Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER XXXIV.

We talk, in ladies' chambers, love and news.--Cowley.

All was bustle and preparation at the court of England; for the two most magnificent monarchs of the world were about to contend with each other, not with the strife of arms, nor by a competition of great deeds, but in pomp, in pageant, and in show; in empty glitter and unfruitful display. However that may be, the palace and all its precincts became the elysium of tailors, embroiderers, and sempstresses. There might be seen many a shadowy form gliding about from apartment to apartment, with smiling looks and extended shears, or armed with ell-wands more potent than Mercury's road, driving many a poor soul to perdition, and transforming his goodly acres into velvet suits with tags of cloth of gold.

The courts of the king's palace of Bridewell rang from morning till night with the neighing of steeds, the clanking of harness, and the sound of the trumpet; and the shops and warehouses of London were nearly emptied of gold, jewels, and brocade. Men and women were all wild to outdo their French equals in splendour and display; and, in short, the mad dog of extravagance seemed to have bitten all the world.

In a small room in the palace, not far from the immediate apartments of the queen, sat a very lovely girl, whom the reader has not spoken to for a long time: no other than Lady Katrine Bulmer, who, with a more pensive air than was usual with her, sat deep in the mysteries of bibs and tuckers, chaperons and fraisies, mantuas and hanging sleeves, which last had, for the moment, regained their ascendancy in the public taste, and were now ornamented with more extraordinary trimmings than ever.

By her side sat her two women, Geraldine and Bridget, whose fingers were going with the rapidity of lightning, quickened into excessive haste by the approaching removal of the court to Calais, which was to take place in the short space of one week, while their mistress's dresses were not half-finished, and their own not begun.

What it was that occupied Lady Katrine's thoughts, and made her gay face look grave, is nothing to any one. Perhaps it might be, that she had not as many dresses as Lady Winifred Stanton; perhaps she had seen a jewel that she could not afford to buy; perhaps Higglemeasure, the merchant, had brought her a brocade that the queen would not let her wear; perhaps she was vexed at not having seen Lord Darby for eight days, the last time having been on the same morning that Sir Osborne Maurice had been driven from the court. Perhaps she was angry with herself for having parted from him with an affectation of indifference which she did not feel.

Well aware that, now Wolsey had returned, the pleasure of seeing her lover almost daily must cease; and that stiff and formal interviews, in presence of the whole court, or a few brief sentences at a mask or pageant, were all they could hope to attain; Lady Katrine did indeed repent that she had suffered her own caprices to mingle any bitter in the few happy hours that Fate had sent her.

Though she had some vanity, too, she had not enough to prevent her seeing and regretting that she had been in fault; and she made those resolutions of amendment which a light spirit often forms every hour, and breaks before the next: and thus sewing and thinking, and thinking and sewing, and stitching in excellent determinations with every seam as she went along, she revolved in her own mind all the various events that had lately happened at the court.

It may well be supposed, that the sudden disappearance of Sir Osborne Maurice, at the same time as that of Lady Constance de Grey, had given rise to many strange rumours, none of which, of course, did Lady Katrine believe; and, to do her justice, although perhaps she was not at all sorry that Constance had judged it right to put an end to any further proceedings regarding her marriage with Lord Darby, by removing herself from the court, yet Lady Katrine suffered no one to hint a doubt in her presence regarding her friend's conduct. But that which was much more in Constance's favour was the good word of the queen herself, who at once silenced scandal by saying, that she would take upon herself to assert, that Lady Constance de Grey had never dreamed of flying from the court with Sir Osborne Maurice. It was very natural, she observed, that a young heiress of rank, and wealth, and proud family, should take refuge anywhere, rather than contract a marriage to which she had always expressed her repugnance; and without meaning offence to the lord cardinal, she could not think but that Constance was right.

Notwithstanding this, many were the tales that were circulated by the liemongers of the court; and it hurt the really generous heart of Lady Katrine to hear them. Meditating, then, over all these circumstances, nearly in the same desultory way in which they are here written down, she took little notice when one of the servants of the palace called her maid Geraldine out of the room. After a short while, Geraldine came back and called out Bridget, and still Lady Katrine continued to work on. After a moment or two she ceased, and leaning her head on her hand, gave herself up to still deeper thought, when suddenly the door opened and Lord Darby presented himself.

Too much taken by surprise to give herself any airs, Lady Katrine looked up with a smile of unaffected delight, and Darby, reading his welcome in her eyes, advanced, and casting his arm round her, imprinted a warm kiss on the full arching lips that smiled too temptingly for human philosophy to resist. Luckily did it happen that he did so within the first minute; for, had he waited later, Lady Katrine might not so easily have pardoned his boldness. However, her only remark was, "Well, Darby, you seem to think it so much a matter of course, that I suppose I too must let it pass as such. But don't look so happy, man, lest I should take it into my head to make you look otherwise before you go."

"Nay, nay, Katrine," said Lord Darby; "not so, when I come solely for the purpose of asking you to make me happy."

The earl spoke seriously, tenderly, and there was so much hope, and affection, and feeling in his glance, that Lady Katrine felt there must be some meaning in his words. "If you love me, Darby," cried she, "tell me what you mean; and make haste, for my maids will be back, and you know you must not stay here."

"Yes, I may, Katrine," replied he; "no one but you can now send me away. In a word, dear girl, to put an end to suspense, I have the king's and the cardinal's consent to ask your hand, and the queen's to seek you here. Will you refuse me?"

Lady Katrine looked at him for a moment, to be sure, quite sure, that what she heard was true; then dropping her head upon his shoulder, she burst into a violent flood of tears. So sudden, so delightful was the change in all her feelings, that she was surprised out of all her reserve, all her coquetry, and could only murmur, "Refuse you? no!" But starting up, at length she cried, "I have a great mind that I will, too. Don't think that I love you. No, I hate you most bitterly for making me cry: you did it on purpose, beyond doubt, and I won't forgive you easily. So, to begin your punishment, go away and leave me directly."

"Nay, Katrine, I must disobey," replied the earl, "for I have other news to tell you: your relation, Lord Orham, is dead."

"My relation?" cried Lady Katrine, whose tears were ever dried as soon as shed. "Oh, yes! I remember: he was my great-grandfather's seventieth cousin by the mother's side. One was descended from Shem, and the other from Japheth, in the time of the flood, or before, for aught I know. Well, what of my antediluvian relative? Oh! he is dead, you say? May he rest with Noah!"

"But you must take mourning for him," said Lord Darby, laughing; "indeed you must."

"Certainly," replied Lady Katrine: "a coif and a widow's hood. But I won't be teased, Darby: I will tease everybody, and nobody shall tease me. As to going into mourning for the old miser just now, when all my finery is ready made, to show myself at Guisnes and captivate all hearts, and make you fight fifty single combats--I won't do it. There, go and ask my singing-bird to moult in the month of May, or anything else of the same kind; but don't ask me to leave one single row of lace off my sleeve for the miser. I disown him."

"Hush! hush! hush!" cried the earl; "take care he does not come back and disown you, for otherwise you are his heiress."

"I!" exclaimed Lady Katrine; "am I his heiress? Now, Mistress Fortune, I am your very humble servant! Bless us! how much more important a person Katrine Bulmer will be, with all the heavy coffers of her late dear cousin, than when she was poor Katrine Bulmer, the queen's woman! Darby, I give you notice: I shall not marry you. I could wed a duke now, doubtless: who shall it be? All the dukes have wives, I do believe. However, there is many a peer richer than you are, and though you do not count cousinship with kings, gold is my passion now; so I will sell myself to him who has the most."

Though she spoke in jest, still Lord Darby was mortified; for what he could have borne and laughed at in the poor and fortuneless girl who had captivated his heart, his spirit was too proud to endure where a mercenary motive could be for a moment attributed to him. "Nay, Katrine," said he, "if the fortune that is now yours give you any wish for change, your promises are to me null: I render them back to you from this moment."

"Why, they were made under very different circumstances, you must allow, Lord Darby," replied she, assuming a most malicious air of gravity, and delighted at having found, for the first time in her life, the means of putting her lover out of humour.

"They were, Lady Katrine," answered the earl, much more deeply hurt than she imagined, "and therefore they are at an end. I have nothing further to do then but to take my leave."

"Good-bye, my lord; good-bye!" cried she. "Heaven bless and prosper you!" and with the utmost tranquillity she watched him approach the door. "Now, shall I let him go or not?" said she. "Oh woman! woman! you are a great fool! Darby! Darby!" she added in a soft voice, "come back to your Katrine."

Lord Darby turned back and caught her in his arms. "Dear teasing girl!" cried he; "why, why will you strive to wring a heart that loves you?"

"Nay, Darby, if things were rightly stated, it is I who have cause to be offended rather than you," answered the lady. "What right had you, sir, to think that the heart of Katrine Bulmer was so base, so mean, as to be changed by the possession of a few paltry counters? Own that you have done me wrong this instant, or I will never forgive you. Down upon your knee! a kneeling confession, or you are condemned beyond hope of grace."

Lord Darby was fain to obey his gay lady's behest, and bending his knee, he freely confessed himself guilty of all the crimes she thought proper to charge him withal; in the midst of which, however, he was interrupted by the entrance of an attendant sent by the queen to call Lady Katrine to her presence.

The lady laughed and blushed at being found with Lord Darby at her feet; and the earl, not particularly well pleased at the interruption, turned to the usher, saying, with the sort of nonchalant air which he often assumed, "Well, sir, before you go, tell the lady when it was you last found me on my knees to any of the fair dames of the court."

"Never, my lord, so please you, that I know of," answered the man, somewhat surprised.

"Well, then," rejoined Darby, "next time knock at the door, for fear you should. In which case, you might chance to be thrown down stairs by the collar."

"Hush, hush, Darby!" cried Lady Katrine; "I must go to her highness. Doubtless we shall not meet again for a long while; so fare you well!" and tripping away after the usher, without other adieu, she left her lover to console himself in her absence as best he might.

On entering the queen's apartment, she found her royal mistress alone with the king, and, according to the etiquette of that day, was drawing back instantly, when Katherine called her forward. "Come hither, my wild namesake," said the queen; "his grace the king wishes to speak with you. Come near, and answer him all his questions."

Lady Katrine advanced, and kneeling on a velvet cushion at Henry's feet, prepared to reply to whatever he might ask, with as much propriety as she could command; although the glad news of the morning had raised her spirits to a pitch of uncontrollable joyousness, which even the presence of the imperious monarch himself could hardly keep within bounds.

"Well, my merry mistress," said the king, seeing in her laughing eyes the ebullition of her heart's gladness; "it seems that you do not pine yourself to death for the loss of Sir Osborne Maurice?"

"I deeply regret, your grace," said Lady Katrine, turning grave for a moment, "most deeply, that Sir Osborne Maurice should have incurred your royal displeasure; for he seemed to me as perfect a knight and as noble a gentleman as I ever saw. But in no other respect do I regret his absence."

"Well, we have tried to supply his place with one you may like better," said Henry. "Have you seen the Earl of Darby--ha? What think you of the exchange, pretty one?"

"I thank your grace's bounty," said the gay girl. "I have seen his lordship, and looked at him well; and though he be neither so handsome as Narcissus nor so wise as Solon, he may do well enough for such a giddy thing as I am. Saving your grace's presence, one does not look for perfection in a husband: one might as well hope to find a pippin without a spot."

"Thou art a malapert chit, Kate," said the queen, laughing; "sure I am, if your royal lord was not right gentle in his nature, he would be angry with your wild chattering."

"Nay, let her run on," said the king; "a tongue like hers has no guile. If you are contented, sweetheart," he added, addressing Lady Katrine, "that is enough."

"Oh, yes! quite contented, your grace," answered she. "I have not had a new plaything for so long, that a husband is quite a treat. I suppose he must be sent to the manège first, like the jennet your highness gave me, to learn his paces."

"If he were as untamed as you are, mistress," answered the king, "he might need it. But to another subject, fair one. You were with Sir Osborne Maurice and his party when he encountered the rioters near Rochester. Some sad treasons are but too surely proved against that luckless young man; yet I would fain believe that his misconduct went not to the extent which was at first reported, especially as the accusation was made by that most ruffianly traitor, Sir Payan Wileton, whom the keen eye of my zealous Wolsey has discovered to be stained with many crimes too black for words to paint. Now, amongst other things, it was urged that this Sir Osborne was in league with those Rochester mutineers, the greatest proof of which was their letting him quietly pass with so small a party, when they boldly attacked the company of Lord Thomas Howard, with ten times the force."

Lady Katrine could hardly wait till the king had ceased. "This shows," cried she at length, "how the keenest wisdom and the noblest heart may be abused by a crafty tale. Sir Osborne knew nothing of the rioters, my lord: he took every way to avoid them, because I, unluckily, having neither father nor brother to protect me, encumbered him by my presence; otherwise, without doubt, he would have delivered the poor priest they had with them by his lance, and not by fair words. Never believe a word of it, your grace. His shield-bearer, indeed, while the knight drew up his men to defend us to the best of his power, recognised the leader of the tumultuaries as an old fellow-soldier, and craved leave of his lord to go and demand a free passage for us, by which means we escaped. Oh! my lord, as you are famous for your clemency and justice, examine well the whole tale of that Sir Payan Wileton, and it will be found false and villanous, as are all the rest of his actions."

"You are eloquent, lady fair," said the king with a smile; "we will tell Darby to look to it. But as to Sir Payan Wileton, his baseness is now known to us; and as we progress down to Dover, we will send a sergeant-at-arms to bring him with us to Calais, where we will, with our council, hear and judge the whole. Then, if he be the man we think him, not only shall he restore to the old Lord Fitzbernard the lordship of Chilham and the stewardship of Dover, but shall stoop his head to the axe without grace or pardon, as I live. But say, know you aught of Lady Constance de Grey, in whose secrets you are supposed to have had a share? Laugh not, pretty one; for by my life it shall go hard with you if you tell not the truth."

