The Fifth Queen Crowned
She came out of her thoughts to say to her uncle, remembering his speech
about her hands--
'Aye; I have heard that Anne Boleyn had six fingers upon her right
hand.'
'She had six upon each, but she concealed it,' he answered. 'It was her
greatest grief.'
Katharine realised that his sardonic tone, his bitter yellow face, the
croak in his voice, and his stiff gait--all these things were signs of
his hostility to her. And his mention of Anne Boleyn, who had been
Queen, much as she was, and of her bitter fate, this mention, if it
could not be a threat, was, at least, a reminder meant to give her fears
and misgiving. When she had been a child--and afterwards, until the very
day when she had been shown for Queen--her uncle had always treated her
with a black disdain, as he treated all the rest of the world. When he
had--and it was rarely enough--come to visit her grandmother, the old
Duchess of Norfolk, he had always been like that. Through the old
woman's huge, lonely, and ugly halls he had always stridden, halting a
little over the rushes, and all creatures must keep out of his way. Once
he had kicked her little dog, once he had pushed her aside; but
probably, then, when she had been no more than a child, he had not known
who she was, for she had lived with the servants and played with the
servants' children, much like one of them, and her grandmother had known
little of the household or its ways.
She answered him sharply--
'I have heard that you were no good friend to your niece, Anne Boleyn,
when she was in her troubles.'
He swallowed in his throat and gazed impassively at the distant oak
tree, nevertheless his knee trembled with fury. And Katharine knew very
well that if, more than another, he took pleasure in giving pain with
his words, he bore the pain of other's words less well than most men.
'The Queen Anne,' he said, 'was a heretic. No better was she than a
Protestant. She battened upon the goods of our Church. Why should I
defend her?'
'Uncle,' she said, 'where got you the jewel in your bonnet?'
He started a little back at that, and the small veins in his yellow
eye-whites grew inflamed with blood.
'Queen----' he brought out between rage and astonishment that she
should dare the taunt.
'I think it came from the great chalice of the Abbey of Rising,' she
said. 'We are valiant defenders of the Church, who wear its spoils upon
our very brows.'
It was as if she had thrown down a glove to him and to a great many that
were behind him.
She knew very well where she stood, and she knew very well what her
uncle and his friends awaited for her, for Margot, her maid, brought her
alike the gossip of the Court and the loudly voiced threats and
aspirations of the city. For the Protestants--she knew them and cared
little for them. She did not believe there were very many in the King's
and her realm, and mostly they were foreign merchants and poor men who
cared little as long as their stomachs were filled. If these had their
farms again they would surely return to the old faith, and she was
minded to do away with the sheep. For it was the sheep that had brought
discontent to England. To make way for these fleeces the ploughmen had
been dispossessed.
It was natural that Protestants should hate her; but with Norfolk and
his like it was different. She knew very well that Norfolk came there
that day and waited every day, watching anxiously for the first sign
that the King's love for her should cool. She knew very well that they
said in the Court that with the King it was only possession and then
satiety. And she knew very well that when Norfolk's eyes searched her
face it was for signs of dismay and of discouragement. And when Norfolk
had said that he himself had placed the banners, the tents, the
pavilions and carpets that made gay all that grim terrace of the air, he
was essaying to make her think that the King was abandoning the task of
doing her honour. This had made her angry, for it was such folly. Her
uncle should have known that the King had discussed all these things
with her, asking her what she liked, and that all these bright colours
and these plaisaunces were what her man had gallantly thought out for
her. She carried her challenge still further.
'It ill becomes us Howards and all like us,' she said, 'to talk of how
we will defend the Church of God----'
'I am a swordsman only,' he said. 'Give me that----'
She was not minded to listen to him.
'It becomes us ill,' she said; 'and I take shame in it. For, a very few
years agone we Howards were very poor. Now we are very rich--though it
is true that my father is still a very poor man, and your stepmother, my
grandmother, has known hard shifts. But we Howards, through you who are
our head, became amongst the richest in the land. And how?'
'I have done services----' the Duke began.
'Why, there has been no new wealth made in this realm,' she said; 'it
came from the Church. Consider what you have had of this Abbey of
Risings that I speak of, because I knew it well as a child, and saw many
times then, sparkling in that which held the blood of my Saviour, the
jewel that is now in your cap.'
The Abbey of Risings, after the visitors had been to it and the monks
had been driven out, had fallen to the Duke of Norfolk. And his men had
stripped the lead from the roofs, the glass from the windows, the very
tiles from the floor. And this little abbey was only one of many, large
and small, that had fallen to the Duke, so that it was true enough that,
through him, the Howards had become a very rich family.
Norfolk burst into a sudden speech--
'I hold these things only as a trust,' he said. 'I am ready to restore.'
'Why, that is very well,' Katharine said; 'and I have hopes that soon
you will be called to make that restoration to your God.'
Norfolk looked at the square toes of his shoes for a long time.
'Will you have _all_ things to be given back?' he said at last after he
had thought much.
