I was astonished at this outburst. “But to whom shall I marry her? A prince of—”
“A duke, a count, anyone! His orthodoxy does not matter! Only see her as a woman, a woman in desperate need of a husband and children. My master, the Emperor, would be irate if he heard me speak thus. But if you loved her as a child ... Your Grace, her needs are no less now! Only you can free her. She needs to love someone, something. Else her natural goodness will grow all crooked.”
Mary. For so many years, an enchanting child. Then a pawn in the war between Katherine and myself. Then—a nothing. I had not thought of her needs, I had been so assiduous in meeting my own. I had thought she would keep, keep until I was at peace.
Nothing keeps. It grows grotesque, or it withers.
“You speak true,” I said. “She is terribly alone.” Strange I had not realized it. I had ascribed strength and happiness all about me where it did not exist.
Mary. I had loved her so, but when she took Katherine’s side I had thrust her aside. What was missing in me, to change allegiances so swiftly? Perhaps the madness reached far back, in an absence of normal feeling.
Madness. No, I was not mad. But these pounding headaches! Where was my head-medicine, the syrup that quieted these ragings? I would have a draught now. The servitor brought it. The pretty emerald syrup. It would course through my veins in time for the next audience.
“Monsieur le Ambassador, Marillac, awaits his audience.”
So he was here already? Very well, then. “We are ready,” I said.
Monsieur Marillac came into the Audience Chamber. He was virtually a stranger to me, having come to England only a few months previous. Francis did not allow any envoy to remain long enough to form a personal bond with me. Was it because he feared my charm, my influence?
“Your Majesty.” He dropped to one knee, then raised his face toward mine, smiling. Such a pretty smile he had.
Wolsey had had a pretty smile. Oh, and such a servile manner, all flattering and obsequious at once.
Wolsey ... there was no more Wolsey.
“We welcome you, Monsieur Marillac. ’Tis pity we have become so slightly acquainted with you, in all these weeks you have been on our soil. Come closer, Monsieur, and let me see you.” I examined his face, his costume. He was stout and placid, that much could I determine. The sort of man with whom I could make no headway. Rather like assaulting one of my new fortifications near the Isle of Wight—I had designed them massive, round, impregnable, and entirely modern, that is, given over to gun-defence and cannon-strategy. No romance or chivalry about them. So, too, this Frenchman.
“How does my brother Francis?” I asked quickly.
“Not well, I fear,” he said. “He is stricken with the sorrow that has afflicted Your Majesty.”
Yes, I had received Francis’s “condolence”—a letter wherein he had intoned, “The lightness of women does not touch the honour of men.” I had not known whether to take it as commiseration or taunt. Whatever it betokened, I did not wish to discuss it with this stranger.
“Ummm.” I grunted. My head yet throbbed. When would the syrup take effect?
“When you left him, what were his instructions? Were you to woo me as his friend, or raise porcupine-like quills against me?” There, that would startle him, make him cough out the truth.
“I—that is, he—”
I had guessed correctly. The rough-spoken English way had unbalanced him.
“When I left France, he was distant toward you. However, that was prior to—Your Majesty’s misfortune—”
“Lies!” I leapt up from my throne and slammed my fist on the arm of it. “It was prior to his own lover’s quarrel with the Emperor!” I swung round, then, and glared at him. “Is that not right, knave?”
It was all theatrics. Chapuys would have laughed. This greenwood knitted his brows, then did exactly as I had hoped: he blurted out the truth. “There has been a chilling of relations, since the Emperor has failed to recognize—”
“Aha! Yes! The Emperor always ‘fails to recognize.’ He fails to recognize his nose at the end of his face, eh? Eh?”
Marillac drew back. “Your Majest8221; I said casually, swinging round once more and sliding into my seat. “He knows he will have to do battle against me. Is he biding his time? Is that his game? Baiting me with foolishness like the money and support he sends the Scots, to incite them against me? Does he think I know not who prevented James from meeting me at York? Does he think I will forget the insult? Well? What does he think?”
