The King's Secret Matter

by Jean Plaidy

  But there was no comfort. Maria herself would not long be at the Queen’s side. She was to leave Court, and she believed she knew why.

  One of the Queen’s women had recently been dismissed from the Court and she had confessed to Maria that the reason was because she had declined to act as the Cardinal’s spy. His idea was clearly to remove from the Queen’s side all those who would not work for him against her.

  What did it all mean? Maria asked herself. Should I try to warn her? If only I could stay with her to comfort her.

  But now Katharine could think of nothing but her daughter.

  ‘Why should she be taken from me?’ she demanded passionately. ‘When she marries it may be necessary for her to leave me. There cannot be many years left to us. Why must I lose her now?’

  ‘I think, Your Grace,’ said Maria, desperately seeking a reason that might soothe the Queen, ‘that the King wishes her to go to Wales so that the country may know she is still Princess of the Principality and heir to the throne.’

  The Queen brightened at that suggestion. ‘It may be so,’ she said. ‘The people did not like his elevating the bastard.’

  ‘That is the answer, Your Grace. You can depend upon it, she will not stay long. It is merely a gesture. I feel certain that is the reason.’

  ‘I shall miss her so much,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Yes, Your Grace, but perhaps it is well that she should go.’

  Katharine said: ‘There is one consolation; Lady Salisbury is going with her as her governess. I cannot tell you how that cheers me.’

  One more friend, thought Maria, to be taken from the Queen’s side.

  Katharine rose suddenly and said: ‘I shall go to my daughter now. I would like to break this news to her myself. I trust that she has not already heard it. Stay here, Maria. I would be alone with her.’

  In the Princess’s apartments the little girl was seated at the virginals; one or two of her attendants were with her. When the Queen entered they curtseyed and moved away from the Princess who leaped from her chair and threw herself into her mother’s arms.

  ‘That was well played,’ said the Queen, trying to control her emotion.

  She smiled at the attendants and nodded. They understood; the Queen often wished to be alone with her daughter.

  ‘I was hoping you would come, Mother,’ said the Princess. ‘I have learned a new piece and wanted to play it to you.’

  ‘We will hear it later,’ answered Katharine. ‘I have come to talk to you.’

  She sat on a stool near the virginals, and Mary came to stand beside her while the Queen put her arm about her daughter.

  ‘You have heard no rumours about Wales?’ asked the Queen.

  ‘Wales, Mother? What sort of rumours?’

  The Queen was relieved. ‘Well, you know you are Princess of Wales and it is the custom for the Prince or Princess to visit the Principality at some time.’

  ‘We are going to Wales then, Mother?’

  ‘You are going, my darling.’

  Mary drew away from her mother and looked at her in startled dismay.

  ‘Oh, it will not be for long,’ said the Queen.

  ‘But why do you not come with me?’

  ‘It is the wish of your father that you go alone. You see, you are the Princess of Wales. You are the one the people want to see.’

  ‘You must come too, Mother.’

  ‘My darling, if only I could!’

  ‘I will not go without you.’ For a moment Mary looked like her father.

  ‘My darling, your father has commanded you to go.’

  Mary threw herself against her mother and clung to her. ‘But it is so far away.’

  ‘Not so very far, and you will come back soon. We shall write to each other and there will be the letters to look forward to.’

  ‘I don’t want to go away from you, Mother . . . ever.’

  The Queen felt the tears, which she had so far managed to keep in check, rising to her eyes.

  ‘My love, these partings are the fate of royal people.’

  ‘I wish I were not royal then.’

  ‘Hush, my darling. You must never say that. We have a duty to our people which is something we must never forget.’

  Mary pulled at the rings on her mother’s fingers but Katharine knew she was not thinking of them. ‘Mother,’ she said, ‘if I were to plead with my father . . .’

