King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  “There seems to be a vast number of them,” remarked his Grace, gamely playing up to me.

  “There is one, for instance, who claims a considerable sum for silks,” I said.

  I do not know whether Wolsey really believed that some Fermor agent was waiting there, or whether he was merely embarrassed that I, who had been in their employ, should know of this debt and dare to bait him with it in the King’s presence. He fished in some pocket deep within the folds of his voluminous soutane and threw six golden sovereigns on the flat coping of the wall. It must have been all that he had on him, for at that moment I am sure he would have paid anything to prevent further revelations in his royal master’s presence. “Take these, you impudent knave, and send them all away!” he ordered, turning back hastily in the opposite direction.

  “Then it seems that Hampton is yours, Harry!” I said, batting an eyelid at the grinning King as I gathered up the scattered coins.

  How Thomas Wolsey must have hated the sight of me!

  Left alone with the sovereigns glittering in my palm, I was suddenly reminded of those testing moments at Neston when I had held six of Richard Fermor’s in my hand and been tempted to rob him. It seemed incredible now. A glad sense of spiritual freedom possessed me, and I found myself smiling with grateful affection at the memory of Father Thayne’s words, “That is one dragon which you have slain, Will.” God knows there were many more lurking in my soul needing the attack, but having won for myself some of my first master’s integrity I hurried to divide my takings among the maimed and aged beggars at the King’s gate.

  Most of them knew and seemed to hold me in affection, and while the almoner’s clerk doled out the food I tried to hearten them with a kindly jest or two. And while I stood there beneath the great archway leading to the kitchens a huge bearded man came rolling up to me with a seaman’s gait. “Have you, too, come to say a Deo Gratia?” I asked, thinking that he looked too strong and well fed to be seeking alms.

  “Aye,” he answered. “But for more than bread. For life itself. I am Miles Mucklow, that pirate whose mother begged you to save him from the gallows.”

  “Then be good to her all the days of her life,” I said, recalling the incident. “You have in her a consolation which I lack. But I thought they threw you into the Marshalsea prison in lieu of hanging?”

  “I did not have to serve my time. I had the good fortune to save the prison master from two murderers who beset him and, having use for my strength, he made me one of his gaolers.”

  I told him I was glad to hear it.

  “My life is yours,” he said sententiously.

  “And what should I do with it?” I asked, giving him a friendly shove. “I am at enough pains sometimes to live my own.”

  “The more reason why you should remember me if ever I can be of service to you,” he pointed out, with something of his mother’s flat persistency.

  “I will remember you, Miles Mucklow, if only for your extraordinary name,” I promised, and straightway went indoors and forgot all about him for many a month. For the thoughts and conversation of all of us within the palace were at that time centred upon this so-called “secret matter” of the King’s divorce.

  It was beginning to dawn upon those of us who were nearest to him that he had no intention of contracting the matrimonial alliance with France for which Wolsey was so devotedly trying to pave the way. And that Anne Boleyn was far too clever to allow herself to become his mistress. Of two things I felt certain. She had truly loved Percy of Northumberland, and she would never forgive Wolsey for so brutally breaking off their betrothal, although he had been but acting on the King’s instructions.

  When she first came back from France Anne Boleyn had been a gay, affectionate, high-spirited girl: but now she was growing into a calculating, cynical woman, with a wit as sharp as her pointed chin. With an ambitious father egging her on, she intended to recompense herself for lost happiness with more than a brief, gaudy hour of royal lust to be followed by the obscurity that was now her sister’s. She was attractive enough, God knows, in her slender black and white way, to bewitch a man utterly. But it was now borne in upon us that she meant to keep her virtue until the Tudor’s passion drove him to pay top price for it. Though how she held him off all those months I cannot imagine, for he could have crushed her between his ten strong fingers and was hot with desire for her.

