King's Fool (24 page)

The very strength and age of the building dismayed me, and I was kept waiting for a long time at the porter’s lodge. I had put on my shabbiest clothes so that I might pass for a turnkey’s friend, and asked if I might speak to one Miles Mucklow. To my great relief the man was known, and at last came to me. “I have brought a message from your mother, Miles,” I said, in the rough voice of the people, frowning him into silence before he could speak. “The man she now lives with has been killed in a tavern brawl and she begs you to pay her rent.” It seemed to be a story in keeping with my surroundings. Staring open-mouthed, he yet had the sense to listen to my cock-and-bull story and to promise gruffly that if I came with him he would spare me a few groats for her. And once outside the lodge I was able to explain to him my real errand.

“A pleasant gentleman, Master Fermor,” he said. “And I remembered you the moment I set eyes on you, Sir.”

“And you once said that if ever there was anything you could do for me—”

“An’ I’ll not go back on my word,” he vowed.

After a careful look round he led me up a narrow, ill-smelling stone stair and along a maze of foul-smelling passages, and, taking a great key from the jangling mass of iron hanging from his belt, unlocked a low-pitched door. “Only half an hour until I go off duty,” he warned me in a whisper. And then I was in a small, cell-like room, alone with Richard Fermor. It had been as easy as that.

“Will!” he cried, in amazed joy, rising from a kind of truckle bed and throwing aside the book he had been reading.

I grasped both his hands, too moved for speech. My eyes searched his face, and I rejoiced to find it not too ravaged by the terrible shock of his experience.

“Did you wheedle a pass from the King—or that unspeakable Cromwell?” he asked, almost laughing in his eagerness.

“No. From that huge, hirsute gaoler, Mucklow—I once did him a service.”

“Good indeed! He is more humane than most of them. He has been to sea, so we sometimes talk about ships and foreign ports when he has time. To talk to anyone helps to keep one sane. But to talk to you, Will, will be like a visit to Heaven.”

“A brief visit, I fear.”

We laughed awkwardly to cover our emotion. He cleared away a litter of possessions so that we could sit side by side on the roughly blanketed bed. “You will notice that I am not too badly treated,” he said. “As a political prisoner I was allowed to bring books, ink, paper, warm clothing—even a lute to pass the time, though I am not the wizard with it that you are.”

“And warmth?”

“As you see, they bring me a brazier—at a price! Sick as Emotte was when I left—home—she sewed money into my belt. And I still have a few assets in London which escaped even Cromwell’s cruel nose. You know, Will, when I feel murderous, or despairing, I have only to compare my lot with poor Nicholas Thayne’s.”

“I have bad news for you from Buckingham. Bart Festing tells me that Nicholas Thayne died soon after you visited him.”

“Small wonder, in that cold cell!”

We crossed ourselves and sat in silence thinking of his kindly goodness. “How few of us stand up to the world for what in our hearts we believe to be the truth!” said Fermor.

“And how he loved the family and the gardens at Neston!” I said, remembering how it was he who had first manoeuvred for a homesick lad the comfort of a meeting with Joanna. “But Father Thayne could take so much of his spiritual life into prison with him, whereas you—who have built up all those smoothly running strands of commerce, all those vast interests in various countries—”

He let his hand drop upon my knee. “I try not to think what is happening to them lest I go mad.”

“Festing has gone to Calais to join Master John,” I told him.

“I am glad. But, above all, what news have you of my daughter? What will become of her now, Will? I know that the Browns or other friends will take her in. But since having so much time in here to think, I have realised how selfish I have been in keeping her with me. She should have been comfortably married by now.”

“She
is
married, Sir,” I said quietly.

“Joanna married! You mean that good Northamptonshire fellow came forward after all and took her—dowerless?”

The moment of confession had come. I stood up and faced him.“No,” I said sharply. “Joanna is married to me.”

He let out a sound which might have indicated surprise or anger. He, too, sprang up, head held high. It could have been the instinctive pride which, years ago, would have repudiated such a thought with furious resentment. Then, slowly, his stance slackened into reasonable acceptance. His gaze passed round his prison room, assessing his misfortunate state. Then came to rest on my unyielding face, assessing me.

I was glad that he still thought of his daughter as being far above me as the sun and stars. No one could have been more utterly in agreement with him than I. But even so, through completely unforeseen circumstances, God had given her to me. “I do not always go about in darned hose and faded doublets,” I said, grinning down at my unprepossessing attire. “It was to persuade people that I am Mucklow’s bosom friend.”

Slowly the smile on my face was reflected warmly on his. “In the filthiest rags you could be nothing less than our friend and equal, Will Somers. And I am glad and—grateful,” he said, gripping my hand in his. “Where have you taken her?”

I told him about the arrangement we had made with the Fest-ings, and how Joanna herself preferred this to going to her relatives in Aldermanbury.

“I realise that you cannot at the moment take any daughter of mine to Court, even had you adequate lodgings,” Fermor said with a sigh. “And Heaven knows that I, on my side, would not have her breathe the same air as Cromwell!” He was not one to dwell on his bitterness, so went on quickly to speak of Emotte. “How I wish I had made over Wapenham to her! I always meant to do so in my will. I am afraid it is not in very good repair, but at least she would be near all her friends.”

I remembered the disused priest house at Wapenham, the living of which had been in his advowson, and which was only a few miles from Easton Neston, and well understood his regret, as it would have made one small piece of his former world salvaged. He was much concerned for all who had worked for him, but his last thoughts and messages were all for his beloved daughter.

“I will go straight back to the wharf and tell her everything you have said. She will be overjoyed that I have seen you,” I promised.

“Tell her I am well and warm, that her watch which she made me bring still ticks away the hours till I see her again, and that I am glad she has gotten herself so good a husband,” he said, standing firm and dauntless in spite of all his cruel misfortune.

And then—in what seemed to be the flash of minutes—Miles Mucklow came to see me out.

IT WAS A STRANGE Court to which I returned, and all agog with whispered rumours. The King did not like his new wife and she had neither coquetry nor the art of flattery with which to win him. He complained to Cromwell that she waxed stubborn, at which we could scarcely wonder. He complained to Cromwell that he could not bring himself to beget sons on her, and most of us guessed that he was impotent. Since it was bullet-headed Cromwell who had urged him into this unfortunate marriage, he complained to him about everything. He had given him the earldom of Essex in gratitude for his negotiations, and now that there was nothing to be grateful for he grudged it to him.

The Tudor’s eyes and appetite were ever turned towards the dainty Howard morsel which Norfolk and his scheming wife dangled so painstakingly before him. And in his chafing anger he agreed with Chancellor Cromwell that Lord Montague, the Countess of Salisbury’s elder son, was conspiring with his brother Reginald Pole against him and that Lord Lisle, the Governor of Calais, was secretly acting as their go-between. Had not the Poles tried to stir up trouble because he divorced his first wife? And now they would meddle and rouse up his people—and his people’s ineradicable sense of fair play—because he was trying to divorce his fourth.These arrogant Plantagenets were best swept out of the way. So Cromwell—who could probably have concocted some plausible charge against the Archangel Gabriel himself—had tried to regain the royal approval by convicting Montague and his kinsman, Courtney of Devon, of treason, and having them executed. For which the people hated
Cow Crommuck
, as they called him, more than ever.

“It seems only a few months ago that Montague was with us at Queen Jane’s funeral,” lamented milady Mary, as some of us were walking back with her from the bowling alley where the news had been brought to her. “Oh, God be thanked that Reginald Pole is safely in Rome!”

“And now a Cardinal, I hear,” I said, knowing how much she had always cared for him and trying to cheer her.

“But have you heard, Will, that they have taken my beloved Lady Salisbury to the Tower—at her age, when she feels the cold so much. Though what offence they can bring against her blameless life I cannot imagine, unless it be that she was ever kind to me,” said Mary Tudor bitterly.

“Or because, like any good mother, she refused to bear witness against her own sons,” said her waiting woman, Bess Cressy, who was carrying her woods.

“Or simply because she is the daughter of the murdered Duke of Clarence, and niece to Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third,” added Susan Toenge, her favourite lady.

“Or because Cardinal Reginald keeps crying milady Mary’s wrongs in Rome,” muttered Jane, the Princess’s pampered female fool, who was in some ways no fool at all.

To take her mind from her own troubles I told milady of the imprisonment of my former master and—because I had long wanted to tell her of my happiness—I told her of my marriage to Joanna. With her usual goodness of heart her Grace wished us well.

But for her there was worse to come. In a final effort to regain the King’s approbation, Cromwell excelled himself in rounding up victims. Mary’s former tutor, Dr. Featherstone, and her late mother’s chaplain, Father Abel, were dragged on hurdles to the flames at Smithfield together with a Protestant martyr, Dr. Barnes, because he denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. Which naturally provoked the witty French ambassador, Marillac, to many a caustic comment on the crazy inconsistency of our country. And then, as if poor Mary Tudor had not suffered enough, Cromwell’s spies brought the aged Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, to the scaffold.

