Jean Plaidy - The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katherine Parr Страница 26

He turned to her and kissed her; he fondled her throat and let his hands stray to her breasts and thighs.

“Your…Your Majesty is kind to me,” stammered Katharine.

“To be kind was ever a fault of ours, Kate.”

“A fault? I would not call it that. ’tis a virtue, and in one so great as your august self, doubly so.”

The lecher had now been succeeded by the sentimentalist. He took his hand from her thigh and laid it on her arm. “You speak sound truth, Kate. Yet it has been our kindness… our softness, which has led many to deceive us. We have been deceived again and again in our life. By those, mark you, who had the best reason to give us their loving regard. This garden doth remind me of another…. It was at Hever Castle. A garden of roses… walled thus…a pleasant place.”

Katharine heard the note of regret and longing, the selfpity which she had heard so many times.

“By God,” he cried suddenly, “if any try deceiving tricks on us, they shall pay. They shall pay with their blood.”

She drew away from him. His moods followed quickly on one another this morning.

“Who would dare deceive the King?” she soothed. “Who would dare deceive a wise and tender King?”

He mumbled: “That is what we would know.” He softened again and put an arm about her shoulders. “Thou art a good woman, Kate. Thy beauty is not of the devil; it is the beauty of meadow flowers, sweet and simple, and not to drive a man to torment.” He began to kiss her and his ringed fingers caught at the neck of her gown. “Thou and I have many a merry night before us, Kate. Old age? Who dares speak of it?”

“It is years away from us, my lord.”

“And we are here, and the sun doth shine. And you are a fair woman and I love you well. You are my wife, and we will get ourselves a son, eh?”

“I trust so. Indeed, I trust so. I care not that the sun doth shine. I care only that my lord’s content doth continue to shine on me.”

“It doth, Kate, and it shall. Thou mayest rest assured of that. Thou art good to kiss, and I am man enough to do the kissing.”

He had lifted his head from her throat and, with him, Katharine heard the sound of soldiers’ marching feet.

The King stood up and shouted, but the sound of his voice was lost in the noise made by the approaching guard.

Katharine stood beside him; she could see a company of the King’s guard, and at its head marched Sir Thomas Wriothesley.

“Halt!” cried the King. “Halt there, I say. What means this? Who dares disturb the King’s peace?”

“Your Majesty …” began the Queen.

“Wait there!” commanded Henry; and he hobbled toward the Chancellor and the forty members of the Guard who had halted at his command.

Over the morning air their words came distinctly to Katharine.

“Wriothesley, you knave, what means this?”

Wriothesley ingratiatingly replied: “My lord King, I have come on your orders with forty halberdiers.”

“What means this?” cried the King. “I understand you not.” His face was purple with fury. “How darest thou disturb our peace?”

“Sire, Your Majesty’s orders. I come with forty men to arrest the Queen, and take her to the Tower. My barge is at the privy stairs.”

“Fool! Knave!” cried Henry. “Get you gone, or ’t will be you who are clapped into the Tower.”

Wriothesley, pale with confusion, yet persisted: “Can Your Majesty have forgotten? You gave the order. Your Grace signed the mandate…. To arrest the Queen at this hour… wherever she might be.”

“Get you gone from here,” screamed the King. “You fool…you arrant fool!” He lifted his stick and struck at the Chancellor, who managed, most skillfully, to avoid the blow.

“By God,” went on the King, “are you a fool, Chancellor? It would seem my lot to be surrounded by fools and knaves. Get you gone, I say. Get you gone.”

Katharine watched the discomfited Chancellor lead his men away.

The King hobbled back to her.

“He…he was disobeying Your Majesty’s command?” asked Katharine in a trembling voice.

“The man’s a fool. The man’s a knave. By God, I’ll not forget this.”

“Mayhap he thought he was obeying Your Majesty’s commands. Mayhap he thought he had Your Grace’s consent to do what he was about to do.”

Henry sat down heavily and signed to her to take her place beside him.

“Let be,” he said. “Let be.” He watched her covertly.

He does not know, she reflected, that I have seen his signature on the order for my arrest, just as Wriothesley does not know that he has changed his mind. From the bed to the scaffold is such a short step. How should Chancellor Wriothesley know that on the King’s whim I have turned about…away from the scaffold, back to the bed!

