King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  But what could I care for these things when any hour now I should be seeing the woman I loved? And she must have set out from Neston as soon as she had my message, because Festing, hurrying back to Thames Street to see to his own affairs, sent word that he had left Joanna at the Browns’ house in Aldermanbury. Master Brown and her aunt were away, but the servants were taking good care of her and she was awaiting my coming.

  What could eager lover want for more?

  I rewarded Festing’s messenger extravagantly, called for my horse and clattered through the palace gate and along the frozen mud of the Strand towards the City. A keen north wind nearly caught my cloak from me at street corners, and I thought, “Heaven help that poor Cleves woman if she has to cross the Channel in this gale!” In Cheapside shopkeepers and ’prentices were already decorating their wares with holly, but I scarcely noticed them. Nor anything in the world till I stood in the pleasant room where I had last parted from Joanna, and saw her again. She looked pale and weary, but rose eagerly from her aunt’s chair to welcome me.

  “That we should meet again only when your world is smashed!”I stammered almost incoherently.

  “Yet our meeting is the one thing that can bring me comfort,” she said. “Oh, Will, Will! How could they do such a terrible thing to my father, who was respected and loved by everyone and who cared for all the people he employed?”

  “All of them will suffer as well as you and Emotte and I.”

  “If only I could see him!”

  “I will try to find a way, sweetheart.”

  “Everyone comes to you when they are in trouble, expecting you to perform miracles, do they not, Will?” she asked, with a small, brave attempt at laughter.

  But I, the professional fool, was far from laughter. The decision for our future was firm in my mind. I came close to her and lifted her face to mine. “This time I want you to do something for me,” I said.

  She had regained some of her usual poise. She even smiled, with heart-warming sweetness. “You know that I will do anything, Will. But what can I do for anyone—now?”

  “Marry me.”

  The two words hung momentarily in the quiet room. Her whole mind had been wrapped in bewilderment and grief.She looked up at me with surprise and a kind of searching uncertainty. Save in moments of levity, she was a mature and thoughtful woman now. “You were always kind. You are asking me because I am homeless and penniless. Because, without a dowry, any other marriage arranged for me will almost certainly have—melted away.” She tried to free herself from me. “No, no. You are a coming man whose name is in the mouths of all. Everyone says so. And a man whose future depends upon the King is not helped in his career by this sort of entanglement with a family that has given offence. Do not be anxious for me, my dear. There will always be a home for me with the Browns—or with one of my married sisters,” she added, with a shade less certainty.

  I took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “And live like Emotte—the invaluable prop of some other woman’s home? No, my sweet, you will marry me and live in your own home, though it be a very poor one for a successful stapler’s daughter. In most of the palaces I have but small bachelor lodgings appointed me, and to those, with Cromwell’s spying, over-shadowing presence, I cannot take you. So you see what sacrifice I am asking of you. But if you love me….”

  She looked lovelier than ever with the pink colour creeping into her face again. “Have I not always loved you, Will, ever since I was sick and you used to make shadows of fantastic creatures by candle-light on my wall?”

  I kissed both the little hands I held. “I know, dear heart, but, sweet as it has been, that kind of love will not satisfy me now.I have always loved you, Joanna, since the day I first saw you standing in the chapel doorway with flowers in your arms. Loved you and hungered for you so that neither success nor royal favour nor all the other things which I truly value can ever count against my hunger to possess you.”

  She pulled my face down to hers, and kissed me long and tenderly. “Never think for one moment that I say this because I am now shorn of so much else,” she vowed, with tears in her eyes, “but that, I swear, is the completeness with which I, too, have loved you for a long time now.”

  It was the moment of ecstatic happiness for which I had lived so patiently—even monkishly, as Henry often said. For the first time I held her in a lover’s embrace, untrammelled by pricks of conscience. Selfishly, I thanked God that she was homeless and penniless. There could be no betrayal to my first, best master if I took her and cared for her now. I pressed the softness of her body against the hungry hardness of my own, kissing her eyes and mouth and the whiteness of her throat, releasing her only when she was warmly responsive and half breathless. Then, because there was so much that we must talk of and so little time, I drew her down beside me on the window seat. “This proposed marriage with some Northamptonshire neighbour—does it mean anything to you that it is not to be?” I asked.

  “Only unspeakable relief. He is a good man. My life would have been pleasant and easy. My father chose him carefully from the others, and then seemed to delay, making excuse that he needed me. I think he knew—”

  “About us?”

  She nodded. “And that any marriage such as he would be likely to arrange could be nothing but a duty to me. I should have married into some wealthy or titled family eventually, I suppose. But most fathers would not have—cared about my feelings.”

  “You must know that I admire him more than any man I have ever known.” Joanna gave me a warm, grateful smile and, springing up from my side, said almost merrily, “And so, Will Somers, I am willing to marry you next week if you say so.”

  I took her hand and swung it between us, grinning up at her as she stood before me. “Not next week, Joanna Fermor—but now, today,” I corrected firmly.

