The Shadow of the Pomegranate Page 4

  “I will see Sir William,” she told the maid, “but you should remain in the room. It is not seemly that I should be alone with him.”

  The maid brought in Sir William and then retired to a corner of the room, where she occupied herself by tidying the contents of a sewing box.

  “Welcome, Sir William,” said Anne. “I pray you be seated. Then you can comfortably tell me your business.”

  Compton sat down and surveyed the woman. Voluptuous, provocative, she certainly was. A ripe plum, he thought, ready enough to drop into greedy royal hands.

  “Madam,” said Compton, “you are charming.”

  She dimpled coquettishly. “Is that your own opinion, or do you repeat someone else’s?”

  “It is my own—and also another’s.”

  “And who is this other?”

  “One whose name I could not bring myself to mention.”

  She nodded.

  “You have been watched, Madam, and found delectable.”

  “You make me sound like a peach growing on a garden wall.”

  “Your skin reminds me—and another—of that fruit, Madam. The peaches on the walls are good this year—warm, luscious, ripe for the plucking.”

  “Ah yes,” she answered. “Do you come to me with a message?”

  Compton put his head on one side. “That will come later. I would wish to know whether you would be prepared to receive such a message.”

  “I have an open mind, Sir William. I do not turn away messengers. I peruse their messages; but I do not always agree to proposals.”

  “You are wise, Madam. Proposals should always be rejected unless they are quite irresistible.”

  “And perhaps even then,” she added.

  “Some proposals would be irresistible to any lady; then it would be wise to accept them.”

  She laughed. “You keep company with the King,” she said. “What is this new song he has written?”

  “I will teach it to you.”

  “That pleases me.” She called to her maid and the girl put down the box and hurried forward. “My lute,” said Anne. And the girl brought it.

  “Now,” went on Anne.

  Compton came close to her and they sang together.

  When they stopped he said: “I shall tell the King that you sang and liked his song. It may be that His Grace would wish you to sing for him. Would that delight you?”

  She lowered her eyelids. “I should need some time to practice. I would not wish to sing before His Grace until I had made sure that my performance could give the utmost satisfaction to him…and to myself.”

  Compton laughed.

  “I understand,” he murmured. “I am sure your performance will give the utmost pleasure.”

  * * *

  ANNE WAS PASSING through an anteroom on her way from an interview with her sister. She was feeling annoyed. Elizabeth had been very severe. She had heard that Sir William Compton had visited Anne on several occasions and such conduct, she would have Anne know, was unseemly in a Stafford.

  “I was never alone with him,” Anne protested.

  “I should hope not!” retorted Elizabeth. “Do behave with more decorum. You must keep away from him in future. The Queen would be displeased if she knew; and what of your husband? Have you forgotten that you are a married woman?”

  “I have been twice married to please my family, so I am scarcely likely to forget.”

  “I am glad,” replied Elizabeth primly.

  Anne was thinking of this as she hurried through the rooms. The Queen would be displeased! She laughed. Indeed the Queen would be displeased if she knew the true purpose of Sir William’s visits. Perhaps soon she would be ready for that encounter with the King, and once that had taken place she was sure that Queen Katharine’s influence at Court would be a little diminished. There would be a new star, for Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon, would be of greater importance even than her brother, the Duke of Buckingham.

  As she came into an anteroom a woman rose from a stool and came hurriedly towards her.

  “My lady Huntingdon.” The voice was low and supplicating, and vaguely familiar. The accent was foreign and easily recognizable as Spanish since there had been so many Spaniards at Court. This was a very beautiful woman. “You do not know me,” she said.

  “I know your face. Were you a lady-in-waiting to the Queen?”

  “I was, before she was Queen. My name is Francesca de Carceres and I am now the wife of the Genoese banker, Francesco Grimaldi.”

  “I do remember,” said Anne. “You ran away from Court a few months before the Queen’s marriage.”

  “Yes,” said Francesca and her lovely face hardened. She had schemed for power; she had imagined that one day she would be the chief confidante of the Queen; but the Queen had been surrounded by those whom Francesca looked upon as her enemies, and in despair Francesca had run away from Court to become the wife of the rich and elderly banker.

  Her banker was ready to lavish his fortune upon her, but it was not jewels and fine garments which Francesca wanted; it was power. She realized that fully, now that she had lost her place at Court; and she cursed herself for a fool because she had run away two months before Henry had announced his intention to marry Katharine. Had she waited two months longer, as one of Katharine’s ladies-in-waiting, as a member of one of the noble families of Spain, she would have been given a husband worthy of her background; she would have remained in the intimate circle of the Queen.

  Having lost these things Francesca now realized how much they meant to her, and she presented herself at Court in the hope of getting an audience with Katharine, but Katharine had so far declined to see her. Francesca had been a troublemaker; she had quarreled with Katharine’s confessor, Fray Diego Fernandez; she had intrigued with Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida who had been the Spanish ambassador at the time and whose arrogance and incompetence had aroused Katharine’s indignation and had resulted in his being sent back to Spain.

  Moreover in Katharine’s eyes Francesca had committed the unforgivable sin of marrying a commoner, and she wished her former maid of honor to know that there was no longer a place at Court for her.

  But Francesca was not one to give way lightly; and she was constantly to be seen in anterooms, hoping for a glimpse of the Queen that she might put her case to her and plead eloquently for that for which she so much longed.

  Francesca now said eagerly: “I wonder if you could say a word in my favor to Her Grace the Queen.”

  “You mistake me for my sister,” Anne answered. “It is she who is in the service of Her Grace.”

  “And you…are in the service of…?”

  Anne smiled so roguishly that Francesca was immediately alert.

  “I am the younger sister,” said Anne. “My brother and sister think me of little account.”

  “I’ll warrant they’re wrong.”

  Anne shrugged her shoulders. “That may well be,” she agreed.

  “The Queen has changed since her marriage,” went on Francesca. “She has grown hard. There was a time, when she lived most humbly in Durham House and I waited on her. Then she would not have refused an audience to an old friend.”

  “She disapproved strongly of your marriage; she is very pious and surrounds herself with those of the same mind.”

  Francesca nodded.

  “My sister is one of them. I have just received a letter on the lightness of my ways, when all I did was to receive a gentleman—one of the King’s gentlemen—in the presence of my maid.”

  “It is natural,” said Francesca slyly, “that the Queen’s friends should be disturbed when a gentleman of the King’s household visits a lady as beautiful as yourself…on the King’s orders.”

  “But I did not say…,” began Anne, and then she burst into laughter. She went on incautiously: “She is indeed so much older than he is, so much more serious. Is it to be wondered at?”

  “I do not marvel,” replied Francesca. “And, Lady Huntingdon, if ever you sh
ould find yourself in a position to ask favors, would you remember that I have a desire to return to Court?”

  Anne’s eyes gleamed. It was a glorious thing to be asked such favors; the power of the King’s mistress would be infinite.

  She bowed her head graciously.

  “I would be your friend for evermore,” murmured Francesca.

  Anne laughed lightly and said: “I shall not forget you.”

  She walked on as though she were a Queen instead of a potential King’s mistress.

  Little fool! thought Francesca. If she ever does reach the King’s bed she will not stay there long.

  There was a constricted feeling in Francesca’s throat which was the result of bitterness. She was the most unfortunate of women. She had endured all the years of hardship as Katharine’s friend; and then two months before the coming of power and glory she had run away to Grimaldi—she, who longed to live her life in an atmosphere of Court intrigue, whose great delight was to find her way through the maze of political strategy.

  She went back to the luxurious house where she lived with her rich husband.

  He watched her with a certain sadness in his eyes. To him she was like some gorgeous bird which had fluttered into the cage he had prepared for her and was now longing to escape.

  She was so young and so beautiful, but lately the lines of discontent had begun to appear on her brow.

  “What luck?” he asked.

  “None. When do I ever have luck? She will not receive me. She will never forgive me for marrying you. I have heard that she thinks I did it to cover up a love affair with Fuensalida. Our Queen cannot understand a noblewoman’s marrying a commoner except to avoid a great scandal. Fuensalida was of a family worthy to match my own.”

  “And I am a vulgar commoner,” sighed Grimaldi.

  Francesca looked at him, her head on one side. Then she smiled and going to him she took his head in her hands and laid her lips lightly on the sparse hair. She loved power and he gave her power over him. He would do anything to please her.

  “I married you,” she answered.

  He could not see her mouth, which had twisted into a bitter line. I married him! she thought. And in doing so I brought about my exile from the Court. It was so easy to offend. She thought of the frivolous Anne Stafford who was hoping—so desperately hoping—to begin a love affair with the King.

  Then she smiled slowly. Such a woman would never keep her place for more than a night or two. Francesca could not place herself on the side of such a woman; and if it was going to be a matter of taking sides there would be another on which she could range herself.

  If Katharine were grateful to her, might she not be ready to forgive that unfortunate marriage?

  * * *

  KATHARINE WAS on her knees praying with her confessor, Fray Diego Fernandez, and the burden of her prayer was: Let me bear a son.

  Fray Diego prayed with her and he comforted her. He was a young man of strong views and there had been certain rumors, mainly circulated by his enemies, the chief of whom was the ambassador Fuensalida with whom he had clashed on more than one occasion; and another was Francesca de Carceres who had been convinced, first that he was preventing her returning to Spain and, now that she was married and exiled from Court, that he was preventing her being received again.

  The pugnacious little priest was the kind to provoke enemies; but Katharine trusted him; indeed in those days, immediately before her marriage, when she had begun to despair of ever escaping from the drab monotony of Durham House, and had discovered the duplicity of her duenna, Doña Elvira, and the stupidity of her father’s ambassador, Fuensalida, she had felt Fray Diego to be her only friend.

  Katharine was not likely to forget those days; her memory was long and her judgment inflexible. If she could not forgive her enemies, she found it equally difficult to forget her friends.

  Fuensalida had been sent back to Spain; Francesca had proved her treachery by deserting her mistress and escaping to marriage with the banker; but Fray Diego remained.

