The Shadow of the Pomegranate

The French Disaster

AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF HIS ARMY IN SAN SEBASTIAN Thomas Grey, second Marquis of Dorset, felt sick, dizzy and decidedly uneasy. He had long regretted the day when his King had put him in charge of ten thousand archers and sent him to Spain as the spearhead of an army which, when the country was ready would, with the King at its head, join Dorset.

From the first he had been bewildered. The help he had been led to expect from his Spanish allies did not come. Ferdinand’s army had done little to help him. There had been scarcely any fighting except for a few clashes with isolated French troops; and his men roamed the countryside, drinking too much Spanish wine, eating too much garlic to which they were unaccustomed and which did not agree with them, catching diseases and vermin from the gipsy girls.

If, thought Dorset, I were not so ill myself that I fear I shall never leave this accursed country, I should feel alarmed, very alarmed.

Home seemed far away. The wrath of the King unimportant. The flies here were such a pest and the sight and smell of men, suffering from the continual dysentery, so repellent, that what was happening in England was of little importance.

He felt listless; that was due to the dysentery; he had ceased to long for home, only because he felt so tired. He believed that he had bungled his commission and that there would be trouble if he ever reached England; but he was too weary to care.

He had been chosen for this honor not because of his military skill but because the King had a fondness for him. Dorset excelled at the jousts and that was enough to make the King admire him. He had enough skill to come near to rivalling the King without quite matching him—a state which endeared Henry to a man and made him his friend.

“Why, Dorset,” he had said, “I see no reason why you should not take the first contingent to Spain. These ministers of mine have now decided that they are in favor of war. Fox has given in at last—though the fellow was obstinate for so long. But you shall go, my friend, and show these Frenchmen the valor of our English archers.”

The rosy cheeks had glowed and the eyes sparkled. “Would I were in your shoes, Dorset. Would I were going to lead an army into battle. But they tell me the time is not ripe for me to leave yet. In a year mayhap I’ll be ready.”

So it was Dorset who came to Spain, and Dorset who now lay sick of the maladies which sprang from a foreign land.

Life had not been easy for him; indeed he had lived in uneasy times. He was closely related to the royal family, and to the York branch, not that of Lancaster. His grandfather had been Sir John Grey, the son of Elizabeth Woodville (Queen of Edward IV) by her marriage with Lord Ferrers of Groby. Such a connection would be regarded somewhat cautiously by the Tudors; and although he had been received at Court he had quickly fallen under the suspicion of Henry VII and been confined to the Tower.

Dorset remembered now those days of imprisonment when he had lain in his cell and hourly expected the summons to the executioner’s block. It would certainly have come had not Henry VII died; but, in those first months of power, his son had desired to show that he had escaped from the influence of his father. He had taken the heads of Dudley and Empson, his father’s favorites, and given a pardon to Dorset.

The Marquis had done well in the service of the golden boy. Bluff, hearty, the young sportsman had given his father’s prisoner the wardenship of Sawsey Forest; he made Dorset one of his companions, for such a figure was an ornament in the tiltyard.

And after that, greater honors had been bestowed. How happy Dorset would have been if he had been allowed to confine his battles to the tiltyard!

He was lying in his tent, turning from side to side, feeling too ill to care what happened to him, when one of his men entered to tell him that the English ambassador to Spain was without.

“Bring him in,” said Dorset.

And the ambassador entered. Dorset made an attempt to rise but he was too weak to do so.

“Sir John Still,” he said, “you find me indisposed.”

“I am grieved that this should be so.” The ambassador was frowning as though he too shared the uneasiness of all who were connected with this campaign. “I have come to see if there is anything you need beyond the two hundred mules and asses which I had sent to you.”

Dorset smiled wryly: “What we need is a means of getting back to England,” he said grimly.

Sir John Still looked startled, and Dorset went on: “The mules and asses which you sent were unable to work. They had been starved and many of them were dying when they arrived. Those which survived had never been exercised and were unable to work for us.”

“But I paid the Spaniards a great price for those animals.”

“Ah, another Spanish trick.”

“A trick?”

“Sir John, surely you know why we are here. The Spaniards have no intention of being our allies and helping us to regain our territories in France. We are here that the French may be uncertain of our numbers and, expecting that we might be a great army, must needs protect their land. Thus they are kept occupied while the Duke of Alva, at Ferdinand’s command, walks into Navarre.”

“You mean…that we English have been tricked!”

“Do not look so surprised, ambassador. All are tricked when they attempt to deal with Ferdinand of Aragon.”

“I bring you instructions from England,” said the ambassador. “The army is to remain here throughout the winter. Next year the King will be ready to join you.”

“Stay here during the winter!” cried Dorset. “It’s impossible. Those men out there are half dead now with the sickness from which you see me suffering. They’ll not endure it.”

“These are the orders from England.”

“They in England can have no notion of what is happening here. We are given garlic…garlic all the time. There is more garlic than real food. The men are unused to this; they suffer from it. The wines overheat their bodies. Eighteen hundred men have already died; if we stay here many more weeks there will not be a healthy man among us.”

“You cannot return. To do so would mean you had failed. What have you achieved since you have been here?”

“Ferdinand has conquered Navarre. We have served the purpose for which we came.”

“You speak like a traitor, my lord Dorset.”

“I speak truth. These men will die if they stay here. If disease does not finish them, the French will. No good can come of their staying.”

“Yet the King’s order is that they should.”

Dorset staggered to the door of the tent. “Come with me,” he said. “I will tell these men of the King’s command that they are to stay in Spain.”

The fresh air seemed too much for Dorset. He swayed uncertainly like a man intoxicated, and the ambassador had to hold him to steady him. Bent double with the pain which distorted his yellow face, Dorset tried to shout, but his voice was feeble. “Men! News from home.”

