The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  It was answer enough for Wolsey, with his long experience of circles where nobody ever said a plain yes or no. He said, musingly,

  “She is not—and when I say unfortunately I mean from the practical, not the moral standpoint—his mistress. In some respects her behavior may be open to criticism, but her character is not.”

  “Had she been his mistress this situation would hardly have arisen.”

  “There I must disagree. The phrase, ‘the King’s conscience,’ may be becoming a joke, but I assure you that it was active long before this infatuation befell him. And the Princess Mary’s legitimacy was being questioned before Anne Boleyn had all her second teeth.”

  “Not openly, nor with quite such vigor. That doubt exists is undeniable, otherwise why am I here?” He shifted his rein and flexed his painful fingers. “The Roman Courts will find an answer,” he said, with an air of dismissing the subject.

  “If the King should ask you whether their verdict will be in his favor or not, what would you tell him?”

  “His Grace would never ask me such a question,” Campeggio said reprovingly. “I have done what I was sent to do, and now I come to take leave. No one has ever suggested that the King of England is lacking in manners.”

  Only people of low birth pressed questions likely to embarrass.

  “He will ask me—if we have any conversation at all.”

  “If you are wise you will say what I just said, that you are not a seer.”

  Clearly, Campeggio had no idea of what he had done, of what he had compelled Wolsey to do. One answer like that, at such a tricky time, could land a man in the Tower!

  Shortly after, he wished that he were in the Tower. There was at least a certain dignity about an arrest, on whatever trumped-up excuse; and the Tower was private. Yes, he would have found it easier to walk in by the Traitors’ Gate than to suffer the public humiliation in the courtyard of Grafton manor house.

  Like many of its kind, Grafton had grown gradually, with rooms added as the need arose, each set with its stairway. One stairway, and the apartments to which it led, had been prepared and set ready for Cardinal Campeggio’s occupation. When the Cardinals’ cavalcade came to a standstill in the courtyard, men had come forward, some to take his horse, some to escort him to his stairway, some to carry his baggage, some to show his servants to their quarters.

  For Wolsey nothing. No welcome, no accommodation. Only the sly gloating in the many watching eyes, the air of waiting to see what he would do now.

  They expected him to break down. There was, he knew, a supposed difference between the behavior of the well-born and the lowly in moments of crisis, but Wolsey had lived long enough and seen enough of the world to know that subject to the right pressure men of the highest lineage could crawl and fawn and weep. The butcher’s son from Ipswich was determined to show, in this moment of ordeal, an example of that ground-level fortitude which kept poor men alive.

  He sat on his mule—thankful that he had not alighted, and with his own dismayed little retinue behind him, he watched Campeggio being received. His expression revealed nothing; he might have been a figure cut from rock and painted and garbed to look like a Cardinal. His mind was made up. So long as the mule could stand—and mules had great powers of endurance—he would sit here. When the mule dropped he would stand until he fell, too. He had a right to be here; to escort the visiting Cardinal to his leave-taking was part of his duty; and if he were made to look like an uninvited guest, that was not his fault, or even his concern.

  He did not believe that the King had ordered matters in this fashion. Henry was angered, yes; but he was incapable of retaliation in this petty, malicious way. This was the work of the Lady, that night-crow who sat on Henry’s shoulder and whispered. She, even more than the King, had been angered by his behavior at Blackfriars, and her revenge was this attempt to keep him out of the King’s presence. She imagined that, rebuffed, he would turn and ride away. Norfolk-born herself; Wolsey thought wryly, she should have known a Suffolk man better; the stubborn refusal-to-be-shifted quality of East Anglians was a byword.

  Firmness was rewarded. After ten agonizing minutes that seemed like half a lifetime, out came Sir Harry Norris, the King’s favorite, the Groom of the Stole; and he must have come direct from the King. He said,

  “My lord, this house is very small, and Cardinal Campeggio, a stranger in the land, was offered the only available accommodation. If you could bear the inconvenience, and make shift with my own apartments, I should be honored.”

