The Nymph from Heaven, page 17
part #1 of The Tudor Chronicles Series
“Jane?”
“Your Grace, the Viscount Lisle has been made Marshall of the Army. He will be at the king’s side in France.”
Mary threw down her cards. “I have been told none of this,” she said. “From where do you hear such rumors?”
Jane laughed. “You are glad enough of my dubious sources when they tell you that which you wish to hear. Or forewarn you about that upon which you need to act.” Mary sat with pursed lips, tapping her fingers on the table. “Oh, all right,” said Jane with a shrug. “If you must know, I heard it all last night, straight from the lips of My Lord of Shrewsbury.”
Mary shook her head. “Jane, you are incorrigible. Shrewsbury is old enough to be your grandfather. And he is married.”
“I prefer older men. They are more easily…guided. And married men are on a leash. Be it short or be it long, at some point the rope is jerked and off they go before they can become…bothersome.”
“And you are shameless into the bargain. Please do not tell me what his lips were doing as they imparted this news of war to you.”
“I confess that I was hoping that Your Grace would not enquire. I am relieved. But this news is serious. His Grace the king or My Lord Lisle will be telling you of it soon, I am sure. But I must admit that I am surprised that Brandon has not yet boasted to you of his new honor. He has known of it for some days. It will be announced to the court two days hence, along with the news of the upcoming campaign.”
“Do not marvel much at that,” said Mary. “Brandon knows well my feelings about all this nonsense. He is probably putting off telling me until the last possible moment.”
“I suppose that is so. But this war was inevitable. The king longs to emulate your illustrious ancestors, the Black Prince and Henry V. He dreams of another Crecy or Agincourt. He will not rest until England wears the crown of France.”
Mary threw a card. It was her way of changing the subject, but Jane continued. “Ever since His Grace convinced the Emperor Maximilian to join the alliance between England, Rome and Spain, this has been in his mind.”
Mary grimaced. “I know it well,” she said. “Because Maximilian is being so cooperative, I have been forced to begin a correspondence once again with the Prince of Castile. The last time it was just one stilted little letter, to which, thankfully, I had no reply. But this time…” She shuddered at the thought of the two unopened letters that lay on her dressing table. She would not touch them, because he had handled them. She would wait until Lady Guildford opened them and read them to her. Then Guildford would draft a reply which Mary would sign and seal. And that was as far as she was willing to go.
Dover Castle, June 1513
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but you cannot be serious.” Thomas Howard, the old Earl of Surrey, had known Henry since the day he had first drawn breath. He had been like a grandfather to the boy. So even though the boy was now a formidable king, he felt that he could risk impertinence.
“I rarely say things that I do not mean, sir, especially on so serious a subject.”
“But, Sire! Surely you do not mean to leave me behind! I am seventy years old, but I can still wield a sword, better than some half my age.”
“I am counting on it,” Henry replied. “Read this.”
Surrey took the parchment. As he lifted it, he recognized the seal of the English ambassador to Scotland. He skimmed the words and then looked up. “The treacherous dog! How could he? What says your sister Margaret of this…this…perfidious behavior?”
“She cannot go against her husband, as you well know.” Henry stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced back and forth across the room. From this top turret room of Dover Castle, more fortress than palace, the whole of the harbor lay below him like a patchwork quilt. His ships, their colorful pennons rippling in the breeze, bobbed in the blue waters of the English Channel. He almost burst with pride each time he beheld his own flagship, the Great Harry and its sister ship, the Mary Rose. He longed to be gone, to feel the sea rocking beneath his feet. He longed to breathe the air of England’s great enemy, France. It was a clear day; he could see the French coast far off in the distance. Soon. Soon.
“Surrey, it is the same old story. The moment a king of England sets sail to reclaim his French rights, Scotland, at the behest of France, invokes the terms of the Auld Alliance. The moment my foot leaves the shore, James will invade. You must prepare. Surrey, this is a much more compelling assignment than that which I go to do. I go to make a just war on France to reclaim my right as king of that country. But you must go north to defend England.”
