The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  He changed his tone and said reasonably,

  “You’re making much out of very little. Men have impulses of which women know nothing. She’s a plump, soft, cuddlesome little thing, like a kitten, and like a kitten I cuddled her. No harm was intended, or done. Come to bed.”

  “If you stumbled on me, hugging one of your gentlemen, would you say no harm was done and wish to bed with me a few hours later?”

  Suddenly he was swept by a perverse emotion. She was saying “no” again, and that set the old will-o’-the-wisp dancing.

  “Let’s not quarrel or argue,” he said. “She’s a kitten and I stroked her. But you are my wife, my angry, railing fishwife, and I will take you to bed and stop your mouth with kisses.”

  She stood still and silent, looking at him in the way which he had once found so fascinating, and now for a moment did again, her look of seeing something invisible to anyone else. She was thinking that, despite losing her temper and acting in opposition to all advice, she was being offered another chance. With a son in her arms she could laugh at Jane Seymour and a hundred like her. And as Emma had said, there was no other way…

  She had never known exactly when Elizabeth had been conceived, but tonight was different. This child would be born in April; and would be the boy for whom England had waited so long. She was thinking this when Henry, still a little breathless, said, in a sudden excess of goodwill,

  “You may send the girl home for all I care.”

  It demanded an effort to think backwards, to think—I was sent home, and he followed; better that she should be here, under my eye.

  She said, “No. I think the time may come when I shall need all the services of all my ladies.”

  XXXII

  In the autumn of this year, 1535, the queen was once more flattered with the hope of bringing a male heir to the throne, to the great joy of the king.

  Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England

  GREENWICH. SEPTEMBER 1535

  “IT IS NOT A MISCARRIAGE,” Emma Arnett said.

  “Give it another name, then!”

  “You missed a month. Women do; even those who have never been near a man.”

  The need to scream, scream, scream, came upon her. She only just mastered it by turning furiously upon Emma.

  “How should you know? I tell you I felt it. I knew. I was sure. Why else am I here and not on progress? I was with child, I tell you; a child who should have been born in April. Now I have miscarried. It’s like a blight; girls and miscarriages! And I was so pleased. So was he when I told him. Fool that I was to speak so soon. I know what he’ll say! Another cursed marriage. The first one cursed because the Pope let him make it, and this one cursed because the Pope forbade. That’d be comic, if it wasn’t so…”

  Something that seemed to have no part of her decided that it was comic and she sat down on the bed and rocked to and fro in a gale of hysterical laughter.

  Emma, acting from some motive not yet clear to herself, laid her hard square hands on Anne’s shoulders, and said urgently,

  “Stop. Your Grace, stop it! Do you want them to hear? Lady Rochfort coming to see what’s amiss?”

  Anne seemed past caring; she laughed on. Emma shook her, not gently, and then, moving one hand, placed the palm of it squarely over Anne’s mouth. As she did so she said, through the sound of the now-muffled laughter,

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but you forced me to it. Listen, I beg you, I beg you. Let this be between you and me, till we have had time to think.”

  Anne made some gulping sounds and then was quiet; cautiously Emma removed her hand. The hysterical bout had passed. Anne said quite calmly,

  “And what will thinking do? Put it back?”

  “It might save the situation,” Emma said, her Saxon eyes as cold and hard as flint. “I was loath to own that it was a miscarriage, knowing how the very word would set you off. But suppose it was?…”

  “I tell you I know that it was.”

  “Then it proves one thing.” Emma’s attention seemed to detach itself. She looked thoughtfully about the luxurious bedchamber.

  “What does it prove?”

  Emma said, with seeming irrelevance, “I’ve come a long way from the farm…But close to the soil, there’s a kind of wisdom. On a farm, if a cow slips her calf once, which is to blame, her or the bull? Nobody can tell. Try her with another bull, him with another cow and then the fault is fixed and the bad breeder goes straight to the shambles and is beef.” She paused for a second, gazing into Anne’s eyes. “I’m thinking this proves that His Grace is a bad breeder.”

  “He fathered the Duke of Richmond.”

  “Did he? His mother said so. But what company had she kept?”

  “Emma!”

  “It would bear thinking on.”

  As she spoke Emma had a curious feeling that it was for this moment that she had been born. She was doing, or was out to do something that nobody else in all the world could do.

  She thought of the fear which haunted all Protestants—that something should happen to the King before the reforms were properly established, and that all the backward-looking Papists, all the people who were neither one thing nor the other would rally to the cause of the Lady Mary who was old enough to take control, sit a horse, wear the Crown. The baby Elizabeth would stand no chance against Mary; but a boy would; from the moment he was born he would be unchallenged.

  Emma, from reading the New Testament, had progressed to reading the Old which was crammed with proofs that if the heart were right, acts mattered little. Look at Jacob, cheating his old blind father, cheating his brother, and his father-in-law, and yet chosen, beloved of God, and the founder of all the tribes of Israel. There must also be taken into consideration Christ’s attitude toward adultery; He’d dealt very gently with the loose-living woman at the wells of Samaria, and had protected the other woman who was about to be stoned…

  Not without an inner amazement, Emma Arnett, that decent woman, realized that if Anne, to bear a prince who would save the country from Mary, must commit adultery, she was willing to be an accomplice, even an instigator.

