Текст книги "In the Shadow of the Crown "
Автор книги: Jean Plaidy
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
That December Dereham and Culpepper were condemned to death. The court judged them traitors. The sentence was to be carried out with that barbarous method of execution which had been seen too frequently in these last years.
How did they feel when they—surely for no crime which could have been proved against them—were condemned to die? How did the Queen feel…if she knew? Poor girl. They said she was in such a state that she was hardly aware of what was happening about her.
Culpepper was of noble birth, and therefore the horrendous sentence would be commuted to beheading. So he, poor man, was merely to lose his head for a crime he had not committed. It was different with Dereham, whose birth did not entitle him to such a privilege. He must suffer the dreadful fate of hanging, drawing and quartering.
He petitioned against it, and the petition was taken to my father. He must have been enraged at the thought of someone's enjoying Catharine's charms before him. He should have known that she was not the girl to have come through her early life without some amatory adventures. If he had wanted an entirely chaste woman, he should have stayed with Anne of Cleves. He wanted everything to be perfect, and if it were not, those who denied it to him must pay with their lives.
So at Tyburn the terrible sentence was carried out on Dereham. He died protesting his innocence, as did Culpepper, who was beheaded at the same time.
The heads of both men were placed on London Bridge—a terrible warning to those who offended the King. People might ask how Dereham could possibly have known he was offending the King. Was no man to love a woman or to speak of marriage to her… for fear the King might fancy her?
Perhaps people were asking themselves a good many questions during those terrible times.
IT WAS A MISERABLE Christmas. I was glad I was not at Court. I could not imagine how my father could celebrate it. It would be a mockery. Catharine was still at Sion House. I wondered if she still thought the King would pardon her. The uncertainty must be terrible. I expect she had been fond of Dereham once; I believe she still was of Culpepper; and she would know that these two had died because of her. Doubtless she would have heard how they stood up to torture and had tried to defend her to the end.
February came—a dreary, desolate month. There was mist over the land until the cold, biting winds drove it away. They brought the Queen from Sion House to the Tower. I guessed that meant her death was inevitable.
I heard she was a little calmer now. She seemed to have accepted the fact that she was to die. Lady Rochford was in the Tower, condemned with her. She was accused of contriving meetings between Catharine and Culpepper; she was therefore guilty of treason.
I kept thinking of Catharine's youth. Such a short time she had been on Earth, and she had been such a merry creature, relishing life in the Duchess's household, reveling in that sexuality which pleased the men. And then the King's devotion, which, they said, she believed to the end would save her.
Susan and I talked of her. We could think of nothing else. I supposed the whole nation was talking of her. She would be the second of my father's wives to be beheaded—but that had not yet become commonplace.
It was the thirteenth day of February when she was taken out to die. Young, so pretty, her crime being that she had been too free with her favors before the ill-fated choice had fallen on her.
At Havering we heard that she had died with dignity. When she knew there was no hope and that the King, who had professed his love for her, was going to leave her to her fate, she accepted it meekly.
What seemed to worry her more than anything was that she might not know what she had to do on the scaffold, and she asked for a block, which would be exactly like the one on which she would have to lay her head, to be brought to her so that she might practice on it. She did not want to stumble on the day of her death. This was done. Later she went out bravely, and before she died she declared that she would rather have been the wife of Thomas Culpepper than a queen.
Lady Rochford died with her. I felt no compassion for that woman. In spite of my hatred for the Boleyn clan, I could not believe in the incest between Anne and her brother, and I thought how depraved she must be to have accused them.
Her last words were reputed to be that she deserved to die for her false accusation of her husband and sister-in-law and not for anything she had done against the King; for she was guiltless of that.
So perished the King's fifth wife, Catharine Howard, on that same spot where his second, Anne Boleyn, had died before her.
THE KING CAME TO VISIT US AT HAVERING—OR PERHAPS not to visit us especially, but it happened to be on the route he was taking to somewhere else.
Edward was always uneasy when the King was under the same roof as he was.
“I am not the son he wants,” he told me, his pale face anxious, his blue eyes a little strained, as Margaret said, from too much reading.
