Читать книгу The Queens and the Hive - Edith Sitwell - Страница 17

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King Philip had not yet returned to his Palace in Spain, darkened against the coruscations of the many-coloured fires of the sun, and haunted by his ghost-like, black-veiled sister and her constant companion, his little half-mad son. But in Brussels, a martyr to matrimony, he was facing anew the fact that once more he must offer himself as a sacrifice on the altar of his religion and his country.

The news from England had been anything but satisfactory.

From a benevolent wish to guide his sister-in-law, ‘a young untried lass’, as his Ambassador, Count de Feria, described her, he had sent that gentleman, a few days before Queen Mary’s death, to assure the Princess of the King’s continued friendship.

Count de Feria was received, he told his royal master, ‘well, though not so cordially as on former occasions’. He supped with the Princess, Lady Clinton, and three of the Princess’s ladies-in-waiting, Lady Troy, Lady Gard, and Mary Norn.

The Princess declared her pleasure at the Count de Feria’s visit, and spoke of the King with cordiality. But when the Count gave her to understand that she owed the reversion of the Crown to His Majesty’s will, she evinced some surprise.

Shortly before this, two members of the Council had visited her, to inform her that it was ‘the Queen’s intention to bequeath to her the royal crown’. To which she replied: ‘I am very sorry to hear of the Queen’s illness, but there is no reason why I should thank her for her intention of giving me the crown of the realm, for she has neither the power of bestowing it, nor can I lawfully be deprived of it, since it is my peculiar and hereditary right’.

Something of the same kind she conveyed to the Ambassador. The uncomfortable impression made on him by this interview was intensified by his treatment when the new Queen went into residence in London.

You would have thought, would you not, that he would have been given a room in the Palace, and would have received all the Queen’s most secret confidences. Not at all! ‘They run away from me as if I were the devil!’ he told the King. And as for being given a room in the Palace, when he suggested this, the Queen sent a message by the Lord Chamberlain that ‘she was astonished at his wishing such a thing, which had never been granted to the Minister of any Prince. It was done for me during the late Queen’s life because she was the wife of Your Majesty, while she [Queen Elizabeth] was still unmarried’.

The Ambassador, determined not to forgo the wished-for room without a struggle, told Bishop de Quadra, his assistant, to ask Cecil to explain the matter to the Queen. It was for the sake of convenience that he asked to be given a room in the Palace. He was there to serve the Queen in all things, and should be given every facility to do so. (But actually his reason was that the Councillors were lacking in tact. They had formed the trying habit of following the Ambassador whenever he wished to have a private conversation with the Queen. By living in the Palace, he hoped to circumvent them.)

At last, to the utter amazement of the Ambassador and the Bishop, it was explained that his request could not be granted as the Queen was a young unmarried woman and the Ambassador a bachelor!

Astonishing! The Ambassador exclaimed that, though still a bachelor, he was about to be married (to Jane Dormer, one of Queen Mary’s maids of honour). The Ambassador, whose high shoulders looked always as if they had just been shrugged, and were about to be shrugged again, seemed even more cynical than ever.

Things went from bad to worse. He himself was, as he complained to the King, ‘nothing but a cypher’. As for the King—‘his voice had no more weight with the Council than if he had never married into the realm. In all likelihood’, he continued, ‘there would be an insurrection, of which the French would take advantage to invade the realm’. Indeed, ‘the realm is in such a state that we could best negotiate sword in hand’.

Spain was determined that England should not come under the influence of France (with whom the war still continued)—still less under French rule.... And there was grave danger of the former happening, without any need for an invasion. The Queen had instructed her Ambassador to tell the King of Spain that France had made advances to her, had proffered a separate peace.

The King of France, that ‘diamond dolphinical dry lecher’, had written congratulating her on her accession, assuring her that he had been and would be her truest friend, and adding that with the death of the late Queen, he trusted the only reason for differences between England and France had gone. The English Ambassador added that he was instructed to say that the Queen would do nothing to injure her alliance with Spain, without a previous warning to the King. But that England had been dragged into war with France against the wishes of her people, and that she would not think it right to refuse an offer made to the advantage of her country.

