by Norah Lofts
He opened his mouth to say that there were now no Observant Friars in England. The Friars had been among the first to go. Even here in the middle of this dismal swamp she must have heard…But at the hour of death the mind tended to look backward. He said,
“I will remember that.”
“And I should like five hundred Masses to be said for my soul.”
He nodded, and let that pass, too.
“That, I think, disposes of everything.” She lay for a moment mustering strength and then said, in a more vigorous voice, “One thing troubles me. You always urged me to take action. Was I wrong not to give you more heed?”
There was only one answer to that. But it was useless, worse than useless, cruel, to point out to the defeated and the dying just where they had gone wrong.
So he said, gently, “Your Grace has always acted in accord with your conscience, so how can you have been wrong?”
She gave him a faint smile. “That was a diplomatic answer. I am…no, not troubled…perplexed about the workings of conscience. You, I am sure were acting in accordance with yours when you went about rousing people to my cause, and trying to persuade me to take up arms. Then whose conscience was right, yours or mine?”
“Only God can judge of that.”
“Now, at the end of it all,” Catherine went on, “another thought troubles me, too. Was I wrong years ago? If when the King first questioned our marriage, I had complied and gone into a nunnery—it was Cardinal Campeggio, I think, who suggested that—then Clement would have, or might have given way to the King and England would have remained part of the true Church. Is not that an appalling thought to visit me now? I have always been so sure, so certain. Always I felt that I was acting as God willed. Now I am sure of nothing and sometimes I feel that I drove Henry to sin in the first place, and by ignoring your advice, rejected the chance to save him. And to think that way, is, I assure you, to feel the pains of Purgatory prematurely.”
Chapuys was at a loss. He was a diplomat, not a theologian. His glib tongue and supple brains were more at home dealing with worldly things. But out of pity for her, he tried.
“Such thoughts,” he said, “are a temptation to despair, which is a sin. You say that you have always felt sure that you were acting as God willed; that being so you have never before been tempted to despair. Such thoughts may be of the Devil, who having failed with you in other respects, tries this. And remember, too, that while faith is confident, it is not truly faith…”
He warmed to his task, surprising himself. He spoke of the apparent triumph of evil and of heresy and of God’s power to reverse it at any moment He chose. Referring to her concern over Henry’s spiritual state he reminded her that ultimately every soul was responsible for its own salvation. And then, moving with some relief on to more familiar ground, he spoke of Mary, exaggerating a little as was his habit. Hope of Mary’s succession must on no account be abandoned, he said. If anything happened to Henry, Mary could count on the support of everyone in the country except convinced Lutherans, of whom there were but few. And as for the Concubine’s latest pregnancy—the delight in gossip shone in the Ambassador’s eyes—there was something extremely odd about that. The child was supposed to be due in April; well, in his time he had seen a good many enceinte women, and he’d seen Anne only last week, and if she were six months gone with child, so was that bedpost. And everybody said the same. Gossip—not to be relied on, of course, but often showing which way the wind blew—said that she had been pregnant but had had a miscarriage in the autumn, dared not tell the King, would begin presently to pad herself out as much as her overweening vanity would allow, and planned, in April, to have a newly-born male child smuggled in…
Catherine felt vaguely that it was wrong to derive comfort from such talk, but in fact she did, and presently she said,
“I think I could sleep now. In the last six days I have not slept as many hours, and that explains my melancholy, for which I apologize. You have brought rest to my mind.”
Chapuys, completely exhausted, and very stiff, rose and tottered away.
Catherine slept. And while she slept there arrived another old friend, the Dowager Countess of Willoughby, who, as Maria de Salinas, had come to England with Catherine. She brought with her no order for admittance from the King and at first Sir Edmund Bedingfield was dubious about letting her in; but she shouted at him in the masterful well-born Englishwoman’s voice which she had acquired, that the weather entitled her to ask hospitality of any inhabited place: And since the dangerous Spanish Ambassador had been allowed entry there seemed no reason to exclude a comparatively harmless woman. So when Catherine woke it was to see another friendly face, and pleasure in the reunion revived her a little. She was strong enough to sit, well-propped with pillows, and write the last of her innumerable letters.
It was to Henry. It began, “My most dear lord, King and husband,” and went on, without a word of reproach, to beg him to consider the good of his immortal soul. “For my part, I pardon you everything…” And she did; she looked upon him as a fellow victim; he was easily led, he had been badly advised, he had fallen prey to an evil woman. “For the rest I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her.” She mentioned her three remaining maids, asking that they should be paid their wages and provided with marriage portions and ended the letter with the words, “Lastly I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.”
Three days later she died in Lady Willoughby’s arms.
In London, when he heard the news, Henry rejoiced. It meant the end of that always-just-hovering-threat that somebody might take up cudgels on Catherine’s behalf; it ended, even in Catholic eyes, his state of being a man with two wives. And it gave him elbow room for the future…
XXXV
It was said she tooke a fright, for the King ran that tyme at the ring and had a fall from his horse, but he had no hurt; and she tooke such a fright withal that it caused her to fall in travaile, and so was delivered afore her full tyme.