Just then the guards opened the doors of the outer chamber and the queen whisked in. Three disappointing pregnancies had thickened her figure; always a diminutive woman, when she had been slender one not had noticed her short stature. But now that she was widening, she looked even shorter than she had hitherto. There was a deep crease between her eyebrows, the result of too much frowning while at prayer. She was nearing thirty, but looked ten years older. Her hair had lost its russet highlights, and looked dark against the sallowness of her complexion. Standing next to the young, six-foot, golden-haired king, she invited unwelcome comparison; surely this serious, rotund woman could not be the king’s wife? Never had their six year difference in age been so apparent.
“You summoned me, Your Grace?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “Here, Kate, sit, please.”
The queen was with child again, although her state was not yet apparent. Henry treated her as though she carried a basket of eggs fresh from the barn. Which, thought Surrey, in a flight of fancy unusual for him, he supposed, in a way, she did.
“I wished to tell the two of you together before announcing this to the rest of the court. “Here,” he said, handing the parchment to Katharine. Her eyes darted back and forth across the page. Caught by surprise, she expostulated one of Henry’s favorite oaths. “God’s teeth! Saving your presence, My Lord of Surrey.”
Henry guffawed. “Just so,” he said.
“Does this mean that you will be postponing your French venture?” she asked.
“Hardly! No, as I have been telling Surrey, he is to muster a force and take them north. He will need help. I am appointing you regent, Madam, in my absence.”
“I am honored, My Lord.” Katharine’s eyes shone. At last, a chance to prove her worth! She had so far failed in a queen’s first and most important duty, the provision of an heir. She must not fail Henry’s trust in this, nothing less than the defense of the realm from an invading army. “My heart goes out to Margaret. What must she be feeling…”
“All I can say, Madam, is that if my sister’s ability to influence her husband matched yours, we should not be facing an invading army.”
Katharine winced; it was exactly the sort of hurtful, petty remark, couched as a compliment, that Henry had taken to aiming at her as if they were darts. He had not yet forgiven her for the part she had played in the disaster at Fuentarrabia. Strangely, he still did not blame Ferdinand for his perfidy in that debacle. Thank goodness, thought Katharine, that this new French campaign had been Henry’s own idea.
“I have also been informed, through Wolsey’s spies at the French court, that Anne of Brittany has sent the King of Scots a jeweled gauntlet and a turquoise ring, begging James to be her champion in this affair.”
Lord Howard guffawed. “I am certain, Your Grace, that the offer of fourteen thousand French crowns also went a long way towards convincing the King of Scots that masking his invasion of England behind a chivalrous gesture is worth his while.”
“Just so,” Henry agreed. “If Madam of France had hoped to deflect our invasion by keeping me occupied at home with the Scots, she is in for a surprise, is she not? God defend us from women in politics!”
Another dart, thought Katharine. Well, let him parry and thrust. In the end, I will be victorious. My mother warred for ten long years, living in military camps and wearing armor, to drive the moors from Spain. Surely, with men such as Surrey, I can drive a few Scots from the border of England! Her eyes shone as her mind began mulling the details. “My Lord of Surrey, you are to muster a force, are you not?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I will begin immediately.”
“Good. In the meantime, we women will not be idle. We will need standards, banners, ensigns and badges. I will busy every hand until the force is ready.”
“I will call a council for the morrow,” said Henry, “to announce the regency.” But his heart was already across the Channel in France.
The Tower of London, July 1513
“Your Grace, these Commissions of Array, warrants, and requisitions require your royal signature,” said Bishop Ruthal.
Katharine, whose hands were never idle, laid down the banner she was stitching and picked up the stack of papers. “For which front are these?” she asked, skimming the parchments.
“For both, Your Grace, and some domestic business as well. The first paper is the commission for the removal of the Tower cannon. The second and third are requisitions, one for more green cloth, and the other for a consignment of sallets and gorgets to be sent to Calais. Oh, that one also includes three more culverins.”
