome to this place.’ He smiled with a pleasure in his own affability and because, since his beard had pricked her, she rubbed her cheek. Culpepper said:

  ‘Come away. We stay the King’s Highness.’

  Henry said: ‘Bide ye here.’ He wished to hear what Cromwell might say of these Howards, and he took him down the terrace.

  Culpepper bent over her with his mouth opened to whisper.

  ‘I am weary,’ she said. ‘Set me a saddle cushion behind my shoulders.’

  He whispered hurriedly:

  ‘I do not like this place.’

  ‘I like it well. Shall we not see brave shews?’

  ‘The mule did stumble on the threshold.’

  ‘I marked it not. The King did bid us bide here.’

  She had once more laid her head back on the stone balustrade.

  ‘If thou lovest me …’ he whispered. It enraged and confused him to have to speak low. He could not think of any words.

  She answered unconcernedly:

  ‘If thou lovest my bones … they ache and they ache.’

  ‘I have sold farms to buy thee gowns,’ he said desperately.

  ‘I never asked it,’ she answered coldly.

  Henry was saying:

  ‘Ah, Princes take as is brought them by others. Poor men be commonly at their own choice.’ His voice had a sort of patient regret. ‘Why brought ye not such a wench?’

  Cromwell answered that in Lincoln, they said, she had been a coin that would not bear ringing.

  ‘You do not love her house,’ the King said. ‘Y’ had better have brought me such a one.’

  Cromwell answered that his meaning was she had been won by others. The King’s Highness should have her for a wink.

  Henry raised his shoulders with a haughty and angry shrug. Such a quarry was below his stooping. He craved no light loves.

  ‘I do not miscall the wench,’ Cromwell answered. She was as her kind. The King’s Highness should find them all of a make in England.

  ‘Y’ are foulmouthed,’ Henry said negligently. ‘ ’Tis a well-spoken wench. You shall find her a place in the Lady Mary’s house.’

  Cromwell smiled, and made a note upon a piece of paper that he pulled from his pocket.

  Culpepper, his arms jerking angularly, was creaking out:

  ‘Come away, a’ God’s name. By all our pacts. By all our secret vows.’

  ‘Ay thou didst vow and didst vow,’ she said with a bitter weariness. ‘What hast to shew? I have slept in filthy beds all this journey. Speak the King well. He shall make thee at a word.’

  He spat out at her.

  ‘Is thine eye cocked up to that level? … I am very hot, very choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I shall do such things as make the moon turn bloody red.’

  ‘Aye art thou there?’ she answered coldly. ‘Ye have me no longer
upon lone heaths and moors. Mend thy tongue. Here I have good friends.’

  Suddenly he began to entreat:

  ‘Thy mule did stumble—an evil omen. Come away, come away. I know well thou lovest me.’

  ‘I know well I love thee too well,’ she answered, as if in scorn of herself.

  ‘Come away to thy father.’

  ‘Why what a bother is this,’ she said. ‘Thou wouldst to the wars to get thee gold? Thou wouldst trail a pike? Thou canst do little without the ear of some captain. Here is the great captain of them all.’

  ‘I dare not speak here,’ he muttered huskily. ‘But this King …’ He paused and added swiftly: ‘He is of an ill omen to all Katharines.’

  ‘Why, he shall give me his old gloves to darn,’ she laughed. ‘Fond knave, this King standeth on a mountain a league high. A King shall take notice of one for the duration of a raindrop’s fall. Then it is done. One may make oneself ere it reach the ground, or never. Besides, ’tis a well-spoken elder. ’Tis the spit of our grandfather Culpepper.’

  When Henry came hurrying back, engrossed, to send Culpepper and the mule to the gatehouse for a guide, she laughed gently for pleasure.

  Culpepper said tremulously: ‘She hath her father’s commands to hasten to Dover.’

