Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (242 page)

He began to sob and to wring his thin hands.

‘
Quod faciam? Me miser! Utinam. Utinam — —’

He recovered a little coherence.

‘If this were a Protestant land ye might say this wedding was no wedding, for that a friar did it; but I know ye will not suffer that — —’ His eyes appealed piteously to the Queen.

‘Why, then,’ he said, ‘it is not upon my head that I do not wed this wench. You be my witness that I would wed; it gores my heart to see her look so pale. It tears my vitals to see any woman look pale. As Lucretius says, “Better the sunshine of smiles — —”’

A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.

‘It is you, your Grace,’ he said, ‘that make me thus tied. If you would let us be Protestant, or, again, if I could plead pre-contract to void this Paris marriage it would let me wed with this wench — eheu — eheu. Her brother will break my bones — —’

He began to cry out so lamentably, invoking Pluto to bear him to the underworld, that the King roared out upon him —

‘Why, get you gone, fool.’

The Magister threw himself suddenly upon his knees, his hands clasped, his gown drooping over them down to his wrists. He turned his face to the Queen.

‘Before God,’ he said, ‘before high and omnipotent Jove, I swear that when I made this marriage I thought it was no marriage!’ He reflected for a breath and added, at the recollection of the cook’s spits that had been turned against him when he had by woman’s guile been forced into marriage with the widow in Paris, ‘I was driven into it by force, with sharp points at my throat. Is that not enow to void a marriage? Is that not enow? Is that not enow?’

Katharine looked out over the great levels of the view. Her face was rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard. The King took his cue from a glance at her face.

‘Get you gone, Goodman Rogue Magister,’ he said, and he adopted a canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. ‘A marriage made and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing. You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you have lost your preferment, and I am glad of it. Another and a better than thou shall be the Queen’s Chancellor, for another and a better than thou shall wed this wench. We will get her such a goodly husband — —’

A low, melancholy wail from Margot Poins’ agonised face — a sound such as might have been made by an ox in pain — brought him to a stop. It wrung the Magister, who could not bear to see a woman pained, up to a pitch of ecstatic courage.

‘
Quid fecit Cæsar
,’ he stuttered; ‘what Cæsar hath done, Cæsar can do again. It was not till very lately since this canon of wedding and consummating and blessing by a holy friar hath been derided and contemned in this realm. And so it might be again — —’

Katharine Howard cried out, ‘Ah!’ Her features grew rigid and as ashen as cold steel. And, at her cry, the King — who could less bear than Udal to hear a woman in pain — the King sprang up from his chair. It was as amazing to all them as to hunters it is to see a great wild bull charge with a monstrous velocity. Udal was rigid with fear, and the King had him by the throat. He shook him backwards and forwards so that his book fell upon the Queen’s feet, bursting out of his ragged gown, and his cap, flying from his opened hand, fell down over the battlement into an elm top. The King guttered out unintelligible sounds of fury from his vast chest and, planted on his huge feet, he swung the Magister round him till, backwards and staggering, the eyes growing fixed in his brown and rigid face, he was pushed, jerking at each step of the King, out of sight behind the green silk curtains.

The Queen sat motionless in her purple velvet. She twisted one hand into the chain of the medallion about her throat, and one hand lay open and pale by her side. Margot Poins knelt at her side, her face hidden in the Queen’s lap, her two arms stretched out beyond her grey coifed head. For a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully —

‘What, child? What, child?’

Margot moved her face sideways so that her mouth was towards Katharine.

‘You can unmake it! You can unmake the marriage,’ she brought out in huge sobs.

Katharine said —

‘No! No!’

‘You unmade a King’s marriage,’ Margot wailed.

Katharine said —

‘No! No!’ She started and uttered the words loudly; she added pitifully, ‘You do not understand! You do not understand!’

It was the more pitiful in that Margot understood very well. She hid her face again and only sobbed heavily and at long intervals, and then with many sobs at once. The Queen laid her white hand upon the girl’s head. Her other still played with the chain.

‘Christ be piteous to me,’ she said. ‘I think it had been better if I had never married the King.’

Margot uttered an indistinguishable sound.

‘I think it had been better,’ the Queen said; ‘though I had jeoparded my immortal part.’

Margot moved her head up to cry out in her turn —

‘No! No! You may not say it!’

Then she dropped her face again. When she heard the King coming back and breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand upon her shoulder.

‘Sha’t have a better mate,’ he uttered. ‘Sha’t be a knight’s dame! There! there!’ and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out, and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went across the terrace, a loud one and then a little echo, a loud one and then two more.

‘Before God!’ the King said, ‘that knave shall eat ten years of prison bread.’

