The Fifth Queen Crowned
She was unwilling to bid the gentleman rise and go, because this was the
Lady Mary's room.
'Where your Grace is, there the spring abideth,' Mary said sardonically.
'_Ecce miraculum sicut erat, Joshua rege._'
The little Prince came timidly down to beg a flower from the Queen and
they all had their backs upon the spy. He ran his hands down his beard
and considered the Queen's words. Then swiftly he was on his feet and
through the door. He was more ready to brave the Lady Mary's after-wrath
than let the Queen see him upon his knees. For actually it was a treason
to kneel to the Lady Mary. It had been proclaimed so in the old days
when the King's daughter was always subject to new debasements. And who
knew whether now the penalty of treason might not still be enacted? It
was certain that the Queen had no liking for the Archbishop. Then, what
use might she not make of the fact that the Archbishop's man knelt,
seeming to curry favour, though in these days all men knelt to her, even
when the King was by? He cursed himself as he hastened away.
The Queen looked over her shoulder and caught the glint of his red heel
as it went past the doorpost.
'In our north parts,' she said, and she was glad that Lascelles had
fled, 'the seasons come ever tardily.'
'Well, your Grace has not delayed to blossom,' Mary said.
It was part of her humour when she was in a taunting mood to call the
Queen always 'your Grace' or 'your Majesty' at every turn of the phrase.
Katharine looked at the pink intently. Her face had no expression, she
was determined at once to have a cheerful patience and not to show it in
her face.
The little Prince stole his hand into hers.
'Wherefore did my father--_rex pater meus_--pummel the man in the long
cloak?' he asked.
'You knew it then?' Katharine asked of her stepdaughter.
'I knew it not,' the Lady Mary answered.
'I saw it from this window, but my sister would not look,' the Prince
said.
The Queen was going to shut, with her own hand, the door, the little boy
trotting behind her, but, purple-clothed and huge, the King was there.
'Well, I will not be shut out in mine own castle,' he said pleasantly.
In those, the quiet days of his realm when most things were going well,
his face beneath his beard had taken a rounder and a smoother outline.
He moved with motions less hasty than those he had had two years before,
and when he had cast a task off it was done with and went out of his
mind, so that he appeared a very busy man with, between whiles, the
leisure to saunter.
'In a half hour,' he said, 'I go north to meet the King o' Scots. I
would I had not the long journey to make but could stay with ye. It is
pleasant here; the air is livening.' He caught his little son by the
armpits and hoisted him on to his purple shoulders. 'Hey, princekin,' he
said, 'what news ha' you o' the day?'
The little Edward pulled his father's bonnet off that he might the
better see the huge brows and the little eyes.
'I told my sister that you did pummel a man in a long gown. What is even
"long gown" in the learned tongue?' He played daintily and languidly
with the hair of the King's temples, and when the King had said that he
might call it '_doctorum toga_,' he added, 'But my sister would not come
to look.'
'Well, thy sister is a monstrous learned wench,' the King said with a
heavy benignity. 'She could not leave her book.'
The Lady Mary stood rigid, with a mock humility. She had her hands
clasped before her, the folds of her black skirt fell stiffly just to
the ground. She pursed her lips and strove with herself to speak, for
she was minded to exhibit disdain, but her black mood was too strong for
her.
'I did not read in my book, because I could not,' she said numbly. 'Your
son disturbed my reading. But I did not come to look, because I would
not.'
With one arm round the boy's little waist as he sat on high, and one
hand on the little feet, the King looked at his daughter in a sudden hot
rage; for to speak contemptuously of his son was a thing that filled him
with anger and surprise. He opened his mouth to shout. Katharine Howard
was gently turning a brass sphere with the constellations upon it that
stood upon the table. She moved her fair face round towards the King and
set her finger upon her lips. He shrugged his shoulders, prince and all
moving up together, and his face took on the expression, half abashed
and half resigned, of a man who is reminded by his womankind that he is
near to a passionate folly.
Katharine by that time had schooled him how to act when Mary was in that
humour, and he let out no word.
'I do not like that this Prince should play in my room,' the Lady Mary
pursued him relentlessly, and he was so well lessoned that he answered
only--
'Ye must fight that cock with Kat. It is Kat that sends him, not I.'
Nevertheless he was too masterful a man to keep his silence altogether;
he was, besides, so content upon the whole that he was sure he could
hold his temper in check, and the better to take breath for a long
speech, he took the little boy from his shoulder and planted his feet
abroad on the carpet.
'See now, Moll,' he said, 'make friends!' and he stretched out a large
hand. She shrugged her shoulders half invisibly.
'I will kneel down to the King of this country and to the Supreme Head
of the Church as it is here set up by law. What more would you have of
me?'
'See now, Moll!' he said.
He fingered the medal upon his chest and cast about for words.
'Let us have peace in this realm,' he said. 'We are very near it.'
She raised her eyelids with a tiny contempt.
'It hangs much around you,' he went on. 'Listen! I will tell ye the
whole matter.'
