Виктория Холт - The King’s Secret Matter

“My darling, your father has commanded you to go.”

Mary threw herself against her mother and clung to her. “But it is so far away.”

“Not so very far, and you will come back soon. We shall write to each other and there will be the letters to look forward to.”

“I don’t want to go away from you, Mother…ever.”

The Queen felt the tears, which she had so far managed to keep in check, rising to her eyes.

“My love, these partings are the fate of royal people.”

“I wish I were not royal then.”

“Hush, my darling. You must never say that. We have a duty to our people which is something we must never forget.”

Mary pulled at the rings on her mother’s fingers but Katharine knew she was not thinking of them. “Mother,” she said, “if I were to plead with my father…”

The Queen shook her head. “He has decided. You must go. But do not let us spoil what time is left to us in grieving. Time will pass, my darling, more quickly than you realize. I shall hear of you from your governess and tutors, and you will write to me yourself. You see I shall have all that to live for.”

Mary nodded slowly. Poor child! thought the Queen. She has learned to keep her feelings in check. She has learned that the fate of Princesses can often be cruel and that one thing is certain, they must be accepted.

“You will go to Ludlow Castle,” said the Queen trying to speak brightly. “It is a beautiful place.”

“Tell me about when you were there, Mother.”

“It was long…long ago. I went there with my first husband.”

“My father’s brother,” murmured Mary.

“It was so long ago,” said the Queen, and she thought of those days when she had been married to the gentle Arthur who was so different from Henry; Arthur who had been her husband for scarcely six months.

“Tell me about the castle,” said Mary.

“It rises from the point of a headland,” the Queen told her, “and is guarded by a wide, deep fosse. It is grand and imposing with its battlemented towers; and the surrounding country is superb…indeed some of the best I have ever seen.”

The Princess nodded sadly.

“You will be happy there,” murmured Katharine, putting her lips to Mary’s forehead. “We shall not be very far away from each other, and soon you will come back to me.”

“How soon?” asked Mary.

“You will be surprised how soon.”

“I would rather know. It is always so much easier to bear if you know how long. Then I could count the days.”

“My darling, you will be happy there. When I left my mother, the ocean separated us. This is not the same at all.”

“No,” said Mary slowly. “It is not the same at all.”

“And now, my love, go to the virginals. Play the piece which you wished me to hear.”

Mary hesitated and for a moment Katharine feared that the child would lose her hold on that rigid control. But obediently she rose, went to the virginals, sat down and began to play; and as she did so, the tears, which would no longer be kept back, rolled silently down her cheeks.

THE PRINCESS MARY WAS MELANCHOLY IN THE CASTLE OF Ludlow and the Countess of Salisbury was alarmed on her account. The only thing which could bring the child out of that languid indifference as to what went on around her was a letter from her mother.

Each day she told the Countess how long they had been at Ludlow; and she would ask wistfully if there were any news of their returning to her father’s Court.

“All in good time,” the Countess would say. “With the passing of each day we are a little nearer to our return.”

The Princess rode often in the beautiful woods close to the castle; she had to admit that the country was some of the fairest she had ever seen; but it was clear that when she was separated from her mother she could not be happy, and the Countess feared that her health would be affected by her melancholy.

Great plans were afoot for the celebrations of Christmas, The New Year and Twelfth Night.

“There will be plays, masques and a banquet…just as at your father’s Court,” the Countess told her.

“I wonder whether my mother will come,” was all the Princess could say.

It was true that she had a certain interest in her lessons; she worked hard at her Latin and her music and sometimes she would chuckle and say: “My mother will be surprised that I have come so far. I shall write to her in Latin, and when she comes I shall play all my new pieces.”

The Countess was grateful that she had this interest in her Latin and music, and made the most of it. There had been rumors which had come to the Countess’s notice before she left Court and, although she could not believe there was much truth in them, they made her very uneasy. The fact that the Queen had married the King’s brother could have no effect on the present marriage. The Pope had given the necessary dispensation, and during all the years the King and Queen had been married there had never before been any suggestion that the marriage might not be legal.

She was a wise woman, and in her fifty-two years she had seen much tragedy. None understood, more than she did, the Tudors’s fierce determination to fight off all those who threatened to take the crown from them. It was natural that the King wanted to make sure of the Tudor succession. Desperately he needed a son, and Katharine had failed to give it to him.

There were times when Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, wished that she were not a Plantagenet and so near to the throne. She had lived through troublous times. Her maternal grandfather had been that Earl of Warwick who had been known as the Kingmaker; her father had been the Duke of Clarence, brother of Richard III, who had been imprisoned in the Tower and there, it was believed, had been drowned in a butt of malmsey. She had been a young child when that had happened and it had made a deep and terrible impression on her; ever after she had been aware of the insecurity of life and the favor of Kings; and it seemed to her that those who lived nearest the throne had the most to fear. That was why she often thought with deep compassion of the Queen, and now as she sat with her royal charge she could grow quite melancholy wondering what the future held for her. Only recently tragedy had struck at her family through her youngest child, Ursula, wife of Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham whose life had recently come to an end on the block.