  “Today!” she cried out. “By all the Saints, how masterful you grow! It must be associating with royalty!” The unashamed joy in her face suddenly changed to dismay. “But what priest of the Reformed Church would marry us, today or any day? You, the King’s jester—and me, the daughter of a man so recently imprisoned for offending against the King’s statute of Praemunire?”

  “I know of one. And not far from here.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Not sure. But he was only too anxious to marry me to you once.When you so narrowly escaped that unspeakable Skevington, and he mistook me for the bridegroom.”

  “You mean that round, jolly Parson Morton of St. Magdalen’s in Milk Street, with whose mistaken offer you tempted me here in this very room?”

  “That same man. What a memory you have for names! I spoke to him in the Lane afterwards and found him to be a liberal-minded man. Let us go to him now, Joanna.” But though she sent for her cloak with a willingness which delighted me, when I had taken it from the servant and put it about her I detained her as I fastened it about her pretty throat. “It will mean secrecy—separation perhaps. All the things we hate. It will be necessary to trust each other utterly,” I had the honesty to remind her.

  She did not answer in words, bless her, but pulled me gently towards the door and down the stairs, and hand-in-hand we walked the short distance to Milk Street.

  “What a way to go to one’s wedding!” she giggled once, having slipped at the edge of a filth-filled gutter and splashed her already travel-stained stockings. And thinking, perhaps, of all the fuss and preparation there had once been for her first frustrated nuptials in the house we had just left.

  “So be that we are going to it anyhow—at last!” I said fervently, drawing her more safely beneath the over-hanging eaves. “Though I am sorry you have had to choose between that shimmering bridal gown and me.”

  I tugged at the raucous bell of the priest house, and Parson Morton himself appeared. “You once offered to marry me,” I reminded him, without waste of time.

  He stared with surprised, bright eyes, but recognised me at once.“You are Will Somers, the King’s fool,” he
said.

  “And this lady is a niece of Mistress Brown of Aldermanbury—the same bride who was to have been married then.”

  He pulled us inside and we told him our story, hiding nothing from him. “I heard of the trial. So many cruel things are done in Christ’s name…” he said ruminatively. “You wanted this fair lass when she was to have married young Skevington, though you kept it always in mind that she was your master’s daughter. But only now, when her family’s prosperity is lost, do you propose to marry her, which seems to me to spell real love.” He tramped about his small, dark room, fitting the thing together in his mind. Then fetched up before Joanna. “And you really wish this, my daughter?”

  “More than anything, Reverend Sir,” she assured him.

  “I should wait until Master Brown returns, I suppose, and consult him,” he muttered. But instead he took us into his church and left us while he went to light the candles and put on his vestments, and to call his old housekeeper and the sexton as witnesses. Joanna and I stood, handfast and quiet, in the gloom of that old building with its empty niches where statues of Our Lady and the Saints must so recently have stood. What had been growing in our hearts over the years was strong enough by now to wash out all need for words. But I remember whispering, “It must be a terrible thing for you to lose your lovely home—like being turned out of the Garden of Eden.” And Joanna squeezing my hand and whispering back, “You—always—will be my home.”

  And then the solemn words of marriage were being said, and we were man and wife.

  Afterwards, in the little vestry, when Thaddeus Morton brought out pen and ink to register our names according to the King’s new decree, he asked us where we lived.

  “Greenwich, Hampton Court, Whitehall…” I answered airily. But he waved aside the vague grandeur of such names.

  “Those are indeed the King’s palaces, but what place shall I enter as your married home?”

  Joanna and I turned to each other with raised brows and laughed. We were forced to admit to him—and to ourselves—the absurd truth that we had none.

  “My husband will find us one,” said Joanna, with large optimism—which was the beginning of her complete trusting.

  “Say that first piece again,” I ordered. “I liked it.”

  “My husband,” she repeated dutifully, with shining eyes.

  “You are both crazed,” chuckled the good vicar of St. Magdalen’s.“But wherever you find a home I make no doubt the good God will bless it with abundant happiness. And when you have settled into it come back here so that I may baptise your children.”

  MY HUSBAND WILL FIND us a home,” she had said, calm as the unruffled leaves on a lily pond. She, the gently reared daughter of a capable business man, putting her faith unquestioningly in a professional fool! Unutterably proud yet desperate, I prayed as earnestly as I had ever prayed for anything that I might never betray her touching trust in me.

  And either because the Almighty listens to fools or because I had lived on my wits for years, before we had turned into the bustle of Cheapside an idea had come to me. “The Festings are going to Calais!” I said, pulling up short with her hand through my arm.

  “Oh, Will, and they are wanting to sell their house,” she cried, quick to pick up my thought. “As we were riding to London he was telling me how wisely you had advised him about joining John, and how they must try to find a purchaser or tenant. And his careful Dutch wife hates the thought of leaving it to strangers.”

  The Festings’ home was a narrow, gabled house with upper stories jutting out over Thames Street which Master Fermor had had built beside his wharf. Its frontage would seem dismal and noisy indeed to anyone accustomed to the wide, airy fields surrounding Neston Manor, but from the back windows there was a sunny ever-changing outlook across the busy Thames and southwards to the Surrey shore. And those windows, being Gerda’s, gleamed like crystal.

