The Sixth Wife_ The Story of Katherine P - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,43

contemplating the manner in which the Catholic Party had plotted for the downfall of the Primate Thomas Cranmer, and noting how on two occasions it was the King himself who had saved Cranmer, Katharine was comforted. The King, it seemed, could feel real affection for some. In the case of Cranmer, the astute monarch, knowing his well-loved Thomas to be in danger, had presented him with a ring which he might show to the Council as a token of the royal regard. None, of course, had dared attack a man who was possessed of such a token. On another occasion when the Catholics had wished to set up a Commission for the examining and discovery of heretics, the King had given his consent to the formation of this Commission but had foiled the purpose of it—which was to ensnare the Archbishop of Canterbury—by setting none other than that Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, at the head of it.

Yes, the King had his affections and loyalties. But would he feel for Katharine the same regard he had shown to Cranmer?

How often during the passing months had the King demanded of his wife: “No sign of a child?”

Once he had said: “By God, I have, I verily believe, got me another barren wife!”

That had been said after a state banquet when he had been feeling more sprightly than was his habit, for his leg had been in one of its healing phases and he had been listening to the singing of one of the ladies, a very beautiful lady, whose person pleased him as well as her voice had charmed him.

“No sign of a child?” The words were ominous; and the glance which accompanied them had been one of dislike.

But a few days later the leg had started to pain more than ever, and it was Katharine, that gentle nurse, to whom he turned. He was calling her his little pig again; and when the beautiful young lady begged leave to sing His Majesty another song, he said: “Another time. Another time.”

How strange, thought Katharine, with that philosophy which had come to her since she had become the Queen, that the King’s infirmity, which made him so irritable with others, should be her salvation!

Uneasy weeks flowed past her. There were nights when she would wake up after a dream and put her hands about her neck, laughing a little, half mocking herself, saying with a touch of hysteria in her voice: “So, my dear head, you are still on my shoulders?”

She was a little frightened of that hysteria. It was new to her. She had always been so calm, so serene. But how could one remain calm when one was close to death?

But what a fool she was to brood on death. It seemed far away when she sat with the courtiers, and the King would lift his heavily bandaged leg and lay it across her lap. “’ Tis easier there,” he would say. “Why, Kate,” he added once in a rush of grateful affection, “there would appear to be some magic in you, for it seems you impart a cooling to the heat, that soothes my sores.”

“Good Kate, good Kate,” he would say; and sometimes he would caress her cheek or her bare shoulder. “Little pig,” he would call her and give her a ruby or a diamond. “Here, Kate, we like to see you wearing our jewels. They become you…they become you.” They were gifts given in order to soothe his conscience; they indicated that he was planning to replace her by some fresh victim who had caught his eye; then because of infirmity and age he would decide not to make the effort; if his wife could not always charm him, the nurse, when pain returned, had become a necessity.

It was about this time that the King decided he would have a new portrait of himself.

Katharine remembered that occasion for a long time afterward, and remembered it with fear. It seemed to her that this matter of the portrait showed her—and the court—how dangerous was her position. The King, when he tired of a woman, could be the cruelest of men. He believed he himself was always in the right, and that must mean that anyone not quite in agreement with him must be quite wrong.

Katharine’s great sin against the King lay in her barrenness. So, after a year of marriage, the King constantly brooded on the fact that there was no child…no sign of a child. Why, he would say