by Mary Lide
Henry’s spies were not yet as skilled as they were to become, capable of turning a single phrase into a dozen conspiracies. They hit upon a theme that was over-ingenious, perhaps incredible, but Henry welcomed it. ‘My sister never criticized me before,’ he argued. ‘If she does so now, some wicked influence must be at work to make her turn from me. What can be more treacherous than fermenting unrest in the king’s own family?’ And so his informants, sure of pleasing him, produced two proofs of Philippa’s perfidy, by relating what the princess did. Neither incident had anything to do with Philippa; neither had anything to do with treachery. Such as they were, the princess alone was responsible. But that was what Henry wanted: to use the princess to strike at her friend.
The ‘incidents’ themselves were small, of human importance only, revealing more human sadness than treachery. It says much about Henry that he had to stoop to such pettiness. And it says much for Philippa that however she might distrust the king she would never have believed him capable of listening at keyholes, while the princess might well have believed she could rely upon her friends, as once in happier times she would have done.
The first incident then. The princess had been examining her wedding gifts, restlessly arranging and rearranging them. Suddenly in a fit of pique she had pushed the piles of linen to the floor, overthrown the caskets of jewels and ordered seamstresses and jewellers to leave (jewels and linens both paid for out of Henry’s munificence, as if he had a Midas-touch; not one sign of normal gratitude, from a sister who had once worshipped him).
‘I know how this marriage will end,’ Mary Tudor had cried, ‘just like those other times when I was wed, always by proxy, you understand, as if I do not merit the real thing’ (a slur upon the royal name). She had snatched up one of the embroidered sheets which Henry also had paid for, picking at her royal cypher with her long nails. ‘God’s goodness suffices me,’ she read, tracing out the elaborate stitchery. ‘Little good has His goodness done.’ (A blasphemy, as well as a reproach.)
Following this suspicious start she had gone on to make a mock of the proxy ceremony itself, whose elaborate ritual Henry had carefully planned; how after the Mass had been said, overseen by Wolsey to ensure no mistake was made, she would have to lie down on the floor under a bed coverlet, while some French lord would be brought to lie beside her in King Louis’s stead. ‘One of those French prisoners,’ the princess scoffed, ‘left over from the Battle of Spurs, I suppose, kept shut up since in the Tower. That would economize, since he is already here. And he will lie beside me, grinning, as if in truth he were a husband. But first he will remove part of his hose so he can stretch his bare leg over mine.’
She had given a little laugh, not unlike her childish giggling but without mirth. ‘And I shall lie beside him like a block of wood, until he jumps up again. And he will bow, at his most respectful, as if minutes before he had not been pinching me or feeling in indecent ways, all in his master’s name of course so I dare not make complaint.
‘If that is all that marriage is,’ she had continued, as if these indiscretions were not enough, ‘then I am reemed with it like any whore. For when I have been trundled off to be redressed; when I have been told to enjoy the feast, what is left for me to enjoy, and who shall I enjoy it with? I have a brother who has turned to straw, and a lover who has turned his back.’
She had not spoken in a frantic way, but rather in cold formal tones, as she had been taught. Her words sent shivers down her listeners’ spines. Some had crossed themselves, fearful of treason’s taint. It was well they did. The taint was there, and Henry’s spies knew how to make the most of it.
The second incident followed close upon the first. Prompted no doubt by the same bitter regret, the princess had gone on to complain how she had been only a child when the first marriage offer had been made. Even her voice changed, became low and monotonous, as if she were in a trance (which she might have been). What she revealed was a litany of shame, all calculated to embarrass the king, for what idol likes to see himself turned to clay. And revealing again that malign influence.
‘The first time,’ the princess said, ‘the groom-to-be was that same Charles who will become an emperor. Younger than I am he was in his cradle still, so his men came on his behalf. He did not choose me himself, nor did I him. A loveless marriage is an affront to God,’ she had cried, ‘as you, Mistress Philippa, have often said. God must have abandoned me.’ Disrespect then, added to blasphemy, in which Philippa de Verne concurred, agreeing with the princess, comforting her, urging her to speak her mind.
