The King's Secret Matter (55 page)

He dared not take her by force. He and his men would be torn to pieces if he did.

He returned to the hall, looked gloomily at the dismantled room; then he wrote to the King, to Cromwell and to Norfolk, explaining the Queen's obstinacy and his fear of mob violence from the crowd which now seemed to be some thousands.

He despatched the letters and prepared to depart himself.

He saw Thomas Abell coming from the Queen's apartments and called to him.

‘So, sir priest, you are still here with the Princess Dowager.'

‘As you see, my lord Duke.'

‘And upholding her in her obstinacy as you ever did,' snarled Suffolk.

‘The Queen is a lady of stern ideals.'

‘The Queen? There is but one Queen of England. That is Queen Anne.'

‘There is but one Queen, my lord; and I say that Queen is Queen Katharine.'

‘By God,' cried Suffolk, ‘you speak high treason.' He shouted to his men. ‘Take this priest. He will leave with us as our prisoner.'

He summoned all those servants, who were not with Katharine, to his presence and forthwith arrested several of them. At least he would not go back to London empty handed. Then he was ready to leave. He glanced round the castle which looked as though it had been sacked by invading soldiery – which in some measure it had – before he rode out into the courtyard and gave the order to depart.

The crowds parted for them to pass; no one spoke, but the looks were sullen.

Katharine came down from her private apartments and gazed in dismay at the havoc in her house. But when she heard that some of her servants had been taken prisoner, among them the faithful Abell, she ceased to care about the state of her dwelling. She thought of Abell going back to the discomfort of the Tower, where he might be submitted to torture as he had been before, and a feeling of utter desolation took possession of her.

Will there be no end to this persecution? she asked herself. Then she began to weep, for the strain of the last days had been greater than she had realised while they were happening; and although when confined to her room, unsure of whether she would be removed by force, she had not wept, now she could not prevent herself from doing so.

Two of her women came and stood with her.

‘Your Majesty, pray return to your bed. There is more comfort there.'

She did not answer but held her kerchief to her streaming eyes.

‘A curse on Anne Boleyn,' said one of the women.

Katharine lowered her kerchief and turned her stern gaze on the speaker. ‘Nay,' she said. ‘Hold your peace. Do not curse her. Rather pray for her. Even now the time is coming fast when you shall have reason to pity her and lament her case.'

She turned slowly and mounted the stairs to her apartment. Her women looked after her in wonderment. Then they shivered, for she spoke with the voice of a prophet.

Chapter XIV

K
atharine continued to live in her private apartments, and the rest of the castle remained as Suffolk's men had left it: the tapestries unhung, the furniture dismantled.

Every day Katharine expected to receive a command from the King to leave Buckden for some place of his choice, but Henry was too occupied by affairs at Court to concern himself with her.

There was about this life an air of transience. She scarcely left her apartments, and heard Mass at the window of her bedroom which looked down on the chapel; her food was cooked by her bedroom fire, and those who served her, living closer to her, began to find love of her mingling with the respect she had always inspired.

The winter was bitter and she often felt, during those rigorous weeks when she lay shivering in her bed, that she could not live long in this condition. Her great concern was for her daughter who she knew, through Chapuys, was as much in danger as she was herself.

Chapuys wrote to her that she must take care what she ate,
and that her meals should be cooked only by her most trusted servants because he believed that in high quarters there was a plot to remove both her and the Princess Mary.

This threat did not diminish when in the March of that year Clement at last gave his verdict, declaring that the marriage of Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon was valid in the eyes of God and the Church.

‘Too late!' sighed Katharine. ‘Five weary years too late!'

She knew that Clement's verdict could do her and Mary no good now, but could only increase the wrath of her enemies among whom she knew in her heart – but she tried hard not to admit this – was the King, her husband.

In May of that year the King ordered her to leave Buckden for Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire; and this time she obeyed.

The reign of terror had begun. There were certain stubborn men who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, and the King was no longer the carefree boy who was eager only for his pleasure.

His marriage with Anne was turning sour. Where was the boy for whom he had dared so much? Where was the tender passion he had once felt for Anne?

In Kimbolton Castle was the woman whom many still called his Queen. He was waiting impatiently for her death which surely could not be long delayed. The last years of anxiety and living in damp houses had ruined her health, he had heard; yet she clung as stubbornly to life as she had to her determination not to enter a nunnery.

A plague on obstinate women . . . and obstinate men.

He knew that Chapuys was dangerous, and he had refused again and again the ambassador's requests to see Katharine. How did he know what was being planned in secret? Was it true that plans were afoot to smuggle Mary from the country and marry her to Reginald Pole, that traitor who dared tell him . . . his King . . . that he disapproved of his conduct?

A plague on all men and women who risked their lives for a cause which was not the King's. They should see whither that road led.

Mary was as obstinate as her mother, refusing to travel with her baby sister, declaring that she was a Princess and would answer to no other title, continually pleading to see her mother; now she was most inconveniently ill, and it was being whispered that she had been poisoned.

Katharine wrote to him from Kimbolton: ‘Our daughter is ill. You cannot keep her from me now. I beg of you, allow me to see her. Do you remember how long it is since I did so? What joy does this cruelty bring you?'

The King's eyes narrowed as he read that appeal. Let them meet! Let them plot together! Let them smuggle notes to sly Chapuys . . . plans to get Mary abroad, married to Pole – a signal doubtless for their friends in England to rise against him!

‘Never!' he cried.

Those who did not obey the King should suffer the supreme penalty. In April of that bloodstained year five Carthusian monks were brought for trial and found to be guilty of high treason. Their crime: They refused to sign the Oath declaring the King to be Supreme Head of the Church.

‘Let them understand,' growled Henry, ‘what it means to disobey the King. Let all who plan like disobedience look on and see.'

In that May the tortured bodies of these five martyrs were brought out of their prison for execution. The degrading and horrible traitors' death was accorded them and they were dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, hanged, cut down alive, their bodies ripped open and their bowels and hearts impaled on spears and shown to the spectators, that all might understand what happened to those who disobeyed the King.

In June more monks of the Charterhouse were brought to Tyburn and similarly dealt with. And a few days later John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was brought from his prison to die the traitors' death. Fortunately for him, there were some for whom it was expedient to show leniency; so the King said he would be merciful. Not for the bishop, whom some of the King's misguided subjects loved, the barbarous death accorded to the Carthusians; Fisher was allowed to die by means of the executioner's axe.

In July Sir Thomas More was brought from the Tower of London, where he had been for fifteen months, and he too laid his head upon the block.

When Katharine heard of the death of these old friends she shut herself into her chamber and remained there alone.

She still could not believe that the gay young husband who had married her in the days of her humiliation was in truth the brutal murderer of good men. She still clung to the belief that it was those about him who urged him to these deeds. Now she feigned to believe it was Anne Boleyn, as once she had believed it was Wolsey.

Yet in her heart she knew that he was all-powerful; more so than ever now that he had cut himself off from the Pope.

John Fisher! she sighed. Thomas More! My dear friends . . . and the King's! How could he murder two such men?

But she knew. And she wondered: Who will be next?

She was very fearful for her daughter . . . and herself.

The winter had come again, and Katharine knew with certainty that she could not live through it. She was now so feeble that she must keep to her bed for days at a time; and some premonition told her that her end was near.

Once more she appealed to Henry.

‘I do not think I have long to live. I pray you permit our daughter to come to me. You surely cannot prevent her from receiving my last blessing in person.'