Читать книгу Fanfare for Elizabeth - Edith Sitwell - Страница 5

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The voice of trumpets approached—a dark and threatening sound, that seemed as if it heralded the birth of Fate, or told of some great event that would change the history of mankind. Sometimes the musicians came to a bend in the garden path, and then the sound grew distant again, like the whisper of dry leaves or the memory of an old fairy-tale. That sound told the story of a great King whose country was in danger because his male children did not live, of a wicked stepmother—a witch who through her enchantments became Queen,—and of a young disinherited Princess, who, through the spells of her stepmother, became a goosegirl, or a maid to her little sister. Then the sound changed once again, and told of a gigantic tragedy, of a spiritual upheaval in the history of mankind, a Sophoclean drama of an escape from an imagined or pretended incest cursed by heaven: the tale was of bloodshed and of huge lusts of the flesh and the spirit; of man’s desire for spiritual freedom, and of a great Queen who sacrificed her heart and her life on the altar of her country.

The door that led out of the garden opened—and one saw that it was not the birth of Fate that the trumpets proclaimed, but the birth of a child; a little girl, the centre of this procession. This small red rosebud was the object of all this care and we, with the good and wicked fairies, were invited to the christening.

The procession walked down the garden path strewn with rosemary and green rushes, between the garden walls that have been hung with arras in honour of the event.

“On Sunday last on the eve of Lady Day” (7th September 1533), “about 3 o’clock in the afternoon”, the Imperial Ambassador told the Emperor Charles V, “the King’s mistress was delivered of a girl, to the great disappointment and sorrow of the King, of the Lady herself, and of others of her party, and to the great shame and confusion of physicians, astrologers, witches and wizards, all of whom affirmed that it would be a boy. The people in general have rejoiced in the discomfiture of those who attack faith with such divinations....

“It must be concluded that God has entirely abandoned the King, and left him a prey to his own misfortune, and to his obstinate blindness, that he may be punished and completely ruined.”

The King’s voice was silent now, but since the birth of the child his fury had been terrifying to see and hear: it had raged for three days, breaking from the fires and darkness of his nature.... The child a girl? Was it for this that he had put aside Katherine, his Queen, defied the Emperor and the Pope?

The astrologers, the physicians, had deceived him. Why, a letter had been prepared which, signed by the new Queen, would announce to the Ministers the birth of a Prince. Now to the word ‘Prince’ an S must be added, in the cramped space left for it.

So certain had been the King that heaven was about to grant him his wish for an heir that (wrote the Imperial Ambassador) “he has taken from his treasures one of the richest and most triumphant” (sic) “beds, which was given for the ransome of a Duc d’Alençon. But it was as well for the Lady that it was delivered to her months ago; for she would not have had it now: because, being full of jealousy, and not without cause, she used words to the King which so displeased him that he told her she must shut her eyes and endure as well as more worthy persons; and that she ought to know that it was in his power to humble her again in a moment, more than he had exalted her before.”

Thomas Dekker, after the death of this being whose christening we are about to witness, wrote—“She came in with the fall of the leafe, and went away in the Springe: her life (which was dedicated to Virginitie) both beginning and closing up in a miraculous Mayden circle: for she was born upon a Lady Eve, and died upon a Lady Eve: her Nativitie and Death being memorable for their wonder”.^[12]

Manningham, in his Diary, records that a certain Mr. Rous had said, “The Queen began her raigne in the fall; and ended in the spring of the leafe”. “So she did but turne over a leafe”, said one B. Rudgers.

“The Queen”, wrote Hall, a contemporary historian, “was delivered of a faire ladye at the noble palace of Greenwich”, so named, according to Jovius, Bishop of Nocera, “from the verdure about it”. The room in which the Virgin Queen was born was named “The Chamber of the Virgins”, because the tapestries with which it was hung represented the story of the Wise Virgins; and when the witch-Queen was told that the child was not the saviour of England who had been expected but only a useless girl, she said to the ladies, “They may now, with reason, call this room the Chamber of the Virgins, for a virgin is born in it, on the Vigil of the auspicious day in which the Church commemorates the Nativity of the Virgin Mary”.^[13]

But the King wanted no virgins, blessed or otherwise. What he needed was a son to succeed him, and to save the country from civil war.

The bonfires lit in acclamation of the birth, the shouts of the exultant crowds, were brighter than the fires, louder than the shrieks, of the martyrdoms that were kindled in vindication of Henry’s regency under God, and in homage to Elizabeth, the new-born offspring of that almost supreme being. But Henry knew that the exultation was because of his humiliation, and that of the witch-Queen, Anne Boleyn. Yet the Te Deum was sung in honour of the child’s birth, and the christening, which took place on Wednesday the 10th of September, was as magnificent as if the child had indeed been that saviour of England for whom so much had been dared.

