The King's Pleasure, page 10
She hoped that she was pregnant—too early to speak of it, too soon to be quite sure—when she rode down to Dover to see Henry and his host embark. The fleet was the largest ever to leave England; four hundred ships waited in the June sunshine to carry the men, the armor, the horses, the pavilions of the nobles, the tents, the cannon, the provisions. It was a momentous occasion; it was a splendid show; but as she stood for a little while on the beach after Henry had gone aboard, she felt the onset of loneliness—they had been much together in the last four years, far closer than most couples of any rank; fear for his safety—she knew what war was; and a heavy sense of responsibility for even Wolsey had gone with his King and here she was, in charge of England with two old men, Sir Thomas Lovell, left behind to advise her, and the Earl of Surrey, who was to take charge of the northern border in case the Scots should attack despite the treaty.
She withheld her tears until she was riding, between them, on the way back to London. Then the thought—the wind carries him in one direction, this horse carries me in another and who knows what may happen before we meet again—brought the tears.
She said, “Forgive me, my lords. I know…a great occasion…not to be marred by weeping…” There was a faint echo there, from the past; tears on a wedding day, ill luck to the bride…Tears at embarkation. Bad luck to those who sailed? God forbid.
Neither of the old men answered her and she thought that their silence was evidence of disapproval; she looked at each apologetically. They were both weeping too.
“To be left behind, with cripples and dotards,” the old Earl said. “I am seventy years old, but I can still ride as hard and fight as well as any youngster. I need no tent to lie in, or beef in a cask. In my day a soldier had the sky for roof and lived on what he could find.” Scorn quenched his tears. “Pretty popinjays. I could outlive any three of them and I take it amiss that my very experience should disqualify me.”
“It did not,” Katharine said vehemently. “It was because of your experience, because you could ride and fight with the best that His Grace chose you to guard the border. The rear guard must be the best—or so I have heard my mother say.”
Sir Thomas Lovell said nothing. Her Grace might take amiss any complaint. But he felt in the same way; there’d be a victory to match or eclipse Agincourt, and here was he, left behind with cripples, dotards and women.
“The border is quiet as a graveyard,” Surrey said.
And so let it stay, please God. Let nothing happen while Henry is absent. Let me sit at Greenwich and feel this child grow; and in March bear a boy, hardier than the other.
The old men wished otherwise. Let the King of Scots ignore that marriage link and the treaty; let the trumpets sound, let the warning beacons blaze; give us a chance to show that the years have toughened, not weakened us. Let us show what old men can do?
It was their wish, not Katharine’s, which was fulfilled. As soon as the King of England and the pick of his nobility were safely engaged across the Channel, the Scots, following the old pattern moved southwards. The border, that quiet graveyard, sprang into life again. Surrey halted the invasion which made mock of all marriage alliances and treaties, at Norham, and Katharine as Captain-General called out all available reserves. Men older than Surrey snatched down weapons that had hung on their walls, unused since the Battle of Bosworth Field, heaved themselves on to horses, relatively as old, pastured for years, and rode north. And with them went apprentices from every town and city, some armed only with the tools of their trade, yardsticks, butchers’ knives.
To her own surprise Katharine found herself capable of making rousing, patriotic speeches; God’s hand, she said, moved in support of those who fought to protect their homeland. She reminded them that the English had always been the most valorous of nations. The old men and the boys went to war with these heartening words in their ears. Those who survived remembered.
She was definitely pregnant now, nauseated at the most inconvenient and unexpected moments. When she said that she must go to York, a rallying point, Maria de Moreto protested.
“It is two hundred miles; five days at least in the saddle. Your Grace, in this state, it is impossible.”
“My mother did longer journeys; on worse roads.”
And lost several babies that way. Not a thing one could say forthright.
“His Grace, when he returns would wish to find you in good health, a child on its way…”
“I must go, Maria. I promised to lead them. They look to me.”