  “I accept gladly, Sir Harry, weary and soiled from riding as I am. But I have no wish to put you about. If I may borrow your chamber briefly, Cavendish here will ride around and find some place for me to spend the night.”

  Had the offer come from anyone else it might have been attributed to pity, or to spite, an underlining of his lack; but coming from Norris it could mean but one thing, that the King, as soon as he was acquainted with the situation had taken immediate action to make amends. Otherwise Norris, so close to the King, would never have dared make such an offer.

  He dismounted gladly; and hope was again renewed.

  He was washed and robed when Campeggio came to join him. If the Italian were aware that there had been anything lacking in Wolsey’s reception he gave no sign. In mind and spirit he was probably already far away, back in the temporary Papal Court in Orvieto where the problem of the English marriage was one of many problems. As he himself had said, what he had been sent to do was done; whereas for Wolsey another stage was just about to begin. His heart resumed its rattle, quietened a little and then began again, more violently, when Sir Harry Norris came to announce that the King was ready to receive the Cardinals.

  They made their slow and stately progress to a sizable hall which had been made into a presence chamber by the erection of a canopy and the placing of a chair at its farther end. The place was full, for in addition to the officials, courtiers, and friends who followed the King on his progresses there were many local landowners and gentry of the kind whom Henry loved to meet, and impress, during his country visits. It was his manner to such people which had gained him a name for being bluff.

  Entering the hall Wolsey was miserably aware that every man there would have heard of his humiliation in the courtyard and now be speculating upon the manner in which the King would receive him. It was an ordeal to move amongst the crowd, greeting those he knew, and behaving as though the past seventy days had never been; but he managed it, governing his hammering heart, keeping voice and hand steady, meeting the eyes, curious or hostile, with a level impassive stare.

  Then the King entered and took his place under the canopy: Wolsey and Campeggio advanced and knelt.

  In Wolsey all confidence, all hope, suddenly ebbed away. Norris’s offer lost its significance; the seventy days of silence, the unanswered letters, the messages ignored, loomed large. Perhaps the King intended to ignore him in the face of this crowd…

  If he does, Wolsey thought, I shall die here, die of shame, on my knees. Perversely, the contrary fear afflicted him, too; if Henry spoke, he would never find breath enough to reply.

  Henry extended his hand to Campeggio who bowed his head over it, released it, and stood up. In the tense silence Henry turned toward Wolsey and extended his hand. Wolsey bowed his head and then raised it and looked directly into the beloved face. The shared experiences of twenty years were relived as their eyes met. From great things like foreign policy and subtle plans for England’s welfare, to small things like jokes and meals enjoyed together: all bonds, not easily cast off.

  Wolsey attempted to stand, but his legs were flaccid and trembling. Henry took him by the elbows and heaved him to his feet, saying genially,

  “You’re still stiff from the saddle, Thomas.”

  Stare, Wolsey thought, stare and listen, all you who thought I was finished. Listen to that, my own heart, lately so downcast that I was prepared to die in the courtyard beside a foundered mule!

  He said, �
�Your Grace, I am cured of my worst ill, the lack of seeing you.”

  Henry said, “I have missed you, too.” He put his arm over Wolsey’s shoulders and drew him aside into the embrasure of a great window.

  Campeggio, watching, reflected that this was one more instance of English unpredictability. Two months of sulky silence because Wolsey had done the only thing possible for him to do, let the poor man arrive to find no place where he could wash and change his clothes, and then, brought face-to-face with him, show him every sign of favor. Well, it was good to see Wolsey forgiven, he was a sound churchman, and had proved it. The Pope would be pleased to hear of this.