She began again: “Wriothesley…”

“Enough,” said Henry testily. “I command thee not to speak of that knave.”

“Your Majesty will pardon me, but I thought you regarded him as a good servant. Mayhap Your Majesty will not feel too hard toward him, since he has failed to interpret your wishes on this day.”

Henry, being ignorant of her understanding of this matter and not imagining that she could possibly know that he had signed a mandate for her arrest which should be her death warrant, looked at her pityingly.

“Do not defend Wriothesley,” he said. “Poor soul, poor Kate, you do not know how little he deserves grace at your hands. Come, Kate, enough of this man. You and I have more pleasant matters with which to occupy ourselves.”

His hands were caressing her. She was once more his sweetheart, his little pig.

By a miracle, it seemed, she had been saved from death. But was she saved, or had Death merely receded a pace or two?

CHAPTER

V

DURING THAT AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER THE KING made the progress, from palace to palace, which had been a habit of his. From Westminster the court went in state along the river to Hampton Court; and after a brief stay at that palace they made the journeys to Oatlands, Woking, Guildford, Chobham and Windsor.

But when the court had reached Windsor it was seen that this last journey had greatly taxed Henry’s strength; and those whom his death would most affect watched him—and each other—with speculation.

Those who had hitherto behaved with the utmost obsequiousness became arrogant. Lord Hertford and Lord Lisle were back from their duties in France, and they were making preparations to rule through the boy King in whom they had instilled a strong appreciation of the new learning. Sir Thomas Seymour was on the alert; his brother was a great statesman and power in the land, but Thomas was the man whom the King-to-be loved more than any other. Cranmer, beloved of the King, was with these men, and they made a powerful party.

On the Catholic side was the Duke of Norfolk and his son Surrey, together with Gardiner, Wriothesley and their supporters.

Now that the King felt death to be near, he knew great anxiety for the future of his House which would have only a young boy at its head. One look from his bloodshot eyes, one gesture, could still strike terror into those about him. After all, he could still wield a pen; he could still sign a death warrant. Callous and brutal as he was, he had to deal with men who lacked his callous brutality, largely because they lacked his vitality. If he was a sick lion, he was still a lion. He was a ruler of men, even now as he lay in his bed, or sat painfully in his chair of state, or hobbled about on his stick, or was conveyed about the palace in that wheeled contrivance which had had to be made for him.

He made his will. Wisely he decided that the council of ministers, who should comprise the Protectorate during the little King’s minority, should be equally balanced by the two parties. Henry was confident that his wishes would be obeyed; he was enough of a King to rule after death.

The people were with him. They were his strength. They had always been with him from the days when he, as a pink and white boy, had ridden among them and sought their applause. It had been his policy to remove the dangerous influential nobles and placate the mob. The people believed that he had freed them from the tyranny of the Pope. The state had taken precedence over the church, and that appealed to the unemotional English as it was done under a cloak of piety. Terrible suffering had been witnessed in the cities: burnings, hangings, beheadings and the most horrible death accorded to traitors; there had been much bloodshed. But on the Continent of Europe the bloodshed had been more fierce; and bloodshed there must be, it seemed, when a new religion was born.

The King was still King and would remain the master of his subjects after death. His word was law and would remain so.

But those turbulent men about the throne were tensely waiting. Tempers ran high and men were reckless.

One November day, Protestant Lord Lisle, during a Council meeting, struck Gardiner in the face. Lisle was banished from the Council.

To be set against this was the fact that Gardiner had been in disgrace with the King ever since Katharine had come so near to being arrested. The King, characteristically, blamed Gardiner for that affair, for he had convinced himself that he had had no intention of allowing Katharine to be removed, and the whole plot had been devised by the Bishop.

The disgrace of Gardiner and the banishment of Lisle kept that balance of power which Wolsey had taught the King was always desirable. A great Reformer and a great Catholic were both in disgrace.

Gardiner tried to regain his position with an offer of money which could be extorted from the clergy. Henry was pleased to receive the money, but refused to reinstate the Bishop; and so Gardiner continued in disgrace. For, concluded the King, he is a man who tried to poison our mind against the innocent Queen! So Gardiner received nothing but scowls from his master. It was unfortunate for him, but that was what so often happened to those who served the King.