His wife looked still over the wooded enclosures, the little stone walls, and the copses. A small cloud had come before the sun, and its shadow was moving leisurely across the ridge where stood the roofless abbey.

‘The maid shall have the best man I can give her,’ the King said.

‘Why, no good man would wed her!’ Katharine answered dully.

Henry said —

‘Anan?’ Then he fingered the dagger on the chain before his chest.

‘Why,’ he added slowly, ‘then the Magister shall die by the rope. It is an offence that can be quitted with death. It is time such a thing were done.’

Katharine’s dull silence spurred him; he shrugged his shoulders and heaved a deep breath out.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘a man can be found to wed the wench.’

She moved one hand and uttered —

‘I would not wed her to such a man!’ as if it were a matter that was not much in her thoughts.

‘Then she may go into a nunnery,’ the King said; ‘for before three months are out we will have many nunneries in this realm.’

She looked upon him a little absently, but she smiled at him to give him pleasure. She was thinking that she wished she had not wedded him; but she smiled because, things being as they were, she thought that she had all the authorities of the noble Greeks and Romans to bid her do what a good wife should.

He laughed at her griefs, thinking that they were all about Margot Poins. He uttered jolly grossnesses; he said that she little knew the way of courts if she thought that a man, and a very good man, might not be found to wed the wench.

She was troubled that he could not better read what was upon her mind, for she was thinking that her having consented to his making null his marriage with the Princess of Cleves that he might wed her would render her work always the more difficult. It would render her more the target for evil tongues, it would set a sterner and a more stubborn opposition against her task of restoring the Kingdom of God within that realm.

Henry said —

‘Ye hannot guessed what my secret was? What have I done for thee this day?’

She still looked away over the lands. She made her face smile —

‘Nay, I know not. Ha’ ye brought me the musk I love well?’

He shook his head.

‘It is more than that!’ he said.

She still smiled —

‘Ha’ ye — ha’ ye — made make for me a new crown?’

She feared a little that that was what he had done. For he had been urgent with her, many months, to be crowned. It was his way to love these things. And her heart was a little gladder when he shook his head once again and uttered —

‘It is more than that!’

She dreaded his having made ready in secret a great pageant in her honour, for she was afraid of all aggrandisements, and thought still it had been better that she had remained his sweet friend ever and not the Queen. For in that way she would have had as much empire over him, and there would have been much less clamour against her — much less clamour against the Church of her Saviour.

She forced her mind to run upon all the things that she could wish for. When she said it must be that he had ordered for her enough French taffetas to make twelve gowns, he laughed and said that he had said that it was more than a crown. When she guessed that he had made ready such a huge cavalcade that she might with great comfort and safety ride with him into Scotland, he laughed, contented that she should think of going with him upon that long journey. He stood looking at her, his little eyes blinking, his face full of pride and joy, and suddenly he uttered —

‘The Church of God is come back again.’ He touched his cap at the sacred name. ‘I ha’ made submission to the Pope.’

He looked her full in the face to get all the delight he might from her looks and her movements.

Her blue eyes grew large; she leaned forward in her chair; her mouth opened a little; her sleeves fell down to the ground. ‘Now am I indeed crowned!’ she said, and closed her eyes. ‘
Benedicta sit mater dei!
’ she uttered, and her hand went over her heart place; ‘
deo clamavi nocte atque dië.
’

She was silent again, and she leaned more forward.

‘
Sit benedicta dies haec; sit benedicta hora haec benedictaque, saeculum saeculûm, castra haec.
’

She looked out upon the great view: she aspired the air.

‘
Ad colles
,’ she breathed, ‘
levavi oculos meos; unde venit salvatio nostra!
’

‘Body of God,’ Henry said, ‘all things grow plain. All things grow plain. This is the best day that ever I knew.’

I
V

The Lady Mary of England sat alone in a fair room with little arched windows that gave high up on to the terrace. It was the best room that ever she had had since her mother, the Queen Katharine of Aragon, had been divorced.

Dressed in black she sat writing at a large table before one window. Her paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach of pewter, books bound in wooden covers and locked with chains, books in red velvet covers, sewn with silver wire and tied with ribbons. It ran beneath a huge globe of the world, blue and pink, that had a golden pin in it to mark the city of Rome. There were little wooden racks stuck full with written papers and parchments along the wainscoting between the arched windows, but all the hangings of the other walls were of tinted and dyed silks, not any with dark colours, because Katharine Howard had deemed that that room with its deep windows in the thick walls would be otherwise dark. The room was ten paces deep by twenty long, and the wood of the floor was polished. Against the wall, behind the Lady Mary’s back, there stood a high chair upon a platform. Upon the platform a carpet began that ran up the wall and, overhead, depended from the gilded rafters of the ceiling so that it formed a dais and a canopy.