I told him he was wrong. “You are everything he wants,” I assured him. “Elizabeth and I…we are only girls and a great disappointment to him. You are the son for whom he has longed for many years. Of course you are what he wants.”
“He would like someone big like himself.”
“You have a long way to grow as yet.”
“He said when he was my age he was twice as big as I am.”
“Big people are not always the best.”
“But they can ride and hunt without getting tired.”
I studied him carefully. He was a delicate child; his attendants had always fussed over him, terrified that something would happen and they be blamed for it.
“I would like to be able to dance and jump and run like Elizabeth,” he said.
“Oh, there is only one Elizabeth.”
He laughed. He agreed with me. He was completely in her thrall.
When the King arrived, we all had to make our respectful bows and curtsies, and when he looked at his son, I could see he did not like the boy's pale looks; he tried to stop himself looking at Elizabeth but she had a way of pushing herself forward, even in the royal presence, and at times I saw him giving her a furtive glance. She looked more than a little like him. If he would have allowed himself, he could have been very pleased with her. She was the one among us most like him.
To my surprise, shortly after his arrival he sent for me, and when I entered his presence I found that he was alone.
“Come and sit beside me, daughter,” he said.
I was amazed at such condescension and obeyed with some apprehension.
He saw this, and it seemed to please him. “There, there,” he said. “Do not be afraid. I wish to talk to you. You are no longer a child… far from it.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“How long is it since you were born?”
“Twenty-six years, Your Majesty.”
“And no husband! Well, these have been tragic times for me. I have been disappointed in my wives… though Jane was a good wife to me. It would seem that there is some curse upon me. Why has God seen fit to punish me thus?”
I felt myself growing stiff with anger, as I always did when anyone said a word against my mother. I wanted to shout at him: You had the best wife in the world and you cast her off for Anne Boleyn.
I think he sensed my feelings and, as he was favoring me at the moment and meant to continue to do so, he was mildly placating.
“I was under the spell of witchcraft,” he said. “I was bewitched.”
I did not answer. His eyes had grown glazed. He was seeing her, I imagined, the black-eyed witch with all her enchantments, seducing him … turning him from a virtuous wife and the Church of Rome. It was necessary to see her thus now. It was the only excuse for murder.
“And Jane,” he went on. “She died…”
“Giving Your Majesty your son,” I reminded him.
“How is the boy? Does he seem weak to you, Mary?”
“He is not strong like Elizabeth, but Lady Bryan says that delicate children often become stronger as they grow older.”
“I did not have to grow out of weakness.”
“Your Majesty cannot expect another to have your strength and blooming health, not even your own son.”
“I do expect it, daughter, and methinks I do not expect too much… only what is due to me. I am too trusting. You see how I am treated. I believed that girl was sweet and innocent…”
I thought: Then you can have had little experience of women. It was strange to be with him like this—answering in asides remarks which I dared not say aloud.
He made a self-pitying gesture, and I tried to look sympathetic, but I kept seeing that poor child running along the gallery at Hampton Court. I kept thinking of her terror as she realized that the axe which was poised above her head was about to fall on her as the executioner's sword from France had on her cousin—his second wife.
“Daughter,” he was saying, “I want you to be beside me. I have no Queen now. I need someone beside me … someone who can play the Queen. We will have a banquet and a ball. We will set aside our gloom. We must, for the sake of our subjects. They like not this sadness. The people must be amused. So …you will come to Court. You will be beside me.”
He was beaming at me, expecting me to express my joy.
I was uncertain of my feelings. I was finding life dull and monotonous. I wanted to be at Court. I wanted to know what was happening, to see events at first hand, not learn of them through hearsay.
And here was a chance.
Yet to be near the King was dangerous. Well, I had lived with danger for most of my life.
He was looking at me steadily.
“I see the idea pleases you,” he said.
He leaned over and patted my hand in a fatherly gesture.
Not since I was a very little girl had he shown me such affection.
MY POSITION HAD CHANGED. I was now in high favor. The King would have me beside him. He made it clear that he recognized me as his daughter.
The loss of Catharine Howard had had its effect on him. He looked much older; even he could no longer deceive himself that he was a young man. His legs were swollen and very painful; his appetite had not diminished, and now that he had less exercise he was beginning to grow very fat. His glinting eyes and his petulant mouth often seemed almost to disappear in the folds of flesh about them. He was melancholy and irascible. People feared him more than ever. I was amazed at his gentle attitude toward me. His health was clearly not good. That running sore on his leg was an outward sign of the state of his body; for some time he had tried to conceal it, but now it was impossible.
Naturally there were spies about the Court whose intention was to report everything that happened, and it was soon known throughout Europe that the King was not in good health, that Edward was frail—and at that only five years old; and it would seem significant that my father had brought me to Court and was treating me with more affection than he had shown toward me since he had decided to discard my mother.
It was not long before King François of France was putting out feelers. His son Charles of Orleans was in need of a bride, and there was none he would welcome as he would the Lady Mary.
I was not very pleased. I had almost become reconciled to being a spinster, to living on the fringe of the Court; after all, there was a great deal to be said for a certain obscurity. One did not have to suffer those alarms every time trouble with which one could be connected sprang up somewhere.
I had settled into a routine, where I could read, write to my friends, occasionally receive them, walk a good deal—I was fond of fresh air, be with my ladies in the evenings by the fire or perhaps, in summer, sit out of doors with dear old Jane the Fool to enliven the hours. It might be a little dull and unadventurous but it was not without its pleasure, and peace of mind was something to treasure when one had had little of it.
How should I know what would be waiting for me at the French Court? Moreover, Chapuys would be against it. If there was to be a union—and I could not have Reginald; that seemed impossible now for he was getting quite old—I would have liked it to bring me closer to the Emperor.
In fact, I found the whole matter rather distasteful, particularly when I discovered that French spies had been questioning my bedchamber women. It was well known that throughout my life I had had bouts of severe illness, and these spies asked delicate and embarrassing questions. They wanted to assure themselves that I was capable of bearing children. They would be considering the many miscarriages my mother had had; my father's children– apart from Elizabeth—were not strong. The Duke of Richmond had died young; Edward was fragile, and I was plagued with illness from time to time. Did that mean that I might not be capable of bearing children?
How serious the negotiations were, I am not sure. The political situation on the Continent was never stable for long; friends became enemies overnight, and that had its effect on proposed marriages. It might have been that it was never intended that there should be a marriage.
The fact that there was a great deal of squabbling over the dowry suggested to me—now experienced in these matters after so many proposals which had come to nothing—that the proposed marriage was a gesture to give the Emperor some apprehension, as the last thing he would want would be an alliance between France and England. My father offered a dowry of 200,000 crowns and François demanded 250,000. Charles of Orleans was only a second son, it was pointed out; I do not know what the response was, but it might have been that the doubts of my legitimacy were referred to.
As the haggling went on, I guessed nothing would come of it, but I was in a state of uncertainty. I had so wanted to marry happily and most of all to have children. I thought this must be the greatest joy on Earth. How wonderful to have a child who would be to me as I had been to my mother! The longing for such a life was with me always
I think it was due to this uncertainty—another proposed marriage which was to end in nothing—that made me ill. There were some doctors who thought my illnesses were due not so much to an affliction of the body as one of the mind. Not that I was in any way unbalanced; but I was often melancholy; and I had suffered so much in my youth, living as I had on the edge of death, that it had affected my health. I was different from my sister Elizabeth. She, too, was in a precarious position, but she seemed to thrive on it. But she was not in such danger as I was, for throughout the country I was seen as the figurehead for those people who wished to deny the King's supremacy in the Church and to lead them back to Rome.
I was very ill this time. Every time I lifted my head from the pillow, I suffered such dizziness that I could not leave my bed. My head ached and I was seized with trembling fits.
I believe those about me thought I would die.
My father visited me. He was most concerned.
“You must get well,” he said. “You shall come to Court. You shall take the place beside me which the Queen would have. You shall be my right hand.”