  The Queen shook her head. ‘He has decided. You must go. But do not let us spoil what time is left to us in grieving. Time will pass, my darling, more quickly than you realise. I shall hear of you from your governess and tutors, and you will write to me yourself. You see I shall have all that to live for.’

  Mary nodded slowly. Poor child! thought the Queen. She has learned to keep her feelings in check. She has learned that the fate of Princesses can often be cruel and that one thing is certain, they must be accepted.

  ‘You will go to Ludlow Castle,’ said the Queen trying to speak brightly. ‘It is a beautiful place.’

  ‘Tell me about when you were there, Mother.’

  ‘It was long . . . long ago. I went there with my first husband.’

  ‘My father’s brother,’ murmured Mary.

  ‘It was so long ago,’ said the Queen, and she thought of those days when she had been married to the gentle Arthur who was so different from Henry; Arthur who had been her husband for scarcely six months.

  ‘Tell me about the castle,’ said Mary.

  ‘It rises from the point of a headland,’ the Queen told her, ‘and is guarded by a wide, deep fosse. It is grand and imposing with its battlemented towers; and the surrounding country is superb . . . indeed some of the best I have ever seen.’

  The Princess nodded sadly.

  ‘You will be happy there,’ murmured Katharine, putting her lips to Mary’s forehead. ‘We shall not be very far away from each other, and soon you will come back to me.’

  ‘How soon?’ asked Mary.

  ‘You will be surprised how soon.’

  ‘I would rather know. It is always so much easier to bear if you know how long. Then I could count the days.’

  ‘My darling, you will be happy there. When I left my mother, the ocean separated us. This is not the same at all.’

  ‘No,’ said Mary slowly. ‘It is not the same at all.’

  ‘And now, my love, go to the virginals. Play the piece which you wished me to hear.’

  Mary hesitated and for a moment Katharine feared that the child would lose her hold on that rigid control. But obediently she rose, went to the virginals, sat down and began to play; and as she did so, the tears, which would no longer be kept back, rolled silently down her cheeks.

  Chapter IV

  THE PRINCESS AT LUDLOW CASTLE

  The Princess Mary was melancholy in the Castle of Ludlow and the Countess of Salisbury was alarmed on her account. The only thing which could bring the child out of that languid indifference as to what went on around her was a letter from her mother.

  Each day she told the Countess how long they had been at Ludlow; and she would ask wistfully if there were any news of their returning to her father’s Court.

  ‘All in good time,’ the Countess would say. ‘With the passing of each day we are a little nearer to our return.’

  The Princess rode often in the beautiful woods close to the castle; she had to admit that the country was some of the fairest she had ever seen; but it was clear that when she was separated from her mother she could not be happy, and the Countess feared that her health would be affected by her melancholy.

  Great plans were afoot for the celebrations of Christmas, The New Year and Twelfth Night.

  ‘There will be plays, masques and a banquet . . . just as at your father’s Court,’ the Countess told her.

  ‘I wonder whether my mother will come,’ was all the Princess could say.

  It was true that she had a certain interest in her lessons; she worked hard at her Latin and her music and sometimes she would
chuckle and say: ‘My mother will be surprised that I have come so far. I shall write to her in Latin, and when she comes I shall play all my new pieces.’

  The Countess was grateful that she had this interest in her Latin and music, and made the most of it. There had been rumours which had come to the Countess’s notice before she left Court and, although she could not believe there was much truth in them, they made her very uneasy. The fact that the Queen had married the King’s brother could have no effect on the present marriage. The Pope had given the necessary dispensation, and during all the years the King and Queen had been married there had never before been any suggestion that the marriage might not be legal.

  She was a wise woman, and in her fifty-two years she had seen much tragedy. None understood, more than she did, the Tudors’s fierce determination to fight off all those who threatened to take the crown from them. It was natural that the King wanted to make sure of the Tudor succession. Desperately he needed a son, and Katharine had failed to give it to him.