The Lady Mary sat grimly amongst all these things as if none of them belonged to her. She looked in her book, she made a note upon her paper, she stretched out her hand and took a piece of bread, putting it in her mouth, swallowing it quickly, writing again, and then once more eating, for the great and ceaseless hunger that afflicted her gnawed always at her vitals.

A little boy with a fair poll was reaching on tiptoe to smell at a pink that depended from a vase of very thin glass standing in the deep window. The shield of the coloured pane cast a little patch of red and purple on to his callow head. He was dressed all in purple, very square, and with little chains and medallions, and a little dagger with a golden sheath was about his neck. In one hand he had a piece of paper, in the other a pencil. The Lady Mary wrote; the child moved on tiptoe, with a sedulous expression of silence about his lips, near to her elbow. He watched her writing for a long time with attentive eyes.

Once he said, ‘Sister, I — —’ but she paid him no heed.

After a time she looked coldly at his face and then he moved along the table, fingered the globe very gently, touched the books and returned to her side. He stood with his little legs wide apart. Then he sighed, then he said —

‘Sister, the Queen did bid me ask you a question.’

She looked round upon him.

‘This was the Queen’s question,’ he said bravely: ‘“
Cur
— why —
nunquam
— never —
rides
— dost thou smile —
cum
— when —
ego, frater tuus
— I, thy little brother —
ludo
— play —
in camerâ tuâ
— in thy chamber?”’

‘Little Prince,’ she said, ‘art not afeared of me?’

‘Aye, am I,’ he answered.

‘Say then to the Queen,’ she said, ‘“
Domina Maria
— the Lady Mary —
ridet nunquam
— smileth never —
quod
— because —
timoris ratio
— the reason of my fear —
bona et satis
— is good and sufficient.”’

He held his little head upon one side.

‘The Queen did bid me say,’ he uttered with his brave little voice, ‘“Holy Writ hath it:
Ecce quam bonum et dignum est fratres — fratres — —”’
He faltered without embarrassment and added, ‘I ha’ forgot the words.’

‘Aye!’ she said, ‘they ha’ been long forgotten in these places; I deem it is overlate to call them to mind.’

She looked upon him coldly for a long time. Then she stretched out her hand for his paper.

‘Your Highness, I will set you a copy.’

She took his paper and wrote —

‘
Malo malo malâ.
’

He held it in his chubby fist, his head on one side.

‘I cannot conster it,’ he said.

‘Why, think upon it,’ she answered. ‘When I was thy age I knew it already two years. But I was better beaten than thou.’

He rubbed his little arm.

‘I am beaten enow,’ he said.

‘Knowest not what a swingeing is,’ she answered.

‘Then thou hadst a bitter childhood,’ he brought out.

‘I had a good mother,’ she cut him short.

She turned her face to her writing again; it was bitter and set. The little prince climbed slowly into the chair on the dais. He moved sturdily and curled himself up on the cushion, studying the words on the paper all the while with a little frown upon his brows. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he set the paper upon his knee and began to write.

At that date the Lady Mary was still called a bastard, though most men thought that that hardship would soon be reversed. It was said that great honours had been shown her, and that was apparent in the furnishing of her rooms, the fineness of her gear, the increase in the number of the women that waited on her, and the store of sweet things that was provided for her to eat. A great many men noted the chair with a dais that was set up always where she might be, in her principal room, and though her ladies said that she never sat in it, most men believed that she had made a pact with the King to do him honour and so to be reinstated in the estate in which she held her own. It was considered, too, that she no longer plotted with the King’s enemies inside or out of the realm; it was at least certain that she no longer had men set to spy upon her, though it was noted that the Archbishop’s gentleman, Lascelles, nosed about her quarters and her maids. But he was always spying somewhere and, as the Archbishop’s days were thought to be numbered, he was accounted of little weight. Indeed, since the fall of Thomas Cromwell there seemed to be few spies about the Court, or almost none at all. It was known that gentlemen wrote accounts of what passed to Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester. But Gardiner was gone back into his see and appeared to have little favour, though it was claimed for him that he had done much to advance the new Queen. So that, upon the whole, men breathed much more freely — and women too — than in the days before the fall of Privy Seal. The Queen had made little change, and seemed to have it in mind to make little more. Her relatives had, nearly none of them, been advanced. There were few Protestants oppressed, though many Catholics had been loosed from the gaols, most notably him whom the Archbishop Cranmer had taken to be his chaplain and confessor, and others that other lords had taken out of prison to be about them.