  ‘Her father taketh and giveth commands from me,’ Henry answered, and his glove flicked once more towards the gate. He had turned his face away before Culpepper’s hand grasped convulsively at his dagger and he had Katharine Howard at his side sweeping back towards Cromwell.

  She asked, confidingly and curiously: ‘Who is that lord?’ and, after his answer, she mused, ‘He is no friend to Howards.’

  ‘Nay, that man taketh his friends among mine,’ he answered. He stopped to regard her, his face one heavy and indulgent smile. The garter on his knee, broad and golden, showed her the words: ‘Y pense’; the collars moved up and down on his immense chest, the needlework of roses was so fine that she wondered how many women had sat up how many nights to finish it: but the man was grey and homely.

  ‘I know none of your ways here,’ she said.

  ‘Never let fear blanch thy cheeks till we are no more thy friend,’ he reassured her. He composed one of his gallant speeches:

  ‘Here lives for thee nothing but joy.’ Pleasurable hopes should be her comrades while the jolly sun shone, and sweet content at night her bedfellow.…

  He handed her to the care of the Lord Cromwell to take her to the Lady Mary’s lodgings. It was unfitting that she should walk with him, and, with his heavy and bearlike gait, swinging his immense shoulders, he preceded them up the broad path.

  VI

  CROMWELL WATCHED the King’s great back with an attentive smile. He said, ironically, that he was her ladyship’s servant.

  ‘I would ye were,’ she answered. ‘They say you love not those that I love.’

  ‘I would have you not heed what men say,’ he answered, grimly. ‘I am douce to those that be of good-will to his Highness. Those that hate me are his ill-wishers.’

  ‘Then the times are evil,’ she said, ‘for they are many.’

  She added suddenly, as if she could not keep a prudent silence:

  ‘I am for the Old Faith in the Old Way. You have hanged many dear friends of mine whose souls I pray for.’

  He looked at her attentively.

  She had a supple, long body, a fair-tinted face, fair and reddish hair, and eyes that had a glint of almond green—but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. She was so intent upon speaking her mind that she had forgotten the pain of her arm. She thought that she must have said enough to anger this brewer’s son. But he answered only:

  ‘I think you have never been in the King’s court’—and, from his tranquil manner, she realised very suddenly that this man was not the dirt beneath her feet.

  She had never been in the King’s court; she had never, indeed, been out of the North parts. Her father had always been a very poor man, with an ancient castle and a small estate that he had nearly always neglected because it had not paid for the farming. Living men she had never respected—for they seemed to her like wild beasts when she compared them with such of the ancients as Brutus or as Seneca. She had been made love to and threatened by such men as her cousin; she had been made love to and taught Latin by her pedagogues. She was more learned than any man she had ever met—and, thinking upon the heroes of Plutarch, she found the present times despicable. She hardly owed allegiance to the King. Now she had seen him and felt his consciousness of his own power, she was less certain. But the King’s writs had hardly run in the Northern parts. Her men-folk and her mother’s people had hanged their own peasants when they thought fit. She had seen bodies swinging from tree-tops when she rode hawking. All that she had ever known of the King’s power was when the convent by their castle gates had been thrown out of doors, and then her men-folk, cursing and raging, had sworn that it was the work of Crummock. ‘Knaves ruled about the King.’

  If knaves ruled about him, the King was not a man that one need trouble much over. Her own men-folk, she knew, had made and unmade Kings. So that, when she thought of the hosts of saints and of the blessed angels that hovered, wringing their hands and weeping above England, she had wondered a little at times why they had never unmade this King.

  But to her all these things had seemed very far away. She had nothing to do but to read books in the learned tongues, to imagine herself holding disquisitions upon the spiritual republic of Plato, to ride, to shoot with the bow, to do needlework, or to chide the maids. Her cousin had loved her passionately; it was true that once, when she had had nothing to her back, he had sold a farm to buy her a gown. But he had menaced her with his knife till she was weary, and the ways of men were troublesome to her; nevertheless she submitted to them with a patient wisdom.

