The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  The moat had, that day, been the setting for a curious scene.

  It had, as Maria said, been a full day.

  Catherine sat and remembered it, hour by hour.

  The first intimation that this was to be different from any other interminable day had come just before noon, when Maria was making the fire over which she was to cook dinner. Catherine had always feared that she might be poisoned, and that fear had increased when, in March, Clement had finally given his verdict on her case. He had declared the dispensation allowing the marriage between her and Henry to be without fault, and that therefore the marriage was good and valid. After that she had not dared to content herself with the old rule which she had written to Mary, to cut only where others cut, and to drink only where others had drunk; she had had her meager meals prepared by Maria in her own room.

  So the place smelt like a peasant’s hut when Sir Edmund Bedingfield, her new jailer, came in saying that there was a messenger from the King.

  He was young and raw, obviously chosen for his ability to ride fast, tiring out one swift horse after another; but for all that he was tired, and short of breath. He’d gulped out his message,

  “Madam, the Imperial Ambassador is on his way to see you. His Grace has not given permission for this visit. He heard of it and sent me to overtake the Ambassador’s train and turn it back. They took no notice of me, but are pressing on. I rode hard to tell you, Madam, that if you receive Messire Chapuys it will be against His Grace’s express command.”

  “Which in all matters not concerning my conscience I am always ready to obey,” Catherine said. She turned to Bedingfield and asked him to oblige her by sending a messenger to meet Messire Chapuys and tell him that she was forbidden to see him and that he should waste no time in riding on.

  She longed to see and talk to Chapuys, always a most loyal friend; but just at this time she was not unwilling to proffer a good excuse for not receiving him. In the last two months—ever since Clement had decided that she was Queen of England—Chapuys had redoubled his efforts to rouse some of the old nobility to support her cause with armed force. He’d met with considerable success, especially in the North and West where the old ideas were strongly entrenched, and where the threatened dissolution of the religious houses was causing great alarm in a class from which Abbots and Abbesses were largely drawn. The Emperor, Chapuys argued, could not now fail to come to the aid of a rising aimed at giving his wronged aunt and cousin their indisputable legal rights. All that was needed was that Catherine herself should agree to lead the insurrection. It was to urge her to do so that Chapuys had attempted to make this visit. Of that she was certain; and since her devotion to Henry and her rooted objection to being the cause of any bloodshed forbade her to make any move, she was relieved to have an excuse for not meeting Chapuys face-to-face and arguing about it.

  She had eaten her modest dinner just after the drawbridge had been raised again behind the speeding messenger Bedingfield had despatched. Within an hour there was a commotion on the far side of the moat, and Catherine, going to the window, saw a group of riders whose clothes, and the harnessing of their horses, proclaimed them to be Spanish. The Ambassador was not among them. Chapuys was far too skilled a diplomat to risk Henry’s displeasure by disobeying a direct order, but he had continued toward Kimbolton until he received Catherine’s message; there he had halted, being now near enough to make it easy to hint that some young men should ride on to see the place where Catherine was imprisoned. There was no order against looking, he said; and if a Spanish-speaking servant should chance to look out and call to them, there could be no harm in sending the Queen a heartening message.

  The young Spaniards did nothing to which Bedingfield could take exception. On the far side of the moat they gave a display of horsemanship in the Spanish style, making their horses dance and leap. Soon every member of Catherine’s small ménage and all the Kimbolton servants were crowded at the windows or on the walls. Then the horsemen drew a little aside and rested while a professional fool took up the business of entertainment. He played all the traditional tricks, while under cover of the laughter and the applause a rapid exchange, in Spanish, took place between the horsemen and Catherine’s servants. When the clown stood on his hands and walked backward, or turned six somersaults in succession it was all the more entertaining because he did it on the very edge of the moat and was in momentary danger of tumbling in. In the end he did tumble in and appeared to lose his sense of direction, for he plunged away from the outer bank and ended in the middle of the moat, screaming that he was drowning, though everyone could see that he was as skilled in the water as out of it. He cried, “Lighten ship!” and began tossing things in all directions; his sodden clown’s cap, his pouch, his belt, his shoes. Some articles he flung toward the outer bank, some toward the inner wall and the watchers yelled as the water-heavy, slimy, stinking things struck or passed near them. All but Maria whose eye the clown had caught and to whom he had said, in Spanish, “I have something for you,” and to whom he had thrown a small locked casket. She had caught and hidden it, but held to her place, laughing and shouting, until the clown, plunging like a porpoise, had gone toward the bank and scrambled into safety.

  The casket, which had to be broken open, having no key with it, contained a letter which to Catherine meant a great deal, but, if intercepted, would only have informed the reader of what was already known, that the Spanish Ambassador was Catherine’s friend and urged her not to lose heart, since God was just and would see justice done; and that Messire Chapuys considered the English an arrogant and boastful race. Only lately one English lord had told him to his face that he could at any moment put 8,000 men into the field, all his tenants and friends. “I said to him, Your Grace, “That may well be, my lord, but you must not expect me to be impressed by such numbers, serving as I do a master whose resources can hardly be numbered.” Nor is this old lord the only boaster I have lately had to do with. To me the English are an intolerable race, with one virtue only, they are sympathetic to anyone oppressed.” The letter ran on in that way, garrulous, ambiguous, meaningful. Catherine burnt it on the fire which Maria made in order to cook supper.

