Katharine, The Virgin Widow - Plaidy Jean (книга регистрации .txt) 📗

The King had ordered the sentence to be read before the ropes were put about the animals’ necks. Then he had said in his low sombre voice: “So perish all traitors!”

His subjects stared at the writhing dogs, but it was of the King they were thinking.

Indeed he must be a man beset by fears since he could not resist pointing out to them the fate of those who attempted to overcome the power of kings.

Henry rose suddenly and, as he left his seat, his family and immediate circle prepared to follow him.

The games were over for that day.

* * *

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* * *

THE CHILDREN HAD ESCAPED to the privy garden. It was pleasant out of doors because a breeze was beginning to blow off the river.

They were unusually silent, for the hanging of the four mastiffs had subdued them. Here in this pleasant garden, in which the scent of roses was very strong, they often gathered when their parents were in residence at the Palace of the Tower of London. They delighted now in its familiarity because the scene they had witnessed had been unexpected, and it was comforting to be in a place they knew so well. This they looked upon as their own little garden; here they felt shut away from the ceremony which was such a large part of their lives. The great walls of the Cradle Tower and the Well Tower formed a bastion against too curious eyes. Here they could forget they were Princes and Princesses and be children.

Henry broke the silence. “But why!” he demanded. “Those four brave mastiffs…traitors! How could they be traitors?”

Mary began to cry. She loved dogs and she had been delighted when the four had beaten the cruel lion. Had she not been told so often that Princesses do not cry in public she would have burst into tears when she saw the ropes being put about their necks.

“Hush, Mary,” said Margaret, stern Margaret, who kept them in order as though she were the eldest. Someone, Margaret often pointed out, had to keep the family in order, and Arthur was useless in that respect.

Mary obediently stopped crying, but it was clear that she could not forget the mastiffs.

Arthur turned to Henry. He looked almost as old as his father in that moment. “It is all so easy to understand,” he said.

“But I do not understand,” cried Henry hotly.

“That is because you are but a boy for all your arrogance,” Margaret retorted.

“Do not call me a boy. I am as tall as Arthur.”

“So you may be, but that does not make you grown up,” Margaret told him.

Arthur said almost wearily: “Our father had the dogs hanged because they had used their strength against Rex. Rex was the king of my father’s beasts, and Rex means King. Our father was showing all those people what happens to those who pit their strength against kings.”

“But the dogs were sent into the arena to fight,” persisted Henry. “It makes no sense.”

“The ways of kings do not always appear to make sense,” answered Arthur.

“But I would have good sense prevail always.”

“I…I…I!” murmured Margaret. “You use that word more than any other, I do declare.”

“Should not a King show his subjects that he is a man of good sense then?” Henry persisted.

“No,” answered Arthur, “only that he is a King to be feared.”

“I do not want the dogs to be dead,” cried Mary, and began to sob loudly.

Margaret knelt down and, taking a kerchief from her pocket, wiped Mary’s tears away. “Have you not been told that it is unseemly for a Princess to cry like a peasant?”

“But they killed the dogs. They put ropes round their necks. They killed…”

“I see,” said Henry in his resonant voice, “that all traitors should be hanged, but…”

“Let us talk of something else,” commanded Margaret. “I must stop this child making such a noise. Now, Mary, what will your new sister say when she comes here and finds you such a crybaby?”

Mary stopped crying; it was obvious that she had forgotten the death of the dogs and was thinking of her new sister.

“Just think,” went on Margaret, “she is coming all the way across the sea to be our sister. So instead of four of us there’ll be five.”

Arthur turned away from the group, pretending to examine one of the roses. He was embarrassed by this talk of his imminent marriage. He was a great deal more uneasy about it than he cared to admit.

“Will she be big like you?” asked Mary, peering into Margaret’s face.

“Bigger. She is older.”

“As old as our father?”

“Do not be foolish. But she is older than Arthur.”

“Then she must be very old.”

“Arthur is not really very old,” put in Henry. “I am nearly as old as Arthur.”

“Nonsense,” said Margaret, “you’re five years younger.”

“In five years then I shall have a marriage.”

Margaret said sharply: “You are destined for the Church, Henry. That means that you’ll have no marriage.”

“I shall if I want one,” retorted Henry; his small eyes narrowed suddenly in his plump, dimpled face.

“Don’t talk so foolishly.”

“Arthur may not either,” went on Henry, who did not like the idea of his brother’s having something which he could not. “It seems to me that his Spaniard is a long time coming.”

Arthur turned to face them all. He said: “Her ships have met with disaster. It is a long and hazardous journey she has to make.”

“Still,” said Henry, “we heard a long time ago that she had set out…and still she does not come.”

“There are storms in the Bay of Biscay,” Margaret put in.

“Perhaps,” cried Henry spitefully, “she’ll be drowned. Then you won’t have a marriage either.”

Arthur nodded in his mild way; but he did not look in the least perturbed by this possibility.

Poor Arthur, thought the wise Margaret, he is not looking forward with any great pleasure to being a husband.

It occurred to her that the subject of the Spanish marriage was not really a very much happier topic than that of the mastiffs.

“I’m going to have a game of tennis,” said Henry suddenly. That meant that he was leaving the family party—because Arthur was not good enough to play with him. Henry would go and find the sprightliest of young boys, and doubtless he would win, not only because he hated to lose and his opponents knew this, but because he really did excel at all games. Arthur would shut himself into his own apartments to read or brood. Margaret would hand Mary over to her nurses, and she herself would do a little embroidery with some chosen companions, chatting lightly but thinking of Arthur’s marriage with the Infanta of Spain and wondering what further marriages were being arranged. It was almost certain that her own would be the next. She would not be as fortunate as Arthur, who at least would stay at home. She believed she would have to go into the wild country beyond the border.

* * *

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THE QUEEN TOOK AN early opportunity of retiring to her own apartments. The spectacle had disgusted and alarmed her. She was shocked that her husband should have so betrayed himself. She had not dared to glance at him, sitting there stonily staring ahead at those struggling bodies, but she knew exactly how he would be looking. His lips would be tightly compressed; his eyes narrow and calculating. She understood more of his nature than he would have believed possible. She had seen much, during her lifetime, of the terrible fascination a crown had for some men and women; she had seen them face disaster and death to win and then retain it.

Yet Henry, her husband, did not understand this. He did not understand her at all; he made no attempt to. He was a man shut in with his emotions, and shared them with none. For two things only did he betray an overwhelming passion: for the crown and for gold; and these she knew he loved with an intensity he would never feel for anything or anyone else.

She herself was no longer young, having last February passed her thirty-fifth birthday; and during those thirty-five years what she had lacked most was security.