  She submitted to the King; she submitted—though she hated him by repute—to Cromwell’s catechism as they followed the King at a decent interval.

  He walked beside her with his eyes on her face. He spoke of the King’s bounty in a voice that implied his own power. She was to be the Lady Mary’s woman. He had that lady especially in his good will, he saved for her household ladies of egregious gifts, presence and attainments. They received liberal honorariums, seven dresses by the year, vails, presents, perfumes from the King’s own still-rooms, and a parcel-gilt chain at the New Year. The Lady Rochford, who ruled over these ladies, was kind, courteous, free in her graces as in the liberties she allowed the ladies under her easy charge.

  He enlarged upon this picture as if it were a bribe that he alone could offer or withhold. And something at once cautious and priestly in his tone let her quick intuition know that he was both warning her and sounding her, to see how far her mutinous spirit would carry her. Once he said, ‘There must be tranquillity in the kingdom. The times are very evil!’

  She had felt very quickly that insults to this man would be a useless folly. He could not even feel them, and she kept her eyes on the ground and listened to him.

  He went on sounding her. It was part of his profession of kingcraft to know the secret hearts of every person with whom he spoke.

  ‘And your goodly cousin?’ He paused. The King had commanded that a place should be found for him. ‘Should he be best at Calais? There shall be blows struck there.’

  She knew very well that he was trying to discover how much she loved her cousin, and she answered in a low voice, ‘I would have him stay here. He is the sole friend I have in this place.’

  Cromwell said, with a hidden and encouraging meaning, her cousin was not her only friend there.

  ‘Aye, but your lordship is not so old a friend as he.’

  ‘Not me. Call me your good servant.’

  ‘There is even then my uncle.’

  ‘Little good of a friend you will have of Norfolk. ’Tis a bitter apple and a very rotten plank to lean upon.’

  She could not any longer miss his meaning. The King’s scarlet and immense figure was al
ready in the grey shadow of the arch under the tower. In walking, they had come near him, and while they waited he stood for a minute, gazing back down the path with boding and pathetic eyes; then he disappeared.

  She looked at Cromwell and thanked him for the warning, ‘quia spicula praevisa minus laedunt.’

  ‘I would have you read it: gaudia plus laetificant,’ he answered gravely.

  A man with a conch-shaped horn upturned was suddenly blowing beneath the archway seven hollow and reverberating grunts of sound that drowned his voice. A clear answering whistle came from the water-gate. Cromwell stayed, listening attentively; another stood forward to blow four blasts, another six, another three. Each time the whistle answered. They were the great officers’ signals for their barges that the men blew, and the whistle signified that these lay at readiness in the tideway. A bustle of men running, calling, and making pennons ready, began beyond the archway in the quadrangle.

  Cromwell’s face grew calm and contented; the King was sending to meet Anne of Cleves.

  ‘Y’ are well read?’ he asked her slowly.

  ‘I was brought up in the Latin tongue or ever I had the English,’ she answered. ‘I had a good master, one that spoke the learned language always.’

  ‘Aye, Nicholas Udal,’ Cromwell said.

  ‘You know all men in the land,’ she said, with fear and surprise.

  ‘I had him to master for the Lady Mary, since he is well disposed.’

  ‘ ’Tis an arrant knave tho’ the best of pedagogues,’ she answered. ‘He was cast out of his mastership at Eton for being a rogue.’

  ‘For that, the worshipful your father had him to master,’ he said ironically.

  ‘No, for that he was a ruined man, and taught for his victuals. We welly starved at home, my sisters and I.’

  He said slowly:

  ‘The better need that you should grow beloved here.’

  Standing there, before the bushes where no ears could overhear, he put to her more questions. She had some Greek, more than a little French, she could judge a good song, she could turn a verse in Latin or the vulgar tongue. She professed to be able to ride well, to be conversant with the terms of venery, to shoot with the bow, and to have studied the Fathers of the Church.