All in all the months that had passed since Cromwell’s fall had gone quietly. The King and Queen had gone very often to mass since Katharine had been shown for Queen in the gardens at Hampton Court, and saints’ days and the feasts of the life of our Lady had been very carefully observed, along with fasts such as had used to be observed. The King, however, was mightily fond with his new Queen, and those that knew her well, or knew her servants well, expected great changes. Some were much encouraged, some feared very much, but nearly all were heartily glad of that summer of breathing space; and the weather was mostly good, so that the corn ripened well and there was little plague or ague abroad.

Thus most men had been heartily glad to see the new Queen upon her journey there to the north parts. She had ridden upon a white horse with the King at her side; she had asked the names of several that had come to see her; she had been fair to look at; and the King had pardoned many felons, so that men’s wives and mothers had been made glad; and most old men said that the good times were come again, with the price of malt fallen and twenty-six to the score of herrings. It was reported, too, that a cider press in Herefordshire had let down a dozen firkins of cider without any apples being set in it, and this was accounted an omen of great plenty, whilst many sheep had died, so that men who had set their fields down in grass talked of giving them to the plough again, and upon St Swithin’s Day no rain had fallen. All these things gave a great contentment, and many that in the hard days had thought to become Lutheran in search of betterment, now looked in byres and hidden valleys to find priests of the old faith. For if a man could plough he might eat, and if he might eat he could praise God after his father’s manner as well as in a new way.

Thus, around the Lady Mary, whilst she wrote, the people of the land breathed more peace. And even she could not but be conscious of a new softness, if it was only in the warmth that came from having her window-leads properly mended. She had hardly ever before known what it was to have warm hands when she wrote, and in most days of the year she had worn fur next her skin, indoors as well as out. But now the sun beat on her new windows, and in that warmth she could wear fine lawn, so that, in spite of herself, she took pleasure and was softened, though, since she spoke to no man save the Magister Udal, and to him only about the works of Plautus or the game of cards that they played together, few knew of any change in her.

Nevertheless, on that day she had one of her more ill moods and, presently, having written a little more, she rang a small silver bell that was shaped like a Dutch woman with wide skirts.

‘The Prince annoys me,’ she said to her woman; ‘send for his lady governess.’

The woman, dressed all in black, like her mistress, and with a little frill of white cambric over her temples as if she were a nun, stood in the open doorway that was just level with the Lady Mary’s chair, so that the stone wall of the passage caught the light from the window. She folded her hands before her.

‘Alack, Madam,’ she said, ‘your Madamship knows that at this hour his Highness’ lady governess taketh ever the air.’

The little boy in the chair looked over his paper at his sister.

‘Send for his physician then,’ Mary said.

‘Alack, sister,’ the little Prince said before the woman could move, ‘my physician is ill.
Jacet
— He lieth —
in cubiculo
— in his bed.’

The Lady Mary would not look round on him.

‘Get thee, then,’ she uttered coldly, ‘to thine own apartments, Prince.’

‘Alack, sister,’ he answered,’thou knowest that I may not walk along the corridors alone for fear some slay me. Nor yet may I be anywhere save with the Queen, or thee, or with my uncles, or my lady governess, or my physicians, for fear some poison me.’

He spoke with a clear and shrill voice, and the woman cast down her eyes, trembling a little, partly to hear such a small, weary child speak such a long speech as if by wizardry — for it was reported among the serving maids that he had been overlooked — and partly for fear of the black humour that she perceived to be upon her mistress.

‘Send me then my Magister to lay out cards with me,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘I cannot make my studies with this Prince in my rooms.’

‘Alack, Madam,’ the girl said. She was high coloured and with dark eyes, but when she faltered then the colour died from her cheeks. The Lady Mary surveyed her coldly, for she was in the mood to give pain. She uttered no words.

‘Alack, alack — —’ the maid whimpered. She was full of fear lest the Lady Mary should order her to receive short rations or many stripes; she was filled with consternation and grief since her sweetheart, a server, had told her that he must leave her. For it was rumoured that the Magister had been cast into gaol for sweethearting, and that the King had said that all sweethearts should be gaoled from thenceforth. ‘The Magister is gaoled,’ she said.

‘Wherefore?’ the Lady uttered the one expressionless word.

‘I do not know,’ the maid wailed; ‘I do not know.’

The form of the Archbishop’s gentleman glided noiselessly behind her back. His eyes shot one sharp, sideways glance in at the door, and, like a russet fox, he was gone. He was so like a fox that the Lady Mary, when she spoke, used the words —