The Fifth Queen (22 page)

T
HE STABLES WERE ESTEEMED
the most magnificent that the King had: three times they had been pulled down and again set up after designs by Holbein the painter. The buildings formed three sides of a square: the fourth gave into a great paddock, part of the park, in which the horses galloped or the mares ran with their foals. That morning there was a glint of sun in the opalescent clouds: horse-boys in grey with double roses worked on their chests were spreading sand in the great quadrangle, fenced in with white palings, between the buildings where the chargers were trained to the manage. Each wing of the buildings was a quarter of a mile long, of grey stone thatched with rushwork that came from the great beds all along the river and rose into curious peaks like bushes along each gable. On the right were the mares, the riding jennets for the women and their saddle rooms; on the left the pack animals, mules for priests and the places for their housings: in the centre, on each side of a vast barn that held the provender, were the stables of the coursers and stallions that the King himself rode or favoured; of these huge beasts there were two hundred: each in a cage within the houses—for many
were savage tearers both of men and of each other. On the door of each cage there was written the name of the horse, as Sir Brian, Sir Bors, or Old Leo—and the sign of the constellation under which each was born, the months in which, in consequence, it was propitious or dangerous to ride them, and pentagons that should prevent witches, warlocks or evil spirits from casting spells upon the great beasts. Their housings and their stall armour, covered with grease to keep the rust from them, hung upon pulleys before each stall, and their polished neck armours branched out from the walls in a long file, waving over the gateways right into the distance, the face-pieces with the shining spikes in the foreheads hanging at the ends, the eyeholes carved out and the nostril places left vacant, so that they resembled an arcade of the skeletons of unicorns’ heads.

It was quiet and warm in the long and light aisles: there was a faint smell of stable hartshorn and the sound of beans being munched leisurely. From time to time there came a thunder from distant boxes, as two untrained stallions that Privy Seal the day before had given the King kicked against the immense balks of the sliding doors in their cage-stalls.

The old knight was flustered because it was many days since the King had deigned to come in the morning, and there were many beasts to show him. In his steel armour, from which his old head stood out benign and silvery, he strutted stiffly from cage to cage, talking softly to his horses and cursing at the harnessers. Cicely Elliott sat on a high stool from which she could look out of window and gibed at him as he passed.

‘Let me grease your potlids, goodly servant. You creak like a roasting-jack.’ He smiled at her with an engrossed air, and hurried himself to pull tight the headstrap of a great barb that was fighting with four men.

A tucket of trumpets sounded, silvery and thin through the cold grey air: a page came running with his sallete-helmet.

‘Why, I will lace it for him,’ Cicely cried, and ran, pushing
away the boy. She laced it under the chin and laughed. ‘Now you may kiss my cheek so that I know what it is to be kissed by a man in potlids!’

He swung himself, grunting a little, into the high saddle and laughed at her with the air of a man very master of himself. The tucket thrilled again. Katharine Howard pushed the window open, craning out to see the King come: the horse, proud and mincing, appearing in its grey steel as great as an elephant, stepped yet so daintily that all its weight of iron made no more sound than the rhythmic jingling of a sabre, and man and horse passed like a flash of shadow out of the door.

Cicely hopped back on to the stool and shivered.

‘We shall see these two old fellows very well without getting such a rheumatism as Lady Rochford’s,’ and she pulled the window to against Katharine’s face and laughed at the vacant and far-away eyes that the girl turned upon her. ‘You are thinking of the centaurs of the Isles of Greece,’ she jeered, ‘not of my knight and his old fashions of ironwork and horse dancing. Yet such another will never be again, so perfect in the old fashions.’

The old knight passed the window to the sound of trumpets towards his invisible master, swaying as easily to the gallop of his enormous steel beast as cupids that you may see in friezes ride upon dolphins down the sides of great billows; but Katharine’s eyes were upon the ground.

The window showed only some yards of sand, of grey sky and of whitened railings; trumpet blew after trumpet, and behind her back horse after horse went out, its iron feet ringing on the bricks of the stable to die into thuds and silence once the door was passed.

