The Fifth Queen

by Ford Madox Ford

  She leaned upon him with all her weight, having her arms about his neck.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘the Emperor Augustus listened to his wife, and the days that followed are styled the Golden Age of Rome, he and the Empress having great glory.’

  Henry scratched his head, holding his beard back from her face that lay upon his chest; she drew herself from him and once more laid her hands upon his knees. Her fair face was piteous and afraid; her lips trembled.

  ‘Dear lord,’ she began tremulously, ‘I live in this world, and, great pity ’tis! I cannot but have seen how many have died by the block and faggots. Yet is there no end to this. Even to-day they have burnt upon the one part and the other. I do know thy occasions, thy trials, thy troubles. But think, sir, upon the Empress Livia. Cromwell being dead, find then a Cinna to pardon. Thou hast with thy great and princely en-deavourings given a Roman peace to the world. Let now a Golden Age begin in this dear land.’

  She rose to her feet and stretched out both her hands.

  ‘These be the glories that I crave,’ she said. ‘I would have the glory of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me as of such a noble woman of Rome.’

  Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.

  ‘Why, I will pardon some,’ he said. ‘It had not need of so many words of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.’ A haughty and challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.

  Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candlelight, and, slowly, he fell upon his knees.

  ‘Majesty,’ he said, ‘I knew not.’

  The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and dangerous.

  ‘This lady’s cousin,’ Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, ‘is new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the Cardinal Pole.’

  The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall again.

  Throckmorton felt his way still further.

  ‘This lady’s cousin would speak with this lady in cousinship. He was set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.’

  Katharine’s hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word ‘Wherefore?’ came from her lips.

  ‘Wherefore, I know not,’ Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. ‘But this I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.’

  ‘Belike,’ the King said, ‘these swordsmen were friends of Pole.’

  ‘Belike,’ Throckmorton answered.

  He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.

  ‘For his sake,’ he said, ‘it were well if your Grace, having rewarded him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to Edinbro’ in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and observe.’

  ‘Belike,’ the King said. ‘Get you gone.’ But Throckmorton stayed there on his knees and the King uttered: ‘Anan?’

  ‘Majesty,’ Throckmorton said, ‘I would ye would see this man who is a poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you reward him and send him from hence ere worse befal him.’

  The King raised his brows.

  ‘Ye love this man well,’ he said.

  ‘Here is too much beating about the bush,’ burst from Katharine’s lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little and pale in the half light of the two candles. ‘This cousin of mine loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of mine shall cause disorders—for indeed he is of disordered intervals. Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.’

  ‘Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,’ Henry said. ‘Let us see this yokel.’ He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting, for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas’ shrine.

  Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass the sill, and looking never at her but at the King’s shoes, he knelt him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:

  ‘Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.’

  Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:

  ‘Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe silence in the awful presence of kings.’

  Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a minute’s space.

  ‘Silence!’ he said. ‘Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this lady’s tongue?’ He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.

  ‘Ye have done well,’ he said. ‘Give me your sword. I will knight you. I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight’s fee farm of a hundred pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye were about my nephew’s courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro’.’ He waved his hand to Throckmorton. ‘See him disposed,’ he said.

  Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in his seat and thundered:

  ‘Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I ha’ heard ye ha’ made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God, I am Harry of Windsor!’

  He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green shoulders below him.

  ‘Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,’ he said. ‘Get you gone!’

  Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.

  ‘Poor Tom,’ she cried. ‘Best it is for thee and me that thou goest. Here thou hast no place.’ He shook his head like a man in a daze and was gone.

  ‘Art too patient with the springald,’ the King said.

  He thundered ‘Body of God!’ again when he saw Throckmorton once more fall to his knees.

  ‘Sire,’ he said—and for the first time he faltered in his level tones—‘a very great treason has come to my ken this day!’

  ‘Holy altar fires!’ the King growled, ‘let your treasons wait. Here hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.’

  ‘Sire,’ Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to support him. ‘This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have seen it in thy town of London.’

  Katharine cried out, ‘Ah!’

  The King leapt to his feet.

  ‘Ho, I will arm,’ he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But, even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret rebellions.

  ‘Sire,’ Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he challenged her:

  ‘This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of the printer, John Badge—’ and he repeated the speech of the saturnine man—‘that “he would raise a thousand prentices and a thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the shires!” ’

  Kath
arine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her that these words were true.

  But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.

  ‘Let us arm my guard,’ he said. ‘I will play Nero to London town.’

  Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.

  ‘Majesty,’ he said, ‘I have this man in my keeping.’ And indeed, at his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and bring him to Hampton. ‘I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your warrant, and Privy Seal’s I dare not ask.’

  The King stayed in his pacing.

  ‘Thou art a jewel of a man,’ he said. ‘By Cock, I would I had many like thee.’ And at the news that the head of this confederacy was taken his sudden fear fell. ‘I will see this man. Bring him to me.’

  ‘Sire,’ Katharine said, ‘we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!’

  ‘Madam,’ Throckmorton dared to speak. ‘This is the man that hath printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.’

  ‘The more I will have him pardoned,’ Katharine said, ‘that his Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.’

  Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.

  ‘God send you never rue it,’ he said. ‘Majesty,’ he continued to the King, ‘give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal’s. For Privy Seal hath a mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me half-an-hour’s space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.’

  He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves. And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For, with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned, she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the point of his dagger.

  The King said:

  ‘Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak of.’

  Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain that ever was in his life.

  And gazing back at him, Katharine’s eyes were filled with pity, so sick he appeared to be.

  ‘Body of God!’ the King said in the silence that fell upon them. ‘Now I hold Cromwell.’

  Katharine cried out, ‘Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!’

  He caught her masterfully in his arms.

  ‘This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,’ he said.

  She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.

  ‘I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me go.’

  He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she cried, ‘listen to me! There have been broadsides printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.’

  ‘Before God,’ he said, ‘I will hang the printers, and slay the witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.’ He shook his fist. ‘I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!’

  She cried out ‘Ah!’

  ‘Child,’ he calmed himself, ‘I will keep my hands from thee. But I would fain have the kisses of thy mouth.’

  She went to lean upon her table, for her knees trembled.

  ‘Let me speak,’ she said.

  ‘Why, none hinders,’ he answered her kindly.

  ‘I swear I do love thee, so that thy voice is as the blows of hammers upon iron to me,’ she said. ‘I may have little rest, save when I speak with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a madness, but grant me this!’

  She looked at him distractedly, brushing her hands across her eyes.

  ‘It feels within my heart that I must do a penance,’ she said. ‘I have been wishful to feel upon my brow the pressure of the great crown. Therefore, grant me this: that I may not feel it. And be this the penance!’

  ‘Child,’ he said, ‘how may you be a Queen, and not crowned with pomp and state?’

  ‘Majesty,’ she faltered, ‘to prepare myself against that high office I have been reading in chronicles of the lives of them that have been Queens of England. It was his Grace of Canterbury that sent me these books for another purpose. But there ye shall read—in Asser and the Saxon Chronicles—how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the throne to be crowned and sacred, but—so it was with Judith that was stepmother to King Alfred, and with some others whose names in this hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind—they were, upon some holidays, shewn to the people as being the King’s wife.’

  She hung her head.

  ‘For that I am humble in truth before the world and before my mother Mary in Heaven, and for that I am not thy first Queen, but even thy fifth; so I would be shewn and never crowned.’

  She leaned back against the table, supporting herself with her hands against its edges; her eyes piteously devoured his face.

  ‘Why, child,’ he said, ‘so thou wilt be that fifth Queen; whether thou wilt be a Queen crowned or a Queen shewn, what care I?’

  She no longer refused herself to his arms, for she had no more strength.

  ‘Mary be judge between me and them that speak against me,’ she said, ‘I can no more hold out against my joy or longings.’

  ‘Sha’t wear a hair shirt,’ he said tenderly. ‘Sha’t go in sackcloth. Sha’t have enow to do praying for me and thee. But hast no need of prayers.’ He lulled her in his arms, swaying on his feet. ‘Hast a great tongue. Speakest many words. But art a very child. God send thee all the joy I purpose thee. And, an thou hast sins, weight me further down in hell therewith.’

  The light of the candles threw their locked shadows along the wall and up the ceilings. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, so that she seemed to be dead and her listless hands were open in her skirts.

  THE

  FIFTH QUEEN

  CROWNED

  A Romance

  “Da habt Ihr schon das End vom Lied”

  To Arthur Marwood

  PART ONE

  The Major Chord

  I

  ‘THE BISHOP OF ROME—’

  Thomas Cranmer began a hesitating
speech. In the pause after the words the King himself hesitated, as if he poised between a heavy rage and a sardonic humour. He deemed, however, that the humour could the more terrify the Archbishop—and, indeed, he was so much upon the joyous side in those summer days that he had forgotten how to browbeat.

  ‘Our holy father,’ he corrected the Archbishop. ‘Or I will say my holy father, since thou art a heretic—’

  Cranmer’s eyes had always the expression of a man’s who looked at approaching calamity, but at the King’s words his whole face, his closed lips, his brows, the lines from his round nose, all drooped suddenly downwards.

  ‘Your Grace will have me write a letter to the—to his—to him—’

  The downward lines fixed themselves, and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at a weighty gibe—

  ‘My Grace will have thy Grace write a letter to his Holiness.’

  He dropped into a heavy impassivity, rolled his eyes, fluttered his swollen fingers on the red and gilded table, and then said clearly, ‘My. Thy. His.’

  When he was in that mood he spoke with a singular distinctness that came up from his husky and ordinary joviality like something dire and terrible—like that something that upon a clear smooth day will suggest to you suddenly the cruelty that lies always hidden in the limpid sea.

  ‘To Cæsar—egomet, I mineself—that which is Cæsar’s: to him—that is to say to his Holiness, our lord of Rome—the things which are of God! But to thee, Archbishop, I know not what belongs.’

  He paused and then struck his hand upon the table: ‘Cold porridge is thy portion! Cold porridge!’ he laughed; ‘for they say: Cold porridge to the devil! And, since thou art neither God’s nor the King’s, what may I call thee but the devil’s self’s man?’