"Oh, please your grace, don't have my head cut off!" cried Lady Katrine, seeing, notwithstanding the king's threat, that he was in one of his happier moods. "I never told a lie in my life, except one day when I said I did not love your highness, and that was when you put off the pageant of the Castle Dolorous till after pentecost, and I wanted it directly. But on my word, as I hope to be married in a year, and a widow in God's good time, I know no more of where Constance de Grey is, or whither she went, or when, or how, than the child unborn."

"Did she never speak to you thereof, my saucy mistress?" demanded Henry. "You consorted with her much: 'twere strange if she did not let something fall concerning her purposes, and she a woman, too."

"I wish I had a secret," said Lady Katrine, half-apart, half-aloud, "just to show how a woman can keep counsel, if it were but in spite. Good, your grace," she continued, "you do not think that Constance would trust her private thoughts to such a light-headed thing as I am. But, to set your highness's mind at ease, I vow and protest, by the love and duty I bear to you and my royal mistress; by my conscience, which is tender; and by my honour, which is strong; that I know nothing of Lady Constance de Grey, and that even in my very best imaginings I cannot divine whither she is gone."

"Your highness may believe her," said the queen; "wild as she is, she would not stain her lips with the touch of falsehood, I am sure. Get ye gone, Kate, and hasten your sempstresses, for we shall set out a day before it was intended; and mind you plume up your brightest feathers, for we must outdo the Frenchwomen."

"Oh, good, your grace! I shall never be ready in time," replied the young lady. "Besides, they tell me I must put on mourning for my fiftieth cousin by the side of Adam, old Lord Orham the miser. If I do, it shall be gold crape trimmed with cobwebs, I declare; and so I humbly take my leave of both your graces."

Thus saying, she rose from the cushion, dropped a low curtsey to the king and queen, and tripped away to her own apartments.

Common bustle and ordinary preparation may be easily imagined. All can, without difficulty, figure to themselves the turmoil preparatory to a ball where there are six daughters to marry, with much blood and very little money: the lady-mother scolding the housekeeper in her room, and the housekeeper scolding all the servants in hers; a reasonable number of upholsterers, decorators, floor-chalkers, confectioners, milliners; much talking to very little purpose; scheming, drilling, and dressing; agitation on the part of the young ladies, and calculation on the part of their mamma. And at the end of a few weeks the matter is done and over. But no mind, however vast may be its powers of conceiving a bustle, can imagine anything like the court of Westminster for the three days prior to the king's departure for Canterbury.

So continual were the demands upon every kind of artisan, that the impossibility of executing them threw several into despair. One tailor, who is reported to have undertaken to furnish fifty embroidered suits in three days, on beholding the mountain of gold and velvet that cumbered his shop-board, saw, like Brutus, the impossibility of victory, and, with Roman fortitude, fell on his own shears. Three armourers are said to have been completely melted with the heat of their furnaces; and an unfortunate goldsmith swallowed molten silver to escape the persecutions of the day.

The road from London to Canterbury was covered during one whole week with carts and waggons, mules, horses, and soldiers; and so great was the confusion, that marshals were at length stationed to keep the whole in order, which of course increased the said confusion a hundred fold. So many were the ships passing between Dover and Calais, that the historians affirm they jostled each other on the sea, like a herd of great black porkers; and it is known as a fact, that the number of persons collected in the good town of Calais was more than it could lodge; so that not only the city itself, but all the villages round about, were full to the overflowing.

At length the king set out, accompanied by an immense train, and left London comparatively a desert; while, as he went from station to station, he seemed like a shepherd driving all the better classes of the country before him, and leaving not a single straggler behind. His farther progress, however, was stayed for a time at Canterbury, by the news that the emperor Charles, his wife's nephew, was on the sea before Dover, furnished with the excuse of relationship for visiting the English king, though in reality conducted thither solely by the wish to break the good understanding of the English and French monarchs; or rather to ensure that no treaty contrary to his interest should be negotiated at the approaching meeting.

With that we have nothing to do; and it is a maxim which a historian should always follow, never to mind anybody's business but his own. We shall therefore only say, that the king and Wolsey, occupied with the reception of the emperor, and his entertainment during the short time he stayed, forgot entirely Sir Payan Wileton till they reached Dover, when some one happening to call it a chilly morning, put Chilham Castle in Wolsey's head (for on such little pivots turn all the wheels of the world); and immediately a sergeant-at-arms, with a body of horse-archers, was sent to arrest the worthy knight and bring him to Calais, for which port the king and the whole court embarked immediately; and, with a fair wind and fine sky, arrived in safety towards the evening.