“The King needs a wife,” he said. “He cannot be happy without a wife, even when he is looking for a new wife. He must have a wife.”
Kate laughed a great deal and the rest of us smiled; I guessed my parents were thinking uneasily of the servants.
“This time,” said Lord Remus, “he is looking for a Princess from the Continent, but some of the ladies are just a little reluctant.” He glanced at Kate. “Like me, young lady, they are anxious to keep their heads and in view of what happened to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn and even to Queen Katharine, the reluctance is understandable.”
“It is like the Arabian nights,” said Kate. “Perhaps if the King could find a Queen who could continue to amuse him she could continue to live.”
“That is what the new Princess will have to aim for,” said Lord Remus. “I hear that the sister of the Duke of Cleves has the King’s attention. Master Holbein has painted a beautiful portrait of her and the King declares himself to be enamored of the lady already.”
“So the new Queen is chosen.”
“That is what is being said at Court. Master Cromwell is eager for the marriage. I never liked the man—a low fellow—but the King finds him clever. It would be a good marriage for politics’ sake, so they say. I’ll dareswear that very soon you will be seeing another coronation.”
“She will be the King’s fourth wife,” said Kate. “I should love to see her. I daresay she is very beautiful.”
“Princesses are rarely as beautiful as they are made out to be,” said Lord Remus. “I’ll warrant those who lack royalty can often make up for it in beauty.” He was smiling at Kate in somewhat bleary-eyed concentration. Our elderberries were very potent that year. They must have been or I am sure he would not have spoken so freely.
I think my father was rather relieved when the meal was over; then my mother led Lord Remus into the music room and she sang a very pleasant ditty to him which he applauded with delight and then Kate took her lute and sang.
She sang a love song and every now and then she would raise her eyes and smile in the direction of Lord Remus. Her long hair escaped from the gold net and fell about her shoulders; she pretended to throw it impatiently back but I knew her well enough to realize she was calling attention to it.
When Lord Remus left we all conducted him to the privy stairs and watched his barge sail up the river.
I noticed that Kate was laughing as though at some secret joke.
She came to my room that night. She had to talk to someone and she had always used me for this purpose.
She stretched out on my bed. She always did that while I was expected to occupy the window seat.
“Well,” she said, “what thought you of my lord?”
“That he eats too much, drinks too much and laughs too much at his own jokes and not enough at other people’s.”
“I know so many to whom those words could apply.”
“Which shows that my lord is so like many others that there is very little new one can say about him.”
“One could say that he is rich; that he has a large estate in the country and a place at Court.”
“All of which could make him very desirable in the eyes of scheming young women.”
“There you speak sense, my child.”
“Pray do not call me your child. I have had a proposal of marriage which is more than you have had.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Master Caseman?”
I nodded.
“He doesn’t want to marry you, Damask, so much as all this…your lands, this house and everything that you will inherit from your father.”
“That is exactly what I implied.”
“You are not so foolish after all.”
“And no longer a child, since plus my inheritance I am considered marriageable.”
“Lucky Damask! And what have I to recommend me? What but my beauty and charm.”
“Which seem to have their effects. Even gentlemen with a place at Court and an estate in the country seem to be not unimpressed by them.”
“So you think he was impressed?”
“Without doubt. But were you wasting your talents?”
“Indeed not. He could make me his lady tomorrow an he wished it. He has had two wives and buried them.”
“By the faith,” I said, “he is almost as much married as the King. But, Kate, he is an old man.”
“And I am a young woman without your inheritance. Your father will give me a dowry, I doubt not, but it will not be anything to compare with what his darling daughter Damask will bring to her husband.”
“I would that there need not be this talk of marriage. It seems to me to be a melancholy subject.”
“Why so?”
I did not answer. I thought of the fox’s mask which I had seen on Simon Caseman’s face and of Kate’s planning to lure Lord Remus into marriage because he had a high-sounding title, an estate in the country and a place at Court.
“Marriage,” I said, “should be for the young, those who love not worldly goods and titles but each other.”
“There speaks my romantic cousin,” said Kate. “Who said you had grown up? You are a child still. You are a dreamer. It so often happens that those we love are not the ones we dare marry. So let us be gay. Let us enjoy what we can while we may.”
But she was no longer bantering; and there was a faraway look in her eyes which I did not then fully understand. That came later.
A change had come over Keziah. She had come out of that trancelike state and suddenly began to take on her old duties. Once or twice I heard her singing to herself. She had lost a certain amount of weight and I often noticed her gazing longingly at Bruno with an expression of intense longing which, if he was aware of it, he ignored. As far as I knew, he ignored her. I remonstrated with him over this. It seemed very cruel to me. But his eyes would flash angrily and to tell the truth I was so wretched when he was cool to me, that I avoided the subject.
He had changed a little too since the day when he had spoken of the jeweled Madonna. One of the servants told me that she had asked him to lay his hands on her and this he had done with the result that the violent rheumatics she had suffered in her legs had disappeared. They knew who he was, and the legend that he was indeed divine lived on. Clement in the bakehouse talked a great deal, I imagined. I wondered how he had ever observed rules of silence. The belief was beginning to spread throughout the household that Keziah and the monk had lied under torture and this was what Bruno wished.
My father told me that he was giving him a little time to grow accustomed to the great change in his circumstances before discussing with him the choice of a career. Bruno was well educated—indeed something of a scholar. Perhaps he would like to go into the church or the law. My father, I knew, would be willing for him to go to one of the universities if Bruno wished it. So far Bruno had discussed his future with no one; and he seemed only to care for the company of Kate and myself.
But I could not completely ignore his treatment of Keziah.
“You could be gentle with her,” I protested. “Speak to her kindly.”
“Why should I?” he asked.
“Because she is your mother and longs for a smile from you.”
“She disgusts me, and she is not my mother.”
“You are cruel to her, Bruno.”
“Perhaps,” he answered.
“I refuse to believe that she is my mother.”
Poor Bruno. It was hard for him to bear. To have believed himself to be apart from us all, a miraculous creation, and to find that he was the son of a servingwoman. But there was cruelty in him. I saw that now, as clearly as I had seen the fox’s mask on Simon Caseman’s face.