Longarm and the lone sta.., p.1
Here Comes the King: A novel of Henry VIII, page 1
HERE COMES THE KING
A novel of Henry VIII
Philip Lindsay
First published by Ivor Nicholson & Watson Ltd in 1933
Copyright © Isabel Lindsay 1972
This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books
The right of Philip Lindsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
For Frank and Madge Lynch
CONTENTS
THE PROLOGUE
Chapter One: Who sleeps here To-night?
Chapter Two: Queen, but not Crowned
PART ONE
Chapter Three: At the King’s Mercy
Chapter Four: King, Queen, and Pawn
Chapter Five: The King shows Humility
PART TWO
Chapter Six: Royal Progress
Chapter Seven: A Pact is Sworn
Chapter Eight: Love in a Progress
PART THREE
Chapter Nine: Lincoln
Chapter Ten: Night of all Nights
Chapter Eleven: And Further Nights
PART FOUR
Chapter Twelve: The Pirate Comes to Court
Chapter Thirteen: Cæsar’s Own
Chapter Fourteen: On with the Progress
PART FIVE
Chapter Fifteen: The Progress is over
Chapter Sixteen: All Souls’ Day, 1541
Chapter Seventeen: Suspense
PART SIX
Chapter Eighteen: Before the Council
Chapter Nineteen: The Queen is Interviewed
Chapter Twenty: At the Chapel Door
THE EPILOGUE
Chapter Twenty-One: The Lover—The Husband—
Chapter Twenty-Two: —The Woman—
Chapter Twenty-Three: —And the Bed
About the Author
Thus as I sat (the tears within my eyen)
Of her the wreck whiles I did debate,
Before my face me-thought I saw this Queen,
No whit as I her left, God wot, of late,
But all be-wept, in black, and poor estate,
Which prayed me that I would ne forget
The fall of her within my book to set.
Cavendish’s Vision of Katharine Howard.
THE PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
Who sleeps here To-night?
At the foot of the bed a groom stood stiffly with a torch in one hand, its acrid smell sneaking into every corner of the chamber and clinging to the arras. Already it was quite dark in the room, although the sun still lit up the landscape outside, the open country that surrounded this royal palace of Oatlands. It was a hot night in July—July 28, 1540—and the groom held the torch as far from his white face as possible, but even then he sweated like a candle, and his stiff white collar tickled his neck. It was his task, however, and heat or no heat, he must hold aloft the torch while the King’s bed was made, no matter if it was made in broad daylight, at night-time, or in the evening. He was very bored, but he dared not yawn; his muscles painfully tight over the jawbones, his eyes smarting, he stood at attention while His Majesty King Henry VIII’s royal double-bed was made.
It took a gentleman usher and four yeomen to make that bed. The gentleman usher, grave Mr. Harman, commanding, directing, the yeomen working. First, a sheet was laid on the rush-covered floor between the groom with the torch and the bed-foot; on this sheet were placed carefully other sheets, blankets, and the down like a film of snow.
A yeoman with a dagger leaped at the straw on the bed, bouncing on the leather-thongs, while he stabbed at the straw, screwed the weapon in it, swooping suddenly round like a cat, stabbing here, there, quickly, to make sure that no assassin was in hiding.
“That will do,” said Mr. Harman.
The yeoman got up reluctantly: he enjoyed doing that. He was expert with the dagger and very proud of his art.
Mr. Harman nodded to Will Sheryngton, the page, and Will took a torch from its iron socket in the wall and set out for food. This being the very important ceremony of bed-making, and not the everyday one, the yeomen were permitted to eat while they worked instead of having to wait until they got outside the door. Hungrily they watched the page go, and licked their lips.
But the bed must be made, the down must be put carefully over the straw and also sifted with a dagger. Mr. Harman stood aside, next to the window, abstracted, his shaking hands clasped together.