I smiled wanly. I was too tired and listless to care whether he favored me or not.
He sent Dr. Butts to attend to me—a sign of his favor; Dr. Butts was the only one who seemed to understand my illness and with his care I began to recover.
Susan told me that he thought that if I were happily married and had children I should cease to be tormented by these bouts of illness.
“The Lady Mary has nothing wrong with her body,” he told her. “If she could live in peace and ease…live naturally…I would be ready to wager that she would gradually cast off these periodic bouts of illness.”
He appeared to know how to treat me, and the very presence of Dr. Butts in the household had an effect on me.
My health was improving.
The King came to see me and said I must come to Court as soon as possible, where I could be sure of a welcome.
I always seemed to recover quickly after my illnesses, and I took a week or so to get completely well—taking walks, playing the virginals, chatting with my ladies and laughing at Jane the Fool.
Then I was ready to return to Court.
My father had been right when he said I should be welcomed. As I rode into the city with my household, the people came into the streets to cheer me. They had always been my friends. I did wonder whether the attention I was receiving now was partly to placate them. But as, recently, he had often acted in a manner to make himself unpopular, perhaps it was not that. It might be that he really did feel the need to have his family about him and wanted to have a happy relationship with his daughter.
The cheers of the people were always music in my ears.
It was Christmas, which was being celebrated at Hampton Court.
My father himself took me to the apartments which had been specially prepared for me and my ladies. They were splendid.
There was a happy smile on his face as he watched me examine them; he looked almost young, so delighted was he in my pleasure.
“You shall take the place of a queen,” he said. “I need a queen to be beside me.”
Ominous words, but they passed over my head at that time. I thought it was just his way of welcoming me.
I was courted now and treated with the utmost respect by those who had previously thought me unworthy of notice. It amused me; but it pleased me also.
I felt better than I had for a long time. I wanted to be at Court; I wanted to see at first hand what was happening. There was something extremely exciting in it, and I began to think that Dr. Butts might well be right that my illness grew out of melancholy and boredom.
My father never did anything half heartedly. His affection for me, which hitherto had not seemed to exist, now overflowed. There were jewels for me; fine clothes were sent for me to choose from. He expressed his delight to see me looking better. He treated me more like a mistress than a daughter. I think perhaps he did not know how to be a father.
In any case, I was delighted.
Chapuys was rubbing his hands with glee. Then I understood. We were once more in conflict with the French, and my father was seeking the friendship of the Emperor.
Nothing would please my cousin more than to see me brought back into favor. He would be well aware of my father's state of health and the frailty of Edward. The outcome seemed obvious. My dream did not now seem impossible, and it might well be that I was destined to bring England back to Rome. I must not betray for one moment that this was in my mind. It would be treason in the extreme; but one cannot help one's thoughts; and the need for friendship with the Emperor did explain to some extent my sudden rise to favor.
My father had cast off his gloom. He seemed better. He was at the center of the revels. He could not dance as he once did, but no one called attention to this; everyone behaved as though he were the handsome King he had once been—standing head and shoulders above all other men; it had never been difficult to deceive him in matters like that.
He was happy. He was keeping his enemies and friends on the Continent guessing which way he would turn—secretly jeering at François who had haggled over 50,000 crowns. Perhaps he wished he had not been so parsimonious now! The King of England would not have wanted to go to war with the family into which his daughter had married; and now war seemed imminent and the King of England stood with the Emperor.
I was still the tool of their political schemes; but on the other hand my father did seem fond of me.
He talked to me now and then, and there was real affection between us. My father had acted in a manner which had seemed very shocking to me; his actions had been responsible for my mother's sufferings; yet such was his nature that I could forget that while I was with him, and be happy because he seemed fond of me. He had great charm when he cared to exert it; I had seen the effect he had on people, and I think it was not entirely due to his power and that aura of royalty. It was something in his personality. My sister Elizabeth had inherited it, and I sometimes saw it in her.
He said, “I am happy now, daughter, that all is well between us. We have been the victims of evil influences… both of us. They have contrived to keep us apart. But now, praise God, right has prevailed.”