‘When they came,’ the princess continued, ‘my mother was dead, my older sister sent to Scotland, my father bowed with grief. The only one to stand by me was my brother Henry. He helped me then, holding up the train of my skirt since it was so heavy I could hardly walk, telling me what to say, coaching me on what to respond. He stood by me, hand on hip, like a little courtier, and glared at those ambassadors. Where has all that kindness gone,’ she cried. ‘Why does my brother forsake me?’ And the traitress Philippa, not disputing these lies, had said, ‘He will regret it one day.’
The end of the tale was full of dark and terrible mystery. It made Henry’s blood surge with a strange yearning, almost as strange as the experience he had had with Philippa, and even the men who recounted it were reluctant to speak. Only the traitress de Verne had not cringed. Openly she had held the princess in her arms and encouraged her. ‘When I had answered all the questions that Charles’s ambassadors asked,’ the princess had whispered, ‘whether I said my prayers, whether I could read, my nurse took me away. One of the men followed us, a tall thin man, a churchman. Wolsey reminds me of him. He came into my room and closed the door. I heard a clink of coins. Then my nurse lifted me upon the table top, close to where he stood, so that I was level with his eyes. He had eyes like all churchmen I have ever known, dark and deepset and inquisitive. While my nurse held my feet, he threw my skirts over my head, almost stifling me. I remember how cold it was, and how cold his hands, prying with his thumbs between my legs. And when he was done, “Put her down,” he said, “I see she is as well made as anyone, enough for my master to enjoy when he is grown.’”
She said, ‘When the Spanish marriage was first arranged, my brother Arthur was but a babe in arms. They say the Spanish ambassador examined him in the same way. They did not examine my brother Henry thus, but then he was not born to be a king. And Arthur was an infant, blessed with infant ignorance. I was old enough to remember everything. I remember how cold it was. If that is all that loving is, I shall never feel warm again.’
And the traitress de Verne, not contradicting her, had replied, ‘When the time comes, love will keep you warm. I know, and I promise so.’
Who was not meant to be a king; a thing of straw, who has forsaken me. These were the phrases which burned in Henry’s mind, more than enough to fuel suspicion into flame. But he did not strike at once, playing with his victim like cat with mouse, wanting Philippa to veer from fear to hope to fear. He meant to make his move just before the princess set sail for France. And so he would have done had not a third ‘incident’ occurred. This too was the princess’s ‘fault’, if ‘fault’ it was. But since it was done in public gaze Henry had no need of spies to report what he could see for himself. And, being in public, it forced him to revise his plans.
By now the weeks of preparation were done; the marriage settlements, the dowry gifts, the grants of land, were approved, and Henry had had the proxy marriage performed, as the princess had foretold. He even had agreed to go with her on part of her journey as sign of respect. He had arranged for more than a hundred souls to accompany her, most of whom she did not know, chosen by him to enlarge his dignity rather than to serve hers. He felt that all that money could buy had salved his conscience; he was relieved that it had been done with such little complaint (although of course he had pretended otherwise).
Surrounded by the greatest lords and ladies of the land Mary Tudor was to sail on the kin
g’s flagship. The rest of her retinue would pack themselves on other ships, among the crates of goods and supplies, as if France were on the moon, without comforts. That milling crowd assembling on the coast, the lords and ladies and their attendants, the personal servants of the servants, the lesser clergy, bailiffs, horse masters, tutors of French and etiquette, made order impossible and nearby villages and towns were jammed with homeless courtiers looking for beds. Henry had been obliged to seek Wolsey’s help.
Wolsey undertook the organization of Henry’s peace in the same way that he had organized Henry’s war. He had his clerks make lists: lists of people, of rank, role, functions; of goods and gifts, and where they came from; of supplies, and who should use them. He himself supervised the whole, keeping careful notes of his own, until it could be safely claimed that he was their master.
Among these lists, so long they might have contained all of England, two names were conspicuous by their absence. And they were the two the princess herself had fixed upon.
The night before she was to sail she had an unexpected visitor. It was the queen, moving swiftly on her dainty feet, cloaked in her customary black. ‘Sister,’ she said, standing tall, although she was so small a thing, her lisping English suddenly very Spanish. ‘I have a wrong to confess. My jealousy has been part the cause of your grief, although God knows I did not wish it so, and long have been my prayers that I might overcome its sin. For jealousy is a sin I know. I also guess at your handmaiden’s distress for I have watched her all this while (although she I think did not know so). I see how she has avoided the king, not thrown herself into his path. And so, to make amends, although God knows I never did you harm, I bring you this.’
She felt beneath her cloak for a sheaf of paper which she had secreted about her person. ‘Take it,’ she said simply, ‘and read. What you do with it is up to you. I myself have made peace with God for this, to right a wrong and perhaps avoid a worse one. My husband is dearer to me than all the world. God bring him back to me,’ she cried. ‘God send him back into my bed. God right my wrongs for me.’
Crossing herself in her foreign way she left as silently as she had come in. Sitting bolt upright in her great four-poster bed, the princess for once was silenced, although not for long. Recovering, she screamed to have the tapers lit, and summoning her chaplain, on pain of death, had him read aloud the lists that Catherine had dared to bring to her.
The first missing name she noticed right away, by far the greatest, and the one dearest to her heart, that of the Duke of Suffolk. Alone of all the English lords he had not been invited to the wedding in France. She knew his suit with the Austrian duchess long played out; she must have wondered at his absence; now she guessed her brother’s command kept him away. She said nothing, turning suspicions in her mind just as her brother did, biding her time too, not willing to let that brother trick her again.
The second missing name was that of Philippa de Verne. Its absence made the princess think, not perhaps for Philippa’s sake but for her own. Henry had made a promise. She needed to ensure he kept his word. She was a queen to his king, and she meant to challenge him, to show him that she was as good as he was. Lying there in the dark, on the eve of her leave-taking, she too came to a decision.
The long delay had not disheartened Philippa. Now, on the verge of freedom, she could scarcely contain herself. In France, she thought, she would find Richard waiting for her. What would her lover care that she was penniless? Her lands meant less to him than her. And far from the English court, why should Henry be a threat? In her eagerness she had convinced herself that Henry had no malice left. Just as Henry hoped she would. His dossier against her was complete, and he was ready to savour it, the pleasure of her terror as his guards arrested her more than making revenge complete. When he had her in his prison, he thought, when his gaolers threatened her, then how she would scream for help, then she would not refuse him.
He had waited to the very day the ships sailed, a fine day, although his master mariners warned that the sun would not last. His fleet rode at anchor in the bay, all fourteen ships, newly painted, newly decorated, their royal banners streaming in the breeze. A gallant display, he must have thought, one calculated to impress the French. And even his queen accompanied him, having decided that anger would never win him back. Her offer of truce was gratifying as was his personal scheme to wipe away his own personal shame (too late for the princess to stop, but soon enough to show her too just how powerful he still was). Pleasure therefore was in his walk, his stance, in the very way he lifted his head to scent the air.
On the pier the princess was waiting for him.
The morning brightness outlined her, the morning wind whipped her skirts. ‘Brother,’ she said without ado, ‘I go to France for England’s sake, not my own.’ She spoke loudly so Henry’s companions and the many ambassadors who attended him could hear and would act as witnesses. ‘Next time I claim the right to marry to my own pleasure.’ Again she paused for effect. ‘As you promised me,’ she cried. ‘And I’ll not go unless the Duke of Suffolk meets me there. And Philippa de Verne accompanies me, as God allows.’
Beside her stood the other young woman whom the court was to admire. She was as straight as a stripling, with passionate blue eyes and long fair curls. She did not look down as she had taught the princess not to do, but fixed her gaze on Henry, not beseechingly, but as if she willed him not to shame himself by refusal. And seeing them both, Henry did feel shame, although that too he hid.
Henry was surprised by the princess’s attack (although that was just what he had warned his spies to expect). He never believed his silly little playmate would be so shrewd as to study lists or having read them would think ahead as to what they meant. You promised. There was that word to strangle him, a weight, wrapped round his neck like a plumb line; would he ever be freed from it. As God allows; he was afraid God might.
Caught then by his own trap, not needing spies to relate what all the world saw, Henry turned from his sister in a rage. Back he stalked, refusing to accompany her, his queen and courtiers trailing after him, afraid to comment on his change of mood. Out of sight he howled for his guards to countermand his orders of instant arrest, thwarted by his own cleverness. And doubly certain that Wolsey’s efficiency had ruined him, he summoned his Archbishop to answer to him. And as ever, Wolsey came to the rescue.
Henry knew that the Archbishop (who preferred to be called ‘Cardinal’ in anticipation of a greater honour) was cloistered in his own private sanctuary, paying a visit to that same Nun of Kent, from whom, it was whispered, he often sought advice, under guise of his professional role of spiritual adviser to her, a profitable exchange for both. Since the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre lay not far from the coast the king’s messengers had no difficulty in routing Wolsey out. And Henry’s message was blunt enough. ‘This is your fault. I blame you.’
The Archbishop then was of young middle years, not yet bloated with the corpulence of age, and he lost no time in scrabbling into a saddle to hurry back, cursing the while in un-Christian wise, both the lack of finesse and the lack of tact. Henry soon heard him scuttling through the cold castle rooms, and was relieved, although he threw himself into a chair, his mouth closed petulantly. Under his eyelids he noted how Wolsey forced his features into their customary deference and how he listened, bent head, to the king’s loud list of faults. And when Henry could complain no more, having run out of complaints, he allowed his Archbishop to assume control.
‘This is what I suggest, my lord king,’ Wolsey’s voice resembled honey and cream, a tone Henry knew was assumed when the Archbishop wanted to placate but which never failed to achieve its end. ‘Let both go to France, queen and queen’s serving wench, for thus you promised and thus you must do. But there they stay. One to marry as you planned;’ (a compliment this, that mollified the king somewhat for he had not liked that word ‘must’) ‘the other to rot in a Calais gaol.’ And when the king still frowned, more persuasively, in that same golden t
ongue, ‘Calais belongs to England still and your law runs there as well as here. A Calais prison will be as firm as an English one, and better hidden if anyone should dare inquire for her.’ He tapped the side of his nose to suggest that no one would. ‘Better all round to let them sail,’ Wolsey went on. ‘But before they do, send off fresh orders by special ship, your fastest craft, to arrive ahead of them. Write a new list in your own hand, and prick your seal beside the girl’s name, so your agents know to look for her. And when you have her fast, and the queen is delivered to her new husband, why then my lord, you have what you want without being forsworn.’ And he smiled, a false smile that failed to light up his sunken eyes.
Henry pretended to hesitate for a while. Wolsey’s idea was good enough; the king only disliked being obliged to use it. But time was pressing and the fleet must leave. ‘Very well,’ he grumbled finally. ‘But I add one other name. And a letter to go to Lille.’
The name he added was his own masterstroke, the Duke of Suffolk’s, and the letter to Lille was sent to him. Not to please the princess to be sure, nor even less to gratify the duke, but to torment Mary all the more, to give her a lover she could not have. And to ensure the duke obeyed he baited the trap with offers that he knew the duke could not refuse, to lead the English at the wedding jousts which were to be arranged after the real marriage in France. Before I was betrothed my brother and Charles fought a hundred knights. Let Charles try the same trick again, before a queen who had passed beyond his grasp.