The King's Pleasure, page 34
“Will you tell her that I hope she will be better soon? That I know she will be better.” De La Sa would carry only messages concerned with health. “I gave my word, Your Highness, hoping thereby to lend weight to my plea that the Queen should be removed from Kimbolton.”
“She will be removed; and shortly,” Mary said, “I know, Dr. de La Sa, that you are allowed only to speak of my health to her and of her health to me, but this is a word concerning health. Tell her, from me, to be of good cheer and to cherish herself. Better days are coming.”
It was incredible, de La Sa thought to himself, comparing in his mind’s eye this upright, sturdy, lively girl with the miserable creature to whom he had been called at Hatfield. And he felt at liberty to deliver the message; it concerned health; good cheer and self-care were healthful measures; and the better days, the summer days must come.
Katharine never knew how nearly she missed liberation or by how narrow a margin civil war had been averted. On a comparatively mild day Francisco Filipez rode out and came back with three eggs, a pot of honey and some news. “It is only gossip, Your Grace, but they are saying that the Princess is to be more closely watched, and recalled to London very soon because the King has heard whisper of a plot against him. A rising, Madam, led by the Princess and the Spanish Ambassador. And it is true that four men, spies by the look of them, Jennie said, stopped at her place to drink ale and asked direction to the place where the Princess is.”
Let it happen, had been his first thought. Single-handed he would deal with Sir Edmund and Sir Edward, and glad to. And there were several others, within the walls of Kimbolton who could be counted upon to take the Queen’s side or remain neutral.
Everything suddenly fell into place; Mary’s sudden improvement in health; “a different person,” de La Sa had said. The messages about better days on the way; the doctor’s assurances that she would not spend another winter in Kimbolton; and from Chapuys, of late, nothing. The focus of his attention had shifted. To Mary?
He could not persuade me, she thought, he found Mary more malleable. And it must not be!
She said, “Francisco, tomorrow you must make some excuse to ride again. I have a most urgent letter to dispatch.”
She sat down and wrote to Chapuys so forcibly that the quill spluttered. “I have heard that His Grace has some suspicion of her surety, but I cannot think that he has so little confidence in me. I am determined to die in this kingdom and I offer my own person as surety for my daughter to the end that if any such thing be attempted, the King, my lord, may do justice upon me as the most traitorous woman ever born.”
She sent for poor Dr. de La Sa and spoke to him so sternly that it seemed another transformation in a patient had taken place.
“What do you know of the plot in which my daughter appears to be involved?”
“Nothing Your Grace. What plot?” His innocence was manifest.
“I believe you. But think back. Her recovery was sudden. What happened on that day? Was she visited? Try to remember.”
“So far as I can recall, Your Grace…I gave her, perhaps in-cautiously, yes, I thought after, it was incautious, some account, moderated because of her condition, of the way in which you were housed and treated. And I said that I hoped that when her condition had improved His Grace would be sufficiently grateful to receive me and give some heed to my plea that you should be removed from here. She then said that her condition was improved; and from that moment she has never looked back. She became, as I have told you, a different person altogether.”
“Then I regard you as responsible for all that has happened since.”
“Responsible for what, Your Grace? I am sorry. I fail to follow…”
“You told her the food was poor? The fire, despite Maria’s trick, insufficient, bed linen scarce; and that another winter in Kimbolton would be the end of me? True or not?”
“Your Grace, I mentioned hardships. The advisability of a change of residence…The Princess appeared to be concerned but not unduly distressed. And as I said, she immediately announced that she was better. I thought at the time she said so in order to expedite my interview with His Grace; but she was better and has remained so.”
He was completely puzzled.
“As I thought,” Katharine said, still looking at him with disfavor. “You must now undo the harm you did—unwittingly, I grant you, but grave harm which must be undone.”
“But, Madam, what harm? How can I undo something that I am ignorant of having done?”
