King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  He was sleepy by then, and the present peak of grief for an erring wife and anxiety for an only son were past. Memories of his second wife seemed to be merging with the immediate memory of his fifth, and almost submerging it. Culpepper and I helped him to lift his heavy bulk on to the high bed and pulled the rose-embroidered covers about him. But as I nodded to Culpepper and slipped from the room, I noticed that he did not lie down beside his master as usual, but remained, fully clothed, sitting very still by the dying fire. I could not help feeling sorrow for him. If ever a man must have been fearing the next bit of scandalous revelation it must have been he.

  It was his rival, Francis Dereham, who supplied it—though to give the man his due, not willingly. Like Katherine herself, he was never vindictive. Henry had sent his defiled little wife across the river to the Convent of Sion which, since its dissolution, he was converting into a hunting lodge for himself. But Sion House was only just across the river and this inconclusive move was not enough for Norfolk’s enemies. Any fine morning the King, riding to hounds, might see her again and relent. For had she not managed to elude her guards that last day at Hampton and run screaming along the gallery and almost succeeded in throwing herself at his feet as he came out from chapel? So Cranmer and Wriothesley rode to the Tower and had Madox and Dereham tortured in the hope of getting something more damning out of them. The music master had nothing more to tell. And Dereham stuck to his assertion that, although he had persuaded the Queen to take him into her household as secretary, he had never sinned with her since her marriage. He had never had the chance, he said bitterly, as the rack on which he lay began to pull and stretch his fine young limbs.

  “She wouldn’t even look at me,” he cried, at the next excruciating turn of the wheel. “It was always the other one—”

  Cranmer and Wriothesley came close and leant over him, one of the rack men told me afterwards. “What other?” they asked, in merciless unison.

  And in his agony at the next turn of the cruel contraption he moaned Tom Culpepper’s name.

  The Queen’s two lovers stood some kind of trial at the Guildhall with the Duke of Norfolk, of all people, as chief examiner for the Crown. The result was a foregone conclusion, and the death sentence was carried out conveniently before Christmas at Tyburn. Dereham was hanged and quartered, and Tom Culpepper, because of his gentle birth—or because the King had once loved him—was beheaded.

  Henry never spoke about any of them all that Christmas. He was hurt in his vanity as much as his heart. He had been made to look a fool waiting outside his own wife’s door before a couple of sniggering pages while Jane Rochford helped to hustle her mistress’s lover safely out. He, once the marriage catch of all Europe whose proud divorced Spanish wife had died still loving him, had been cuckolded before Court and country. That he never would forgive.He moved his Court from Hampton of happy memories to Greenwich. He showed friendly gratitude towards Archbishop Cranmer, and gave orders that everyone should enjoy themselves as usual during the festive season.

  “At Christmas play and make good cheer

  For Christmas comes but once a year,”

  I quoted from the popular poet Tusser, trying to start off the season on the right note and to make a bright spot in the lonely life of the young Princess Elizabeth. But it was difficult to be merry with a queen in disgrace and the uncertainty of her fate hanging over us, and for once I was thankful that my wife and babe were far away on their visit enjoying the simpler pleasures of Wapenham.

  And still more thankful was I that they were well out of it all when the Constable of the Tower received a warrant signed by Henry for the execution of yet another wife.

  Early one sad, misty February morning Thomas Vaux and I stood on the opposite bank and watched the great black barge covered with an awning pull out from the mooring creek where the lawns of Sion slope down to the Thames. There were halberdiers aboard and Suffolk, we knew, had been given the unpleasant duty of taking Katherine to the Tower.

  “One pays for being the King’s friend,” remarked Vaux, his voice floating flatly on the grey stillness of the riverside mist. And some of the stark verities which touched our lives at that time were too obvious to need answering.

  Even without the extra big awning the two women in the barge would have been but shadowy figures to us, and both Katherine and Lady Rochford, condemned for her part in helping Culpepper to the Queen’s bed, were probably wrapped in black, warm garments, sad as the morning.

