The house of the wizard

It was dusk; the shadows were folding thickly about the gloomy walls of Kimbolton. In the queen’s drawing-room Betty Carew sat alone, a solitary taper burning on the table beside her, while she mechanically turned the leaves of the illuminated missal, her thoughts being far away. The queen had been ill for some days; she was able to sit up, but kept her own chamber. Below, in the apartments of Bedingfield, were two gentlemen from the privy council, and with them, as Betty knew, the Marquis of Exeter. Something had happened; what, the young girl scarcely divined. The three visitors had arrived almost at daybreak, and at noon there had been a stormy interview in Catherine’s room, from which Mistress Carew was excluded. After it was over, the queen was in more distress than Betty had ever seen her; she even wept, and called passionately for her daughter,—an unusual outbreak, followed by a season of exhaustion. She was reported now to be asleep, her three favorite attendants watching her, while the youngest of all sat like an outcast and a spy in the outer room. There had been much secret dealing of late, Betty knew, and she felt that they were careful to shut her out, ever suspicious of her motives. That day, she had heard Exeter remonstrate with Bedingfield on the mean state of the household and on the queen’s poor attendance; and Sir Edmund replied that he must even obey his orders, and that as for state, he had no money, and the council allowed none to support the princess dowager.

“Poor lady!” Exeter said, “there is little need of all this watch and ward; if I be not mistaken, there cometh soon a guest which no bars shall keep out and no privy council examine.”

“Ay, so it looks,” Bedingfield replied, “and yet I know not; she hath been ailing long, but seems to fight her malady as steadfastly as she did the divorce.”

“A gallant heart,” my lord of Exeter replied, “but she will die. Her eye looks it and her dull and yellowish hue betrays it. ’Tis no place here either to stir the laggard blood in her veins; she is a Spaniard, and this sharp weather suits her as little as our northern temperaments. The end of a great sorrow draweth nigh.”

So spoke the marquis, and Betty, hearing him, felt a chill at her heart. The gloomy life had weighed upon her, and she fell often into meditations which were full of dim foreboding. The wizard’s tale had stolen into her brain and found a lodgment there, and she dreaded something, what she knew not. Youth is fanciful, and sees either a flood of sunshine on the path or a thick cloud. While the shadows without lengthened into night, Betty sat alone; and then there was a soft footfall behind her, and Patience came to summon her to the queen. Something in the woman’s face betrayed that the call was unusual, and Mistress Carew was yet more surprised when she found herself alone with Catherine, who sat propped up in her chair, a rosary in her hands and her black mantilla shading her features even more than usual. The lights were so arranged that her face was in the gloom, and it was impossible to see her expression.

“My visitors are still below, as I hear, Mistress Betty,” she said quietly, “and I would ask you to do an errand for me. Here is a little packet which, I pray you, give my lord of Exeter from the queen. These gentlemen will look askance at my own poor maids, but you, my child, are in favor with the powers that be.”

Betty stood a moment irresolute, her heart beating high. The hour had come for her to show herself worthy of her uncle’s confidence. She could not deceive herself about the packet; it was the same which the wizard had let fall a few weeks before. She was silent, her eyes downcast.

“What ails you, mistress?” cried the queen, sharply; “have you no tongue to answer me?”

“Madam,” replied Betty, her tone faltering ever so slightly, “I may not disobey my instructions.”

“Your instructions!” repeated Catherine, sternly; “from whom—and when?”

Mistress Betty’s cheek was scarlet. How could she speak the truth to this injured woman, although the truth was not to her own discredit? Her embarrassment carried conviction to the queen’s mind, and she was passionately incensed.

“So!” she said, in her coldest and most sarcastic tone, “the dove was but the serpent in disguise. For shame! How could one so young, so seeming innocent, become a tool in the hands of villains? Had you no woman’s heart that you could spy upon and betray a woman—and she your queen? My God! the very babes and sucklings are utterly corrupted, vile traitors and heretics!”

“Madam,” Betty cried, with deep resentment, “you do me bitter wrong! I am no spy, nor would my uncle have sent me to fill so foul an office. I cannot—nay, I will not carry secret missives against my instructions! That would be as deep a treason to this realm as it would be to you did I purpose to betray you.”

“You say ‘I will not’ to your queen?” exclaimed Catherine, harshly; “the saints bear witness that the time was when so saucy a tongue would have been treason. It is well to make fine protests, wench, but ’twill be long ere you find one so foolish as to credit them.”

“For that there is no help, madam,” Betty answered firmly. “I will even tell you the whole truth; my uncle did forbid me to carry any secret missives, or to meddle with these matters, since he bade me remember that the safety of this realm was a greater matter than the sorrows of one woman, albeit she is a queen.”

“Is a queen!” cried Catherine, catching at the words; “thine uncle is a worthy man—an honest man. I am still a queen, it seems, despite the universities and Cranmer! Ah, well, something remains, albeit I can be insulted by a little wench like this one.”

“I do assure your grace,” Betty said, “that I am heartily sorry. I would gladly do any service for your pleasure, but I owe also much to my uncle; I would not lay his head in danger.”

The queen looked at her a moment in silence; something in the sincerity of the young girl’s tone touched her.

“Is it, then, so dangerous to serve the Queen of England?” she asked in a strange voice.

“Madam, the Act of the Succession,” began Betty; but Catherine cut her short.

“Nay,” she said sharply, “speak not of these things; they poison me. Go, wench! I have no need of you—such service is of little pleasure to me.”

Angry, yet touched and wounded by the queen’s reproaches, Betty moved to the door, but there she paused long enough to speak once more.

“I do beseech your grace to believe me,” she said gently. “I would not harm a hair of your royal head—I do indeed think that you are despitefully used, the deepest sympathy for your wrongs is in my heart.”

“I believe you, Mistress Carew,” the queen replied, after a pause, “but those that be not with me are altogether against me. I am weary; I pray you leave me. Though uncrowned, I may claim so much obedience. When you are older, my girl, and broken in health and spirit, I pray no fairer face may steal your husband’s heart. My fate is not so uncommon that it should isolate me; rather, think I, there be many women in England who should weep for me in very sympathy. A man’s heart is like a ship which is ever prone to slip its moorings; look well, mistress, when you have one, that it is stoutly anchored.”

Deeply disturbed and unhappy, Betty Carew left the queen’s room, and going into the gallery beyond, walked to and fro. There was something so desolate in Catherine’s situation, and so merciless were her enemies, that few women could have looked upon her with indifference, and Betty’s heart was not so cold as to resist the appeal. She had often wavered in her allegiance to the king’s party since her arrival at Kimbolton, and being young, was far more likely to be led by her sympathies than her reason. Had Catherine possessed in a greater degree the powers of attraction, she might have won the young girl wholly to her wishes; but the unhappy queen was not rich in nature’s gifts and her austerity was repellent, while her proud reserve in some degree concealed the depth of her own suffering.

Moved though Betty was, she could not bear the packet to the marquis without deliberately violating her pledges to her uncle; and bred as she had been under the new influences of the changed times, she had, too, a horror of meddling with a matter which she knew involved the safety of the realm, threatened, as it was, with a multitude of dangers. While she walked in the gallery, with a heart full of varied emotions, she heard the trampling of horses below, and running to the casement, saw the three guests riding away, and knew that, unless the queen had speedily found another messenger, it was too late.

That night Catherine was very ill, or so her maids gave out, and for two days afterwards no one saw her but her physician and her three chosen attendants. Mistress Betty was not summoned, even to perform any small office, and it touched her sharply to feel how deeply she was distrusted; but after this, there was no time for reflections, for events hurried one upon another. The queen’s condition could not be concealed, and reluctant as her personal attendants were to hold intercourse with the royal officers of the household, Bedingfield was notified of the danger in which she lay.

On New Year’s Day, at about six o’clock, came the queen’s Spanish maid of honor, Lady Willoughby, who had been Donna Maria de Salines. Bedingfield would have refused her admittance, since she had no warrant from the king, but she pleaded with such eloquence the cold and her fatigue that she finally gained her will. Once with Catherine, the Spanish woman never left her, but administered to her comfort to the end. The day after her arrival came also Capucius, the emperor’s ambassador, bearing, however, the king’s permission, though he was not allowed to see the dying queen save in the presence of the royal chamberlain. Bedingfield’s vigilance was defeated, however, for Catherine and Capucius spoke to each other in Spanish, a language which the royal officer understood as little as Hebrew.

Like a gloomy pageant, scene followed scene in this sorrowful drama. The weeping maid of honor, the stately ambassador, the laments of the poor, whom Catherine had ever treated with sympathy and kindness,—all these things made a sad impression on the young girl, who was a reluctant witness of the gloomy closing of a tragic life, nor was she to escape without one more trial. It was after Lady Willoughby’s arrival, and Catherine being very low, every member of the household shared in the service of attendance. Although she had been tacitly exiled from the queen’s presence, Betty was now called upon to go to her apartment, and, Catherine’s attention being attracted by her entrance, she called her to her bedside. The queen’s voice was firm, although her face bore the unmistakable signs of approaching death.

“Come hither, Mistress Carew,” she said; and as Betty obeyed her summons, she turned to Lady Willoughby, who stood on the other side.

“Maria,” she said, “mark you this maid? She is likely to go to court; will she not outshine some stars at Windsor?”

Lady Willoughby glanced in surprise from the queen’s face to Betty’s, and doubtless thinking her royal mistress wandering in mind, replied gently that the maiden was fair enough surely to shine in any court.

“Hark you, my girl,” Catherine said to Betty, a rigid sternness in her face, “I die the Queen of England, the true and lawful wife of the king’s grace. Forget it not.”

She paused, and there was no response. Betty Carew, standing beside her with tears in her eyes, had no words to answer her, and, like Lady Willoughby, believed that her mind wandered.

“Kneel down,” said the queen, solemnly; and both Betty and Donna Maria mechanically obeyed. The room was still, a dim light crept in at the windows, the tapers flared behind the dark canopy of the bed. The attendants stood back in the shadows. Catherine raised herself a little on her pillows and lifted her hands, clasping them before her; her eyes shone with a strange luster in the deadly whiteness of her face.

“His holiness the pope,” she said in a clear voice, “hath declared my marriage valid. I am the wife of Henry, King of England. I do call upon you all to witness; this maid also, who is not of us,—I die the queen! And I do solemnly charge you, at the peril of your souls, to bear in mind that the king has one true and legitimate daughter, the Lady Mary, Princess Royal of England and heiress to the throne.”

She remained a moment with her hands lifted, her face growing more rigid. There was the sound of suppressed sobbing in the room. The queen’s arms fell heavily and she sank back in a deathlike swoon.