King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  We had reached the old moat wall, and sat there awhile in the warm afternoon sunshine in companionable silence. I think he felt strange at Court with so many new faces and was sadly aware of deterioration and loss of brilliance, and each of us found comfort in having someone connected by family ties and interests to whom we could unburden our minds without cautious forethought. “That hussy Katherine,” he began presently. “It is not her fault, poor wench. After her gallant father died she was dragged up with the DowagerDuchess’s maids. But even before I went away there were stories going the rounds about her which, if the King should come to hear of them, would stop all thought of matrimony. And if he finds out afterwards there will be no more joyous poems from Surrey, I am afraid. Nor any more ambitious family plans from his father Norfolk.”

  “Whatever may have happened in the past she is ardently in love with Tom Culpepper now. It is plain for all to see,” I said.“A pity about this Flemish Princess,” said Vaux ruminatively. “At least she has dignity, judging by her portrait. Tell me, Will—and I swear it shall go no further—can you really believe that marriage was never consummated?”

  I shook my head doubtfully. “The one thing the King wants—and has always wanted—more than he has desired any woman—is strong, legitimate sons. If you ask me, he would scarcely miss the chance to come by one.”

  “Then presumably he is impotent.”

  We were talking dangerously, but suddenly Thomas Vaux began to laugh. He leaned back and laughed aloud, his neat, pointed beard quivering with mirth.

  “What is it?” I asked, hating to miss a jest in a world which was becoming all too solemn for me.

  He clutched my arm. “Suppose Henry underrated his virility,”he spluttered. “Suppose, Will, just suppose—that after all that solemn tarradiddle at the divorce proceedings—my lady of Cleves found herself pregnant—at Richmond—now!”

  “Now she is called the King’s sister? And he married to the Howard. What a situation!” I elaborated, joining in his laughter.“In truth, kinsman Thomas, it would be the biggest joke in all his Grace’s reign.”

  We were still laughing helplessly when a swish of skirts on the grass and a woman’s voice recalled us to decorum. His lady wife had come through the gardens to look for him. “My good Thomas, I thought you must have thrown yourself in the Thames for very boredom with this changed and wearisome Court. But since you and our good friend Will here have found something amusing I pray you let me share your mirth,” she entreated charmingly.

  We slid from the wall and brushed the dust from our hose. I bowed and milord offered her his arm. “No, no, my love. ’Twas but one of Will’s more disreputable jokes. The kind with which he amuses the King in his cups,” he excused himself—mightily unfairly, I thought. “Though I doubt,” he added, looking back at me to bat an eyelid, “whether this particular one would amuse his Grace over much.”

  But kings and jokes all went out of my mind when I arrived at Thames Street that evening and Joanna whispered against my shoulder that she was with child. I exclaimed over her and kissed her, feeling that I held my whole world in my arms. “We will call him Richard,” I announced, knowing that she would wish this, too, and certain that we should have a boy. And that evening we walked across Tower Hill and out through Aldgate to the pleasant hamlet and fields of Shoreditch, in moonlight and the peak of married happiness, eagerly deciding what school he should attend and what profession he should pursue.

  “There will be no inheritance from my father and he may not have the ready wit to become a jester,” Joanna reminded me.

  “One of your father’s friends would right willingly apprentice him to the wool trade. Or he could be a vintner like the Chaucers, or a mercer like the Browns. Most of the money these days is made by merchants,” I mused.

  “He could be a printer like Caxton or a learned translator like Tyndale. There are sure to be more and more books, Will.”

  “Or an explorer like Magellan, sailing right out into uncharted seas to prove the world is round,” I suggested, still hot for my boyhood’s hero.

  “Oh, no!” she protested. “For then, as we grew old, we should never see him.”

