girl with flowing hair and a clever, pointed face, and the loveliest dark eyes in the court. Anne, he thought, you witch! I vow you hold off to provoke me....Pleasant thoughts. She was holding off to plague him. But enough, girl. How many years since I saw you in your father’s garden, and wanted you then! What do you want, girl? Ask for it; you shall have it, but love me, love me, for indeed I love you truly.
The Queen had stopped praying.
“They give themselves such airs, these women you elevate with your desires.”
“Come,” he said, gratified, for did not she give herself airs, and was it then because of his preference for her? “It is natural, is it not, that those noticed by the King should give themselves airs?”
“There are so many,” she said faintly.
Ah! he thought, there would be but one, Anne, and you that one!
The Queen repeated: “I would fain Your Majesty controlled himself.”
Oh, her incessant chatter wearied him. He wished to be left alone with his dream of her whose presence enchanted him.
He said cruelly: “Madam, you yourself are little inducement to a man to forsake his mistresses.”
She quivered; he felt that, though the width of the vast bed separated them.
“I am no longer young,” she said. “Am I to blame because our children died?” He was silent; she was trembling violently now. “I have heard the whispering that goes on in the court. I have heard of this they call The King’s Secret Matter.”
Now she had dragged his mind from the sensuous dream which soothed his body. So the whispering had reached her ears, had it! Well, assuredly it must reach them some time; but he would rather the matter had been put before her in a more dignified manner.
She said appealingly: “Henry, you do not deny it?”
He heaved his great body up in the bed. “Katharine,” he said, “you know well that for myself I would not replace you; but a king’s life does not belong to him but to his kingdom. And Katharine, serious doubts have arisen in my mind, not lately but for some time past; and well would I have suppressed them had my conscience let me. I would have you know, Katharine, that when our daughter’s marriage with the Duke of Orleans was proposed, the French ambassador raised the question of her legitimacy.”
“Legitimacy!” cried Katharine, raising herself. “What meant he? My lord, I hope you reproved him most sternly!”
“Ah! That I did! And sorely grieved was I.” The King felt happier now; he was no longer the erring husband being reproved by his too faithful wife; he was the King, who put his country first, before all personal claims; and in this matter, he could tell himself, the man must take second place to the King. He could, lying in this bed with a woman whose pious ways, whose shapeless body had long since ceased to move him except with repugnance, assure himself that the need to remain married to her was removed.
He had married Katharine because there had been England’s need to form a deep friendship with Spain, because England had then been weak, and across a narrow strip of channel lay mighty France, a perennial enemy. In those days of early marriage it had been a hope of Henry’s to conquer France once more; with Calais still in English hands, this had not seemed an impossibility; he had hoped that with the Emperor’s help this might be effected, but since the undignified affair at Pavia, Charles was hardly likely to link himself with English allies; thus was the need for friendship with Spain removed; Wolsey’s schemes had been called to a halt; the new allies were the French. Therefore, what could be better for England than to dissolve the Spanish marriage! And in its place...But no matter, dissolve the Spanish marriage since it could no longer help England.
These were minor matters compared with the great issue which disturbed his conscience. God bless the Bishop of Tarbes, that ambassador who had the tact at this moment to question the legitimacy of the Princess Mary.
“’Twere a matter to make a war with France,” said Katharine hotly. “My daughter a bastard! Your daughter...”
“These matters are not for women’s wits,” said the King. “Wars are not made on such flimsy pretexts.”
“Flimsy!” she cried, her voice sharp with fear. Katharine was no fool; to the suppers given in her apartments there came the most learned of men, the more serious courtiers, men such