The King's Secret Matter

by Виктория Холт

  The servant was delighted to be so selected and assured the Cardinal that the Genoese merchant should have the best room in his house, and all the respect deserved by one whose merchandise pleased the Cardinal.

  Wolsey nodded his approval in a manner which implied good services would not be forgotten.

  And so the agent of Louise of Savoy—who was naturally the servant of François Premier—had his lodgings in London; and the Cardinal often called him to Hampton Court, where they would remain together and alone, sometimes for hours at a time.

  * * *

  THE KING CAME riding to Greenwich from Hever Castle where he had been spending a night as the guest of Sir Thomas Boleyn. As soon as he reached the Palace he summoned the Cardinal to his presence.

  He greeted Wolsey with the pleasure he habitually bestowed upon his favorite minister, but there was a change in his manner which baffled the Cardinal.

  He seemed almost subdued, which was rare in Henry; he looked more like a boy than ever and there was a certain gentleness about him which the Cardinal had never seen before.

  “’Twas pleasant in the country,” he said. “I declare Boleyn’s castle of Hever is a restful place in which to spend a night.”

  That was strange also. When had Henry ever asked for restfulness?

  “Your Grace took but a small party with you?”

  “’Twas enough. I declare, Thomas, I am weary of ceremony on every occasion.”

  “’Tis pleasant for Your Grace to escape now and then; and may I say that it is doubly pleasant for your servant to see you again.

  “Good Thomas,” murmured the King, but the Cardinal felt that his attention was elsewhere.

  Was this a good time to let him know that it might not be difficult to make peace with France, to whisper in the royal ear those first drops of poison regarding the Emperor? It seemed likely while he was in this gentle mood.

  “Boleyn entertained me royally at his castle,” went on Henry musingly. “I thought I would show my gratitude by granting him certain land. You might see what we could do for him.”

  “It shall be so, Your Grace.”

  “I had thought of elevating him to the peerage…as Viscount Rochford.”

  “This would take time, Your Grace.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Henry testily. “But it is in my mind to do so.”

  “He is a fortunate man to have found such favor in Your Grace’s eyes, particularly as his daughter so recently offended you.”

  “Ah…the girl.” The King began to smile. “A haughty wench, Thomas. I saw little of her during my stay at Hever.”

  “She was absent from her home?”

  “Indisposed.”

  “Your Grace was doubtless glad not to be bothered by the presence of the girl, preferring the company of her father.”

  “Bold,” mused Henry, “and haughty.”

  “Your Grace believes this indisposition to have been sulks on account of banishment from Court. The saucy wench should be clapped into prison for behaving so.”

  “Nay nay,” said the King. “I do not disturb myself with the vagaries of girls. I believe her to have declared she will be revenged on you, Thomas.”

  Thomas laughed. “Should I tremble, Your Grace?”

  “I notice she has flashing black eyes and the look of a witch. She blames you for sending Percy back to his father.”

  “She should blame Percy for being so easily persuaded, or herself for choosing such a lover.”

  “As usual, Thomas, you speak good sense.”

  Wolsey bowed his head in appreciation of the compliment and went on: “Your Grace, I confess I am disturbed about the war.”

  “Ah yes.” The King seemed reluctant to end the discussion of his trip to Hever.

  “I do not trust the Emperor.”

  “I begin to agree with you, Thomas.”

  “We have been pouring our resources into war and have so far not gained a foot of French soil. If Your Grace considers our expenditure…”

  “I am considering it, Thomas, considering it with great sadness.”

  “Look at the progress the Emperor has made. He has driven the French from Italy. But what gain to us is that? He has strengthened his frontiers in the Netherlands and Spain. That is good…for the Emperor. I would say, Your Grace, that in Charles we have another such as Maximilian.”

  Henry nodded and his face darkened, as he remembered how he had been duped by Charles’s grandfathers—the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon.

  “I had hoped much from the rising of the Duke of Bourbon against François,” said Henry.

  “And we hoped in vain, Your Grace.”

  “Well, Thomas, what can we do?”

  “I should be ready to forget all that we have spent on this enterprise and put out feelers for a separate peace with France.”

  The King’s frown sent a shiver of alarm through the Cardinal. Fleetingly he wondered what Henry’s reaction would be if he discovered that Giovanni Joachino Passano paid regular visits to him, not to sell him cloth but to carry letters back and forth between the chief of the King’s ministers and the mother of François. One thing was certain; he was playing a dangerous game.

  The King was like a child who had set his heart on a certain glittering bauble; in this case the conquest of France. Such a project was an impossibility—Wolsey knew.

  “Dispatches from the Emperor have been increasingly gloomy, Your Grace.”

  Henry stuck out his lower lip like a petulant child.

  “I have poured money into this project,” he began.

  “And the Emperor asks for more, Your Grace. He says that unless we provide it the entire enterprise may be fruitless. It would appear now that even the Pope…” Wolsey’s voice was faintly bitter. “…whom he helped to elect, is uncertain of him!”

  “Ah, the Pope!” said Henry, and an alert expression had crept into his face. He knew it had been a bitter disappointment to Wolsey that he was not elected, and he wondered how he himself would have fared, robbed of the services of his Chancellor. It seemed to him in that moment that there was a tinge of disloyalty in the Cardinal’s disappointment. “You were overeager to leave us, Thomas,” he said with a trace of petulance.

  “Solely that I could have worked for England from the Vatican.”

  Henry was sorry for his suspicions. “I believe that to be so,” he said. “Well, it did not happen as we wished it, Thomas. But Clement is a good friend to you and to me.”

  “He could not be the friend of one and not the other,” said Wolsey.

  “’Tis true,” answered the King. “And I rejoiced when he confirmed your Legateship for life, and gave you the Bishopric of Durham.”

  “Your Grace is good to me.”

  “Well, you have a King and a Pope as your good friends, Thomas; I wonder which you value the more.”

  “Your Grace does not need me to answer that question.”

  Henry smiled well pleased, and the Cardinal knew that no rumors had reached him concerning the French spy in their midst.

  “Then Your Grace would not be prepared to think of peace?”

  “Thomas, there is one reason why I stand firmly with the Emperor and, no matter what our losses, there I shall remain. Do not forget that he is betrothed to the Princess Mary. While he adheres to that promise we must forgive him if he breaks some others.”

  The Cardinal then understood that he must continue to work in secret.

  * * *

  THE QUEEN and her daughter sat with some of the women of the Court busily working with their needles. As they bent over their work one of their number read to them from Thomas More’s Utopia; this was a custom which Katharine remembered from the days of her childhood, when her mother had sought to have the hands usefully employed while the mind was exercised.

  Katharine’s life was becoming increasingly busy. She spent a great deal of time with her daughter, whose education was, she believed, in constant need of her supervision. Her daughter was
her greatest joy, and while she had her with her she could not be unhappy. Mary was now nine years old and it was distressing to remember that in three more years she would be expected to leave her home and go to the Court of the Emperor. Three years was such a short time. But I must not be selfish, thought the Queen. My daughter will be a great Queen, and it is not for me to regret that which is necessary to make her so.

  Nevertheless, she wished to have her with her at every moment of the day, so that none of the time which they could spend together would be lost.

  Now they were working on small garments which would be given to the poor women who had babies and no means of clothing them. Katharine was alarmed by the growing poverty among some classes in England; she knew that many people were wandering from town to town, village to village, homeless, sleeping in barns and under hedges, working when they could, eating when they could; and, as was inevitable in these circumstances, now and then stealing or starving to death.

  Thomas More, when he came to her intimate suppers, had on several occasions spoken of his growing anxiety about the new conditions in England. He had pointed out that the prosperity of the upper classes was in some measure responsible for the poverty of the lower. There was a great demand for fine cloth which meant that many of the landowners, deciding to keep more sheep, took small-holdings from the men who had hitherto farmed them, and turned them into grazing land. The land which had been rented to them lost, turned out of their cottages, hundreds of these small farmers had become vagabonds.

  Thomas More had said that the enclosing of land had so far affected no more than about five percent of the entire population but he felt that to be a great deal.

  Katharine was therefore doing all she could to right this evil, and she had appointed her Almoner to distribute funds from her own purse to the poor. She set aside a regular portion of her income for charity and took a great pleasure in providing the needy with clothes and food. Thus, temporarily, she abandoned the tapestry which she delighted to work and set herself and her women making garments for the poor.

  Thus they were sitting together when a page entered to tell the Queen that the Seigneur de Praet, the Emperor’s ambassador in England, was without and begging an audience.

  As it was rarely that she had an opportunity of seeing her nephew’s ambassador, she said that she would receive him at once; and this meant the dismissal of all present.

  Seeing the look of disappointment in Mary’s face she took the child’s hand in hers and kissed it. “Go along now for your practice on the virginals,” she said. “When the Seigneur has left I will come and hear how you are getting on.”

  Mary smiled and curtseyed; and the Queen’s eyes remained on her until she had disappeared. Almost before the ladies had all left the apartment the Seigneur de Praet was being ushered in.

  Katharine received him with graciousness although she did not feel the same confidence in him as she could have had in an ambassador of her own nationality. But the Seigneur, as a Flemish nobleman, was preferable, in Charles’s eyes, to a Spaniard. Katharine had to remember that Charles was more Fleming than Spaniard because he had spent very little time in Spain and had been brought up in Flanders, so it was natural of course, that he should choose Flemings rather than Spaniards to represent him.

  The Seigneur was a very grand gentleman and he had already been unwise enough to show his lack of respect for Cardinal Wolsey on account of the latter’s humble birth. It seemed incredible to him that he should be expected to treat with one who, so rumor had it, had spent his infancy in a butcher’s shop.

  As for the Queen, he found her so Spanish in some ways, so English in others, that he had never felt on very easy terms with her. Moreover whenever he had sought an interview he had always found it difficult to reach her; and he suspected the reason. The Cardinal contrived this—and for what cause? Because, for all his outward protestations, he was no friend of the Emperor.

  Now de Praet was excited because he had made an important discovery and was determined at all costs to lay it before the Queen. Strangely enough on this occasion he had found no difficulty in reaching her.

  As Katharine welcomed him and he bent over her hand, one of the women who had been in the sewing party slipped away unnoticed from the group of women who had just left and went swiftly into the anteroom adjoining the Queen’s apartment. There she took up her stand near the door and very quietly lifted the latch so that it was slightly ajar without seeming to be so.

  “Your Grace,” said de Praet, “it is a great pleasure to find myself at last in your presence.”

  “You have news for me from the Emperor?”

  “No, but I have discovered treachery which I must immediately lay before you. Our enemy is working against us. Your Grace knows whom I mean.”

  “The French?”

  “They work continually against us. I was referring to one nearer at home who, while he pretends to be our friend and supports the King’s war, is in fact working against us.” He lowered his voice and whispered: “The Cardinal.”

  “Ah!” said Katharine.

  “It does not surprise you.”

  “Nothing the Cardinal did would surprise me.”

  “What can be expected…he was not born to this.”

  “Do not let us underestimate his skill,” said the Queen. “He is a brilliant man. It is for this reason that we must be very wary of him.”

  “Your Grace will be surprised when I tell you that I have discovered he is in secret negotiations with the French.”

  “Without the King’s knowledge!”

  “That I cannot say, Your Grace, but he is a traitor to my master and your nephew. There is a certain merchant from Genoa, now lodging with one of his servants, and this man is a regular go-between for François and Wolsey.”

  “It is impossible!”

  “Not with such a one. I can tell you we should never have trusted him.”

  “The King knows nothing of this, I am sure.”

  De Praet lifted his shoulders. “It is impossible to know what the King knows, how far Wolsey works in conjunction with His Grace, how far on his own account.”

  “Should not the King be told of Wolsey’s action?”

  “If the King is already aware of these negotiations with France—and we must not lose sight of this—we should be playing into their hands by telling them of our discovery.”

  Katharine was horrified. It seemed to her that Charles’s ambassador was drawing her towards a controversy in which she might well, by supporting her nephew, be obliged to work against her husband. This was reminiscent of those days of humility before her marriage to Henry when her father, Ferdinand, had used her in his negotiations with Henry’s father.

  She said quickly: “I fear my nephew has made promises which he has not kept.”

  “The Emperor is engaged in bitter war and needs all the money he can find to prosecute that war; he has little to spare for bribes.”

  “He has accepted loans and has not repaid them,” Katharine reminded him.

  “He will…in due course. Your Grace knows that he is a man of honor.”

  “I am sure of that.”

  “Then Your Grace will write to the Emperor and tell him of these discoveries? He should be warned.”

  “I could not work against the King.”

  “This would not be so. You would merely be telling him of the Cardinal’s perfidy. Your Grace, it is imperative that he should be aware of this. I myself shall write and tell him, and to stress the urgency of the situation I beg of you to do the same.”

  “I will write to him,” said the Queen.

  De Praet bowed. “If you would do so with all speed I believe you would be doing your nephew a great service.”

  “I will do so without delay.”

  “Then I shall take leave of you that you may lose no time. I do assure Your Grace that the matter is urgent.”

  As soon as he had left her she went to her table and took up writing materials, carefully
considering what she would say to her nephew. She began by imploring him to be frank with her husband, to let him know exactly how the war was progressing, and above all not to make promises unless he was sure he could keep them. She added that the Cardinal was aggrieved because he believed that with the Emperor’s help he might have achieved the Papacy. She implored Charles to be aware of Wolsey who was as vindictive as he was ambitious. There were rumors that he was already pondering the desirability of a rapprochement with the enemy. Charles must not make the mistake of so many who believed that because of Wolsey’s humble origins he lacked ability; rather should he believe that the Cardinal possessed a shrewd and brilliant brain; for the more lowly his beginnings, the greater must be his brilliance, since he had come so far.

  Carefully she sealed the letter and summoned a page.

  One of her women was coming towards her, having slipped unseen from the anteroom wherein she had overheard the conversation between Katharine and de Praet.

  “I want a page to take this to the courier,” said Katharine.

  “If Your Grace will allow me I will take it to him.”

  Katharine handed the letter to the woman, who took it not to the courier, but to another of the Cardinal’s spies. It was not difficult to find one as the Cardinal had them placed in the most strategic positions in the Court, and one of these was undoubtedly the Queen’s household.

  “Take this with all speed to the Cardinal,” she instructed.

  Then she joined the ladies who were stitching together and listening to Utopia.

  * * *

  THE CARDINAL read the Queen’s letter which she had addressed to her nephew. So it was known that he was in negotiation with the French! He did not relish the Queen’s comments about himself; but they did not surprise him for he had long suspected that she regarded him as an enemy.

  It would be unfortunate if his negotiations with Louise of Savoy through Passano were made known to the King by Charles’s ambassador. He did not think this was likely, because his spies were thick about the ambassador and all his correspondence came to Wolsey before it went overseas. It was not difficult to reconstruct the ambassadorial seal; and the Cardinal had felt it was a matter of common sense that he should ascertain what de Praet was writing to his master at such a time.