It was the first time she had been mentioned directly and Henry noticed, almost avidly, that Chapuys did not say Her Grace or the Queen.

  “I have not yet mentioned the matter to her. There has been no time.”

  He had, in fact, only just thought of it himself, prodded on by one of Anne’s hysterical outbursts. How long, she had demanded, would the canvassing of the Universities take? A year at the very least; any man who claimed to be a scholar could argue six months about nothing. Given something to argue about they would argue until they were dead, until Henry was dead, until she was dead! And meantime she occupied this invidious position and Katharine was still housed and treated like a queen. It was an intolerable situation and unless he did something to end it soon, she would. She would go back to Hever. That was the threat which always cut so sharply and so deeply that there were times when under it he felt a wild impulse to say: Go! And good riddance! That impulse, fleeting as it was, always frightened him it was so akin to that of a suicide who cast life away because life had not given him what he wanted. He always restrained it and soothed her as best he could, with gifts, with promises, with honeyed words.

  Leaving her he had thought again about Cranmer’s suggestions. Anne was opposed to the waiting for a consensus of scholarly opinion, Katharine said she could accept no decision but Clement’s. And there was something else to be considered. If he followed Cranmer’s plan it would inevitably lead to the setting up of the authority of a simple English ecclesiastic court in direct defiance of the Pope. It was all very well, coming straight from Waltham to say to Katharine: I will declare the Pope a heretic, but once one realized the full implication and saw, as he did, that a blow against one form of authority was a blow against all authority…that if the Pope could be defied, so might a king be, and bishops, lords of manors, mayors in towns…there was no end to it.

  So he had thought instead of the swift, decisive court in Cambrai.

  To Chapuys he said, “It would come better from you, Messire, than from me. She no longer understands me. She is most noble and honorable, and I swear to you, as I have sworn to others, that were things otherwise, there is no woman in the world whom I would prefer before her. But she is a woman and women have fancies; they can be perverse and very stubborn.”

  And for that, Chapuys thought, God be thanked. Had my mother not been the most stubborn creature in creation—donkeys not excepted—I should not be here. In his coldly amicable voice he said:

  “Your Grace wishes me to suggest a court at Cambrai?”

  “Yes. As soon as possible. She is at Greenwich.”

  Chapuys went to Greenwich a man committed to nothing except his master’s service. Charles had instructed him to use his best endeavors to bring about, if possible, even at this late hour, a reconciliation between the King and Queen of England whose matrimonial dispute had assumed absurd proportions. Every time-wasting device had been employed. The King of England’s passion for the waiting lady must soon burn itself out—he was forty; his wife forty-five; full time that they settled down. They had a daughter, about fourteen. Charles had a three-year-old son; there was a difference admittedly; but when Philip was fourteen, Mary Queen of England would be only twenty-five, greater disparities in age had, in the interests of political or territorial interests, been compounded in the past.

  Chapuys was not surprised to find that Katharine was opposed to the suggestion of a court at Cambrai; and it was not difficult for him—a seasoned diplomat—to make a few remarks which sounded as though he was using persuasion upon her, but were in fact calculated to strengthen her opposition. “It would,” he said, “be much the quickest way, Your Grace.”

  “I am in no hurry to be the subject of a wrong decision,” she said. He felt that his point had been taken. “I appealed to Rome and the only verdict acceptable to me will come from Rome.”

  “The delay must be very tedious.”

