The Fifth Queen

by Ford Madox Ford

  ‘Well, there’s a fine roister-doister!’ the Lady Cicely laughed behind the Queen’s back. The Queen stood very still and frowned. To her the disturbance was monstrous and distasteful, for she was minded to have things very orderly and quiet. The boy, in his scarlet, pulled off his bonnet and panted, but he was not still more than a second, and suddenly he called out to the Queen—

  ‘Make that pynot to marry my sister!’

  Margot Poins hung round him and cried out—

  ‘Oh no! Oh no!’

  He shook her roughly loose.

  ‘An’ you do not wed with him how shall I get advancement?’ he said. ‘ ’A promised me that when ’a should come to be Chancellor ’a would advance me.’

  He pushed her from him again with his elbow when she came near.

  ‘Y’ve grown over familiar,’ the Queen said, ‘with being too much near me. Y’are grown over familiar. For seven days you shall no longer keep my door.’

  Margot Poins raised her arms over her head, then she leant against a window-pane and sobbed into the crook of her elbow. The boy’s slender face was convulsed with rage; his blue eyes started from his head; his callow hair was crushed up.

  ‘Shall a man—’ he began to protest.

  ‘I say nothing against that you did beat this Magister,’ the Queen said. ‘Such passions cannot be controlled, and I pass it by.’

  ‘But will ye not make this man to wed with my sister?’ the boy said harshly.

  ‘I cannot. He hath a wedded wife!’

  He dropped his hands to his side.

  ‘Alack; then my father’s house is down,’ he cried out.

  ‘Gentleman Guard,’ Katharine said, ‘get you for seven days away from my door. I will have another sentry whilst you bethink you of a worthier way to advancement.’

  He gazed at her stupidly.

  ‘You will not make this wedding?’ he asked.

  ‘Gentleman Guard,’ Katharine said, ‘you have your answer. Get you gone.’

  A sudden rage came into his eyes; he swallowed in his throat and made a gesture of despair with his hand. The Queen turned back into her room and busied herself with her task, which was the writing into a little vellum book of seven prayers to the Virgin that the Lady Elizabeth, Queen Anne Boleyn’s daughter, a child then in London, was to turn each one into seven languages, written fair in the volume as a gift, against Christmas, for the King.

  ‘I would not have that boy to guard my door,’ the Lady Cicely said to the Queen.

  ‘Why, ’tis a good boy,’ Katharine answered; ‘and his sister loves me very well.’

  ‘Get your Highness another,’ the Lady Cicely persisted. ‘I do not like his looks.’

  The Queen gazed up from her writing to where the dark girl, her figure raked very much back in her stiff bodice, played daintily with the tassels of the curtain next the window.

  ‘My Lady,’ Katharine said, ‘my Highness must get me a new maid in place of Margot Poins, that shall away into a nunnery. Is not that grief enough for poor Margot? Shall she think in truth that she has undone her father’s house?’

  ‘Then advance the springald to some post away from you,’ the Lady Cicely said.

  ‘Nay,’ the Queen answered; ‘he hath done nothing to merit advancement.’

  She continued, with her head bent down over the writing on her knee, her lips moving a little as, sedulously, she drew large and plain letters with her pen.

  ‘By Heaven,’ the Lady Cicely said, ‘you have too tickle a conscience to be a Queen of this world and day. In the time of Cæsar you might have lived more easily.’

  The Queen looked up at her from her writing; her clear eyes were untroubled.

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Lucio Domitio, Appio Claudio consulibus—’

  Cicely Rochford set back her head and laughed at the ceiling.

  ‘Aye, your Highness is a Roman,’ she tittered like a magpie.

  ‘In the day of Cæsar it was simple to do well,’ the Queen said.

  ‘Why, I do not believe it,’ Cicely answered her.

  ‘Cousin! Cousin!’ The old Lady Rochford warned her that this was the Queen, not her old playmate.

  ‘But now,’ the Queen said, ‘with such a coming together and a concourse of peoples about us; with such holes and corners in a great Court—’ She paused and sighed.

  ‘Well, if I may not speak my mind,’ Cicely Rochford said to the old lady, ‘what good am I?’

  ‘I did even what I might to keep this lamb Margot from the teeth of that wolf Magister,’ the Queen said. ‘I take shame to myself that I did no more. I will do a penance for it. But still I think that these be degenerate days.’

  ‘Oh, Queen of dreams and fancies,’ Cicely Rochford said. ‘I am very certain that in the days of your noble Romans it was as it is now. Tell me, if you can, that in all your readings of hic and hoc you lit not upon such basenesses? You will not lay your hand upon your heart and say that never a man of Rome bartered his sister for the hope of advancement, or that never a learned doctor was a corrupter of youth? I have seen the like in the plays of Plautus that here have been played at Court.’

  ‘Why,’ the Queen said, ‘the days of Plautus were days degenerated and fallen already from the ancient nobleness.’

  ‘You should have Queened it before Goodman Adam fell,’ Cicely Rochford mocked her. ‘If you go back before Plautus, go back all the way.’

  She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears and uttered a little sound like ‘Pfui!’ Then she said quickly—

  ‘Give me leave to be gone, your Highness, that I may not grow over familiar like the boy with the pikestaff, for if it do not gall you it shall wring the withers of this my old husband’s cousin!’

  The old Lady Rochford, who was always thinking of what had been said two speeches ago, because she was so slow-witted, raised her gouty hands in the air and opened her mouth. But the Queen smiled faintly at Cicely.

  ‘When I ask you to mince matters in my little room you shall do it. It was Lucius the Praetor that went always accompanied by a carping Stoic to keep him from being puffed up, and it was a good custom.’

  ‘Before Heaven,’ Cicely Rochford said in the midst of her curtsey at the door, ‘shall I have the office of such a one as Diogenes who derided Alexander the Emperor? Then must my old husband live with me in a tub!’

  ‘Pray you,’ the Queen said after her through the door, ‘look you around and spy me out a maid to be my tiring-woman and ward my spinsters. For nowadays I see few maids to choose from.’

  When she was gone the old Lady Rochford timorously berated the Queen. She would have her be more distant with knights’ wives and the like. For it was fitting for a Queen to be feared and deemed awful.

  ‘I had rather be loved and deemed pitiful,’ Katharine answered. ‘For I was once such a one—no more—than she or thou, or very little more. Before the people I bear myself proudly for my lord his high honour. But I do lead a very cloistered life, and have leisure to reflect upon for what a little space authority endureth, and how that friendship and true love between friends are things that bear the weather better.’ She did not say her Latin text, for the old lady had no Latin.

  VI

  IN THE UNDERGROUND CELL, above the red and gold table that afternoon, Lascelles wrought at a fair copy of the King’s letter to the Pope, amended as it had been by Udal’s hand. The Archbishop had come into the room reading a book as he came from his prayers, and sate him down in his chair at the tablehead without glancing at his gentleman.

  ‘Prithee, your Grace,’ Lascelles said, ‘suffer me to carry this letter mine own self to the Queen.’

  The Archbishop looked up at him; his mournful eyes started wide; he leaned forward.

  ‘Art thou Lascelles?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, Lascelles I am,’ the gentleman answered; ‘but I have cut off my beard.’

  The Archbishop was very weak and startled; he fell into an anger.

  ‘Is this a time for vanities?’ he said
. ‘Will you be after the wenches? You look a foolish boy! I do not like this prank.’

  Lascelles put up his hand to stroke his vanished beard. His risible lips writhed in a foxy smile; his chin was fuller than you would have expected, round and sensuous with a dimple in the peak of it.

  ‘Please it, your Grace,’ he said, ‘this is no vanity, but a scheme that I will try.’

  ‘What scheme? What scheme?’ the Archbishop said. ‘Here have been too many schemes.’ He was very shaken and afraid, because this world was beyond his control.

  ‘Please it, your Grace,’ Lascelles answered, ‘ask me not what this scheme is.’

  The Archbishop shook his head and pursed his lips feebly.

  ‘Please it, your Grace,’ Lascelles urged, ‘if this scheme miscarry, your Grace shall hear no more of it. If this scheme succeed I trow it shall help some things forward that your Grace would much have forwarded. Please it, your Grace, to ask me no more, and to send me with this letter to the Queen’s Highness.’

  The Archbishop opened his nerveless hands before him; they were pale and wrinkled as if they had been much soddened in water. Since the King had bidden him compose that letter to the Pope of Rome, his hands had grown so. Lascelles wrote on at the new draft of the letter, his lips following the motions of his pen. Still writing, and with his eyes down, he said—

  ‘The Queen’s Highness will put from her her tire-woman in a week from now.’

  The Archbishop moved his fingers as who should say—

  ‘What is that to me!’ His eyes gazed into the space above his book that lay before him on the table.

  ‘This Margot Poins is a niece of the master-printer Badge, a Lutheran, of the Austin Friars.’ Lascelles pursued his writing for a line further. Then he added—

  ‘This putting away and the occasion of it shall make a great noise in the town of London. It will be said amongst the Lutherans that the Queen is answerable therefor. It will be said that the Queen hath a very lewd Court and companionship.’

  The Archbishop muttered wearily—

  ‘It hath been said already.’

  ‘But not,’ Lascelles said, ‘since she came to be Queen.’

  The Archbishop directed upon him his hang-dog eyes, and his voice was the voice of a man that would not be disturbed from woeful musings.

  ‘What use?’ he said bitterly; and then again, ‘What use?’

  Lascelles wrote on sedulously. He used his sandarach to the end of the page, blew off the sand, eyed the sheet sideways, laid it down, and set another on his writing-board.

  ‘Why,’ he brought out quietly, ‘it may be brought to the King’s Highness’ ears.’

  ‘What way?’ the Archbishop said heavily, as if the thing were impossible. His gentleman answered—

  ‘This way and that!’ The King’s Highness had a trick of wandering about among his faithful lieges unbeknown; foreign ambassadors wrote abroad such rumours which might be re-reported from the foreign by the King’s servants.

  ‘Such a report,’ Lascelles said, ‘hath gone up already to London town by a swift carrier.’

  The Archbishop brought out wearily and distastefully—

  ‘How know you? Was it you that wrote it?’

  ‘Please it, your Grace,’ his gentleman answered him, ‘it was in this wise. As I was passing by the Queen’s chamber wall I heard a great outcry—’

  He laid down his pen beside his writing-board the more leisurely to speak.

  He had seen Udal, beaten and shaking, stagger out from the Queen’s door to where his guards waited to set him back in prison. From Udal he had learned of this new draft of the letter; of Udal’s trouble he knew before. Udal gone, he had waited a little, hearing the Queen’s voice and what she said very plainly, for the castle was very great and quiet. Then out had come the young Poins, breathing like a volcano through his nostrils, and like to be stricken with palsy, boy though he was. Him Lascelles had followed at a convenient distance, where he staggered and snorted. And, coming upon the boy in an empty guard-room near the great gate, he had found him aflame with passion against the Queen’s Highness.

  ‘I,’ the boy had cried out, ‘I that by my carrying of letters set this Howard where she sits! I!—and this is my advancement. My sister cast down, and I cast out, and another maid to take my sister’s place.’

  And Lascelles, in the guard-chamber, had shown him sympathy and reminded him that there was gospel for saying that princes had short memories.

  ‘But I did not calm him!’ Lascelles said.

  On the contrary, upon Lascelles’ suggestion that the boy had but to hold his tongue and pocket his wrongs, the young Poins had burst out that he would shout it all abroad at every street corner. And suddenly it had come into his head to write such a letter to his Uncle Badge the printer as, printed in a broadside, would make the Queen’s name to stink, until the last generation was of men, in men’s nostrils.

  Lascelles rubbed his hands gently and sinuously together. He cast one sly glance at the Archbishop.

  ‘Well, the letter was written,’ he said. ‘Be sure the broadside shall be printed.’

  Cranmer’s head was sunk over his book.

  ‘This lad,’ Lascelles said softly, ‘who in seven days’ time again shall keep the Queen’s door (for it is not true that the Queen’s Highness is an ingrate, well sure am I), this lad shall be a very useful confidant; a very serviceable guide to help us to a knowledge of who goes in to the Queen and who cometh out.’

  The Archbishop did not appear to be listening to his gentleman’s soft voice and, resuming his pen, Lascelles finished his tale with—

  ‘For I have made this lad my friend. It shall cost me some money, but I do not doubt that your Grace shall repay.’

  The Archbishop raised his head.

  ‘No, before God in heaven on His throne!’ he said. His voice was shrill and high; he agitated his hands in their fine, tied sleeves. ‘I will have no part in these Cromwell tricks. All is lost; let it be lost. I must say my prayers.’

  ‘Has it been by saying of your Grace’s prayers that your Grace has lived through these months?’ Lascelles asked softly.

  ‘Aye,’ the Archbishop wrung his hands; ‘you girded me and moved me when Cromwell lay at death, to write a letter to the King’s Highness. To write such a letter as should appear brave and faithful and true to Privy Seal’s cause.’

  ‘Such a letter your Grace wrote,’ Lascelles said; ‘and it was the best writing that ever your Grace made.’

  The Archbishop gazed at the table.

  ‘How do I know that?’ he said in a whisper. ‘You say so, who bade me write it.’

  ‘For that your Grace lives yet,’ Lascelles said softly; ‘though in those days a warrant was written for your capture. For, sure it is, and your Grace has heard it from the King’s lips, that that your letter sounded so faithful and piteous and true to him your late leader, that the King could not but believe that you, so loyal in such a time to a man disgraced and cast down beyond hope, could not but be faithful and loyal in the future to him, the King, with so many bounties to bestow.’

  ‘Aye,’ the Archbishop said, ‘but how do I know what of a truth was in the King’s mind who casteth down to-day one, to-morrow another, till none are left?’

  And again Cranmer dropped his anguished eyes to the table.

  In those days still—and he slept still worse since the King had bidden him write this letter to Rome—the Archbishop could not sleep on any night without startings and sweats and cryings out in his sleep. And he gave orders that, when he so cried out, the page at his bedside should wake him.

  For then he was seeing the dreadful face of his great master, Privy Seal, when the day of his ruin had come. Cromwell had been standing in a window of the council chamber at Westminster looking out upon a courtyard. In behind him had come the other lords of the council, Norfolk with his yellow face, the High Admiral, and many others; and each, seating himself at the table, had kept his bonnet on his head.
So Cromwell, turning, had seen them and had asked with his hard insolence and embittered eyes of hatred, how they dared be covered before he who was their president sat down. Then, up against him in the window-place there had sprung Norfolk at the chain of the George round his neck, and Suffolk at the Garter on his knee; and Norfolk had cried out that Thomas Cromwell was no longer Privy Seal of that kingdom, nor president of that council, but a traitor that must die. Then such rage and despair had come into Thomas Cromwell’s terrible face that Cranmer’s senses had reeled. He had seen Norfolk and the Admiral fall back before this passion; he had seen Thomas Cromwell tear off his cap and cast it on the floor; he had heard him bark and snarl out certain words into the face of the yellow dog of Norfolk.

  ‘Upon your life you dare not call me traitor!’ and Norfolk had fallen back abashed.

  Then the chamber had seemed to fill with an awful gloom and darkness; men showed only like shadows against the window lights; the constable of the Tower had come in with the warrants, and in that gloom the earth had appeared to tremble and quake beneath the Archbishop’s feet.

  He crossed himself at the recollection, and, coming out of his stupor, saw that Lascelles was finishing his writings. And he was glad that he was here now and not there then.

  ‘Prithee, your Grace,’ the gentleman’s soft voice said, ‘let me bear, myself, this letter to the Queen.’

  The Archbishop shivered frostily in his robes.

  ‘I will have no more Cromwell tricks,’ he said. ‘I have said it’; and he affected an obdurate tone.

  ‘Then, indeed, all is lost,’ Lascelles answered; ‘for this Queen is very resolved.’

  The Archbishop cast his eyes up to the cold stone ceiling above him. He crossed himself.

  ‘You are a very devil,’ he said, and panic came into his eyes, so that he turned them all round him as if he sought an issue at which to run out.