“And looking her worst, all ill-prepared,” put in my wife. “It doesn’t seem kind. Why must his Grace do this?”
Because she was showing more anxiety for some foreign princess than she had shown for herself, I kissed her worried brow. “‘In order to foster love,’ he told milord of Suffolk. ‘Or because you still love dressing up, you romantic old roisterer,’ jibed Suffolk, they both being full of sack and high good humour at the prospect of so unusual an outing. So as soon as they have word that the Flemish Princess has landed you may be sure they will set off for Rochester. And you may be equally sure that the moment they are over London Bridge I shall be on my way here.”
“To foster love?” enquired Joanna, with a provocative grin.
“Love like ours needs no fostering. For my own part, it is already full grown to the point of starving,” I said, reddening her cheeks with an ardent kiss before them all. “And so I warn you, that you may be prepared to solace me when I come.”
And so, striving to weigh my unlooked-for possession of her against that long delay, I took my leave, promising Bart Festing to send a quarter’s rent before he left for Calais. My tastes had always been simple, my expenses few. In the King’s service so much in victuals, travel and amusement was free. Save for a gift to my aunt in Shropshire, whenever I could find opportunity to send to her, there was no one dependent on me. Though I made it a rule to take no bribes, rich men who had enjoyed an evening’s fun and visiting foreign envoys frequently made me presents. My savings were considerable and lay snugly in the royal cofferer’s care. And when I got back to the palace my good friend John Thurgood, in whom alone I confided, offered to deliver the money for me. I think he was as desirous of meeting my bride as of doing me a service at this all-important juncture in my life.
“She is sweet as a field of spring flowers, and gay as sunshine,” he said, stretching himself out in my room on his return. “You are a lucky man, Will, but your constancy deserves it.”
“I would to God I could have won her fairly in any way but by her family’s misfortune,” I said. “And that I could keep her openly as my wife in some place where there are gardens and the things to which she is accustomed.”
“It may not be for long,” said Thurgood, trying to cheer me.“And ’tis a quiet nest for love.”
“Too quiet, perhaps, if Joanna frets too much about her father. And what to do for him I know not, John.”
“Nothing, I fear, with Bull Cromwell in power,” he sighed, getting up reluctantly to go about his own affairs. “Listen, Will. There will be little to do here until all this Blackheath pageantry is over, and higher level men than us, such as milord Marshal, will have all the managing of that. So I can well cover up your tracks here. You can easily be free to get away the moment the King and Suffolk and Sir Anthony Browne set off on this escapade of theirs for Rochester.”
I needed no second bidding. “Success or no success, Court life would have been a desert indeed without you, John!” I said, grateful for his years of ungrudging friendship and professional cooperation. And when he had gone, with a thwack on the shoulders and a ribald wish for my new married state, I had the temerity to visit the King’s own barber and then put out my fine mulberry velvet which had been ordered for the coming of the new Queen, and dressed myself with as much nervous fumbling as any bridegroom. “You are no Adonis. You can’t be fashionably fair like the Tudors and all those gallants who dye their hair with saffron to imitate them,” I told myself, peering anxiously into the silver-framed mirror which milady Mary had given me. “Your cheekbones are too high and your face too lean, but at least you’ve kept your figure and your eyes and teeth are good. Dressed like a gentleman of the more sober sort, you look the kind of man a woman might willingly acknowledge as her husband. But”—and here I came to the question which always nagged at the back of my mind—“could any woman in her heart want to have a husband who was the King’s fool?”
As one prospective bridegroom to another, and because I really wanted to, I went down into the courtyard to wish the King godspeed.He and the Duke of Suffolk and Sir Anthony Browne were already in their saddles, dressed in plain brown worsted with unfeathered caps and as conspiratorially excited as a trio of plump schoolboys.
“Do we look like a party of honest merchants?” Suffolk was asking, looking down at his unaccustomed garb self-consciously.
“Here’s Will. He should know, having lived with some of them,” cried Henry, at sight of me. “Do we look like honest merchants, Will?”
