I
The Queen was at Hampton, and it was the late autumn. She had been sad
since they came from Pontefract, for it had seemed more than ever
apparent that the King's letter to Rome must be ever delayed in the
sending. Daily, at night, the King swore with great oaths that the
letter must be sent and his soul saved. He trembled to think that if
then he died in his bed he must be eternally damned, and she added her
persuasions, such as that each soul that died in his realms before that
letter was sent went before the Throne of Mercy unshriven and
unhouselled, so that their burden of souls grew very great. And in the
midnights, the King would start up and cry that all was lost and himself
accursed.
And it appeared that he and his house were accursed in these days, for
when they were come back to Hampton, they found the small Prince Edward
was very ill. He was swollen all over his little body, so that the
doctors said it was a dropsy. But how, the King cried, could it be a
dropsy in so young a child and one so grave and so nurtured and tended?
Assuredly it must be some marvel wrought by the saints to punish him, or
by the Fiend to tempt him. And so he would rave, and cast tremulous
hands above his head. And he would say that God, to punish him, would
have of him his dearest and best.
And when the Queen urged him, therefore, to make his peace with God, he
would cry out that it was too late. God would make no peace with him.
For if God were minded to have him at peace, wherefore would He not
smoothe the way to this reconciliation with His vicegerent that sat at
Rome in Peter's chair? There was no smoothing of that way--for every day
there arose new difficulties and torments.
The King o' Scots would come into no alliance with him; the King of
France would make no bid for the hand of his daughter Mary; it went ill
with the Emperor in his fighting with the Princes of Almain and the
Schmalkaldners, so that the Emperor would be of the less use as an ally
against France and the Scots.
'Why!' he would cry to the Queen, 'if God in His Heaven would have me
make a peace with Rome, wherefore will He not give victory over a parcel
of Lutheran knaves and swine? Wherefore will He not deliver into my
hands these beggarly Scots and these atheists of France?'
At night the Queen would bring him round to vowing that first he would
make peace with God and trust in His great mercy for a prosperous issue.
But each morning he would be afraid for his sovereignty; a new letter
would come from Norfolk, who had gone on an embassy to his French
friends, believing fully that the King was minded to marry to one of
them his daughter. But the French King was not ready to believe this.
And the King's eyes grew red and enraged; he looked no man in the face,
not even the Queen, but glanced aside into corners, uttered blasphemies,
and said that he--he!--was the head of the Church and would have no
overlord.
The Bishop Gardiner came up from his See in Winchester. But though he
was the head of the Papist party in the realm, the Queen had little
comfort in him. For he was a dark and masterful prelate, and never
ceased to urge her to cast out Cranmer from his archbishopric and to
give it to him. And with him the Lady Mary sided, for she would have
Cranmer's head before all things, since Cranmer it was that most had
injured her mother. Moreover, he was so incessant in his urging the King
to make an alliance with the Catholic Emperor that at last, about the
time that Norfolk came back from France, the King was mightily enraged,
so that he struck the Bishop of Winchester in the face, and swore that
his friend the Kaiser was a rotten plank, since he could not rid himself
of a few small knaves of Lutheran princes.
Thus for long the Queen was sad; the little Prince very sick; and the
King ate no food, but sat gazing at the victuals, though the Queen
cooked some messes for him with her own hand.
* * * * *
One Sunday after evensong, at which Cranmer himself had read prayers,
the King came nearly merrily to his supper.
'Ho, chuck,' he said, 'you have your enemies. Here hath been Cranmer
weeping to me with a parcel of tales writ on paper.'
He offered it to her to read, but she would not; for, she said, she knew
well that she had many enemies, only, very safely she could trust her
fame in her Lord's hands.
'Why, you may,' he said, and sat him down at the table to eat, with the
paper stuck in his belt. 'Body o' God!' he said. 'If it had been any but
Cranmer he had eaten bread in Hell this night. 'A wept and trembled!
Body o' God! Body o' God!'
And that night he was more merry before the fire than he had been for
many weeks. He had in the music to play a song of his own writing, and
afterwards he swore that next day he would ride to London, and then at
his council send that which she would have sent to Rome.
'For, for sure,' he said, 'there is no peace in this world for me save
when I hear you pray. And how shall you pray well for me save in the old
form and fashion?'
He lolled back in his chair and gazed at her.
'Why,' he said, 'it is a proof of the great mercy of the Saviour that He
sent you on earth in so fair a guise. For if you had not been so fair,
assuredly I had not noticed you. Then would my soul have gone
straightway to Hell.'
And he called that the letter to Rome might be brought to him, and read
it over in the firelight. He set it in his belt alongside the other
paper, that next day when he came to London he might lay it in the hands
of Sir Thomas Carter, that should carry it to Rome.