“All they could find against her was a bedgown embroidered with the arms of England—the Plantagenet leopards before the Tudor dragon joined them—which she had a perfect right to,”Susan Toenge told me, when I hurried immediately to the Princess’s apartments.

I found her Grace pale and exhausted with weeping. “Next to my mother I loved the Lady Margaret above anyone on earth,” she said. “I was so happy to see her again when Queen Jane had me back at Court. And now I have no one of my own left.” All her submissive protestations of filial loyalty had forsaken her, and it would have been vain at that moment to have reminded her that she had a father. “Oh, Will, Will, it was kind of you to come!”she cried. “You see how just as an ordinary act of human kindness was used as incriminating evidence against your Master Fermor, so a piece of family embroidery and a refusal to betray her sons has brought my friend and mentor to this terrible death. In public—at Smithfield—where we all used to be so gay, do you remember, watching tournaments and May Day dances.” As if only physical movement could help her to bear the horror she visualised, Mary crossed to a window to stare out unseeingly. “The Lady Margaret was proud like my mother. She refused to bow her head before a common executioner. And while the men yelled their execrations at him and the women pleaded with tears, he chased his ageing victim round and round the block. Hacking—hacking—”

“My sweet lady, stop!” I cried, catching her blindly groping hands in mine while Randal Dod, her devoted manservant, and the women who loved her pressed around to carry her to bed. But she had sunk down upon the window seat and I signed to them to let her be a while first. To one so long shut up with grief, to sit and cry unrestrainedly must mean relief. We all remembered her as a happy, trusting child, and recognised the effort she must have made to hold such strong emotions so rigidly in check. At last she pulled herself upright, hands to throbbing temples and eyes blind with tears. “She is with my mother now in Paradise,” she said huskily. “But if ever I had the power to revoke such things…”

“Oh, my lady!” exclaimed Bess, shocked by the set expression on her face.

Even in that hard moment Mary Tudor laid a reassuring hand on hers. “Well, well, my young brother will be King. Perhaps it is just as well that these matters will never rest with me.” She rose with a sigh, and went, leaning on Dod’s strong arm, and followed by her women, towards her bedchamber. Although she was a fine horsewoman, ever active of gait and still young, she walked that short distance like an old woman. Which brought home to me in a rush of compassion how much she must have suffered, in humiliation, fear and hurt love.

And as I stood looking after her with a hand still on the high, carved back of her chair, I was recalling an odd conversation I had had a few days earlier with Hans Holbein. He was already back in favour, and had been working on a portrait of the Prince which Henry wanted him to finish, and a quiet companionship had grown up between us two so that I often watched him at work, trying to learn something of his art and a good deal about my own country through the eyes of a foreigner. “His little Grace should be strong as his father when he grows to manhood,” I had remarked cheerfully, as he put the finishing touches to a pink and dimpled arm.

“
If
he grows to manhood,” the great artist had said.

He was bending over his palette and I wondered if I could have heard him aright. “But with that colour, those rounded cheeks—and Dr. Butts so pleased with him—” I expostulated, too low for the women amusing the Prince to hear me.

Casually, as if to select a different brush, Holbein turned to make sure that no one stood behind us. “I painted young Richmond. He had them, too,” he said, adding a firmer line to the rattle which the pictured child held. “And there is that painting of your unfortunate Prince Arthur.”

“You mean—” I had gasped, staring at him.

But he had become absorbed in his work again. “Only that sometimes a painter sees more than a physician,” he had answered cryptically, as Mother Jack came bustling forward to make sure her charge was not over-tired.

And now, as I watched the door close behind King Henry’s elder daughter, this strange, almost casual conversation seemed to take on a still greater significance. I had seen all the happy ties with her mother’s Court broken, everything their religion stood for swept away. And I wondered if it were a dangerous thing to make one small woman suffer so much. A woman who might, just conceivably, one day come to power—power to retaliate. A woman with a long-leashed desire to do the impossible—to build up again the world as she had first, and so happily, known it. And I wondered if the cruelties of Cromwell and the acquiescence of her father could ever bend back again, pliant as a whip, to scourge England.

I spoke some part of my thoughts to Edward Seymour, although by now my anxiety had veered to the immediate effects of such brutalities upon my royal master. “Surely the people will never forgive him,” I said involuntarily, as we chanced to ride heel by heel behind his Grace through a sad and silent City.

