Виктория Холт - The Shadow of the Pomegranate

“No!” cried a voice; and others took up the cry. “Home! We are going home!”

“The orders of our most Gracious Sovereign.…”

“To the devil with our most Gracious Sovereign. Let him fight his own wars. Home! England! We’re going home to England.”

Dorset looked at the ambassador.

“You see,” he said; and he staggered wearily back into his tent.

Now he was afraid. He saw that he was caught between the desires of his King and those of his men. He was faced either with disobedience to the King or wholesale desertions.

“I must write to His Grace,” he said. “I must make him aware of the true state of affairs.”

The ambassador waited while he wrote; but meanwhile outside in the camp the cries of rebellion grew louder. Dorset knew, and the ambassador knew, that even the King’s order to remain in Spain would carry no weight with those men out there.

* * *

THE KING WAS watching the return of his troops. He stood, legs apart, hands clenched at his side, his eyes so narrowed that they were almost lost in the flesh of his face.

Beside him stood the Queen, and she was ready to weep at the sorry plight of these men. They were in rags and many were still suffering from the fever; some had to be carried ashore. Yet as they came they were shouting with incoherent joy because the soil they trod was English, and the tears showed clearly on their poor sunken cheeks.

“What a sad sight,” murmured the Queen.

“It sickens me!” the King growled.

But he did not see this return as Katharine did. He felt no pity. He had only room for anger. This was the army which he had sent to France and of which he had been so proud. “I have never seen a finer army!” he had written to John Still. And now…they looked like a party of vagabonds and beggars.

How dared they do this to him! He was the golden king, the darling of fortune. So far he had had everything he desired, except a son. He remembered this fleetingly and glared distastefully at his wife. There were tears in her eyes. She could weep for that band of scarecrows when she should be weeping because she had failed him and, although she could become pregnant, could not give birth to a healthy boy.

Katharine turned to him. “There is my lord Dorset, Henry. Oh, poor Dorset. How sick he is. See him. He cannot walk. They are carrying him on a litter.”

The King followed her gaze and strode over to the litter on which lay the emaciated figure of the man who had once been a champion of the jousts. The sight of such sickness disgusted Henry.

“Dorset!” he cried. “What means this? I sent you out with an army and an order to fight for victory. You return with these…scarecrows…and dishonorable defeat.”

Dorset tried to see who was towering over him, shouting at him.

He said: “Where am I? Is it night?”

“You are in the presence of your King,” roared Henry.

“They’ll mutiny,” murmured Dorset. “They’ll endure no more. Is it morning yet?”

“Take him away,” cried the King. “I never want to see his treacherous face again.”

The bearers picked up the litter and were passing on.

“He is sick, very sick,” Katharine ventured to point out.

Henry looked at her, and she noticed that characteristic narrowing of the eyes.

“He will be far sicker when I have done with him!”

“You can’t blame him for what has happened.”

“Then whom else!” snarled Henry. He looked about him impatiently. “Put me up a gallows,” he shouted. “Not one, but twenty…a hundred! By God and all his saints, I’ll show these paltry cowards what I do to those who fail to carry out my orders.”

His face was suffused with rage. The tyrant was bursting his bonds. The metamorphosis was taking place before the eyes of the Queen. The vain good-natured boy was showing signs of the brutal egocentric man.

Katharine, watching him, felt an apprehension which was not only for the men whom he had so carelessly condemned to death.

* * *

KATHARINE KNELT before the King. The terrible rage which she had seen on his face had not altogether disappeared. There were signs of it in the over-flushed cheeks, the brilliant blue of the eyes.

He was watching her with interest, and she suddenly knew that she could change this tragedy into one of those situations which so delighted him in a masque.

“Henry,” she cried, “I implore you to spare these men.”

“What!” he growled. “When they have disgraced England! When our enemies are laughing at us!”

“The odds against them were too great.…”

It was a mistake. The faint geniality which she had perceived to be breaking through was lost, and the blue eyes were dangerous. “You would seek to enter our state counsels, Kate? You would tell us how to conduct our wars?”

“Nay, Henry. That is for you and your ministers. But the climate…and that disease which attacked them…how could you or your ministers know that such a catastrophe would befall them? That was ill luck.”

“Ill luck,” he agreed, somewhat mollified.

“Henry, I beg of you, show your clemency towards them. For this time forget the sneers of your enemies. Instead prepare to show them your true mettle. Let them know that England is to be feared.”

“By God, yes!” cried the King. “They shall know this when I myself go to France.”