'The King will have all things be as they were before the Queen
Katharine, my namesake of Aragon, was undone,' Katharine answered. 'And
me he will have to take her place so that all things shall be as before
they were.'
The Duke, leaning on his silver and gold staves, shrugged his shoulders
very slowly.
'This will make a very great confusion,' he said.
'Ay,' Katharine answered, 'there will a very many be confounded, and a
great number of hundreds be much annoyed.'
She broke in again upon his slow meditations--
'Sir,' she said, 'this is a very pitiful thing! Privy Seal that is dead
and done with worked with a very great cunning. Well he knew that for
most men the heart resideth in the pocket. Therefore, though ye said all
that he rode this land with a bridle of iron, he was very careful to
stop all your mouths alike with pieces of gold. It was not only to his
friends that he gave what had been taken from God, but he was very
careful that much also should fall into the greedy mouths of those that
cried out. If he had not done this, do you think that he would have
remained so long above the earth that he made weary? No. But since he
made all rich alike with this plunder, so there was no man, either
Catholic or Lutheran, very anxious to have him away. And, now that he is
dead he worketh still. For who among you lords that do call yourselves
sons of the Church, but holdeth of the Church's goods? Oh, bethink you!
bethink you! The moment is at hand when ye may work restoration. See
that ye do it willingly and with good hearts, smoothing and making plain
the way by which the bruised feet of our Saviour shall come across this,
His land.'
Norfolk kept his eyes upon the ground.
'Why, for me,' he said, 'I am very willing. This day I will send to set
clerks at work discovering that which is mine and that which came from
the Church; but I think you will find some that will not do it so
eagerly.'
She believed him very little; and she said--
'Why, if you will do this thing I think there will not many be
behindhand.'
He did what he could to conceal his wincing, and her voice changed its
tone.
'Sir,' she said, and she was eager and pleading, 'you have many men that
take counsel with you, for I trow that you and my Lord of Winchester do
lead such lords as be Catholic in this realm. I know very well that you
and my Lord Bishop of Winchester and such Catholic lords would have me
to be your puppet and so work as you would have me, giving back to the
Church such things as have fallen to Protestants or to men that ye
mislike. But that may not be, for, since I owe mine advancement not to
you, nor to mine own efforts, but to God alone, so to God alone do I owe
fealty.'
She stretched out towards him the hand that he had kissed. The tail of
her coif fell almost to her feet; her body in the fresh sunlight was all
cased in purple velvet, only the lawn of her undershirt showed, white
and tremulous at her wrists and her neck; and, fair and contrasted with
the gold of her hair, her face came out of its abstraction, to take on a
pitiful and mournful earnestness.
'Sir,' she said, 'if you shall speak for God in the councils that you
will hold, believe that your rewards shall be very great. I think that
you have been a man of a very troubled mind, for you have thought only
or mostly of the affairs of this world. But do now this one good stroke
for God His piteous sake, and such a peace shall descend upon you as you
have never yet known. You shall have no more griefs; you shall have no
more fears. And that is better than the jewels of chalices, and than
much lead from the roofs of abbeys. Speak you thus in these councils
that you shall hold, give you such advice to them that come to you
seeking it, and this I promise you--for it is too little a thing to
promise you the love of a Queen and a King's favour, though that too ye
shall not lack--but this I promise you, that there shall descend upon
your heart that most blessed miracle and precious wealth, the peace of
God.'
III
When Henry was calmed by his pacing in her chamber he came out to her in
the sunlight, rolling and bear-like, and so huge that the terrace seemed
to grow smaller.
'Chuck,' he said to her, 'I ha' done a thing to pleasure thee.' He moved
two fingers upwards to save the Duke of Norfolk from falling to his
knees, caught Katharine by the elbow, and, turning upon himself as on a
huge pivot, swung her round him so that they faced the pavilion. 'Sha't
not talk with a citron-faced uncle,' he said; 'sha't save sweet words
for me. I will tell thee what I ha' done to pleasure thee.'
'Save it a while and do another ere ye tell me,' she said.
'Now, what is your reasoning about that, wise one?' he asked.
She laughed at him, for she took pleasure in his society and, except
when she was earnest to beg things of him, she was mostly gay at his
side.
'It takes a woman to teach kings,' she said.
He answered that it took a Queen to teach him.
'Why,' she said, 'listen! I know that each day ye do things to pleasure
me, things prodigal or such little things as giving me pouncet boxes.
But you will find--and a woman, quean or queen, knows it well--that to
take the full pleasure of her lover's surprises well, she must have an
easy mind. And to have an easy mind she must have granted her the
little, little boons she asketh.'
He reflected ponderously upon this point and at last, with a sort of
peasant's gravity, nodded his head.
'For,' she said, 'if a woman is to take pleasure she must guess at what
you men have done for her. And if she be to guess pleasurably, she must
have a clear mind. And if I am to have a clear mind I must have a maiden
consoled with a husband.'
Henry seated himself carefully in the great chair of the small pavilion.