“What means this?” cried the King. “I understand you not.” His face was purple with fury. “How darest thou disturb our peace?”
“Sire, Your Majesty’s orders. I come with forty men to arrest the Queen, and take her to the Tower. My barge is at the privy stairs.”
“Fool! Knave!” cried Henry. “Get you gone, or ’t will be you who are clapped into the Tower.”
Wriothesley, pale with confusion, yet persisted: “Can Your Majesty have forgotten? You gave the order. Your Grace signed the mandate…. To arrest the Queen at this hour… wherever she might be.”
“Get you gone from here,” screamed the King. “You fool…you arrant fool!” He lifted his stick and struck at the Chancellor, who managed, most skillfully, to avoid the blow.
“By God,” went on the King, “are you a fool, Chancellor? It would seem my lot to be surrounded by fools and knaves. Get you gone, I say. Get you gone.”
Katharine watched the discomfited Chancellor lead his men away.
The King hobbled back to her.
“He…he was disobeying Your Majesty’s command?” asked Katharine in a trembling voice.
“The man’s a fool. The man’s a knave. By God, I’ll not forget this.”
“Mayhap he thought he was obeying Your Majesty’s commands. Mayhap he thought he had Your Grace’s consent to do what he was about to do.”
Henry sat down heavily and signed to her to take her place beside him.
“Let be,” he said. “Let be.” He watched her covertly.
He does not know, she reflected, that I have seen his signature on the order for my arrest, just as Wriothesley does not know that he has changed his mind. From the bed to the scaffold is such a short step. How should Chancellor Wriothesley know that on the King’s whim I have turned about…away from the scaffold, back to the bed!
She began again: “Wriothesley…”
“Enough,” said Henry testily. “I command thee not to speak of that knave.”
“Your Majesty will pardon me, but I thought you regarded him as a good servant. Mayhap Your Majesty will not feel too hard toward him, since he has failed to interpret your wishes on this day.”
Henry, being ignorant of her understanding of this matter and not imagining that she could possibly know that he had signed a mandate for her arrest which should be her death warrant, looked at her pityingly.
“Do not defend Wriothesley,” he said. “Poor soul, poor Kate, you do not know how little he deserves grace at your hands. Come, Kate, enough of this man. You and I have more pleasant matters with which to occupy ourselves.”
His hands were caressing her. She was once more his sweetheart, his little pig.
By a miracle, it seemed, she had been saved from death. But was she saved, or had Death merely receded a pace or two?
CHAPTER
V
DURING THAT AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER THE KING made the progress, from palace to palace, which had been a habit of his. From Westminster the court went in state along the river to Hampton Court; and after a brief stay at that palace they made the journeys to Oatlands, Woking, Guildford, Chobham and Windsor.
But when the court had reached Windsor it was seen that this last journey had greatly taxed Henry’s strength; and those whom his death would most affect watched him—and each other—with speculation.
Those who had hitherto behaved with the utmost obsequiousness became arrogant. Lord Hertford and Lord Lisle were back from their duties in France, and they were making preparations to rule through the boy King in whom they had instilled a strong appreciation of the new learning. Sir Thomas Seymour was on the alert; his brother was a great statesman and power in the land, but Thomas was the man whom the King-to-be loved more than any other. Cranmer, beloved of the King, was with these men, and they made a powerful party.
On the Catholic side was the Duke of Norfolk and his son Surrey, together with Gardiner, Wriothesley and their supporters.
Now that the King felt death to be near, he knew great anxiety for the future of his House which would have only a young boy at its head. One look from his bloodshot eyes, one gesture, could still strike terror into those about him. After all, he could still wield a pen; he could still sign a death warrant. Callous and brutal as he was, he had to deal with men who lacked his callous brutality, largely because they lacked his vitality. If he was a sick lion, he was still a lion. He was a ruler of men, even now as he lay in his bed, or sat painfully in his chair of state, or hobbled about on his stick, or was conveyed about the palace in that wheeled contrivance which had had to be made for him.
He made his will. Wisely he decided that the council of ministers, who should comprise the Protectorate during the little King’s minority, should be equally balanced by the two parties. Henry was confident that his wishes would be obeyed; he was enough of a King to rule after death.
The people were with him. They were his strength. They had always been with him from the days when he, as a pink and white boy, had ridden among them and sought their applause. It had been his policy to remove the dangerous influential nobles and placate the mob. The people believed that he had freed them from the tyranny of the Pope. The state had taken precedence over the church, and that appealed to the unemotional English as it was done under a cloak of piety. Terrible suffering had been witnessed in the cities: burnings, hangings, beheadings and the most horrible death accorded to traitors; there had been much bloodshed. But on the Continent of Europe the bloodshed had been more fierce; and bloodshed there must be, it seemed, when a new religion was born.
The King was still King and would remain the master of his subjects after death. His word was law and would remain so.
But those turbulent men about the throne were tensely waiting. Tempers ran high and men were reckless.
One November day, Protestant Lord Lisle, during a Council meeting, struck Gardiner in the face. Lisle was banished from the Council.
To be set against this was the fact that Gardiner had been in disgrace with the King ever since Katharine had come so near to being arrested. The King, characteristically, blamed Gardiner for that affair, for he had convinced himself that he had had no intention of allowing Katharine to be removed, and the whole plot had been devised by the Bishop.
The disgrace of Gardiner and the banishment of Lisle kept that balance of power which Wolsey had taught the King was always desirable. A great Reformer and a great Catholic were both in disgrace.
Gardiner tried to regain his position with an offer of money which could be extorted from the clergy. Henry was pleased to receive the money, but refused to reinstate the Bishop; and so Gardiner continued in disgrace. For, concluded the King, he is a man who tried to poison our mind against the innocent Queen! So Gardiner received nothing but scowls from his master. It was unfortunate for him, but that was what so often happened to those who served the King.
Those were anxious days for all, but with the coming of November, the King’s health began to improve a little. There was feasting and revelry at court, and at a certain banquet Henry’s eyes alighted on a fair lady of the Queen’s household. It seemed to him once more that it was a pitiable thing when a man such as he was—a mighty King, a great ruler—had but one legitimate son to follow him.
Surely there must be some truth in those accusations which some of his ministers had tried to bring. Had Gardiner been so wrong when he had plotted against the Queen? Was the barren Katharine a heretic at heart?
DURING THOSE WEEKS of tension, the manners of the Earl of Surrey became insufferable by those whom he chose to consider his enemies; the chief of these was Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford.