“Weep for Your Majesty, who is both great and glorious!”
“Tush! You think of matters of state. A king is a man as well as a king. You know I married my brother’s widow. Twenty years, Kate— twenty years of marriage that was no marriage. For twenty years I lived in sin… with my own brother’s widow. Unintentional sin, though. I was tricked. I was cheated. And England all but robbed of an heir! You know our story, Kate.”
“I know of Your Majesty’s sorrows.”
Henry nodded. He was passing into that mood of sentimentality and selfpity which contemplation of the past brought with it. He took a lace kerchief and wiped a tear from his eye. He could always weep for the injustices that had come to him through his marriages. “To some men it would have been simple,” he said. “I was happily married. I had one daughter. Suffice it that I had given England a future Queen, though a son had been denied me. Then, Kate, I understood. It was my conscience, my most scrupulous conscience that told me I could no longer risk England’s security by continuing with a marriage that was no marriage. No marriage, Kate! Can you realize what that meant? The King of England was living in sin with his brother’s widow. Small wonder that God did not grant us a son! So I wrestled with myself, and my conscience told me that I must end that marriage. I must take a new wife.”
Henry had stood up; he now seemed unaware of the shrinking woman, who immediately rose, as she must not be seated while the King stood. Katharine realized that it was not to her that he was talking now. He began to shout and his fist was clenched.
“I took to wife a black-browed witch! I was cajoled by sorcery. She would have poisoned my daughter, the lady Mary. My son, Richmond, died soon after she laid her wicked head on the block… died slowly, lingeringly. That was the result of the spells she laid upon him. The devil had made her beautiful. I was entrapped by sorcery. She should have burned at the stake.” He began to speak more softly. “But I was ever merciful to those that pleased me… and she pleased me… once.”
There was silence in the chamber but for the rustling of the silken curtains as they moved in the draft. The King’s face was gray, and his eyes went to the curtains as though he looked for someone there.
He turned suddenly and saw Katharine standing beside him. He seemed startled to find her there.
“Ah, yes,” he sighed. “Kate… Kate… Sit down, Kate.”
“Your Grace,” she said, “was most unhappy in his marriages.”
“Aye!” He spoke softly now, and all the selfpity was back in his voice. “Most unhappy. And then came Jane… poor gentle Jane, Jane whom I loved truly. She gave me my son and then she died. The most cruel blow of all!”
Katharine began to pray again silently and fervently. Oh God, save me. Save me from this man. Save me from the King.
She knew more of him than he realized. In her country house she had heard how he had received the news of Jane Seymour’s death. Bluntly he had told his ministers that the death of his wife meant little to him beside the great joy he had in his newborn son.
“Had Jane but lived!” he was saying. “Ah, had Jane but lived!” He turned to Katharine and she felt the hot hand on her knee, caressing her thigh. She longed to beg him to desist, but she dared not.
“You are cold, Kate,” he said. “You tremble. ’tis all this talk of my miseries. Sometimes I wonder if I have paid for my most glorious reign with my most miserable domestic life. If that be so, Kate, I must be content. A king ofttimes must forget he is a man. A king is the slave of his country as is never the humblest citizen. You know the rest of my sad story?”
“I do, my lord.”
“I am young enough to enjoy a wife, Kate.”
“Your Grace has many happy years before him, I trust and pray.”
“Well spoken. Come nearer, Kate.”
She hesitated, but he had had enough of reluctance.
“Hurry! Now! Here, help me up. This accursed leg gives me much pain.” He stood beside her, towering above her. She felt his hot, sour breath on her cheek. “Do you like me, Kate?”
How to escape him she did not know. She fell on her knees.
“I am the most obedient of your subjects, Sire.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Henry testily. “But enough of kneeling. Get up. Be done with maiden modesty. You have been twice a wife. It becomes you not to play the reluctant virgin.”
“I am overwhelmed,” said Katharine, rising.
“Then you need no longer be. I like you, Kate, and you shall be my Queen.”
“No, no, Sire. I am too unworthy. I could not…”
“It is for us to say who is or who is not worthy to share our throne.” He was losing patience. Now was the time for kissing and fondling, for that excitement which should chase away the ghosts he had conjured up.
“I know it, my lord King, but…”
“Know this also, Kate. I choose you for wife. I am tired of the celibate state. I was never meant to bear it. Come, Kate, give me that which I found but once and held so short a while before death intervened. Give me married happiness. Give me your love. Give me sons.”
Katharine cried: “I am too unworthy, Your Majesty. I am no longer in my prime….”
Henry stopped the words with a loud kiss on her mouth. “Speak up!” he cried. “Speak up. What’s all this you are saying?”
Katharine cried in desperation: “If you love me then… then you must needs love me. But ’t would be better to be your mistress than your wife, an it please Your Grace.”
He was overcome with horror. The little mouth was tight with outraged modesty. “It pleases me not!” he shouted. “It pleases me not at all to hear such wanton talk. You are shameless.”
“Yes, Sire, indeed yes, and unworthy to be your wife.”
“You said you would be our mistress and not our wife. Explain yourself. Explain yourself.”
Katharine covered her face with her hands. She thought of two women who had knelt on Tower Green, who had laid their heads on the block at the command of this man. They had been his wives. Already she seemed to sense the executioner beside her, his ax in his hand, the blade turned toward her.
Henry had taken her by the shoulder and was shaking her.
“Speak up, I said. Speak up.” His voice had softened. He was seeing himself now as he wished to see himself—the mighty, omnipotent King, whom no woman could resist, just as they had been unable to resist him in the days of his youth when he had had beauty, wealth, kingship and all that a woman could desire.
“It is on account of mine own unworthiness,” faltered Katharine.
He forced her hands from her face and put an arm about her. He kissed her with violence. Then, releasing her, he began to roar: “Here, page! Here, man! Call Gardiner. Call Wriothesley…Surrey…Seymour… call them all. I have news I wish to impart to their lordships.”
He smiled at Katharine.
“You must not be afraid of this great honor,” he said. “Know you this: I can take you up and lift you to the greatest eminence…and I will do it.”
She was trembling, thinking: Yes, and you can cast me down. You can marry me; and marriage with the King, it is said with truth, may be the first step toward the Tower and the block.
The courtiers came hurrying back to the chamber. The King stood smiling at them.
He looked at them slyly, all those gentlemen who, a short time before, he had dismissed that he might be alone with Katharine.
“Come forward!” he cried. “Come and pay your respects to the new Queen of England.”
KATHARINE WAS IN her own apartments. With dry, tragic eyes she stared before her; she was trying to look into a future which she knew would be filled with danger.
There was no escape; she knew that now.
Nan, her faithful woman, had wept openly when she had heard the news. Katharine’s own sister, Anne Herbert, had come quickly to court. They did not speak of their compassion, but they showed it in their gestures, in the very intonations of their voices. They loved her, those two; they prayed for her and they wept for her; but they did not let her hear their prayers, nor see their tears.