They were making the King’s bed, seeing that nothing could endanger His Highness’s person; and this morning, with these grey eyes of his still smarting with past tears, Mr. Harman had stood near the scaffolding on Tower Hill, behind a burly soldier’s steel back, and had watched Tom Cromwell mount the wooden steps. Wyatt, the poet, was beside him: he had not dared meet the poet’s eye lest womanliness overmaster his manhood, for he could feel tears behind his lids, and he knew that one glance from Wyatt would bring those tears out. Wyatt was sobbing gently. Cromwell had been hated by those that did not know him, he was cruel and sly and a murderer; Mr. Harman knew all that, but he could not forget that Cromwell had been kind to him. And now this man must die because he had chosen the wrong wife for the King.
Wyatt’s sobs grew louder; his hand over his eyes, he wept openly, defying the spies to note such treason. And on the scaffold, Cromwell had turned his squat body, smiling his twisted contemptuous smile. “Oh, gentle Wyatt,” he cried; and suddenly, behind the mask, the iron will was broken and tenderness was in his voice: “Oh, gentle Wyatt, good-bye, and pray to God for me.…” Mr. Harman had not dared look up: he heard the voice of Cromwell in the hush of that July morning, in the quietness of a multitude tense with excitement; he heard the clank of armour as the guard turned his heavy shoulder in the pauldron to s e the face of Tom Wyatt who wept so openly for a traitor. There was a pause, then Cromwell’s voice came again; the iron was back, the tenderness gone, the old Cromwell spoke in that jeering intonation that, before, so many men had trembled at. “Oh, Wyatt, do not weep,” he cried; “if I were not more guilty than you had been when they took you, I should not be in this pass.…”
Mr. Harman had not seen the fall of the axe, he did not know if the executioner had been sure or crude; but he felt—so close was he to the scaffold—some hot blood spit upon the hand he held before his eyes; and he heard the murmurous roar of the crowd. Then my Lord Hongreford, traitor, pederast, and ravisher of his own daughter (so it was said), stood up to follow the great Cromwell on the road beyond earth.
Sheryngton, the page, returned with wine and food, and the yeomen now chewed as they made the bed, pausing to take gulps of liquor; Mr. Harman shook aside memories of Cromwell: he had to watch closely lest they put their greasy hands on the linen or on the priceless arras on the walls.
Four yeomen, each holding a corner, were laying the fustian blanket, being careful not to touch the bed itself. It was slow and formal, and very irritating to Mr. Harman. He stood near the window, not bothering to order the men about, for they knew their duties fully; he wished that this was over so that he could creep away to his chamber and drink that bloody memory away.
Who was in the passage? Who dared to disturb this tremendous ceremony of bed-making?
Pleased for an excuse to be angry, Mr. Harman strode to the door, but before he reached it he saw the white face of young Tom Culpeper, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Clerk of the Armoury, peering in from the ante-chamber. Behind him stood Tom Paston, Culpeper’s closest friend, standing in the shadows.
“What brings you here, Mr. Culpeper?”
Culpeper gazed inside, his face a little haggard, the black hair falling over his forehead, for it was fully an inch long, contrary to the King’s command. He must indeed be worried, thought Mr. Harman, not to have seen his barber, for Culpeper was a dandy and usually most careful of his person. Mr. Harman noted other details: his sleeve had missed a button at the shoulder, the garter on his right leg was loose.
“Is—is this necessary?” said Culpeper at last; “is it usual, this bed-making? Why—why are you doing it?”
Mr. Harman was puzzled what to say. “What do you mean, sir?” he asked. “You should know as well as I—better than I. You sleep in the Privy Chamber.”
“I don’t sleep there to-night,” said Tom Culpeper.
“Oh,” said Mr. Harman.
Both could guess what that might mean. This was to be a secret night: the King wanted none to gaze or listen.
“Who is she?” asked Culpeper harshly.
Tom Paston came closer to the light and caught his friend by the shoulder. The yeomen in the bed-chamber had paused in their work and were eating and drinking, listening openly.
“I do not know,” said Mr. Harman gently.
“But you can guess!”
Mr. Harman bowed. He felt on all sides pain and terrible suffering. Tom Cromwell this morning had mounted the scaffold with sure steps; he had talked to the people of Catholic things, he who had destroyed the Catholic faith in England; true to his master to the last, with his dying breath he had spoken what his master wished to hear; and all because he had chosen for Queen fat Anne of Cleves, slack-breasted, slack-bellied Anne of Cleves. And now, this youth … Mr. Harman, like all th
e courtiers, knew where Tom Culpeper’s bright young eyes had roved, and the King’s had roved to the same flower. It was said (though God knew with what truth) that the King would marry the girl now that Anne was divorced from him. Marriage or no, this ostentatious bed-making presaged an important night; and at the moment, there was only one girl for whom this could be done.
“Tom,” said Paston gently, “come away, you fool. Come and get drunk.”
“I am already drunk,” said Culpeper fiercely, and his eyes sought Mr. Harman’s with hungry questions; and Mr. Harman kept his head bowed, refusing to answer those questions.
“I received His Highness’s commands this morning,” he said. “I can tell you no more.”
“Nothing more?”
“I said that I am as ignorant as you, sir, more ignorant, perhaps,” said Mr. Harman, raising his head and gazing at Culpeper. “You will learn nothing here,” he whispered, “but others will. I would go, sir.”
Culpeper stood at the door, staring into the bedchamber as if he could not draw himself away, like a condemned man fascinated by the rack and thumbscrew before they are used upon him.
The yeomen, chunks of bread in their hands, were smiling as widely as they dared; Sheryngton grinned broadly; even the groom with the torch relaxed his pose enough to stare over one shoulder. None attempted to hide his interest.
And the giant double-bed there was naked under the coating of white satin; the curtains were thrown up over the ciel, exposing its great width, its indecent width, with the gold Tudor rose at the foot, and at the head, Henry’s coat of arms glaring with bright golds and greens; the jolly-coloured arras, telling in stiff figures the tale of Daphne and Apollo, shook as the wind crept between it and the wall; but the bed dominated the room. How many women had lain in that bed beside the big-limbed roistering King? Queens had lain there … and ladies-in-waiting, too …
Suddenly Culpeper swung aside, seemed to tear himself physically away from the contemplation of that vast kingly bed; his sunken eyes fixed themselves mournfully for a moment on Mr. Harman’s sympathetic face; then he was gone, striding down the ante-chamber, his quick steps sounding very loud in the quiet rooms.
Mr. Harman stood at the door, head bowed under the thought of humanity’s ceaseless pain; he heard dimly the steps of the two friends, and behind him the chuckles and whispers of the yeomen. That, to him, epitomised all life: the sneers of the world as it gloated on and fondled the King’s double-bed, while love walked alone, hurrying even from friendship; and he stood between them both, touched but inactive.
The rascals would not laugh at another’s suffering! He turned swiftly.
“You there!” he cried, “keep your filthy hands from those hangings! What are you waiting for? Get to work!”
Sullenly, the work continued: sheets were laid carefully, not touched by impious hands, or, if touched, marked with the cross and kissed; blankets and more sheets followed; then bolsters and green silk pillows; the sword was laid on the stool at the bed-head.
As they worked in the hot night, lit by the glare of the torch and by the dying sun, making the King’s bed, out in the park a man wandered alone: Tom Culpeper.
Soon the bed-chamber was quiet; only the groom remained with his torch, waiting for His Highness … waiting for His Highness, for the whisper—“Here comes the King,” from the gentlemen in the Privy Chamber.… Even Tom Culpeper waited for His Highness, waited for what he dreaded above all things—the coming of the King with a new woman … what woman?
The woman was Katharine Howard, the bed was made for her. She came that night, not as a lady-in-waiting to the divorced Anne of Cleves; she came as the Queen of England, although few knew it as yet. At Oatlands that day, while Cromwell rested his shoulders on the block at Tower Hill, while the provincial synod at Canterbury, brought together two months ago to wrangle over Anne’s divorce, was being dissolved, Katharine and Henry bowed before Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, hand in hand, the King and Queen of England.
