The King's Pleasure, page 20
It was pitiable; only twelve tears old…
“Mary, until you are of age you should not concern yourself too much with worldly matters. I am your mother; leave decisions to me. Be confident that whatever happens I shall have a care to our interests, and at the same time do my best for Holy Church. The interests are not incompatible; as you say, this may be the testing time. Let us have faith in God.”
“I do. And I do recognize my duty to you, my mother. And then I think…I cannot feel dutiful to him who tries to repudiate me.”
He was her father and until this trouble started she had adored him; handsome, sweet-smelling and merry, tossing her about in his strong arms, what could any little girl want more of her father? And later, praise, for the way she handled her lute, her good memory, the way she rode a horse. His loud voice and hearty laughter, even his bouts of ill-temper appealed to something boisterous in her, something which had sometimes chafed under Katharine’s admonitions and instructions and rules about what a little girl must and must not do.
Her recoil, when she learned what he was planning to do, was proportionate to her former esteem. The prospect of not being Queen of England was galling enough; to learn that one’s father had set himself to prove one a bastard was humiliating in the extreme; but worst of all was the fact that he was hurting her mother to whom, as she grew older and more sedate, she had become passionately devoted and whom she looked upon almost as a saint.
“I think, Mary, that you must try. He still is your father; he is the same person…this is very hard to explain. He has been ill-advised.”
“And led by the nose by a light woman.” Mary, who was one day to love recklessly and without reserve, spoke with savage scorn.
“Not light,” Katharine said. “Had she been light we should not now be speaking to her. And I think we have had enough gloomy talk. We can do nothing except await Cardinal Campeggio’s coming and hope and prepare ourselves to accept what comes with resignation and dignity.”
“I shall not. Whatever he says I shall never look upon you as other than Queen of England, or upon myself as anything but Princess of Wales. If the Pope himself ordered me to do otherwise, I could not. And,” she added, “if I play for you; it will not be any of the songs my father made. I never play them now.”
“Play what you like, darling.”
Henry scurried from place to place, always just one day’s journey ahead—or so it seemed—of the sweating sickness. He would leave a place in the morning and by nightfall someone in that place, a resident or somebody of the royal train, left behind to overlook the loading of the last of the baggage, would be smitten.
Anne Boleyn did not die. Henry, when he heard that she was ill, sent his second-best physician to attend her.
Campeggio moved northwestward, covering on a good day as much as ten miles.
In Spain Dr. Puebla’s son, going through his father’s papers, came upon a Papal brief, more lengthy and explicit than the original dispensation. In particular it omitted the words forhans, the Latin for perhaps. The dispensation gave permission for Henry and Katharine to marry even if perhaps the marriage between Katharine and Arthur had been consummated. The brief lacked the conditional word and Dr. Puebla’s son realized the importance of his find.
In England it rained and rained; a disastrous summer murrain—a disease amongst cattle, curiously similar to the sweating sickness amongst men—decimated herds and the blighted, mildewed crops lay sideways in the fields.
So the autumn came; and since no journey can last forever, Cardinal Campeggio who had set out in June on a journey which in midwinter would have taken six weeks and had taken him four months, arrived in England on the first of October and went straight to his bed. And I would to God I could do likewise, Wolsey thought, heaving his ailing, failing bulk up to make the necessary visit of welcome and condolence. He had not fled before the threat of the plague; he had labored away in London, confident in his belief that the sweating sickness, so eclectic, fastened upon the healthy and the well-born. He was no longer healthy and he was a butcher’s son who by using his wits and his phenomenal capacity for work, his talent for intrigue and his gift of ostentation had climbed so high that his enemies called him King of Europe.
But he knew that for him this was the supreme test of his life. Henry had made that painfully clear. By hook or by crook the verdict must be made to go in Henry’s favor or the blame would fall upon the most faithful, clever, cunning servant any king ever had.
