“That cannot be true.”
“Your Majesty asked…”
“Yes, I asked because I like to know what tales are being circulated. What else, Susan? You are still holding something back.”
She paused; she held up her head and a certain defiance came into her eyes. I knew she did not like Philip because she blamed him for my unhappiness.
She said, “It is that King Philip is hoping to have his marriage annulled.”
It was out, and now it was difficult for me to hide my dismay. They knew me too well, both of them. They had seen my exultation. I had talked to them of the perfections of my husband, of my perfect marriage, of my hopes. I could not disguise my misery from these two who knew me so well.
I sat very still and covered my face with my hands. There was a deep silence in the room. Then I felt them at my feet. I opened my eyes and saw them both kneeling there. There were tears on Jane's cheeks, and Susan looked stricken.
“It is only gossip, Your Majesty,” said Susan.
“Only gossip,” I repeated.
“Yet it has a ring of truth…”
They saw now that there was to be no more pretense. It was no use. They knew of my love, of my hopes. They had been with me during those terrible weeks when I was awaiting the birth of a non-existent child. They had been through it all. They had suffered with me.
I could no longer hide my true feelings from them. They were my very dear and trusted friends.
Susan spoke first. “Your Majesty must not grieve. It is better to look at the truth.”
“Better to say I deluded myself,” I murmured, “that he did not care for me, that he never did.”
“It is often so in royal marriages, Your Majesty… and in the marriages of those who are high born.”
“But sometimes love comes,” I said.
They were silent.
“He is a great man,” I said.
“Your Majesty is a great Queen,” added Susan.
I put out my hands and touched their heads gently.
“You should not grieve, Your Majesty, for one who would betray you,” said Susan.
I did not answer. Did she know that she was uttering treason against the King? But she was safeguarding the Queen.
“He was not what Your Majesty believed him to be,” she went on.
“He was all that I believed him to be.”
She was silent for a moment, then she burst out, “You thought he was so solemn…so pure…so chaste. It was never so. Why, he tried to seduce Magdalen Dacre.”
“Magdalen Dacre!”
“Yes. She told us. She was horribly shocked.”
I remembered how I had noticed the girl because she was so tall. They would look incongruous together, I thought inconsequentially. Ludicrous. Perhaps that was what appealed to him about her. But she was exceptionally beautiful. I remembered there had been a time when she had been subdued and always seemed to absent herself when Philip was there.
“It was at Hampton Court,” said Susan, who, having begun, seemed to find it difficult to stop.
“She was at her toilette. There was a small window. He must have seen her as he passed. He tried to open the window and put his arm into the room. Magdalen rapped him sharply and told him to be off.”
“She did not tell me.”
“She would not have grieved you.”
“Perhaps it would have been better if I had known.”
There was no pretense now. I could not hide my misery from them, and they would not have believed me, however good a job I made of it.
“He gave me no sign …” I said.
“He was particularly courteous to her afterward.”
“He bore no grudge,” said Jane, as though calling my attention to something in his favor.
“Oh, Your Majesty,” said Susan, “you must not be unhappy. There are such men. They know not the meaning of fidelity. It is better not to care too much. We heard how he used to go off with a group of friends. They were of a kind.”
“I had heard rumors and not believed them.”
“They used to sing that song about the baker's daughter,” said Jane.
I closed my eyes. So they knew! All my people knew, and I was the only one who believed he loved me!
“What song?” I asked.
Susan said quickly, “It was a silly little rhyme … nothing … nothing…I have forgotten it.”
I caught Jane's wrist. “Tell me the rhyme,” I commanded.
“Your Majesty, I…I can't remember.”
“Tell me,” I said coldly.
So she told me.
The baker's daughter in her russet gown
Better than Queen Mary—without her crown.
The humiliation! The pain of rejection! My happiness had been nothing but an illusion. It was a phantom creature of my imagination to mock me now. It was created out of nothing… like the child of whom I had dreamed, for whom I had planned…a will o' the wisp…to taunt me and to leave me desolate.
I wanted to be alone with my sorrow. It overwhelmed me. I could share it with no one.
“Leave me,” I said.
“Your Majesty …” began Susan, but I only looked at her coldly and repeated, “Leave me.”
So I was alone… alone with my wretchedness, staring the truth in the face as I should have done many weary months before. I had conceived a dream, a flimsy figment of my own imagination. It had nothing to do with reality. I had duped myself; and I had been seen to be duped by those around me. There would be some who laughed at my gullibility and others who kept silent and protected me from the knowledge because they loved me.
At length I rose. I went to that chamber where his picture hung.
How I had loved it! He stood erect, as he always did to disguise his low stature. His face was handsome with his fair hair and beard and his firm Hapsburg chin. I had stood many times before this picture, glowing with pride and pleasure, while he had been romping with some low woman of the town. The baker's daughter who was better than Mary … without her crown, of course.
