The Concubine (11 page)

“And how do they keep Christmas?”

“With a Mass in the church and the old Druid sacred plant, the mistletoe, in the hall; with evergreens, holly and ivy, sacred to woodland gods even farther back in time, and with twelve days of undisciplined revelry that is more like the old Saturnalia than anything I ever saw or heard of.”

All very interesting and informative, but Clement’s mind insisted upon coming back to his present situation.

“When they hear of this,” he moved an eloquent hand, “what will their reaction be?”

“Mixed, as their reactions always are. They’ll say—We’re glad we weren’t there; and—If we’d been there things would have been different; and—Serves him right for falling out with the Emperor. Never forget, Your Holiness, the Netherlands are part of the Empire and it is in the Netherlands that the English sell their wool. The French they hate, and I have no doubt that it was the idea of fighting alongside the French and not against them that has made them such feeble allies for you in this war.”

He should have said, “for us.” He realized that as soon as he had said the other thing; but Clement seemed not to have noticed.

“To make peace with the Emperor seems to be my only hope,” Clement said. “Spain is the stronghold of the faith, and the heart of the Empire. And that brings up again the problem of the English marriage, now more important than ever if what you tell me is true.”

“It is a matter of time,” Campeggio said. “The King may tire of being repulsed; the lady may give in. The Queen is said to be dropsical—though that is denied in other quarters. Given time anything could happen. Henry has reached the age when men have a roving eye; it might easily fall upon someone less obdurate. Let us hope…”

He broke off as a series of screams, more piercing than any hitherto heard, rose through the din. Clement shuddered, and his heart reproached him anew. How dismally he had failed. He broke into womanish tears.

“They are my sheep,” he said, “and I can do nothing to protect them.”

Campeggio said, not callously, but as a plain statement of fact,

“Your Holiness is their
spiritual
shepherd. On the physical plane there is but one defense for sheep—they must learn to fight back. In any given situation they always vastly outnumber the wolves.”

Clement was not exactly comforted by these comments, but he sensed in Campeggio a detachment which he himself did not possess, and he made another attempt to control his tears.

“You were speaking about time.”

“Oh yes. I was thinking that the French having proved no match for the Emperor’s troops and the English having failed us, our only hope is to come to terms with Charles. I’m no seer, but I think that Henry will do the same; his wool merchants will see to that. And while this peace is brought about, such trivial extraneous things as whether Henry is married or not should be…” He realized that he was on the brink of proffering an unasked-for piece of advice. “I am sorry, your Holiness; it is not for me to advise you.”

“If you can, do.”

“The matter should be delayed. Not shelved, that would anger Henry. Merely delayed for as long as is possible. There are methods of delay well known to lawyers.”

“If I am free to use them,” Clement said, coming back to his own immediate future. He then voiced the thing which troubled him most, “I think I was wrong to allow myself to be persuaded to come here. I should have stayed, robed and in my chair. That was my intention. At the lowest it would have been an assertion of faith, and it would have left me with some authority.”

“If you had stayed, you would now be dead. Of that I am certain!”

“You think they would have dared…”

“They are drunken and mutinous; they would re-crucify Christ given the chance. Your Holiness must…” There he was doing it again.

“Must what?” Clement asked mildly.

“Escape from here. Throw yourself under the Emperor’s protection. Unless I am much mistaken this day’s work is going to make a breach between the real Empire and the German principalities. The Emperor and the Empire will be on your side. After all, Charles has not yet been crowned. Who else could do it?”

So the hideous night ran its course and the talk in the high room ran hither and thither, touching upon many things. Before the year was out, Clement was to follow Campeggio’s advice and, dressed like a workman, with a sack on his shoulders, escaped to Orvieto. He was to carry with him inerasable memories of the rape of Rome, memories which strengthened his determination never again to fall out with the Emperor; and adhering to the memory of that one particular night, as barnacles cling to a ship’s hull, some of the other things that Campeggio had said; that Henry was a staunch churchman, unlikely to turn Lutheran if offended, that Henry must not be offended; that it would be against the interest of the Church for Anne Boleyn ever to be Queen of England; that only time was needed to solve everything.

He was to carry also the conviction that Campeggio was farsighted and reliable, and very knowledgeable. If, in the years that lay ahead, so unsafe and so uncertain, he ever needed a man for any particularly delicate mission, Campeggio was the one he would try first.

W
HEN HENRY ENTERED, CATHERINE ROSE
and greeted him with grave respect before giving any sign of the immense pleasure which his visit gave her. Even to herself she would not use the word neglectful, but it was impossible to overlook the fact that lately she had seen less and less of him on private occasions. She told herself that he was busy, much occupied with the affairs of state, and of that, she, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, fully approved. Rulers should take their duties seriously. She had often thought, and occasionally in the past gently hinted, that Henry left too much to Wolsey. Such dependence, even in its most innocent aspect, was bad, since Wolsey was twenty years older that his King, and must one day die, or sink into useless senility. It was better that Henry should learn to do without him.

She had almost brought herself to believe her own explanation of Henry’s withdrawal from her: but she was not a fool, and she knew very well that any man, however preoccupied, can make time to spend with the woman who holds his interest. She had lost Henry’s; that she admitted to herself, sadly, but with resignation. It was no one’s fault; it was inevitable; it was due to the dates of their births.

Just six years difference, so little, so much, so
variable
.

Six years had made an unbridgeable gap between a boy of ten and a well-developed, marriageable girl of almost sixteen; and it was across this gap that they had first looked at one another when he gave her his hand and led her along the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral where, at the altar, his brother Arthur awaited her. She had thought him very handsome, had even entertained a fleeting hope that her first-born son might inherit the sturdy physique of his young uncle Henry, rather than that of his delicate-looking father.

After that, with every passing month, the gap between them had narrowed, until he was a great lusty fellow of eighteen, almost full-grown of body and in mind rendered precocious by the respect that had been paid to him, and the demands made upon him since the death of Arthur had made him heir to the throne. Between such an eighteen-year-old and a young woman of twenty-four, who since the death of her husband, after a few months’ “marriage” had lived an almost nunlike life, there seemed no gap at all. They were married; they mourned together over their first stillborn child, and in the next year rejoiced—oh, with what fervor—over the birth of a living son. Completely at one in joy, they had organized the celebrations to make his birth, completely at one in sorrow, they saw him coffined before the gay decorations were down.

Then, a man of twenty-five, a woman of thirty-one they had leaned over the cradle of another living child, a daughter this time, a small, not very thriving child, but she lived and that was a good sign. They were still young; there was still hope that they could breed another boy, who would live.

All too soon the gap began to yawn again; Henry was in his prime, Catherine moving into middle age. Repeated childbirth had thickened her body, repeated disappointment had sobered her spirits. There was still no child but the one daughter. Catherine had prayed to God and to the Virgin and to the Saints until sometimes she felt they must be weary of her; she had made pilgrimages to shrines and paid for prayers to be said for her, she had been charitable, and patient, and always on guard against despair, for despair was sin…And now, on this brilliant June morning in 1527, Henry was thirty-six, handsome, shapely, hard-muscled, sexually at the height of his powers, while she was forty-two and had known for several months that her childbearing days were done. The six years’ gap was wider than it had ever been.

Under her determined cheerfulness and resignation to the will of God, a persistent sense of failure gnawed. She had failed as a wife, for every man, even a peasant with nothing but his name, an old donkey, and a scythe to bequeath, wanted a son, how much more so the King of England…? She had failed England, too; that curious and in some ways uncouth country, where foreigners were ill-esteemed, had taken her to its heart and had looked to her to provide it with an heir. Still, even the feeling of failure had its palliatives. What happened was according to the will of God. And there was Mary. After all, Catherine’s own mother had been Queen in her own right, and a better ruler the world had never seen. Why should not Mary be as good; she had all the qualities, young as she was, gravity, intelligence, integrity, and courage.

When Henry said, “I have a matter of some importance to discuss,” Catherine thought instantly of Mary.

Henry spoke pleasantly, addressing Catherine, but looking at her ladies, all as gay as flowers in their summer dresses. Catherine—he gave her her due—was not as dowdy as many pious women were, nor did she surround herself with women so old or ill-featured that by comparison she might look younger and more comely. There were, indeed, amongst the women who went fluttering and chattering away, more than one who might have attracted him, had his heart not been fixed.

But his heart was fixed, and this next half-hour, which he suspected would be the most uncomfortable half-hour he had ever spent, must be regarded as the breaking of a barrier between him and his heart’s desire. It must be regarded as one of those ordeals which qualified a man for knighthood. It was, more simply, just something that must be done.

God’s life, though! How he wished it were something that he could do, could bear, could achieve, either by himself or in contest with other men. Catherine would be hurt, and he hated hurting a woman.

He told her to be seated, sat down himself, got up again and looked out of the window. He had said, “a matter of some importance,” yet his remarks, for several minutes, dealt with trivial things. Like Wolsey, on a former occasion, Catherine found this behavior uncharacteristic, and like Wolsey, she was anxious to be helpful.

“I think,” she said, “that I can guess what is on your mind. The betrothal of our daughter to the Dauphin of France. My Lord, I have considered it well and am now assured that it is for the best.”

That should please him, she thought.

There again she was putting a brave face against a crushing disappointment. Mary had been betrothed to Charles, King of Spain, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The betrothal had satisfied Catherine’s strong family feeling, and it promised to link the two countries she loved best, her native Spain and England which had so kindly adopted her. But Charles had decided not to wait for Mary, but to marry instead another of his cousins, Isabella of Portugal. And then Henry and Wolsey, throwing their weight on to the French end of the European seesaw, had thought of betrothing Mary to the Dauphin of France. France, the ancient enemy of England and Spain.

It had taken some time and much effort for Catherine to resign herself to that idea, but she had done so, and now she held out her acceptance of it toward Henry, like a posy, trusting that he would be pleased.

He said, with awkward abruptness,

“I didn’t come here to talk about Mary. I came to talk about us.

“About us?” The rather somber lines of her face lifted. Perhaps he, too, had been aware of their drifting apart; had realized that outside of bed there was a good deal that a man and a woman, well-disposed, could give one another. Lately she’d prayed for this; perhaps at last
one
prayer was about to be answered.

“Yes,” he said. And then it was as though at one minute she had been standing on a safe sunlit terrace overlooking a flat sea, rippling hyacinth and sapphire and jade, and the next minute a great cold, slate-gray wave had come up and engulfed her, swept her down, battered her against sharp rocks, and then thrown her back, dying, but not dead, limp, broken and breathless on some strange and desolate shore.

She could never recall afterward exactly what words he had used, or how long he took to say them, but his meaning reached her. He and she had never been married; they had lived in sin; they’d broken God’s law; she wasn’t his wife, she was Arthur’s; and all those precious babies, miscarried, stillborn or soon dead, were a proof that God had cursed their incestuous union.

When at last she could speak she heard her own voice, a faint mewling, the last cry of somebody being strangled.

“But, Henry…the Pope. He gave…a special dispensation. He knew…everybody knew…poor Arthur and I…”

I must, I must collect myself and speak firmly. This is nonsense; it must be refuted.

“Arthur and I,” ah, that was better, her own voice. “We were married; there was the ceremony; and for a few nights we shared a bed. But he was a child, and sick, even then. I shared a bed with a sick child. And knowing that, the Pope gave us leave to marry.”

“We were deceived, Catherine. The Pope had no right to issue such a dispensation. Of that I am now convinced, and so are many learned men of whom I have asked counsel. Ours was an unlawful marriage, and its results condemn it.”

“The children? Henry, you know, babies are born dead, or die in every family. We have Mary. Is she not living proof of our marriage being good. It says—I know it, too—that the man who marries his brother’s wife shall be childless. You are not childless. And I was never, never, your brother’s wife. You know it. You must know that I came to you virgin as I was born.”

After all these years, in a moment of stress, her voice, the way she used her hands, betrayed her Spanish origin. Once he had thought her accent, her gestures, fascinating; now they revolted him, as a dish, once loved, eaten to surfeit, will ever more revolt. And the mention of virginity, coming from a woman who was aging, growing stout, and laboring under emotion, that was revolting, too. A kind of disgust held him speechless.

“Your father and mine,” Catherine said, “two of the wisest Princes in Christendom; they were satisfied that the dispensation was good.”

“No,” Henry said, feeling firm ground beneath his feet at last. “My father had a doubt and spoke of it on his deathbed.”

That was true, and he leaned back against the memory of that moment as a man might lean against a strong wall. Henry VII, who for years had kept the young widow in England, who had once even thought of marrying her himself, because his miserly nature hated to part with her dowry, who had extracted from the Pope the permission for her to marry his second son, had, in the final hour of his life, seen the worthlessness of material things. He had mumbled out a few words which Henry had chosen then to ignore.

Henry, the second born, bigger, stronger, in every way save age Arthur’s superior, had always envied his brother. He had coveted Arthur’s heritage, and later Arthur’s princess. She had been, then, every boy’s dream, plump, pretty, amenable, and despite her Spanish blood, blue-eyed and golden-haired; her grave and stately Spanish manners gave her the charm of the exotic, and her curiously accented English was pleasing to the ear. He’d led her to her wedding, wishing all the time that he stood in Arthur’s place. And when, eight years later, he stood by his father’s deathbed and heard the warning, issued in a thready, failing voice, he had thought—He’s failing, he does not know what he says; he asked for the dispensation and Julius gave it; and I shall marry her; why not?

But it was useful now to mention his father.

“He knew it was wrong. I was young and headstrong and chose to ignore his warning. Now I know that he was right. Wolsey has approached the Pope, with no result so far, for reasons that we know of; but Wolsey and Warham have had a discussion upon the matter and came to the conclusion that our marriage was open to question. So there we are.”

All this and not a word to her.

She remembered often during the last few weeks, coming upon a group of her ladies, chattering like magpies, and then falling silent as she approached. They knew! Wolsey had his own channels to the Pope, his discussion with the Archbishop might be kept secret, but things of such importance had a way of brimming over all such precautions. Her ladies had known; she had not. Unkind! Unkind, she thought, and then hastened to exonerate him.

“You have been badly advised, my Lord.”

Neither of them realized it then, but Catherine in seven words had expressed her belief and nothing was ever to move her from it. Henry, left to himself, was, she was sure, incapable of thinking along such lines, or of acting so unkindly. Theirs had been an unusually happy marriage and he had never been anything but kind to her. A little inconsiderate perhaps in bringing his bastard son to Court, and making him Duke of Richmond, but it was natural for a man to love his son, even it he were a bastard. He’d been unfaithful to her twice that she knew of; people whispered about a third time, long ago, but those whispers she had ignored, and that for a King with unlimited opportunities and so many temptations was a remarkably clean record. All this made the blow which he had just dealt her more wounding, and at the same time convinced her that he was not really responsible.

It was Wolsey.

Wolsey had always aimed at a firm alliance with France, and he was infinitely cunning. He’d worked on Henry’s wish for a son, and was now, this minute, over in France, bargaining for some buxom, bright-eyed girl with a quarter of a century of childbearing years before her.

The awful inescapability of the years’ damage confronted her fully for the first time; a woman was nubile, fruitful, barren, subject to a progress as fixed as the passage of the sun across the sky.

Abruptly she began to cry, taking Henry by surprise, for she wept seldom. The tears welled up and spilled over, quietly, as though they were her life blood seeping away.