Slowly and sagaciously he disentangled all his coil of policies. His
letter to the Holy Father was all drafted and ready to be put into fine
words. But, before he sent it, he must be sure of peace abroad. It was
like this--
'Ye know,' he said, 'though great wrangles have been in the past betwixt
him and thee and mine own self, how my heart has ever been well inclined
to my nephew, thy cousin the Emperor. There are in Christendom now only
he and France that are anyways strong to stand against me or to invade
me. But France I ha' never loved, and him much.'
'Ye are grown gentle then,' Mary said, 'and forgiving in your old age,
for ye know I ha' plotted against you with my cousin and my cousin with
me.'
'It is a very ancient tale,' the King said. 'Forget it, as do I and he.'
'Why, you live in the sun where the dial face moves. I in the shadow
where Time stays still. To me it is every day a new tale,' the Lady Mary
answered.
His face took on an expression of patience and resignation that angered
her, for she knew that when her father looked so it was always very
difficult to move him.
'Why, all the world forgets,' he said.
'Save only I,' she answered. 'I had only one parent--a mother. She is
dead: she was done to death.'
'I have pardoned your cousin that he plotted against me,' he stuck to
his tale, 'and he me what I did against your mother.'
'Well, he was ever a popinjay,' the Lady Mary said.
'Lately,' Henry continued, 'as ye wiz he had grown very thick with
Francis of France. He went across the French country into the
Netherlands, so strict was their alliance. It is more than I would do to
trust myself to France's word. All Holland marvelled.'
'What is this to me?' the Lady Mary said. 'Will you send me across
France to the Netherlands?'
He left her gibe alone.
'But in these latter months,' he said, 'Kat and I ha' weakened with true
messages and loyal conceits this unholy alliance.'
'Why, I ha' heard,' Mary said, 'ye did send the Duke of Norfolk to tell
the King o' France that my cousin had said in private that he was the
greater King of the twain. These be princely princes!'
'An unholy alliance it was,' Henry went on his way, 'for the Emperor is
a very good Christian and a loyal son of the Church. But Francis
worships the devil--I have heard it said and I believe it--or, at least,
he believes not in God and our Saviour; and he pays allegiance to the
Church only when it serves his turn, now holding on, now letting go. I
am glad this alliance is dissolving.'
'Why, I am glad to hear you speak like this,' Mary said bitterly. 'You
are a goodly son to Mother Church.'
The King took her scorn with a shrug of the shoulders.
'I am glad this alliance is dissolved or dissolving,' he said, 'for when
it is fully dissolved I will make my peace with Rome. And I long for
that day, for I am weary of errors.'
'Well, this is a very goodly tale,' Mary said. 'I am glad you are minded
to escape hell-flame. What is it all to me?'
'The burden of it rests with thee,' he answered, 'for thou alone canst
make thy cousin believe in my true mind.'
'God help me,' Mary said.
'See you, Moll,' the King broke in on her eagerly, 'if you will marry
the Infant of Spain----'
'God's sakes,' she said lightly, 'my cousin's son will wed no bastard as
I be.'
He brushed her jest aside with one hand.
'See you,' he said, 'now I ride to the north to meet the King o' Scots.
That nephew of mine has always been too thick with Francis. But I will
be so friendly with him. And see you, with the Scots cut away and the
Emperor unloyal, the teeth of Francis are drawn. I might not send my
letter to the Pope with all Christendom arrayed together against me. But
when they are set by the ears I am strong enow.'
'Oh, good!' the Lady Mary said. 'Strong enow to be humble!'
Her eyes sparkled so much and her bosom so heaved, that Katharine moved
solicitously and swiftly to come between them.
'See you, Moll,' the King said, 'forgive the ill I wrought thee, and so
shall golden days come again. Once more there shall be a deep peace with
contented husbandmen and the spreading of the vines abroad upon the
stakes. And once more _venite creator spiritus_ shall be sung in this
land. And once more you shall be much honoured; nay, you shall be as one
that saved this realm----'
She screamed out--
'Stay your tongue!' with such a shrill voice that the King's words were
drowned. Katharine Howard ran in between them, but she pushed her aside,
speaking over her shoulder.
'Before God,' she said, 'you gar me forget that you are the King that
begot me illegally.'
Katharine turned upon the King and sought to move him from the room. But
he was still of opinion that he could convince his daughter and stood
his ground, looking over her shoulder as Mary had done.
'Body of God!' Mary said. 'Body of God! That a man could deem me so
base!' She looked, convulsed, into Henry's eyes. 'Can you bring my
mother alive by the truckling and cajoling and setting lying prince
against lying prince? You slew my mother by lies, or your man slew her
by poison. It is all one. And will you come to me that you have decreed
misbegotten, to help you save your soul!'
There was such a violent hatred in her tone that the King could bring no
word out, and she swept on--
'Could even a man be such a dull villain? To creep into heaven by
bribing his daughter! To creep into heaven by strengthening himself with
lies about one prince to another till he be strong enow to be humble!
This is a king! This is even a man! I would be ashamed of such manhood!'
She took a deep breath.
'What can you bribe me with? A marriage with my cousin's son? Why, he
has deserted my mother's cause. I had rather wed a falconer than that
prince. You will have me no longer called bastard? Why, I had rather be
called bastard than the acknowledged child of such a royal King. You
will cover me with brocades and set me on high? By God, the sun in the
heaven has looked upon such basenesses that I seek only a patch of