Amidst it all she wrote to Henry, as she had done regularly, once a week since his departure; she sent him fresh linen and many admonitions about changing his clothes if he were caught in the rain or became overheated. Her worst fears for his safety were lulled; the French had avoided rather than courted a face-to-face conflict and the only engagement of any importance was called the Battle of the Spurs because the French knights had prodded their horses into headlong flight. To Katharine who knew what real war was, what was going on in France, the exchange of prisoners, the ransoms, Henry firing with his own hand one of the Twelve Apostles, seemed to be that he had imagined it, an exercise in chivalry. She was engaged in a real war.
Things her mother had said came into memory: “An army must have something to fall upon. Men run, but a wall or a fence will steady them and they will turn and fight again.”
York, Katharine thought, must be what Surrey’s men had to fall back upon. She would be there, with the cannon taken from the Tower.
Fresh recruits fell in at every market square and at every crossroads and by the time she reached Buckingham she had a sizeable army; the country men came armed with sickles, scythes and hay forks.
She held to another of Isabella’s axioms—leader and men should be as little separated as possible and lodged in the one inn of the town. She was hardly installed there when there was a commotion, first in the street, then in the yard. She thought: Quarrelling already! It was, she knew, the curse of armies such as this, seasoned soldiers reserved their spleen for the enemy. She went to the window that overlooked the yard and saw a horse with hanging head, heaving flanks and sweat-streaked hide standing just inside the gateway, while a young man thrust his way through the throng that gathered round him and shouted:
“Hinder me not. I must tell the Queen.”
News from France! Her heart halted; the crowded yard swirled in a grey blur. She caught at the window sill to steady herself and called into the greyness: “Tell me quickly.”
“A great battle. A great victory, Your Grace.”
“And the King?”
“Well, when last I heard. This battle was against the Scots.”
Her sight cleared and there was the yard, full of men with their faces lifted up towards the window where she stood; country faces, bronzed from harvesting, paler townsmen’s faces, and the face of the young man in tawny, all striped, paper white where the sweat had run freely, grey where the dust had gathered.
“Come up,” she said, “and tell me all.”
He was as nearly exhausted as the horse which had carried him on the last stage of his wild ride, but, unlike the horse, he knew the worth of the message he bore and the necessity of delivering it properly. On the six stairs that led to the Queen’s room he wiped his face on his sleeve so that when he knelt before her he seemed to wear a mask, all greyish, with blazing pale eyes.
The news he brought was wonderful. Never in the long history of war between English and Scots had such a decisive victory been won by either side. The veteran Earl of Surrey had pushed the Scots back to the foothills of the Cheviot Hills and there, by a cunning deployment of his forces, surrounded them. James of Scotland was dead, cut almost to pieces, nine thousand lay dead on the field.
“They will remember Flodden, Madam.”
And so shall I; that moment by the window…
“What is your name?”
“Harry Percy, Your Grace. I am son to the Earl of Northumberland. Too young for France, they said: but I was at Flodden.” The grey mask twitched into a sardonic grin. “And because I ride so light, honored to bring the news.”
Well, wars were fought to be won; and one must think that decisive victories were less wasteful of men than long-drawn out wars of attrition, skirmishes and sieges.
But how was Margaret of Scotland feeling at this moment? As I would feel at hearing that Henry was dead, cut almost to pieces…and for every one of those nine thousand dead men some woman weeps.
She was sickened; but she had learned lately that a resolute ignoring of bodily weakness helped. Fix the mind, the inward eye upon something extraneous, even a thing so trivial as a milestone, or the clink of a loose horseshoe, and the bad moment passed. She fixed her eye and her mind on the thing which the boy wore, knotted around his waist like a sash; a piece of cloth, crudely dyed, the colors at odds with the tawny doublet.
“What is that that you wear?”
“Oh, this? I took it from the Scot I killed, Your Grace. He wore things of more value—but I did not wish to profit. All Scots carry these, cloak, blanket, pillow, for most the only equipment, besides arms, that they have.” As he spoke he unknotted the sash and shook it out, astonishingly wide.
“It is your trophy,” she said, “but might I ask it of you? I could send it to His Grace. It would look well as a banner.”
He began to smooth out the creases, “Had I known that it was to be so honored, I would have carried it more carefully. Folded and wrapped.”
“It does very well,” she said.
“Oh,” he said with a remembering look, “there was something I was to ask Your Grace. My lord of Surrey wished to know what to do with the body of the King of Scots.” Nausea again.
“It should be embalmed. The place and time of interment will be for His Grace to decide.”
James had played false, but he was a King. He was also Henry’s brother-in-law; he would be buried with due pomp.
And now the makeshift army could go home; some regretfully, some already homesick, most gladly. She had no need to push on to York. She could sit down and write letters.
“I will write to the Earl of Surrey and despatch my letter tomorrow. Not by you. I think you should rest for a day.”
He was affronted.
“Your Grace, I am not tired. A little sleep and a fresh horse…”
There was something immensely touching about boys of that age; fifteen? sixteen? So much touchy pride, such an anxiety to prove themselves the equal of men. Please God she would mother such a one.
She wrote to the old Earl of Surrey, jokingly reminding him about the importance of the rear guard and congratulating him upon the wonderful victory. Then she wrote to Henry, telling him the news, but careful not to make Flodden sound superior, or even the equal to the Battle of the Spurs. Of James IV she wrote: “It should have been better for him to have been at peace than to have this reward.” And she told Henry that she was sending him a Scots coat—the only name that her tired mind could fix upon—to hang from his banner. And then she thought that, spared the further fighting and the ride to York or beyond, she would make her way back to London by way of Walsingham and she ended her letter, “And now I go to our Lady at Walsingham.”
It was a woman’s place. It was said that when the Saracens over-ran the Holy Land, the Virgin was grieved to see her little house at Nazareth fall into infidel hands and had appeared to a Norman lady in Norfolk and asked her to build a replica, giving specific instructions. Angelic hands had helped in the building and in the inmost sanctuary there was a little flask, filled with the milk from the breast that had nursed the Savior of the world—still liquid after more than fifteen hundred years.
It was the season of pilgrimage; humble and unassuming she took her place with the rest and prayed for a child, a living boy, lusty…Holy Mother of God, not my need alone, England’s need…
There were dozens, hundreds of them, helping with the last harvesting, brown-faced, barefoot little boys. And in and around Walsingham more of them, eager to hold a horse’s head, eager to carry the shoes one must discard, eager to sell the crude, yet oddly pleasing images of clay or wood. The world that September seemed full of little boys.
It was still September when she miscarried.
One must not give way to despair; it ranked with gluttony, avarice and anger amongst the deadly sins. She knew that she must not dwell upon the loss of some part of her flesh, a little red lumpish thing, no bigger than a pear; but she had looked forward to greeting Henry with the news. Oh God, why? What have I done?
Henry came back, safe and well, full of his exploits; as loving as ever, and yet, she sometimes felt, subtly changed. Over two matters that autumn he surprised her by showing a ruthless streak. One was the disposal of the corpse of the King of Scots. She spoke of it, thought he had forgotten and reminded him. “Why bother about him? He stabbed me in the back. Let him rot.” The embalmed body was bundled away into a lumber room. The other matter was the marriage that was to seal the peace between France and England; a marriage between Henry’s sister, Mary, and Louis XII. Mary was eighteen, old enough to have a mind of her own, too old to be easily compliant; at the same time too young for an old, ailing man. She wept and protested, made what seemed to Katharine pitiable little attempts at defiance. Henry was adamant.
“Take her aside,” he told Katharine, “and make her see sense.”
“She is in love, Henry; that makes it harder.”
“Unworldly, girlish nonsense about Charles Brandon. She is a princess not a lovesick…” He halted abruptly and his face took on a curious remembering look; but whatever he remembered seemed to make him more irascible. “This mopish atmosphere wearies me. Tell her, if she weeps again in my presence, I shall send her to Hatfield until she sails for France.”
