Katharine of Aragon

by Jean Plaidy

  “This is impossible!” said the Queen. “They cannot turn me out of Buckden without my consent.”

  But she was wrong, because this was exactly what Suffolk had made up his mind to do.

  Secretly Suffolk was ashamed of this commission and wished that the King had chosen some other to carry it out; it was particularly distasteful to him, because he had, on the death of the King's sister Mary, recently married the daughter of Maria de Salinas who was such a close friend of the Queen. But his bucolic mind could suggest no other way of disguising his distaste than by truculence. Moreover he had orders to move the Queen from Buckden, and he did not care to contemplate what the King would say if he returned to Court and explained that he had been unable to carry out his task.

  Katharine went to the hall and saw that what she had been told was correct. The tapestries had already been taken down from the walls, and the furniture was being prepared for removal.

  Angrily she confronted Suffolk. “How dare you move my furniture without my consent?” she demanded.

  He bowed. “The King's orders are that it and you should be removed.”

  “I tell you I shall not go.”

  She left him and went up to her bedchamber. Several of her faithful women were there, and she locked the door on herself and them.

  Suffolk followed her and stood outside the door begging her to be reasonable.

  She would not answer him and, realizing that it was no use arguing with a locked door, Suffolk went back to the hall.

  “Go into all the rooms save those of the Queen's private apartments, which are locked against us,” he commanded. “Dismantle the beds and pack all that needs to be packed. We are moving this household to Somersham.”

  The work went on while Katharine remained in her own apartments; but Suffolk and his retinue had been seen arriving, and it was not long before news of what was happening within the manor house was spread throughout the villages. As the crowd outside grew, Suffolk, who had posted his guards about the house, was soon made aware that the Queen's neighbors were gathering to protect her. It was a silent crowd, watching from a distance; but it was noted that many of the men carried choppers and billhooks; and Suffolk, who had never been noted for his quick wits, was uneasy. Here was a humiliating situation: the Queen locked in her own apartments with a few of her faithful servants; he and his men dismantling the house, preparing to move; and outside, the Queen's neighbors gathering to protect her! Suffolk knew that if he attempted to remove the Queen by force there would be a battle. He could imagine Henry's fury when news of this reached his ears.

  Yet something must be done; but the winter evening was near and he could do nothing that night, so he called a halt to his men. They should see about their night quarters and making a meal. They were prepared for this for they had not expected to complete their task in one day and night.

  In the morning, Suffolk told himself, I shall work out a plan. He thought wistfully of the Christmas revelry which would be taking place at the Court. The new Queen and her admirers would certainly arrange a lively pageant. There would be fun for those at Court, while he had to spend his time in this gloomy mansion, trying to persuade an obstinate woman to do something which she had sworn not to do.

  But in the morning the situation was the same. Katharine remained in her own apartments, waited on by her faithful servants who treated the invaders as though they did not exist.

  Meanwhile by daylight the crowds waiting outside seemed to be more formidable—young, strong countrymen with their ferocious-looking billhooks. If he attempted to force a way through them Suffolk knew there would assuredly be a clash.

  More than ever he wished himself back at Court; but he could see only one possible course. He must write to the King and tell him the circumstances; he would be cursed for an incompetent fool, but that was better than being responsible for a fight between the King's soldiers and the Queen's protectors. Suffolk was shrewd enough to know that such an incident might be the spark to start a civil war.

  Already the King was preoccupied with fears of a rebellion which might seek to set his daughter Mary on the throne.

  Yet he was undecided. He put off writing to the King, telling himself that Katharine might relent. She was after all an ageing woman, a lonely woman who had suffered the greatest humiliation possible. Perhaps those yokels waiting outside to defend her would grow tired. So Suffolk decided to wait.

  For five days he waited and still Katharine's door remained locked. She took her food in her own apartments and would not open her door to Suffolk.

  His patience ended. He went to her door and hammered on it.

  “If you do not come out, I shall take you by force,” he shouted.

  “You would have to do that,” was Katharine's answer. “Break down my door if you will. Bind me with ropes. Carry me to your litter. That is the only way you will get me to move from this house.”

  Suffolk swore in his angry uncertainty. There were spies in this household. They were carrying tales to those waiting people so that everything that was happening in this house was known. He was sure that the Queen's neighbors were sending word to friends miles away, and that the ranks about the house were swelling.

  He dared not take her by force. He and his men would be torn to pieces if he did.

  He returned to the hall, looked gloomily at the dismantled room; then he wrote to the King, to Cromwell and to Norfolk, explaining the Queen's obstinacy and his fear of mob violence from the crowd which now seemed to be some thousands.

  He dispatched the letters and prepared to depart himself.

  He saw Thomas Abell coming from the Queen's apartments and called to him.

  “So, sir priest, you are still here with the Princess Dowager.”

  “As you see, my lord Duke.”

  “And upholding her in her obstinacy as you ever did,” snarled Suffolk.

  “The Queen is a lady of stern ideals.”

  “The Queen? There is but one Queen of England. That is Queen Anne.”