I viewed them with mock solemnity, walking critically around each, so that all the attendants and grooms began to titter. “You look like merchants, Harry,” I assured him. “But as to honest—well, let your consciences be the judge of that.”
“He must be alluding to you, Charles, for managing to keep your ward’s dowry by marrying her,” laughed Henry. “But, since we talk of disguises, if we look like merchants you look like the lord of a manor, this morning, Will. Whither are you going?”
“To my honeymoon,” I said, without hesitation.
“Then there are two of us.”
I went close beside him and laid a hand on his stirrup. “So I wish you happiness with all my heart, and pray you find the lady to your liking,” I said, in a sudden glow of affection for him. For all our sakes, I wanted this fourth marriage of his to be a happy one. And he knew as well as I how, even in the midst of our fooling, we sometimes said things in deep sincerity which strengthened the strange bond between us. “Where will you be spending your honeymoon, Harry?” I asked lightly, to cover our moment of emotion.
“Where else but at Greenwich, since it is conveniently on the Kentish side for my bride’s arrival,” he answered, all jovial with anticipation. “And where will Master Somers of Mummery Manor, in all his wedding finery, spend his?”
“In the City of London,” I told him promptly.
“An odd, public sort of place to choose for dalliance, surely?”
“But I chose it because only milord Mayor has jurisdiction there, and so your Grace cannot recall me before the moon be waned and the honey all tasted.”
Everyone was smiling good-humouredly around us. “An excellent idea,” he agreed, making a last effort to restrain his plunging mount. “And when do you propose to go?”
“Now, this same moment as yourself,” I told him. “For were we not both born in the month of June under the self-same sign?”
He laughed again and waved his plainly-gloved hand. “We must compare our experiences later. Amuse-toi bien, mon brave!” he called back over his shoulder.
The three of them, followed by a groom or two, clattered through the gateway, and it was as if the exciting centre of things were gone. Courtiers and servants went back in twos and threes to their various occupations. The courtyard began to empty. “A lanky, nonsensical fellow, that fool! But for some reason the King allows him far too much liberty,” I overheard a long-nosed, ambitious bishop say disapprovingly, as I passed him and the parson-poet Skelton on my way to the stables.
And then I heard from behind me John Skelton’s mocking voice answering him in ribald rhyme,
“How good for kings
To hear of things
From fools who find
No axe to grind.”
Probably he shocked his ecclesiastical superior, but he delighted me immensely.
And the funny part was that because I had told the exact truth in open courtyard no one had dreamed of believing me, and if anyone missed me during the following week probably the last place in which they would think of seeking me would be the City of London.
One of the grooms had my grey gelding ready saddled for me.And I rode like the wind to Thames Street—or it might well have been to Heaven—where the Festings were already gone and my bride awaited me. And whatever romantic surprises or gorgeous spectacles of nuptial welcome royalty may have been enacting to an amazed world outside our ken or caring, Joanna and I had no need of them. No matter what other homes
we might live in, that narrow, typical London house among the docks would always remain in our memories as the enchanted casket of our first married ecstasy.
During those few precious uninterrupted days we scarcely ever left it save for an evening saunter across Tower Green beneath the stars. We had waited so long and so hopelessly to be together.There were so many things to talk of, so many years of lovers’ longings to assuage. And we found that we satisfied each other in mind, body and emotions. Poor as my parents had been, the education my father had given me was much the same as that enjoyed by merchants’ sons. Contact with her father had dispelled much of my youthful gaucherie, and Court life had given me a worldly wisdom which, save in social graces and experience in managing a gracious manor, Joanna lacked. We valued intensely every facet of a happiness which we had never hoped to possess. If we had waited long enough to lose the shy romance of very early youth, we had found an undreamed depth of magic in our marriage.
But when the bells of St. Paul’s and all the other London churches began to ring out, and we saw the wealthy Flemish merchants setting out from the steelyard in all their best finery to welcome their Princess, and a wild scurry of small boats filled with sightseers rowing down-river we knew that the bride must have arrived at Blackheath, and that soon the King would be escorting her with all the bejewelled company into Greenwich Palace. And that I, the Court jester, should be expected to be there.
