The Fifth Queen (53 page)

They heard the breathing of a heavy man who had mounted stairs. The voice sounded more faintly:

‘Now you have naught further to think of than the goodly words of Ecclesiastes:
“Et cognovi quod non esset melius, nisi laetare et.…
” ’ The voice died dead away with the closing of the door. And as a torch passed, Throckmorton knew that the King had waited there whilst light was being made in Katharine’s room. He said softly to Viridus:

‘Whilst I go unto them you shall hold this dagger against
this fool’s throat. We gain as many hours as we may hold him from blabbing to Privy Seal. And consider that we must bring to the King Rich and Udal and many other witnesses this night.’

‘Throckmorton,’ Viridus said, ‘before thou goest thou shalt satisfy me of many things. I have not yet given myself into thy hands.’

A
WEARY SADNESS
had beset Katharine Howard ever since she had knelt before Anne of Cleves at Richmond, and it was of this the King had spoken outside the door whilst they had waited for light to be made.

All Anne’s protesting that willingly she rendered up a distasteful crown could not make Katharine hugely glad with the manner of her own taking it. And, when a messenger, dressed as a yeoman in green, had come into the bright gallery to beg the Queen and that fair lady the Lady Katharine Howard to come a-riding side by side and witness the sports that certain poor yeomen made in the woods upon Thames-side, she felt a sinking in her heart that no Rhenish of the Queen’s could relieve. She desired to be alone and to pray—or to be alone with Henry and speak out her heart and devise how they might atone to the Queen. But she must ride at the Queen’s right hand with the Duke of Suffolk at her left. It was so between their captives that the Cæsars had ridden into Rome after the taking of barbaric kings. But she had waged no war.

She did not, in her heart, call shame upon the King; she knew him to be a heavy man with bitter sorrows who must in these violentnesses and brave shows find refuge and surcease; it was her province to endure and to find excuse for him. But to herself she quoted that phrase of Lucretius that the King again repeated: there was a hidden destiny that tamed the
shows of the great; and she was the mutest of that throng that upon white horses, all with little flags flying and horns blowing, cantered to see the yeomen shoot. For the ladies and knights, avid of these things, loved above all good bowmanry and wagered with outstretched hands for the marksmen that most they deemed to have skill or that usually seemed to enjoy the fortunate favours of chance and the winds.

But, being alone with the King—(for when the Queen rode back to Richmond the notable bowman in green walked, holding Katharine’s stirrup, back to Hampton at her saddle-bow)—she could not stay herself from venting her griefs.

‘Et cognovi quod non esset melius nisi laetari et facere bene in vita sua’
—Henry finished his quotation when they were within her room. He sat himself down in her chair and stretched his legs apart; being tired with his long walk at her saddle bow, the more boisterous part of his great pleasure had left him. He was no more minded to slap his thigh, but he felt, as it was his favourite image of blessedness to desire, like a husbandman who sat beneath his vine and knew his harvesting prosper.

‘Body of God!’ he said, ‘this is the best day of my life. There doth no cloud remain. Here is the sunburst. For Cleves hath cut himself adrift; I need have no more truck with Anne; you have no more cause nor power to bend yourself from me; to-morrow the Parliament meets, such a Parliament to do my will as never before met in a Republic; therefore I have no more need of Cromwell.’ He snapped his thumb and finger as if he were throwing away a pinch of dust, and when she fell to her knees before his chair, placed his hand upon her head and, smiling, huge and indulgent, spoke on.

‘This is such a day as seldom I have known since I was a child.’ He leaned forward to stroke her dusky and golden hair and laid his hand upon her shoulder, his fingers touching her flushed cheek.

‘On other days I have said with Horace, who is more to my
taste than your Lucretius:
“That man is great and happy who at day’s end may say: To-day I have lived, what of storms or black clouds on the morrow betide.”
 ’ …

He crossed his great legs encased in green, set his heavy head to one side and, though he could see she was minded to pray to him, continued to speak like a man uttering of his memories.

‘Such days as that of Horace I have known. But never yet such a day as to-day, which, good in itself, leadeth on to goodness and fair prospects for a certain morrow.’ He smiled again. ‘Why, I am no more an old man as I had thought to be. I have walked that far path beside thy horse.’ It pleased him for two things: because he had walked with little fatigue and because he had been enabled to show her great and prodigal honour by so serving her for groom. ‘This too I set to thy account as my good omen. And that thou art. No woman shall have such honours as thou in this land, save only the Mother of God.’ And, after touching his green and jewelled bonnet, he cast it from his head on to the table.

‘Sir,’ she cried out, and clasping her hands uttered her words in anguish and haste. ‘Great kings and lords upon their affiancing day have ever had the habit of granting their brides a boon or twain—as the conferring of the revenues of a province, or the pardoning of criminals.’

‘Why, an thou come not to me to pardon Privy Seal—’ he began.

‘Sir,’ she cut in on his words, ‘I crave no pardon for Privy Seal; but let me speak my mind.’

He said tenderly:

‘Art in the mood to talk! Talk on! for I know no way to hinder thee.’