  The Queen herself must have been aware of her skittish maid’s ambition, for I was in her apartments one evening when she and her ladies were playing those new card games which we had from France. The stakes ran high and some of us crowded round to watch. Katherine of Aragon laid down a queen with the face of her late mother-in-law Elizabeth of York painted upon it, as was the fashion. But Anne Boleyn, who was always lucky at games of chance, trumped that high card with the king of hearts, so winning both trick and game. “Ah, my lady Anne, I see that you will have a king or nothing,” said her Grace with a wry smile, motioning to another of her ladies to pay the girl her winnings and rising wearily from the table.

  But the getting of him was to be a more difficult sport, subject to plague and parting and procrastination. And for the poor Queen a long-played-out tragedy, subject to every kind of cruel delay.

  Henry sent envoys to the Pope, entreating his Holiness to sanction a divorce and a second marriage to Mistress Boleyn so that he might beget an heir. And Wolsey, who had so glibly called Anne “a foolish girl about the Court” when rating Percy of Northumberland for wanting her, was obliged to arm them with a wordy testament lauding her gentle birth, her virginity and her virtue. But by the time the earnest prelates reached him poor Pope Clement had fled from the Castello Sant’Angelo in Rome and was the Emperor’s prisoner in Oriento, and could receive them only in the shabbiest of rooms. He promised to send a wise old Cardinal called Campeggio to arbitrate, but so poor was his Holiness’s state at that time that Wolsey had the choir in Canterbury cathedral sing Ora pro papa nostro Clements instead of Ora pro nobis.

  And as if all this was not unfortunate enough for my royal master, here in England we had the plague. I well remember the heat that June, when the Fleet river almost dried up, the street runnels stank and the sweating sickness began to kill off the citizens of London like flies.

  The King was staying at York House, Wolsey’s riverside mansion by Westminster, and I had laid aside my motley and walked along the Strand into London in the hope of seeing my former master. Knowing the great pleasure that this would be to me, Father Thayne had asked one of the Neston grooms to bring me word that Master Fermor would be staying with his sister-in-law and her husband, John Brown, while attending to various affairs in the capital. It was not difficult to find Master Brown’s whereabouts. As became a wealthy merchant whose father had been Lord Mayor, he lived in one of those fine, high-gabled houses in Aldermanbury near the Guildhall—a house all ornamented with richly coloured coats-of-arms and wooden carvings of men mounted on monstrous beasts. A few years ago such solid grandeur would have over-awed me to the point of retreat, but now I gave my name to an obliging servant and was allowed inside to wait, and presently my former master came into the great hall accompanied by two other gentlemen. He did not attempt to hide his pleasure at finding me there, and without any kind of condescension presented me to them. One I recognised instantly as a son of Sir William, from his portrait hanging at Easton Neston, and the other was Master Skevington, a lean, stooping old wine merchant, reported to be of great wealth. Both of them greeted me most pleasantly, making reference to my growing popularity at Court, and then, to my secret delight, excused themselves to Master Fermor as they had to attend some meeting at the Guildhall.

  It was indeed good to be alone with him again. There was an air of solid efficiency about him which struck me afresh after living among the more foppish figures at Court. Although his brown doublet was of the finest Utrecht velvet and his matching hose of the best wool obtainable, he was content to look what he was—a busy merchant and land-owner—rather
than to ape the courtiers, in the manner of his son.

  It was too early in the day for the midday meal to be laid, so we sat at the end of the top table in that comfortable hall with a bottle of the vintner’s own well-chosen wine which Master Brown had, before leaving, called to one of his servants to bring.

  “It seems you have succeeded marvellously with the King, Will,” he said heartily. “We in Northamptonshire are proud of you, and I find that some of your bon mots have already spread to other counties where I do business. You even have some influence with his Grace, my son tells me.”

  “I do at times have his ear, being often alone with him,” I said.“But I would say rather that by some unaccountable favour of God I irritate him less than others.”

  “Which is quite understandable,” said Fermor, with a reminiscent smile. “For you have a way of entering into the lives and loves of others.”

  “Having little of my own!” I thought sadly. And to amuse him rather than to exalt myself I related the incident of milord Cardinal and the creditors at the gate.

  He threw back his head and laughed heartily, but almost immediately spoke with gravity. “Because I brought you to Court, Will, I would not have you ever feel constrained to beg anything for me.Not ever, in any circumstances whatever.”

  And there was Richard Fermor of Easton Neston speaking—the finest master man ever had—as opposed to all those favour-seeking climbers at Court, who so often showed me kindness for their own ends.

  “There can never be any question of obligation or constraint,” I heard myself saying, in the slow way one speaks when digging up a real thought from the banalities cluttering one’s mind. “If you should ever be assailed by trouble, Richard Fermor, it would be to me as my own.”

  And speaking those words I knew that, in a different way, I, too, had grown to the pride of independent manhood. Across our brimming tankards we looked into each other’s eyes and knew that we were no longer master and man, but friends. He stretched a strong brown hand across the polished surface of the table and gripped my bony one. We must have made an incongruous pair. We lifted our tankards and drank, and then fell to talking of more obvious things.

  “I was grieved when Master John told me about the Cast.”

  “It was a bitter blow,” he admitted thoughtfully, “but one of the hazards of commerce. And now the drought of this hot summer is like to spoil our harvest. But I have good men, and by dint of hard work we hope to make up for it next year. In the meantime I am short of ships for wool and wheat and have just gone into partnership with Master Skevington, whom you just now met, in the ownership of two brigs.”

  “I remember that when you first brought me to London he, like Master Pickering, had asked you to be his executor.”

  “So naturally I am assured that he is sound,” grinned Richard Fermor. “Besides which, he is an old friend of my father-in-law.”

  I looked round the handsomely appointed hall. “It was here in his house that Mistress Joanna was to have stayed had she not been taken ill. How is she?” I said, in what sounded almost an ordinary sort of voice.

  “Well and gay as ever. Growing uncommonly beautiful. And quite the woman.”

  “But not yet betrothed?” I forced myself to ask.

  “No. All this Cast trouble put it from my mind. But I must not so selfishly keep her at home much longer. That is one of the things I have come to discuss with the Brown family. She must make a good marriage.” It seemed to me that the sunlit lattices and the diligently polished silver dishes on the sideboard and the fine bright tapestries were all darkening, when a letter with the familiar cock’s-head crest was thrust before my eyes. “Oh, before I forget,”I heard Master Fermor saying, “Joanna asked me to give you this.She sat up late to write it the night before I left.”

  I tried not to clutch at it like a starving beggar at the royal almoner’s bread. A perfectly good leather wallet hung at my belt, but I thrust the precious missive between the buttons of my doublet, warm against my heart. I would save it until I was alone, and live on it for weeks. “And Mistress Emotte? And Father Thayne? And Jordan? And old Hodge?” I gabbled.

  He gave me news of them all, saying that Mistress Emotte was growing less domineering and our beloved Father more frail. And then he rose briskly, reminding me that he had many affairs to attend to and inviting me to accompany him down to the river to take a look at the two ships of which he was now part owner.

  “Must you go down to the docks with all this sickness about?”I demurred.

  “Of course. It is partly what I came for.”

  I swung into step beside him as we went out into the stifling heat and down towards his wharf near the busy steelyard where the Hanseatic traders berthed. “Is it true, all I hear from my London friends about a royal divorce?” he asked anxiously, as we hurried along Thames Street.

  “Too true,” I said, and told him all I knew.

