The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  God’s life, though! How he wished it were something that he could do, could bear, could achieve, either by himself or in contest with other men. Catherine would be hurt, and he hated hurting a woman.

  He told her to be seated, sat down himself, got up again and looked out of the window. He had said, “a matter of some importance,” yet his remarks, for several minutes, dealt with trivial things. Like Wolsey, on a former occasion, Catherine found this behavior uncharacteristic, and like Wolsey, she was anxious to be helpful.

  “I think,” she said, “that I can guess what is on your mind. The betrothal of our daughter to the Dauphin of France. My Lord, I have considered it well and am now assured that it is for the best.”

  That should please him, she thought.

  There again she was putting a brave face against a crushing disappointment. Mary had been betrothed to Charles, King of Spain, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The betrothal had satisfied Catherine’s strong family feeling, and it promised to link the two countries she loved best, her native Spain and England which had so kindly adopted her. But Charles had decided not to wait for Mary, but to marry instead another of his cousins, Isabella of Portugal. And then Henry and Wolsey, throwing their weight on to the French end of the European seesaw, had thought of betrothing Mary to the Dauphin of France. France, the ancient enemy of England and Spain.

  It had taken some time and much effort for Catherine to resign herself to that idea, but she had done so, and now she held out her acceptance of it toward Henry, like a posy, trusting that he would be pleased.

  He said, with awkward abruptness,

  “I didn’t come here to talk about Mary. I came to talk about us.

  “About us?” The rather somber lines of her face lifted. Perhaps he, too, had been aware of their drifting apart; had realized that outside of bed there was a good deal that a man and a woman, well-disposed, could give one another. Lately she’d prayed for this; perhaps at last one prayer was about to be answered.

  “Yes,” he said. And then it was as though at one minute she had been standing on a safe sunlit terrace overlooking a flat sea, rippling hyacinth and sapphire and jade, and the next minute a great cold, slate-gray wave had come up and engulfed her, swept her down, battered her against sharp rocks, and then thrown her back, dying, but not dead, limp, broken and breathless on some strange and desolate shore.

  She could never recall afterward exactly what words he had used, or how long he took to say them, but his meaning reached her. He and she had never been married; they had lived in sin; they’d broken God’s law; she wasn’t his wife, she was Arthur’s; and all those precious babies, miscarried, stillborn or soon dead, were a proof that God had cursed their incestuous union.

  When at last she could speak she heard her own voice, a faint mewling, the last cry of somebody being strangled.

  “But, Henry…the Pope. He gave…a special dispensation. He knew…everybody knew…poor Arthur and I…”

  I must, I must collect myself and speak firmly. This is nonsense; it must be refuted.

  “Arthur and I,” ah, that was better, her own voice. “We were married; there was the ceremony; and for a few nights we shared a bed. But he was a child, and sick, even then. I shared a bed with a sick child. And knowing that, the Pope gave us leave to marry.”

  “We were deceived, Catherine. The Pope had no right to issue such a dispensation. Of that I am now convinced, and so are many learned men of whom I have asked counsel. Ours was an unlawful marriage, and its results condemn it.”

  “The children? Henry, you know, babies are born dead, or die in every family. We have Mary. Is she not living proof of our marriage being good. It says—I know it, too—that the man who marries his brother’s wife shall be childless. You are not childless. And I was never, never, your brother’s wife. You know it. You must know that I came to you virgin as I was born.”

  After all these years, in a moment of stress, her voice, the way she used her hands, betrayed her Spanish origin. Once he had thought her accent, her gestures, fascinating; now they revolted him, as a dish, once loved, eaten to surfeit, will ever more revolt. And the mention of virginity, coming from a woman who was aging, growing stout, and laboring under emotion, that was revolting, too. A kind of disgust held him speechless.

  “Your father and mine,” Catherine said, “two of the wisest Princes in Christendom; they were satisfied that the dispensation was good.”

  “No,” Henry said, feeling firm ground beneath his feet at last. “My father had a doubt and spoke of it on his deathbed.”

  That was true, and he leaned back against the memory of that moment as a man might lean against a strong wall. Henry VII, who for years had kept the young widow in England, who had once even thought of marrying her himself, because his miserly nature hated to part with her dowry, who had extracted from the Pope the permission for her to marry his second son, had, in the final hour of his life, seen the worthlessness of material things. He had mumbled out a few words which Henry had chosen then to ignore.

  Henry, the second born, bigger, stronger, in every way save age Arthur’s superior, had always envied his brother. He had coveted Arthur’s heritage, and later Arthur’s princess. She had been, then, every boy’s dream, plump, pretty, amenable, and despite her Spanish blood, blue-eyed and golden-haired; her grave and stately Spanish manners gave her the charm of the exotic, and her curiously accented English was pleasing to the ear. He’d led her to her wedding, wishing all the time that he stood in Arthur’s place. And when, eight years later, he stood by his father’s deathbed and heard the warning, issued in a thready, failing voice, he had thought—He’s failing, he does not know what he says; he asked for the dispensation and Julius gave it; and I shall marry her; why not?

  But it was useful now to mention his father.

  “He knew it was wrong. I was young and headstrong and chose to ignore his warning. Now I know that he was right. Wolsey has approached the Pope, with no result so far, for reasons that we know of; but Wolsey and Warham have had a discussion upon the matter and came to the conclusion that our marriage was open to question. So there we are.”

  All this and not a word to her.

  She remembered often during the last few weeks, coming upon a group of her ladies, chattering like magpies, and then falling silent as she approached. They knew! Wolsey had his own channels to the Pope, his discussion with the Archbishop might be kept secret, but things of such importance had a way of brimming over all such precautions. Her ladies had known; she had not. Unkind! Unkind, she thought, and then hastened to exonerate him.

  “You have been badly advised, my Lord.”

  Neither of them realized it then, but Catherine in seven words had expressed her belief and nothing was ever to move her from it. Henry, left to himself, was, she was sure, incapable of thinking along such lines, or of acting so unkindly. Theirs had been an unusually happy marriage and he had never been anything but kind to her. A little inconsiderate perhaps in bringing his bastard son to Court, and making him Duke of Richmond, but it was natural for a man to love his son, even it he were a bastard. He’d been unfaithful to her twice that she knew of; people whispered about a third time, long ago, but those whispers she had ignored, and that for a King with unlimited opportunities and so many temptations was a remarkably clean record. All this made the blow which he had just dealt her more wounding, and at the same time convinced her that he was not really responsible.

  It was Wolsey.

  Wolsey had always aimed at a firm alliance with France, and he was infinitely cunning. He’d worked on Henry’s wish for a son, and was now, this minute, over in France, bargaining for some buxom, bright-eyed girl with a quarter of a century of childbearing years before her.

  The awful inescapability of the years’ damage confronted her fully for the first time; a woman was nubile, fruitful, barren, subject to a progress as fixed as the passage of the sun across the sky.

  Abruptly she began to cry, taking Henry by sur
prise, for she wept seldom. The tears welled up and spilled over, quietly, as though they were her life blood seeping away.

  “Don’t,” he begged her. “Catherine, don’t cry. I had no intention of making you cry.”

  He felt like a great clumsy boy who, romping round, had unintentionally hurt his mother.

  “It will make no noticeable difference,” he assured her. “It is some time now since we…since we lived as man and wife. This means only the separation of our households, for the sake of appearance. You can have any house, any of my houses that you care to choose. You shall be shown every honor and consideration. You can keep what state you wish, and be known as the Princess Dowager.”

  He thought—Yes, I know, I was clumsy and hurt you, but don’t cry. Have a bite of my apple, borrow my top, but please don’t cry.

  She pressed her hands to her mouth and willed the tears to cease, her mouth to stop trembling. There was so much she must say, clearly, positively, firmly, before this nonsense went any further.

  “Henry, I am your wife. Nothing can alter that. The present Pope would never dream of retracting a proper dispensation given by his predecessor. I don’t care where I live, or what state I keep, but I am your wife. I have been for sixteen years and shall be until I die.” She saw the shame-faced expression change to sullen displeasure. “If it is…if it is a question of another woman…I will be discreet. I know that I am growing old and no longer attract you. If some other woman could make you happy, I would accept that, and pray for you both. But to treat our marriage as though it had never been, that I could not do. It would be impossible. It would be wicked.”

  “Wicked to put right a grave wrong?”

  Her own voice came back to her, deep-toned,

  “Wicked to pretend that I have been nothing but your mistress and that Mary was born out of wedlock.”

  “Pretend! Pretend! Anyone would think that this was some game I had invented for my own amusement. You speak of Mary. Isn’t it true that when the business of her betrothal to the Emperor was discussed the lawyers, Spanish ones, brought up the question of her legitimacy. It came up again over the French betrothal. This isn’t something I made up out of my head. It’s fact. If it were merely my fancy wouldn’t Clement have told me I had no case? Do you think Wolsey and Warham would sit in solemn session and say the marriage was open to doubt were it not so? There was an error and we suffer for it; Mary, too; but it must be put right. Come now, once accept the situation—as I have—and it will not seem so bad. I’m fond of you, and of Mary, as well you know. I shall treat her as I always have, and you as…as my favorite sister.”

  She knew that if she gave in now she would have his friendship for life. Something would be salvaged from the wreck—his goodwill. If she made things easy for him, he would make things pleasant for her. But it wasn’t only of herself she must think.

  It never had been. All her life long it had never been Catherine first. The English marriage which would be good for Spain; the long, wretched time of waiting after Arthur’s death, while her father and Henry’s brooded over her dowry and the choice of a second husband for her; marriage to Henry which had, by mere chance, brought her happiness, though when it was arranged nobody cared whether it did so or not. And now this. Even now Catherine mattered hardly at all. Mary was the one who mattered.

  She said, “As long as I live I shall regard myself as your wife and shall call myself Catherine the Queen. And Mary will be your one legitimate child. You have gone, behind my back, which was unkind, to the Pope and gained no satisfaction. I shall ask him to consider my case. I will write to the Emperor, too. The original dispensation that Julius gave is either in Rome, or in Madrid. They can get it out and study it and see if there is a flaw that would justify this troubling of your conscience, after so many years. You are my husband, my King, my lord, under God I owe you obedience and in any other matter that you could name I would obey you. But when you ask me to accept something which denies the Pope’s ruling, and the sacrament of marriage, and the legitimacy of our child, then you ask too much.”

  Knowing her as he did he knew that further words would be wasted. The tears had made her eyes swell, and with her jaw set in that obstinate line she looked like a bulldog.

  “We shall see,” he said, and turned and went out, setting each foot down more heavily than usual.

  He was still far from being the tyrant that he was to become in later life, but he liked his own way and was accustomed to getting it. And at the moment Catherine’s attitude mattered. The Pope was the Emperor’s prisoner and it would have been of inestimable value if the next emissary could have carried some proof that Catherine had agreed to the annulment. Her orthodoxy and piety were everywhere acknowledged, if she would have admitted to a qualm of conscience, too, there’d have been no more argument about it.

  Now it would go on and on.

  What a fine way to repay his years of devotion and the patience with which he had borne all her mishaps in childbed. Never once had he reproached her, never once allowed his disappointment to exceed her own.

  It was the waste of time that irked him most. Of the final outcome he had no doubt. The Pope needed him and in the end would settle for his terms. But there’d now be the pretense of studying Catherine’s case. And another summer was well on its way and here he was, a man, strong, healthy, lusty, with on one side a woman of whom he was tired, and on the other a woman he wanted as no man, surely, had ever wanted a woman before. Both stubborn women, too. One clinging to a marriage which, as he had just explained to her, was no marriage at all; the other demanding marriage as the price of surrender. Of the two he had, being in love with her, more sympathy with Anne. To a woman her good name mattered. Catherine’s good name was in no danger, everyone would regard her as the unfortunate victim of a mistake; she was merely being proud and disobliging.

  The first thing to do—he thought—was to prove to her that he meant what he said. And he knew a very agreeable way of doing that, if only it could be brought about.

  His face brightened; his step grew lighter and swifter.

  Within ten minutes he was mounted, and riding hard for Hever.

  VIII

  Mistress Anne Boleyn was called back into Court, where she flourished afterwards in great estimation and favour.

  Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey

  HEVER. JUNE 1527

  JUNE AGAIN, WITH THE CUCKOOS calling in the Kentish woods, and the roses blooming in the garden at Hever; lovers’ weather again, and nothing changed, save that he was more in love than ever, and growing impatient, and aware of the time slipping away.

  He was renewing his pleading that she should return to Court.

  “I can’t forever be coming down to Hever, darling, yet I count every day when I don’t see you, wasted. I need you in London. Why won’t you come?”

  “I did,” she said, “in May, and you sought me out so openly that had I stayed out the week, scandal would have been busy.”

  “It was May Day,” he said humbly. “Everybody makes merry then.”

  “That saved us, perhaps. I don’t think even the Queen had any real suspicion. But if I came back, and it happened again…Henry, I hate the thought of people talking in corners, watching, making up tales; and I hate being sly and furtive, and in the wrong.”

  “But everything is changed now. I’ve been frank with Catherine; I’ve told her that I no longer regard her as my wife, and…”

  “Did you mention me?”

  “No. It was not the time for that. She was very upset. She…she…I don’t care to think about it. But I am a free man, and I intend to act like one. Wolsey is now in France and when he returns I want him to see that I do not intend to marry this Renée he has picked for me. I want him to see you beside me. I want it all out in the open. I have chosen you, and as soon as a few legal points are settled we shall be married. What is there in that for people to talk over in corners?”

  “When you put it like that, nothing. But
I would rather remain here until those legal points are settled. They take so long. Last month the Cardinal and the Archbishop were to look into your marriage and declare it void. And that all came to nothing.”

  “That was a stroke of foul luck,” Henry said with a touch of impatience in his voice. “How could anyone foresee that while they were actually sitting we should get news of the Pope being taken prisoner. His is the ultimate sanction, so there was nothing Wolsey and Warham could do but what they did, which was to say that the marriage was open to question. They said that, the two highest authorities in England. And that justifies me. The news from Rome was a shock. But things are settling now and it may well be that the Pope’s captivity may even be of benefit to us.”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “In two ways, or one of two ways. A helpless man—and Clement is that if ever a man was—is always eager to find an ally. As soon as his slow mind takes stock of his position he’ll see that his only hope is for me and Francis of France to go to his aid; and he’ll know what my price is! Francis can make his own bargain. Or—and this was Wolsey’s inspired idea—it would be feasible to argue that a Pope who is a prisoner is incapable of fulfilling his proper function and therefore his authority devolves upon his Legates in the various countries. Here that means Wolsey, and Wolsey would free me like that!” He snapped his fingers.

  “To marry Renée of France, not me!”

  “Trust you, sweetheart, to put your pretty finger on the nub of the matter,” Henry said dotingly. “But he said it. He admitted that the marriage was open to question, he said that in certain circumstances he could assume Papal powers. He can’t go back on that. He can’t turn about to me, his King, and say—I’d free you to marry the Frenchwoman, but not the woman you love. By God’s throne, if he did that, I’d have his head!”