The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  They brought the news to Henry, where he sat with his leg supported by a stool. It was very swollen, very black and very painful, but that was only to be expected; what distressed him was to find, every time the bandage was removed, that the trivial wound, instead of drying up and healing, remained moist and seemed to be widening. The old ulcer waking again?

  That the child was dead brought him no surprise; nothing good could be expected of so premature a labor; that it would have been a son filled him with impotent fury which for about the space of an hour swamped every other feeling. Then it began to recede, leaving, like an ebbing tide, some stark and alien things stranded and exposed.

  First, the hope that she would die and thus put an end to this marriage, as cursed as his former one. Second, the determination that should she live, he would rid himself of her. Third, a pondering of the means. And fourth, this for comfort, the certainty that soon things would change and begin to go well for him.

  Passionately he willed her to die. It would make everything so simple. There’d be a splendid funeral, as befitted one who had been Queen of England, a little time, a very little time of mourning, and then, because the succession was of such paramount importance, marriage with his darling little Jane. The most captious critic of his acts and motives could find no fault with that.

  Let her die, and by dying make good the fraud she had practiced, the fraud which he would never, to his dying day, understand. All those years of longing and waiting. For nothing. Die and wipe out the false promise, the wasted years, the letters, the garden at Hever, Catherine’s tears, Wolsey’s last look. Die and make all good…

  She did not die. She clung to life as stubbornly as Catherine had clung to her title. In the whole of God’s creation there was nothing so tough, so resilient as a woman.

  He could justifiably have pleaded his lameness as an excuse for not visiting her, but something impelled him to go. Supported by Norris and leaning on a stout staff he hobbled along to her room. Her drained face looked very sallow against the whiteness of the pillows, and her hair was limp and damp, like the coat of a drowned animal. He felt nothing but disgust and hatred, and his first words were brutal,

  “So you lost my boy!”

  “It was the shock my uncle of Norfolk gave me. He told me that you were dead.”

  “And if I had been, wasn’t that all the more reason for holding on to the child?”

  “If willing could have done it, I would. You should know that.”

  “Well, you’ll get no more boys from me!” That was what he had come to say. He wanted to hurt her, wanted to see her wince and begin to weep. She merely looked at him and with out any perceptible movement of lip or eye, contrived to convey an expression of mockery. He turned away abruptly and limped from the room.

  In the anteroom of his own apartments he found the Duke of Norfolk, Cromwell, and Sir Thomas Audley, his new Chancellor, awaiting him; he’d summoned them earlier in the day. He greeted them gruffly and passed on into his audience chamber where he sat down heavily in his chair and stuck his injured leg straight out, waiting until Norris had arranged the stool.

  “You’d better all sit down,” he said. “I have something of some importance to communicate to you.”

  The Duke of Norfolk, ever since the day of the King’s fall, had lived in a state of acute apprehension. Sooner or later, he was certain, he was going to bear the brunt of the blame for the catastrophe. Emma’s words still rang in his ears; if nobody else had seen the connection, she had, and she’d talk; rung by rung that talk would mount. It would come to the King’s ear, and then…

  It might be now. In the presence of his Chief Secretary and his Chancellor, the King might point the finger and say, “You killed my son!”

  And what the punishment would be was past the mind of man to imagine. The King enraged could devise fearful punishments. Norfolk had never, in these few days, ceased to think about what had happened to a few Carthusian monks in the previous year. They had merely asked Cromwell for advice on what attitude they should take to the Oath of Allegiance; and for that, by no standards a crime, they had been taken to New-gate, put into iron collars, and fettered, and so stood, without food or water until they died. Norfolk carried, in his pouch, ready to hand, three pills, each one guaranteed to kill a man. There had been four, but he’d tried one out on an old servant who was always complaining of the stiffness of his joints. Take this, he’d said, and see what it will do for you. He’d been dead before his master had counted to two hundred and twenty. When the finger pointed, Norfolk would swallow the pills.

  “This latest disaster,” Henry said, “has shown me where I stand. This marriage is as cursed as my former one.”

  There was a silence. To Audley and Cromwell the announcement came as a surprise, to Norfolk as a relief. Vengeance was to be wreaked, not upon him, but upon his niece.

  Cromwell, the lawyer, said in a tentative way, “Your Grace, it was regarded as a legal marriage.”

  “By some!”

  He remembered, unwillingly, a few of those who had refused to acknowledge its legality. Fisher, More whose heads had rotted on Tower Bridge, and Catherine…But the memory, instead of softening his temper hardened it. They were all fellow victims.

  “A man is the best judge of his own marriage, and this I know! I was seduced by witchcraft into making it, and it has brought me, and this country, nothing but woe.”

  Cromwell thought—Last time it was his conscience, and my master, Wolsey, fell, tripped on his conscience. I shall not trip over this superstitious rubbish. Put into plain English, he wants to marry Jane Seymour and that suits me well. We’re related by marriage, and if I help with this the whole family will have reason to be grateful to me.

  Audley thought—Wolsey held the Seal and opposed him, and was disgraced; More held the Seal and opposed him and was beheaded. They were both brilliant men, while I can claim no more than my share of good common sense; whatever he proposes, I shall go with him.

  Norfolk thought—I’ve had a lucky escape; he’s blaming circumstance, not me. But this talk of witchcraft, no, I don’t like that. Open to ridicule.

  Henry looked at their faces, all at that moment bearing a strong resemblance to one another, well-fed, molded by self-interest, calculating, shrewd, and wearing expressions of consternation.

  He said, “Well?”

  A ghost with a very similar face moved in the shadows.

  Nobody wished to be the first to speak; nobody knew what, exactly, to suggest. Only Norfolk, with his plain man’s ability to focus attention on one thing at a time, ventured to decry the King’s suggestion without offering an alternative.

  “I must beg Your Grace to abandon the thought of witchcraft. Nobody believes in witches nowadays, and to mention the word in such a connection would make us all the laughingstock of Christendom.”

  “No new experience for me,” Henry said sourly. “And why nowadays when everybody has a smuggled Bible. Witches are mentioned there. It says distinctly enough—‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”

  So that was it! He wanted her dead.

  For a little while nobody spoke and no man looked at another.

  Then at last Norfolk said, “I am sorry, sire, but as a reason that will not do. It would be such bad policy. I beg you to consider. There are so many things these days, things people have believed in for hundreds of years, contemptuously dismissed as superstition. Our Lady’s blood at Walsingham—that is superstition; how can we turn about and ask people to believe that a girl, by witchcraft, cast a spell over the King of England?”

  Henry glared at him.

  “Not so long since when I talked with you on the matter, I suggested two other reasons, and you scoffed at both. I’m beginning to suspect that, despite all your protests to the contrary, you are interested in keeping your niece where she is.”

  “As God is my judge, that is not so. Rid yourself of her, but let it be for some reason which any man of good sense can accept. And,�
�� he added, remembering their former conversation, “one that does Your Grace’s reputation no damage.”

  “Name one,” Henry said challengingly. He looked from one face to another. “Name me one.”

  Cromwell said, “I beg Your Grace’s indulgence, but it seems that I—I do not know about Sir Thomas Audley—am not fully informed. Your Grace and His Grace of Norfolk have formerly discussed this matter?”

  “I know nothing of it,” Audley muttered.

  “I spoke of it, last summer. To you,” Henry said, swinging his stare to Norfolk. “And you opposed me and gave me a lot of advice which I followed to the letter. And with what result? Another stillborn boy! Is that, or is it not, plain proof of God’s displeasure?”

  A great dark wave of depression swamped him and he looked at the three men with hatred. His premier Duke, his Chancellor, his Chief Secretary, and not a glimmer of understanding among the three of them. How would they feel in his place? A king without an heir, with a wife he hated, a sweetheart he longed to marry. And a bad leg!

  He said, suddenly malicious,

  “I shall retire now, and have some attention from Dr. Butts. This plaster is worse than the wound. I’ve told you what I want. You sit here and thresh it out. When you hit upon something that my lord of Norfolk can bring himself to approve, come and lay it before me.”

  Cromwell, the lawyer took charge.

  “My lord, this conversation which took place last summer, the remedies for his case which His Grace suggested and you scoffed at, could you enlighten us thereupon?”

  Norfolk gave as detailed an account of the conversation as he could. His feeling of guilt over the miscarriage, and the King’s accusation about his wishing to keep Anne as Queen, had shattered even his monumental self-confidence and he was pitiably grateful when, at the end of his account, Cromwell said,

  “And you were right. As you were right about the witchcraft. And right, too, about any damage to His Grace’s reputation. These are tricky times. The country is in a state of ferment, one false move now…? He made a movement of his hand.

  Audley said, “But the Queen was never popular, not as the Princess Dowager was. I think, given adequate reason, the people would accept her disposal. I agree with my Lord of Norfolk that witchcraft is ridiculous, and that nobody wishes to hear any more about precontract, or consanguinity. So what have we left?”

  The answer formed itself, out of thin air.

  Adultery!

  Not one of them had actually moved, yet they seemed to have drawn together, and Norfolk when next he spoke did so almost in a whisper.

  “Against a woman one charge is always feasible, and as often as not, justified.”

  “It means naming a man,” Audley said. “What man?”

  “There,” Norfolk said, “is the irony. My sister is dead, so I will only say that she was notoriously flighty; Mary we all know about; but Anne, though they call her witch and poisoner, has never, so far as I know, been accused of laxity.”

  “That need be no stumbling block,” Audley said. “A simple matter of accusing some man and then extracting a confession. Someone of small importance for preference. Less fuss.”

  At the back of Cromwell’s mind a memory scratched, like a dog seeking admission at a closed door. Shy though, and elusive, sidling away as he sought to call it in. It would come back, as such things often did, just before he fell asleep.

  He said, “Such a scheme involves the King admitting to being cuckolded. I doubt if that will be to his liking.”

  “Rats caught in traps have been known to gnaw off a leg to get free,” Norfolk said brutally. “What other way is open that involves no long-drawn-out litigation, or, and this matters more, loss of popularity for him. The Princess Dowager’s death has stirred many memories, the stillborn boy has started tongues clacking. Now this! Next time he draws attention to his matrimonial affairs it would be strongly advisable that he should appear as the injured party, deeply injured and compelled to take action.”

  Audley said, “With that I agree.”

  Cromwell said, “It is indisputable.”

  Audley was also trying to remember something; a bit of kitchen gossip, little minded at the time. It came back to him; he exclaimed, “I have it!” and then, as the other two men looked at him as though in expectation of a solution of the whole problem, what he had heard seemed so small and frail that he hesitated to expose it. It was a reported speech, and so out of character with the speaker that it seemed very little to go upon. On the other hand, plainly they were here to make a case out of nothing, and this, frail as it was, was better than nothing. Still, he framed what he had to say as a question rather than a statement.

  “Did you ever hear something that the Lady Mary is reported to have said when informed of the birth of Princess Elizabeth?”

  Instantly the thing which had been scratching at the door of Cromwell’s mind came trotting in and settled. But in accordance with his usual policy of caution he said,

  “It has momentarily escaped me. What was it?”

  Norfolk answered. “I remember it. She said, ‘And whom does she resemble? Her father, Mark Smeaton?’ Is that what you have in mind, Audley?”

  Smeaton. Cromwell could see the name and the few words before and after it, standing out from thousands of words that he had read on that same day. “Lord Rochfort said that Smeaton was a poor oaf and was in love with the Lady.”

  He said, “Ah, yes. I remember that, too. But a querulous question, asked in a moment of chagrin, is not evidence, you know.” And nor were a few words exchanged by uncommitted persons and overheard by a spy.