  “Perhaps less so to me than to others concerned. I sometimes think, Messire Chapuys—and may God forgive me if the suspicion is unwarranted—that everything is being deliberately delayed in the hope that His Grace’s infatuation may die down of its own accord. That is a fatuous hope and underestimates both His Grace and Mistress Boleyn, as much as the hope that long waiting will change my mind underestimates me. You would serve us all if you conveyed this fact to the level where decisions are made. If His Holiness pontificates in my favor and says that my marriage is good, it will be a great relief to me and also, I think, perhaps to His Grace, when the anger has died. He has been unfortunate—and only I who love him can see this…I know,” she said, clasping her hands together and hammering them upon the air, “I know what is said, and believed of him. It so happens that his doubts about our marriage, our having no son, were fomented by evil counsellors and coincided with the fancy he had conceived—as many men do—for a younger woman. The timing was bad. And the woman…Messire Chapuys, it ill becomes one woman to wish another less virtuous, but had she been less virtuous, less of a bargainer, it would all be over now and we should have been spared much suffering. I do not know, Messire Chapuys, why I say such things to you, except that I hope you will convey to your master, my nephew, the certainty that more time wasted will be wasted indeed and that a firm directive from Rome would be to the benefit of us all.”

  “And if,” the Spanish Ambassador said, “it should go against you, Your Grace?”

  “I should grieve for my daughter. For myself, I should accept it, putting as they say, a hard heart against a hard sorrow.”

  Chapuys knew then. In another place, in another tongue, the only woman he had ever cared for or respected, had used that phrase many times. And once the likeness between her and the Queen of England was recognized…Dignity in humiliating circumstances, clear thinking, straight speaking, tolerance just on the wry side, and at the heart of it all a rocklike resistance. Like his mother!

  His father had died leaving nothing but a house. To the widow friends and advisers had come, meaning well. Sell the house, they said; buy a modest property; Eustache and the next boy, they said are big enough now to take service, in some merchant’s house…She had listened with the very same manner as Katharine had listened, to his proposal of the court at Cambrai. She had then gone her own way. The clear, rather chilly air of Annecy was reckoned to be good for people with faulty lungs, and she had turned her house into a place where such could lodge, squeezing her own family into the minimum of space and cooking, cooking, the good simple food that did as much as the air. Her first-born, Eustache, should never be a menial, he must continue at school, proceed to University, become, like his father an attorney. The younger boys, if they showed a gleam of promise, should have similar opportunities; and her daughters should be brought up—no matter at what sacrifice—to be marriageable within the class they would have occupied had their father lived. It had been a hard and bitter struggle, worse than poverty because poverty could always show its sores and find dogs to lick them. But Eustache, her first-born, taken into confidence too young—to whom else could she talk frankly?—had never seen her lose composure, dignity or faith. The pallid, languid lung-sufferers would die, what was owing would be disputed; the flour would be weevilly, the onions rot in the ground, the best milking goat slip its tether: and she would say, We must put a hard heart against a hard sorrow. And she would press on, undismayed by the fact that everything in the world was against her—except Eustache, the dependable little boy always ready to shoulder any task; even those beyond his capacity.

  Eustache, the man, the Imperial Ambassador, came away from Greenwich deeply committed.

  It was, however, the goodwill of the King that the Ambassador appeared anxious to gain. He made a point of never seeking private interviews with the Queen and in public exchanged only the few remarks demanded by custom and by courtesy. But he kept a sharp ear for gossip, however trivial and would shamelessly eavesdrop on occasion. Now and then, even in a crowded room, he would slip into the formal conversation a warning word. One evening he said, speaking in a low voice, but with no glancing to left or right or leaning forward or any other sign that he was speaking of anything but the weather or the quality of the entertainment just ended:

  “Your refusal of Cambrai is likely to have unpleasant repercussions.”

  “I trust God will give me the necessary fortitude.” There had been times when the clean, polished rooms at Annecy had stood empty; when food was scarce and shoes outgrown. His mother had never failed in fortitude.

  “The Lady is bringing pressure to bear. She wishes you away from Court.”

  “I am grateful to you, Messire,” she said, with the amiable look, the gracious inclination of the head with which she might have received some flattering, ambassadorial words. She was aware of the bystander. Not hovering, as Wolsey had hovered. Henry’s new man, Thomas Cromwell, who had been Wolsey’s servant and who, the moment his master fell from favor, had ridden posthaste to take his place with the King, lacked the physical dignity, the urbane manner of Wolsey. He did not hover, he approached and stood, his stance a little awkward, his intention of interrupting the conversation plain. Finesse, the art which his old master had perfected, was no longer needed; Katharine’s days as Queen, even in appearance, were numbered. Tomorrow, or the day after, she would be informed…

  Informed already she was prepared for the deputation which called upon her to demand that she should accept, and appear at, the Court in Cambrai. Cromwell, more brutally direct in spheres where retaliation was unlikely than Wolsey had ever been, had chosen the men who were to form the deputation. The Duke of Norfolk, Anne’s uncle; the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne’s father; the Duke of Suffolk who, ever since the King had spared his head and taken him back into favor, had been a willing pliant tool.

  Knowing what the repercussions were likely to be, she said to them what she had said to Chapuys: For her the only acceptable verdict must come from Rome. And when they had gone she turned back into the apartments—to the rooms where, on a June evening long ago Henry’s love had installed her, his fore-thought kindled fires—and began to make preparations for her removal.

  It was a dismal task. This is mine, this is state property; this I brought from Spain; this has been given me since. A severance of bone from bone.

  “And the jewels?” Maria de Moreto asked. They had been, for years, her special care and responsibility.

  Katharine hesitated for a moment. Then she said:

  “They are the jewels of the Queen of England; and until the Pope says I am not, I am Queen of England. They belong with me, wherever I go.”

  When the order came, very promptly, to remove herself and her personal belongings, out of London and to The More, a manor which had once been Wolsey’s, near to Harrow Hill, she took her clothes, the silver and the linen that she had brought from Spain, and the jewels of the Queen of England.

  She did not look upon her banishment from Court as final. It was part of the waiting time; and the order for it had been given in part to punish her for not agreeing to go to Cambrai, in part to pacify Anne for the delay which the putting into practice of Cranmer’s schemes must involve. The move had something to recommend it; the last period of waiting would be spent in private, away from watchful eyes, pitying or scornful, away from gossip, away from the scarcely veiled insolence of Anne and her friends; but it was also away from Henry and although for a long time now their appearances together had seemed to be a cruel mockery of a former happy relationship, she found herself missing the almost daily meetings. Sitting or standing beside him, on public occasions, she had been aware of constraint, the constant wonder as to his mood, what he would say and in what tone; but there had been many occasions, twice, thrice a week, when anonymous among her ladies, she could sit and watch him and admire, and slip away from this troubled present into memories of the happier past. He still jousted with skill and vigor, and though “Sir Loyal Heart” had been replaced by the cryptic, “Declare I Dare Not,” she still liked to see him win. It was the same in the tennis court, where, stripping off his doublet, he revealed one of the fine linen shirts that she had sewn for him. Had Anne ever made him a shirt? She never saw him as a middle-aged man, a little heavier, a little slower, redder in the face, shorter of breath. For her his image was fixed and immutable, and with no danger of a surly, chilling, or merely formal word to spoil the illusion, she could still watch him with love. There would be no more of that.

  She accepted the irony of The More as her place of residence. One of Wolsey’s properties. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but long before Wolsey, in a dark November had halted, and died at Leicester Abbey on his way back from York to trial in London, she had forgiven him. Like everybody else, she believed that Wolsey had died of a broken heart, surviving by only a few months the withdrawal of Henry’s favor. Wolsey had so stoically concealed his ills, his ominous symptoms, that this belief was current. Sometimes Katharine thought seriously about this—the King turned his face from Wolsey and Wolsey died; he has now turned his face from me and I am not dead, have no intention of dying. Am I less loving than the butcher’s son? Put that thought aside. I am not yet forty-six; Wolsey was fifty-five; he had no hope. I have. Clement will issue his verdict and I shall be reinstated.

  She held to this conviction so firmly that at Christmas 1531, the first of her banishment, two visitors from Venice, having been entertained first at Court and then, by their own wish moving on to The More, declared that in the latter place the food was better and the diversions merrier.

  Only those close to her, and, closest of all, Maria de Moreto, saw that at The More Katharine did not flourish. She grew paler, more susceptible to cold and to little ills. She never lost faith or hope or confidence or even good humor, but there was a difference. Maria de Moreto who had herself survived love’s loss, remembered her own lessening of gusto and resilience, her own settling down into resignation. Chapuys, still allowed to visit and more punctilious now, wrote to his master, amongst many other things, “The Queen has aged much in few months.”

  XVIII

  It was life in a void. She was allowed visitors—anyone except Mary. Every time that she considered this restriction it would seem to be an act of spite on Henry’s part. But that was so sickening a thought that she could not accept it; such malice was incompatible with the Henry she knew. She would remind herself that years ago she had felt in the same way about Mary’s being sent to Ludlow, but Mary’s stay there had been good for her, good for the Welsh. One must not cherish destructive suspicions. It was better, surely better, at this point, for Mary, with her passionate nature, to live quietly, to continue her studies and not to be too closely involved in a situation which must—and soon—be resolved.

  Other visitors made the twelve-mile journey from the center of London to The More; but in their manner, in their words, what was said, and what was not said, Katharine detected an unwelcome sympathy, a kind of finality, as though she were stricken with some fatal disease that could only end in death. Nobody had any real news to impart and everybody was just a little too eager to remark upon the amenities of The More, which, like every other place upon which Wolsey had laid a hand, was comfortable, handsome, well-appointed. Doomed to death, but on a good bed, under a soft blanket.

  To this general behavior there were two welcome exceptions. The Countess of Willoughby who had been Maria de Salinas came and did not adopt the death-bedside manner. Far from it. She had no eye for the pleasant view, no praise for the painted ceilings. “You will not be here long,” she said cheerfully. “His Holiness must decide soon, if only to forestall this ridiculous scheme of putting so much authority into the hands of the English church.”

  “That is still spoken of?”

  “Constantly, Your Grace. The Archbishop of Canterbury is much opposed to it. But he is old, and ailing. And if things are allowed to drift until Cranmer is appointed…” “Cranmer?”

  “He is said to be earmarked for the honor. May I ask what sounds like an impertinent question?”

  “I have known you in many moods, Maria, but never impertinent.”

  “Have you written to the Pope and to the Emperor, urging a decision soon?”

  “Many times. I have written with my own hand: and Messire Chapuys almost always includes some plea for a speedy settlement in his communications.”

  “I think,” the Countess said, “that it would be wise to write again. The King himself blows hot and cold on this matter. He can see where the putting of so grave a decision into an English church court might lead. But when Warham dies and Cranmer succeeds him…” She finished the sentence with an eloquent movement of her hands. Then she added, “When promotion results from the putting forward of an idea, that idea will be put forward. And a sheep in wolf’s clothing is a notoriously dangerous animal.”

  “Cranmer?” Katharine said again.

  “Cranmer,” the Countess said. “He even looks like a sheep. But in return for the mitre he would act like a wolf and carry the King with him.”

  “I will write yet again,” Katharine said. “Maria, you go back to London?”

  “On my way home. For one night only.”

  “Will you take, or send a message to Messire Chapuys for me? Tell him that I should be glad to see him at the earliest possible moment convenient to him.”

  “Most gladly,” the Countess said.

  Seeing Katharine, even paler and much preoccupied, writing, writing, Maria de Moreto said, “Is it something that she said to worry Your Grace?”

  “The other Maria? Oh no. It is something I must do before Messire Chapuys’ next visit.”

  “And that will not be yet. He was here only five days ago.”

  Chapuys had carefully spaced out his visits, frequent enough not to let the Queen feel that she was neglected, not frequent enough to merit Henry’s disapproval. On his visits he never admired the view, the wall hangings or the special scented rushes on the floor—the very same rushes as had been spread, as a tribute to the occasion, on the floor at Baynard’s Castle all those years ago. Wolsey had ordered that all his residences should be supplied with them and since nobody had ever cancelled the order and since Suffolk people were slow to change, the rushes were still cut and despatched to all the places which had once belonged to the great Cardinal. The bill was mounting…

 

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