“I shall often be back,” I promised, making my hurried preparations. “Late at night sometimes, or when the King is out hunting or having a long session with Cromwell or one of the foreign ambassadors. This is our home, Joanna.”
But she was standing disconsolately by the window of our bedroom staring out across the Thames, perhaps to hide her tears. “I believe I can see the Marshalsea prison from here—tall and grim on the Surrey side,” she said, and I knew that her tears were mostly for her father. “Oh, Will, have we been wickedly selfish, being so happy here in this warm room while he is imprisoned over there across the water? With family and freedom gone, his full life all in ruins. Even hungry, perhaps—”
I turned her from the window and held her tight, so that she wept for a while against my shoulder. Any evening we might have walked across London Bridge and stood beneath those prison walls, but what good would it have done? “If only we could see him—speak with him,” she murmured, making a brave effort to dry her eyes.
“Cromwell’s orders about visiting are extraordinarily strict. You may be sure I made every enquiry,” I said. “I even woke in the night with a wild idea—”
“Yes?” she asked eagerly.
“It was useless, through my own carelessness. You see, my sweet, I was once able to save a man from hanging. And I believe he became a gaoler at the Marshalsea.”
“You mean the sailor accused of piracy whose mother pleaded for him?”
“Yes. Did I tell you about it?”
“When I was in London. She caught you in a softened mood, you said, that day your Uncle Tobias came about Frith Common.Miles Mucklow, you mean?”
I held her at arm’s length and stared at her in amazed admiration. “Joanna! Joanna! I always said you had a marvellous memory for names. But how, in Heaven’s name, when I myself had long since forgotten?”
“Oh, my dear foolish one,” she cried, “do you not see how your life has been such a full one—so busy with becoming a celebrity—while mine has been so quiet that I have lived on your letters and all the interesting stories you ever told me? I wrote them down, some of them, lest I should forget any part of you—after I grew older and must be married to another.”
I held her to my heart in silence. What could a man say in return for so sweet a confession? An ordinary, low-tongued, timeserving buffoon like me? Life would not be long enough to show her how gratefully I loved her.
She brought my riding cloak and smoothed down my fine maroon doublet. “Fit for a new Queen,” she teased, quick again to laughter. “But I am glad you wore it for me first.”
“What will you do while I must leave you?”
“Tatty and I will furbish this dear house from attic to cellar while you are gone lest dear, kind Gerda should find fleas!”
“Au revoir, my love,” I whispered. “Even though I should be set upon by footpads between the bushes in St. Martin’s Lane for my new velvet purse I shall die the most fortunate of men, dumb with gratitude for all you have given me.”
“I cannot imagine my Will dumb. Call loudly ‘Oh, mihi beati Martin!’ so that honest men run to your aid and the saint of travellers will let you live for me,” she adjured me gaily, following me to the stairs. But at the open door she caught at my cloak and entreated with sudden seriousness, “And you will try to speak to the King about my father?”
I wished that she would not ask me. I knew how unlikely the Tudor was to interfere with any clever move of his Chancellor’s. “Perhaps—if this new marriage mellows him—or if God makes something unexpected happen to smooth the way…” I promised hurriedly, with small conviction.
IF I HAD ENTERTAINED any hopes of speaking to a King who was a mellowed bridegroom, they were rudely shattered from the moment I re-entered Greenwich Palace. The courtyard was crowded with hangers-on from the gorgeous spectacle on Blackheath, but many of them seemed to be already preparing in a subdued manner to return home. Instead of the wild bridal merriment I had expected to have to lead that evening, an awed hush had fallen over the interior of the palace. Ushers stood about looking frightened and uncertain, even the incorrigible pages moved decorously, and the servants laying the tables for supper might have been preparing a funeral meal for a batch of mourning relatives. Thomas Cromwell, who had brought off the whole diplomatic coup, and whom one would have expected to find very much in evidence, was nowhere to be seen. And the only sight I caught of the King was a brief glimpse of his back-view, as he strode along a gallery, with his short coat flapping out on either side of him like the wings of an enraged swan, and then disappeared through his bedchamber door which a couple of scared-looking ushers pulled firmly shut behind him.