  “A brittle beauty, made by Nature frail,” I heard Thomas Vaux murmur, as he watched the oarsmen pull out skillfully towards mid-stream. I suppose he was speaking of poor Katherine Howard, but the words may well have been taken from one of his own vivid poems.

  “An unusually strong current,” I said, as they shot forward. “It will be difficult for so big a craft to shoot between an arch of the bridge on this high tide. But thank God for the mist!”

  Stamping his cold feet and drawing his cloak more closely about his neck, Vaux looked at me in questioning surprise.

  “In the city these new coal fires will have turned this white mist to fog,” I pointed out. “So she will not see her lovers’ mouldering heads stuck on poles above the bridge.”

  We turned away to warm ourselves, while small, sensuous, nineteen-year-old Katherine was rushed by the too swift tide of river and Life to the same block which had not so long since been scrubbed clean of the blood of her cousin Anne.

  “She stooped to comfort milady Rochford before mounting the scaffold, and died meekly confessing her sins against the King,” an unctuous parson told us in the depressed quiet of the palace afterwards.

  But the Captain of the halberdiers, who had been reviving himself after an unpleasant duty with some of the cellarer’s strongest wine, lurched to his feet and reported daringly, “These things she may have done. But I was standing within a few feet of the executioner, and know that last thing before she died she cried boldly, with all the blood of the Bigods and Mowbrays, the Plantagenets and Howards which was in her, ‘I die Queen of England, but God knows I would sooner be the wife of Tom Culpepper.’”

  IT WAS LIKE THE time when Henry had been a widower before, with Court life settled down into a predictable, unexciting routine.Except that now it lasted for only a few months. He did not hunt any more, but would attend Council meetings or see foreign envoys in the forenoon, fall asleep after dinner, and often in the evenings he would send for me to amuse him. As he usually retired early I was often free to row down to Richmond and spend the night with my wife. I seemed to spend a small fortune on hiring watermen.

  One midday Henry came bustling back from dinner to his private apartments looking particularly pleased with himself. “You have heard of the new law they are passing to safeguard me from further pain?” he asked, in that disassociated way he had of throwing all the onus of his own wishes on to his advisers, and quite forgetful of the fact that it had been the Howard girl who had suffered most of the pain. “In future any woman who comes to the royal marriage bed with former unchastity unconfessed will be guilty of treason.”

  I laid down the lute I had been tuning. “In future?” I gasped.

  He did not seem to hear me, being busied with searching through a pile of music scores for something which he wished me to play. He handed me a French love song, which I took to indicate the direction of his thoughts. He settled himself to listen in appreciative silence while I sang the thing through, and when the last sweet cadence had died away I could contain my curiosity no longer. “Is your Grace seriously thinking of marrying again?” I asked, carefully keeping all emphasis from the last word, which would so soon be on all men’s lips.

  “For feminine companionship, not for any hope of a family,” he admitted smugly.

  “Yet she must come to you a virgin?” It seemed to me grossly unfair. And surely it would be asking for trouble to tie a girl, still avid for the half-guessed sweets of love, to a diseased mountain of a man like him? What he needed was some
motherly woman to nurse and cosset him. “After your last experience why not try a widow, Harry?” I suggested.

  He looked up sharply, pulling at his spade-like golden beard.The idea was new, but worth considering. “Some lesser man would have had the love bird’s first sweetness,” he objected.

  “And therefore she might be the less likely to flutter outside the gilded cage.”

  I had made the suggestion in part because it seemed unlikely that any girl, however innocent, would now risk the charges which might be trumped up against her should the King’s affection wane or veer. But Henry took the thought and mulled it over like a good untried wine.

  As a result there were Privy Council meetings and secret consultations; and one day, emerging from one such meeting, Thomas Vaux beckoned me to join him in a quiet corner. There was a look of astonishment on his pleasant, contemplative face.“You are always plaguing us with guessing games, Will. Now guess whom the King is going to marry,” he said, in the half deprecating manner of someone who has scored unexpectedly high at the butts.