“Oh, yes, they will forgive the King anything,” said Seymour, Earl of Hertford, “as long as he appears to consult Parliament and makes our defences strong against the French.”

“But—killing women? Even when it was the Boleyn, whom they did not love, they were sullen like this for days.”

Seymour bent to adjust a rein more exactly. He was an exact and careful man. “Like all effective monarchs, ours has always been careful to keep a whipping boy. In the past the people blamed Wolsey. Now they will blame Cromwell.”

“But they must know that none of these cruelties could be done without the King’s consent.”

“True. But seeing something is so much more persuasive than knowing it, particularly with people who do not think overmuch.They do not see him daily as we do, nor realise the way in which he has gradually changed. He has always been the right kind of figurehead, bluff and hearty and popular. Listen, Will Somers. If you had never lived at Court, and saw this same hearty figure of a man at ceremonial occasions or riding through the streets, how could you know that he had become altogether different inside?”

I could see that this was true enough. To us it had been a slow, sad realisation which we had had to live with. “It is his leg—” I began. But even the doctors were now forbidden to discuss the diseased state of his health.

I looked at Edward Seymour with new interest. I felt that my ill-advised groping for reassurance would be safe with him. He was neither handsome nor lovable like his younger brother, the swashbuckling Sir Thomas. But he was strong and humane and more deep-seeing than I had supposed. The Prince, for all that he was said to lisp precociously in Latin, was still but an infant. And although many an arrogant lord walked before Seymour in processions, nothing could alter the fact that he was the Prince’s elder uncle and might one day become Lord Protector of England.

But I had been playing at being prescient of late. I must shake myself out of such weighty thoughts and play the fool, which was what my wages were paid me for. I fell behind milord Hertford and some of the other riders so that I might think up some means of cheering the whole household when we got back.

Although Mary Tudor had her own household she was now often at Court, and one bright spot in a calamitous spring was the very real liking which seemed to have sprung up spontaneously between the new Queen and herself. At first sight one might have judged them to be an oddly contrasted pair, but they were much of an age and both knew the humiliation of not being wanted. Mary helped her stepmother with the vagaries of English speech and customs and toned down her flamboyant taste in dress, while Flemish Anne, by dint of kindness and complete naturalness, broke down milady’s tense reserve and even made her remember how to laugh.

“And now, just as we are getting used to hearing laughter at Court again,” I told Joanna later, in the precious intimacy of our little home, “the King takes a blow at both of them.”

“Oh, Will, is it something serious?” exclaimed my wife with her ever-ready sympathy.

“Not perhaps as serious as some people seem to think. Or rather, I should say, the loss may prove to be more ours than theirs.” I went to fetch a couple of tankards of well-spiced sack from the buttery, and pulled Joanna more comfortably against my shoulder on the settle before a cheerful fire. “I do not know how much you have heard, my love, but the King has now actually divorced his Flemish wife and, having thus offended Cleves, he was obliged to tell his daughter to return the handsome diamond cross which young Philip of Bavaria had given her.”

“Is
every
marriage negotiation for our Princess to be broken off?”exclaimed Joanna.

I turned to kiss the tip of her small, indignant nose. “Did that prove such a calamity for us, with love waiting at the end?” I teased.“And Jane the Fool blurts out that her mistress could not send the lovely bauble back quickly enough. ‘Duke Philip is a very kind gentleman,’ says Jane, in that squeaky voice of hers, ‘but my lady will be spared the pain of marrying a Lutheran!’”

Joanna had to laugh at my imitation of poor nit-wit, shaven-headed Jane. “But on what grounds can the King divorce
this
Anne?” she wanted to know.

“Oh, the usual convocation of clergy declaring the marriage null and void. On three points. That it was unwillingly entered into by the bridegroom, never consummated and marred by the bride’s pre-contract to Lorraine. I suppose that one of the advantages of being Supreme Head of the Church is that one can make and unmake one’s wives. If one is in the unenviable position of wanting to! It was all very quickly done. After all, Cranmer and the rest should be quite experienced by now. No good purpose would be served by the defendant being present, they said, because she was not familiar with our language. There had been one or two cases of plague in London as there always are in hot weather, so an excuse was made to send the Queen to Richmond while all this was going on. Though, as the French ambassador so pungently says, had they been very grave the King himself would have been the first away. And immediately the divorce was granted Henry sent Suffolk and Southampton and that toad, Secretary Wriothesley, there to tell her.”