“You must break the promise that you made to His Grace and carry a letter for me to my daughter. And be ready to ride with it within ten minutes.” He had only just arrived back in Kimbolton. “Moreover, tomorrow morning you must rise early and come back to me bringing the assurance that the Princess has understood and is prepared to obey my order.”
“Perhaps Your Grace will permit me to say that this is precisely the kind of communication which I undertook not to assist in.”
“You were to concern yourself with health only. I know. Health is concerned—I shall neither sleep nor eat until I am reassured. The health, indeed the lives, of thousands of people are in danger. Do you wish to see civil war in England, Dr. de La Sa?”
He gaped at her.
“Madam, are you feeling quite well?”
“Quite well, thank you. You can occupy yourself while you wait by making a copy of this letter,” she tapped the one she had written to Chapuys. “And in a legible hand, please.”
Never, in all the long time he had served her had he seen her like this. Then, when he had glanced through what he was to copy, he felt again that she was suffering from some disturbance of the mind. He said, almost timidly:
“Your Grace…Are you fully aware of what this means? The situation is not clear to me, but what is clear is that such a statement might involve grave risk to yourself.”
“It was intended to,” Katharine said, without looking up.
De La Sa wrote with unaccustomed slowness and clarity, rounding each letter like a child. He still could not see in what respect he had offended.
“Make the best speed you can,” Katharine said, handing him both letters, folded together. He had never heard her speak so curtly to the youngest page and he did not realize that the manner was deliberately assumed in order to frighten him into an act of disobedience.
Mary looked stunned when she read the letter and the enclosure and then burst into a passion of weeping more violent than Dr. de La Sa had ever seen, even in a house from which Death had snatched an only child, or a breadwinner. Most women sat down in order to weep; Mary walked up and down, wringing her hands together and drawing harsh noisy breaths that sounded more like the death rattle in the throat of a strong man than the sobs of a woman. Dr. de La Sa, weary—he had ridden forty miles that day—and under some emotional stress himself, was flustered.
“Your Highness; sit down; try to be calm. You will undo all the good…you will bring on a headache…”
“This ruins all,” she said hoarsely, and continued to walk and wring her hands while the tears—not copious, the doctor observed, but slow and difficult—squeezed themselves out and ran down her face which was as pale now as when she lay in bed at Hatfield.
“You must,” he said, “Your Highness must strive for calm. You will be ill again…I beg you, sit down…Take a little wine…”
“Leave me be. I have to make up my mind.” She locked her fingers together and beat on the air with them as though hammering something.
Then, abruptly, she was calm. She sat in a chair and brushed the last tears away with the tips of her fingers.
“So!” she said. “It is over. I cannot, even her own cause, sacrifice her. There she sits, a prisoner, helpless and without hope. She is ill-housed, ill-fed, ageing, ailing—and she is the most powerful woman in this world, Dr. de La Sa, the most powerful woman in the world.”
As she said it she shuddered, a spasm that rattled from her teeth to her heels on the floor.
“A little wine now?” Dr. de La Sa suggested again. Wine heartened and soothed; given enough of it a man could bear the amputation of a limb by a barber surgeon with no more noise and complaint than a man with no wine in him would make at the removal of a splinter or the lancing of a boil.
“Yes. This bitter pill needs something to wash it down; and you have made a double journey. Pour for us both; I should not wish to be seen in this state…” She brushed away two more slow running tears.
In this house whose owners were uncertain of their role—host and hostess? unofficial jailers?—a natural good-heartedness had tipped the balance and Mary had been served with the best. The wine which the doctor poured—his hand a little less steady than usual—was both heartening and soothing.
Mary said, “I am well now. I need you no more. I shall return forthwith to Hatfield or any other place to which the King orders me.” All over, the trumpets, the banners, the release of Katharine, Queen of England, the triumphant ride into London, the restoration of Papal authority. Finished, done with. God’s will.
“It is a wise decision,” de La Sa said—not knowing what it concerned. “Being so near, and not allowed to meet, has imposed strain upon you both.” He was still in the dark; he had, he realized, become involved with something outside his sphere; the Queen’s strange manner towards him; his own breach of faith; the Princess’s behavior. From his confusion and exhaustion and the effect of a full glass of good wine after more than a year of abstinence, he took refuge in his profession and the Hippocratic oath: “The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment and not for their hurt. Whatsoever house I enter I will go there for the benefit of the sick.”
He said, “Your Highness, wherever you go, and whatever happens, I advise calm and contentment of mind. Upon such basis all health depends. The Queen, your mother, has survived trials that could have destroyed her had she not maintained a quiet mind, willing to wait upon events.”
“And never one event brought her good. I could, I would have saved her. But faced with this…” she tapped the papers which she had flung down in the paroxysm of anger and frustration, “I am helpless. A hobbled horse. She waits in Kimbolton for death to release her. For what do I wait with this quiet contented mind?”
Bit by bit, helped by the wine, he saw the situation in which he had played his unwitting part, like Justice, blindfold, in the morality plays.
He thought quickly; the King was not his patient; the Princess was.
“I can no more look into the future, than any other man—except as a doctor. And this I can say: Men who in their forties grow fat and continue to eat as though they were still young and are of a choleric disposition, seldom make old bones.”
Mary said, “Oh,” and put her hand to her face.
“Your Highness, that is an observation, not a prognosis.”
“But my mother might, despite all, outlive him?”
“It is possible; even likely. With an untroubled mind…” He realized his duty to his other patient, and in turn tapped the papers. “This kind of thing is not good for Her Grace.”
“There will be no more of it,” Mary said. “Tell her that from me. I yield to her will as to the will of God. Tell her I shall not stir, that remembering she is my surety I shall walk most warily and wait. Go now, Dr. de La Sa and give her this assurance.” She added with the good common sense that the doctor recognized as a sign of mental health, “It is almost dusk; but every horse knows the way to his own stable.”
Sixty miles in a day!
XXV
In April Fisher, More, Abell and others taken from Buckden, and a number of Carthusian monks, forty-five people in all, were executed. Fisher took with him to the block all immediate hope of Paul III’s making—as he had considered doing—any compromise with Henry. The political situation had seemed to warrant a review of the whole dispute and Paul had thought about making an offer to recognize Henry’s present marriage in return for the restitution of Papal authority in England. That was now impossible. Fisher was a Cardinal, a man of learning and of exemplary life and his sole offence was that he had believed in Julius’ dispensation, which Clement had confirmed; the olive branch could not readily be extended to the man who had killed him. Also, word came seeping through that the Carthusians, while awaiting trial, had been villainously treated, so shackled that they could neither sit nor lie down and practically starved. The papers for Henry’s excommunication were drawn up; but not signed.
More went to death almost gaily; at the scaffold he said, “I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and as for my coming down, let me shift for myself.” All London mourned him. He had been an honest lawyer, insusceptible to bribery. He took with him the last vestige of Henry’s youth. Henry had loved him as a brother, enjoyed his company, revelled in his wit. In allowing him to die Henry had again violated his own nature and he was less resilient now. He refused to admit any sense of guilt or of wrongdoing and took refuge in a vast corrosive self-pity. He was right; those against him were wrong and they would regret it.
Even in the streets of his beloved London he seemed, for a moment, to have lost that personal popularity which meant so much to him. Immediately after the executions he rode out and faced, for the first time in his life, a crowd whose cheers were thin and faint-hearted. He reined in his horse and said in a loud, carrying voice, “I did not know that so many of you were dumb. You have my sympathy.”