  “Not a sixth!” I murmured. “It will make him the laughing stock of Europe.”

  “Katherine Parr, who married Lord Borough of Gainsborough when she was thirteen, and then milord Latimer, who has just died,” he went on, too dazed to heed my remarks.

  I burst out laughing. “Three Katherines. And this one twice widowed! Then he has taken my advice most thoroughly.”

  “Each of the husbands was a widower when she married him, the last even richer than the first,” elaborated Vaux, as if reciting some carefully recollected family history.

  “What better reason could our Tudor need?” I asked cynically.“Although he did mention companionship.”

  “Katherine Latimer is a very learned and pleasant lady whose conversation his Grace has often enjoyed,” said Vaux defensively. “But that is not my point. Do you not realise, Will—and you from Northamptonshire—that she is sole heiress of my grandparents, the Greens of Green’s Norton, and sister to my late mother who was my father’s second wife? So that she is my aunt!”

  I let out a low whistle. “And she will be Queen,” I said, duly impressed at last.

  Mercifully, Thomas Vaux was not devoured by ambition like so many of the men about the King.

  “This will bring you close within the Tudor family circle,” I added, with the thought stirring in my mind that he might one day be able to help Richard Fermor still more. “That is, of course, if the lady herself be willing. Everybody must know that handsome Thomas Seymour is courting her.”

  “And she certainly cares for him. Although one would scarcely have expected the flamboyant younger Seymour to be attracted by so staid a woman as Aunt Katherine when every pretty chit at Court is making eyes at him.”

  “Perhaps he cares more for big money bags than big eyes,” I said.

  A chattering posse of courtiers was coming our way. It was as well for milord Vaux of Harroden not to be seen gossiping in odd corners immediately after a royal conference on so delicate a matter. “And however much my kinswoman may want to wed him, you may be sure Tom Seymour is too astute to push his charms in the King’s way just now, and will take himself off to sea or somewhere,” he added hurriedly, before he left me.

  And so, after a quietly dignified wedding, the reluctant bride of fair estates and impeccable character became King Henry’s sixth wife. She was able to talk to him knowledgeably as had his first Katherine. She often read to him in Latin. And she was there, calm and efficient, through all the worries of war we had at that time.

  There always had been the difficulty of keeping a balance of power between Spain, France and England, which must have given Henry many a sleepless night. And now the ever-ready alliance between France and Scotland had sprung into the very real fear of a simultaneous invasion from over the northern border and from across the Channel. Jane Seymour’s elder brother, Edward, Earl of Hertford, held off the Scots, and Thomas Seymour certainly found plenty of occupation at sea. When King James the Fifth died after the battle of Solway Moss, Henry would have negotiated a betrothal between our Prince Edward and the baby daughter Mary whom James left, if only to prevent a later alliance between her and the Dauphin. He was astute enough to see that union within our isles could give us greater solidarity than any spectacular European marriage. But the Scots, instigated by the French, would have none of it.

  The French were digging deep trenches along their coast and mounting falconet cannon on their walls. The Spaniards were with us this time and at last our ships and men were ready for a joint invasion. Henry, heavy as he had become, rode down to embark at Dover. And I, his fool, rode gladly in this company—not because I had orders to, but because it took away the stigma of buffoonery which I had felt when I first saw my long-discarded motley. And, hard as it was to part from my loved ones, I would not for the world have missed that campaign.

  Men saw a King of England, splendidly mounted on an enormous charger, riding to war again. And they forgot the cruel taxes they had been grumbling at, the debased coinage, desecrated shrines and abbeys, the executions, and the homeless monks and unfed beggars on their roads. In every town, as we rode through, they turned out to cheer or to join. We English are so illogical, quarrelling like curs among ourselves, but standing as one man the moment some foolhardy foreigner butts in. Grasping greedy we can be in times of peace, but giving our all without question when it comes to war.