The reference to a mopish atmosphere was a little disturbing. It was true that since his return she had found it more and more difficult to match his exuberant high spirits; some of the pranks, once so amusing, seemed silly; the days of hunting, a pastime she had adopted eagerly because it meant being with him, she now found exhausting and every now and then, even when she was making merry, the thought would strike, like a cold draught—twenty-eight and I have no child. But, disturbed or not, she risked one more protest on Mary’s behalf.
“She is eighteen; and at that age one’s heart can be set. As we know.” Surely that would move him. It did not.
“A different thing altogether,” he said, “and you are not to encourage her.”
Mary, without encouragement from Katharine, struck her own bargain. In every marriage ceremony there came a moment when the bride could say, “I do” or “I do not.”
“And I will say I do not, loud and clear, in Notre Dame, unless you promise me that when the old man dies—I hope it may be soon—I can choose my second husband myself.”
She made other conditions, too; she would have only English women and girls about her. Prospective candidates for the honor of accompanying the Princess Mary to France came to court to be inspected and approved. One was Sir Thomas Boleyn’s second daughter, Anne; among the fair, pink-cheeked young creatures, her coloring marked her out; darker than any Spaniard; not pretty, but with a certain grace. Katharine noticed her, a changeling child…
Mary left for France in October 1514. Two months later Katharine gave birth to a boy, born living, dead within a few hours. He had not even been christened; nameless he went to join other unbaptized infants in Limbo. The will of God? Yes, she must cling to that because beyond there was nothing but darkness and chaos; and a mind that might, all too easily, run distraught. Why? Why? She asked God and there was no answer; but when, mourning, she put the question, perhaps for the twentieth time, to Maria de Moreto, Maria said:
“The blame lies elsewhere, Madam. It is not your punishment; it is his. And well deserved.”
Her voice was hard; she was a hard woman. She had been born, eighth child; fifth daughter into a family of the kind which only Spain could produce. Immensely proud, wretchedly poor. In such a family sons, handsome enough, might make advantageous marriages, or, clever enough, attain some official post; daughters without dower, but with some looks, might make marriages, not altogether mésalliances. But even the most determined and resourceful parents grew old and lost hope and energy. By the time that Maria was twelve she was acting as page to her brothers, even polishing armor at times, and as maid to her pretty sisters. Servants were plentiful enough in the unproductive countryside in which her father’s crumbling castle stood, but they expected to be fed, and whenever there was a shortage the old man would go stamping and shouting through the kitchens and stables, driving them out. “Look to God to provide for you, not to me.” They fled; and presently, finding God’s rations even shorter than their master’s, they drifted back. In the interim periods Maria did the menial work.
One of her brothers, who had attained not the hoped-for good marriage, but a minor appointment in Isabella’s Court, remembered his little sister with gratitude, and when Katherine’s suite was being gathered, had mentioned her name. So she had come to England. She was rather less than a year older than Katharine, but she was hard, sour and intolerant.
Katharine said, “And what has His Grace done to deserve such punishment? Missed a Mass? Eaten meat on a fast day?”
Too late, Maria realized what her outburst meant. She, if she answered the question, must cause distress to the mistress she adored. She said primly:
“I spoke unadvisedly. It is not for me to criticize His Grace.”
“But you did! Now, you will sit on that stool and you will explain what you meant. If His Grace is at fault, there is a remedy. He is as anxious as I am.”
In moments of emotion her voice always deepened, as her mother’s did. It was like a man’s, like the voice of the fearome old father who had dominated Maria de Moreto’s youth. It woke fear’s memory. Maria turned pale, was glad to take the stool.
“One must be to blame. And it is not Your Grace; so pious, charitable, wearing the rough habit under the silk and the velvet, going to Walsingham again, and to Canterbury. Therefore it must be His Grace. That was all…” She let her voice trail off and she managed to produce the smile, sick, sly false which had been her defense in another time another world.