  She rose from her knees and said: “Fray Diego, there are times when I think that you and Maria de Salinas are the only part of Spain that is left to me. I can scarcely remember what my father looks like; and I have almost as little esteem for our present ambassador as I had for his predecessor.”

  “Oh, I do not trust Don Luis Caroz either, Your Grace,” said the priest.

  “I cannot think why my father sends such men to represent him at the English Court.”

  “It is because he knows his true ambassador is the Queen herself. There is none who can do his cause more good than his own daughter; and none more wise or understanding of the English.”

  Katharine smiled tenderly. “I have been blessed in that I may study them at the closest quarters…singularly blessed.”

  “The King is full of affection towards Your Grace, and that is a matter for great rejoicing.”

  “I would I could please him, Fray Diego. I would I could give him that which he most desires.”

  “And is there any sign, Your Grace?”

  “Fray Diego, I will tell you a secret, and secret it must be, for it is as yet too soon to say. I believe I may be pregnant.”

  “Glory be to the saints!”

  She put her fingers to her lips. “Not a word, Fray Diego. I could not endure the King’s disappointment should it not be so. You see, if I told him he would want to set the bells ringing; he would tell the entire Court…and then…if it were not so…how disappointed he would be!”

  Fray Diego nodded. “We do not wish Caroz to prattle of the matter.”

  “Indeed no. Sometimes I wonder what he writes to my father.”

  “He writes of his own shrewdness. He believes himself to be the greatest ambassador in the world. He does not understand that Your Grace prepared the way for him. He does not know how you continually plead your father’s cause with the King.”

  “I do not see it as my father’s cause, Fray Diego. I see it as friendship between our two countries. I would have perfect harmony between them, and I believe we are working towards it.”

  “If Caroz does not ruin everything, it may well be. He is such an arrogant man that he does not know that Your Grace’s father sent him to England because he had sufficient wealth to pay his own way.”

  “Ah, my father was always careful with the gold. He had to be. There were so many calls upon it.”

  “He and the late King of England were a pair. The King, your husband, is of a different calibre.”

  Katharine did not say that her husband’s extravagance sometimes gave her anxiety; she scarcely admitted it to herself. Henry VII had amassed a great fortune, and once his successor had had a surfeit of pleasure he would shoulder his responsibilities and turn his back on it. Katharine often remembered his behavior when the people had robbed him of his jewellery so unexpectedly; and she believed that when he was in danger he would always know how to act. He was a boy as yet—a boy who had escaped from a parsimonious upbringing. He would soon grow tired of the glitter and the gold.

  Fray Diego went on: “Your Grace, Francesca de Carceres was at the Palace today, hoping for an audience.”

  “Did she ask it?”

  “She did and I told her that Your Grace had expressed no desire to see her. She abused me, telling me that it was due to me that you had refused, that I had carried evil tales about her. She is a dangerous woman.”

  “I fear so. She is one who will always scheme. I do not wish to see her. Tell her I regret her marriage as much as she evidently does; but since she made it of her own free will I should admire her more if she were content with the station in life which she herself chose.”

  “That I will do, Your Grace.”

  “And now, Fray Diego, I will join my ladies. And remember I have not even told Doña Maria de Salinas or Lady Elizabeth Fitzwalter of my hopes.”

  “I shall treat it as a secret of the confessional, Your Grace; and I shall pray that ere long the whole Court wi
ll be praying with me that this time there may be an heir who lives.”

  * * *

  FRANCESCA DE CARCERES was furiously angry as she left the Palace. She had always hated Fray Diego Fernandez but never quite so much as she did at this time. She had persuaded herself that it was due to his influence that Katharine would not receive her; and she decided to seek the help of the Spanish ambassador, Don Luis Caroz.

  This was not difficult to arrange, because her husband transacted business for Caroz as he had done for Fuensalida, and the ambassador was a frequent visitor to the Grimaldi household.

  So on his very next visit Francesca detained him and told him that she had news of an intrigue which was taking place at Court and of which she felt he should not be kept in ignorance.

  She then told him that she believed that the King was either conducting, or preparing to conduct, a love affair with Lady Huntingdon.

  The ambassador was horrified. It was essential to Spanish interests that Katharine should keep her influence with the King, and a mistress could mean considerable harm to those interests.

  “The affair must be stopped,” he said.

  “I doubt whether it has begun,” answered Francesca. “The King has been a faithful husband so far, in spite of temptations; but I think he is eager to subdue his conscience and take a mistress. I believe therefore that we should take some action…quickly. The Queen will not see me. Could you approach her, tell her that I have discovered this and am sending the news to her through you? You might hint that if she would see me I could tell her more.”

  The ambassador shook his head. “It would be dangerous to approach the Queen. We cannot be sure what action she would take. She might reproach the King, which could have disastrous results. Nay, this woman has a sister who is in the service of the Queen. We will approach the sister, Lady Fitzwalter. She will almost certainly call in the help of her brother the Duke and I am sure that the proud Staffords would not wish their sister to become the mistress even of the King. They will doubtless realize that the relationship with this rather foolish woman would be of short duration.”