The King of France had instructed Guido Cavalcanti to say that ‘although Calais was of the ancient patrimony of France and the French would give all their substance to keep it’, yet, ‘where there was a will on both sides, no difficulties were insuperable’.... ‘So long as it was uncertain where the Queen might marry, he might, if he restored it, be opening a door to give his enemies an entrance into his kingdom.’ (To which the Queen replied that, as to Calais falling to Spain, she was of English descent, not Spanish like her sister, and she and her people might be trusted to take care of it. She was good friends with the King of Spain, but not otherwise than was for the good of her people.)

If, the French King told her, the Queen would marry in a quarter from which France had nothing to fear ... an expedient would be found for Calais to the honour of both princes and the satisfaction of their subjects ... while an alliance might be formed between himself, the Dauphin, the Dauphine Mary (who claimed to be Queen of England as of Scotland) and Elizabeth, for a perpetual union of England, France, and Scotland, with a final determination of all quarrels, rights, and pretensions whatever.

This must be prevented at all costs!

The King of Spain instructed his Ambassador to spare no expense in the Palace or outside it, in order to find out the truth of the Queen’s relations with France, the possibilities of a separate peace, etc.

At first, all went splendidly. The new Lord Treasurer, and the new Lord Chamberlain, Lord William Howard, accepted with delight the offer of pensions to be paid them by Spain. What made these acceptances particularly fortunate was that Lord William was to succeed the Earl of Arundel (held by the Ambassador in peculiar detestation) as delegate to the Peace Conference to end the war between Spain and France ... and Lord William would be in the pay of Spain!

The Ambassador suggested that they should have a quiet talk, an invitation that Lord William accepted with alacrity. In the course of the talk, the Ambassador assured him that not only would he receive the pension yearly, but that the King would add to this, each year, a valuable sable coat, the perquisite of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. It gave the King particular pleasure to think of the coat having so worthy a wearer! There was no need—the Ambassador was particularly emphatic on this point—that anybody should know about the transaction: the payment and presents would arrive under cover, through Luis de Paz, a Spanish agent in London.

Lord William was profuse in his thanks, the farewell was cordial in the extreme, and the Ambassador relaxed, and waited for news.

News came—but not of the order the Ambassador had expected. Instead of going straight to the Conference at Château-Cambrécis, Lord William and his train were to stay in Brussels, where the King of Spain was at that time, in order to see him.... Why? The Ambassador was completely in the dark. His spies seemed even more stupid and inept than usual, and could tell him nothing.

The Ambassador, therefore, sent Luis de Paz to Lord William to express his delight at the news. But travelling in state, and entertaining in a suitable manner, were a heavy expense. If Lord William needed ready money, there was Luis de Paz only waiting to give it to him. (Surely this added proof of generosity and thoughtfulness must entangle Lord William even more inextricably in the web of Spain!)

To the Ambassador’s amazement, Howard replied that ‘he was provided with money for the present’, and that ‘hitherto he had done no more than other councillors, and did not require the money’!

It was evident, either that the Lord Chamberlain had taken leave of his senses, or that he had been so indiscreet as to consult somebody, and had received bad advice.

But worse was to come.

The Ambassador was still suffering from shock when he received another and even worse one. The Lord Chamberlain sent a servant to say that he had thought the matter over and had changed his mind. ‘He could not accept what I had offered him previously until he found the Queen’s pleasure in the matter; but now that she had given her consent, he would be glad if I would give him the money.’ So the Ambassador told his King. It was obvious that you could not trust this perfidious race an inch. ‘This is to let your Majesty know’, the Ambassador exclaimed, ‘what sort of people these are!’

Lord William made a sensational attendance at the Peace Conference, where he shouted so loudly that he caused the Constable Montmorency to swear in church.

Disgusted and disillusioned, the Ambassador did not look forward to his next interview with the Queen. The conduct of that ‘young untried lass’ was, however, as usual, unpredictable. With great sweetness of manner she told him there was no objection, as far as she was concerned, to his spending his master’s money in that way if he liked. It would be an economy for her to employ people whose wages were paid by somebody else. She even said, ‘She hoped Your Majesty would not be offended if she, on her side, employed some of the servants you have here’.

De Feria replied that he was sure His Majesty would be delighted. He told the King that he thought the surplus of the money which might, alas, have been so usefully expended, had better be distributed among the loyal Bishops in the Tower, rather than ‘on these renegades who have sold their God and the honour of their country!’