This was what Tom Culpeper had dreaded, for Tom Culpeper loved Kate Howard.
She was very small and very beautiful. Her body was firmly moulded, her eyes the gentlest colours—blue in some lights, paling to a soft green, and, in sunlight, flecked with gold—modest eyes they were, yet when the mood took her, they sparkled with secret joys. She was an orphan, only eighteen years of age; her eyes were armour that none could see behind, for none could tell her thoughts, they disarmed the questioner with their bold stare of childish innocence.
Her hair was reddish, not the red of copper but of rust, and in texture it was so gossamery, so frail and soft to touch, that Henry had often felt that it must melt against his hot palm as if it were fairy gold. Her nose was turned-up ever so little, and added to her childish look. Her mouth was a kissing mouth, if ever God made one: the upper-lip drawn in a trifle, demurely, the lower-lip heavy, full-blooded: the mouth of a lover and the eyes of a child. Mouth that seemed creased with kissing, red and warm; little well-moulded chin; long throat; broad across the eyes, she was; the hair drawn tightly back, as was the fashion, parted in the centre to show a dazzle of white scalp, and plaited at the back, falling behind the veil of the French hood in gold bands.
She seemed a child in masquerade when you saw her dressed in her mighty velvet gown, split from the waist and opening to show the gaudily embroidered underskirt; jewels at her throat, on her small fingers, over her breast; little Kate Howard at the giant King’s side stepped along the corridor of Oatlands that night … its mistress.…
Pages before her, ladies with her, to her own little chamber; the King to his chamber. The groom with the torch was dismissed, and it was dark when she came to him, this child who thought herself a woman.
By God! King Harry swore in his golden beard, I’ll see that no harm comes to her; God has been good to me at last to give me this rose without a thorn, this rose without a thorn!
All petals, she was; petalled lips, soft as a petal, trembling as if in a gentle wind; petalled skin stretched over such small bones; shy little mouth; frightened fingers.…
Indeed, his rose without a thorn!
They had been married by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Kate’s uncle, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, standing as sponsor. Kate did not like Norfolk, few women liked him. He was a soldier, and had contempt for femininity; love was, to him, something peculiar and idiotic, to be used brutally in the fight for power.
They were married at Oatlands, quite close to Hampton Court. Henry had hurried the ceremony on; he wanted to forget that Thomas Cromwell was to die this day; but at the same time he did not want to announce a new wife following so closely on the annulment of his marriage with Anne of Cleves. Oatlands had been built for Anne; it was yet unfinished, and the foundations were bedded in the earth for over fourteen acres; it spread and meandered, darting up here and there into turrets and gables. The men had toiled day and night to finish it in time, dragging materials from the nearby monasteries that were now in ruins, bringing stone from Chertsey and Bisham Abbey, marble from Abington, brick of a brilliant red being baked swiftly at Woking. Henry stacked the half-built palace with the warmest tapestries from France and Flanders, with the richest Turkey carpets. It spread, broad and powerful, towards the river, near Weybridge. You entered through the gates into a splendid court flanked with flat muddled buildings; the front rose into a great turreted gatehouse, beyond which lay the palace itself. And from brick walls flowed the glorious green terraces rippling with fountains that led to the pleasance and the orchards, and beyond that, to the deer park.
Here, quietly, in this half-built palace meant for Anne of Cleves, Katharine Howard was married to Henry VIII, King of England and France, Lord of Ireland; and here, Mr. Harman had seen that the bed was made and was blessed with Holy Water; here, Tom Culpeper drank his full weekly bouge of wine until sleep wiped away all thought.
CHAPTER TWO
Queen, but not Crowned
She was not Queen yet. She had no State apartments. She was, to all the visitors and courtiers in the King’s new palace of Oatlands, but a relation staying with the Duke of Norfolk. She lived in Norfolk’s apartments, mothered by her cousin, Norfolk’s daughter, Mary, Duchess of Richmond and Somerset, Countess of Nottingham, the widow of Henry’s illegitimate son, the brilliant Richmond. It was perfectly correct, no slander could touch her there.
