The Fifth Queen (7 page)

Henry suddenly waved both hands at the sky.

‘Take you good order,’ he said heavily into the lean and yellow face of the Duke. ‘Marshal these ceremonies fitly from henceforth. Let nothing lack. Get you gone.’ An end must be made of talk and gossip. The rumour of last night’s Council must appear an idle tale, a falsehood of despairing Papists. ‘The Queen cometh,’ he said.

With the droop of the Duke’s long arms his hat seemed to brush the stones, his head fell on his chest. It was finished.

He had seen so many things go that he loved. And now this old woman with her Germans, her heresies—her children doubtless—meant the final downfall of the Old Order in his day. It would return, but he would never see it. And under Cromwell’s sardonic gaze his head hung limply, and his eyes filled with hot and blinding drops. His face trembled like that of a very old man.

The King had thrust his hand through Cromwell’s arm, and, with a heavy familiarity as if he would make him forget the Council of last night, he was drawing him away towards the water-gate. He turned his head over his shoulder and repeated balefully:

‘The Queen cometh.’

As he did so his eye fell upon a man tugging at the bridle of a mule that had a woman on its back. He passed on with his minister.

I
N TURNING
, Norfolk came against them at the very end of the path. The man’s green coat was spotted with filth, one of his sleeves was torn off and dangled about his heel. The mule’s knees were cut, and the woman trembled with her hidden face and shrinking figure.

They made him choke with rage and fear. Some other procession might have come against these vagabonds, and the blame would have been his. It disgusted him that they were within a yard of himself.

‘Are there no side paths?’ he asked harshly.

Culpepper blazed round upon him:

‘How might I know? Why sent you no guide?’ His vivid red beard was matted into tails, his face pallid and as if blazing
with rage. The porter had turned them loose into the empty garden.

‘Kat is sore hurt,’ he mumbled, half in tears. ‘Her arm is welly broken.’ He glared at the Duke. ‘Care you no more for your own blood and kin?’

Norfolk asked:

‘Who is your Kat? Can I know all the Howards?’

Culpepper snarled:

‘Aye, we may trust you not to succour your brother’s children.’

The Duke said:

‘Why, she shall back to the palace. They shall comfort her.’

‘That shall she not,’ Culpepper flustered. ‘Sh’ath her father’s commands to hasten to Dover.’

The Duke caught her eyes in the fur hood that hid her face like a Moorish woman’s veil. They were large, grey and arresting beneath the pallor of her forehead. They looked at him, questioning and judging.

‘Wilt not come to my lodging?’ he asked.

‘Aye, will I,’ came a little muffled by the fur.

‘That shall she not,’ Culpepper repeated.

The Duke looked at him with gloomy and inquisitive surprise.

‘Aye, I am her mother’s cousin,’ he said. ‘I fend for her, which you have never done. Her father’s house is burnt by rioters, and her men are joined in the pillaging. But I’ll warrant you knew it not.’

Katharine Howard with her sound hand was trying to unfasten her hood, hastily and eagerly.

‘Wilt come?’ the Duke asked hurriedly. ‘This must be determined.’

Culpepper hissed: ‘By the bones of St Nairn she shall not.’ She lifted her maimed hand involuntarily, and, at the sear of pain, her eyes closed. Immediately Culpepper was beside her
knees, supporting her with his arms and muttering sounds of endearment and despair.

The Duke, hearing behind him the swish pad of heavy soft shoes, as if a bear were coming over the pavement, faced the King.

‘This is my brother’s child,’ he said. ‘She is sore hurt. I would not leave her like a dog,’ and he asked the King’s pardon.

‘Why, God forbid,’ the King said. ‘Your Grace shall succour her.’ Culpepper had his back to them, caring nothing for either in his passion. Henry said: ‘Aye, take good care for her,’ and passed on with Privy Seal on his arm.

The Duke heaved a sigh of relief. But he remembered again that Anne of Cleves was coming, and his black anger that Cromwell should thus once again have the King thrown back to him came out in his haughty and forbidding tone to Culpepper:

‘Take thou my niece to the water-gate. I shall send women to her.’ He hastened frostily up the path to be gone before Henry should return again.

Culpepper resolved that he would take barge before ever the Duke could send. But the mule slewed right across the terrace; his cousin grasped the brute’s neck and her loosened hood began to fall back from her head.

The King, standing twenty yards away, with his hand shaking Cromwell’s shoulder, was saying:

‘See you how grey I grow.’

The words came hot into a long harangue. He had been urging that he must have more money for his works at Calais. He was agitated because a French chalk pit outside the English lines had been closed to his workmen. They must bring chalk from Dover at a heavy cost for barges and balingers. This was what it was to quarrel with France.

Cromwell had his mind upon widening the breach with France. He said that a poll tax might be levied on the subjects
of Charles and Francis then in London. There were goldsmiths, woolstaplers, horse merchants, whoremasters, painters, musicians and vintners.…

The King’s eyes had wandered to the grey river, and then from a deep and moody abstraction he had blurted out those words.

Henry was very grey, and his face, inanimate and depressed, made him seem worn and old enough. Cromwell was not set to deny it. The King had his glass.…

He sighed a little and began:

‘The heavy years take their toll.’

Henry caught him up suddenly:

‘Why, no. It is the heavy days, the endless nights. You can sleep, you.’ But him, the King, incessant work was killing.

‘You see, you see, how this world will never let me rest.’ In the long, black nights he started from dozing. When he took time to dandle his little son a panic would come over him because he remembered that he lived among traitors and had no God he could pray to. He had no mind to work.…

Cromwell said that there was no man in England could outwork his King.

‘There is no man in England can love him.’ His distracted eyes fell upon the woman on the mule. ‘Happy he whom a King never saw and who never saw King,’ he muttered.

The beast, inspired with a blind hatred of Culpepper, was jibbing across the terrace, close at hand. Henry became abstractedly interested in the struggle. The woman swayed forward over her knees.

‘Your lady faints,’ he called to Culpepper.

In his muddled fury the man began once again trying to hold her on the animal. It was backing slowly towards a stone seat in the balustrade, and man and woman swayed and tottered together.

The King said:

‘Let her descend and rest upon the seat.’

His mind was swinging back already to his own heavy sorrows. On the stone seat the woman’s head lay back upon the balustrade, her eyes were closed and her face livid to the sky. Culpepper, using his teeth to the finger ends, tore the gloves from his hands.

Henry drew Cromwell towards the gatehouse. He had it dimly in his mind to send one of his gentlemen to the assistance of that man and woman.

‘Aye, teach me to sleep at night,’ he said. ‘It is you who make me work.’

‘It is for your Highness’ dear sake.’

‘Aye, for my sake,’ the King said angrily. He burst into a sudden invective: ‘Thou hast murdered a many men … for my sake. Thou hast found out plots that were no plots: old men hate me, old mothers, wives, maidens, harlots … Why, if I be damned at the end thou shalt escape, for what thou didst thou didst for my sake? Shall it be that?’ He breathed heavily. ‘My sins are thy glory.’

They reached the long wall of the gatehouse and turned mechanically. A barge at the river steps was disgorging musicians with lutes like half melons set on staves, horns that opened bell mouths to the sky, and cymbals that clanged in the rushing of the river. With his eyes upon them Henry said: ‘A common man may commonly choose his bedfellow.’ They had reminded him of the Queen for whose welcome they had been commanded.

Cromwell swept his hand composedly round the half horizon that held the palace, the grey river and the inlands.

‘Your Highness may choose among ten thousand,’ he answered.

The sound of a horn blown faintly to test it within the gatehouse, the tinkle of a lutestring, brought to the King’s lips: ‘Aye. Bring me music that shall charm my thoughts. You cannot do it.’

‘A Queen is in the nature of a defence, a pledge, a cement,
the keystone of a bulwark,’ Cromwell said. ‘We know now our friends and our foes. You may rest from this onwards.’

He spoke earnestly: This was the end of a long struggle. The King should have his rest.

They moved back along the terrace. The woman’s head still lay back, her chin showed pointed and her neck, long, thin and supple. Culpepper was bending over her, sprinkling water out of his cap upon her upturned face.

The King said to Cromwell: ‘Who is that wench?’ and, in the same tone: ‘Aye, you are a great comforter. We shall see how the cat jumps,’ and then, answering his own question, ‘Norfolk’s niece?’

His body automatically grew upright, the limp disappeared from his gait and he moved sturdily and gently towards them.

Culpepper faced round like a wild cat from a piece of meat, but seeing the great hulk, the intent and friendly eyes, the gold collar over the chest, the heavy hands, and the great feet that appeared to hold down the very stones of the terrace, he stood rigid in a pose of disturbance.

‘Why do ye travel?’ the King asked. ‘This shall be Katharine Howard?’

Culpepper’s hushed but harsh voice answered that they came out of Lincolnshire on the Norfolk border. This was the Lord Edmund’s daughter.

‘I have never seen her,’ the King said.

‘Sh’ath never been in this town.’

The King laughed: ‘Why, poor wench!’

‘Sh’ath been well schooled,’ Culpepper answered proudly, ‘hath had mastern, hath sung, hath danced, hath your Latin and your Greek … Hath ten daughters, her father.’

The King laughed again: ‘Why, poor man!’

‘Poorer than ever now,’ Culpepper muttered. Katharine Howard stirred uneasily and his face shot round to her. ‘Rioters have brent his only house and wasted all his sheep.’

The King frowned heavily: ‘Anan? Who rioted?’

‘These knaves that love not our giving our ploughlands to sheep,’ Culpepper said. ‘They say they starved through it. Yet ’tis the only way to wealth. I had all my wealth by it. By now ’tis well gone, but I go to the wars to get me more.’

‘Rioters?’ the King said again, heavily.

‘ ’Twas a small tulzie—a score of starved yeomen here and there. I killed seven. The others were they that were hanged at Norwich … But the barns were brent, the sheep gone, and the house down and the servants fled. I am her cousin of the mother’s side. Of as good a strain as Howards be.’

Henry, with his eyes still upon them, beckoned behind his back for Cromwell to come. A score or so of poor yeomen, hinds and women, cast out of their tenancies that wool might be grown for the Netherlands weavers, starving, desperate, and seeing no trace of might and order in their hidden lands, had banded, broken a few hedges and burnt a few barns before the possé of the country could come together and take them.

The King had not heard of it or had forgotten it, because such risings were so frequent. His brows came down into portentous and bulging knots, his eyes were veiled and threatening towards the woman’s face. He had conceived that a great rebellion had been hidden from his knowledge.

She raised her head and shrieked at the sight of him, half started to her feet, and once more sank down on the bench, clasping at her cousin’s hand. He said:

‘Peace, Kate, it is the King.’

She answered: ‘No, no,’ and covered her face with her hands.

Henry bent a little towards her, indulgent, amused, and gentle as if to a child.

‘I am Harry,’ he said.

She muttered:

‘There was a great crowd, a great cry. One smote me on the arm. And then this quiet here.’

She uncovered her face and sat looking at the ground. Her
furs were all grey, she had had none new for four years, and they were tight to her young body that had grown into them. The roses embroidered on her glove had come unstitched, and, against the steely grey of the river, her face in its whiteness had the tint of mother of pearl and an expression of engrossed and grievous absence.

‘I have fared on foul ways this journey,’ she said.

‘Thy father’s barns we will build again,’ the King answered. ‘You shall have twice the sheep to your dower. Show me your eyes.’

‘I had not thought to have seen the King so stern,’ she answered.

Culpepper caught at the mule’s bridle.

‘Y’ are mad,’ he muttered. ‘Let us begone.’

‘Nay, in my day,’ the King answered, ‘y’ad found me more than kind.’

She raised her eyes to his face, steadfast, enquiring and unconcerned. He bent his great bulk downwards and kissed her upon the temple.

‘Be welcome to this place.’ He smiled with a pleasure in his own affability and because, since his beard had pricked her, she rubbed her cheek. Culpepper said:

‘Come away. We stay the King’s Highness.’

Henry said: ‘Bide ye here.’ He wished to hear what Cromwell might say of these Howards, and he took him down the terrace.

Culpepper bent over her with his mouth opened to whisper.

‘I am weary,’ she said. ‘Set me a saddle cushion behind my shoulders.’

He whispered hurriedly:

‘I do not like this place.’

‘I like it well. Shall we not see brave shews?’

‘The mule did stumble on the threshold.’

‘I marked it not. The King did bid us bide here.’

She had once more laid her head back on the stone balustrade.

‘If thou lovest me …’ he whispered. It enraged and confused him to have to speak low. He could not think of any words.