Виктория Холт - The King’s Secret Matter

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 apartment. Her women looked after her in wonderment. Then they shivered, for she spoke with the voice of a prophet.

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?