  That his own reception had been restricted to the most formal, stylized ritual fretted Campeggio not at all. He knew that he had annoyed Henry at their first meeting after his landing; in the old days monarchs cut off the heads of those who brought bad news; and Clement’s offer to bolster the King’s marriage had been bad news. In a just world, Campeggio thought wryly, he would have been better treated by the King, for in three interviews with Catherine he had done his best—as had Wolsey—to persuade her to give in. He had quoted to her the case of a French Queen who had entered a nunnery in order to allow her husband to remarry. That had moved Catherine as little as his arguments. On his second visit to her she made her confession to him, and had solemnly declared that although she had bedded with Arthur in all twelve nights, she had been virgin when she married Henry, therefore, whether the dispensation were in order or not mattered little; she was Henry’s legal wife. Undoubtedly a good, pious woman, but excessively headstrong; and by all accounts this Anne Boleyn upon whom Henry had set his heart, though different in many ways, was equally self-willed.

  One could almost be sorry for the man, set between two such unmanageable females.

  In the window Henry said, “I was so maddened by disappointment that I hated the thought of looking at anyone concerned with it. I’ve thought of you as a traitor—until a moment ago. I realized then that no traitor ever looked so at the man he had betrayed. Judas only kissed Christ. I doubt that he looked Him straight in the eye!”

  “I could have sat on and the Court would have decided for you, your Grace. By verdict of an English Court, from which the Pope’s commissioner had withdrawn, you would have been declared a bachelor. But in the eyes of the world your subsequent marriage would have been bigamous, the issue of it tainted with bastardy. I knew that that was the last thing your Grace really wished.”

  “You were right—in a way,” Henry said reluctantly. “If I wished to act the bigamist I should have done so long since. Bigamist in fact I could not be, never having been legally married.”

  “And that is the point upon which Clement has yet to be convinced.” Wolsey hesitated. Was this quite the moment to mention that Clement would be more easily convinced if only the King would choose some other lady? A man in love…And seventy days, during which many things might have happened. He compromised. “Campeggio,” he said, “is a closemouthed fellow. He sat side-by-side with me all those weeks and never gave me a hint of what, in the last resort, he had been ordered to do. But on our way here he let fall one significant remark which I noted to report to your Grace.”

  Henry would have liked to hear it there and then, but he had promised Anne that as soon as he had received the Cardinals he would dine with her. So he said,

  “Everybody is hungry, and you, Thomas, must be hungriest of all. I see they’re bringing in the tables. We’ll have further talk after dinner.”

  He went striding away, thinking how good it was to be talking to Wolsey again. He’d allowed anger and disappointment to blind him to the real issue; but Wolsey, even at the risk of offending him, had kept his eyes fixed upon it. Wolsey knew that above all things he needed the Pope’s verdict in his favor, needed it personally because he was a good Catholic, and in a wider sense because he wanted to be proved right in the sight of the world. If Wolsey had sat on at the Blackfriars Court the marriage with Anne could only have been a hole-and-corner affair, and his son’s legitimacy would always have been in question. It was far better this way.

  Wolsey took his place, as Chancellor, as Keeper of the Seal, as Cardinal, at the trestle table set crossways above those set lengthways in the hall. And he came straight from a confidential talk with the King who had received him with marked favor. His enemies were confounded, his few friends pleased; and his faithful gentleman-usher, George Cavendish, leaned over from behind his chair and murmured that he had found him a lodging, comfortable and suitable to his estate, in a house called Euston, just three miles away.

  For the first time in many days he felt an appetite for food.

  After dinner he went to Henry’s own apartments, and there, after a few preliminaries, said,

  “Campeggio indicated very clearly, sire, that Clement would take a more favorable view of your case were you not determined to marry the Lady Anne.”

  Henry’s demeanor altered immediately.

  “There you have the clearest admission of the weakness of their case that I have yet heard! Either Julius’s dispensation was good and I’m married, or it was not, and I am free. That’s the ground we’re fighting over, Thomas, and all else is irrelevant. If I’m free, I’m free to marry a Turk or an Ethiopian provided I could get her to be baptized. Is that not true? Is that not the law?”