The word home acted on the camp like magic. Men crawled out of tents, dragging with them those who could not walk. There was a feverish joy in their faces. They believed that the horror was over, and their commander had summoned them to tell them to prepare to leave for home.

“The King’s orders,” said Dorset. “We are to stay here through the winter.”

There was a growl of discontent.

“No!” cried a voice; and others took up the cry. “Home! We are going home!”

“The orders of our most Gracious Sovereign.…”

“To the devil with our most Gracious Sovereign. Let him fight his own wars. Home! England! We’re going home to England.”

Dorset looked at the ambassador.

“You see,” he said; and he staggered wearily back into his tent.

Now he was afraid. He saw that he was caught between the desires of his King and those of his men. He was faced either with disobedience to the King or wholesale desertions.

“I must write to His Grace,” he said. “I must make him aware of the true state of affairs.”

The ambassador waited while he wrote; but meanwhile outside in the camp the cries of rebellion grew louder. Dorset knew, and the ambassador knew, that even the King’s order to remain in Spain would carry no weight with those men out there.

THE KING WAS watching the return of his troops. He stood, legs apart, hands clenched at his side, his eyes so narrowed that they were almost lost in the flesh of his face.

Beside him stood the Queen, and she was ready to weep at the sorry plight of these men. They were in rags and many were still suffering from the fever; some had to be carried ashore. Yet as they came they were shouting with incoherent joy because the soil they trod was English, and the tears showed clearly on their poor sunken cheeks.

“What a sad sight,” murmured the Queen.

“It sickens me!” the King growled.

But he did not see this return as Katharine did. He felt no pity. He had only room for anger. This was the army which he had sent to France and of which he had been so proud. “I have never seen a finer army!” he had written to John Still. And now…they looked like a party of vagabonds and beggars.

How dared they do this to him! He was the golden king, the darling of fortune. So far he had had everything he desired, except a son. He remembered this fleetingly and glared distastefully at his wife. There were tears in her eyes. She could weep for that band of scarecrows when she should be weeping because she had failed him and, although she could become pregnant, could not give birth to a healthy boy.

Katharine turned to him. “There is my lord Dorset, Henry. Oh, poor Dorset. How sick he is. See him. He cannot walk. They are carrying him on a litter.”

The King followed her gaze and strode over to the litter on which lay the emaciated figure of the man who had once been a champion of the jousts. The sight of such sickness disgusted Henry.

“Dorset!” he cried. “What means this? I sent you out with an army and an order to fight for victory. You return with these…scarecrows…and dishonorable defeat.”

Dorset tried to see who was towering over him, shouting at him.

He said: “Where am I? Is it night?”

“You are in the presence of your King,” roared Henry.

“They’ll mutiny,” murmured Dorset. “They’ll endure no more. Is it morning yet?”

“Take him away,” cried the King. “I never want to see his treacherous face again.”

The bearers picked up the litter and were passing on.

“He is sick, very sick,” Katharine ventured to point out.

Henry looked at her, and she noticed that characteristic narrowing of the eyes.

“He will be far sicker when I have done with him!”

“You can’t blame him for what has happened.”

“Then whom else!” snarled Henry. He looked about him impatiently. “Put me up a gallows,” he shouted. “Not one, but twenty…a hundred! By God and all his saints, I’ll show these paltry cowards what I do to those who fail to carry out my orders.”

His face was suffused with rage. The tyrant was bursting his bonds. The metamorphosis was taking place before the eyes of the Queen. The vain good-natured boy was showing signs of the brutal egocentric man.

Katharine, watching him, felt an apprehension which was not only for the men whom he had so carelessly condemned to death.

KATHARINE KNELT before the King. The terrible rage which she had seen on his face had not altogether disappeared. There were signs of it in the over-flushed cheeks, the brilliant blue of the eyes.

He was watching her with interest, and she suddenly knew that she could change this tragedy into one of those situations which so delighted him in a masque.

“Henry,” she cried, “I implore you to spare these men.”

“What!” he growled. “When they have disgraced England! When our enemies are laughing at us!”

“The odds against them were too great.…”

It was a mistake. The faint geniality which she had perceived to be breaking through was lost, and the blue eyes were dangerous. “You would seek to enter our state counsels, Kate? You would tell us how to conduct our wars?”

“Nay, Henry. That is for you and your ministers. But the climate…and that disease which attacked them…how could you or your ministers know that such a catastrophe would befall them? That was ill luck.”

“Ill luck,” he agreed, somewhat mollified.

“Henry, I beg of you, show your clemency towards them. For this time forget the sneers of your enemies. Instead prepare to show them your true mettle. Let them know that England is to be feared.”

“By God, yes!” cried the King. “They shall know this when I myself go to France.”

“It will be so. Your Grace will go with an army, not as Dorset went, with only his archers. You will make great conquests…and so, in your clemency and your greatness, you can afford to laugh at your enemies and…spare these men.”

“You have friends among them, Kate. Dorset is your friend.”

“And a friend also to Your Grace.”

He looked down at her head. Her hair fell about her shoulders—that beautiful hair; her eyes were lifted to his in supplication.

She was playing her part in the masque, but he did not know it; his masques were always real to him.

So he was pleased to see her thus, humble, begging favors. He was fond of her. She had failed so far but she was young yet. He would forgive her those miscarriages when she gave him a bonny son. In the meantime there was this game to be played.

“Kate,” he said, his voice slurred with emotion, “I give you the lives of these men. Rise, my dear wife. They deserve to die for their treachery to me and to England, but you plead…and how could such as I deny a fair lady what she asked!”

She bowed her head, took his hand and kissed it. It was alarming when the masque had to be played out in stark realities.