King's Fool (25 page)

“Whatever in Heaven’s name did she say?”

“Nothing, at first. She swooned from shock.”

“Or fear? After all, whether she understands much English or not, the poor lady must have heard about what happened to—the other Queen Anne.”

Others had said the same, but I had always maintained that the Flemish head was safe enough. “She probably had, but the King would no more have dared to do that to her than to Queen Katherine, whom he was trying to get rid of for so long. You see, neither of them was his subject, like Jane Seymour and Anne Boleyn. He would soon have had half Europe about his ears. No, my dear, this Anne is to be styled ‘his dear sister’ and to rank after the Lady Mary, to keep her household at his expense. And he is giving her Richmond Palace. And I think she probably fainted with shock at hearing how much money he was giving her with it—particularly after hearing about the meagreness of his own daughters’ households.”

“Oh, Will, you are making fun of it all. But after she recovered from the shock of—fear or relief or whatever it was—how did the poor Queen take it?”

“With remarkable serenity, they say.”

“You mean she did not insist that she was his legal wife, as Queen Katherine did? After all, you have told me that he often slept with her.”

Since I had come expressly to sleep with
my
wife, I took the opportunity of kissing her closely. “Perhaps she did not enjoy it very much, sweetheart,” I suggested.

“Neither should I enjoy having a great fat man like that in my bed,” giggled Joanna, snuggling more warmly up against me. “But what of her brother, the Duke? Surely he will make some sort of diplomatic protest?”

“He certainly will,” I agreed, not caring much at the moment whether he did or not. “But now that France and Spain are making an alliance, little Cleves will not count for as much as Cromwell had hoped.”

“And now Cromwell himself is in the Tower under sentence of death?”

“Well, nobody can be sorry for that,” I said, thinking of the poor Countess of Salisbury and milady Mary’s distress, and how things might now be made easier for the Fermors. “And up to the last, while he was in the Tower, the King still made use of him, forcing him to bear witness in a letter that the marriage was made unwillingly. And they say that the divorced Queen has written to her brother, Duke William, entreating him not to make trouble and assuring him that she is well used in England.”

“But how will she be called, being now the King’s sister?”

“My Lady of Cleves.”

“And you mean to tell me, Will, that after being brought to England and so insulted she has just meekly done everything the King wanted?”

I had to laugh at recollection of the King’s face when he was told. “A shade too meekly, perhaps,” I said. “He is so accustomed to having women fight for the right to call him husband that I fancy the easiness with which she let him go must have shaken him considerably.” As I went to the door to call to young Tatty to prepare our bed half my mind was still on my master’s marital affairs. “After all, Joanna, she may not have wanted to go back to all that strict maternal supervision we heard about in Cleves, and she may
prefer
having her own life to having Henry. And, as I say, in his grateful relief he has heaped manors upon her and given her far more money than she would ever have had the free spending of as his wife.
And
Richmond.”

“Why do you say Richmond like that, with a kind of ecstatic sigh, as if it were part of Heaven?” asked Joanna laughingly, as I pulled her to her feet.

“Do I?” I said, as we went upstairs together. “It must be because I have seen the gardens and those bulbous fairy turrets from the river. And because the King himself always speaks of it that way. It was his family home and his mother lived there, and I suppose he thinks of it as a place full of love and sunshine and laughter, where the cares and cruelties of an ambitious world fall away.”

I WAS GLAD WHEN Lord Vaux came back from the Channel Islands after his Governorship was ended. I knew he would do what he could in the Fermor cause, and now that Cromwell had been executed our efforts might meet with more success. Wriot-hesley would have his day, but Seymour was the coming man.

“How different the Court seems, Will!” Vaux said with a sigh, when at last he had time to walk with me alone along the
vrou
walk, as the servants had come to call that pleasant path at Hampton which the Flemish Queen and her ladies had liked to use.

“A place for older, more materially-minded men,” I said, and knew that we were both thinking of those cultured young gallants who, but for the Boleyn witch, might yet have graced the scene. “But Surrey is still with us to make verse. And now we hope to have yours, milord.”

He shrugged my praise aside with a new and becoming modesty.He had matured during his travels.

“What is all this I hear from my sister Maud in Calais about her father-in-law? Is it really possible that he has been imprisoned and stripped of everything? And all for visiting their priest, a crime of which I have often been guilty. You know that ours was imprisoned for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, too?”

I gave him all the family news and told him how I had seen Richard Fermor in the Marshalsea. And how I had had the amazing happiness of marrying his daughter.

“Maud wrote to tell me about that also—and how relieved they were for Joanna. Then, since my sister is married to your wife’s brother, you are in some sort my kinsman, Will Somers,” he said, holding out a ready hand. “So perhaps you had best stop addressing me as milord and call me Thomas. Have you told the King you are married?”

“I told him I was going on my honeymoon the day he himself set out to meet his bride. But, as I intended, he took it all as a part of my fooling. But I hope to tell him in all seriousness when I find an opportunity to plead for my father-in-law.”

“I, too, will speak for him if I can,” he promised. It would, of course, be to his sister’s advantage if he could.

“Say rather
when
you can. More and more it becomes a matter of choosing one’s moment. You will find the King much changed,”I warned.

“Physically, you mean?”

“Ever since he has had that running fistula his temper has been more uncertain.”

“You think it is the syphilis?”

“The doctors are not allowed to discuss it. Whatever it is, it seems to change his nature. Though he grows more despotic, I believe that inside himself he is more fearful and suspicious.”

“Which might account for such barbarous cruelty to the few remaining Plantagenets.”

I nodded. “Yet in some ways his powers wane. He is amorous of Katherine Howard, but with nothing of the devastating passion he had for her cousin Anne. He is always pawing this one in public as old men will.”

“According to Norfolk he really means to marry her.”

“Some say Archbishop Cranmer has already made her the King’s wife.”

“His
fifth
!”

I shrugged. “I have lost count,” I said. “And interest,” I thought.From then on anyone whom the Tudor might marry would be but one of his women to me.

“After all, in this age of grace, plenty of men—like Suffolk, for instance—run through at least four,” Vaux was saying broad-mindedly.“They marry them the moment they are come to puberty and wear them out in continuous childbirth.”

“And then, when the first heat of their desires dies down, they marry again and again into rich families to increase their estates.”

“Listen to a couple of old cynics in their late thirties!” grinned Thomas Vaux, giving me a friendly dig in the ribs. “Or is it that few men love and cherish their wives as we do?”

We had reached the old moat wall, and sat there awhile in the warm afternoon sunshine in companionable silence. I think he felt strange at Court with so many new faces and was sadly aware of deterioration and loss of brilliance, and each of us found comfort in having someone connected by family ties and interests to whom we could unburden our minds without cautious forethought. “That hussy Katherine,” he began presently. “It is not her fault, poor wench. After her gallant father died she was dragged up with the DowagerDuchess’s maids. But even before I went away there were stories going the rounds about her which, if the King should come to hear of them, would stop all thought of matrimony. And if he finds out
afterwards
there will be no more joyous poems from Surrey, I am afraid. Nor any more ambitious family plans from his father Norfolk.”

“Whatever may have happened in the past she is ardently in love with Tom Culpepper now. It is plain for all to see,” I said.“A pity about this Flemish Princess,” said Vaux ruminatively. “At least she has dignity, judging by her portrait. Tell me, Will—and I swear it shall go no further—can you really believe that marriage was never consummated?”

I shook my head doubtfully. “The one thing the King wants—and has always wanted—more than he has desired any woman—is strong, legitimate sons. If you ask me, he would scarcely miss the chance to come by one.”

“Then presumably he is impotent.”

We were talking dangerously, but suddenly Thomas Vaux began to laugh. He leaned back and laughed aloud, his neat, pointed beard quivering with mirth.

“What is it?” I asked, hating to miss a jest in a world which was becoming all too solemn for me.

He clutched my arm. “Suppose Henry underrated his virility,”he spluttered. “Suppose, Will, just suppose—that after all that solemn tarradiddle at the divorce proceedings—my lady of Cleves found herself pregnant—at Richmond—
now
!”

“Now she is called the King’s sister? And he married to the Howard. What a situation!” I elaborated, joining in his laughter.“In truth, kinsman Thomas, it would be the biggest joke in all his Grace’s reign.”

We were still laughing helplessly when a swish of skirts on the grass and a woman’s voice recalled us to decorum. His lady wife had come through the gardens to look for him. “My good Thomas, I thought you must have thrown yourself in the Thames for very boredom with this changed and wearisome Court. But since you and our good friend Will here have found something amusing I pray you let me share your mirth,” she entreated charmingly.

We slid from the wall and brushed the dust from our hose. I bowed and milord offered her his arm. “No, no, my love. ’Twas but one of Will’s more disreputable jokes. The kind with which he amuses the King in his cups,” he excused himself—mightily unfairly, I thought. “Though I doubt,” he added, looking back at me to bat an eyelid, “whether this particular one would amuse his Grace over much.”

But kings and jokes all went out of my mind when I arrived at Thames Street that evening and Joanna whispered against my shoulder that she was with child. I exclaimed over her and kissed her, feeling that I held my whole world in my arms. “We will call him Richard,” I announced, knowing that she would wish this, too, and certain that we should have a boy. And that evening we walked across Tower Hill and out through Aldgate to the pleasant hamlet and fields of Shoreditch, in moonlight and the peak of married happiness, eagerly deciding what school he should attend and what profession he should pursue.

“There will be no inheritance from my father and he may not have the ready wit to become a jester,” Joanna reminded me.

“One of your father’s friends would right willingly apprentice him to the wool trade. Or he could be a vintner like the Chaucers, or a mercer like the Browns. Most of the money these days is made by merchants,” I mused.

“He could be a printer like Caxton or a learned translator like Tyndale. There are sure to be more and more books, Will.”

“Or an explorer like Magellan, sailing right out into uncharted seas to prove the world is round,” I suggested, still hot for my boyhood’s hero.

“Oh, no!” she protested. “For then, as we grew old, we should never see him.”

During the months which followed I tried to be with her as often as I could, to cherish her and keep her thoughts from grieving for her father. I exhorted a delighted Tatty to take the utmost care of her mistress. Lady Vaux came to visit us, bringing Joanna peaches and grapes from their country garden. John Thurgood, who had long since fallen victim to my wife’s charms, could scarcely be kept away. He took her books of amusing plays and, somewhat prematurely, a small set of puppets which he had carved for our small son to play with. And one unexpected visitor we had that winter was Colin, my eldest cousin from Shropshire, come to settle about some taxes in London and to tell me that my dear old Uncle Tobias was dead. My aunt sent her grateful love to me for such small things as I had sent her, farm and family were prospering and Colin himself was now the father of two sturdy boys by the Tarleton girl whom he had been courting in the neighbouring village of Condover.

“And the Priory?” I asked, well knowing what sort of answer to expect, having seen the sad desolation of Merton Abbey when staying with the King at Oatlands.

“Being gradually demolished. The fine nave be all pulled down and the choir where you used to sing—an’ the stones, some of ’em, gone to build Master Tyrrell’s pig-sties. Only the Prior’s house be saved to house some stranger. Even the great kitchens, where the lay brothers used to dole out food to the destitute, is become an inn.”

“And the good monks themselves?’’ I asked, remembering their finely trained voices.

My honest, shock-headed cousin shrugged. “Homeless an’ roaming the roads, I reckon. Beggars themselves by now, most like.”

Tatty made up a bed for him in the attic and showed him some of the sights of London. And Joanna fed him and showed him every kindness. But when it was time for him to mount his strong farm horse I had no desire to go with him. Now that Uncle Tobias and the Priory were both gone I felt that I could never bear to see Much Wenlock again.

And when Joanna’s time was drawing near there came that most welcome visitor of all. That indomitable woman, Emotte, who made the journey with the only maidservant left to her and stayed with us until Joanna was up and about again.

“There is nothing you could have done for which a man could be more grateful,” I told her with a fervent embrace when my son was safely born.

“You
went to see my brother in prison,” she said, in that short, unemotional way of hers.

“And, God helping me, I will one day get him out,” I promised.Her loving look and my wife’s eyes shining at me from the bed made me feel a poor, inadequate sort of knight errant. “But with the King one has to await the right moment,” I explained apologetically, as I had so often been forced to tell myself.

But through a series of unexpected happenings and the kindness of two great ladies my moment was to come sooner than I had dared to hope.

For fear of making trouble for Miles Mucklow I had not gone again to the Marshalsea, but, being swollen with paternal pride, I felt that I must give Richard Fermor news of his new grandson. I took him the loving letter and the dainties which Joanna had prepared, but Mucklow dared not let me stay for long. “The Governor is all on edge about people coming in and out just now because of all these fresh cases of plague,” he explained. But in the excitement of seeing Richard Fermor the words washed over me at the time.There was so much news to tell, and so short a time in which to tell it. He had heard about the Cleves marriage and Cromwell’s execution, and most of the Court gossip. But he was avid for family news and delighted about his small namesake. To my great relief, my father-in-law looked reasonably well. He kept up his spirits by reading and writing a useful account of foreign towns which he had visited. He was allowed to take exercise in some inner courtyard and refused the money which I had brought.

“How do the other prisoners manage to live?” I asked, as he showed me the modest supply of money still left in the cunning lining which Emotte had made to the leather of his Florentine belt.

“The baser kind spend much of their time making counterfeit coins which some of the gaolers have found a brisk market for at a stiff commission—particularly among unsuspecting foreign visitors,” said Fermor, sampling one of Joanna’s honey cakes with relish. “But many a poor devil would starve, I fear, were it not for milady Mary’s donations for them.”

“The Lady Mary!” I exclaimed, marvelling that I, who had known her from her childhood, should yet have had no inkling of this bounty. “But she herself has had so little—in the past, I mean, when she was sharing her household with the young Lady Elizabeth, and when but for her kindness the child would have had scarce enough clothes to stand up in. Do you mean that she has always done this?”

“And to the Fleet Prison as well, I believe,” Richard Fermor told me. “Her mother always helped the prisoners, and whatever the Lady Mary’s personal privations, her Grace has never let the payments cease. There is not a man here, however debased, who does not bless her name.”

I returned home because I knew that Joanna would be longing for news of him, but had to hurry back to Whitehall before sunrise. Yet in the grey light of dawn I saw a cross chalked on a door quite close to our house in Thames Street, and almost stumbled over the half-naked corpse of a woman callously thrown out on a stinking laystall at the corner of Paul’s Wharf. Instantly the words of Miles Mucklow came back to me. “More cases of plague,” he had said. One heard it so often, and small wonder, with the filth thrown from bedroom windows to overflowing gutters, and cattle still being slaughtered within the city walls. But here in our own street, so near my loved ones! I almost turned back to drag them from our comfortable home, but had nowhere to take them. Let them sleep while I thought what best to do. Perhaps someone at the palace could help me.