“And the rest?”
“Writs and warrants for the executions of a thief and two murderers, Your Grace.”
Katharine sighed. She would not admit it even to herself, but the ordinary business of running the government combined with mustering the home force and provisioning war on two fronts was beginning to exhaust her. In the past weeks she had sent Surrey north to raise the tenantry, had commissioned myriad messengers and what heralds could be spared to warn the people all along the border, and to rally the call to arms throughout the land. She and her council had worked up to twenty hours each day for weeks on end to see to the double task of preparing for the invasion in the north, and managing the never-ending requests from Henry and Wolsey for supplies for the French war. Her waking hours had become a rapid blur of sewing, signing papers, and attending council meetings.
Every female person at court capable of doing so had been put to work sewing the tabards and badges, the easiest of the tasks. Katharine had decided that not a man who went north to fight for England would lack some personal symbol of the homeland he went to defend.
“But, Your Grace,” the men of the council had argued. “The Scots wear a distinctive dress, of plaid material. It is true that the plaids are all different, but none but a Scot would wear them. There will be no problem understanding who is whom.”
“That is not my reasoning,” Katharine had countered calmly. One of the characteristics that the council most admired about the queen was her grace under pressure. She never raised her voice; she never argued. She simply considered all angles of a question then calmly rendered her decision. A woman in a million. “I have experience of war. I know that men, especially poor men such as we will be consigning to the coming battles in the north, fight better when they have some tangible symbol to which to cling. It reminds them of that for which they fight.” If she had her way, in addition to the standards and banners, which more experienced hands such as hers were making, every man who fought for England should have a green and white tabard to wear over his peasant clothes, or at least a Tudor badge to pin to his outermost garment. Green and white were the Tudor colors; each badge was in the shape of a shield, green on one side and white on the other. Onto each was sewn a red and white Tudor rose. The queen smiled. “Consider what a tourney would look like, My Lords, if the knights wore only homespun,” Katharine said. “And the women need some task to keep them busy. To keep them from fretting over much.”
Understanding dawned on the men’s faces.
Katharine frowned as she read the requisition for the weapons. A sudden memory of her childhood flashed through her mind as she took up her quill to sign it. She and her sisters, Isabella, Joanna and Maria, had been brought up in the shadow of war. They had not been sheltered from its horrible sights as some royal princesses might have been. Queen Isabella did not believe in families living apart, and so the royal children had stayed in the military camp at Santa Fe all during the long siege of the Palace of the Alhambra, indeed, had been made useful.
Many was the day Katharine and her royal sisters had spent their daylight hours in the camp hospital rolling bandages, as the wounded and maimed men were carried past them on makeshift stretchers. Katharine had been raised with the sight of dying, bleeding men, the eye that had been pierced by an arrow, the bloody stump where an arm had been hacked off in battle. At sunset sometimes the girls would go out for a breath of the cooler evening air, and would play amongst the burial mounds, each grave adorned with its little twig-and-twine cross. Katharine knew that a dead man lay beneath each mound, but this did not frighten her, even in the dark. Many of them were soldiers she had known, nursed perhaps. And she also knew that for each mound there was a grieving mother, father, wife, daughter, son.
As Katharine stared at the munitions requisition, tears sprang into her eyes, and in the swimming words she saw only the deaths of men. I am becoming fanciful, she thought. Did my sainted mother ever behave so? Katharine had always thought of her mother, Queen Isabella, as invincible, but she knew that it was not so. Isabella had wept on the day of Katharine’s departure for England. Isabella had been a queen and a warrior; but she was also a woman. Katharine signed the paper and held a candle to the wax for her seal. She lifted the heavy gold handle and impressed the seal into the red wax. For a moment, it looked like blood. She moved on to the death warrants, which were easier to contemplate for some reason. Perhaps it was because these men had committed crimes, and deserved to die.