XIV
When, after some days, Campeggio, accompanied by Wolsey, shuffled into Henry’s presence, Henry looked him over sharply and was satisfied that the long-drawn-out journey had not been a trick to waste time. Inside the soft cloth shoes Campeggio’s feet were grossly swollen, his puffy, glazed fingers fumbled stiffly with the papers and even his eyelids were swollen and red…A sorry sight, the King thought, quickly averting his eyes. Me too? One day?
He looked at Wolsey and because he saw him almost every day, failed to notice how much he had altered lately, the firm red cheeks mottled and sagging into heavy jowls and pouches under the eyes, the nose sharpened. Wolsey was twenty years older than his master and to Henry his servant’s physical endurance, his mental energy and clarity spelled hope. Fifty-four this year, and as good as ever.
Wolsey had had several talks with Campeggio already, and Henry had dropped a hint, no more, that the investigation might be avoided. “He is very secretive, and says nothing outright—one must remember that he is Italian by birth—but there is something which seems to indicate that he has instructions which do not concern the investigation. He said, quite seriously, Your Grace, that he hoped he would not be obliged to winter in England. It is now October; he knows how long a full trial would take to mount…”
Henry’s hopes ran high, and now, having greeted them and invited them to be seated, he prepared himself to hear that Clement had found a short cut out of this impasse. Perhaps in an hour he would be free; a bachelor again; able to rush to Anne and say, “Sweetheart, it is over. We can be married tomorrow, tonight…”
He said, “Well, my lords?”
He was not perturbed when Campeggio began with a dissertation about the sanctity of marriage. The man was a lawyer and lawyers like preambles. And with everything in this speech Henry agreed. Marriage was a sacrament, man and wife one in the Sight of God.
He listened, impatience well-concealed, but mounting.
“His Holiness has taken into consideration the tenderness of Your Grace’s conscience,” Campeggio said, and paused; a lawyer’s pause. Henry leaned forward, a smile already beginning to form.
“He has, therefore, instructed me to tell Your Grace that he is prepared to amend any flaw in the original dispensation, and to extend it, so that your marriage to Queen Katharine is good and valid, whether or not she was formerly the wife of your brother, and this would allow Your Grace to resume marital relations with a completely clear conscience.”
“Christ’s wounds!” Henry said. Precisely what he did not want. He sagged back in his chair and for a moment or two he looked almost as old, as worn by life as the two men who confronted him. Then he rallied.
“The offer astonishes me. It admits the possibility of a flaw and at the same time ties me down to acceptance of a flawed dispensation. Julius was either right or wrong. I claim that he was wrong. On that my case rests. This is no answer. Mending up a wrong. You sit there and tell me that if Julius was in error, Clement with a stroke of the pen can make it right and I have leave to take to my bed in good conscience a woman past child-bearing age who has borne me dead children, or children dead before their navels have healed. Can Clement, lifting his pen, remove the curse of Leviticus?”
“It is a matter of law, Your Grace,” Campeggio said. “And if one gives consideration to Leviticus one should give equal attention to Deuteronomy, where a man is ordered to take his dead brother’s wife and raise children in his brother’s name. The study of such ancient, Jewish writings leads to confusion—as your case exemplifies. The teaching of the Church, the authority of the Pope are far more reliable guides to any Christian.”
“I am a Christian,” Henry said vehemently. “Nineteen years ago, acting under the direction of a dispensation which now even Clement admits may have held a flaw, I married, within the forbidden degree. The consequences proved me wrong; I searched my conscience. Can Clement’s amendment give me back the lost boys, the lost years?”
“His willingness to amend any flaw should be a salve to any pang of conscience,” Campeggio said imperturbably.
Henry looked at Wolsey who had so far said nothing.
“Thomas, what is your view on this? Am I not right?”
“Your Grace repudiates the notion of amendment. It is to be hoped that Cardinal Campeggio did not travel so far, and so painfully, in order to offer a single, so easily rejected suggestion.”
Let Campeggio show his full hand; let Campeggio see what it meant to deal with a man like the King of England.
“There was an alternative suggestion,” Campeggio said, after a short, tense silence. “His Holiness is fully prepared to absolve the Queen from her earthly marriage, if she retires to a convent and takes vows.”
At that Wolsey looked up and his eyes met Henry’s. You see! All this running to and fro, all this talk and what result? They now point to the way out which I suggested more than a year ago.”
“There is nothing new there, either,” Henry snapped. “My lord Cardinal proposed it last year; before he left for France. The Queen repudiated it utterly.”
“Saying that she would await His Holiness’s decision in the matter. Is it not possible that Her Grace might regard the suggestion coming now as it does direct from him, as a decision? She has now had ample time for thinking over her position.” And to see how little hope she had. “Have I permission to see the Queen and lay this proposal before her?”
“If that is the best you can do. You might as well save your breath. I’ve been married to her for hard on twenty years and never yet seen her change her mind over a principle. She looks on herself as my wife and will do so until I get a plain yes or no to my question, put to Rome three years back. Is my marriage legal or not? It warranted a plain answer. And what do I get? This stale stuff.”
He glared at them. This would be a fine thing to tell Anne; he could just imagine how she would take it; tears, hysterics, or mockery. God’s eyes! People applauded when the old dog went through the hoop. He went through it every night.
“Had the answer been so simple, I should not be here,” Campeggio said. All those miles; so much pain.
“Why are you here? This nonsense could have been put on paper. Clement promised me a full investigation.”
“Which I am here to conduct. If needs be. But I was ordered to bring about, if possible, a decent, private settlement. We can talk about the trial when I have seen Her Grace.”
“That word does not please me. Who is on trial? Kate…Her Grace and I are both innocent victims of a Papal error, which Clement could put right with a pen stroke. If he has power to amend the dispensation he has power to annul it.” Impotent anger choked him. Then suspicion flared. Campeggio wanted to see Katharine. Alone with her what might he not say? Clement lived under the Emperor’s thumb, and the Emperor was her nephew. The long delay, the sending of this slow-moving devious man to make more delay. Part of a plot against him.
“And another thing,” he said, speaking to Campeggio but bringing his hard, blue, down-bearing stare upon Wolsey. “You go together. His Holiness yoked you…Go when you like. England is a free country. Anyone may talk to whom he wishes. That is all I have to say. I wish you Good day.”
As usual, Wolsey thought, the King had summed the situation in a few words. England was a country where all men were free to obey orders.
“I have nothing to say to Her Grace which I should not wish Cardinal Wolsey to hear. Indeed I hope that he will lend his persuasions to mine to bring about a happy issue, agreeable to all.”
Outside the audience chamber Wolsey, matching his step to Campeggio’s shuffle, said:
“That was unfortunate. The Queen neither likes nor trusts me. You would have done better alone.”
“If we could travel by river it would suit me well. A boat jolts less and we might avoid the crowd.”
The crowd had been very vociferous; shouting for the Queen and against Nan Bullen. Campeggio had wondered whether the English had no work to do, no homes or children to tend that at a moment’s notice, or no notice at all, they could flock into the streets and shout. He had made only one comment: “His Grace must know how his people feel.”
“He has no intention of marrying her,” Wolsey said, putting into words his own deep-seated belief. “And while they are shouting against her, they are happy.” And not shouting against you, or me.
They shouted lustily at Westminster steps where the Cardinals embarked and here and there along the river, and at Greenwich. And today every now and then, after the call, “We want no Nan Bullen,” there was a postscript. “Nor no Cardinals neither!”
Campeggio said, with tact, or malice, one never knew:
“I seem to share Mistress Boleyn’s unpopularity. They mistake my errand if they think I come to break a marriage.”
“It broke years ago,” Wolsey said morosely. His disappointment was almost equal to Henry’s. Campeggio, after all, had nothing new to suggest; no easy way out. And the Queen would never yield. A proposition which she would not take from the King, whom she loved, she would not take from Campeggio. Unless that secretive man had, somewhere concealed about him, a definite order from Clement: Get into a convent! Nothing less would move her; and the investigation would go on, taking time. And unless it ends as he wishes, the bell will toll for me. Wolsey thought wearily that God in His wisdom had made women, child-bearing animals or playthings—his own woman, Joan Larke had been both, and he still enjoyed the company and was interested in the well-being of his son and daughter, known as his nephew and niece. But the western world had given the creatures a ridiculous importance; dowries, marriage settlements, rights. The Turks had better sense; a man had only to say, “I divorce you,” three times and it was done.
So they came to Greenwich, where the lower steps, washed by every tide, were clean, those above slimy—“I beg you be careful, my lord!” and then a few which except in an exceptionally wet spring the water never touched.
“We want no Nan Bullen!” The crowd greeted them.
You muttonheaded fools, Wolsey thought, do you think I want her? You silly English people, Campeggio thought, she will be grey-headed and forgotten before His Holiness gives consent; get back to your looms and your counters!
Katharine was at work with her women, stitching away at an altar cloth, a Christmas gift to the chapel of the Observant Friars, when the two Cardinals, with something of a flurry, were announced. She pushed her needle into the cloth, rose, curtseyed to the two Princes of the Church and led them into the little private room on the far side of the apartment. It was her own sanctum, the place where she wrote her letters, sometimes meditated, sometimes prayed. It was, as regards aspect, on the wrong side of the house, lighted only be a narrow, ancient window that never caught the sun. It had no hearth. Walls and floor were bare and it contained the minimum of furniture. Apart from the table, directly under the window and the chair in which she sat when writing, there was nothing except a bench against one wall and against the other a prie-dieu, and that very stark.
Campeggio, taking the whole place in at a glance, thought: This should not be too hard; she is halfway to a nunnery already. For a moment he saw himself, successful in this tricky business, back in Rome before the English winter set in, his task accomplished, taking his ease.
In that same moment Katharine was concerned with a triviality, a matter of precedence. There was the one chair; offer it to either and the other would be offended; and her eye, sharper than Henry’s in this respect, saw nothing to choose between them, physically; Cardinal Campeggio was the more obviously disabled, but Cardinal Wolsey did not look well; the high ruddy color that he usually carried was unequally distributed, separate islands of red and white all over the full-fleshed face; and the lips bluish.
So she seated herself in the chair and asked them to set themselves on the bench, and said to Campeggio:
“You bring me news of the decision that His Holiness has made in my case?” And she waited as avidly as Henry had done.
Campeggio said, “Your Grace, in this matter a decision is hard to reach. I bring a suggestion…”
He did not lecture her on the sanctity of marriage; he made no preamble. He told her, quite quickly and with a bluntness that Wolsey would not have thought him capable of, that the best, the only thing she could do, was to renounce her dubious earthly marriage and become the Bride of Christ. A nun.
Until he said it she had not realized how much she had counted upon his coming; how much she had relied upon the Pope to espouse her cause. All along she had not set her hopes too high, had been careful to say, even to Mary, “If…” and “Whatever happens…” But her inner certainty that she was right had colored her thinking; she realized now that in her inmost heart she had been certain that when Campeggio arrived he would bring proof that she was right, that His Holiness, in Rome, had sorted all things out and was prepared to stand by her.
People said, slapping words about like coins on a counter, “my heart sank,” “my heart stopped,” “my heart broke” and there was, after all, some groping after truth in such expressions. Campeggio’s words went into her ears, her mind absorbed them and lower down, in her chest and stomach there was a drop, a stop, an emptying, as though her whole body was suddenly hollowed out. It needed a deliberate, almost desperate effort for her to gather enough force and breath to say:
