The King's Confidante: The Story of the Daughter of Sir Thomas More (11 page)

Margaret suddenly knew that her mother would not live long to occupy that bed.

“Margaret,” said Jane, “come close to me.”

Margaret came to the bed.

“Sit near me,” said Jane, “where I can see you.”

Margaret climbed on to die bed and sat looking at her mother.

“Margaret, you are only six years old, but you are a wise little girl. You seem all of eleven. I feel I can talk to you.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I am going to die.”

“No … you must not. What can we do without you?”

Jane smiled. “Dear little Meg, those are sweet words. It is of when I am gone that I wish to speak to you. How I wish I could have waited awhile! Another seven years and I could have safely left my household in your hands.”

“Mother … Mother … do not say these things. They make me so sad.”

“You do not wish for change. None of us does. You will take care of your father, Margaret. Oh, he is a man and you are but a child … but you will know what I mean. Margaret, I can die happy because I have left you to your father.”

The tears began to fall down Margaret's cheeks. She wished that she had given her mother more affection. She had loved her father so much that she had thought little of the quiet woman who, she now saw, had taken such an important place in their happy household.

“Mother … please …,” she began.

Jane seemed to understand.

“Why, bless you, Meg, it has been my greatest delight to see that love between you and your father. When we married I was afraid I was quite unworthy of him. I was so … unlearned; and at first I was unhappy. I would sit at the table trying so hard to study the Latin he had set me… yet knowing I would never learn it to his satisfaction. And then when you were born all my unhappiness vanished, because I knew that, although I could not make him an ideal wife, I had given him someone whom he could love better than anyone in the world. That was worthwhile, Margaret. I was happy then. And when I saw you grow up and become everything that he had desired, I was even happier. Then there was Elizabeth … then Cecily … and now Jack. You see, he has, as he would say, his quiver full. And but for me he could not have had you all. That is what I have told myself, and because of it I can die in peace. So do not reproach yourself, my little one, that you love him more than you do me. Love is not weighed. It flows. And how can we stem the flow or increase it? Margaret, always remember, my child, that if you have given him great happiness, you have given me the same. Come, kiss me.”

Margaret kissed her mothers cheeks, and the clammy touch of her skin frightened her.

“Mother,” she said, “I will call Mercy. Mayhap she will know what would ease you.”

“One moment, dearest Meg. Meg … look after them all. My little Jackie … he is such a baby. And he is like me. I am afraid he will not be as good with his lessons as you girls are. Take care of him … and of little Bess and Cecily. And, Meg, I need not tell you
to comfort your father, for I know that your very presence will do that. Oh, how I wish that this could have been delayed … a year or two … so that my Margaret was not such a child. You are a dear child, a clever child—never was one so clever—but… if only you had been a few years older I could be content.”

“Mother … please do not fret. I will be as though I have lived twelve years. I will. I swear it. But you will get well. You must. For what shall we do without you?”

Jane smiled and closed her eyes; and, watching, Margaret was filled with terror.

She ran from the room, calling Mercy; but it was Alice Middleton who came into the chamber of death.

A
WEEK
later Jane was dead; and only a month or so after she was buried, Thomas called his children to him and told them that they should not be long motherless.

He was going to marry a lady capable of looking after them, a lady of great virtue. She was without much education and several years older than himself, but he was convinced that she would be the best possible stepmother for them.

Her name was Alice Middleton.

HEN MARGARET WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD FEAR AGAIN
appeared in her life. It seemed like a great cloud which came nearer and nearer to the house until that day when it enveloped it. The cloud formed itself into the shape of a man, of great height, of great girth, on whose head there was a crown. At the age of four, Margaret had learned to fear kings. And now would the cloud pass over the house? Would it pass on as, once before, had a similar cloud?

Much had happened since the death of her mother. The family still lived in Bucklersbury, but it had become a different household under the domination of Mistress Alice.

It must have been the cleanest house in London; the rushes were changed once a week, and very little odor came from them. When they were removed from the house it was only necessary to go upstairs, not to leave the house for a day until the servants had cleared it of its filth. Alice was the most practical of women. She knew exactly how many pieces could be cut from a side of beef, and she saw that they were so cut; her servants must account for every portion of fish, every loaf of bread. She kept strict count of the visitors who called for a meal. She reckoned—and this matter she took up fiercely with her husband—that visitors were costing the household purse the whole of twopence a day, what with food, beds and firing. The family was allowed only sixty candles a year, and if any burned out his share before the year was over, then, said Alice grimly, must that one sit in the dark. She herself kept the keys of the buttery; she saw that none had more than his portion of ale or mead. She was the martinet of the household.

All Thomas's attempts to teach her Latin failed.

“What the good year!” she cried in scorn. “Would you have me one of these pale-faced, lantern-jawed scholars? I'll warrant you, Master More, that I do you more good watching the affairs of your household than I ever should tampering with foreign speech. The English tongue, sir, is good enough for me.”

But nevertheless she kept a strict eye on the children.

Thomas had instituted what he called his “School” in the house, and here all the children spent many hours at their lessons. Alice had a habit of peeping at them at odd moments, and if she found them not at their desks she would take them, throw them across a chair and administer a good beating with her slipper.

“Your father has set you these tasks,” she would say, “and your father is head of this house.” (Not that she would admit such a fact to his face.) “He'd not whip you himself, being too soft a man, so there's some that has to do his duty for him. Now … get
to that Latin … or Greek … or that mathematics … or whatever nonsense it is, and if you have not learned it by sundown you'll feel more of my slipper where you won't like it.”