  “There is but one Queen, my lord; and I say that Queen is Queen Katharine.”

  “By God,” cried Suffolk, “you speak high treason.” He shouted to his men. “Take this priest. He will leave with us as our prisoner.”

  He summoned all those servants, who were not with Katharine, to his presence and forthwith arrested several of them. At least he would not go back to London empty handed. Then he was ready to leave. He glanced round the castle which looked as though it had been sacked by invading soldiery—which in some measure it had—before he rode out into the courtyard and gave the order to depart.

  The crowds parted for them to pass; no one spoke, but the looks were sullen.

  Katharine came down from her private apartments and gazed in dismay at the havoc in her house. But when she heard that some of her servants had been taken prisoner, among them the faithful Abell, she ceased to care about the state of her dwelling. She thought of Abell going back to the discomfort of the Tower, where he might be submitted to torture as he had been before, and a feeling of utter desolation took possession of her.

  Will there be no end to this persecution? she asked herself. Then she began to weep, for the strain of the last days had been greater than she had realized while they were happening; and although when confined to her room, unsure of whether she would be removed by force, she had not wept, now she could not prevent herself from doing so.

  Two of her women came and stood with her.

  “Your Majesty, pray return to your bed. There is more comfort there.”

  She did not answer but held her kerchief to her streaming eyes.

  “A curse on Anne Boleyn,” said one of the women.

  Katharine lowered her kerchief and turned her stern gaze on the speaker. “Nay,” she said. “Hold your peace. Do not curse her. Rather pray for her. Even now the time is coming fast when you shall have reason to pity her and lament her case.”

  She turned slowly and mounted the stairs to her apartme
nt. Her women looked after her in wonderment. Then they shivered, for she spoke with the voice of a prophet.

  In the Castle of Kimbolton

  KATHARINE CONTINUED to live in her private apartments, and the rest of the castle remained as Suffolk's men had left it: the tapestries unhung, the furniture dismantled.

  Every day Katharine expected to receive a command from the King to leave Buckden for some place of his choice, but Henry was too occupied by affairs at Court to concern himself with her.

  There was about this life an air of transience. She scarcely left her apartments, and heard Mass at the window of her bedroom which looked down on the chapel; her food was cooked by her bedroom fire, and those who served her, living closer to her, began to find love of her mingling with the respect she had always inspired.

  The winter was bitter and she often felt, during those rigorous weeks when she lay shivering in her bed, that she could not live long in this condition. Her great concern was for her daughter who she knew, through Chapuys, was as much in danger as she was herself.

  Chapuys wrote to her that she must take care what she ate, and that her meals should be cooked only by her most trusted servants because he believed that in high quarters there was a plot to remove both her and the Princess Mary.

  This threat did not diminish when in the March of that year Clement at last gave his verdict, declaring that the marriage of Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon was valid in the eyes of God and the Church.

  “Too late!” sighed Katharine. “Five weary years too late!”

  She knew that Clement's verdict could do her and Mary no good now, but could only increase the wrath of her enemies among whom she knew in her heart—but she tried hard not to admit this—was the King, her husband.

  In May of that year the King ordered her to leave Buckden for Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire; and this time she obeyed.

  THE REIGN OF TERROR had begun. There were certain stubborn men who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, and the King was no longer the carefree boy who was eager only for his pleasure.

  His marriage with Anne was turning sour. Where was the boy for whom he had dared so much? Where was the tender passion he had once felt for Anne?

  In Kimbolton Castle was the woman whom many still called his Queen. He was waiting impatiently for her death which surely could not be long delayed. The last years of anxiety and living in damp houses had ruined her health, he had heard; yet she clung as stubbornly to life as she had to her determination not to enter a nunnery.

  A plague on obstinate women… and obstinate men.

  He knew that Chapuys was dangerous, and he had refused again and again the ambassador's requests to see Katharine. How did he know what was being planned in secret? Was it true that plans were afoot to smuggle Mary from the country and marry her to Reginald Pole, that traitor who dared tell him… his King… that he disapproved of his conduct?

  A plague on all men and women who risked their lives for a cause which was not the King's. They should see whither that road led.

  Mary was as obstinate as her mother, refusing to travel with her baby sister, declaring that she was a Princess and would answer to no other title, continually pleading to see her mother; now she was most inconveniently ill, and it was being whispered that she had been poisoned.

  Katharine wrote to him from Kimbolton: “Our daughter is ill. You cannot keep her from me now. I beg of you, allow me to see her. Do you remember how long it is since I did so? What joy does this cruelty bring you?”

  The King's eyes narrowed as he read that appeal. Let them meet! Let them plot together! Let them smuggle notes to sly Chapuys… plans to get Mary abroad, married to Pole—a signal doubtless for their friends in England to rise against him!

  “Never!” he cried.

  THOSE WHO DID NOT obey the King should suffer the supreme penalty. In April of that bloodstained year five Carthusian monks were brought for trial and found to be guilty of high treason. Their crime: They refused to sign the Oath declaring the King to be Supreme Head of the Church.