And yet, in spite of this, in spite of the fact that she had refused him a room in the Palace, it was obvious to the Ambassador that the Queen had changed from her former cold attitude to him. She told him gossip, invited him to plays. She undoubtedly, he thought, enjoyed her conversations with him. (There, he was right!) She now consulted him about everything, listened to his advice with a countenance of the most flattering attention, agreed to follow it—and it was, of course, only due to accident that she never by any chance did so. The look she turned upon him was of the utmost innocence. She enjoyed, particularly, their theological discussions, and, sighing, said that she wished that religion had played a larger part in her upbringing. He sent her books on the subject, which, she assured him, were of the greatest profit to her.

But strangely enough, they did not influence her behaviour. The truth of the matter was, as he realised, that the ‘young untried lass’s’ stupidity was the cause of these strange discrepancies between her conversation and her conduct!

But the lightning changes from day to day—each day bringing some scheme more impossible than the last—were beginning to tell on the Ambassador’s nerves. It was impossible to foresee what she would say or do next. He feared that she would ‘marry for caprice’. This would be fatal. He must ‘get in a few words about it’. He did, and often. Each time that he did so, the Queen listened with a pretty air of deference. She had, she said, been about to consult him. She had practically made up her mind to marry So-and-so—in every case someone who was obviously out of the question. What did the Ambassador think? The Ambassador gave full rein to his eloquence. From time to time, leaning back in her chair of state with its shining cover of peacocks’ feathers sewn together, she would shield her face with her hand, as if dazzled by so much brilliance. Once, from behind the hand, came a slight sound, gone almost as soon as heard. The Queen, perhaps, had caught her breath? Perhaps. The next moment, the hand was withdrawn, and the young, serious face, the candid eyes, regarded him. Sighing, she declared he had convinced her. But next day she consulted him about marrying somebody even more impossible.

The Ambassador was in despair. The Queen seemed determined on her own ruin. And as for her obstinacy! And yet ... ‘She seems to me’, he wrote, ‘incomparably more feared than her sister, and gives her orders and has her way as absolutely as her father did.’

This was true. ‘Che grandezza!’ an Italian onlooker observed, as she—then an old woman—walked by. That grandezza had been with her from the beginning. And the Houses of Parliament, to their astonishment, were soon to know what lay in that heart of fire, that temper of the finest steel, that man’s brain in a woman’s body. She ruled Parliament as her father had done, spoke to them as a King, not as a woman. When, years afterwards, the Commons thought to force her to marry by including her promise to do so in their subsidy book, she said to them: ‘I know no reason why my private answers to the realm should serve for prologue to a subsidy book; neither yet do I understand why such audacity should be used to make, without my licence, an act of my words’. Then in the same session of Parliament she said: ‘Let this my discipline stand you in stead of sorer strokes, never to tempt too far a prince’s patience, and let my comfort pluck up your dismayed spirits, and cause you think that ... you return with your prince’s grace, whose care for you, doubt you not to be such as she shall not need a remembrancer for your weal’. And, turning to Bacon, she said, ‘My Lord Keeper, you will do as I bid you’. Bacon said, ‘The Queen’s Majesty dissolves this parliament. Let every man depart at his pleasure.’

They feared and loved her.

As for her people: she who, many years after, wrote a Latin prayer in her prayer-book, the last words of which, translated by Frederick Chamberlin, are ‘Give to me, the Queen, Thy commands, that I may judge Thy people in justice, and Thy poor in understanding’, was already, at the beginning of her reign, beloved by them. She could say of their love then, as she said to the French Ambassador when she was an old woman, ‘It seems incredible, and I love them no less, and I can say that I would rather die than see any diminution of it on one side or the other’.

The unfortunate Spanish Ambassador was soon to find, as Parliament found, that she had inherited King Henry’s temper. ‘I have’, she said, ‘the heart of a man, not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything.’ And, years later, ‘I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the Kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the House of Guise, and all their confederates’.

It was useless for the King of Spain to urge him to terrify the young untried lass with the Dauphine Mary’s claim to the throne, or with the Pope.

What was to be done? ... Perhaps even better than that Spain should ‘negotiate sword in hand’, would be the Queen’s immediate marriage to a prince who could be ruled by Philip—his cousin, the landless Philibert of Savoy, perhaps? ... But he had already been suggested and refused, before her accession.

‘If she marry out of her own realm’, the Ambassador wrote, ‘may she place her eyes upon Your Majesty.’