  There were times when Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, wished that she were not a Plantagenet and so near to the throne. She had lived through troublous times. Her maternal grandfather had been that Earl of Warwick who had been known as the Kingmaker; her father had been the Duke of Clarence, brother of Richard III, who had been imprisoned in the Tower and there, it was believed, had been drowned in a butt of malmsey. She had been a young child when that had happened and it had made a deep and terrible impression on her; ever after she had been aware of the insecurity of life and the favour of Kings; and it seemed to her that those who lived nearest the throne had the most to fear. That was why she often thought with deep compassion of the Queen, and now as she sat with her royal charge she could grow quite melancholy wondering what the future held for her. Only recently tragedy had struck at her family through her youngest child, Ursula, wife of Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham whose life had recently come to an end on the block.

  Henry VIII had occasionally been kind to her family; she had fancied that he wanted to make amends to them for his father’s murder of her brother Edward who, as the Earl of Warwick, had been a menace to the throne. But how long would that favour last? She believed now that she was regarded with suspicion by Wolsey because of her close friendship with the Queen.

  If Katharine could have been with her in Ludlow she would have been almost happy. It was peaceful here and seemed so far from the world of ambition. And how happy little Mary would have been if the Queen were here! But as the weeks stretched into months the love between the governess and her charge grew deeper and did – so the Countess fervently hoped – compensate in some measure for the child’s loss of her mother.

  Margaret tried to replace that mother, and it was a great joy to her to know that the times of the day to which Mary looked forward more than any other were those when she and the Countess were alone together; and the little girl, released from her lessons which Margaret often felt were too much for her, would sit at the Countess’s feet and demand to hear stories of her life.

  And when Mary said: ‘My mother used to tell me stories of the days when she was a girl in Spain . . .’ Margaret knew that the substitution had taken place in the child’s mind; and she wrote to the Queen telling her of these pleasant hours which seemed to give consolation to Mary for her exile.

  Through Margaret’s description of her family Mary began to know the Pole children so well that they seemed to be her intimate friends. There was Henry, Lord Montague, who had followed the King to France to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Margaret did not tell the child of the anxiety she had suffered when Henry had been arrested at the time of the trial of the Duke of Buckingham because his father-in-law was a connection of the Duke’s; in any case he had been speedily released, and very soon afterwards had been restored to favour, being among those noblemen who had greeted the Emperor Charles on his arrival in England. The Countess would talk of her sons, Arthur, Reginald, Geoffrey and her daughter Ursula, with such loving detail that the Princess knew that these quiet hours were as enjoyable to the Countess as they were to her.

  But it was of Reginald that Mary liked best to hear; Reginald was learned and deeply religious, and Mary had always felt that to give lifelong devotion to religion was the best way of living. Therefore Reginald became her hero.

  The Countess told how she had always meant him to go into the Church and how eager he had been to follow that calling, although he had not yet taken holy orders.

  ‘There is no better man in the world than my Reginald,’ said Margaret proudly, and Mary began to believe her.

  ‘When he was a boy at Oxford he astonished his tutors,’ the fond mother declared. ‘In truth I think they began to realise that he was more clever than they. He became a Dean at Wimborne though still a layman. He held many posts, and then he decided to go to Padua, and that is where he is now. The King, your father, is pleased with him and there is great hospitality in his house there. Scholars flock to see him. He thinks it is because he is a kinsman of the King.’

  ‘But it is really because of his noble character,’ Mary asserted.

  ‘I believe that to be so. Mary, I think he will soon be coming to England.’

  Mary clasped her hands in ecstasy. ‘And will he come to Ludlow?’

  ‘Come to see his mother! Of a certainty he will. You do not know my Reginald.’

  ‘I do,’ declared the Princess.

  And after that they often spoke of his coming and when Mary awoke in the mornings she would say to herself: ‘Will there be news from my mother today?’ And then: ‘Is Reginald now on his way to the Castle?’

  It was only these hopes which made the separation tolerable. But the months passed and there was no news of Mary’s joining her mother; and Reginald continued to stay in Italy.

  Henry cut himself off from communication with his Queen, and she rarely saw him. She lived quietly, working on her garments for the poor, reading religious books, going to Mass, praying privately. Her great joy was writing letters to her daughter, but what a difficult task this was when she must suppress her fierce longing, and not convey her fears that the long absence was stifling that deep affection they had for each other!

  Henry was growing impatient. He had begun to wonder whether Wolsey was working as wholeheartedly for him as he had once believed. Wolsey was a man who had seen that his own pockets were well lined; and should a king feel such gratitude towards a man who in his service had grown as rich as surely only a king should be?

  Wolsey was constantly whispering caution, and Henry was becoming a little uncertain of the game the Chancellor was playing. There was a new faction springing up at Court, and at the centre of this was George Boleyn whom the King found a fascinating young man, largely because he was the brother of Anne.

  Anne remained at Hever, but she should not do so for long. Henry had already shown his favour to the family by raising Sir Thomas to the peerage, so that he now bore the title of Viscount Rochford. He had even given poor Will Carey, Mary’s husband, a post at Court as gentleman of the Privy Chamber. He was certain that soon the haughty girl would give in to his pleading, and stop talking about her virtue.

  But at the same time it was this Boleyn faction which was making him doubt Wolsey. He sent for his Chancellor in order to discuss a matter which was of great concern to them both at this time: the marriage of the Princess Mary.

  When Wolsey entered, the King did not greet him with the affectionate look which the Chancellor usually received from him. Wolsey was acutely aware of the King’s changing attitude towards him and it was doubly alarming because he was not sure of its origin.

  ‘I have news from France,’ said Henry. ‘It seems that François is rejecting our offer of my daughter.’

  Wolsey nodded gravely. Here was one matter on which they were in agreement; they shared the desire for a marriage between Mary and a member of the royal French family. Nothing would disturb the Emperor more; at the same time if Mary wer
e to marry into France she would very soon be sent to that country; and if the King were about to rid himself of the Queen, Mary’s presence in England could prove an embarrassment. There was no need to speak of this matter. Each knew that it was well to the fore in the mind of the other.

  The King took a document from his table which had been sent to him from Louise of Savoy who was her son’s Regent while he, François, remained the Emperor’s prisoner in Madrid.

  ‘Read it,’ commanded the King; and Wolsey read that the Duchesse of Savoy could not express sufficient regret that the marriage between her son and the Princess Mary was not possible. She knew that the Princess of England excelled all other Princesses; she had heard nothing but good of her character, her attainments and her beauty. Alas, a tragic fate had befallen her son; he was in the hands of the Emperor and harsh terms were being imposed on him. Not the least harsh of these – in view of the offer of the Princess’s hand from England – was that he should marry the Emperor’s sister Eleanora whom Emanuel of Portugal had recently left a widow. It seemed likely that the King of France would have to comply with this unless Eleanora refused to marry him.

  The Duchesse however hoped that this might not make an end of their desire for a French-English alliance. She had grandsons. She was certain that François would welcome the Princess Mary as the wife of his son Henri, Duc d’Orléans.

  ‘Well,’ the King demanded, ‘what do you think of this proposition?’

  ‘A fair one. Marriage to young Henri would, in truth, be more suitable than marriage with François.’

  ‘A second son,’ murmured the King.

  ‘Eldest sons sometimes die,’ Wolsey reminded him.

  ‘That’s so,’ replied the King, himself a second son. He was thoughtful for a while. ‘The child is young . . . not yet ten years of age. There is time. But it shall be a French match for her.’

  ‘I am in full agreement with Your Grace.’

  ‘I rejoice to hear it.’ Was it his imagination, wondered Wolsey, or was there a trace of sarcasm in the King’s voice. The little blue eyes swept over the rich satin robes. ‘We shall be having French ambassadors here soon, I doubt not. When they come it would be well for them to be entertained at Hampton Court.’