Marillac stared back.
“Can you not speak for him? What sort of an ambassador are you, then? Have you no powers of representation? What, did you get no letters of instruction?”
He was pitiful. Not even worth sparring with. This was not sport, it was cruelty.
“Tell me this,” I finally said. “Is Francis in good health, or not?” I tried to make my tone gentle and disarming.
“Indeed he is,” replied Marillac haughtily.
Liar. I knew Francis was eaten up with the Great Pox, and it was beginning its deadly final assault on his mind.
“I am grateful to you for being so truthful.” I smiled. “Francis is doubly blessed, then, in both his good health and his true representative. You may tell my brother of France that ...” I had had a glib remark ready, but what came out was, “I hope we meet again on the plains of Ardes. Yes, if he would be willing, I would come again to the Val d’Or. No fantasy-palaces this time, no tournaments, merely ... Francis, and myself. You will write him this?”
“This very evening, Your Majesty.” The Frenchman bowed low.
That evening what he wrote was, “I have to do with the most dangerous and cruel man in the world.” The double-dealing Frenchman! (And how did I know this? I had made use of Cromwell’s legacy: his spies and secret police. They served me well. I would not have formed them myself, but as they already existed ... I had found them useful, and using them myself prevented others from using them against me.)
Spies. There had always been spies. Julius Caesar had his, so ’tis said ... although they must have been singularly ineffective, since they failed to warn him of the coming assassination. Spies were necessary, I suppose, to run a state. But I disliked the idea, the very fact of their being required.
I preferred to believe I could read a man’s visage, could sum him up all by myself. I had realized the French ambassador lied. I did not truly need to have the contents of his letters espied, copied, and presented to me. It demeaned him and added nothing essential to my operating knowledge. But these new times required such machinations as a matter of course.
My head was still pulsating. The emerald syrup had done little to dispel the discomfort. Evidently I had not taken enough. I poured a bit more into the medicinal beaker, and swallowed it.
It was only a tiny bit, and yet within minutes I felt relieved of my symptoms. Why can but a little added to the dosage do that? There is so much physicians have yet to discover.
At four o’clock the Scots envoy was to pay me a call. I sat and pulled out the lengthy chronology I had myself constructed of all our relations, going back to my father’s negotiations with Je Scots steadfastly set their faces against us? We were their neighbours, we shared a common isle. Yet they preferred to ally themselves with France. When we fought France in 1513, they attacked us from the backside. When I sought a bride on the Continent, James V had entered the same contest and snatched Marie of Guise right from under my nose. And then there was the little matter of the York jilting.
“The Earl of Arbroath,” announced the page. I seated myself just in time for the jaunty Earl, who strode in as if he always came to see the King of England.
He was dressed in his formal Scots attire: yards and yards of swirling patterned wool, a dagger in his sock, a great overworked silver brooch holding a sash of some sort.
Daggers were not permitted in my presence, since the Duke of Buckingham’s attempt on my life. I nodded to my Yeomen of the
Guard, and they ceremoniously removed it.
“Do you truly represent Scotland, Robert Stuart?” I inquired. “Is there a Scotland to represent?” That was the true question.
“As much as it is in any man’s power to represent that glorious land, I do so.” His voice rang in the very mouldings of the ceiling.
“Then you have many questions to answer, questions that have caused me sleepless hours.” I motioned him closer. “What is that tartan you wear?” I asked. It was a rather pleasing interweaving of shades and designs. Unsophisticated, but pleasing. “I notice it has white in it. Does that have a special significance?” I was curious.
His great, fishlike mouth broke into a smile. “White is what we wear for dress occasions, woven into the rest of the cloth. It signifies that we will do no hard riding while wearing it. Riding would throw mud.”
How primitive! How simple! Dark colours for riding. A stripe of white meaning, “There will be no riding, everything will be indoors and clean, upon my word of honour.”
