Mary did not answer but her small body had begun to tremble.
“It shall not be, my little one,” went on the Queen. “The Emperor said…”
“He meant it not. It was to compliment you that he spoke those words. It is what is called diplomacy. Have no fear, you shall not leave me for a long, long time…not until you are old enough to want to go.”
“Mother, how could I ever want to go from you?”
Katharine lifted the little hand and kissed it.
“When you grow up you will love others better than your Mother.”
“I never shall. I swear I never shall.”
“You are too young to swear eternal love, my darling. But I am here now I slipped away from the ball because I knew you would be fretting.”
Katharine lay on the bed and held the child in her arms.
“Oh Mother, you love me, do you not?”
“With all my heart, sweeting.”
“And I love you with all of mine. I never want to go away from England, Mother…unless you come with me.”
“Hush, my sweetheart. All will be well. You will see.”
“And you will not let the Emperor take me away?”
“No…not for years and years…”
The child was reassured; and the Queen lay still holding her daughter fondly in her arms, thinking of a young girl in Spain who had been afraid and had told her mother that she wished to stay with her forever.
This is the fate of royal children, she told herself.
The comfort of her mother’s arms soothed Mary and soon she slept. Then Katharine gently disengaged herself; the Queen must not stay too long from the ball.
THE KING was momentarily contented. He was at war with France and he dreamed of being one day crowned in Rheims. His temper was good. He spent more time than he ever had engaged on matters of state, and the Cardinal, seated beside him, explaining when the need arose to do so, was feeling certain twinges of uneasiness.
He had been forced to support the war somewhat against his wishes; yet he was too wily to let anyone know that he was against it. The King wished it and Wolsey had no intention of arousing Henry’s anger by seeming lukewarm about a project which so pleased the King.
Henry had inherited the wealth which his miserly father had so carefully accumulated; but he had spent lavishly and already the treasury was alarmingly depleted.
“Nothing,” said the Cardinal, “absorbs wealth as quickly as war. We shall need money if we are to succeed in France.”
The King waved a plump hand. “Then I am sure there is no one who can raise it more ably than my good Chancellor.”
So be it, thought Wolsey. But the levying of taxes was a delicate matter and he suspected that the people who were obliged to pay them would blame, not their glittering charming King, but his apparently mean and grasping Chancellor.
There was talk of the King’s going to France with his army, but although Henry declared his eagerness to do this, nothing came of it. His adventures abroad with his armies in the earlier years of his reign had not been distinguished although he had thought they had at the time. Much as Henry would have enjoyed riding through the streets of Paris, a conqueror, and even more so returning home to England as the King who had brought France to the English dominions, he was now wise enough to realize that even hardened campaigners did not always succeed in battle, and that he was a novice at the game of war. Failure was something he could not bear to contemplate. Therefore he felt it was safer to wage war on the enemy with a strip of channel between himself and the armies.
François Premier was a King who rode into battle recklessly; but then François was a reckless fellow. He might win his successes, but he also had to face his defeats.
So Henry put aside the plans for a personal visit to the battlefields. But war was an exciting game played from a distance, and Wolsey must find the money to continue it.
THESE WERE HAPPY DAYS for the Queen. Her husband and her nephew were allies and they stood together against the King of France whom she believed to be more of a menace to Christianity than the Turk. François, already notorious for his lecherous way of life, must surely come to disaster; and since her serious-minded nephew had the power of England beside him she was certain that Charles was invincible.
She had her daughter under the same roof with her and she herself supervised her lessons.
Mary was docile and happy as long as her mother was with her. The King left Katharine alone, it was true, but she believed that even he had ceased to fret for a son, and accepted the fact that their daughter Mary was heir to the throne; and one day when she married Charles she would be the Empress of Austria and the Queen of Spain as well as the Queen of England. That matter was happily settled.
She was constantly seeking the best method of teaching her daughter, and one day she summoned Thomas More to her that she might discuss with him the manner in which his own daughters were educated.
As usual she found great pleasure in his company. She talked a little about the war but she saw that the subject was distressing to him—which was to be expected, for he was a man to whom violence was abhorrent—so she turned the conversation to his family, which she knew could not fail to please him.
She told him of her desire that the Princess Mary should receive the best education in all subjects which would be of use to her, and Thomas said: “Has your Grace thought of consulting Juan Luis Vives?”
“I had not until this moment,” she said, “but now that you mention him I believe he is the man who could help me in the education of the Princess. I pray you, bring him with you and come to see me at this hour tomorrow.” When Thomas had left her she wondered why she had not thought of Vives before. He had so much to recommend him. In the first place he was one of her own countrymen and she felt that, as her daughter was after all half Spanish and would be the wife of the King of Spain, there must be a Spanish angle to her education.
Both Erasmus and Sir Thomas More had called her attention to Juan Luis Vives, and those two were men whose intellectual abilities had won the admiration of the world. Vives was a man, said Thomas, forced by poverty to hide his light under a bushel. He was living at Bruges in obscurity; he had published very little of his writings and few people had ever heard of him. Erasmus would bear him out, for Vives had studied Greek with him at Louvain. It was Thomas’s opinion that Vives should be brought to England and encouraged by the Court, for there was little his native Valencia or the city of Bruges could offer him.
Katharine, out of her great admiration for Thomas, had immediately sent money to Vives with a letter in which she explained her interest in his work. It had not been difficult to persuade Henry—with the help of Thomas More—that Vives would be an ornament to the English Court; and Henry, who, when he was not masking or engaged in sport, liked occasionally to have conversation with men of intellect (François Premier boasted that his Court was the most intellectual in Europe and Henry was eager to rival it) very willingly agreed that Vives should be given a yearly pension.
Thus in gratitude Vives dedicated his book, Commentaries on Saint Augustine to Henry, which so delighted the King that he called him to England to lecture at the college which Wolsey had recently founded at Oxford.
This had happened some years before, but Vives made a point of spending a certain part of each year in England with his friends and patrons; and it so happened that he was in London at this time. So the very next day he arrived in the company of Thomas More for an interview with the Queen regarding her daughter’s education.