  “Upon the face of it, yes. The whole trouble with this matter has been, all along, that so much outside the law is involved. Three-quarters of the time spent at Blackfriars was wasted on discussion as to whether Her Grace came to you maid or matron, which was no concern of the law. Clement is Pope and in theory above all personal preferences, and when the case goes to Rome he should be governed by law; but he’ll have human feelings, too, which will sway him.”

  “Then he’s a damned rogue! He knows nothing whatsoever about the Lady Anne, except a lot of evil gossip, garbled at that, sent him by Catherine’s friends. I wouldn’t judge a horse or a hound on such evidence.”

  “Horses and hounds are not so important as Queens, your Grace. I think I know what Clement fears.”

  “From her?”

  “From what she represents.” Wolsey’s voice took on a heaviness. “Her father, his friends. All who are known as “new men.” You, your Grace, know that as well as I. Clement fears—and not, I think without reason—that those who take easily to new ways in secular matters eventually tend to new ideas where religion is concerned.”

  “Clement fears his own shadow. I detest Luther and all his notions. They’ll never take root here while I rule. By God’s Blood, how often have I wished that I could tolerate these so-called reforms. When I think of how I have been treated by the Pope, who should have been my friend. When Luther began to spit his venom I was one of the first to defend the established faith; and what did I get? From Leo an empty title! And Leo’s successor refuses me justice. That is all I ask. I get no justice; I get inquiries and commissioners and insolent advice and now that they can think of no further shifty trick, they attack the woman I love, who is as good a Catholic as I am. And have the audacity to hint that they’d free me of Catherine if I’d promise to marry someone of their choice.”

  His voice had grown loud; his face was dark crimson, the whites of his eyes, red. Wolsey knew, however, that the rage was not directed at him, and that if he sat quietly the storm would blow itself out.

  “It’s enough to make a man lose faith,” Henry went on. “Sometimes I think I’ll cut loose, thumb my nose at the Pope and all connected with him. I’m damned if I know what holds me back. No, I do know. I’ve no wish to line myself with those little German princelings and archdukes and electors, nun-rapers, image-breakers. It’s almost a thousand years since Augustine set foot in England and made it part of Christendom. Must I break away, merely because Clement is a weak, frightened fool? I’m not forever on my knees, but I believe, Thomas. I believe that when the Host is elevated, Christ is there, in the flesh. But I’m trapped; and sometimes the only way
out that I can see is the gate that would take me into the camp of those who hold that the bread is still bread, the wine, wine. You’d best tell Campeggio to warn Clement; he’d better not drive me too far! And he can tell him at the same time that Anne is no heretic; there are no heretics in England.”

  “Clement will find for you, in the end. But we must remember that he has the Emperor to consider. That is one good reason for allowing the case to go to Rome; a verdict there will be more likely to satisfy the Emperor. And in the meantime…After all, your Grace, the Roman Court opens next month and the work on the case is largely done. It could be over by Christmas. If you could bring yourself to allow the Lady to be a little less…prominent. Perhaps even if a rumor of a rift could be spread abroad…It could do no harm, and it would ease Clement’s mind.”

  Henry considered the suggestion for a moment.

  “I’ll think of it,” he said. “After all, Clement has not played straight with me. It would serve him right. Yes, I’ll think of it.”

  “Campeggio might carry back some hoodwinking tales,” Wolsey said. God knew that this kind of thing was abhorrent to him, petty, sordid stuff for a man to bring his brains to; but the King had taken him back into favor and he must do his best to be of service.

  “Still my wily old Thomas,” Henry said. “We’ll talk more of this tomorrow. I must go now and be seen by my guests.”

  They parted with the utmost amity; and riding the three miles out to Euston, Wolsey reflected that all was to be as before; as the old proverb said, The falling out of faithful friends is the renewal of love.

  The local gentlemen found their King a little less bluff and hearty than they had expected, for as he moved amongst them he was visualizing the scene when he must break to Anne the news that for a few months she must be a little less…prominent. He was also thinking how horribly lonely he would be if anything came of this latest scheme. Even half a day’s necessary absence from her now irked him almost unbearably.