  During the months which followed I tried to be with her as often as I could, to cherish her and keep her thoughts from grieving for her father. I exhorted a delighted Tatty to take the utmost care of her mistress. Lady Vaux came to visit us, bringing Joanna peaches and grapes from their country garden. John Thurgood, who had long since fallen victim to my wife’s charms, could scarcely be kept away. He took her books of amusing plays and, somewhat prematurely, a small set of puppets which he had carved for our small son to play with. And one unexpected visitor we had that winter was Colin, my eldest cousin from Shropshire, come to settle about some taxes in London and to tell me that my dear old Uncle Tobias was dead. My aunt sent her grateful love to me for such small things as I had sent her, farm and family were prospering and Colin himself was now the father of two sturdy boys by the Tarleton girl whom he had been courting in the neighbouring village of Condover.

  “And the Priory?” I asked, well knowing what sort of answer to expect, having seen the sad desolation of Merton Abbey when staying with the King at Oatlands.

  “Being gradually demolished. The fine nave be all pulled down and the choir where you used to sing—an’ the stones, some of ’em, gone to build Master Tyrrell’s pig-sties. Only the Prior’s house be saved to house some stranger. Even the great kitchens, where the lay brothers used to dole out food to the destitute, is become an inn.”

  “And the good monks themselves?’’ I asked, remembering their finely trained voices.

  My honest, shock-headed cousin shrugged. “Homeless an’ roaming the roads, I reckon. Beggars themselves by now, most like.”

  Tatty made up a bed for him in the attic and showed him some of the sights of London. And Joanna fed him and showed him every kindness. But when it was time for him to mount his strong farm horse I had no desire to go with him. Now that Uncle Tobias and the Priory were both gone I felt that I could never bear to see Much Wenlock again.

  And when Joanna’s time was drawing near there came that most welcome visitor of all. That indomitable woman, Emotte, who made the journey with the only maidservant left to her and stayed with us until Joanna was up and about again.

  “There is nothing you could have done for which a man could be more grateful,” I told her with a fervent embrace when my son was safely born.

  “You went to see my brother in prison,” she said, in that short, unemotional way of hers.

  “And, God helping me, I will one day get him out,” I promised.Her loving look and my wife’s eyes shining at me from the bed made me feel a poor, inadequate sort of knight errant. “But with the King one has to await the right moment,” I explained apologetically, as I had so often been forced to tell myself.

  But through a series of unexpected happenings and the kindness of two great ladies my moment was to come sooner than I had dared to hope.

  For fear of making trouble for Miles Mucklow I had not gone again to the Marshalsea, but, being swollen with paternal pride, I felt that I must give Richard Fermor news of his new grandson. I took him the loving letter and the dainties which Joanna had prepared, but Mucklow dared not let me stay for long. “The Governor is all on edge about people coming in and out just now because of all these fresh cases of plague,” he explained. But in the excitement of seeing Richard Fermor the words washed over me at the time.There was so much news to tell, and so short a time in which to tell it. He had heard about the Cleves marriage and Cromwell’s execution, and most of the Court gossip. But he was avid for family news and delighted about his small namesake. To my great relief, my father-in-law looked reasonably well. He kept up his spirits by reading and writing a useful account of foreign towns which he had visited. He was allowed to take exercise in some inner courtyard and refused the money which I had brought.

  “How do the other prisoners manage to live?” I asked, a
s he showed me the modest supply of money still left in the cunning lining which Emotte had made to the leather of his Florentine belt.

  “The baser kind spend much of their time making counterfeit coins which some of the gaolers have found a brisk market for at a stiff commission—particularly among unsuspecting foreign visitors,” said Fermor, sampling one of Joanna’s honey cakes with relish. “But many a poor devil would starve, I fear, were it not for milady Mary’s donations for them.”

  “The Lady Mary!” I exclaimed, marvelling that I, who had known her from her childhood, should yet have had no inkling of this bounty. “But she herself has had so little—in the past, I mean, when she was sharing her household with the young Lady Elizabeth, and when but for her kindness the child would have had scarce enough clothes to stand up in. Do you mean that she has always done this?”

  “And to the Fleet Prison as well, I believe,” Richard Fermor told me. “Her mother always helped the prisoners, and whatever the Lady Mary’s personal privations, her Grace has never let the payments cease. There is not a man here, however debased, who does not bless her name.”

  I returned home because I knew that Joanna would be longing for news of him, but had to hurry back to Whitehall before sunrise. Yet in the grey light of dawn I saw a cross chalked on a door quite close to our house in Thames Street, and almost stumbled over the half-naked corpse of a woman callously thrown out on a stinking laystall at the corner of Paul’s Wharf. Instantly the words of Miles Mucklow came back to me. “More cases of plague,” he had said. One heard it so often, and small wonder, with the filth thrown from bedroom windows to overflowing gutters, and cattle still being slaughtered within the city walls. But here in our own street, so near my loved ones! I almost turned back to drag them from our comfortable home, but had nowhere to take them. Let them sleep while I thought what best to do. Perhaps someone at the palace could help me.

  The King, they said, had been asking for me. But I pushed past the pestering pages and made my way to the comptroller of the household’s rooms. Perhaps in this overcrowded hive at Whitehall he could find me some accommodation. If not I was prepared to tell him my private concerns and beg leave to bring my unsanctioned wife and child into my own lodgings, risking the royal displeasure. But Sir John Gage’s clerk did not know where his master was.

  “Then go and find him,” I snapped.

  “But, Master Somers, he may well be with his barber at this early hour.”

  He was a meek little man, already over-burdened with work, and to my shame I hit him, in one of those sudden brief outbursts known at Court as Somers’s rages. “I care not if he be with the Devil himself,” I bellowed. “Go find him.”

  There was a light step behind me. “Will!” exclaimed a shocked contralto voice. I swung round, still aggressive, and there was milady Mary immediately behind me, coming along the gallery on her way from early Mass.

  “What is wrong with you, Will? What has the poor man done?”she asked, waving her ladies to a standstill behind her, while the little rabbit of a clerk bolted back into his burrow rubbing his reddened jaw.

  “Everything is wrong,” I said roughly.

  “But surely not so wrong but what, with God’s help, we can put it right?” she said quietly. By her use of the plural pronoun she was deliberately associating herself with my stress. And suddenly I had a mental picture of her, denying herself a much-needed new gown and writing instructions in her own careful hand that the money should go to feed a horde of miserable ne’er-do-wells in prison. If she helped them, surely she would help me, whom she cared for?

  “It is the plague, milady—in Thames Street,” I burst out, finding myself unutterably glad to tell her.

  “And you want to move your wife and new babe to safety—and have nowhere to go?”

  “I must get them away.” I saw again the dead, disfigured body of that young woman lying in the filth at Paul’s Wharf, and remembered that the King’s daughter had once said to me, just as Miles Mucklow had, “If ever there should be anything that I can do for you—” I looked round at the quiet, contented faces of her ladies, with the reflection of their prayers still like a soft radiance upon them. It was the first favour I had ever asked for myself since I came to Court. “I suppose that your Grace could not—”

  She followed the direction of my eyes, guessed my hope, but shook her head regretfully. Then she walked away from me to the window and back, her head bent in thought. Small as she was, she somehow looked remarkably like her mother then, less carefree than others because her thoughts must ever go out to her responsibilities in the world. It was the trait for which the people had always loved them both. When she came back to me her hands were folded severely beneath her wide sleeves, but her brown eyes were smiling. “You know, Will, that I cannot take the daughter of a political prisoner into my household even if I would. I am too—”

  In Cromwell’s time she might well have said “beset with spies”—but she changed the sentence with a deprecating smile. “My household is still carefully surveyed, shall we say? But do not look so downcast, dear Will. I have an idea. This very afternoon I go to visit my Lady of Cleves at Richmond and I will ask her if she has room in her household for your wife. She loves children, is not suspected of Papist tendencies, and since she has so uncomplainingly made her home there no one seems to concern themselves with what she does. Indeed, she has far more liberty than I.”

  I seized her hand and kissed it. “You would do this for me—” I mumbled, wildly incoherent with gratitude.