  “It should be thought about,” she said, “and nothing said yet. This news would dishearten your friends, and delight your enemies. And His Grace would take it very hard.”

  Her lips were framing the simple-seeming, obvious remarks, while her eyes, looking into Anne’s, made their own communication. We know how it could be managed…

  The room seemed to grow smaller, closing itself in around the secret; the scented air seemed to vibrate with words which must not be spoken, need never be spoken.

  Then, suddenly, Anne’s innate secretiveness took fright. This was too close! It wasn’t that she did not trust Emma who had always been loyal and closemouthed, and who had dealt admirably with the situation which had existed in the months between her yielding to Henry and her marriage. But then the worst danger had been scandal, in which Henry had been himself involved. This was different. If, as a last desperate resource, she took this perilous road, she would walk it alone.

  Still eye to eye with Emma she said,

  “That advice is sound. I’m grateful for it. And for your restraining me when I was distraught. I’m too anxious. I think too much of Catherine. A slight show and I go screaming about a miscarriage because it is a thing I dread, and always in the forefront of my mind. Now I’m no longer sure. Somehow, despite everything, I don’t feel that I have shed my load.”

  Emma’s gaze remained steady, but behind it she, in turn, retreated. Oh, she thought, so that is the way it is to be. You don’t trust me. Very well, go ahead, do it in your own fashion. I shall stand by and pretend to be deceived with all the rest. The end is what matters, not the means.

  Yet she was more hurt by Anne’s lack of trust than she would admit, even to herself. It was a poor reward for all she had done, and especially hard, coming as it did just when she had saved the situation.

  She looked at the door and thought, But
for me they’d have all come crowding in when they heard the laughter; they’d have asked what was the matter and she, just then, would have blurted it all out. And then suddenly to be put in my place like that!

  Still, she had averted certain disaster, she had made success possible, she had served the Cause. And for what other reason was she here?

  XXXIII

  I do not say that this is how it happened; I only say that this is how it could have happened.

  Your Author

  GREENWICH. SEPTEMBER—OCTOBER 1535

  THE PRETTY MAID-OF-HONOR said discontentedly,

  “Masked again! And that is the third time running. I could understand it if Her Grace were swollen about the face or pop-eyed as women in her state so often are, but she looks as usual. So why?”

  The plainer one wanted to say that the masked balls were immensely enjoyable. She’d enjoyed herself more during the two in the past ten days, than at any other time in her life. Safely masked she had been equal to the greatest beauty in Court, and had had as good a time. But to say so would have been to decry herself, so she joined in the lament.

  “It makes so much work,” she said, falsely. “Still any kind of gaiety is welcome. I always used to hear how clever the Queen was at devising entertainments, but since I came to Court I’ve found life rather dull.”

  You always will, poor dear, the pretty one thought. She said,

  “Ah, being pregnant again has made a great difference. And the change in His Grace. He’s acting like a lover again; sending in a courier every day to ask after her health. And all those deer! I’m growing tired of venison however dressed. We shall have it again this evening, without doubt.”

  “This evening,” said the plain one, “I am going to wear a wig.”

  How wise, how very wise, thought the pretty one, with a swift glance at her companion’s lusterless, mouse-colored hair.

  “Where in the name of goodness could you get such a thing at a moment’s notice?”

  “I borrowed it. From my aunt Talbot. She went bald, years ago, when my youngest cousin was born, and she used to wear a cap. But when my uncle died and she had money to spend she bought two wigs; beautiful ones, bright brown and curly. When Her Grace announced that this evening we were to be masked again and to appear as we would wish to appear, I asked leave and ran out and begged the loan of one of my aunt’s wigs.”

  “Bright brown and curly? Then I know one thing. You are not intending to pay Her Grace the compliment of imitation. Nor am I. I did think of it; I think I was the first to do so. Appear as you would wish to appear. As soon as I heard that I thought it would be a pretty compliment…but six other ladies had the same notion, so I abandoned it.”

  “Six?”

  “That I know of; so there will be twenty most likely.”

  The plain girl’s heart gave a little ecstatic leap of anticipation. Ladies who intended to pay Her Grace that compliment would be obliged to wear headdresses which concealed their hair, for her hair was unique; therefore aunt Talbot’s beautiful wig would be all the more noticeable. She remembered with pleasure the last masquerade when they had all been rural characters, shepherds and milkmaids, thatchers, plowboys, goose-girls, and a very fine upstanding plowboy had attached himself to her and finally taken her to a small dark room that smelt of horses and of harness, and had kissed her with enthusiasm. He had suggested that they both remove their masks, and she had been able to say, “The Queen forbade that anyone should,” and so escape unshamed. That was what made these masked balls so different and so wonderful; usually, on the stroke of midnight everyone unmasked and there you were with your almost lashless, gooseberry-green eyes and snub nose, yourself again. Unwanted. It was such a pity, she thought; nobody wished to be plain, or could be blamed for being so. In all other respects you were just like any other girl. And at the very back of her mind there lingered a hope, frail yet lively, that tonight somebody, momentarily caught by the masked, anonymous face and the beautiful wig, might pause, look a little deeper and realize that a face wasn’t all…

  She felt so warmly toward the Queen, who had made this possible, that she almost wished that her aunt Talbot had chosen to invest in wigs of straight black hair so that she too, in response to the order to appear as she wished to be, could have impersonated Her Grace.