“The Mayor and his brethren,” wrote Hall in his Chronicle, “and forty of the chief of the citizens, were commanded to be at the christening ... upon the which day the Mayor, Sir Stephen Pecocke, in a gowne of Crimson Velvet, ... and all the Aldermen in Scarlet, with collars and chains, and all the council of the city with them, tooke their barge after dinner, at one of the clock ... and so rowed to Greenwich, where were many lords, knights and gentlemen assembled. All the walls between the King’s palace and the Friers, were hanged with arras, and all the way strawed with green Rushes: the Friers Church was also hanged with Arras.

“The Font was of silver and stood in the midst of the Church, three steps high, which was covered with a fine cloth, and divers gentlemen with aprons, and towels about their necks, gave attendance about it. That no filth should come into the Font, over it hung a square Canopy of crimson Satin fringed with gold. Above it was a rail covered with red silk. Between the choir and the body of the Church, was a close place with a pan of fire, to make the child ready in. When all these things were ordered, the child was brought to the hall, and then every man set forward: First the citizens two and two, then Gentlemen, Esquires and Chaplains, next after them the Aldermen, and the Mayor alone: next the Mayor the King’s Council, the King’s Chaplain in cope; then Barons, Bishops, Earls.”

The sun of the late summer glittered on the gold cups frosted with pearls, on the gold trains of the company, so that each being seemed a planet in its splendour. But even at the christening of this child of a great fate, the shadow of a triumph brought about by Death was present.

After the long procession of citizens, who were not to be lost to the sunlight, came Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, bearing the gilt basons.^[14] This magnificent being was the last of his race to bear that title. He was of royal lineage, being descended from Thomas of Woodstock: and to be of royal lineage meant to go through the days and nights in fear. But another fate awaited him from that which he thought watched him from the shade. This “arrogant high hollow fateful rider” was to die, six years after this time, through falling from his horse, and as he had no male heir, his title went from him, and was given by the King to Chief Secretary Cromwell, of the low birth and accommodating conscience.

Next came Henry, Marquis of Dorset, the unfortunate father of Lady Jane Grey. The shadow lay further from him, but it was darker. His eldest daughter was to lose her head because he had plotted to place the Crown upon it. His own life was spared, but only for a while, for shortly after he was to be beheaded because he had taken up arms in the Wyatt rebellion.

He was followed by one whose doom had an equal darkness, but not an equal splendour—Henry Courtney, Marquis of Exeter, who carried the taper of virgin wax. This great nobleman had the misfortune to be very near the throne, since his mother was a daughter of Edward IV. But at this time he could not see the shade. The King his cousin, after setting aside his daughter Mary, and his sisters, had declared him heir to the throne after Elizabeth. But the shade was waiting, was near him; although he had not expected it—for it was only a question of which way the light of the sun should fall. In November 1538 Exeter and his wife were sent to the Tower: on the 10th of December he was beheaded; his estates and honours were forfeited, and his son, though a child, was imprisoned in the Tower.

Next came the shy, modest young figure of Lady Mary Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, bearing the chrism. This terrible creature, with the peacefully smiling lips, the head bent through modesty, was to help bring about the death by beheading of her own brother, the young Earl of Surrey, the poet.... She was, at the time of the christening, about to marry the King’s bastard son, the young Duke of Richmond, and after her husband’s death this young girl, the familiar friend of her father’s mistress, Bess Holland, for whose sake the half-mad, termagant Duchess of Norfolk had been discarded, accused her brother of advising her to try to lure her father-in-law the King into making her his mistress, in order that she and her family might gain power over him. This accusation, horrifying the King, sealed the doom of Surrey, who had already been attainted for using a version of the royal arms.

The baby Princess, swaddled in a mantle of purple velvet, with a long train furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, her step-great-grandmother. On this old woman darkness was to fall through her part in marrying the guilty Katherine Howard to the King.

The other godmother at the christening was the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset. Fate was to spare her old head, but three of her four sons, and her granddaughter Lady Jane Grey, were to die on the scaffold, and her remaining son was to end his life as a prisoner, in the reign of Elizabeth, for the fault of distributing a pamphlet asserting the right of his line to the throne.

The procession advanced, with the first godmother holding the child, the small red rosebud, in the centre. On either side of these walked the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. The fates of these two men were entirely opposite. The Duke of Suffolk, alone among Henry’s favourites, kept his favour. Even his marriage to the King’s sister Mary^*, the widowed Queen of France, did not endanger him, but he did not live to see the mournful fates of his younger granddaughters, the children of his daughter Lady Dorset, in the reign of Elizabeth.... The Duke of Norfolk, however, was powerful enough to raise Henry’s fear that the peace of his own son’s reign might be disturbed by the Duke, and no memory of his unvarying fidelity could remove that fear.... As the King lay dying, he condemned his old and faithful servant to the scaffold. But then, for the first time, Henry’s will was not absolute. The dying King was disobeyed. During the reign of Henry’s son, however, the Duke was kept prisoner, to reappear for a short time, restored to his old splendour, in the reign of Mary.

The train of the baby was borne, on one side, by Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, her grandfather: father to a Queen Consort, and grandfather to a future sovereign. But he was to see two of his children, that same Queen Consort, Anne Boleyn, and her brother, Lord Rochford, die on the scaffold....

Of those that carried the canopy, one was that same Lord Rochford, the others were sons of “the illustrious family of Howard, which furnished in this age almost more subjects of tragedy than Thebes and Pelops’ line”.

At the door of the church of the Grey Friars, the procession had been received by the Bishop of London, with a great company of Bishops and of mitred abbots. The Bishop of London performed the ceremony of baptism, with all the rites of the Church of Rome. This over, he gave way to Archbishop Cranmer, the child’s godfather, who bestowed a solemn benediction. As he stepped forward, the light, for one moment, rested on his face, on the thoughtful, kindly eyes, with their rather plotting expression, the weak mouth and chin. A timid but benevolent man, he was to die among the flames of martyrdom. But who could have foreseen that such a fate would fall upon one so adaptable and accommodating? This charming, rather learned man, of a vacillating will, was forty-three years of age at the time of his royal godchild’s christening. “Insinuating and an admirable deceiver”, as Mr. Friedmann said in his Life of Anne Boleyn, “who possessed the talent of representing the most infamous deeds in the finest words”, he had, not many months since, risen to be Archbishop, because of his help in the matter of the King’s marriage, and perhaps, also, because Chief Secretary Cromwell knew a secret in his life.... This priest had broken his vow of celibacy, had gone through a ceremony of marriage with a young woman in Germany. Somehow the matter, secret as it was, had come to the ears of Cromwell’s spies. Cranmer’s timidity was well known. The slightest act of disobedience, one trace of hesitation to do the bidding of the King and his Minister, and the Archbishop, accused of incontinence, would be deprived and sent to the Tower.... A useful servant, and one on whom the King and Cromwell could safely rely.

These were the beings who heralded the fate of Elizabeth. In silence they stood in their appointed places, while the Archbishop’s blessing was pronounced. Garter King at Arms cried: “God of His infinite goodness, send a prosperous life and long to the high and mighty, princess of England, Elizabeth.

“Then the trumpets blew.”

The standing cup of gold that was the gift of the Archbishop, the cup of gold frosted over with pearls given by the old Duchess of Norfolk, and the other gifts of gold were presented. “Then wafers, comfits, and Hypocras”,^[B] wrote Hall, “were brought in such plenty that every man had as much as he could desire. Then they set forwards, the trumpets going before in the same order, toward the King’s place as they did when they came thitherward, saving that the gifts that the godfather and the godmothers gave were borne before the child....”

[B] Mr. Walter de la Mare, in the notes to Come Hither, gives this recipe: “To make Hypocras the best way.... Take 5 ounces of aqua vitae, 2 ounces of pepper, and 2 of ginger, of cloves and grains of paradice each 2 ounces, ambergrease 3 grains, and of musk 2 grains, infuse them 24 hours in a glass bottle on pretty warm embers and when your occasion requires to use it, put a pound of sugar into a quart of wine or cyder, dissolve it well, and then drop 3 or 4 drops of the infusion, and they will make it taste richly.”

“The shadows haunting faerily the brain”, the beings that seemed planets with their long gold trains like the heat of the sun, would soon be gone. Now, one by one, they moved away in a procession, through the garden door and along the garden path, lighted by the flames of five hundred torches, “borne by the guard and other of the King’s servants” into the future.

“In this order”, wrote Hall, “they brought the princess to the Queen’s chamber, and the Mayor and the Aldermen tarried there awhile.

“And at last the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk came out from the King; thanking them heartily, and said the King commanded them to give thanks in his name; and from thence they went to the cellar to drink, and so went to their Barges.”