  The spoken exchanges across the moat were mainly concerned with lighter matters, in which Catherine would be interested and about which, probably, she had had no firsthand information.

  First and foremost, Mary. Attached to the household of her half-sister Elizabeth, Mary was contriving without too greatly affronting the King to hold her own. Whenever it was possible for her to do so she took precedence. She had refused to take the oath, but had said that she was willing to call Elizabeth “sister,” just as she had called the Duke of Richmond “brother.”

  There was news of the Concubine, too. She had given proof of her Lutheran leanings by writing a letter to Secretary Cromwell asking him to be lenient to an Antwerp merchant accused of bringing in and distributing copies of the New Testament in English. She had made overtures to Mary, which the Princess, rightly suspicious of their motive, had rejected. When Anne visited her baby daughter, Mary invariably retired to her own room in order to avoid meeting her; but some of Anne’s ladies, noticeably Lady Rochfort, had always made a point of going to Mary’s room and talking with her. Surprisingly, the Concubine had never rebuked them for doing so, or seemed to bear any resentment because of it. There were, so far as anyone knew, no signs of a further pregnancy and around the Court there were rumors that His Majesty’s passion was on the wane, though he still gave her his attention.

  In Cambridge, a serving man named Kylbie had been arrested for calling the King a heretic. Kylbie had been grooming his master’s horse and got into an argument with an ostler who had said there was no Pope, only a Bishop of Rome, the King’s Grace had said so. Kylbie had retorted, “You are a heretic, and the King another. And none of this business would ever have happened if His Grace had not lusted after Anne Boleyn.”

  “And then, Your Grace,” Maria said, recounting this piece of goss
ip, “they set about one another with sticks and the man Kylbie was arrested. But he said the truth. She is to blame for all.” She threw out her hands to indicate the cheerless room, the humble pan on the smoky fire, the loneliness of the flat countryside. “I pray God to curse her and bring her low with madness in her head and the gnawing sickness in her body.”

  “Oh no,” Catherine said. “Don’t curse her. Pity her rather. Her bad time is yet to come.”

  She spoke sincerely. She knew what happened when Henry’s passion waned. It had waned for her, but she had been upheld by her rights, by her religion, by her connections. What would Anne have to support her? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  XXIX

  But one thing, good master Secretary, consider, that he was young, and love overcame reason…I saw so much honesty in him that I loved him as well as he did me…I saw that all the world did set so little by me, and he so much that I could take no better way…If we might once be so happy to recover the King’s gracious favour and the Queen’s.

  A letter from Mary Boleyn to Cromwell

  The Lady’s sister was banished from the court three months ago; it being necessary to do so, for besides that she had been found guilty of misconduct, it would not have been becoming to see her at Court enceinte.

  The Spanish Ambassador in a letter to the Emperor

  WHITEHALL. DECEMBER 1534

  THE MERCER, WITH A SPLENDID careless gesture dropped the roll of amber-colored velvet to the floor, whence his acolyte apprentice retrieved it and began to smooth and refold it.

  “This, Your Grace,” the mercer said, reaching for another roll, giving it a twist and a shake so that the material spilled down, a waterfall of sheen and color, “is straight from France and a complete novelty. So woven that…” He pivoted so that the light changed on the silk; in one light it showed fleur-de-lys of dark blue on pale, in another pale fleur-de-lys on dark. “There!” he said, in a tone of deep satisfaction.

  “Would Your Grace consider it impertinent of me to ask why not? Blue is not, I agree, the color for everyone; and in my experience it is the very ladies for whom it is least suited who favor it most. Ladies of insipid coloring. Your Grace could wear anything.”

  “Not blue,” Anne said firmly, but she smiled so that the little man should not feel that he had been impertinent. “It is beautiful, and a novelty, and if two shades of yellow could be woven in the same skillful way I should be pleased to have a gown of it.”

  “I’m sure that could be done, if Your Grace wishes,” the mercer said. But before dropping this piece to the floor he held it a second, admiring it, regretting its rejection.

  Anne said, Wait. I’ll have it. Not for myself, as a gift for someone to whom that shade is immensely becoming.”

  Mary should have it for Christmas.

  Mary’s husband, William Carey, had been one of those who had died during the Sweating Sickness in one of the manors the King had just abandoned and for the last three and a half years she had lived an aimless, rather unhappy life. She spent a good deal of time in the houses of various relatives, particularly with an aunt at Edwarton in Suffolk. Every now and then Sir Thomas would send for her to keep Lady Bo company, and then, in a short time, quarrel with her, scold her for wasting her opportunities, and complain that she was a burden to him. She had refused, with the stubbornness of the weak, to come to Court until Anne was married; then at last she had accepted invitations and made quite protracted stays. But she had changed; her sweetness had soured into a whining self-pity, and, most surprisingly, she often gave evidence of having inherited Sir Thomas’s facility for planting verbal barbs.

  But she would be pleased about the blue silk, Anne thought; and it would suit her, though her looks, like so many of their kind, were fading early.

  The dresses must be ready for Christmas wear, so as soon as the mercer had gone, Anne sent for Mary and they retired to her bedchamber, attended by Emma and two sempstresses, one of whom, an expert fitter, was armed with a measuring tape.

  Mary eyed the blue silk with no sign of pleasure.

  “It was a kind thought, but I don’t wish for a new gown.”

  “But it was to be my Christmas gift to you.”

  “I don’t want it. One can get accustomed to anything and I am accustomed to shabby clothes.”

  “Then why not have a change? Come along, Mary, don’t be silly. Off with that drab old thing, and come and be measured.”

  Anne was already in her petticoat and submitting to the touches of the dry, cold, dressmaker’s hands of the woman with the measure, who had a pretty little problem of her own. Should she say, what was true, “Your Grace’s measurements are exact to an inch to what they were last time.” Or would that be tactless? So many ladies would welcome the remark; but when the lady was Queen of England, mother of one girl child, it might not be quite the thing to say.

  Anne looking over her shoulder at Mary saw that at the word “measured,” a wild, almost frantic look came into her blue eyes.

  Mary said, “When I had gifts to give I never forced you to accept them, did I?”

  Anne thought, as she had so often done before, excusing Mary’s behavior—She’s jealous, and that is natural enough. Who wouldn’t be in her place? If only she knew how little there is to be jealous of!

  But all the same she shouldn’t make such remarks before Emma, and two sempstresses; sempstresses were notorious gossips, they had to occupy their minds with something while their fingers were busy. She could imagine how this little exchange would be magnified and overcolored in the retelling. Quarreling like fishwives, they would say. So she shot Mary what Lady Bo would call an old-fashioned look and then spoke sternly to the woman with the tape.

  Mary said, rather sulkily, “If that was all you wanted of me, I’ll ask leave to retire.”

  “You have it,” Anne said and turned back so that she faced the glass on her table. In it she saw Mary move toward the door. A flaw in the glass? Imagination? Oh God, not that. Just now when nothing was going well.

  She said sharply, “No, Mary, wait a moment. I want…I want your advice upon another matter.” To the sempstresses she said, “There, that will do. My usual hanging sleeves, and a curved neckline instead of square,” and bustled them away. She invented an errand for Emma. Within five minutes the sisters were alone, as once they had been in the bedroom at Blickling.

  Anne said, “You’re pregnant!”

  Mary made a moaning sound and dropped on to a stool, pressing the back of her knuckles against her face.

  “Just when we’re all in such bad odor,” Anne said, furiously. “George acting like a frivolous fool and being rebuked, Father falling out with Cromwell; and now this. This is worst of all! Mary, how could you? How could you? You’ve brought disgrace to us all just at the very moment when we needed bolstering up.” Once she began her tongue-lashing old grievances sprang to mind. “All my life,” she said bitterly, “I’ve suffered from your shame. In France nobody could ever distinguish between the two of us; or if they did it was only to think that a trollop’s sister must needs be a trollop, too. I’ve spent my life trying to prove otherwise and now…”

  The old Mary, moaning, abashed, gave way to the new one.

  “And you did prove it, finely, did you not? Married on April 12th and brought to bed on 7th September. You should rail at me!”

  “We were married before, privately.”

  “So we were told,” Mary said.

  “But it is true. Believe it or not, as you wish. It is not my behavior we are discussing, it’s yours. And you have shamed us again. And without the excuse you once had,” she said cruelly. “You’re old enough now to know better.”

  Mary said, “But I…” and then stopped openmouthed for a second. She took a breath and said more calmly, with something approaching dignity, “You’ll be sorry for the things you have said. One day. When you know all.”

  The most hateful suspicion shot through Anne’s mind. Henry so plainly dissatisfied, his att
entions more and more perfunctory; Mary still besotted with love for him, undemanding, sloppy-minded, as comfortable to fall back upon as a featherbed. And it would account for the change in her, the flashes of sharpness, the new confidence, the occasional smugness.

  “Is it Henry?”

  Mary’s expression showed fright again.

  “No. Oh no. Anne, I swear it.”

  “Then who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “But you must. He must be made to marry you. The King must compel him…”

  “Anne, if you mention this to the King I’ll never, never speak to you again. Please, please leave it alone. I’ll go away. You need never see me…”

  “Oh, don’t talk like a fool! Where could you go! In a week or two there’ll be no hiding your state.” Mary acknowledged the truth of that by beginning to weep and the sight of her, so helpless and silly, muddled, shabby, tearful, and stubborn, exasperated Anne and at the same time roused that old protective feeling. She went over and shook Mary’s shoulder.

  “He must marry you. If he can. Is that it? Is he married already?”

  Mary choked. Then she said, with a courage which Anne could only recognize later, “Yes, he’s married. So you see there’s nothing you, or the King, or anybody can do about it.”