“Catherine, take no heed of these foolish girls.”
There were tears in Catherine’s eyes.
“I will not hear them say such things of my cousin.”
“Heed them not, the foolish ones! They mean it not.”
“I will not endure it.”
“And you think to stop it by telling your grandmother?”
“Yes,” said Catherine, “for if she knew what happened here, she would dismiss them all.”
“I should not tell, Catherine. You have been here many nights yourself; she might not hold you guiltless. Catherine, listen to me. They shall say nothing of your cousin again; I will stop them. But first you must promise me that you will not let a word of what happens here get to your grandmother’s ears through you.”
“It is wrong of them to taunt me.”
“Indeed it is wrong,” said Isabel, “and it must not be. Trust me to deal with them. They are foolish girls. Now promise you will not tell your grandmother.”
“I will not tell unless they taunt me to it.”
“Then rest assured they shall not.”
Catherine ran from the room, and Isabel turned to the girls who had listened open-eyed to this dialogue.
“You fools!” said Isabel. “You ask for trouble. It is well enough to be reckless when there is amusement to be had, but just to taunt a baby...What do you achieve but the fear of discovery?”
“She would not dare to tell,” said Nan.
“Would she not! She has been turning over in her baby mind whether she ought not to tell ever since she came here. Doubtless the saintly Thomas warned her it was wrong to tell tales.”
“She dared not tell,” insisted another girl.
“Why not, you fool? She is innocent. What has she done but be a looker-on? We should be ruined, all of us, were this known to Her Grace.”
“Her Grace cares nothing but for eating, sleeping, drinking, scratching and gossip!”
“There are others who would care. And while she is innocent, there is danger of her telling. Now if she were involved...”
“We shall have to find a lover for her,” said Nan.
“A fine big girl such as she is!” said the lewd-faced girl who had promised to take the part of Henry.
The girls screamed together lightheartedly. Only Isabel, aloof from their foolish chatter, considered this.
The King sat alone and disconsolate in his private apartments. He was filled with apprehension. Through the southeastern corner of England raged that dread disease, the sweating sickness. In the streets of London men took it whilst walking; many died within a few hours. People looked suspiciously one at the other. Why does this come upon us to add to our miseries! Poverty we have; famine; and now the sweat! Eyes were turned to the palaces, threatening eyes; voices murmured: “Our King has turned his lawful wife from his bed, that he might put there a witch. Our King has quarreled with the holy Pope....”
Wolsey had warned him, as had others of his council: “It would be well to send Mistress Anne Boleyn back to her father’s castle until the sickness passes, for the people are murmuring against her. It might be well if Your Majesty appeared in public with the Queen.”
Angry as the King had been, he realized there was wisdom in their words.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “the people are murmuring against us. This matter of divorce, which they cannot understand, is at the heart of it. You must go to Hever for awhile.”
She, with the recklessness of youth, would have snapped her fingers at the people. “Ridiculous,” she said, “to associate this sickness with the divorce! I do not want to leave the court. It is humiliating to be sent away in this discourteous manner.”
Was ever a man so plagued, and he a king! To his face she had laughed at his fears, despising his weakness in bowing to his ministers and his conscience. She would have defied the devil, he knew. He had forced himself to be firm, begging her to see that it was because he longed for her so desperately that he wished this matter of the divorce concluded with the minimum of trouble. Ever since she had gone he had been writing letters to her, passionate letters in which he bared his soul, in which he clearly told her more than it was wise to tell her. “Oh,” he wrote, “Oh, that you were in my arms!” He was not subtle with the pen; he wrote from the heart. He loved her; he wanted her with him. He told her these things, and so did he, the King of England, place himself at the mercy of a girl of nineteen.
He believed, with his people, that the sweat was a visitation from Heaven. It had come on other occasions; there had been one epidemic just before his accession to the throne. Ominous this! Was God saying he was not pleased that the Tudors should be the heirs of England? Again it had come in 1517, at about the time when Martin Luther was denouncing Rome. Was it God’s intention to support the German, and did He thus show disapproval of those who followed Rome? He had heard his father’s speaking of its breaking out after Bosworth...and now, here it was again when Henry was thinking of divorce. Assuredly it was alarming to contemplate these things!
So he prayed a good deal; he heard mass many times a day. He prayed aloud and in his thoughts. “Thou knowest it was not for my carnal desires that I would make Anne my wife. There is none I would have for wife but Katharine, were I sure that she was my wife, that I was not sinning in continuing to let her share my bed. Thou knowest that!” he pleaded. “Thou hast taken William Carey, O Lord. Ah! He was a complaisant husband to Mary, and mayhap this is his punishment. For myself, I have sinned in this matter and in others, as Thou knowest, but always I have confessed. I have repented...And if I took William’s wife, I gave him a place at court beyond his deserts, for, as Thou knowest, he was a man of small ability.”
All his prayers and all his thoughts were tinged with his desire for Anne. “There is a woman who will give sons