Wriothesley
…the King had said to somebody in great confidence…that he had made this marriage seduced by witchcraft, and for that reason he considered it null; and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have male issue, and that he believed he might take another wife.
The Spanish Ambassador in a letter to his master
GREENWICH. JANUARY 1536
THE RAIN HAD CLEARED AND everything was washed with the peculiarly lucid light of a sunny winter’s day. It was fine enough for most of the ladies to go, well-furred, to watch the King and his friends at exercise in the tiltyard. Anne had stayed indoors, careful always to remember that she was supposed to be farther advanced in pregnancy than she actually was; and Margaret Lee had stayed with her. They were busy with an almost completed piece of tapestry. It was heavy and bulky, and Emma Arnett insisted upon standing by to help with handling it.
Anne, as she worked, worried away at the problem which had confronted her, day and night, ever since the autumn. She had told Henry that the child would be born in April. Unless it was prematurely born—and who could count upon that?—April would come and go and she would not be delivered. How late could a child be without causing comment and question? She had managed to inveigle Dr. Butts into discussing that. First babies, he said, tended to be tardy, anything from a fortnight to three weeks, though, he had added, often the baby was blamed for the mother’s fault. Women reckoned so ill. The average for women was about two hundred and seventy days; in his experience, second babies—he had smiled at her as he said this—were usually more considerate than first ones, they were often three weeks early and that was why second confinements seemed easier.
Margaret said, “Have you yet received an answer from Mary?”
“I have indeed. Rude and contemptuous, as always.”
She had been particularly anxious to come to terms with Mary. Mary had been the one who had said—at least so it had been reported and ne
ver contradicted—the vilest possible thing about Elizabeth. “And does she resemble her father, Mark Smeaton?” If Mary could say that, about Elizabeth so obviously Henry’s child, what might she not say next time? Mary simply must be won over.
Anne, rebuffed so often, had not tried the direct approach; she had sent a message through Lady Shelton. She had asked Mary to let an old sore heal; she had said that she would be a mother to her, and promised that if she would come to Court and be one of the family that she should take precedence of everyone, she might, if she wished walk, on all formal occasions, side by side with Anne herself. Never had a Queen made such an offer; but Anne reflected with frank wryness, never could a Queen have had quite such reason.
“She said that she would sooner die a hundred times than change her mind.”
“I hope you sent her back a sharp answer,” Margaret said. She was constitutionally incapable of making a sharp answer herself and one of the many things she admired about her cousin was her ability to wage verbal warfare, if need be.
“I wrote to Lady Shelton,” Anne said, a little wearily. “I asked her to tell Mary that from now on what she does and how she acts are of no interest to me. I told her that I hoped to have a son and was merely trying to establish her beforehand. That was sense. If this is a boy, within six months the Lady Mary might lie in Peterborough beside her mother for all any one will care.”
“In less than six,” Margaret said, happily. She, as much as anyone in the world, was counting upon this child’s birth, counting upon it being a boy. She loved Anne and wished to see her properly reestablished. The King had been a little more discreet of late, but he had not yet tired of Jane Seymour; and although Anne seldom spoke of it, Margaret knew that she was troubled. She had never been quite the same since the day when she had discovered Henry with Jane on his knee, and no wonder. Still a boy would right everything. In the joy of being the father of a prince at last Henry would forget the trivial pleasure of dalliance.
Margaret spared a moment to breathe yet another swift prayer for a safe delivery, and a boy baby: and then, seeing Anne’s hands idle and her eyes fixed in an inward, unhappy look, set herself to rouse her.
“Now, blue would you say, or purple? Of blue we have plenty, the purple is running short. If it is to be purple we shall need more.”
Before Anne could answer there was a clatter outside the door; it opened and the Duke of Norfolk burst in. Except for his helm, which he carried in his hand, he was clad for tilting; his long heavy face was the color of tallow.
“The King,” he gasped. “He took a great fall…He may be dead!”
In one piercing second she saw exactly what would happen to her, bereft of Henry’s protection. Mary on the throne. Herself hurried away and disposed of; for Mary would never let this child be born. Then she swayed on the stool, and would have fallen but for Margaret’s supporting arms.
Emma dropped the ends of wool she was sorting and ran forward.
“You take her feet,” she ordered, pushing Margaret away and putting her own arms under Anne’s. “We must get her flat. Open the door,” she said to the Duke, “you blundering fool! You clown! If he’s dead, all the more reason…” O God, she prayed, more earnestly than she had ever prayed before, let the child be unharmed, let her go her full time; this is the prince, dear merciful God, who is to set thy people free!
They laid Anne on her bed, loosened her clothing and wrapped her warmly. Emma put a pillow under her feet, too; and when Margaret took the flagon of grated hartshorn to hold to her nose, checked her.
“I’m not so sure. If he’s dead…At least she isn’t fretting now. What did that old fool say, “may be,” didn’t he? Run and find out. We might have good news to bring her round to.”