It was yet another facet of his personality that I almost believed him when I listened to him. I suppose I wanted to shut my eyes to the truth which should have been clear enough and to accept the verdict which was his alone. It was no use reasoning with such a man. He saw only one viewpoint—that which was made to fit his ideal of himself in order to keep that conscience of his in the chains he had forged for it to keep it in restraint.
He said to me one day, “Methinks I owe it to my people to marry again.”
I was alarmed. So he was contemplating taking another wife.
He nodded regretfully. “It is a duty, you know, daughter. A king should have many sons. I have Edward … and I have my good daughter…” He patted my knee affectionately, “… but I should give my people more sons.”
I could see that the cosy period was over. There would be another woman led to the sacrificial altar. I could tremble for her. Who would be brave enough to be the next?
“I am no longer young, Mary,” he went on. “This leg… this devil of a leg…you have no idea what I suffer.”
“I have, Your Majesty,” I replied. “And I am deeply sorry for the pain it causes you.”
He pressed my knee again. “I know, I know. It is a trial. I need a good woman…”
I was silent, fearing to speak lest I chose the wrong words.
“I need someone who will not plague me … someone not too young …” Thinking no doubt of that fresh, sensuous face of the girl who had been no coy virgin and had doubtless pleased him because of that for which she had been taken away from him—though I never believed that it was his will that she had been. Left to himself, he would have found some means to reinstate her, but her enemies had been astute enough to get the story circulated abroad. He could not have endured to think of François laughing at the poor old cuckolded King of England. “Yes,” he went on, “a mature woman … of good looks … experienced of life. No doll … a woman of some intellect… tender and loving…to be a comfort to me.”
“Where could such a woman be found, Your Majesty?”
“Ah, there you speak wisely. And mayhap I shall never find her.”
I guessed then that it would not be long before we had a new Queen.
THE NEWS CIRCULATED round the Court. The King was looking for a wife. This time, it was whispered, he would not have some foreign bride who was sent to him to strengthen a treaty, someone he had never seen before. He would choose her himself and by so doing make sure that he was not plagued further in his mature years.
I went to visit Anne. She was deeply disturbed.
“My brother is hoping that the King will take me back,” she said.
I stared at her. Could that be possible? In spite of the King's original revulsion for her, she was quite a good-looking woman. She no longer wore the hideous Dutch fashions which she had arrived in, and in our softer clothes she was almost handsome. Moreover the peaceful life she had been living agreed with her.
The King visited her now and then. He had made her his dear sister, and since she had ceased to be his wife he had grown quite fond of her.
Yes, I thought, she has reason to be afraid.
“I could not bear it,” she said to me. “I like so much my life here. I have my home…my income…my friends. I see Edward, and he is glad to see me… and my dear Elizabeth. To be with her makes me happy. I am not denied their company. I see you, my dear Mary. You are my friend. I have this family I have inherited. I do not want to go back to Cleves. I want to go on living here in my nice house with my nice servants… and my dear family close. I want no change.”
“Do you really think he might want to take you back as his wife?”
She looked alarmed and then, as though she were trying to convince herself, she said, “No … he did not like me when I came…Surely he cannot have changed. But I do know he likes to talk to me. He respects my views. He is fond of his dear sister. There is just a fear …” She put her hand to her heart. “A little fear in here. But I could not bear it, Mary. Sooner or later…”
She put her hand to her throat.
“I understand,” I said. “Oh, my dear Anne, I hope it never comes to that.”
“Sometimes I wake in the night. I think they have come for me. I am not sure what I dreamed. Have they come to take me to the Palace or to the Tower? I think of that young girl… who followed me. I remember how enamored he was of her… and yet that did not save her.”
I said, “I cannot believe he will want to take you back. Not after all that has gone before.”
“But my brother wishes it.”
“Anne, try not to think of it. I am certain it will not come to that.”
“No,” she said slowly. “He did not like me when I came. He did not like me at all. He could not want me like that…now.”
“I am sure that is so,” I reassured her.