  Her little contribution was not missed. Not twenty, but forty-three ladies had paid Anne the ultimate compliment, and had shown considerable ingenuity; breasts tightly bound to flatten them; waists tightly clenched in; almost unmanageable high heels to lend stature; dresses of the colors she favored, yellow, white, tawny, orange and cinnamon and black. Some ladies had even had their hair dyed; others had made shift with headdresses. Goldsmiths and silversmiths must have worked all through the night on hasty copies of her favorite trinkets.

  Forty-three versions of her, of varying validity; some had entered into the spirit of the game and imitated her manner, sprightly yet a little aloof.

  It wasn’t easy to tell one from another; it was impossible to know where they went, or what they did, or with whom.

  That was—to the regret of the plain maid-in-waiting—the last of the masked balls. The Queen would dance no more until April had come and gone. The King came back from his progresses, perceptibly heavier, for everywhere he stayed he had been offered the best the house afforded and it would have been churlish not to eat and praise the food.

  He was settled in his mind, too, content to wait and see what April brought. If Anne bore him a son then he would do what kings had done from time immemorial, give all outward honor and respect to the mother of his heir and enjoy himself with his mistress. Jane would accept that, once she saw that there was no alternative. But if the new baby should be another girl then he would know that this was another marriage cursed by God and he would get out of it somehow and marry Jane as speedily as he could.

  Winter settled down over England and all life seemed attuned to the slow, inevitable process of gestation.

  XXXIV

  She won’t live long. Go to her when you like.

  Henry VIII to the Spanish Ambassador

  KIMBOLTON CASTLE. JANUARY 4TH–7TH, 1536

  CATHERINE WAS DYING.

  Nobody knew exactly why. Some said that she was dropsical, but there was not much sign of that disease; she had for years suffered from rheumatism, but rheumatic people were usually long-lived; there were those who believed in the local rumor that Kimbolton stood in the center of an area where the very air was inimical to any but the native-born. Those closest to her said that she was dying of heartbreak, occasioned not by her personal misfortunes, which she had borne with fortitude, but by the terrible things which were taking place in England as a result of Henry’s break with Rome.

  Whatever the reason, she was dying and she knew it; and when, on the fourth of January, a day of gray, weeping skies, Messire Chapuys arrived at the castle and was admitted promptly, she knew that her death was regarded as imminent by Henry, for otherwise the visit would not have been permitted.

  From the bed she extended her hand and Chapuys went down on his knees, cautiously, for they were stiff in damp weather, took it and kissed it.

  She said, “You have come. Now I can die in your arms and not like a beast, abandoned in a wet field.”

  Chapuys, like most normal men, found the mention of death by the dying, embarrassing, and made some awkwardly evasive remark about hoping that her health would improve.

  “Not on this earth, my friend. That is why I am so relieved to see you at last. My women are loyal and kind, but powerless, and my present chaplain is timorous and pliable. To tell them my final wishes would be like telling the wind. But you…”

  “I shall do my utmost to carry out anything you wish done,” he said soothingly, and settled himself to endure some discomfort of body—for he was damp and muddy from his journey—and of mind—for she was certain to mention the Emperor fondly and with hope, and just before he had left London he had heard that Charles,
anxious for Henry’s help against the French King, had agreed to ignore Catherine’s rights, and Mary’s. It would be a mercy if Catherine died before she learned of that.

  “Material things first,” Catherine said. “’I have no estate and fear I may die in debt. My allowance has been small and prices have risen steeply of late. I have a gold collar which my mother herself fastened around my neck when I sailed from Corunna; I would like Mary to have that. And my furs. They are old and worn, but while the Concubine lives she will get no new ones and in cold weather may be glad of mine. Do you bring me any news of my daughter?”

  “Nothing of much mark. She is pursuing exactly the orders you gave her; obeying the King in all matters save those of conscience. She has rebuffed the Concubine’s overtures on several occasions. You may be proud of your daughter, Your Grace.”

  “I am. But I pity her, too. All her best years…” Even now she would not say “wasted”; but there were times when she felt that all the suffering, all the stubborn standing upon rights had been in vain. She had begun to feel so when Henry started to demolish the religious houses and give away, or sell cheaply, their vast estates. It was bribery, ensuring the continuance of the breach with Rome. Even if something unforeseen happened and Mary came to the throne she would find it very hard to pry men away from their ill-gotten acres.

  Still, having done what she could, she must leave the outcome with God.

  “As for me,” she said, “I wish to be buried in some place belonging to the Observant Friars, my favorite order.”