  Soon after we had landed the Spaniards made a separate peace with King Francis. But the angry Tudor hung on. He besieged Boulogne, and by the tail end of that summer we had taken that important seaport with all the French equipment abandoned in it, and he returned home a hero. Knowing how often his people had groaned beneath his despotic dictates, their spontaneous cheering must have been sweet to him. There was a happy reunion between him and his Queen, who had acted so successfully as Regent and had his two younger children in her care. But I doubt if any reunion could have been as happy as mine with Joanna, whom I found awaiting me at Richmond.

  All that winter we knew the seething French were preparing to retaliate, but when they landed on the Isle of Wight the resourceful islanders were ready for them. It was not the first time they had had to contend with French invaders. They fought them on the slopes of Bembridge Down, destroyed the bridge over a small river there, and then cut them to pieces when they came to fill their water casks in some place called Shanklin Chine. For months they had been driving stakes into their beaches, and strengthening their forts at Sandown, Cowes and Yarmouth with stones shipped across from demolished Beaulieu Abbey on the mainland. And whether deterred by a score or two of well-aimed island guns or by the tricky waters of the Solent, the French Admiral d’Annebaut never reached Portsmouth but scuttled for the safety of his own shores again.

  The King had insisted upon riding once more to Dover. “If I can no longer go to sea with my ships at least I shall be there to meet the enemy,” he said. And dined aboard the Great Harry, which was the pride of all his Navy and of his heart.

  But after the scare was over those of us who saw him daily knew what the effort had cost him. In spite of his indomitable determination, he was failing. During that last autumn of his life, although he had to be lifted to the saddle, he somehow managed to make his usual progress. Hampton, Oatlands, Woking, Guildford, Windsor—he visited them all. And each as usual was cleansed and made sanitary again during the absence of the Court. But, try as we would, Thurgood and I could not make Christmas at Windsor the merry season it had been. Suffolk, the King’s friend and brother-in-law, was dead. Gifted Holbein, to my grief, had fallen a victim to the plague.

  After Christmas Henry came back to Whitehall. And there Queen Katherine showed him infinite patience, carrying out his physician’s orders, giving him his potions and sometimes sitting for cramped hours with his bad leg resting across her lap. She slept in the same room with him when the gentlemen of the bedchamber feigned illness rather than endure the stench from the putrefaction
of his ulcer. And, above all, she was kind to both his daughters, having them with her at the palace as much as possible. In gratitude for this, and out of old rooted affection for my master, I tried as often as I could to relieve the tedious strain of her devoted nursing.

  Henry had become so heavy and unwieldy that the head carpenter had devised a great chair in which he could be lifted from room to room, sometimes by means of pulleys. He hated the necessity for this so much that he would often hit out at the strong young halberdiers who came to move him. And how could they, or anyone who had not known him in his prime, realise how their ministrations must infuriate and humiliate a king who had been the champion wrestler of his day and who had challenged all comers in the lists? They had not in their minds, perhaps, the picture of a strong, laughing, generous Henry Tudor which I tried to keep fresh and vivid as an antidote to all hatred and misunderstanding and repulsion. And although Henry was often violently irritable with all who tended him, he was seldom so with me.

  “You are comfortable to me, old crony,” he said, opening a wary eye to make sure who it was as I took my place quietly beside his bed.

  “Like an old slipper,” I answered. Not too tactfully, perhaps, because he had just thrown one after his departing wife. I hoped that she was out in the thin wintry sunshine getting the stench of the sickroom out of her lungs or playing with young Elizabeth to sweeten her thoughts. Poor lady, she had been three times stepmother to old men’s children, and unless Thomas Seymour waited for her, and did not have to wait too long, her chances of ever bearing a child of her own seemed slender.

  Henry heaved himself up in his bed and I put his harp into his hands, hoping to coax him to play. But his gaze was still resentfully on the array of medical phials from which the poor Queen must have been trying to physic him. “Why are good women always so dull?” he asked, plucking crossly at a string or two.