  “But our poor, good Queen. How can he repudiate her after all these years?” he asked, with the bewildered distress which was typical of all who lived too far from Court for the latest news of the matter to be daily meat. “His father would never have arranged her second marriage without the Pope’s consent. He was far too anxious to establish the Tudor dynasty to take any chances. I remember being taken to see him when I was a lad, when he was issuing orders that all merchants’ weights and measures should be strictly checked. A shrewd Welshman if ever there was one. No spectacular figure like his son. But he did more for our trade, with his lively interest in exploring and exporting, than any king we ever had. And now this power-drunk Cardinal-Chancellor ruins our Flemish market by picking war with Spain and then imposing impossible taxes to pay for it.” He stopped to survey the Flemish ships, which were fewer than usual. “And he, an Ipswich grazier’s son, who should know better!” he added with a sigh.

  We were come to the wharf where Master Skevington’s ships lay alongside his own, and after admiring them we bade each other a brisk farewell. Master Fermor was soon aboard discussing the size of hold and quantity of bales, while I was hurrying away to find some unused bollard further along the quay where I could sit alone to devour my lady’s letter.

  It was a very ordinary letter, I suppose—gay with foolish family jokes and practical with everyday happenings. She told me how the pups now had families themselves, how Jordan’s new young clerk always muddled up her household orders, how the honeysuckle was blooming on the wall beyond the herb garden where we used to sit, how dull Christmas had been without me and how often my poor threadbare jests were quoted. Towards the end anxiety for our good Queen crept through, together with Mottie’s fond instructions for my health. But as I sat there, all unaware of contagion and passing wherries, hustling seamen and laden porters, I was back in a world where all in retrospect seemed sunlit, and where I was still affectionately remembered. And my heart sang because Joanna herself still missed me, burning her candle late to bring our minds, if not our bodies, into contact.

  A warning shout and a flung hawser drove me from my borrowed perch. Back from the comparative freshness of the river to York House. Picking my way along narrow riverside lanes towards Ludgate and the Strand, I was glad enough of the shade from closely overhanging upper stories, but not a breath of air stirred beneath them—only the stifling, stench-laden heat.

  Inevitably, with all the coming and going of clerks and messengers and merchants, the plague soon spread to Greenwich. Several of the servants and two of the household died—swiftly and hideously. And the King of England, without waiting for so much as a change of clothing, mounted his horse and hurried off with his wife and his daughter and his physician to the Abbot of St. Alban’s sequestered country place at Tittenhanger.

  Henry Tudor’s fear of sickness was not an edifying sight, and some years later I was to wonder if he had noticed how contemptuously that tall, proud Plantagenet woman, Margaret of Salisbury, looked at him as she stood in the sunlit courtyard bidding a calm farewell to her friend the Queen an
d to her young charge, the Princess.

  To those of us who had scores of times watched him pitting his enormous strength against the finest wrestlers in the country and riding full tilt against deadly opponents in the lists, it seemed incredible that he should behave so anxiously and propitiatingly at Tittenhanger. He had even sent Mistress Boleyn home to Hever, although she was one of the Queen’s ladies. But this may well have been because he loved her and wanted to keep her and her strange beauty safe. Instead of enjoying sports and dancing he was much with his confessor, and used to spend hours helping Doctor Butts to compound ointments and lotions against this sweating sickness. Of an evening he would sit dutifully discussing rather dull subjects with Queen Katherine, and of a morning he would attend Mass with her, as if he were seeking to shelter from the possible wages of sin beneath the wings of her unruffled goodness. But his health remained excellent and, before long, whenever he retired to his own room he would be writing love letters to Hever. That they were impassioned I know because often he would have me play softly to him while he wrote, and I would hear him sigh and see him draw a heart at the bottom of the paper with the lady’s initials within. I believe that for greater privacy he often wrote to her in French, because sometimes he would break off and sit singing one of her favourite chansons in that sweet, soft tenor of his, or speak to me absently in French as though his thoughts lingered in that language. And when news came that, in spite of all his precaution, she and her father were suffering from the sickness he was nearly frantic and sent his own Doctor Butts to her without thought for himself, which showed the extraordinary measure of his love for her.