King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  “And my mother, God rest her sweet soul, ever upheld her,”explained the King. “Which is why the old crone is so cantankerous today.”

  “Probably her Grace the late Queen Elizabeth knew that Mother Jack would give her life for you,” I suggested.

  “As she certainly would for her nursling Ned today,” agreed Henry, considerably mollified. “That being the reason why I gave her the appointment and why I allow myself to be so—so hectored.”

  “Or because the Welsh dragon has met his match?” I murmured among the general laughter. But he preferred not to hear my impertinence, and spent the rest of the morning talking kindly to his elder daughter, whose docile submission must have soothed him as much as it saddened me.

  I stood at a respectful distance watching her. Mary was a woman now, far more grave and reserved than nature had ever intended her to be. Gone were all the sparkle and spontaneity of her happy childhood, leaving her face plain as her mother’s, and pitifully wary. Only her brown eyes were still beautiful, and they were sad and shamed. Shamed because at long last she had been driven to deny the Pope’s supremacy and her own legitimacy, to the end that she might sometimes come home and receive a breath of family kindness for which she, of all lonely people, yearned. Yet she must have known that Cromwell’s spies were nosing about her household, whether here at Hunsdon or elsewhere, making sure that she did not go back on the document which she had been made to sign. Even her attractive husky voice had grown gruff with the strain of argument, and only when she bent over her small half-brother’s cradle did the beauty come back into her sallow face.

  “We must be getting back to Whitehall, dear daughter, lest I find friend Cromwell waiting at the gates with some fresh foreign bride,” Henry excused himself with heavy humour, as soon as we had dined.

  “At least the man works while most of us go hunting or sit rhyming,” Surrey had the grace to say.

  “And brings in the money,” added the King succinctly.

  Although most people hated Thomas Cromwell, he was always pleasant enough to me. On the rare occasions when he had time to notice me, that is. Perhaps he thought it as well to keep in with someone who, however unimportant, had the King’s affection. But I sometimes wondered whether he remembered how I used to bait his former master whose interests he had served faithfully until the end.

  “Do you ever hear from Easton Neston these days, Somers?” he asked, a few days after the Hunsdon visit, when I happened to be standing beside him in a small ante-room waiting for the King to come from Mass.

  It sounded like one of those casual questions which any important personage might put to a subordinate to avoid an awkward silence during some moment of propinquity. Yet, as his bull-like eyes swivelled round upon me, I felt an illogical conviction that he knew of the letter from Joanna lying warm and cherished against my breast. Could one of his ubiquitous spies have been down at the wharf waiting hopefully for Bart Festing, Master Fermor’s London agent, who had just come down from Neston? But, of course, that was absurd. Of what possible interest could my leisure hours be to a busy man like Cromwell? “Quite recently,” I replied.

  “And where is that modish son of his these days? The one who married so well into the Vaux family and used to come to Court with milord sometimes.”

  “He has been living in Calais for some time now so that he can attend to that end of the business,” I told him.

  “I am sure he must be much needed there,” said Cromwell pleasantly. “Only last time I saw him he was telling me how enormously their trade with Europe was expanding, and how much spice his father was importing for this country from the East. A pleasantly frank young man. Years ago a colleague of mine, John Clark, met him in Florence, Somers, when on milord Cardinal’s business, and young Fermor was able to help him out of a temporary embarrassment by a loan of two hundred pounds, in return for which we ordered some expensive silks from him.”

  I recalled perfectly how Wolsey had failed to pay for the silk, and how I had ridiculed him into doing so. Probably Cromwell himself had seen the entries in the York House ledgers. If he hoped that I would enlarge upon the Fermors’ growing profits from spices as glowingly as Master John had done, I did not rise to the bait. “The Fermors’ main export is wool—to Flanders,” I said non-committally. And then realised that as the Vicar-General of England had begun life in the wool trade he was probably able to assess the value of the Fermor exports quite as well as I. My mind went back to a day when he had leaned with me on the harbour wall at Calais watching the loading of Fermor bales into Fermor ships, and telling me that as a young man he had owned a fuller’s mill on Putney Heath.

  The man knew too much about everything. For the first time I looked at him with real dislike. At his pudgy, expressionless face, his capable hands and the black jowl that always looked as if it needed shaving. I did not know how soon and how thoroughly I, too, was to hate him. Nor do I know to this day what half-understood warning made me take my afternoon stroll in the direction of the wharves that day. To watch this clever painter Holbein painting one of his Hanseatic merchant friends at the steelyard, I probably told myself. But I meant to see Bart Festing, too. To repeat to him that oddly disturbing conversation perhaps. To assure myself that all was well.

  I had barely turned into Thames Street when I saw him, riding head down against the wind towards me. Clattering like a madman along the narrow cart-obstructed street. Had I not shouted out his name he would have passed me, blindly. As it was, to my astonishment he slid from his saddle and grasped me by the arm, almost pinning me against the steelyard wall. “God be praised, Will, what sent you? Just now when I had to see you,” he gasped almost incoherently.

  “What is it?” I asked, seeing the pallor of his face and trying to steady him.

  “Old Jordan has just ridden down from Northamptonshire,” he gasped. “They’ve arrested Master Fermor.”

  “Arrested him?” I repeated stupidly.

  “This Praemunire thing—”

  “Praemunire! But he is one of the King’s most loyal subjects. You know how careful he has always been to conform, and how he never discusses religious matters except among his closest friends.”

  “I know,” agreed Bart Festing. “But last week he rode into Buckingham to visit poor Father Thayne in gaol. He’d heard the old man was sick with the damp and cold, and took him a couple of his own warm shirts and some money for better food. He has done it before, often. As you probably know, he used to be a sheriff of Buckingham himself, and the present sheriff, like a good friend, has always turned a blind eye. So who can have made trouble? Who could have seen, right away there in Buckinghamshire?”

  “One of Thomas Cromwell’s spies,” I said, and my voice rasped with harshness. I walked back with him in silence to his familiar work-room on the busy, sun-lit wharf near Dowgate. I was piecing things together. These same bales and ships all those years ago in Calais harbour, John Fermor’s bragging tongue, all those apparently casual enquiries.

  Faithful, irascible old Jordan was awaiting us, head in hands, worn out by his anxious, unaccustomed journey. “They are bringing him to London for his trial,” he told me, as we came in.

  “And Mistress Joanna?” The question shot from my lips like ball from cannon.

  “She wanted to follow him.”

  “Alone?”

  “Mistress Emotte is too sick with a bout of fever to accompany her. So the Master bade her stay and await the result of the trial at home. What do you suppose the verdict will be?”

  Bailiff Jordan had many a time set me in my place in the old days, but we were all in this together and he was looking to me for help. I laid a comforting hand on his bowed shoulder. “There is only one kind of verdict when Cromwell’s agents prosecute,”I said.

  He clutched at my hand and slewed round towards me. “Could you not speak to the King, Will?” he entreated. And I saw that the more sophisticated Festing’s eyes were entreating me, too, albeit more doubtfully.

 
; I shook my head sadly. “There are two things no one dares importune the Tudor about these days—his treasury and his supremacy of the Church.”

  “But what has riding a dozen miles or so to do an act of Christian kindness got to do with denying the supremacy of the King?” burst out Festing, slumping down before a desk piled with bills of lading.

  “Nothing, my good Bart,” I agreed bitterly. “Except that it acknowledges the supremacy of Christ. But it is the sort of pretext being used daily to scoop a successful man’s money into the Treasury.”

  “And what will happen to all this?” he asked. His gaze wandered wretchedly over his samples and ledgers and beyond them to the busy porters, all unaware of disaster, still bringing merchandise ashore from hold to warehouse. It was his commercial life, and I should have been full of compassion for him. But my heart was torn for Richard Fermor, my mind already making wild plans for the protection of his unmarried daughter.

  IF I COULD NOT go to the King about Richard Fermor’s unjust fate, I went to Cromwell—which I hated doing far more. But one might as well have looked for mercy in a stone wall. Particularly at a time when he dared not relax his efforts to fill the royal coffers. Edward Seymour, recently created Earl of Hertford, was proving himself a sober and exceptionally able young man. Not just another modish, jumped-up poet courtier, but someone with a mind almost as astute as Cromwell’s own though linked with a finer conscience towards humanity. A man, who, with the King’s favour, might one day prove a serious rival.

  “Set your mind at rest, my dear Somers, if you formed some attachment while you were at Neston,” he told me, probably without any intention to insult. “Everything will be done decently and in order. When a landowner is arrested my men always have strict orders not to molest the womenfolk or disturb the household in any way until after the trial.”

  “And you are always quite certain which way the verdict will go?”

  “And as for the servants,” he went on, ignoring the sarcasm of my question, “those of good character will no doubt be taken on by whoever the property passes to.”

  “How pleasant for them!” I said, wishing for once that I had my fool’s bladder to blow a rude noise on.

  But there was no perturbing Master Cromwell, and at least I learned from him the time and place fixed for Richard Fermor’s trial.

  Plagued by rheumatics as he was, old Jordan had hurried back to Neston to try to calm the frightened farmhands and household, but Festing and I sat through the brief travesty of a trial in London. We heard our master—obviously still unable to believe that his whole life’s work and all he owned could be jeopardised by so small a charge—speaking out bravely in his own defence. He scorned to deny his errand of mercy to a sick and beloved priest who had offended against the King’s Act of Supremacy, but maintained his own loyalty, giving the names of influential friends who would testify to his orderly private life and offering the court opportunity to inspect his books in proof that he had always made his money honestly and paid all taxes except those personally remitted to him by the King himself. I was on my feet, hoping to be allowed to bear witness to this. But when Cromwell prosecuted for the Crown, no defence was of any avail. The prosecution called witnesses to prove that the accused had taken money and clothing to a proscribed priest, and that was enough. The judge pronounced a verdict of imprisonment and confiscation to the Crown of all possessions and estates under the Act of Praemunire. And that honest and good-living man, Richard Fermor, was hustled out of court like a criminal. And taken under guard to the Marshalsea prison. We had not even been allowed to speak to him.

  “I would not give a thieving scullion such short shrift! It was scarce worth the pain of coming!” muttered Festing furiously, as the court began to clear.

  “At least he saw us and knew how much we cared,” I said, still staring at the empty place where the condemned man had stood.

  Festing kicked at a stool on which one of Cromwell’s lawyers had sat. “You were fortunate to change to the King’s service before this black day came,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” I answered, realising that at least I would not suddenly find myself out of good employment as he would. “Why do you not sail to Calais, Bart? As things are here Master John would be a fool to come back, and you could help him to salvage and consolidate what remains of the business over there.”

  “Calais is but another part of England,” he demurred.

  “True. But although the Fermors’ is a family business, I doubt if Cromwell will pursue the matter beyond these shores.”

  “I think you are right, Will,” he agreed, after a moment’s consideration. “I will warn my wife and try to sell or rent my house. At least,” he added, with a bitter laugh, “I shall have no difficulty in getting passage aboard any of a dozen good ships whose masters are well known to me.”

  “But will not your house be confiscated along with the other Fermor property in Thames Street?” I asked, knowing that it stood alongside.

  “That they cannot do. Master Fermor gave it to me for a wedding gift, and the deeds are in my money chest.”

  It was for his ability to make quick decisions that Master Fermor had particularly valued him, but before leaving the almost deserted court-room I laid an urgent hand on his arm. “But first, as you are my good friend, will you do something for me?” I entreated.

  “You know I will. With all my heart,” he promised, surprised.“It is so seldom that you ask anything. What is it, Will?”

  “Ride to Neston—now—to-night. I have to entertain at this banquet for the envoy returning from Cleves and cannot get away. Break the evil news to them and bring Mistress Joanna back with you.”

  “Here—to London—though she surely will not be allowed to see her father once he is in prison? Will she come?”

  “She will come if you tell her that I ask it.”

  He gave me a long look. Perhaps on his business visits to Neston he had gleaned from Emotte how it was with us. Like a good friend he nodded assent, and asked no further questions.

  “Take her to Master John Brown’s house in Aldermanbury. Tell her I will come to her there.”

  We came out into the street, where people were still standing about discussing the trial in shocked voices. “I must fetch my horse from Thames Street and will at the same time tell Gerda to begin packing up our possessions,” he said.

  “Give her my humble duty,” I said, remembering her as a kindly, comely Dutch woman whom he had married when on some business journey to Bruges. “And, Bart, if Mistress Emotte is still unfit to travel, I pray you make sure before leaving Neston that she is safely housed with some of their good friends.” I felt as if I were playing the role of one of Richard Fermor’s absent sons. But I had to hurry back to Whitehall. To be funny at dinner. To help Thurgood prepare a masque mounted in the Flemish style, since everyone was talking of the possibility of a royal union with Cleves. To think up some fresh means of entertaining Dr. Nicholas Wotton, the returning envoy, after supper, together with all the distinguished guests who were agog to hear his news. The King’s revelry must go on. And, oddly enough, judging by the bursts of laughter, I must have been at the top of my form. Or perhaps it is easy to be funny about brides. Or, again, it may just have been that Henry was delighted with the miniature which Hans Holbein had been sent to paint of the Duke of Cleves’s sister, and was in merry mood at the prospect of marrying again.

  It was past midnight before I got away to the small room which was all the privacy I could call my own when at Whitehall. Wearily I flung myself on my bed, with mind at liberty again to go over the morning’s devastating events. I wondered how much Richard Fermor would sleep in the Marshalsea. And how I could manage to get entry there. I had heard that it was strictly controlled by the King’s Marshal, and that, because most of the prisoners were political, visiting was seldom permitted. And there seemed to be something else which I had heard about this grim prison over on the south bank, but it eluded me. For the first time I tr
ied to realise what the full repercussions of this blow would be to Richard Fermor himself and to so many people whom I knew and had affection for.

  A ship’s bell clanged dismally as she nosed her way by lantern light down-river into the Pool. Presently the tramp of martial feet crossed the outer courtyard. The guard had changed and all was quiet again when I found myself sitting up, gripping the sides of my wool-stuffed mattress with excitement and staring wide awake into the darkness. Some train of thought about the Marshalsea began to stir. Back over all the scenes and people, the pageants and the executions, to the time when I was new at Court. When Henry was younger and less autocratic. Something to do with a woman—a ragged woman carrying—incongruously enough—a richly embroidered cushion. I had been resting on a stile by the river…. Gradually it all came back to me. That woman whose pirate son was condemned to death, and who had been so insistent that I should do something to save him. And afterwards the man himself, a great muscular fellow standing among the daily crowd of hungry beggars, come to the gates of Greenwich to thank me. Had he not told me that a merciful or short-staffed head gaoler had given him work at the Marshalsea, of all places? And had he not muttered that usual formula of gratitude, “If ever there should be anything that I can do for you—”? Well, there was certainly something which he could do for me now. If he were still there. And if only I remembered his name. But so many years had passed, and a King’s jester meets so many strangers. Strain my memory as I would I could not recall the name.

  At the palace all the talk was of preparations for this marriage with Anne of Cleves. Neither Cromwell nor anyone else had time to discuss an extra prisoner in the Marshalsea. Cromwell was Chancellor of the Exchequer now and all manner of other titles had been heaped on him, such as Earl of Essex, Great Chamberlain of England and Governor of the Isle of Wight. And had he confined himself to refilling the Exchequer from Church lands and private estates here at home he would have remained the invaluable King’s whipping boy which he was. Men hated him for acts from which a pleasant, smiling King benefited, and the King could never have found anyone so well trained to replace him. But foreign policy was, I submit, beyond his money-making mind. Lest France and Spain should combine against England, he persuaded his master into a Lutheran alliance with insignificant Cleves. Religious parties were all one to Cromwell, but he stood as the man behind the marriage and, as I should have thought he might have learned from Wolsey’s fall, it is dangerous work meddling with Henry Tudor’s private life where women are concerned.