  “Let them understand,” growled Henry, “what it means to disobey the King. Let all who plan like disobedience look on and see.”

  In that May the tortured bodies of these five martyrs were brought out of their prison for execution. The degrading and horrible traitors' death was accorded them and they were dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, hanged, cut down alive, their bodies ripped open and their bowels and hearts impaled on spears and shown to the spectators, that all might understand what happened to those who disobeyed the King.

  In June more monks of the Charterhouse were brought to Tyburn and similarly dealt with. And a few days later John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was brought from his prison to die the traitors' death. Fortunately for him, there were some for whom it was expedient to show leniency; so the King said he would be merciful. Not for the bishop, whom some of the King's misguided subjects loved, the barbarous death accorded to the Carthusians; Fisher was allowed to die by means of the executioner's axe.

  In July Sir Thomas More was brought from the Tower of London, where he had been for fifteen months, and he too laid his head upon the block.

  When Katharine heard of the death of these old friends she shut herself into her chamber and remained there alone.

  She still could not believe that the gay young husband who had married her in the days of her humiliation was in truth the brutal murderer of good men. She still clung to the belief that it was those about him who urged him to these deeds. Now she feigned to believe it was Anne Boleyn, as once she had believed it was Wolsey.

  Yet in her heart she knew that he was all-powerful; more so than ever now that he had cut himself off from the Pope.

  John Fisher! she sighed. Thomas More! My dear friends… and the King's! How could he murder two such men?

  But she knew. And she wondered who will be next?

  She was very fearful for her daughter… and herself.

  THE WINTER HAD COME AGAIN, and Katharine knew with certainty that she could not live through it. She was now so feeble that she must keep to her bed for days at a time; and some premonition told her that her end was near.

  Once more she appealed to Henry.

  “I do not think I have long to live. I pray you permit our daughter to come to me. You surely cannot prevent her from receiving my last blessing in person.”

  She was hopeful when she had dispatched that appeal because she persisted in believing that Henry was not so cruel as he seemed.

  But this plea, like others, was unanswered, and she now understood that she would never see her beloved daughter again in this life.

  Chapuys, hearing of the Queen's condition, was alarmed and went at once to the King. He was shocked to see the hopeful expression in the King's face. The man is a monster, he thought angrily.

  “I ask Your Majesty's permission to visit the Queen at Kimbolton,” he said.

  Henry ignored the request, and began to speak of affairs in Europe. François would not rest until Milan was his; and could he win Milan without the help of England?

  Chapuys did not answer. Instead he said: “I have heard from the Queen's physician that she is near death. She implores you to allow her to see her daughter.”

  “It is a matter which I could not decide without consulting my council.” Henry took Chapuys by the shoulders and studied him intently. “The Emperor ignores his interests when he meddles in matters which are outside his concern. If he refuses my friendship, why should I not make an alliance with an ally who is eager to be my friend?”

  “Your Majesty cannot believe the Emperor would ever abandon Queen Katharine while she is alive.”

  A smile of complacency crossed the King's face. “Then perhaps it is not important. She will not live long.”

  “It is for this reason that I ask your permission to visit her.”

  Henry shrugged his shoulders. She was dying; she could not long be an encumbrance to him.

  “Go to her if you w
ish,” he said. “But there shall be no meeting between her and the Lady Mary.”

  Chapuys did not wait, for fear that the King might change his mind. He left Henry's presence and with all speed set out for Kimbolton.

  CHAPUYS KNELT by her bed and his heart was touched by the sight of her. The skin was tightly drawn across her bones; her hair, once so beautiful, hung limp and lustreless. Talking exhausted her. But she brightened at the sight of him; and when she saw his distress she told him not to weep, for, as he would see, death held no terrors for her, and since she was parted from her daughter life had little to offer.

  Then she pushed aside her grievances and wished to hear news of her daughter and to give instructions as to what was to happen after her death.

  “I have so little to leave,” she said. “A few furs, a few jewels…but they are hers; and she will love them, more because they were mine than because of their value. When you see her, tell her that I loved her dearly and that had it not been for my delight in her I doubt I could have borne my sorrows. Oh, my dear friend, I fear I have brought great suffering to this country. Worthy men have died and others have endangered their souls. Yet I am Henry's wife, and how could I deny that?”

  Chapuys tried to soothe her, and it was gratifying to him to know that he brought her some comfort. He looked round the room, at the few candles, at the rushes on the floor. A humble room to provide the death chamber of Isabella's daughter.

  But his visit so comforted her that she seemed to recover.

  IT WAS SIX O'CLOCK on New Year's Day when a small party of weary travellers arrived at the gate of the Castle. At their head was a woman who declared that they were half dead with fatigue and implored to be given shelter.

  The gatekeeper told her that none could be admitted to the Castle unless carrying a written permission from the King to do so; but the woman wept and begged him not to leave her without shelter in this bitter January night.

  The gatekeeper was touched by the piteous spectacle the travellers presented, and consented to allow their leader to see Sir Edmund Bedingfeld whom the King had appointed steward to Katharine, but who was in fact her jailor.