Margaret ran, and Emma went down on her knees by the bed and laid her hands gently upon Anne’s body, as though warding off some threatened, physical attack. O God, dear God. The prayer ran through her mind, as repetitious, as stylized as the telling of beads against which her kind railed so bitterly. This was the child who would keep Mary from the throne, keep England from slipping back into the Pope’s clutches, a child whose very begetting was proof of God’s secret, mysterious ways of working His will on earth.
Margaret, less than halfway to the tiltyard met the ladies swarming back. The King was not dead, merely unconscious and suffering a small wound in the leg. The doctors were with him.
Armed with this cheering news Emma set to work with the hartshorn, with cold water, with wrist rubbing. She yielded place to no one, and when Anne moaned and stirred it was Emma’s voice which said, bluntly and briefly, “He isn’t dead.”
“He was stunned,” Margaret said, “and his leg is hurt a little. The doctors are with him.”
“I should go to him,” Anne said.
“Oh no, Your Grace,” Emma said firmly. “That you’ll not do. You’ve had a bad shock and a swooning spell and you must lie and rest.”
“You could do nothing,” Nan Savile contributed. “We shall hear when he comes round. Perhaps you can go then.”
She was content to be persuaded; her limbs felt boneless, and the child lay heavy, heavy, like the weights they placed on prisoners who refused to plead, the peine forte et dure.
“I’ll rest a little then—though I’m well enough.”
“Small thanks to his Grace of Norfolk,” Emma said grimly. “I’ve never before in my life wished myself married, but I’d give something to be his wife for just half an hour.”
Within two hours they had news that the King had regained consciousness and suffered no more than a headache and a scratch and what promised to be a remarkable bruise on the leg. Emma, reasonably sure now that what she dreaded most had been averted, allowed Anne to get up, and clad in a loose robe, go along to his apartments. He made light of the headache, but seemed concerned about his leg.
“It’s on the very spot where I had a most troublesome ulcer, until Thomas Vicary cured it. A fine thing it’ll be if this knock opens it up again.”
She said that she hoped that would not happen. She said that she was glad that so severe a fall had not injured him more. She looked at him with a dreary feeling of guilt because her first thought had been for herself. She’d felt no grief, nothing but fear. It was an outstanding example of the way in which circumstances could corrupt people.
“Dr. Butts has applied a plaster,” Henry went on complaining, “to draw out the bruise, he said. By the feel of it it’s drawing the flesh from the bone.”
I should pity him, she thought, knowing as I do how anything less than perfect physical health disgusts him.
But another thought swung out in counterbalance; he should spare a thought for me, just a question; he must know what a shock I sustained; and I am with child. Not his, but that he does not know. The feeling of something badly amiss, of having lost herself, of having mismanaged everything, of being alone and on the wrong road, a feeling that reached back to that thundery night at Hampton Court, came upon her as it had so often lately, and with even more force. Their whole relationship was wrong; and was she much to blame? She’d only done what most women, placed as she had been, would have done. Every single move in this blindfold game had been forced upon her; and the root, the real root of all the trouble lay with him, with what Mary had once warned her of, his inability to love anyone who loved him. On that night at Hampton Court he had thought she loved him, and he had begun to hate her then. After that she’d been nothing but a brood animal, and knowing that she had not dared to tell him last autumn that she had miscarried. She’d been compelled to find her own way out of that predicament; and she had; and for the last few months whenever she had these dismal thoughts, she had been able to think about the boy whom she might bear. But not tonight. Tonight the child was just a leaden weight, dragging down so that her back ached.
Henry, with the headache like a leaden cap, with spikes inside it, bearing down on his head, and his leg throbbing, a pendulum of pain, thought that it was civil
of her to have come, but oh, how he did wish she’d go away. She looked so unwell that the sight of her filled him with foreboding. Something wrong with this pregnancy? He’d asked himself that when he came back from his progress in October, expecting to find her sleek, filling out and had found her hollow-cheeked, a little wild of eye. Later she had seemed to settle down, but not completely, not as she had before the birth of Elizabeth. And maybe, he conceded, for that he was a little to blame. She was jealous. She knew about Jane. And she hadn’t Catherine’s good sense in that respect. Catherine had known about the Stafford girl, about Bessie Blount, and Mary Boleyn…but she hadn’t gone about looking…
Still, there was a belief that a really healthy vigorous child leeched strength from its mother. If that was true this child should be exceptional. Cheered by that thought, he asked a little belatedly,
“And is all well with you?”
She forced herself to smile. “All is well with me. And I hope that all will soon be well with you. I wish you a good night.”
“That I most certainly shall not have,” Henry said, reverting to egotism, “unless I can persuade Butts to remove this damned plaster.”
She went away, moving slowly, very conscious of her burden which had, since the shock, ceased to seem like a part of herself.
Six days later, after a long agony that surpassed the pangs of ordinary birth, she bore what would have been a boy.
Over the tiny scrap of carrion which should have been the savior of his country, Emma, who had not wept for forty years, almost wept, would have wept, had there been room in her shocked and angry mind for any soft emotion.
Her faith, the new faith, founded upon reason and shorn of superstition, faltered and failed. Really, she thought with furious despair, it looked as though God didn’t know His own business!