Henry VIII had occasionally been kind to her family; she had fancied that he wanted to make amends to them for his father’s murder of her brother Edward who, as the Earl of Warwick, had been a menace to the throne. But how long would that favor last? She believed now that she was regarded with suspicion by Wolsey because of her close friendship with the Queen.

If Katharine could have been with her in Ludlow she would have been almost happy. It was peaceful here and seemed so far from the world of ambition. And how happy little Mary would have been if the Queen were here! But as the weeks stretched into months the love between the governess and her charge grew deeper and did—so the Countess fervently hoped—compensate in some measure for the child’s loss of her mother.

Margaret tried to replace that mother, and it was a great joy to her to know that the times of the day to which Mary looked forward more than any other were those when she and the Countess were alone together; and the little girl, released from her lessons which Margaret often felt were too much for her would sit at the Countess’s feet and demand to hear stories of her life.

And when Mary said: “My mother used to tell me stories of the days when she was a girl in Spain…” Margaret knew that the substitution had taken place in the child’s mind; and she wrote to the Queen telling her of these pleasant hours which seemed to give consolation to Mary for her exile.

Through Margaret’s description of her family Mary began to know the Pole children so well that they seemed to be her intimate friends. There was Henry, Lord Montague, who had followed the King to France to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Margaret did not tell the child of the anxiety she had suffered when Henry had been arrested at the time of the trial of the Duke of Buckingham because his father-in-law was a connection of the Duke’s; in any case he had been speedily released, and very soon afterwards had been restored to favor, being among those noblemen who had greeted the Emperor Charles on his arrival in England. The Countess would talk of her sons, Arthur, Reginald, Geoffrey and her daughter Ursula, with such loving detail that the Princess knew that these quiet hours were as enjoyable to the Countess as they were to her.

But it was of Reginald that Mary liked best to hear; Reginald was learned and deeply religious, and Mary had always felt that to give lifelong devotion to religion was the best way of living. Therefore Reginald became her hero.

The Countess told how she had always meant him to go into the Church and how eager he had been to follow that calling, although he had not yet taken holy orders.

“There is no better man in the world than my Reginald,” said Margaret proudly, and Mary began to believe her.

“When he was a boy at Oxford he astonished his tutors,” the fond mother declared. “In truth I think they began to realize that he was more clever than they. He became a Dean at Wimborne though still a layman. He held many posts, and then he decided to go to Padua, and that is where he is now. The King, your father, is pleased with him and there is great hospitality in his house there. Scholars flock to see him. He thinks it is because he is a kinsman of the King.”

“But it is really because of his noble character,” Mary asserted.

“I believe that to be so. Mary, I think he will soon be coming to England.”

Mary clasped her hands in ecstasy. “And will he come to Ludlow?”

“Come to see his mother! Of a certainty he will. You do not know my Reginald.”

“I do,” declared the Princess.

And after that they often spoke of his coming and when Mary awoke in the mornings she would say to herself: “Will there be news from my mother today?” And then: “Is Reginald now on his way to the Castle?”

It was only these hopes which made the separation tolerable. But the months passed and there was no news of Mary’s joining her mother; and Reginald continued to stay in Italy.

* * *

HENRY CUT HIMSELF OFF from communication with his Queen, and she rarely saw him. She lived quietly, working on her garments for the poor, reading religious books, going to Mass, praying privately. Her great joy was writing letters to her daughter, but what a difficult task this was when she must suppress her fierce longing, and not convey her fears that the long absence was stifling that deep affection they had for each other!

Henry was growing impatient. He had begun to wonder whether Wolsey was working as wholeheartedly for him as he had once believed. Wolsey was a man who had seen that his own pockets were well lined; and should a king feel such gratitude towards a man who in his service had grown as rich as surely only a king should be?

Wolsey was constantly whispering caution, and Henry was becoming a little uncertain of the game the Chancellor was playing. There was a new faction springing up at Court, and at the center of this was George Boleyn whom the King found a fascinating young man, largely because he was the brother of Anne.

Anne remained at Hever, but she should not do so for long. Henry had already shown his favor to the family by raising Sir Thomas to the peerage, so that he now bore the title of Viscount Rochford. He had even given poor Will Carey, Mary’s husband, a post at Court as gentleman of the Privy Chamber. He was certain that soon the haughty girl would give in to his pleading, and stop talking about her virtue.

But at the same time it was this Boleyn faction which was making him doubt Wolsey. He sent for his Chancellor in order to discuss a matter which was of great concern to them both at this time: the marriage of the Princess Mary.

When Wolsey entered, the King did not greet him with the affectionate look which the Chancellor usually received from him. Wolsey was acutely aware of the King’s changing attitude towards him and it was doubly alarming because he was not sure of its origin.

“I have news from France,” said Henry. “It seems that François is rejecting our offer of my daughter.”