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I ask thee no pardon for Privy Seal, neither his goods ne his life. I maintain this man hath well served thee and is no traitor; but since that he hath ground the faces of the poor, hath made thee to be hated by bringing of false
witness, hath made the thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the Church—since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will adjudge him to die, I am no fool to say: No!’

Henry wrinkled his brows and said:

‘Grinding the faces of the poor is in law no treason. Yet I may not slay him save upon the occasion of treason. I would a man would come to me that could prove him traitor.’

Kneeling before the King she grasped each of his knees with one of her hands.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘this is your occasion, none of mine. I would ye would reconcile it to your conscience so to act to him as I would have you, for his injustice to the poor and for his cogged oaths. But yet grant me this: to cog oaths for the downfall of Privy Seal upon the occasion of treason ye must have many other innocents implicated with him; such men as have had no idea, no suspicion, no breath of treason in their hearts. Grant me their lives. Sir, let me tell you a tale that I read in Seneca.’ She moved her body nearer to him upon the floor, set her hands upon his two arms and gazed, beseeching and piteous, up into his face.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘you may read it in Seneca for yourself that upon the occasion of Cinna’s treachery being made known to the Emperor Augustus, the Emperor lay at night debating this matter in his mind. For on the one side, says he in words like this:
“Shall I pardon this man after that he hath assailed my life, my life that I have preserved in so many battles by sea and by land, after I have stablished one single peace throughout the globe into all the corners thereof? Shall he go free who has considered with himself not only to slay me but to slay me when I offered sacrifice, ere its consummation, so that I may be damned as well as slain? Shall I pardon this man?
” And, upon the other side, the Emperor Augustus, lying in the black of the night, being a prince, even as thou art,
prone to leniency, said such words as these:
“Why dost thou, Augustus, live, if it is of import to so many people that thou diest? Shall there never be an end to thy vengeance and thy punishments? Is thy single life of such worth that so much ruin shall for ever be wrought to preserve it?
” ’

‘Why, I have had these thoughts,’ Henry said. ‘Speak on. What did this Emperor that thought like me?’

‘Sir,’ Katharine continued, and now she had her hands upon his shoulders, ‘the Empress Livia his wife lay beside him and was aware of these his night sweats and his anguishes. “
And the counsels of a woman; shall these be listened to?
” she spoke to him.
“Do thou in this what the Physicians follow when their accustomed recipes are of no avail to cure. They do try the contrary drugs. By severity thou hast never, sire, profited from the beginning to this very hour that is; Lepidus has followed to death Savidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio followed Murena; Eynatius, Caepio. Commence to essay at this pass how clemency shall act in cure. Cinna is convicted: pardon him. Further to harm thee he hath no power, and it shall for ever redound to thy glory.”
’

She leaned upon him with all her weight, having her arms about his neck.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘the Emperor Augustus listened to his wife, and the days that followed are styled the Golden Age of Rome, he and the Empress having great glory.’

Henry scratched his head, holding his beard back from her face that lay upon his chest; she drew herself from him and once more laid her hands upon his knees. Her fair face was piteous and afraid; her lips trembled.

‘Dear lord,’ she began tremulously, ‘I live in this world, and, great pity ’tis! I cannot but have seen how many have died by the block and faggots. Yet is there no end to this. Even to-day they have burnt upon the one part and the other. I do know thy occasions, thy trials, thy troubles. But think, sir, upon the Empress Livia. Cromwell being dead, find then a Cinna to pardon. Thou hast with thy great and princely en-deavourings
given a Roman peace to the world. Let now a Golden Age begin in this dear land.’

She rose to her feet and stretched out both her hands.

‘These be the glories that I crave,’ she said. ‘I would have the glory of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me as of such a noble woman of Rome.’

Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.

‘Why, I will pardon some,’ he said. ‘It had not need of so many words of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.’ A haughty and challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.

Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candlelight, and, slowly, he fell upon his knees.

‘Majesty,’ he said, ‘I knew not.’

The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and dangerous.

‘This lady’s cousin,’ Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, ‘is new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the Cardinal Pole.’

The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall again.

Throckmorton felt his way still further.

‘This lady’s cousin would speak with this lady in cousinship.
He was set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.’

Katharine’s hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word ‘Wherefore?’ came from her lips.

‘Wherefore, I know not,’ Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. ‘But this I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.’

‘Belike,’ the King said, ‘these swordsmen were friends of Pole.’

‘Belike,’ Throckmorton answered.

He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.

‘For his sake,’ he said, ‘it were well if your Grace, having rewarded him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to Edinbro’ in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and observe.’

‘Belike,’ the King said. ‘Get you gone.’ But Throckmorton stayed there on his knees and the King uttered: ‘Anan?’

‘Majesty,’ Throckmorton said, ‘I would ye would see this man who is a poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you reward him and send him from hence ere worse befal him.’

The King raised his brows.

‘Ye love this man well,’ he said.

‘Here is too much beating about the bush,’ burst from Katharine’s lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little and pale in the half light of the two candles. ‘This cousin of mine loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of mine shall cause disorders—for indeed he is of disordered intervals. Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.’

‘Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,’ Henry said. ‘Let us see this yokel.’ He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting, for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas’ shrine.

Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass the sill, and looking never at her but at the King’s shoes, he knelt him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:

‘Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.’

Culpepper grunted over his shoulder: