The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  In this suspended moment, he, like Cavendish, turned his eyes without moving his head and looked at his fellow Cardinal. Typical Italian, slippery as an eel. Civil, smooth, revealing nothing. The moment he had arrived in England he’d gone, without a word to Wolsey, and infuriated the King by telling him of the Pope’s offer to make good anything lacking in Julius’s dispensation. The King had then sent for Wolsey and stamped and raged. “I want no more tricks like that. I want freedom, and you must get it for me, by hook or by crook. Or by God’s Wounds, I’ll find somebody who will! I heard the other day of some humble cleric with a good head on him. He thought of something none of my favored advisers had hit on. Canvas the Universities of Europe, he said, and ask their opinion of this marriage. His name’s Cramer, Cranmer, Canner, something like that; and by God he has the right sow by the ear.”

  It was disturbing to learn that some unknown little man had thought of a move which he himself had overlooked; but there was nothing irrevocable and ruinous about that. What bothered Wolsey far more than anything else at the moment was Catherine’s attitude.

  Either she had been very shrewdly advised or she had been inspired by the quintessence of feminine guile; she refused absolutely to approach the problem from the legal point of view, refused to admit that the solution lay in the validity or otherwise of Pope Julius’s dispensation. She had taken her stand upon the contention that she and Arthur had never been man and wife, that their marriage had never been consummated. This meant that the Cardinals’ Court would be forced to abandon the strictly legal ground and venture on to the quaking morass of a personal, very intimate relationship; most distasteful. And potentially dangerous; for though a legal document could be studied and argued over, clause by clause, and some rational conclusion drawn, nobody in this world could truly decide whether a marriage had been consummated or not—especially after a lapse of almost thirty years.

  Wolsey was worried about Catherine. He was also troubled by a suspicion that Campeggio carried secret orders from the Pope; perhaps even a relevant document. Campeggio, since his arrival in England, had discussed the case with Wolsey, with a seething frankness and cooperation, saying “We must see that…” saying “It would be well if we…” saying “Our contention is…” But always Wolsey felt that Campeggio held something in reserve, knew something, or planned something which he did not propose to divulge. And to ask a point-blank question would be undiplomatic, and useless since it would merely provoke a lie. His sense of something being hidden from him had slipped from his waking thoughts into his dreams, and his short snatches of sleep were often troubled by dreams in which he was searching for something immensely precious and important, hidden in some filthy place which he dreaded to explore and yet must.

  All in all, these last few months had imposed strain enough to kill a cart-horse. Thank God the end was near.

  For now the static scene sprang into life.

  First the solemn proclamation of the Court’s commission from His Holiness Pope Clement VII; then the crier calling, “Henry, King of England, come into the Court.” The King from under his royal canopy, replied in a firm, loud voice, “Here, my lords.” His fidgety, uneasy manner was the result of impatience rather than of lack of confidence. He was certain that his cause was good; he had attained his wish in having the case brought to open trial in his own country; and he had refused what he was sure must be Clement’s last pathetic attempt to compromise. Now he wanted the whole thing over, finished, done with, as soon as possible.

  The crier raised his voice again, “Catherine, Queen of England, come into the Court.”

  This was the last time—or one of the last times—that she would be addressed thus, Henry reflected. The Court would move slowly, high-ranking clerics were adept at making everything seem solemn by acting with great deliberation; but within a few days his claim to be a free man would be acknowledged, and he would be able to keep his promise to Anne. Queen Anne. It sounded well. He thought of all the work the stonemasons and the woodcarvers and the embroideresses would have to do, removing all the C’s from the places where they now stood, entwined with the H’s, and substituting the A’s.

  Catherine, instead of replying, played a typically female trick. She stood up, gravely crossed herself and began to move toward where the King sat. She had aged and altered lately and could now well have been in her fifties instead of forty-four; her shoulders had bowed and her neck shortened, which gave her a dogged, stubborn look; but she had dignity, too. Her dress was in the Spanish style, somber in color, rich in fabric and she wore a good many jewels. She moved with assurance.

  As she neared him, Henry gripped the arms of his great chair and looked to left and to right, as though meditating flight and seeking a way of escape. If that had been his intention he thought better of it and settled down to face her with a set, hard look. She knelt down before him and made a long speech, pitiable or irritating according to the inclination of the listener. The pretty broken-English which had been one of her attractions long ago had almost vanished, leaving only an oddly accented word here and there. Her voice was deep, at times almost gruff.

  True to her plan, she made no mention of Pope Julius, or of the dispensation. She addressed herself to Henry as a supplicant, trying by words to stir a sentiment long since dead.

  “Sir, I beseech you for all the love that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right, take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman, and a stranger, born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friends, and much less impartial counsel. I flee to you as to the head of justice within this realm…”

  Ill-timed, Wolsey thought, coolly assessing; and out of place. This was a Court of law. What could she hope for by publicly putting the King in such an embarrassing situation? Surely there was no man in the place, not even Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, her most confirmed supporter, who did not at this moment share the King’s discomfiture.

  It went on, grew worse.

  “This twenty years or more I have been your true wife and by me ye have had divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no default in me. And when ye had me at the first, I take God to be my judge, I was a true maid without touch of man.”

  That was open to question; there were witnesses who would presently swear to the contrary.

  She mentioned the King’s father and her own, “They were both excellent kings in wisdom and princely behavior.” They and other men of good judgment had thought the marriage good and lawful.

  She ended by what was tantamount to an insult to the Court, saying that it could not be impartial since it was composed of Henry’s subjects, “and dare not for fear of your displeasure, disobey your will and intent, once made aware thereof.” She begged that this Court should be dismissed and she be given time to consult her friends in Spain. “And if ye will not extend to me so much impartial favor, your pleasure then be fulfilled, and to God I commit my cause.”

  By the time she had reached the end she knew that she had failed. The healthy color in Henry’s face had deepened and spread into a flush of embarrassment, but there were white patches over his jaw muscles where the clenching of his teeth made them bulge against the skin. His eyes were as cold and hard as pebbles at the tide’s edge. No hope.

  She rose, made a deep curtsy and then turned and moved away, not toward her former place, but to the door.

  Henry stirred and spoke, “Call her back!”

  The crier repeated his call. Griffiths, Catherine’s gentleman-usher, offering his arm, said, “Madam you are called again.” In a loud rough tone which carried back into the farthest corner of the Court she said, “I hear. But that is no court of justice for me! Let us go on.”

  Let us go on, also, Wolsey said to himself.

  Everybody in the Court shifted a little in his place.

  There was no such moment of drama on any of the ensuing days. They were largely spent in the hearing of evidence
whose nature proved that Wolsey’s misgivings, and his dreams of having to deal with filth, had been prophetic.

  Catherine did not come to Court again, yet she dominated it, for it was her attitude which had shaped procedure. A woman, in her personal life modest to the point of prudishness, she had by refusing to base her case on the validity of the Papal dispensation and choosing to fight instead upon the ground that she had gone virgin to Henry’s bed, stirred up the very elements which any ordinary woman would have striven to suppress. The clear stream of justice was forced into many muddy little side channels.

  What had Arthur meant exactly in 1501 when he said, “Tonight I have been in Spain”? How could one overlook his calling for wine and saying, “Marriage is thirsty work, my masters”? At what age was a boy capable of consummating a marriage? There was no lack of witnesses ready to declare that they themselves had been no mean performers at an earlier age than fifteen. And even if old waiting women came forward to swear that in all Catherine and Arthur had only bedded together for twelve nights, what did that prove? A virgin could be deflowered in an hour.

  To Wolsey the whole business was unutterably distasteful. He’d urged from the first that the Court should concern itself with law, and law only, not with old men’s lecherous memories and old dames’ gossip. But, though disgusted he was not unhopeful. Catherine had said a true thing when she said that this Court dare not do other than declare for the King. Fisher would certainly declare for Catherine, Ridley almost certainly; there were a few dubious ones, but the majority would be ruled by the King known wish, and confirmed in their decision to do so by the case Wolsey had prepared, with its careful repudiation of Catherine’s absurd claim.

  The days dragged on, each one warmer and stuffier than its predecessor; the air grew steadily more polluted, past the help of the little posies, fresh each day, to redeem.

  Campeggio, giving no sign at all, must have seen, as Wolsey had, the way the Court was tending. On July 23rd he acted, abruptly, in obedience to the secret orders which Wolsey had always suspected him of having received. Wolsey could imagine the very words Clement had spoken—If it looks as though the English will themselves declare the marriage good and valid, by all means let them do so: if they veer the other way, advoke the case to Rome; that will gain us time.

  At exactly the right moment Campeggio rose and said that the legal issue was far from being decided, but procedure had gone as far as it could in England. This was a great matter, one upon which all the eyes of the world were fixed and nothing must be done in haste. This was a case for the Courts of Rome, and thither it must be advoked.

  There was a second’s stunned silence and then the sound of heavy footsteps moving fast. From his place in the gallery where he had come, on this last day of the trial to hear a decision in his favor, the King of England went stamping out.

  The butcher’s son from Ipswich, grown so tall, a man on two stilts, one his King’s favorite, the other the power of his Church, faced, without a second’s preparation, the most agonizing, the most desperate decision of his whole life.

  His treacherous heart betrayed him; it began to gallop and thunder, shaking his chest, deafening his ears. Sweat broke out on his forehead and neck. All the astonished, angry faces moved together in a pale blue which began to go round and round, dizzyingly before his eyes.

  Yet within this physical collapse his mind was steady; it stood, as the chimney stack of a burned or ruined house will often stand when all else is gone. He could still think, coolly and clearly. He knew he had a choice of actions.

  He could stand up, now, and declare firmly that this was an English Court, called to consider a matter which concerned England, and that he, as an Englishman, intended to proceed. He could ask Cardinal Campeggio to retire, and go on alone, ask for a decision and have it, within five minutes.

  That was what the King wanted, expected of him. And he could always justify himself to himself by remembering that had the Pope remained a prisoner in San Angelo, he would have conducted this Court alone and accepted its verdict.

  But not now.

  Not now.

  He was a Prince of the Church, and the Head of that church was the Pope, who was still performing his functions—the presence of Campeggio proved that. The Pope had given Campeggio his orders, and by implication, they were orders to Wolsey, too. And he must obey. For he, too, was a good churchman and throughout his long career had never yet done anything to undermine the authority of the Church, the one, holy, indivisible Catholic Christian Church. Within it he might scheme and spar, jostle for position, debate and demur, but always inside it. He could never overrule or ignore a direct order from St. Peter’s successor, the supreme authority, the Pope.

  It might, almost certainly would, mean personal ruin; but greater issues were involved.

  He had thought so rapidly that there seemed to those watching and listening no more than a breathing space between Campeggio’s last words and Wolsey’s smooth utterance,

  “Then this Court is adjourned.”

  The decision once taken, his heart steadied, he had his hearing, his sight. The blur of faces broke up into their individual identities and here was one, coming forward, insolent and angry. Its owner banged his hand on the table behind which the Cardinals sat.

  Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.

  He’d gone, years ago, to bring back to England, Henry’s sister, the young widowed Queen of France. They’d fallen in love and married and Henry had been furiously displeased; but he had yielded in the end to family feeling, accepted and advanced Suffolk, who now saw a chance to repay, to prove his loyalty. But he was a stupid, witless fellow and all he could do in this moment of crisis was to bang on the table and shout,

  “Things have never gone well in England since we had Cardinals amongst us.”

  Campeggio slightly turned his head and looked at Wolsey as though to say—I defined my position quite clearly; you deal with this.

  Wolsey said, “My lord, we are but commissioners, and our commission does not allow us to proceed further without the knowledge and consent of our chief authority, which is the Pope.”

  Campeggio in his speech had spoken of his conscience, his soul, of his age and his sickness. Wolsey, the butcher’s son, scorned such irrelevancies.

  Campeggio looked at Wolsey with grave approval. (In his final talk with the Pope he had asked, “And if I am compelled to make this announcement, how will the English Cardinal take it?” Clement had said, “Correctly. He has that respect for my office only possible to one who has entertained hopes of occupying it.” Campeggio had thought then that Clement was a little overoptimistic, but he had been right. Under all that fumbling, bumbling manner Clement was shrewd, and it was a great pity, Campeggio thought, that he had never met Henry of England. That fanatical intelligent eye, that bull neck, that curious blend of manner, familiar, formidable. Now that the case was to be advoked to Rome, perhaps the two might meet and Clement would see that behind the petulant boy who wanted his own way, there was a rock of a man who intended to have it. Face-to-face with Henry, Clement would give way. It was only a matter of a little more delay. The Roman Courts reopened in October.)

  The two Cardinals rose, bowed to each other, and then to the assembly, and in a rustle of silk, retired.

  Wolsey expected to be met at the door with a peremptory summons to wait upon his King. But there was no messenger and he passed along and went to his great house, York Place, tasting, for the first time, the loneliness of those who fall, suddenly, from high places.

  XIV

  The Lady is all-powerful here, and the Queen will have no peace until her case is tried and decided at Rome.

  The Spanish Ambassador to Charles V

  Mark Smeaton, a performer on musical instruments, a person specified as of low degree, promoted for his skill to be a groom of the chambers.

  From the indictment for high treason

  SUFFOLK HOUSE. JULY 1529

  SHE KNEW BY THE LOOK on Henry
’s face that it was over and the verdict bad, so when at last he became coherent enough to make a straightforward statement it came as a relief. At least no judgment was yet given.

  “I was so angered by the trick the damned Italian played,” Henry said, “that I came out. Then I stopped. I thought to myself, Wolsey knows what I want and here is his chance to give it to me. So I waited, and next thing I knew, they were telling me that he had agreed to adjourn the case and we’re back as we were. Except that now I know the truth about him! I’ve treated him better than most men treat their brothers; gifts, favors, preferments! There’s not a King in Europe, there never was a King anywhere who let a subject swell so large. But he’ll learn, the jumped-up jackanapes. I made him, and I can unmake him. I can’t take away his bishopric, or his rank as Cardinal, but everything else I’ll strip him of. Ungrateful dog!”

  He raved on in that manner for several minutes, repeating himself often.

  She thought of an angry, impotent child burying a laurel leaf.

  She said, “He was always my enemy.”

  “He called himself my friend, I called him my True Thomas! But Christ Himself said it, no man can serve two masters, and Wolsey is the Pope’s man. I see now how I have been fooled. But that’s over. I’ve been ill-served by Cardinal Facing-both-ways. I’ll replace him by somebody who can bring Clement to heel. And I’ll go ahead with Dr. Cranmer’s suggestion for canvassing the opinions of the Universities. I haven’t shot my last bolt yet. Far from it.”

  “You’ll let them take the case to Rome?”

  “Oh, most certainly; if only to show that I am serious. That’s half the trouble. Nobody yet has taken this thing seriously. They thought it was an idle fancy I’d taken and if they made me wait long enough, I’d give up. The original brief of the damned dispensation is still locked up in the archives at Rome or Madrid. We’ll have that out and know why it wasn’t produced before. Cheer up, sweetheart. We shall win.”