Jean Plaidy - Murder Most Royal - The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

The King remonstrated with her.

“It will not do, sweetheart, it will not do.”

“Would you have me leave such a poor old lady to starve?”

He took her onto his knee, and touched her cheek in a manner meant to reprove her, but she, with a characteristic gesture, seized his finger and bit it softly, which amused him, so that he found himself laughing instead of scolding.

He could not help it. She was irresistible. If she would take clothes and food to the old Countess, then she must. He would try pleading with her again concerning the greater indiscretion of asking pardon for Wyatt.

“Now listen to me,” he said. “Wyatt is a traitor.”

“He is no traitor. He is a brave man. He does not cringe nor show fear, and is not afraid to state his opinions.”

“Aye!” said the King slyly. “And he is the handsomest man in court, you are about to add!”

“He is assuredly, and I am certain he is a true friend to Your Majesty.”

“So you find him handsomer than your King, eh?”

“The handsomest man, you said. We did not speak of kings !” She took his great face in her hands and surveyed him saucily. “Nay,” she said, “I will say that Thomas Wyatt is the handsomest man in the court, but I would not include the King in that!” Which made him laugh and feel so gratified that he must kiss her and say to himself, A plague on Norfolk! Does he think to rule this realm! Wyatt is indeed a bold spirit and I was ever one to look for boldness in a man. If he is too anti-Catholic, he is at least honest. How does a King know when men will plot against him? Wyatt is too pleasant a man to die; his head is too handsome to be struck off his shoulders. Doubtless we can pardon Wyatt on some condition.

Norfolk was furious over the affair of Wyatt. He quarreled with his stepmother.

“What means the Queen? Wyatt is our enemy. Has she not sense enough to know that!”

“Speak not thus of the Queen in my presence!” said the Dowager Duchess. “Or ’twill go ill with thee, Thomas Howard.”

“You are an old fool. Who put the wench on the throne, I would ask you?”

“You may ask all you care to. I am willing to answer. The King put Catherine Howard on the throne because he loves her sweet face.”

“Bah! You will go to the block one day, old woman, and that wench with you.”

“This is treason!” cried Her Grace.

“Tut, tut,” said the Duke and left her.

The Duchess was so furious that she went straight to the Queen.

“He was but feigning friendship for us,” said Catherine. “I believe I ever knew it...”

“I fear him,” said the Duchess. “There is that in him to terrify a woman, particularly when...”

They looked at each other; then glanced over their shoulders. The past was something they must keep shut away.

“Tread warily with the Duke!” warned the Duchess.

But it was not in Catherine’s nature to tread warily. She showed her displeasure in her coolness to the Duke. The King noticed it and was amused. He liked to see proud Norfolk slighted by this vivacious Queen of his whose power flowed from himself.

Norfolk was filled with cold fury. This Catherine was every bit as unruly as his niece Anne Boleyn. If there was anything in that rumor which had risen up within a few weeks of her marriage, by God, he would not be the one to hold out a helping hand to Catherine Howard.

Sly Cranmer watched the trouble between Norfolk and his niece, and was pleased by it, for Norfolk was a worthy ally, and that they, enemies to one another, should be joined in common cause against Catherine Howard, was not an unsatisfactory state of affairs. But even if he had a case against Catherine, he would have to wait awhile, since it would be folly to present it to the King in his present amorous state. How much longer was the fat monarch going on cooing like a mating pigeon?

There was no sign of a change in the King’s attitude towards Catherine. All through spring and summer as they journeyed from place to place, he was her devoted husband. He preferred comparative retirement in the country to state balls and functions.

Henry was, however, jolted out of his complacency by news of a papist revolt in the north. This was headed by Sir John Neville and there was no doubt that it had been strongly influenced from the Continent by Cardinal Pole. Up rose Henry, roaring like a lion who has slumbered too long. He would restrain his wrath no longer. He had, in his newly found happiness, allowed himself to be over-lenient. How could he go on enjoying bliss with Catherine if his throne was imperiled and snatched from him by traitors!

The old Countess of Salisbury could no longer be allowed to live. Her execution had been delayed too long. Catherine had pleaded for her, had conjured up pitiful pictures of her freezing and starving in the Tower. Let her freeze! Let her starve! So perish all traitors! She was the mother of a traitor—one of the greatest and most feared Henry had ever known. Cardinal Pole might be safe on the Continent, but his mother should suffer in his stead.

“To the block with her!” shouted Henry, and all Catherine’s pleas could not deter him this time. He was gentle with her, soothing her. “Now now, sweetheart, let such matters rest. She is not the poor old lady you might think her to be. She is a traitor and she has bred traitors. Come, come, wouldst thou have thy King and husband tottering from his throne? Thrones have to be defended now and then with blood, sweetheart.”

So the old Countess was done to death in cruel fashion, for she, the last of the Plantagenets, kept her courage to the violent end. She refused to lay her head on the block, saying the sentence was unjust and she no traitor.

“So should traitors do,” she said, “but I am none, and if you will have my head, you must win it if you can.”

Of all murders men had committed at the King’s command this was the most horrible, for the Countess was dragged by her hair to the block, and since she would not then submit her head peaceably, the executioner hacked at her with his axe until she, bleeding from many wounds, sank in her death agony to the ground, where she was decapitated.

Such deaths aroused Henry’s wrath. The people loved to gloat over bloody details; they whispered together, ever fond of martyrs.

It had always been Henry’s plan, since the break with Rome, to play the Catholics off against the Lutherans, just as he played Charles against Francis. The last insurrection had put the Catholics out of favor, and his conscience now gave him several twinges about Cromwell. He replied to his conscience by mourning that, acting on false accusations which those about him had made, he had put to death the best servant he had ever had. Thus could he blame the Catholics for Cromwell’s death and exonerate himself. Norfolk was out of favor; Cranmer in the ascendant. Henry left the administration of his affairs in the hands of a few chosen anti-papists headed by Cranmer and Chancellor Audley, and proceeded North on a punitive expedition, accompanied by the Queen.

Henry was wholehearted in most things he undertook. When he set out to stamp the impression of his power on his subjects, he did so with vigor; and as his method was cruelty, Catherine could not help being revolted by that tour to the north.

Loving most romantically the handsome Culpepper, she must compare him with Henry; and while she had been prepared to do her best and please the indulgent man she had so far known, she was discovering that this was not the real man, and she was filled with horror. There was no kindness in him. She was forced to witness the groveling of those who had rebelled because they wished to follow what they believed to be true. As they went through county after county and she saw the cruelty inflicted, and worse still was forced to look on his delight in it, it seemed to her, that when he came to her, his hands dripped blood. She wished the King to be a loving monarch; she wished the people to do homage to him; but she wanted them to respect him without fearing him, as she herself was trying so desperately to do.