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Authors: Margaret Irwin
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whose King is a child’ – woe also to the child! The skeletons of his own boy-uncles, murderedsixty years ago in the Tower by their uncle, Richard III, would raise their little heads through his fever to warn him how near the fate of Edward VI might be to that of Edward V and his small brother. But
this
uncle, Edward Seymour, virtuous, high-principled, was no Richard Crookback – or was he?
Anyway, he could do no more. And he had to see about dying. He left command that he should be buried at Windsor beside the body of Jane Seymour, his third wife, the only one who had given him a son. And that his soul was to be prayed for, and masses said for it, to release it the sooner from Purgatory. He had abolished Purgatory – he had intended to abolish the Mass – but no matter, one might as well be on the safe side. Henry had never learnt that he could not eat his cake and have it; there was no time to learn it now.
Bess spent the days in terror lest she be summoned to his sick-chamber. But he did not send for her, nor for Edward. It had become indeed no place for children. He sent for his wife Catherine, and for Mary, separately. They both came out weeping uncontrollably.
Bess gazed in wonder at her stepmother. She would be free now and unafraid, yet she was crying as if for the loss of a child. Had he been sorry? What could he have said to move her so? He had said, ‘It is God’s will that we should part.’
Bess could recognise the simplicity of greatness; and its practical quality. It was no good looking back; he had looked forward, told Catherine he wanted her to keep all the jewels and ornaments he had given her, and not to hand them back to the Crown, and that he had ‘ordered all these gentlemen to honour you and treat you as if I were living still.’ Yes, Bess conceded inwardly, as she listened to her stepmother, it wassomething for Catherine Parr to have been made a Queen.
And Mary, of course, was always ready to cry.
Mary had, in fact, cried so much at the interview with her father that he could not bear it, and had signed to her to leave him, for by then he could speak no more.
He had tried to talk to her of the councillors he had appointed, but she would only beg him not to leave her an orphan so soon. To which he made no answer. But presently with deep earnestness he had asked her to try and be a mother to her brother Edward, ‘for, you see, he is little.’
It was that last request that tore her heart. Catherine Parr owed him royalty, honour and jewels. Mary’s debt had been otherwise; she had been dispossessed from her royal and legitimate inheritance, and dishonour cast on her birth and on her mother; she owed him years of loneliness, sometimes imprisonment; insult and ill treatment both from himself and his servants; worst of all, separation from her adored mother all the last years of Katherine of Aragon’s life; a refusal even to be allowed to go to her when she was dying and afraid, as even her stout heart admitted, that she would have to die alone and abandoned, ‘like a beast.’ Did Mary not remember how she had been forbidden her mother’s death-chamber, when she came out of her father’s, sobbing as if her heart would break?
So Bess asked herself with the clear-cut logic of thirteen, and a horror of the father who had killed her own mother four months after he had at last worried Mary’s to death.
She could not guess how much else Mary remembered.
The huge decaying body Mary had just seen had not appalled her as the corruption of his soul had done, long yearsago, when he became rotted with power and the lust of life.
The thirty-year-old woman who met the child’s astonished gaze, all her pent-up passion in these repressed years broken loose by an agony of pity and desire for what might have been, had one of her violent irrational impulses, and tried to tell her what her father had been; like the Sun himself when he ‘cometh out of his chamber like a bridegroom.’
‘You never
this
uncle, Edward Seymour, virtuous, high-principled, was no Richard Crookback – or was he?
Anyway, he could do no more. And he had to see about dying. He left command that he should be buried at Windsor beside the body of Jane Seymour, his third wife, the only one who had given him a son. And that his soul was to be prayed for, and masses said for it, to release it the sooner from Purgatory. He had abolished Purgatory – he had intended to abolish the Mass – but no matter, one might as well be on the safe side. Henry had never learnt that he could not eat his cake and have it; there was no time to learn it now.
Bess spent the days in terror lest she be summoned to his sick-chamber. But he did not send for her, nor for Edward. It had become indeed no place for children. He sent for his wife Catherine, and for Mary, separately. They both came out weeping uncontrollably.
Bess gazed in wonder at her stepmother. She would be free now and unafraid, yet she was crying as if for the loss of a child. Had he been sorry? What could he have said to move her so? He had said, ‘It is God’s will that we should part.’
Bess could recognise the simplicity of greatness; and its practical quality. It was no good looking back; he had looked forward, told Catherine he wanted her to keep all the jewels and ornaments he had given her, and not to hand them back to the Crown, and that he had ‘ordered all these gentlemen to honour you and treat you as if I were living still.’ Yes, Bess conceded inwardly, as she listened to her stepmother, it wassomething for Catherine Parr to have been made a Queen.
And Mary, of course, was always ready to cry.
Mary had, in fact, cried so much at the interview with her father that he could not bear it, and had signed to her to leave him, for by then he could speak no more.
He had tried to talk to her of the councillors he had appointed, but she would only beg him not to leave her an orphan so soon. To which he made no answer. But presently with deep earnestness he had asked her to try and be a mother to her brother Edward, ‘for, you see, he is little.’
It was that last request that tore her heart. Catherine Parr owed him royalty, honour and jewels. Mary’s debt had been otherwise; she had been dispossessed from her royal and legitimate inheritance, and dishonour cast on her birth and on her mother; she owed him years of loneliness, sometimes imprisonment; insult and ill treatment both from himself and his servants; worst of all, separation from her adored mother all the last years of Katherine of Aragon’s life; a refusal even to be allowed to go to her when she was dying and afraid, as even her stout heart admitted, that she would have to die alone and abandoned, ‘like a beast.’ Did Mary not remember how she had been forbidden her mother’s death-chamber, when she came out of her father’s, sobbing as if her heart would break?
So Bess asked herself with the clear-cut logic of thirteen, and a horror of the father who had killed her own mother four months after he had at last worried Mary’s to death.
She could not guess how much else Mary remembered.
The huge decaying body Mary had just seen had not appalled her as the corruption of his soul had done, long yearsago, when he became rotted with power and the lust of life.
The thirty-year-old woman who met the child’s astonished gaze, all her pent-up passion in these repressed years broken loose by an agony of pity and desire for what might have been, had one of her violent irrational impulses, and tried to tell her what her father had been; like the Sun himself when he ‘cometh out of his chamber like a bridegroom.’
‘You never
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