Jack was the chief offender, because he could not love learning as his sisters did. Jack would look longingly out of the window, particularly when horsemen rode by. He would like to be out of London, in the green country, climbing trees and riding horses. Jack sometimes felt it was a sad thing to be a boy possessed of such clever sisters.

Ailie was not overfond of lessons, but she did not care to be too far outstripped by her stepsisters. She applied herself and as she had a cleverness of her own, a natural wit, she could usually appear to know more than she actually did. Her mother had a habit of looking the other way when Ailie misbehaved, so, although she might have been in trouble as much as Jack was, somehow she managed to escape it. She was very pretty, and Alice believed that one day she would make a very good match.

Alice insisted that each of the girls should study housekeeping under her guidance; for what, she had demanded, would be the use of all that learning if when they married—and if only Master More would make the most of his chances they might marry very well—they had no knowledge of how to run a house and keep the servants in order? So each of the girls must, in addition to her lessons, give orders to the servants, decide on the composition of meals and superintend the cooking for a whole week before the task fell to her sister or stepsister. And if anything went wrong, if the bread was burned or the meat had been subjected to too many turns of the spit, or not enough, then it was not only the servant who felt the mistress's slipper.

Alice was not above giving any member of this large household the measure of her tongue. Even the tutors came in for their share, learned men though they might be. Master Nicholas Kratzer, fellow of Corpus Oxford, who had come to live in the house to teach the children astronomy, particularly irritated Alice.

She laughed him to scorn. “You, a scholar… and cannot
speak the King's English! Here's a pretty state of affairs. And supposed to be a learned man!”

“Madam,” he told her with the humility all these great men seemed to display before Alice, for it was a fact that every one of them wilted under her scornful gaze, “I was born in Munich; and although I cannot speak your tongue well, I doubt you can speak mine at all.”

“Tilly valley!” said Alice. “And who would want to when they could make themselves understood in good plain English?”

The poor scholar, to the amusement of Margaret and Mercy, was quite at a loss to answer Alice; for, somehow, her method of delivering what she thought to be wise was so authoritative that temporarily it seemed to be so. Therefore, Master Kratzer returned to his study of the stars feeling a little cowed, and as for Margaret and Mercy, they had their ears boxed for laughing—as Alice said, when Kratzer had left them—at a great and learned man.

Richard Hyrde, the great Greek scholar, also lived in the house. Mercy was his favorite pupil, for he was also a student of medicine, and this science appealed to Mercy more than any other. Master Drew and Master Gunnel, considerable scholars, also lived in the growing household in order that they might tutor the children.

Dr. Colet and Dr. Lily came to the house now and then, but not so frequently as they had at one time, for all Dr. Colet's thoughts and energies were now concentrated on the school he had built in St. Paul's Churchyard, at which he planned to educate children of all ages, of all classes and all races. This school was his delight; it was a dream become a reality. He had always said that when he was a rich man—and he knew he would be on the death of his father—he would build such a school. Now he watched over it as a mother watches over her child, brooding over it, worrying over it, talking of it continually. Dr. Lily shared all his enthusiasm and fears for Dr. Lily had consented to become Headmaster of the school.

Thomas had said: “There is no man in England who could carry out this task with greater skill. But I wanted Lily for my children.”

Colet laughed gleefully. “I got there first, Thomas,” he cried. “I have secured him for my children.”

Now that Margaret was aware of the clouds coming nearer to her home she thought often of Dr. Colet's escape from the King's wrath. This had happened a few years before, and they had trembled for the fate which might overtake this beloved friend. The same cloud must have darkened Colet's house then as it now did that of the Mores.

Why must these great men always express their views with such careless unconcern for the consequences? Why could they not be content to talk in private with their friends, and enjoy the happy lives they had built up for themselves out of their goodness? Dr. Colet had his school—the great wish of a lifetime fulfilled— yet when the King planned war with France, he must get into his pulpit and preach a sermon on the folly and wickedness of war.

It was inevitable that he should be called before an angry King; it was by a miracle that he had escaped with his life. But was it a miracle? What a plausible tongue had this great man, what a way with words!

He came to the house afterward to tell them about it; and he and her father had laughed together until Margaret had feared they would make themselves ill with such immoderate laughter which in her wisdom, she understood was partly the laughter of relief.

“But, Your Grace,” Colet had said to the King, “it is true that I preached against war. Aye, and would do so again. I said: ‘Few die well who die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is the argument? Men must follow Christ, the King of Peace … not the kings of war.’ Those were my words, Sire.”

“I know your words, sirrah!” the King cried angrily. “And I like them not.”

“But, Your Grace,” was the reply, “I but preached against dishonorable war … unjust war … and Your Grace must agree with me that there can be no good in unjust war.”

It was at this point, when telling the story, that Colet was overcome with helpless mirth. “And Thomas, the King looked at me, his little eyes suspicious. Then, suddenly, that tight mouth slackened. He laughed; he slapped my shoulder. ‘I see, friend Colet,’ he said. ‘You spoke not of this just war I would wage against the enemies of England. You spoke of the unjust wars that my enemies would wage on me?’ I bowed my head. I feared he might see the laughter in my eyes. For, this King of ours, Thomas, is a King who believes he is God Himself. He believes in all simplicity, in all sincerity, that he himself could not be unjust, could not be dishonorable. The very fact that he acts in a certain way makes that action honorable. What a man! What a King!”