I found a knife and I slashed at the picture. I felt better than I had for some time. The knife pierced the canvas, and still I went on cutting.
Susan came in.
She must have heard me come here. She was terribly anxious and feared what effect the revelations had had on me.
She saw at once what I had done.
“Have it taken away,” I said.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Gently she took the knife from me and hid it in the pocket of her skirt. The next day the picture was gone, but my unhappiness remained.
I WAS ILL after that. No one was surprised. My periodic illnesses had become commonplace… too frequent for anyone to notice.
I spent long hours alone. I brooded on the past. I recalled incidents, our being together, our love-making, which had been conducted in a manner to resemble a stately pavane. There had been no joy in it, no laughter, no fun. It was a ritual which had to be borne—on his side—for the sake of an heir.
As for myself, I had not known it could be any other way. How could I, ignorant as I was of such matters? Now I wondered how it had been with the Duchess of Lorraine, the baker's daughter and all the others.
I stormed…to myself, of course. I wept. I talked to him as though he were there beside me. I told him what he had done to me. He had humiliated me, used me, slighted me, and never had he loved me.
I remembered how he had been with Elizabeth. He had said she should not be forced to marry. Did he plan to marry her when I was dead? He surely could not be thinking of annulling our marriage so that he could marry my sister? Dispensation could, of course, always be obtained for the powerful.
How empty my life was! For the happiness I craved I would have exchanged twenty crowns.
But one cannot mourn for ever. I must meet my Council. The country was unstable. The burnings were deplored in several quarters. I was blamed for them. Families all over the country were cursing my
name.
I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to explain how distressed I was. My task had been to bring England back to Rome, and that I had done, but there were sullen looks everywhere. There were murmurings against me.
Only those close to me, the people who really knew me, gave me their love—and mingled with it, I think, their pity.
I told myself that I hated Philip.
* * *
NEWS CAME FROM ITALY. Edward Courtenay had died.
I was deeply moved. He was so young. So handsome he had been. I could have been in love with him. Then Philip had come, a King, a ruler, a strong man. Poor Courtenay! What chance had he had then? I thought of all those years when the Tower had been his home; it was commendable that he had educated himself, but there was more needed than education. To have married him would have been an even greater disaster than my marriage with Philip.
Would he have loved me any more? Not he. I was too old. Love had passed me by until I was too old to understand and enjoy it. I had nothing to offer but a crown. A low-class baker's daughter was more attractive than I … if my crown were taken away.
But with it, of course, I had been a glittering prize.
I knew poor Courtenay had found it hard to live in exile. Right up to the time of his death he was pleading to return. I would have granted his request but the Council was horrified at the prospect. Often they had pointed out how dangerous such people could be. With Courtenay, his good looks made up for his lack of sense, and he was a member of that dynasty which, now it was no longer the ruling family, had been ennobled with the sanctity of that which was and now is no more. Oh yes, the Plantagenets had become holy now their age was past. Had people loved them so devotedly while they lived? Would the Tudors be as revered when they had passed away?
So Courtenay had wandered about Europe, dreaming of home and perhaps a crown. It was tragic to be born within reach of it—even when the chances of attaining it are remote—and to spend one's life in endless striving for the unattainable.
Yes, the Council had been right. It would have been folly to have allowed him to return.
So the golden boy had died in Padua. He was buried there, and all his dreams of glory with him.
* * *
PHILIP WAS WRITING to me. Such tender letters they were. He desired to return but events delayed him. However, he was coming. There was so much he wished to discuss with me. Our enforced separation had gone on too long.
How could I help it if my melancholy lifted, if I began to dream again?
The rumors had been false, I told myself. He loved me. He implied it in his letters. There had certainly been weighty matters to occupy him. Now he wanted to talk with me that we might act together, which, as husband and wife, was natural for us.
Perhaps I was not so guileless as I had been, for while a part of me wanted desperately to believe, there was another part which knew why he was so eager to express his affection.
He needed help.
Well, should not a wife help her husband? It should be her joy and privilege to do so.
The fact was that he was coming home. I should see him again. I studied myself in my mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes, and wrinkles round them. I was an old woman. But the news had brought a certain radiance to my face, and I assured myself I looked younger.
Susan said I did. She was anxious, though. She believed that Philip would hurt me again as he had before.
I knew why he was coming. He wanted help against the French.
There were times when I did not care that he came for this reason. It was only important that he was coming. We should be together again…lovers, and perhaps this time there would be a real child. A child would make up for everything.
I was arguing with myself again. Some women of my age had children. Why should not I? I prayed fervently. I wanted the whole country to pray with me. But I did not ask them to. I could not have borne the humiliation. They would have tittered when and where they dared. They would have sung “The Baker's Daughter.”
But I was a desperate woman, longing for the love I never had.
I went to see Reginald. He was very ill, but there were days when he was lucid and it seemed that all his old power returned to him. He could not walk now, but he still studied. That was his pleasure in life—as, I imagined, it always had been.
He kept abreast of what was happening in Europe and, because of the years he had spent there, was in close contact with Rome and those who, like himself, held the office of Cardinal.
I said to him, “Philip writes of coming home.”
“To England?”
I nodded.
“Ah, yes,” went on Reginald. “It is the war. I deplore it. The Emperor and the King of France fought for years—each wanting to rule the Continent. They will never achieve this… either of them. Perhaps one succeeds for a few years… and then the other. It will go one way and then swing back. It always has. I cannot see why they do not understand it always will.”
“It has kept us apart. Philip has his duties and now that he is the King …” I shook my head sadly.
“I was against the marriage,” he said. “You remember, I warned you. You should not have married. You could have reigned alone. The people never wanted Philip. They will never accept him with a good grace. They hate foreigners.”
“People seem to hate those who are not of the same nationality as themselves—and sometimes they hate people who are. There is too much hate in the world.”
Reginald was silent for a few moments; then he said, “And now there is a new force in Europe… this new Pope.”
“He is an old man. I heard that he was eighty. Surely that cannot be? How could they elect a man of that age?”
“He is no ordinary man. And he has had eighty years of experience which few men have, and he uses what he has gleaned through the years to his advantage.”
“They should have elected you, Reginald. You should have been Pope.”
“My dear Mary, I am a sick man.”
“So they chose this old man!”
“You have not seen him. He has the energy of youth and the experience of old age. A man who can combine the two is a rarity, but such is Cardinal Caraffa who is now Paul IV. It is unfortunate that he has a grudge against Philip.”
“How could Philip have aroused his animosity? It was not very wise of him, was it?”
“It would have been if the Cardinal had failed to be elected. Philip tried to prevent that and so, I fear, has earned the Pope's enduring emnity.”
“A man of God will forgive,” I said.
Reginald smiled wryly. “The Pope will try to drive Philip out of Europe and to achieve this is ready to make an alliance with the French.”
“All my life I remember it. There was an alliance between my father and the King of France… and then they were enemies and there was an alliance with the Emperor. Then he quarrelled with the Emperor and was the friend of France. How much are these alliances worth, Reginald?”
“A great deal while they last. Philip is disturbed.”
“That is why he is coming home. He will talk to me. It is what he wants.”
“I will tell you what he wants. He will want England to stand with him. He will want you to declare war on France.”
“War! I hate war! There are enough troubles here already. The drought has not helped. The people fear famine, and when that threatens they turn against those who in their eyes are wealthy and well fed. There has been trouble since we turned to Rome. Oh, Reginald, there are times when I am so unhappy. The people no longer love me. I think they are waiting for my death… hoping for it… that they may turn to Elizabeth.”
“She would take the country away from Rome.”
“She would do what the people wanted her to.”
“She has heard the Mass.”
“Yes… but showing her reluctance. She sways with the wind. Which way do you want me to go? What is the best for me? she asks herself. And that is the way s
he will go.”
“There are some who think she should be questioned.”
“I cannot believe she would ever harm me.”
“You are too trusting.”
“Yes,” I agreed, thinking of Philip. “It may be that I do not employ subterfuge as some people do.”
He put his hand over mine. “You have done well,” he said.
“Remember you used to say you had a mission? God had chosen you to bring England back to His true Church? You must rejoice, for you have done that. Always it will be remembered that it was in your reign that England returned to the Church of Rome.”
It was pleasant to be with him. I wanted to talk of the old days when I was a child and I had first known him. He had seemed so noble then. I liked to think of our mothers talking confidentially over their needlework, matchmaking for us.
If I had married Reginald when I was young and had wanted to, how different my life would have been. It would surely have been a very suitable and happy marriage.
But it did not come to pass; and now Philip was coming home because he wanted my country to join his in the war against the French.
* * *
WE WERE DISTURBED by the menace of another rebellion. This time it was Thomas Stafford. It was very disconcerting to me because the young man was Reginald's nephew.
Reginald was very upset about it. He talked to me about Thomas, who had renounced the Catholic faith. When he was on the Continent, Reginald had made great efforts to bring him back to it—but in vain.
Thomas's mother, Ursula, was the daughter of my dear Countess of Salisbury; thus she was Reginald's sister. So the young man had royal blood on that side of the family; but his father was the third Duke of Buckingham who was descended from Thomas Woodstock, third son of Edward III. So … Thomas had royal blood on both sides, and he had the temerity to consider that his claim to the throne was greater than mine, for he declared that, by marrying a Spaniard, I had forfeited my right to it.
It seemed so recklessly stupid that one felt one should ignore it, and, as Thomas Stafford was abroad, we did for some time. It had seemed just one of the minor irritations I was doomed to suffer.
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