The Fifth Queen

by Ford Madox Ford

  Norfolk dropped his eyes to the ground.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘his Grace ordered them and their placing. There is no man to equal his Grace for such things; but I had the work of setting them where they are. I would have your favour for that.’

  She appeared appeased and gave him her hand to kiss. There was a little dark mole upon the third finger.

  ‘The last niece that I had for Queen,’ he said, ‘would not suffer me to kiss her hand.’

  She looked at him a little absently, for, because since she had been Queen—and before—she had been a lonely woman, she was given to thinking her own thoughts whilst others talked.

  She was troubled by the condition of her chief maid Margot Poins. Margot Poins was usually tranquil, modest, submissive in a cheerful manner and ready to converse. But of late she had been moody, and sunk in a dull silence. And that morning she had suddenly burst out into a smouldering, heavy passion, and had torn Katharine’s hair whilst she dressed it.

  ‘Ay,’ Margot had said, ‘you are Queen: you can do what you will. It is well to be Queen. But we who are dirt underfoot, we cannot do one single thing.’

  And, because she was lonely, with only Lady Rochford, who was foolish, and this girl to talk to, it had grieved the Queen to find this girl growing so lumpish and dull. At that time, whilst her hair was being dressed, she had answered only—

  ‘Yea; it is good to be a Queen. But you will find it in Seneca—’ and she had translated for Margot the passage which says that eagles are as much tied by weighty ropes as are finches caught in tiny fillets.

  ‘Oh, your Latin,’ Margot had said. ‘I would I had never heard the sound of it, but had stuck to clean English.’

  Katharine imagined then that it was some new flame of the Magister Udal’s that was troubling the girl, and this troubled her too, for she did not like that her maids should be played with by men, and she loved Margot for her past loyalties, readiness, and companionship.

  She came out of her thoughts to say to her uncle, remembering his speech about her hands—

  ‘Aye; I have heard that Anne Boleyn had six fingers upon her right hand.’

  ‘She had six upon each, but she concealed it,’ he answered. ‘It was her greatest grief.’

  Katharine realised that his sardonic tone, his bitter yellow face, the croak in his voice, and his stiff gait—all these things were signs of his hostility to her. And his mention of Anne Boleyn, who had been Queen, much as she was, and of her bitter fate, this mention, if it could not be a threat, was, at least, a reminder meant to give her fears and misgiving. When she had been a child—and afterwards, until the very day when she had been shown for Queen—her uncle had always treated her with a black disdain, as he treated all the rest of the world. When he had—and it was rarely enough—come to visit her grandmother, the old Duchess of Norfolk, he had always been like that. Through the old woman’s huge, lonely, and ugly halls he had always stridden, halting a little over the rushes, and all creatures must keep out of his way. Once he had kicked her little dog, once he had pushed her aside; but probably, then, when she had been no more than a child, he had not known who she was, for she had lived with the servants and played with the servants’ children, much like one of them, and her grandmother had known little of the household or its ways.

  She answered him sharply—

  ‘I have heard that you were no good friend to your niece, Anne Boleyn, when she was in her troubles.’

  He swallowed in his throat and gazed impassively at the distant oak tree, nevertheless his knee trembled with fury. And Katharine knew very well that if, more than another, he took pleasure in giving pain with his words, he bore the pain of other’s words less well than most men.

  ‘The Queen Anne,’ he said, ‘was a heretic. No better was she than a Protestant. She battened upon the goods of our Church. Why should I defend her?’

  ‘Uncle,’ she said, ‘where got you the jewel in your bonnet?’

  He started a little back at that, and the small veins in his yellow eye-whites grew inflamed with blood.

  ‘Queen—’ he brought out between rage and astonishment that she should dare the taunt.

  ‘I think it came from the great chalice of the Abbey of Rising,’ she said. ‘We are valiant defenders of the Church, who wear its spoils upon our very brows.’

  It was as if she had thrown down a glove to him and to a great many that were behind him.

  She knew very well where she stood, and she knew very well what her uncle and his friends awaited for her, for Margot, her maid, brought her alike the gossip of the Court and the loudly voiced threats and aspirations of the city. For the Protestants—she knew them and cared little for them. She did not believe there were very many in the King’s and her realm, and mostly they were foreign merchants and poor men who cared little as long as their stomachs were filled. If these had their farms again they would surely return to the old faith, and she was minded to do away with the sheep. For it was the sheep that had brought discontent to England. To make way for these fleeces the ploughmen had been dispossessed.

  It was natural that Protestants should hate her; but with Norfolk and his like it was different. She knew very well that Norfolk came there that day and waited every day, watching anxiously for the first sign that the King’s love for her should cool. She knew very well that they said in the Court that with the King it was only possession and then satiety. And she knew very well that when Norfolk’s eyes searched her face it was for signs of dismay and of discouragement. And when Norfolk had said that he himself had placed the banners, the tents, the pavilions and carpets that made gay all that grim terrace of the air, he was essaying to make her think that the King was abandoning the task of doing her honour. This had made her angry, for it was such folly. Her uncle should have known that the King had discussed all these things with her, asking her what she liked, and that all these bright colours and these plaisaunces were what her man had gallantly thought out for her. She carried her challenge still further.

  ‘It ill becomes us Howards and all like us,’ she said, ‘to talk of how we will defend the Church of God—’

  ‘I am a swordsman only,’ he said. ‘Give me that—’

  She was not minded to listen to him.

  ‘It becomes us ill,’ she said; ‘and I take shame in it. For, a very few years agone we Howards were very poor. Now we are very rich—though it is true that my father is still a very poor man, and your stepmother, my grandmother, has known hard shifts. But we Howards, through you who are our head, became amongst the richest in the land. And how?’

  ‘I have done services—’ the Duke began.

  ‘Why, there has been no new wealth made in this realm,’ she said; ‘it came from the Church. Consider what you have had of this Abbey of Risings that I speak of, because I knew it well as a child, and saw many times then, sparkling in that which held the blood of my Saviour, the jewel that is now in your cap.’

  The Abbey of Risings, after the visitors had been to it and the monks had been driven out, had fallen to the Duke of Norfolk. And his men had stripped the lead from the roofs, the glass from the windows, the very tiles from the floor. And this little abbey was only one of many, large and small, that had fallen to the Duke, so that it was true enough that, through him, the Howards had become a very rich family.

  Norfolk burst into a sudden speech—

  ‘I hold these things only as a trust,’ he said, ‘I am ready to restore.’

  ‘Why, that is very well,’ Katharine said; ‘and I have hopes that soon you will be called to make that restoration to your God.’

  Norfolk looked at the square toes of his shoes for a long time.

  ‘Will you have all things to be given back?’ he said at last after he had thought much.

  ‘The King will have all things be as they were before the Queen Katharine, my namesake of Aragon, was undone,’ Katharine answered. ‘And me he will have to take her place so that all things shall be as before th
ey were.’

  The Duke, leaning on his silver and gold staves, shrugged his shoulders very slowly.

  ‘This will make a very great confusion,’ he said.

  ‘Ay,’ Katharine answered, ‘there will a very many be confounded, and a great number of hundreds be much annoyed.’

  She broke in again upon his slow meditations—

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘this is a very pitiful thing! Privy Seal that is dead and done with worked with a very great cunning. Well he knew that for most men the heart resideth in the pocket. Therefore, though ye said all that he rode this land with a bridle of iron, he was very careful to stop all your mouths alike with pieces of gold. It was not only to his friends that he gave what had been taken from God, but he was very careful that much also should fall into the greedy mouths of those that cried out. If he had not done this, do you think that he would have remained so long above the earth that he made weary? No. But since he made all rich alike with this plunder, so there was no man, either Catholic or Lutheran, very anxious to have him away. And, now that he is dead he worketh still. For who among you lords that do call yourselves sons of the Church, but holdeth of the Church’s goods? Oh, bethink you! bethink you! The moment is at hand when ye may work restoration. See that ye do it willingly and with good hearts, smoothing and making plain the way by which the bruised feet of our Saviour shall come across this, His land.’

  Norfolk kept his eyes upon the ground.

  ‘Why, for me,’ he said, ‘I am very willing. This day I will send to set clerks at work discovering that which is mine and that which came from the Church; but I think you will find some that will not do it so eagerly.’

  She believed him very little; and she said—

  ‘Why, if you will do this thing I think there will not many be behindhand.’

  He did what he could to conceal his wincing, and her voice changed its tone.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, and she was eager and pleading, ‘you have many men that take counsel with you, for I trow that you and my Lord of Winchester do lead such lords as be Catholic in this realm. I know very well that you and my Lord Bishop of Winchester and such Catholic lords would have me to be your puppet and so work as you would have me, giving back to the Church such things as have fallen to Protestants or to men that ye mislike. But that may not be, for, since I owe mine advancement not to you, nor to mine own efforts, but to God alone, so to God alone do I owe fealty.’

  She stretched out towards him the hand that he had kissed. The tail of her coif fell almost to her feet; her body in the fresh sunlight was all cased in purple velvet, only the lawn of her undershirt showed, white and tremulous at her wrists and her neck; and, fair and contrasted with the gold of her hair, her face came out of its abstraction, to take on a pitiful and mournful earnestness.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘if you shall speak for God in the councils that you will hold, believe that your rewards shall be very great. I think that you have been a man of a very troubled mind, for you have thought only or mostly of the affairs of this world. But do now this one good stroke for God His piteous sake, and such a peace shall descend upon you as you have never yet known. You shall have no more griefs; you shall have no more fears. And that is better than the jewels of chalices, and than much lead from the roofs of abbeys. Speak you thus in these councils that you shall hold, give you such advice to them that come to you seeking it, and this I promise you —for it is too little a thing to promise you the love of a Queen and a King’s favour, though that too ye shall not lack — but this I promise you, that there shall descend upon your heart that most blessed miracle and precious wealth, the peace of God.’

  III

  WHEN HENRY WAS CALMED by his pacing in her chamber he came out to her in the sunlight, rolling and bear-like, and so huge that the terrace seemed to grow smaller.

  ‘Chuck,’ he said to her, ‘I ha’ done a thing to pleasure thee.’ He moved two fingers upwards to save the Duke of Norfolk from falling to his knees, caught Katharine by the elbow, and, turning upon himself as on a huge pivot, swung her round him so that they faced the pavilion. ‘Sha’t not talk with a citron-faced uncle,’ he said; ‘sha’t save sweet words for me. I will tell thee what I ha’ done to pleasure thee.’

  ‘Save it a while and do another ere ye tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Now, what is your reasoning about that, wise one?’ he asked.

  She laughed at him, for she took pleasure in his society and, except when she was earnest to beg things of him, she was mostly gay at his side.

  ‘It takes a woman to teach kings,’ she said.

  He answered that it took a Queen to teach him.

  ‘Why,’ she said, ‘listen! I know that each day ye do things to pleasure me, things prodigal or such little things as giving me pouncet boxes. But you will find—and a woman, quean or queen, knows it well—that to take the full pleasure of her lover’s surprises well, she must have an easy mind. And to have an easy mind she must have granted her the little, little boons she asketh.’

  He reflected ponderously upon this point and at last, with a sort of peasant’s gravity, nodded his head.

  ‘For,’ she said, ‘if a woman is to take pleasure she must guess at what you men have done for her. And if she be to guess pleasurably, she must have a clear mind. And if I am to have a clear mind I must have a maiden consoled with a husband.’

  Henry seated himself carefully in the great chair of the small pavilion. He spread out his knees, blinked at the view and when, having cast a look round to see that Norfolk was gone—for it did not suit her that he should see on what terms she was with the King—she seated herself on a little foot-pillow at his feet, he set a great hand upon her head. She leaned her arms across over his knees, and looked up at him appealingly.

  ‘I do take it,’ he said, ‘that I must make some man rich to wed some poor maid.’

  ‘Oh, Solomon!’ she said.

  ‘And I do take it,’ he continued with gravity, ‘that this maid is thy maid Margot.’

  ‘How know you that?’ she said.

  ‘I have observed her,’ he maintained gravely.

  ‘Why, you could not well miss her,’ she answered. ‘She is as big as a plough-ox.’

  ‘I have observed,’ he said—and he blinked his little eyes as if, pleasurably, she were, with her words, whispering around his head. ‘I have observed that ye affected her.’

  ‘Why, she likes me well. She is a good wench—and to-day she tore my hair.’

  ‘Then that is along of a man?’ he asked. ‘Didst not stick thy needle in her arm? Or wilto be quit of her?’

  She rubbed her chin.

  ‘Why, if she wed, I mun be quit of her,’ she said, as if she had never thought of that thing.

  He answered—

  ‘Assuredly; for ye may not part man and lawful wife were you seven times Queen.’

  ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I have little pleasure in Margot as she is.’

  ‘Then let her go,’ he answered.

  ‘But I am a very lonely Queen,’ she said, ‘for you are much absent.’

  He reflected pleasurably.

  ‘Thee wouldst have about thee a little company of well-wishers?’

  ‘So that they be those thou lovest well,’ she said.

  ‘Why, thy maid contents me,’ he answered. He reflected slowly. ‘We must give her man a post about thee,’ he uttered triumphantly.

  ‘Why, trust thee to pleasure me,’ she said. ‘You will find out a way always.’

  He scrubbed her nose gently with his heavy finger.

  ‘Who is the man?’ he said. ‘What ruffler?’

  ‘I think it is the Magister Udal,’ she answered.

  Henry said—

  ‘Oh ho! oh ho!’ And after a moment he slapped his thigh and laughed like a child. She laughed with him, silverly upon a little sound between ‘ah’ and ‘e.’ He stopped his laugh to listen to hers, and then he said gravely—

  ‘I think your laugh is the prettiest sound I ev
er heard. I would give thy maid Margot a score of husbands to make thee laugh.’

  ‘One is enough to make her weep,’ she said; ‘and I may laugh at thee.’

  He said—

  ‘Let us finish this business within the hour. Sit you upon your chair that I may call one to send this ruffler here.’

  She rose, with one sinuous motion that pleased him well, half to her feet and, feeling behind her with one hand for the chair, aided herself with the other upon his shoulder because she knew that it gave him joy to be her prop.

  ‘Call the maid, too,’ she said, ‘for I would come to the secret soon.’

  That pleased him too, and, having shouted for a knave he once more shook with laughter.

  ‘Oh ho,’ he said, ‘you will net this old fox, will you?’

  And, having sent his messenger off to summon the Magister from the Lady Mary’s room, and the maid from the Queen’s, he continued for a while to soliloquise as to Udal’s predicament. For he had heard the Magister rail against matrimony in Latin hexameters and doggerel Greek. He knew that the Magister was an incorrigible fumbler after petticoats. And now, he said, this old fox was to be bagged and tied up.

  He said—

  ‘Well, well, well; well, well!’

  For, if a Queen commanded a marriage, a marriage there must be; there was no more hope for the Magister than for any slave of Cato’s. He was cabined, ginned, trapped, shut in from the herd of bachelors. It pleased the King very well.

  The King grasped the gilded arms of his great chair, Katharine sat beside him, her hands laid one within another upon her lap. She did not say one single word during the King’s interview with Magister Udal.

  The Magister fell upon his knees before them and, seeing the laughing wrinkles round the King’s little eyes, made sure that he was sent for—as had often been the case—to turn into Latin some jest the King had made. His gown fell about his kneeling shins, his cap was at his side, his lean, brown, and sly face, with the long nose and crafty eyes, was like a woodpecker’s.

  ‘Goodman Magister,’ Henry said. ‘Stand up. We have sent for thee to advance thee.’ Without moving his head he rolled his eyes to one side. He loved his dramatic effects and wished to await the coming of the Queen’s maid, Margot, before he gave the weight of his message.