  “It’s something to start with,” Audley said. “I think we must bear in mind that within a short time His Grace has suffered a severe disappointment over this stillborn boy, and a physical injury. He told us, just now, what he wished, and left it to us to find a means of attaining his wish. I think that we should give some proof that we are endeavoring to do so.”

  “I agree,” Norfolk said. “But even you must see that it would be worse than useless to go to him now and say that we have decided that the best thing for him to do is to play the cuckold. He’s like me, a blunt man, no good at dissembling. We must play for time. Say that we are on the track of something that will set him free and lose him no jot of popularity. That should content him for a little. Then the day will come and he will ask, “What?” and then we tell him that it may be possible to prove the Queen an adulteress. What he says then must determine our course.” He added cynically, “My niece may in the meantime have recovered her health, dressed her hair in some new fashion, and renewed the spell he spoke of. We mustn’t be hasty.”

  No, they were agreed there; a show of activity, of willingness, but no haste.

  Yet something had been decided, without debate, without a moment’s consideration. Mark Smeaton was the man.

  XXXVI

  Ah! Mark…

  A time thou hadst above thy poor degree,

  The fall whereof thy friends may well bemoan.

  A rotten twig upon so high a tree

  Hath slipped thy hold, and thou art dead and gone.

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  STEPNEY. MAY 1ST, 1536

  MARK SMEATON, DRESSED IN HIS best, arrived at Cromwell’s house in Stepney, exactly on the stroke of noon. He had been invited to dine with the King’s chief minister, an honor which fell to few men and which was a tribute paid to his genius.

  Delighted as he was by the invitation he did not imagine that Cromwell had asked him solely for his company. He was probably planning some grand entertainment for the coming summer and needed expert advice about the music. But—and this was the delightful part—any ordinary musician of lowly birth would have been told to wait upon the Chief Secretary at nine in the morning, and if he were lucky, be given leave to refresh himself at the buttery on his way out. Mark Smeaton was asked to dine. That was the first token of recognition that had ever come to him from the outside world; it would not, he felt, b
e the last.

  It was the Queen who had first seen in him something out of the ordinary, and for that, as well as other reasons, he loved her. He could not, of course, still worship her as goddess of purity; her first pregnancy had destroyed that bit of fantasy, but he had quickly—to save his reason—built himself another. She was Henry’s unwilling wife; her changing moods, her silences, her wistful looks all stemmed from unhappiness. She was actually in love with him herself, as he was in love with her. But it was a secret, never to be acknowledged even when they were alone together. Once, and once only, he had attempted to speak to her about it and she had rebuffed him; he’d wept over the rebuff until he had thought about it enough to convince himself that she was right. She was wise, she knew the value of silence and secrecy in a love affair which must always remain a thing of the heart and mind.

  To walk along ordinary streets made him feel strange. For years now his life had consisted of his music, and his dreams; he was out of touch with reality. Around the Court he was known and nobody wondered if sometimes he stood stock-still, staring into space; if necessary they’d say, “Wake up, Smeaton,” or joke, “Thinking of a fine tune!” Here in the noisy streets he was jostled; and once a woman with a basket of fish said, “Look where you walk, can’t yer?” in a railing tone.

  The great house, when he reached it, seemed oddly deserted. He had heard that Cromwell, warned by Wolsey’s fall from high estate, lived comparatively modestly; still everyone had servants, and a man of such importance, in a house of this size, must have many. The tall doors, as was customary, stood open, and beyond them the entrance hall was unattended. Surely an invitation to thieves. But while he stood, hesitant, for a moment, a man appeared, from nowhere it seemed; a steward to judge from his black clothes and gold chain. He asked, “Master Smeaton?” and then led the way upstairs, through several well-furnished rooms, none of them occupied, down a few stairs and into a passage, and finally into a room of very moderate size, bare-walled, stone-floored and meagerly furnished with a table against the wall and a few chairs. It had one small window, so high, ill-placed, and thickly barred that on this bright May morning the room seemed full of chill twilight; it was a second before Mark realized that Cromwell was in the room, on the side away from the window, and in his dark clothes, almost lost in the shadow.