Therouanne, France, August 1513
Henry looked about him with supreme satisfaction. He slapped Brandon on the back and said, “And what thinks my Lord Marshall of our splendid camp, eh?” He strutted up and down the long, even lines of tents, each decorated with a gaily colored pennant flying from the top of its pole. The royal tent had three poles, pennants in the Tudor livery of green and white flying from each one. Outside the tent flap, the royal standard boasting the leopards of England quartered with the lilies of France snapped in the stiff breeze, with the bright blue sky as a background. Outside each noble’s tent flew their own unique standards, displaying various beasts such as lions, dragons, greyhounds, antelopes, or the unicorn. The field was ablaze with cloth of gold complemented by a riot of color.
Eyeing the blue sky, Brandon replied, “I am glad that our luck has changed, Sire.” The Channel crossing had been a nightmare, taking place the day after a terrible storm; the wind had not yet died down from it, but Henry, impatient to be gone, had given the order to sail. While other men had crouched below or clung to wet masts or netting, Henry had strode, hands on hips, rain and sea spray dripping from his face, laughing and blowing his golden bosun’s whistle.
The force had lingered at Calais for three weeks while Wolsey ran about like a distracted hen gathering its chicks together. Horses, fodder, wagons, mules, supplies, were all accounted for, organized, packed and loaded. Finally all was ready and the great English host, greater than any ever seen on French soil in living memory, had begun its march to Therouanne. They arrived without incident, pitched the camp, and had eaten an excellent outdoor meal. Henry insisted upon dining from a metal plate with his men, walking as he ate, greeting each man, making him feel as if he were the king’s best friend. So far it all seemed like a country outing, only with the ladies left behind.
Only the grim walls of Therouanne, which loomed over the camp, were there to remind them of the purpose of this jaunt. Men appeared on the walls from time to time to watch the great host build its bivouac. Noticing Brandon’s worried looks, Henry had said, “Don’t look so concerned, My Lord of Lisle! Therouanne will be ours within the month!”
The next day the siege began. The Twelve Apostles, Henry’s new German siege cannons, had been cunningly named by Wolsey, in that they made the common soldier believe that God was on their side. All that first day of the siege, Wolsey ran from bombard to bombard, granting shrift to the bombardiers, because each time a cannon was fired, it was just as likely to blow up its firer as it was to send its deadly cargo into, or over, the walls of the town, where it would do its deadly work.
The heavy cannon had done a great deal of damage; the crumbling walls of Therouanne, along with the half-hearted defense the French put up, lifted the spirits of the men. But after ten days Henry became bored. When he heard that His Imperial Majesty had finally arrived at Aire, he took a small detail and rode out to meet him.
The Emperor Maximilian had offered his services to Henry not as a superior, not as a brother-in-arms, but as a mercenary, for a price. Henry, wishing to impress his sister’s future father-in-law, had ridden into Aire with a glittering entourage. This included the Duke of Buckingham, because, as Henry’s closest male relative, Buckingham had a right to be there, but also because Buckingham was the court popinjay. Henry was disappointed to learn that the emperor was a short, pale fellow with a wispy gray beard, and that his company were all dressed in black mourning because of the recent death of Maximilian’s wife, a Sforza of Milan.
Nevertheless, the emperor greeted Henry as a fellow monarch, and before long, Henry perceived that indefinable royal dignity that had kept the emperor on his throne for so many years.
“I believe it will not be long, Brother, before Therouanne falls,” Henry said.
“You may be right,” Maximilian replied. “The French have no stomach for this war. You will see.”
“Do you think Louis will send a defending force, Your Grace?” asked Brandon.
“Of a certainty, he will,” said Maximilian. “But we shall test their mettle, shall we not?” He smiled, revealing brown teeth. Brandon noticed that the smile did not touch his eyes.
“Brother,” said Henry to Maximilian, “have you yet seen a portrait of my sister, your grandson’s betrothed?”