“You,” was the magic word; it was addressed directly to every man, every woman in the crowd, with the mocking I-know-you, you-know-me grin. Had he shown discomfiture at the silence, or merely ignored it, it would have lasted and there would have been other, longer silences. But he had challenged them, and they responded. There he sat, solid, confident, handsome, their King. They proceeded to show him that they were not dumb. It was a gift, like being able to walk a tightrope, this ability to establish intimate contact with people whose names he would never know, whose opinions and feelings he was prepared to disregard if they conflicted with his own. Such moments provided the exact counterbalance to those of self-pity during which he would think: Forty-four this year, and still no son; love for Kate dead, passion for Anne soured into something worse than indifference; the damned heretics battering on the gate that only he, good Catholic, kept barred; and the Pope threatening to excommunicate him. Lonely, too; one daughter a mere prattler, the other a surly, defiant young woman who by rights should be in the Tower.
And Katharine was to blame for it all.
He could no longer bear to be reminded of her existence. When Chapuys began to speak of the advisability of her removal from Kimbolton before another winter set in, Henry said, “Speak of something else, Messire, or withdraw.” When Cromwell said, “I have another communication from Sir Edmund Bedingfield…” Henry said, “Forget it.” He did not wish to hear that the allowance was inadequate, in the face of rising prices, or, presently, that it was not paid at all.
Chapuys had recovered from the failure of what he now thought of as the Winter Plot which had come to nothing because a woman who could not order herself a proper dinner or a supply of new bed linen, had issued an order which her daughter had obeyed. He was eagerly awaiting the day when Henry should be excommunicated. Excommunication was a curse and it cancelled out all bonds of allegiance. Those who, in January, might have stood by the King or wavered, could turn against an excommunicated man with clear consciences. The Queen would feel differently, too; such a staunch upholder of Papal authority would be bound to take the ban very seriously.
But sentence must be executed before the Concubine quickened again. So just as Chapuys had urged Clement to give his verdict before Henry took matters into his own hands, so now he urged Paul to sign and seal the sentence of damnation before it was too late.
Clement had adopted time-wasting measures in the hope that Henry’s infatuation for Anne would wear itself out; Paul delayed from making the final breach in the hope that Katharine would die. In Rome the shock and horror of Fisher’s execution had begun to die down. With Katharine dead the way might yet be open to some kind of bargain with the man who held the balance of power between France and Spain.
Paul’s delaying tactics made Chapuys anti-Papist for several minutes. It was a letter explaining that the papers of excommunication could not be risked, signed and delivered because the aggrieved person—Katharine—had not made an application for such action to be taken. If she would write to Rome, requesting the King’s excommunication, matters could proceed.
Chapuys saw through that all too clearly. The Pope and officials believed that Katharine, shut away and denied communication with the outer world, was incapable of such a demand. And that was where they made a mistake; reckoning without Francisco Filipez and Jennie Turnbull and ten or eleven other people who formed the secret network. Most of all reckoning without Chapuys, the son of a stubborn woman who had once fallen down the cellar stairs of the Annecy house and put her knee out of joint. She had never laid up for a day. She sat in a chair, the injured leg, with the knee hideously swollen, stretched out on a board nailed to the chair seat, and propelled by the sound leg she had hitched herself about the kitchen and cooked for her family and a houseful of guests. Eustache and the younger ones could go to market, fetch water, sweep floors and empty slops, but they could not cook. So she did it, though the pain was so great that when it was necessary to move from the chair, she fainted. This quality of doggedness she had transmitted to her son and it was the thing which he recognized in Katharine.
When Katharine received from Filipez’s hand the letter from Chapuys telling her what she must do, she was as much distressed as she had ever been in her life. She was in poor health; the April executions had shattered her; she felt directly responsible and lost—never to fully regain it—that absolute certainty of being right. She had so firmly repudiated the idea that any blood should be shed over a purely domestic matter; and now blood had been shed, the most innocent blood, the blood of the best and the most faithful. Fasting, she had prayed for the souls of the dead; in the Chapel the Bishop of Llandaff had said Masses for their souls. They were martyrs, he said, reminding her that the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. She listened, but could not be wholly comforted. And the pain in her chest came more often, more sharply, sometimes leading to nausea which she tried to conceal from Maria who took such pains over the food.