“Aye. I understand. Now, I would you answer me questions which are puzzling me about your master. The Scots King refused to meet with me in York, and I know not his mind. I have received no messages of any sort from him.”
“He was afeared of kidnapping.”
“Did he think me so little a man of my word?”
“Not from Your Majesty, but that others, antagonistic Scots who oppose him, they would take advantage of his absence.”
“Who exactly are these antagonistic Scots? I keep hearing their names invoked, like a charm. There are Lowland Scots and Highland Scots, and chieftains, and Lords of the Western Isles. What sort of country is this?”
“A divided, unhappy country, Your Majesty. The Highland Scots, as you call them, are great families that own certain tracts of land, and have done so since time out of mind. They reside in their little valleys and glens and seek primarily ’to be left alone. The Border Scots are another matter entirely. They are bandits and extortionists, betraying the English for the Scots, and vice versa, at the same time. Then, the Isles—ah, they are something yet again. They are part Norse, settled by the Norsemen, and don’t see themselves as part of any country. They live on those barren, cold rocks out in the Irish Sea, and claim to be Christian, yet ...” He sp3">I held MacDonald, son of the chieftain of the Isle of Rum. I might as well hold the wind hostage, from what this man said. “In such a topsy-turvy country, how came there to be an ambassador selected? What, and whom, does he represent?”
“I am a cousin of King James, albeit from the wrong side of the blanket. I believe I can speak for him. I know his mind.”
“But does he have a mind?” I barked. “And is it consistent? You knew his mind when you set forth from Edinburgh. Do you know it now?”
“I believe I do. I understand its workings.”
“Its turnings, you mean. Very well, then, how turns it in regard to me, his English brother, his uncle?”
“He wishes peace.”
I stifled a laugh. That outworn old phrase! One might as well say an Ave Maria, for all it meant in real terms. “I know a way to peace,” I declared. “Unite the countries. It is unnatural that one island should contain two realms. Let us combine. Through a marriage, at first. Then the two Parliaments would unite—”
“A marriage has been tried, Your Majesty. The Princess Margaret Tudor of England and King James IV of Scotland, in 1503.”
“It failed due to the persons involved. My sister Margaret was”—she was lust-ridden, shortsighted, unimaginative—“unequal to the high calling before her. She was but a child when she came to Scotland.” And was still a child, at fifty-three. “How does she?” I asked.
He looked dismayed. Margaret was an embarrassment. Betrayed by her lust, her impulses ... they were all played out now, and no one wanted her. She had many indifferent custodians. Even her son regarded her as a burden—like an old pet that soiled carpets and slept all the time in the sun, its owners just waiting for it to die.
“She is ... recuperating. At Methven Castle. She suffered a—a—something in her head.”
“What of her husband—her so-called husband—Lord Methven?” She had divorced Angus thirteen years ago to marry him, and now sought to divorce him to remarry Angus. The foolish, lustful woman!
“He ... remains behind, at Stirling.”
“The truth is, he has left her,” I said brusquely. “He has more important things to attend to than a dying, powerless old woman.” I snapped my fingers. The Scot’s attention had wandered.
“Your sister,” he demurred.
“Aye. My elder sister. Well, I was speaking of a marriage between Scotland and England, one that would do what my father’s experiment failed to do.”
“Your sister,” he insisted.
“What, am I supposed to mourn for her? I wrote her in 1528, the year of the Sweating Sickness, when first I heard of her folly in divorcing Angus to marry that fop, Methven. Did she heed me? No! Is it any surprise this has befallen her?” Margaret had been stupid. I hated stupidity. I could forgive any sin, any shortcoming, but that.
He blinked. “It is true, then, the way they paint you.”“Then your master, the Pope, is a prime example of misdirection. For he has always tried to do both, and failed in both. His spiritual leadership was at such a low ebb that even common men repudiated it. His worldly leadership has been so misdirected that half the countries of Europe fight against him. Let him heed his alleged Master’s words himself!”