  “It is not much. She is easily approached and very kind. And have you not always come to me when I have been in trouble? Have I not told you, you are as a part of our family? So be at the water steps when my barge returns and I will tell you what milady Anne says.” She would have left me then, but seeing that I did not answer, she added anxiously, “What is it, Will? Does my plan not please you?”

  “Oh, your Grace, I cannot think of any refuge I would choose for my family rather than Richmond. But—but could I not bring them now—in your Grace’s barge? Lest the plague should spread—”

  She looked at me with raised brows and the suspicion of a smile on her lips. Perhaps she was laughing at my cowardice for them—she who had faced so much—but I could not care. “How you love her! I have never before seen the King’s irrepressible fool all of a tremble.” She nodded assent and beckoned to Randal Dod to tell him we should be of the party. “It must be wonderful to be loved like that!” I heard her murmur with a sigh, as she passed on to her apartments.

  And so my wife and child went to the safety and sunshine of Richmond. To that place of sunshine where cares and cruelties fall away. My Lady of Cleves, on her Grace’s recommendation, received my wife with every kindness. She even seemed to remember me from out of all the welter of English people whom she must have seen at Court.

  “I think you were once kind to me,” she said, when I tried to thank her. “Ze leetle matter of ze wig.” Seeing that I did not remember, she explained in her rapidly improving English. “The Norfolk Duchess tell me it is ze custom in your country to wear one. She even brought me one, yellow and crimped. So that my Dutch cap will not cover it and I look ugly. Some ill-bred man laugh and I hear you—how you say?—downdress him.”

  “I did not know how much you understood, milady,” I said, recalling the incident.

  “Kindness, in any language, is always easy to understand. And that first night at supper I was so much afraid.”

  “You did not show it, Madam.”

  “No,” she agreed thoughtfully. “It is always better not to show when one is afraid. But coming into a strange country—I was so much afraid of all those gentlemen and ladies. Most of all the ladies, who could laugh at my so different clothes and ways…”

  “And of the King, I suppose,” I said, listening to her with great sympathy.

  But to my surprise she laughed, surprisingly and wholeheartedly. “Nein! Nein!” she said. “I vas never afraid of your King.
Not after that first terrible day at Rochester. A man—one manages him—like.…” She did not say “like a spoiled boy,” but her smiling glance slid to my half-naked, red-haired son sprawled on the daisy-strewn grass a few yards away.

  The Lady Mary, who had never managed a man in her life, looked slightly shocked. While my wife and I, trying to control our laughter, hoped above all things that life would one day give us an opportunity of seeing our hostess managing Henry Tudor.

  Richmond Palace was far too vast for the Flemish lady’s household, and with a sweep of her wide generosity its mistress assigned to us a pleasant lodging in the wardrobe court, large enough to accommodate me whenever I could leave my duties to come, and with a little room for Tatty. I had only to take boat across the river whenever the Court was at Hampton, as it was more and more often these days. And we soon found that there were often other small children about the gardens because the King’s divorced wife, denied a family of her own, seemed to have adopted half the destitute infants of the neighbourhood. And it did not take long to discover that these orphaned infants were cared for with practical common sense, rather than with the spasmodic sentimentality with which other wealthy ladies sometimes indulged this whim.

  “Everything is so well run,” Joanna told me later, full of admiration for Flemish efficiency. And because she herself had so painstakingly learned to control a thriving manor house beneath Emotte’s expert tuition, she was able to repay some of milady of Cleves’s kindness by taking charge of the herb garden and supervising servants in the stillroom.

  “Do these servants never quarrel?” I asked on one of my happy visits, being freshly come from the frequent backstairs wranglings and jealousies of the King’s household.

  “I often hear them laughing,” said Joanna, sinking down amid spread skirts upon the greensward beside me, and helping our sturdy, auburn-haired son to crawl towards a coveted dandelion.“But, being rather more adept at baking and brewing and butter-making than they are themselves, milady manages to keep them too pleasantly occupied to have much time for quarrelling.