The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [54]
Learning to know all the scattered buildings of Westminster, and of Wolsey’s relinquished Whitehall; learning to recognize the officers of State and all their counterparts and double counterparts in King Philip’s households of Spanish and Englishmen, Philippa began to see the reason for the obsessive hard work, in a woman who was only moderately clever, in one of the hardest offices in the world. The fluency in languages modern and classical which visiting ambassadors found so impressive. The aching need for success which showed itself in her fierce joy in gambling; in the cosseted throng of her cage-birds; in her enjoyment in children; in the care—although, to be fair, her nature was to be thoughtful and careful of others—she took with the common people on her travels, stopping to speak with them, and anonymously to care for their troubles.
The desperate need she had for the bulwark of her religion.
Sitting sewing with Jane, or reading aloud, or playing, without much thought, on the lute or the virginals, Philippa’s mind, like one of the Emperor’s clocks, busied itself with the entrancing tangle of England.
The Queen’s mother had been devout. But she had needed the support of her church more than most—mother of five stillborn children in eight years; cast off for another after twenty-four years of marriage. Brought up in that household, naturally Mary Tudor would hold strong religious opinions, even had her own birthright not depended on it. Now, attempting to rule with no apprenticeship for ruling behind her, she needed it for support.
She had little enough, thought Philippa grimly, of the human kind. Jane Dormer was only sixteen; her grandmother too old to master the new political complexities; old Mistress Clarenceux too simple. Margaret Lennox, the oldest, the dearest, the most richly rewarded of all the Queen’s circle, was also the Englishwoman with the nearest Catholic claim to the throne … was that why she had been given, Tom Wharton had told her, the whole three thousand marks yearly tax revenue from the wool trade, simply as a royal gift? The group of gentlemen who had quelled the rebellions and seen to it that Mary returned to the throne had had to be repaid with offices which they were not necessarily fitted for. Even Reginald Pole, Cardinal, royally born and man of integrity, had not supported the Queen in one thing: he had been against the marriage with Philip.
My lord and nephew, the King of England. When she first heard the Queen speak of her husband, Philippa had expected to catch in the deep, over-strong voice the slightest shadow, perhaps, of defiance.
There was none. Perhaps there had never been. Perhaps in crushing the opposition to her marriage she had also argued into oblivion, to herself and to her prie-dieu, the personal reasons. The ponderous young man who visited her daily, tastefully dressed; who gave a due meed of his time to being agreeable to those odd people, the English, and who then retired behind closed doors with Ruy Gomez and the Spanish lords of his court, was no one’s soul-mate, except possibly the unknown Doña Isabel de Osario, mother of unspecified numbers of Spanish illegitimate children, and about whose predecessors Don Alfonso was lyrical. The Emperor’s exhortations to his son to please Queen Mary and to make her happy would hardly spring from cousinly kindness. No untoward personal emotions must upset the Imperial English alliance. More, a warm marriage bed might produce the son which would reconcile the English to their King and to his religion.
The Queen knew that, better than any.… But the pinched lips parted for him as they did for her love-birds; and the pale, shadowless eyes relaxed in the high-coloured face. At two, the Queen had been betrothed to the Dauphin of France, Henri’s brother. At nine, to the Emperor Charles, Philip’s father. Yet again she had been sought by the Dauphin’s father, Francis of France, twice married and twice widowed, with seven bastard children. She had been painted and inspected: ambassadors