The King was like a child who had set his heart on a certain glittering bauble; in this case the conquest of France. Such a project was an impossibility—Wolsey knew.
“Dispatches from the Emperor have been increasingly gloomy, Your Grace.”
Henry stuck out his lower lip like a petulant child.
“I have poured money into this project,” he began.
“And the Emperor asks for more, Your Grace. He says that unless we provide it the entire enterprise may be fruitless. It would appear now that even the Pope…” Wolsey’s voice was faintly bitter. “…whom he helped to elect, is uncertain of him!”
“Ah, the Pope!” said Henry, and an alert expression had crept into his face. He knew it had been a bitter disappointment to Wolsey that he was not elected, and he wondered how he himself would have fared, robbed of the services of his Chancellor. It seemed to him in that moment that there was a tinge of disloyalty in the Cardinal’s disappointment. “You were overeager to leave us, Thomas,” he said with a trace of petulance.
“Solely that I could have worked for England from the Vatican.”
Henry was sorry for his suspicions. “I believe that to be so,” he said. “Well, it did not happen as we wished it, Thomas. But Clement is a good friend to you and to me.”
“He could not be the friend of one and not the other,” said Wolsey.
“’Tis true,” answered the King. “And I rejoiced when he confirmed your Legateship for life, and gave you the Bishopric of Durham.”
“Your Grace is good to me.”
“Well, you have a King and a Pope as your good friends, Thomas; I wonder which you value the more.”
“Your Grace does not need me to answer that question.”
Henry smiled well pleased, and the Cardinal knew that no rumors had reached him concerning the French spy in their midst.
“Then Your Grace would not be prepared to think of peace?”
“Thomas, there is one reason why I stand firmly with the Emperor and, no matter what our losses, there I shall remain. Do not forget that he is betrothed to the Princess Mary. While he adheres to that promise we must forgive him if he breaks some others.”
The Cardinal then understood that he must continue to work in secret.
THE QUEEN and her daughter sat with some of the women of the Court busily working with their needles. As they bent over their work one of their number read to them from Thomas More’s Utopia; this was a custom which Katharine remembered from the days of her childhood, when her mother had sought to have the hands usefully employed while the mind was exercised.
Katharine’s life was becoming increasingly busy. She spent a great deal of time with her daughter, whose education was, she believed, in constant need of her supervision. Her daughter was her greatest joy, and while she had her with her she could not be unhappy. Mary was now nine years old and it was distressing to remember that in three more years she would be expected to leave her home and go to the Court of the Emperor. Three years was such a short time. But I must not be selfish, thought the Queen. My daughter will be a great Queen, and it is not for me to regret that which is necessary to make her so.
Nevertheless, she wished to have her with her at every moment of the day, so that none of the time which they could spend together would be lost.
Now they were working on small garments which would be given to the poor women who had babies and no means of clothing them. Katharine was alarmed by the growing poverty among some classes in England; she knew that many people were wandering from town to town, village to village, homeless, sleeping in barns and under hedges, working when they could, eating when they could; and, as was inevitable in these circumstances, now and then stealing or starving to death.
Thomas More, when he came to her intimate suppers, had on several occasions spoken of his growing anxiety about the new conditions in England. He had pointed out that the prosperity of the upper classes was in some measure responsible for the poverty of the lower. There was a great demand for fine cloth which meant that many of the landowners, deciding to keep more sheep, took small-holdings from the men who had hitherto farmed them, and turned them into grazing land. The land which had been rented to them lost, turned out of their cottages, hundreds of these small farmers had become vagabonds.
Thomas More had said that the enclosing of land had so far affected no more than about five percent of the entire population but he felt that to be a great deal.
Katharine was therefore doing all she could to right this evil, and she had appointed her Almoner to distribute funds from her own purse to the poor. She set aside a regular portion of her income for charity and took a great pleasure in providing the needy with clothes and food. Thus, temporarily, she abandoned the tapestry which she delighted to work and set herself and her women making garments for the poor.
Thus they were sitting together when a page entered to tell the Queen that the Seigneur de Praet, the Emperor’s ambassador in England, was without and begging an audience.
As it was rarely that she had an opportunity of seeing her nephew’s ambassador, she said that she would receive him at once; and this meant the dismissal of all present.
Seeing the look of disappointment in Mary’s face she took the child’s hand in hers and kissed it. “Go along now for your practice on the virginals,” she said. “When the Seigneur has left I will come and hear how you are getting on.”
Mary smiled and curtseyed; and the Queen’s eyes remained on her until she had disappeared. Almost before the ladies had all left the apartment the Seigneur de Praet was being ushered in.
Katharine received him with graciousness although she did not feel the same confidence in him as she could have had in an ambassador of her own nationality. But the Seigneur, as a Flemish nobleman, was preferable, in Charles’s eyes, to a Spaniard. Katharine had to remember that Charles was more Fleming than Spaniard because he had spent very little time in Spain and had been brought up in Flanders, so it was natural of course, that he should choose Flemings rather than Spaniards to represent him.
The Seigneur was a very grand gentleman and he had already been unwise enough to show his lack of respect for Cardinal Wolsey on account of the latter’s humble birth. It seemed incredible to him that he should be expected to treat with one who, so rumor had it, had spent his infancy in a butcher’s shop.
As for the Queen, he found her so Spanish in some ways, so English in others, that he had never felt on very easy terms with her. Moreover whenever he had sought an interview he had always found it difficult to reach her; and he suspected the reason. The Cardinal contrived this—and for what cause? Because, for all his outward protestations, he was no friend of the Emperor.
Now de Praet was excited because he had made an important discovery and was determined at all costs to lay it before the Queen. Strangely enough on this occasion he had found no difficulty in reaching her.
As Katharine welcomed him and he bent over her hand, one of the women who had been in the sewing party slipped away unnoticed from the group of women who had just left and went swiftly into the anteroom adjoining the Queen’s apartment. There she took up her stand near the door and very quietly lifted the latch so that it was slightly ajar without seeming to be so.
“Your Grace,” said de Praet, “it is a great pleasure to find myself at last in your presence.”
“You have news for me from the Emperor?”
“No, but I have discovered treachery which I must immediately lay before you. Our enemy is working against us. Your Grace knows whom I mean.”