Cicely Elliott plagued her, tickling her pink ears with a piece of straw and sending out shrieks of laughter, and Katharine, motionless as a flower in breathless sunlight, was inwardly trembling. She imagined that she must be pale and
hollow-eyed enough to excite the compassion of the black-haired girl, for she had not slept at all for thinking, and her eyes ached and her hands felt weak, resting upon the brick of the window sill. Horses raced past, shaking the building, in pairs, in fours, in twelves. They curvetted together, pawed their way through intricate figures, arched their great necks, or, reined in suddenly at the gallop, cast up the sand in showers and great flakes of white foam.

The old knight came into view, motioning with his lance to invisible horsemen from the other side of the manage, and the top notes of his voice reached them thinly as he shouted the words of direction. But the King was still invisible.

Suddenly Cicely Elliott cried out:

‘Why, the old boy hath dropped his lance!
Quel malheur!
’—and indeed the lance lay in the sand, the horse darting wildly aside at the thud of its fall. The old man shook his iron fist at the sky, and his face was full of rage and shame in the watery sunlight that penetrated into his open helmet. ‘Poor old sinful man!’ Cicely said with a note of concern deep in her throat. A knave in grey ran to pick up the lance, but the knight sat, his head hanging on his chest, like one mortally stricken riding from a battlefield.

Katharine’s heart was in her mouth, and all her limbs were weak together; a great shoulder in heavy furs, the back of a great cap, came into the view of the window, an immense hand grasped the white balustrade of the manage rails. He was leaning over, a figure all squares, like that on a court-card, only that the embroidered bonnet raked abruptly to one side as if it had been thrown on to the square head. Henry was talking to the old knight across the sand. The sight went out of her eyes and her throat uttered indistinguishable words. She heard Cicely Elliott say:

‘
What
will you do? My old knight is upon the point of tears,’ and Katharine felt herself brushing along the wall of the corridor towards the open door.

The immense horse with his steel-plates spreading out like skirts from its haunches dropped its head motionlessly close to the rail, and the grey, wrinkling steel of the figure on its back caught the reflection of the low clouds in flakes of light and shadow.

The old knight muttered indistinguishable words of shame inside his helmet; the King said: ‘Ay, God help us, we all grow old together!’ and Katharine heard herself cry out:

‘Last night you were about very late because evil men plotted against me. Any man might drop his lance in the morning.…’

Henry moved his head leisurely over his shoulder; his eyelids went up, in haughty incredulity, so that the whites showed all round the dark pupils. He could not turn far enough to see her without moving his feet, and appearing to disdain so much trouble he addressed the old man heavily:

‘Three times I dropped my pen, writing one letter yesterday,’ he said; ‘if you had my troubles you might groan of growing old.’

But the old man was too shaken with the disgrace to ride any more, and Henry added testily:

‘I came here for distractions, and you have run me up against old cares because the sun shone in your eyes. If you will get tricking it with wenches over night you cannot be fresh in the morning. That is gospel for all of us. Get in and disarm. I have had enough of horses for the morning.’

As if he had dispatched that piece of business he turned, heavily and all of one piece, right round upon Katharine. He set his hands into his side and stood with his square feet wide apart:

‘It is well that you remember how to kneel,’ he laughed, ironically, motioning her to get up before she had reached her knees. ‘You are the pertest baggage I have ever met.’

He had recognised her whilst the words were coming out of
his great lips. ‘Why, is it you the old fellow should marry? I heard he had found a young filly to frisk it with him.’

Katharine, her face pale and in consternation, stammered that Cicely Elliott was in the stables. He said:

‘Bide there, I will go speak with her. The old fellow is very cast down; we must hearten him. It is true that he groweth old and has been a good servant.’

He pulled the dagger that hung from a thin gold chain on his neck into its proper place on his chest, squared his shoulders, and swayed majestically into the door of the stable. Katharine heard his voice raised to laugh and dropping into his gracious but still peremptory ardent tones. She remained alone upon the level square of smooth sand. Not a soul was in sight, for when the King came to seek distraction with his horses he brought no one that could tease him. She was filled with fears.

He beckoned her to him with his head, ducking it right down to his chest and back again, and the glances of his eyes seemed to strike her like hammer-blows when he came out from the door.

‘It was you then that composed that fine speech about the Fortunate Isles?’ he said. ‘I had sent for you this morning. I will have it printed.’

She wanted to hang her head like a pupil before her master, but she needs must look him in the eyes, and her voice came strangely and unearthly to her own ears.

‘I could not remember the speech the Bishop of Winchester set me to say. I warned him I have no memory for the Italian, and my fright muddled my wits.’

Internal laughter shook him, and once again he set his feet far apart, as if that aided him to look at her.

‘Your fright!’ he said.

‘I am even now so frightened,’ she uttered, ‘that it is as if another spoke with my throat.’

His great mouth relaxed as if he accepted as his due a piece of skilful flattery. Suddenly she sank down upon her knees, her dress spreading out beneath her, her hands extended and her red lips parted as the beak of a bird opens with terror. He uttered lightly:

‘Why, get up. You should kneel so only to your God,’ and he touched his cap, with his habitual heavy gesture, at the sacred name.

‘I have somewhat to ask,’ she whispered.

He laughed again.

‘They are always asking! But get up. I have left my stick in my room. Help me to my door.’

She felt the heavy weight of his arm upon her shoulder as soon as she stood beside him.

He asked her suddenly what she knew of the Fortunate Islands that she had talked of in her speech.

‘They lie far in the Western Ocean; I had an Italian would have built me ships to reach them,’ he said, and Katharine answered:

‘I do take them to be a fable of the ancients, for they had no heaven to pray for.’

When his eyes were not upon her she was not afraid, and the heavy weight of his hand upon her shoulder made her feel firm to bear it. But she groaned inwardly because she had urgent words that must be said, and she imagined that nothing could be calmer in the Fortunate Islands themselves than this to walk and converse about their gracious image that shone down the ages. He said, with a heavy, dull voice:

‘I would give no little to be there.’

Suddenly she heard herself say, her heart leaping in her chest:

‘I do not like the errand they have sent my cousin upon.’

The blessed Utopia of the lost islands had stirred in the King all sorts of griefs that he would shake off, and all sorts of remembrances of youth, of open fields, and a wide world that
shall be conquered—all the hopes and instincts of happiness, ineffable and indestructible, that never die in passionate men. He said dully, his thoughts far away:

‘What errand have they sent him upon? Who is your goodly cousin?’

She answered:

‘They put it about that he should murder Cardinal Pole,’ and she shook so much that he was forced to take his hand from her shoulder.

He leaned upon the manage rail, and halted to rest his leg that pained him.

‘It is a good errand enough,’ he said.

She was panting like a bird that you hold in your hand, so that all her body shook, and she blurted out:

‘I would not that my cousin should murder a Churchman!’ and before his eyebrows could go up in an amazed and haughty stare: ‘I am like to be hanged between Privy Seal and Winchester.’

He seemed to fall against the white bar of the rail for support, his eyes wide with incredulity.

He said: ‘When were women hanged here?’

‘Sir,’ she said earnestly, ‘you are the only one I can speak to. I am in great peril from these men.’

He shook his head at her.

‘You have gone mad,’ he said gravely. ‘What is this fluster?’

‘Give me your ear for a minute,’ she pleaded. Her fear of him as a man seemed to have died down. As a king she had never feared him. ‘These men do seek each other’s lives, and many are like to be undone between them.’

His nostrils dilated like those of a high-mettled horse that starts back.

‘What maggot is this?’ he said imperiously. ‘Here there is no disunion.’

He rolled his eyes angrily and breathed short, twisting his hands. It was part of his nature to insist that all the world
should believe in the concord of his people. He had walked there to talk with a fair woman. He had imagined that she would pique him with pert speeches.

‘Speak quickly,’ he said in a peremptory voice, and his eyes wandered up the path between the rails and the stable walls. ‘You are a pretty piece, but I have no time to waste in woeful nonsense.’