“It will be so. Your Grace will go with an army, not as Dorset went, with only his archers. You will make great conquests…and so, in your clemency and your greatness, you can afford to laugh at your enemies and…spare these men.”

“You have friends among them, Kate. Dorset is your friend.”

“And a friend also to Your Grace.”

He looked down at her head. Her hair fell about her shoulders—that beautiful hair; her eyes were lifted to his in supplication.

She was playing her part in the masque, but he did not know it; his masques were always real to him.

So he was pleased to see her thus, humble, begging favors. He was fond of her. She had failed so far but she was young yet. He would forgive her those miscarriages when she gave him a bonny son. In the meantime there was this game to be played.

“Kate,” he said, his voice slurred with emotion, “I give you the lives of these men. Rise, my dear wife. They deserve to die for their treachery to me and to England, but you plead…and how could such as I deny a fair lady what she asked!”

She bowed her head, took his hand and kissed it. It was alarming when the masque had to be played out in stark realities.

IN HIS HEADQUARTERS AT LOGROÑO, FERDINAND WAS IN gleeful conference with Cardinal Ximenes. It appeared that the King had cast off his infirmities; he was as a young man again. Perhaps, thought the Cardinal, watching him, he congratulates himself that, although his body may be failing him, his mind is as shrewd and cunning as it ever was—and indeed, it may be more so, for his experience teaches him further methods of doubledealing, of plotting against his friends while he professes his regard for them.

Ximenes could have felt sorry for the young King of England if he had not been convinced that what had happened to him was due to his own folly. The King of England was clearly a braggart, seeking easy glory. He had certainly not found it in Spain; and one of the first lessons he would have to learn was that none but the foolish would enter into alliance with the most avaricious, double-dealing monarch in Europe—Ferdinand of Aragon.

Henry was as yet oversentimental; he believed that because he was Ferdinand’s son-in-law he would be treated with special consideration. As if Ferdinand had ever considered anything but his gold and his glory.

“So, Excellency, the campaign is over; it merely remains to consolidate our gains. Jean d’ Albret and Catharine have fled to France. Let them remain there. As for me…I have no further wish for conflict, and I do not see why, if Louis is agreeable, I should not make a truce with him.”

“And your son-in-law?”

“The young coxcomb must fight his own battles…if he can, Excellency. If he can!”

“He received little help from his allies, Highness.”

Ferdinand snapped his fingers. “My son-in-law will have to learn that if he hopes to win battles he should not send an army into a foreign land without the means to maintain it.”

“He relied too strongly on the promised help of his ally.”

“It was not promised, I do assure you. But we waste our time. I hear he tried his gallant officers and that they were forced to give evidence on their knees! That must have been a sight, eh! He was trying them for the incompetence and lack of foresight of himself and his ministers. And it was my daughter who saved them from the gallows.”

“It would seem that the Queen of England has not forgotten the teachings of her mother.”

Ferdinand was sobered by the mention of Isabella; then he shrugged off the memory with the reminder that Isabella had worked unsparingly for Spain. She would surely have realized the importance of Navarre and have understood that the means of acquiring it were not so important as long as the deed was accomplished with the minimum of bloodshed and expense to Spain.

“I am sending dispatches to my son-in-law, Excellency. Here they are. Glance through them and give them your approval!”

Ximenes took the proffered documents.

In these Ferdinand explained to Henry that the incompetence of Dorset’s army had made conquest of Guienne impossible. He was not suggesting that Dorset was a true example of an Englishman; and it was his belief that English soldiers, if properly trained and armed, would make fair enough soldiers; perhaps then they would not show up so badly against those of Europe. At this time he could not ask Henry to send more men into Spain, even though he himself should lead them. He had been forced to conclude a six months’ truce with Louis, as he feared that, if he had not, the French might feel—in view of the sad spectacle they had recently witnessed of English troops in action—that it would be an act of folly not to invade England, where they might—as they had seen a sample of English valor and fighting prowess—expect an easy victory. It was a great regret to Ferdinand that the English had failed to achieve their object—the conquest of Guienne—and if it was still the desire of his dear son-in-law that the province should be won for England, he, Ferdinand would, at the conclusion of the six months’ truce, win it for England. He would need ten thousand German mercenaries to help him, for his dear son-in-law would readily understand that, in view of their recent capers, he could not ask for Englishmen. The cost of the mercenaries would be great, but it was not money his son-in-law lacked but men of valor and fighting spirit. Ferdinand would be hearing more of this through his ambassador, Don Luis Caroz, and more importantly and more intimately from his dearly beloved daughter who was also the wife of that dear and honored son, the King of England.