“His alleged Master’s?”
“He claims Christ for his master. Yet do we see Christ in him?”
“No man can see into another’s soul, Your Majesty.”
I had meant a smart retort. But he spoke true. I could not see into Pope Paul’s soul; he could not see into mine. “Only God can see,” I finally said. “And we must leave it at that.”
“Aye.” He bowed, then crossed himself. When he stood erect again, we faced each other in silence, as if the interview had just begun.
“The excommunication still stands?” I finally asked. Someone had to speak.
“He cannot retract it!” The voice of the little man was astonishingly deep, and rich. “There has been too much. The dissolution of the monasteries; the harassment of Princess Mary; the execution of Cardinal Fisher; the burnings of the Carthusians.”
I caressed the carved knobs at the end of the throne-arms. Yes, too much to let pass. I would not let it pass. Nor would any man who called himself such. “I understand.”
“There is to be a General Council.”
“Nine years late. I begged the Pope for one in 1533. My plea was ignored.”
“There is to be one now. In Mantua, outside the Emperor’s reach. It was an inspired idea to hold one, and surely the Holy Father will recognize your farsightedness. There is so much to be deliberated upon....”
“Yes, how to halt the slide of Europe into Protestantism! But it is too late.”
“You will be in a position to name your terms.” His voice was crisp and unemotional. “You are not rebellious in doctrine, only in title. A reconciliation between you and the Holy Father would be worth a great deal to him. He needs allies.”
“He has Francis, and Charles.” I deflected the thrust of this offer for offer it was.
And, oh! I was tempted by it. To be recognized by Rome, to wear my hard-won titles by consent....
“Inconstant, fluctuating fools,” he sneered. “They are not the men you were, to stand firm amidst temptations from all sides. No, they are men of the hour, of the day....”
“Not men of the Light? I fear none of us can claim that title. Nay, nay ... if Rome and I embrace again, your master and I must agree on several things, none of which has been solved by need or the moment. I will not tolerate meddling, and your master will not tolerate insubordination, and therein we disagree, and disagree mightily. Tell him I’ll serve him, if he recognizes my sovereignty over all aspects of England.”
That he would never
allow. Less I would never agree to. There it lay. The envoy bowed and took his leave.
Was it true that the two countries would never be united? I had always assumed that someday they would be. It seemed natural. In the back of my mind I had already married one of my children to one of James’s. But my father had followed the same scheme, and it had come to naught.
What constituted a country, then? That its inhabitants were of like natures? But the Normans and the Saxons were not of like natures. By that criterion they should have never melded to form England. The Celts—were they as unabsorbable as their spokesman made out? Would Wales never become truly a part of England? And what of the Irish? I meant eventually to absorb that island as well.
If ever I felt decent ... if this cursed leg would ever heal....
But did one wait to do things until one felt “decent”? Did one order one’s life upon a leg? Or did one go ahead anyway, regardless of his personal feelings?
My head-throbbing had returned, and along with it, confusion....
I hated the confusion, hated it worse than any pain I might endure. The confusion was my enemy, the real enemy. It unhorsed me like a challenger in a tournament....
But I would fight it. Or, at the very least, disguise it. None must know.
Now I would take myself to bed. I would call no groom, no servitor. They might sniff out my weakness, hear me call for a candle when I meant for a fur.
CXV
Throughout the spring my remorse decreased and my confusion increased. The ghosts died away. No more did I hear the shrieking outside my chamber; no more food ran red blood and clots. Mercifully, my memory of Catherine, her true physical being, began to recede and fade. I was thankful that I had never commissioned the portrait to be made that I had longed for. Holbein—whom I had forgiven for his Cleves portrait when he explained it was customary to omit pockmarks—had been occupied at the time in executing sketches for a mural for my Privy Chamber, a dynastic one that included my father, myself, and my children. Now there was nothing remaining to recall Catherine’s exact features to me.
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