Anne Boleyn: A Novel (10 page)

In the royal apartments of the Tower, Anne and Henry were alone in his bedroom. The King was never disturbed in his chamber, and the other rooms, all leading into one another, were always filled with courtiers. The door was closed, and the windows tightly shut, for a cold wind was blowing in from the Thames. The King’s huge tester bed stood in the center of the room, hung with curtains of velvet; the rugs newly imported from Persia were spread over the tables and covered the bed itself. The floor was covered with rushes and scented herbs to keep the room warm in winter, and the King sat in a wide oak chair before the fire, with Anne on his knee.

There was no danger in intimacy with him now, no need to deny him and hold him off. They made love fiercely and without restraint, but he never tried to take her, or urged her to give way. The heir they both talked about must be born in wedlock; that was Anne’s weapon and excuse, and he agreed with it. Her arms were round his neck, and he caressed her blindly, greedy for the abortive pleasures their relations allowed. He had unpinned her hair and the long plaits hung to the ground. She held his head and kissed him slowly on the mouth, feeling his heart pounding against her breast. Then she drew back, and caught his strong hands in her own.

“The Cardinal came to me today,” she said.

“Nan, Nan sweetheart,” he muttered, not listening, and laid one finger gently on her mouth. She kissed it, and moved her head free.

“Harry, beloved, this is important. He talked about the divorce.”

The interlude was over, and Henry knew it; he relaxed and leaned back, shifting her so that she rested comfortably on his knees.

“He spoke of it to me, at his last audience.”

She stiffened. “You never told me! What did he say?”

Henry sighed. “Ah, Nan, I didn’t want to vex you with it. He failed to convene the Cardinals in France and take the Pope’s authority, you knew that. Well, now there’s nothing for it but to go direct to Rome. The Emperor’s set Clement free, and he must give the authority for the divorce to be tried. It’ll take time, my love, but Wolsey swears he’ll use his influence to hurry it.”

“That’s what he said to me,” Anne interrupted. “That and how anxious he was to serve me. I didn’t believe one word!”

Henry stared at her. “How, and why not?”

“Because a serpent doesn’t grow legs overnight,” she retorted. “He hates me, and I’ll swear he’s clinging to his idea of a French marriage. And you’ve received him with favor again,” she accused. “So he thinks he’ll rule you as he did before. In the meantime he makes false promises to lull me so that he can work against me.”

The King flushed with anger. “He went on his knees and vowed he’d spend his last drop of blood to hurry the divorce and marry us himself!” he said. “Now you tell me it’s deceit. Rule me again, you say...By the living God above, if I thought he’d such a thing in his head I’d cut it off!”

He pushed her off his knees and stood up, towering over her. She began winding her plaits round her head; she knew his anger was directed against Wolsey. The private audiences hadn’t altered Henry after all.

“Naturally I don’t trust him,” she said. “He’s had his own way too long to submit so easily. That’s all I say, don’t trust him...”

“Then who am I to trust?” Henry demanded. “Who is to deal with Rome if he does not?”

“He’ll deal with Rome,” she said. “He’ll dally and make difficulties in the hope you’ll sicken of me in time and come round to his way again.”

Then Henry smiled at her, a triumphant smile. She was sometimes right too often and it irritated him, but now he had her. His temper was soothed at once.

“You think too fast and too crookedly, sweet,” he said mockingly. “And you underestimate the Cardinal. If he dallies and makes difficulties, he’ll lose his head and he knows it. He knows my mind and he’s wise enough not to balk me. You’ve said often enough that he ruled me, and you know how that angers me. Say it no more, for I’ve proved it’s a lie. Wolsey himself suggested sending Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Foxe to Rome to see Clement and obtain a commission from him to try the divorce in England. Now tell me he’s trying to thwart my will!”

She retorted with a mock curtsy, pinning her plaits into place with a jeweled pin, and then she came close to him and put her arms round his waist and her head against his chest.