  Their door stood wide and we found them packing house linen and clothing into three great cedar chests, assisted by Bart’s elderly clerk and a young maid who kept dissolving into tears at the thought of their departure.

  “Why, Mistress Fermor!” exclaimed Gerda, curtsying as best she could with a bolster in her rosy arms.

  “Mistress Somers,” I corrected, proud as Lucifer.

  “Of all swift workers!” exclaimed Bart Festing admiringly, and dropping the rope with which he was lashing up a bundle of particularly precious household possessions in a sail, he sent Craddock, the clerk, for wine with which to celebrate.

  They were genuinely glad. Gerda put my bride into the only available chair and fussed over her, and they both listened delightedly to my suggestion. “The master’s daughter living here in our humble home!” they kept saying.

  “Tempora mutantur,” I quoted sadly.

  “And neither my father nor I have any home now,” Joanna reminded them.

  “My poor pretty one.” Mistress Festing, who had no children of her own, put a motherly arm about her. “If this is what you both really wish, nothing could suit us better, could it, Bart?”

  “There is no time to sell, and Gerda has worried the night through lest hurriedly accepted tenants ill-use our carefully chosen furniture.”

  One had only to look round to see that, like many a merchant’s agent, he had bought good stuff in advantageous markets, and that everything had been kept polished with Dutch thoroughness. “Not woven tapestry as you both are probably used to in palaces and manors,” said Gerda, following my appraising gaze. “But all our walls are hung with good wholesome painted linen from Antwerp.And, oh, how thankful I shall be not to have to leave my best feather-bed and pillows to flea-infested strangers!”

  On my insistence Bart and Craddock and I went across to his office on the wharf to agree a rental and to draw up a properly signed and witnessed agreement. “Your home will be here for you when you come back,” I said, trying to cheer him. “And it could be a pied-a-terre to shelter the master if we can get him out of prison.”

  “You have hopes?” they both asked eagerly.

  The all-powerful shadow of Thomas Cromwell seemed to blacken them all out. “I shall never give up trying,” I said cautiously.

  As we came down the outside steps to the wharf trying to steady ourselves against the blustering wind, seamen and porters crowded about us. “Any fresh news, Master Festing?” they asked morosely. Some of them recognised me and called to me to tell the King, who so loved ships, that six good merchantmen were moored idle. It was always the same. Because one or two stories of my having been able to help the under-dog had got about the city and become household words like some of my absurdities, people seemed to think that I could approach the Tudor about anything. They never could realise that I had to choose my opportunity—and above all the King’s mood. But I could and did tell them that no matter who acquired the Fermor estates, a man with as much business sense as Cromwell certainly would not allow the wharf and all that valuable shipping space to stand idle for long. And because I happened to be a familiar figure in all the King’s palaces they believed my words as unquestionably as the gospels in Master Tyndale’s newly-printed Bibles, and took comfort.

  And back to Whitehall Palace I must go, bridegroom or no bridegroom, leaving my treasure unenjoyed. The clock of All Hallows was striking noon, and the royal procession would be forming to go into hall for dinner. And the King would soon miss me. “I am sure our good friends will spare Craddock here to escort you back to Aldermanbury,” I said to my new wife, feeling about as inadequate as a pricked bladder.

  But Joanna did not want to be escorted anywhere. She preferred to stay here in what was going to be her new home—if the Festings would have her. After all, they were her father’s people, and would not advise or interfere as the Browns might do. “If I shall not be an added burden to you at this busy time,” she said.

  “My sweet lady, we are honoured,” Gerda assured her. “But you do realise, Master Somers, that we shall be sailing in three days’ time?”r />
  “You cannot stay here alone when I am on duty, Joanna,” I said. Much as I liked to think of her here, in our own place, I felt that I should take her back to her aunt’s house where I knew she would be safe.

  “There is Tatty, our willing little maid, crying her eyes out because we are going. And she has already taken a vast liking to you, Madam, and would, I am sure, ask nothing better than to stay and work for you.”

  “And Craddock sleeps at the docks and will keep an eye on them,” Festing promised me.

  And so it was arranged.

  “Listen, my sweet,” I said, taking Joanna’s hands in mine.“The Cleves princess, Heaven help her, is due to arrive at Dover tomorrow, or—if the storm does not abate—by next day. From there she and milord Southampton, who is fetching her, and all the usual welcoming retinue will ride to London, breaking their journey for a night at the Bishop’s palace at Rochester and then setting out for the great official welcome on Blackheath. But the King has taken a notion to ride to Rochester with milord of Suffolk and one or two more of his cronies disguised as merchants, and so pay her a surprise visit there.”

  “I thought it was all planned that he should meet her at Black-heath with all this elaborate reception we have heard so much about,” said Festing.

  “I know. That is to be the official welcome,” I said. “But last night at supper his Grace was planning to pay her this surprise visit first.”

  “But surely the poor creature will have been seasick and want to rest,” remonstrated kindly Gerda.