Those were anxious days for all, but with the coming of November, the King’s health began to improve a little. There was feasting and revelry at court, and at a certain banquet Henry’s eyes alighted on a fair lady of the Queen’s household. It seemed to him once more that it was a pitiable thing when a man such as he was—a mighty King, a great ruler—had but one legitimate son to follow him.

Surely there must be some truth in those accusations which some of his ministers had tried to bring. Had Gardiner been so wrong when he had plotted against the Queen? Was the barren Katharine a heretic at heart?

DURING THOSE WEEKS of tension, the manners of the Earl of Surrey became insufferable by those whom he chose to consider his enemies; the chief of these was Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford.

Surrey hated the Seymours more than he hated any, and in particular he hated the elder brother. Reckless Surrey, that elegant poet, was no clever statesman as Hertford had proved himself to be. Surrey had been born to a high place in the realm; Edward Seymour had fought for his place. Surrey was proud and foolish, and Edward Seymour was one of the most astute men in the Kingdom. That was why Henry had removed the Earl of Surrey from his post in the garrisoned French towns, to which his conduct had done no good service, in order to replace him by the clever elder Seymour.

This had seemed to Surrey an insult to himself and his house which he could not endure.

Swaggering about the court, he insulted all those who had risen to high places in the land through their talents. His father warned him, but he would not listen to warnings.

“This kingdom,” he declared, not caring who heard him, “has never been well since the King set mean creatures in the government. It would seem that His Majesty delights to rid himself of noble blood and to employ none but low people.”

This was a direct insult to the Seymours, so they watched him and waited for their opportunity.

“Since the King,” said Edward Seymour to his younger brother when they walked in the Great Park together, “cannot last long it might be well to lower the pride of these Howards while he yet lives.”

Thomas agreed that it would be well. “You will remember that Norfolk once proposed a match between Surrey and the Princess Mary.”

“The King would have none of it.”

“But if the King were dead and there was a young boy in his place, who knows what Norfolk might try? The Princess Mary is a Catholic, and so is Surrey. The Catholic Party would be strongly in favor of such a match.”

The brothers looked at each other cautiously—two scheming men; for the moment they seemed to harbor the same desires. But did they? Hertford wished to see himself Protector of this kingdom with the little Edward his puppet. Thomas visualized marriage with the Princess Elizabeth and, as a corollary, the throne.

Temporarily they stood together against the Howards, but only temporarily.

And while they talked, Hertford thought of the great power which would come to him through his little nephew; and Thomas’s dreams of a shared throne were tinged with other dreams, of an erotic nature.

Surrey, from his apartments, watched them and laughed aloud.

“See,” he said to one of his attendants, “there go the lowborn Seymours. They plot against me and my father, I doubt not. They hate our noble blood as we hate their baseness.”

He sought his sister.

She was not a very happy young woman at this time. The King occasionally looked her way, but although his desire for her was at times quite strong, he could not forget the affinity between them, since she was his daughter-in-law, and his desire was not quite strong enough to overcome that drawback.

“Look!” cried Surrey, entering her apartments, and not caring that some of her servants were with her. “See the two great men walking together?”

The Duchess looked, and she found it difficult to draw her eyes away from the younger of the Seymour brothers.

“You are a fool,” she whispered. “Brother, you are the most reckless fool at court.”

He bowed. He was not displeased with the epithet.

“And,” she went on quietly, still looking at the tall man who walked beside his brother in the park, “I will tell you this: If your folly takes you to the Tower—which it may well do—I will do nothing… nothing to help you.”

Her brother laughed aloud and did not bother to lower his voice. “So you think I have persuaded our father against a match with Seymour, do you? Then you are right. I’ll not stand by and see our noble family united with such lowborn knaves.”

“How dare you speak to me thus?” she demanded.

“Because I am your brother. I will never allow you to marry with Seymour…even if he would. Ah, but he never would. He looks higher. Lowborn as he is, he yet looks high indeed.”

“You speak of the King’s brother-in-law,” she murmured.

“I speak also of the man you long for, sister.”

“Go… Go. Do not come here to brawl.”

He bowed ironically. He saw that he had won her hatred. He had insulted her before her servants.

The courtiers continued to watch him with speculative eyes. They were beginning to look at him in the way they regarded those whose days they believed to be numbered.