Thoroughly nonplussed, I went in search of John Thurgood, whom I found in one of the smaller galleries putting his new troupe of tiny monkeys through their tricks, while Hans Holbein sat in one of the wide window seats moodily sketching them. “What line do you want me to take this evening, John? Has anything cropped up that I can use for a topical joke?” I asked, rather conscience-stricken that I had left him to make all the preparations for so important an occasion.
“Not unless the whole Flemish marriage is a joke. And even so, in the King’s present mood, it would be dangerous to be funny about anything. That is why I am playing safe with these,” he explained, flicking his fingers towards the monkeys.
Since the German painter must just have returned from Cleves, I looked to him for enlightenment, but he went on sketching glumly.
He had been about the palace for years and spoke English fluently, and most of us liked him personally besides admiring his work. “But surely there was never such a state welcome,” I said. “What went wrong at Blackheath?”
“Everything went wrong before Blackheath,” vouchsafed Holbein at last, with a brush between his teeth.
I remembered Joanna’s indignation on behalf of a bride who would not be looking her best. “You mean—it is always a mistake to take a tired woman unawares?”
Holbein looked up then, his expressive brown eyes smouldering with anger. “She had been horribly seasick. We all had. She had even taken off her stays, so her women tell me.”
I gave a low whistle of comprehension. “And the King did not like her.”
“He called her a Flemish mare.”
How brutal the Tudor could be! And how hurt in his liking for the lady was Holbein! “But I myself heard him extolling that exquisite miniature you sent,” I said.
“Which is said now to have been over-flattering—to please Cromwell. As if I, whose whole life is painting, would prostitute my art t
o please any man!” He got up, scattering a genius’s unfinished sketches of monkeys in all directions. “She looked as I painted her, Master Somers. She is like that, for all who have eyes to see. A tall woman—angular if you will—with calmly hooded eyes looking out straightly on to the world.” He had screwed up his eyes as if visualising his recent model, the stick of black crayon in his hand seemed to be measuring her, and his deep voice shook with enthusiasm. “The nose too long for beauty, but the mouth kind, with a suggestion of quiet humour. There is a placidity—a beauty of the soul—a—a—how do you say?—sensible healthiness.”
His enthusiasm almost discomforted us. “A pity the poor lady had to travel in such a storm,” was all Thurgood could think of to say.
“Yet, ill as she felt, she persuaded Sir Thomas Seymour to teach her English words and card games, to fit herself for her future lord.And your seamen, who had hated the thought of crossing with a boatload of foreign women, finished up by swarming up the ratlines to cheer her when she disembarked at Dover.”
“Where will you go, Hans Holbein?” I asked, watching him gathering up his plain cloak and cap, and realising that his brilliant career must be momentarily blighted.
“As far as possible from palaces,” grunted that unostentatious son of Augsburg.
“To paint some more rich Flemish merchants down at the steelyard?” I said, having seen some of the fine portraits they had commissioned him to do, and suddenly wishing that he had made a picture of Richard Fermor to hand down to posterity.
“Till this blows over,” he said with a shrug.
I stooped to pick up two of his half-finished sketches, folded them carefully and put them in my pouch. Even the most casual lines of the artist who had so splendidly depicted Henry, the late Queen Jane, her infant son and half the notables at Court, must be valuable. “I suppose that Cromwell’s stock has fallen, too?” I asked my friend, as soon as Holbein was beyond earshot.
Thurgood’s clever little monkeys had finished the rehearsal of their act and he sat back on his heels, while they jumped about him clamouring for the tit-bits with which he always rewarded them.“All I know is that the moment the great guns boomed out salutes for the royal arrival, the King conducted his bride-to-be to her apartments. Then he snapped his fingers sharply to Cromwell—as I might do to Mitzi here—to follow him into his own room. They were closeted there alone for nearly an hour, so Culpepper, that new young gentleman of the bedchamber, says. Then Cromwell comes glowering out and calls a Council meeting. This afternoon, of all times! So there were no more festivities and most of the guests took themselves off. And no instructions from milord Chamberlain for this evening. Heaven alone knows what it all bodes!”
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