But I could well understand her terror; and it would be so with any woman he chose to be his wife.
IT SEEMED TO ME that my father expected his ideal woman to emerge from all the banquets and balls which were now taking place at Court.
I noticed him watching and assessing them. It was interesting to see that any woman who caught his eye on her would seek to efface herself. One thing was certain: no woman at Court—or in any foreign Court—was eager to become the King's sixth wife.
I marvelled that he was not aware of this. It did not seem to occur to him that the fact that he had beheaded two wives would be held against him. Those two wives, he would have told himself, had been traitors, and death was the penalty for that crime. Anne of Cleves had been honorably treated. As he was not pleased with her as a wife, he had made her his sister. My mother…well, that was a matter between him and his Maker. It was no fault of his that he had made a marriage which was no marriage and he had had to set her aside—reluctantly, he would assure himself.
I congratulated myself that I was outside the range of his choice, but I could well understand the apprehension of those within it.
I had made the acquaintance of Lady Latimer; she had had two elderly husbands and was now a widow. She was good-looking in a rather unspectacular way, wealthy, kindly and of an intellectual turn of mind. Her conversation was rather erudite, and it was a pleasure to join in discussions with her.
She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr who had at one time been Comptroller of my father's household. I never knew him. He had died a year after I was born, leaving a son and two daughters, one of whom was Katharine.
Katharine had married Lord Borough of Gainsborough when she was little more than a child. I do not know what difference there was in their ages, but I did know that Lord Borough's son's wife was fourteen years older than Katharine, so I should imagine she was quite a little girl.
On the death of Lord Borough, she was given to another old man. This was John Neville, Lord Latimer, who had taken part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. After his original foray into danger, from which he was lucky enough to emerge with his head still on his shoulders, Katharine, who was always wise and far-seeing, had persuaded him to have nothing to do with rebellion and to keep himself clear of trouble.
He had recently died, and there was Katharine, about thirty years of age, good-looking, clever and wealthy. She was her own mistress now. She had been the wife of two old husbands; if she wished to marry again, the choice should be hers.
I thought I knew on whom her choice would fall. I had noticed the looks which passed between her and Thomas Seymour. He was a dashing figure at Court—a great favorite of the King. He was just the type to appeal: flamboyant, adventurous, good-looking—and of course he was the King's brother-in-law and uncle of young Edward who adored him. He was the little boy's favorite uncle. He was about four years older than Katharine—a man in his prime—overambitious, I should say, like his brother Edward. It was these two brothers who had determined that their sister Jane should be Queen of England. Jane would never have done it on her own. Naturally the Seymours had received great favors since the marriage of their sister. The Duke of Norfolk had tried to ally himself with them through marriage, but Norfolk's son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, had been so opposed to an alliance between the two families that the matter had been dropped.
Now it seemed that Seymour had his eyes on Lady Latimer, and she was more than willing to encourage him.
Then, to my horror—and certainly to hers, I noticed that the King's eyes rested on her often.
I heard him say one day, “Come and sit beside me, Lady Latimer. I overheard your discussions on Erasmus. I should like to hear your views on the Dutch scholar. You must tell me what you think of In Praise of Folly.”
At first she was not alarmed. She talked brightly and amusingly, and from time to time the King smiled.
The next day he looked for her, and when he did not see her he asked where she was and said that when she was found she must come to him.
“I enjoy her discourse,” he said. “She is a lady of firm views.”
That was a beginning.
He watched her as she danced, which she did gracefully enough, but she was not outstanding. She was perhaps not as beautiful as some of the younger ladies; but beautiful young women would remind him of Catharine Howard. He was looking for a sixth wife, and he wanted no mistakes this time.
I MISSED LADY LATIMER at Court, and when I enquired after her I was told she was unwell and had taken to her bed for a few days.
I visited her, and I found her melancholy.
“You are ill, Lady Latimer,” I said.
She nodded. Then she said, “The King has asked me to be his wife.”
I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that I was her friend; but I was never very good at showing my feelings. So I just looked at her with sympathy and understanding in my eyes.
