A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  “If only you had said that to me before!” he cried. “By heavens, madam. I’d have charged alone on Westminster and dragged Tydder off his throne with my own hands. I never knew, did not dare believe … How was I to tell? … Always you held me off. Even when you gave yourself, somehow you held me off with your open eyes. That was no woman but a shell I strove to love. Ay, like a soulless beast were you, a ghost in flesh, a witch who took me for your incubus, your thoughts plainly on other things. I did despise myself for loving you, degraded that I should shame my manhood and take love’s charity given with such indifference and as though in your sleep. You call me weak and say that I lacked courage. You could never have said that until after I met you. It was you, you who turned me weak and made me doubt myself.”

  That there was certain justice in his accusations only increased Katherine’s growing resentment at having been forced to admit her need for his love. Here had she come like some draggletail, pride cast aside that she might demean her womanhood in wooing a man, and the ungrateful beast blamed her for his own pusillanimity. Almost could she have struck him, but she closed her eyes and tried to think calmly. They were watched, from every side were they watched and the tale would be laughed through all the palaces that Master and Mistress Warbeck had met again at last and she had cuffed him like a fishwife.

  “Do not let us argue,” she said, breathing heavily. “Nor must we talk too long lest we be suspected. I like not that fellow there who tries to listen … Move further over, to here … I have only this to say, sir, so listen carefully. In loving friendship I came, offering freedom. For the love of God, speak low!”

  At her cry, he closed his lips which had been about to speak and he searched her eyes to find whether she mocked him.

  “Is this a jest?” he whispered at last. “Would you make merry at me in my misery, offering happiness only to plunge me into hell?”

  “I offer freedom,” she whispered. “I and … and a friend. We have plotted everything. We will be hidden in London after we leave here. Are you closely guarded?”

  “This is a trick,” he said.

  She shivered with impatience but, determined not to return to the queen with a confession of failure, she said in the same low, hurried tone: “All has been arranged. A boat will wait nearby one night when there’s no moon. If you can steal off, I’ll await you there. My absence shall be accounted for and none will seek me, I can promise that. But you … can you steal away without the household knowing of it?”

  “By the Lord God,” he whispered, glaring at her, “if I thought that I could trust you …”

  “I swear it. You can trust me.”

  “And you do love me? Confess you love me.”

  Again, as always, those words stuck in her throat, greatly though she wanted to utter them. But to admit her love was somehow to surrender her spirit, to make herself contemptible in her own eyes, as though she were like any animal-woman, those fools who without shame could look with naked hunger on their lovers. Yet the admission had to be made or he’d not believe the plot. Almost loathing him because he forced her to confess a weakness she had sworn never to show any man lest the words like an evil spell bind him hers forever, “I … I love you,” she said between her teeth; and swung away.

  He caught her in his arms and, before in her surprise she could break free, he kissed her, kissed her as though he could not stop, in his excitement kissing not only her mouth but her chin and her cheeks and her nose and her eyes and her temples and brow. Aghast at this near-rape in sunlight, she fought free and sprang away to glare at him with murder in her eyes. Yea, like a rape it was, her spirit outraged that he should beslobber her in the daylight. People were watching and laughing, she could hear them laughing, and some were clapping and whistling. Never again, she felt, would she be able to hold up her chin at court, hearing always around her that jeering laughter.

  Had she lingered she would have said things that could never have been recalled. Quickly, she turned and, trying not to run in her heavy gown, stumbled back to the palace, almost blind with tears. And once she had turned from him, she was even more furious with herself than she had been with him, because, when she had been leading him as she had plotted, her foolish pride, her prickly vanity, had swung her out of his greedy arms. Did it matter that others laughed because a man should kiss his wife in the open?

  She strove to tell herself that this quarrel would work for the good, that after this no one would suspect them of conspiring to run away together … but she could not be consoled and she wished that only there were some corner in this labyrinthine palace into which she might crawl and weep and weep without being spied on; but there was nowhere she could go. And all her life, unless Perkin could be reconciled and work with her for their escape together, she would remain in such surroundings, in a prison of luxury, spied on, mocked at, and forever unloved.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LOVE’S COVENANT

  IT WAS her unbroken pride, Katherine kept telling herself, not fondness for the man, that kept her balanced feverishly between anger and affection, between the wish to slap and beat the impertinence out of him and the longing to kiss him and to caress the worries from his brow. Not love. Assuredly, not love. Love in women made them either cheerful or melancholy, made them compassionate towards all living things or sent them moping to a corner; and she felt neither cheerful nor melancholic. She was merely restless and irritable, not wishing to talk to others and contemptuous of the twitterings of the queen’s ladies which she had to endure wellnigh from daybreak to the blowing out of the tapers in the ante-chamber where they lay, each on her pallet, with the eldest ladies, called mothers of the maids, to watch that those who were unmarried should remain maids in more than name.

  Amongst them were married women like herself, and they were the queen’s ladies, their position being superior to the maids’ whom they commanded and sharply watched lest they scamp their duties. Not that these duties were many or, arduous. They had merely to wash and dress the queen, to serve her at meals, and to attend her so that she might never be alone. Jailers rather than friends or servants were they in the queen’s eyes, a wall of skirts to keep her from the contagion of ordinary mortals or the touch of any man other than her confessor: When she spoke, they fell respectfully silent, while the lowest of whispers usually reached their sharp ears. Whatever she might attempt to do was watched, commented on and reported eventually to the king. Even in her intimate moments, they were present as though the queen were some gigantic baby incapable of looking, after herself; and most of these women, carefully chosen, were no friends of the House of York. Plainly, the King feared to have her alone lest she meet his enemies and talk too plainly of his doings and her suspicions; and Katherine recalled how, against all precedent, during her coronation he had watched from behind a lattice. Previously, he had warned her that he would be there, noting her every gesture, so great was his mistrust, so well did he understand how she hated him, the murderer of her brothers.

  Nevertheless, despite his royal surveillance, there were times when the queen could converse with Katherine alone, and amongst her ladies there were a few whom she could trust to carry messages to friends outside. Delicately did she have to step amidst daggers; and in her pleasure in outwitting her husband-enemy, enthusiastically she schemed for Katherine’s freedom and happiness. Because of this, Katherine could not confess the truth of that unhappy meeting with Perkin near the bowling-alley.

  This intrigue by proxy had made the queen appear younger, as though it were her own escape with a lover that she planned. Often, not too often to excite suspicion or jealousy in the other women, she had Katherine sleep with her that they might whisper like two girls in a convent speculating on the pleasures of becoming a wife. And the queen’s enthusiasm excited Katherine, although she had small faith in her future, not fully trusting Perkin’s resolution. The man was a coward, a coward who feared a woman … yet when like a savage he had caug
ht her that, day in the daylight, kissing her as though he would eat her, certainly he had shown no fear of her displeasure … yet that act of disrespect, that denial of her noble birth’s semi-divinity, deserved punishment that he might be made to remember that she was sibling to a king while he was of mere merchant-stock.

  Yet felicitous would it have been to her had she felt herself capable of full surrender. Other women paraded their subjugation, glorying in their invisible chains of amorous slavery. When, after the king, the gallants entered the queen’s chambers, the women immediately altered. Pert girls turned themselves into shy damsels at a blink; ruttish women acted primly; unexcitable ladies became more demure, and some paraded their wit when they had no other charms; but all of them, some crudely, some subtly, altered once the men had entered. Bosoms out-thrust, they swaggered; or they moved as though on skates or had no legs to bend under their skirts; and shrill voices were hushed, while talk of pimples, itches, aches and ailments changed to discussion of some dance or sport or of worship of the saints. Gladly thus did they submit to male tyranny, renouncing their female natures to pretend awe with giggles and sighs and smiles and wriggles before their arrogant masters. Katherine sneered and felt at times that she detested her own sex with its smug-faced acceptance of inferiority under the constant scolding of the church and the jail of man-made laws. Like bitches, they must fawn, accepting a caress or a cuff at his lordly whim. They must not ride astride but seated in a chair or on a hard pillion at their master’s back; they must not play tennis or any other active game which men kept to themselves. Even in the dance, she was expected to avoid any violent twists and leaps, while certain musical instruments, the tabor, the drum, the flute or the trumpet were considered too boisterous for her delicate fingers or lips. All that she was allowed to do in her small world, fenced in with courtesy, was to read a little, to play on a few instruments such as the lute or the harp, to dance decorously, if skilfully; and sadly little else. Almost all other things had been stolen for the men’s world from which she was shepherded that she might remain his toy, the smiling mirror to his vanity, his bedizened slave and the envelope for his children.

  Rage though she might within herself, withdrawing her spirit haughtily when in men’s company, Katherine found herself often envying these pliant, happy fools. For usually they were happy. No doubt of it; they were content with their submission like sows in slime. At the sound of a man’s approach, they reared like salt bitches hearing their master’s step, their eyes shone, they bit their lips softly to redden them, and glanced anxiously towards any mirror that might be near. Fools; fortunate fools …

  Why did it seem that she alone amongst them had this stiffness in her muscles which hardened the flesh at a man’s touch? She could not understand because, alone with her husband in the dark, she had suffered no revulsion. Even then, however, there had been something in her spirit that had been aghast at any sound or movement of pleasure which, she had felt, would have been like a betrayal.

  Her stern upbringing, the devotion to chastity with fear of men’s brutal lusts and indifference to her soul which had been preached at her from early years, had globed her in invisible armour as though her skirts were forged of iron. She had been proud of this virtue, considering herself superior to other women, but now she discovered that this moral superiority was deliberately rejected and despised by these gay ladies. They did not respect her for her continence and virtuous conversation and her contempt for man’s power. Rather did they pity her as though she were some maimed thing, morally disfigured, because she was deprived of love. And, to her horror and despair she caught herself wondering whether they were not right to look at her askance. Women unloved grew notoriously vinegarish and took to wearing hair-shirts and to whipping themselves that they might conquer their starved bodies and please God with misery. Or they remained locked within themselves with the acid of self-regretting, like the queen; and, God help her, like herself …

  Had any of these ladies been in her shoes, had they been kissed with such passion, even in daylight, as Perkin had kissed her, they would have been proud, not ashamed of it. They’d have flaunted the insult as proof of their desirability, and for weeks and months would they have prattled of it to annoy their friends. Yet the memory still made her blush and wriggle.

  But at night, concealed in the friendly dark while listening to the others whispering about her, she could recall that moment without anger, rather wistfully, and pray that should there be a next time she would submit and not be angry with him for it. And she wondered, and feared, whether she would have the strength to show weakness, whether she would ever be able to take him into her arms, without embarrassment kissing him, her spine no longer rigid like a stretched bow, and her muscles relaxed.

  This was an amorous little world in which she was forced to live. These women, locked most of the time away from men, seemed to exhale desire like perfume from flowers, whether they were merry or melancholy, tussling like boys together, pinching and slapping, whispering into one another’s hair, or sitting in pensive silence or sighing over their embroidery or a book of hours. The weather had become hot and at night the windows were closed to keep out poisonous vapours. Although most of them went naked to bed, a few only retaining their smocks, often was it difficult to sleep in the perfumed dark. Struggle though she did to keep out of her heart this atmosphere hot with dreams, Katherine could not escape, and too often, to her exasperation, she found her mind picturing scenes with Perkin in the past and future.

  And there was always the queen to prick her towards action, while in some extraordinary fashion these days she seemed always to be meeting Perkin. This, however, she learned, was not so surprising as she had believed. He had been moved from his lowly quarters to lodge with the queens pages close to the queen’s apartments. Therefore it was natural that they should often meet, although rarely they spoke beyond words of courtesy. How could they speak when they were never alone and they knew that the court still laughed at the tale of how she had fled from under his kiss? Haughtily at first she looked at him that he might realize how he had displeased her, and she choked with passion when he met her scorn with a sardonic smile and a bow.

  Before his mockery, the haughtiness began to ebb out of her heart and she wondered, with growing fear she wondered, whether she had finally lost him through her irascibility. He made no attempt to seek her out; he did not gaze fondly on her when they met, nor peer into her bosom; he grinned and walked by as though she were any court wagtail not worth the winning. Quickly had he responded when she had dangled a promise not only of escape from Sheen but of a return to marriage with her, and merely because she had shown an honest woman’s repugnance at being handled and smouched in public, now he avoided her. A true lover would have been on his knees to implore his lady’s forgiveness; but it seemed, she sighed, that such true lovers dwelt only in the past, in old romances, and were not at this modern mercenary court where women’s and men’s honour could be cheaply purchased.

  That he, the hunter, should avoid her, the huntress, was an added exasperation because, when she failed to encounter him, she felt absurdly disappointed. Not that she wished to see him, she would argue, but only by witnessing her resentment could he be able to realize the great loss he suffered through his barbarity. But when he was not to be found, or when he turned his back or kept on talking with someone else while she was present, how could he be made to understand how she despised him? Besides, there was the queen growing more urgent every night that the time be settled for their escape, for Katherine had been unable to confess to her that she and Perkin were not friends again.

  If he would not come to her, she decided, she would have to go to him; and later would she make him pay for that; but the task was not so simple a one as she had hoped. Having once been wounded by her, Perkin made it plain that he was not going to allow her to wound him again. For so long had she held him off, humiliating his love by treating him almost as a stranger in her ar
ms, that now he took revenge. He smiled and bowed and turned away as though his heart, not hers, were the self-sufficient one.

  It was when she found him whispering to another woman — a woman she. had always despised as a many-lovered rogue with “whore” writ large in every glance she gave, and in every wanton movement of her body — that with panic she realized that he might be seriously lost to her. Men had warned her that there could be an end to cruelty, that, no matter how loving a man, he must in time weary of a mistress who continually rejected him. She had believed they teased her, wishing to frighten her into saying Yea; only now, alas, she discovered that she had no other arts save scorn in love. She could not be playful, coy or yielding. Desperately, she watched the other ladies at their tricks, hoping to learn from them, and knew that never would she be able to act in such a fashion. She was different from these others. Once had she been proud of that difference, feeling superior; now was she furious at the thought and even began to feel that she must be less than some hen-brained flirt-jill who could yet make a sane man crow at her tail. What was this sensuous jewel that she lacked? It was not only Perkin who had cause to be ill-tempered because of her contempt. Others also had begun to avoid her as though an invisible lazar-bell sounded in her skirts. This had she smugly believed proved that she was of finer clay than other females, but now she wondered whether it did not mean that, despite her beauty, she was a failure in her femininity. That she was outwardly beautiful and therefore desirable, she knew, few other women, if any, at this court being so beautiful; yet the men, though they looked at her with admiration, did not seek her out with desirous eyes as they sought out women of lesser charms. The horror of this discovery made her ill and set her temples throbbing. It was not her superiority, it was her inferiority that had set her apart.