“I thank God,” she said gently. “And I pray him to help us, with Wolsey or without. But to please you, Harry, I won’t speak against him till we see how he conducts this matter and keeps his promises. It may be that he’s true at last; he said the fairest words on his tongue to me today.”

Perhaps Wolsey was genuine, she mused; perhaps he was so afraid of her and so alarmed by the King’s change of attitude that he was prepared to alter his whole policy and follow theirs...Henry believed so, and she knew that he was seldom mistaken. If it was true, the anticlerical party who supported her would be furious; they were hoping for Wolsey’s dismissal within the next few months. Well, they would have to wait, she decided. The devil take them. If she needed Wolsey to become Queen, Wolsey must remain till his turn was served. Afterward...afterward they should have their victim and so would she. And so would Henry Percy, who was reputed to be living so unhappily with his wife that they were separated. He was subject to fits of epilepsy...His marriage—as Agnes Throgmorton, one of Catherine’s ladies, said in her hearing—his marriage to that shrew Mary Talbot had broken his health.

It was a long time ago, Anne thought, with her cheek against Henry’s silk doublet and her eyes closed; a very long time since the days Percy had held her in his arms and begged her to marry him, and now an unbridgeable gulf separated them. They had nothing to say to each other. He was a wreck of a man, nervous and violent and near to feeble-mindedness at times, while she was the most powerful woman in England, who was expected to marry the King.

There was nothing left but some tiny core of regret which throbbed when they met; he would flush and stammer and his hands would shake, and she would smile and say something and pass on. Though there was no future for them with each other anymore, the memory of the past remained. There were times when the past seemed sweeter than the present, when she remembered her early years in France with a gay and brilliant court, and her return to England, ready for marriage and children, like her friends.

Percy had offered her both; he was the only one who had, besides the King, she thought suddenly. He could have made her happy then, but now it was too late. Now marriage and domesticity were impossible. If she had changed Henry, as her enemies said, then Henry had changed her. She was suspicious and on edge, and the struggle to keep her position had made her fierce and ruthless. Sexually the King was coarse and brutal, so in that too she had become debased. The Cardinal had set her life on its present course and there was no turning back.

“Why are you laughing, Nan?”

Henry could feel her shaking against him. Sometimes she laughed for no reason, and like her father, the King was disconcerted by it. He was frowning. “Come, tell me the joke.”

She looked up at him, giggling, with her eyes full of tears.

“The joke, Harry...why it’s just that I was thinking that I couldn’t live without you now. Isn’t it comical? Before God, I really couldn’t...”

On January twenty-second the heralds of England and France declared war on Emperor Charles V. The pattern of the Cardinal’s foreign policy was taking shape for the last time, as the French King prepared to launch a new attack against the power of the Empire with the help of English money and a force of Englishmen. Heavy taxes had been levied on the English people for the purpose of another unpopular war abroad and the enclosure of common lands by the great nobles had deprived large numbers of peasants of pasture for their flocks. Poverty began to spread, so soon after the prosperity of Henry VII’s thrifty reign, and the Cardinal’s splendid barge was greeted with yells and handfuls of filth whenever it sailed too close to the banks of the Thames. Wolsey was blamed for everything, because it was commonly accepted that he directed the King’s policy. He, and the Church with him, were joined to the greedy, hated nobility who had tyrannized for centuries over the common people, and became the focus of their resentment. By contrast the King’s popularity increased while Wolsey was bitterly accused of trying to remove their good Queen Catherine and there were growing rumors of a conspiracy between the hated Cardinal and some court lady to have her put away.

Dispossessed peasantry roamed the countryside, begging and robbing, so that the roads were unsafe without an armed escort, and the wool merchants and the townspeople waited anxiously for the effect of the Cardinal’s war on the Netherlands’ trade. In Europe the armies of France had penetrated deeply into the imperial kingdom of Naples under the leadership of the Sieur de Lautrec, and the emissaries of the King of England had their audience with the Pope on April third to open the petition for the annulment of his marriage.

At the Vatican Dr. Reginald Foxe and Dr. Stephen Gardiner were announced at the door of the Papal audience chamber, guarded by the halberdiers of the Swiss Guard in their scarlet doublets and breastplates, emblazoned with the arms of the Vicar of Christ. The chamber was high-ceilinged and lit by torches set into the walls; it was hung with magnificent tapestries depicting episodes from the New Testament, and the Pope’s throne stood at the far end of the room, under a white and gold canopy.

Clement VII seemed like an old man; his shoulders were bent and his hands knotted with rheumatism; he withdrew them from his scarlet sleeves and made the sign of the cross over the two Englishmen as they bowed before him, and came forward to kiss his ring. He looked delicate and tired, but his dark eyes were alive with intelligence. The face was very Italian with its aquiline nose and sallow skin.

“I give you a hearty welcome, gentlemen. Please sit down. You had a good journey, I trust?”

Clement looked from one to the other and smiled gently. He knew how fast they had traveled, gathering speed as the French armies drove further into imperial territory, and he knew that their insistence on the point at issue would have gained by the Emperor’s weakness. The day before, he had given an audience to the imperial Ambassador and listened to
his
pleas not to yield to English pressure and injure the Emperor’s aunt. He had said as little to Charles’s emissary as he meant to say to Henry’s. Until he knew the outcome of the war, he dared not give a decision either way.

“We come to Your Holiness on the matter of the King’s Grace and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon,” Gardiner began. He had been told to avoid calling Catherine
Queen
. “May I present this letter from your Legate Cardinal Wolsey?” Clement thanked him and opened the paper. There was silence for some moments while he read, holding the letter close to his eyes.

The situation in England was very dangerous, Wolsey had written. The anticlerical party was using the King’s wish for a divorce as a lever with which to dislodge him and strike a blow at the independence of the Church in the Kingdom...Clement frowned.

The English Church was well known for its independence of Rome anyway; the management was left entirely to the English Cardinal and the English bishops, all the Holy See received was the friendship of the King and a few revenues. Clement read on.

Feeling against Wolsey was high in the country, and his enemies at court had a powerful advocate in the woman whom the King had determined to marry. In order to safeguard the Church’s interests in England, it was vital that he should retain the favor of the King and remain in office, and he begged the Holy Father to take all these factors into consideration when listening to the petition of Foxe and Gardiner.

In other words, Wolsey was in mortal danger unless he got for Henry and the woman what they wanted; and as he said, the interests of the Church in England were probably in danger too Clement nodded to himself. He understood how Wolsey felt.

But the danger of the Church in England was nothing compared to the danger of the Church on the continent. Rome, the heartbeat of the Christian faith, was only a city built on seven hills, ringed by the nationalistic designs of the Italian Princes and the dictatorial might of France and the Empire.

Europe was in a religious ferment; the whole structure of medieval society had been changing for years, as the power of the monarch superseded that of the feudal nobility. With the centralization of power, the Papacy faced its first challenge; and with the spread of learning and the founding of lay universities, it faced the deadlier challenge of heresy.

Clement still held the letter, apparently reading, while his mind ran on. He and his Church were paying for the sins of previous Popes, for the worldliness and power politics of the Borgias, who had transformed the mighty spiritual power of the Papacy into an armed political force. Once already the Church had been threatened by the laxity of its members in medieval times, and the great army of Franciscans roamed Europe, preaching and purging into the heart of Rome itself. Now the reformers were attacking not only the human abuses but the spiritual structure of Christianity itself. The Church of God was held in contempt, Clement said to himself, concentrating on the scrawl of Wolsey’s signature at the end of the page; she was despised by even those who professed her doctrines and drove merciless bargains in return for their protection. And the wave of austerity sweeping from Lutheran Germany was turning many away from the forms and rituals which were part of her worship.

The Church in England was in danger; if he wished to preserve it, he had better grant the King his freedom. And risk the fury of the Catholic Emperor, who had already permitted his troops to sack Rome.

He looked up at Gardiner, folding the letter.

“I am well pleased with the Cardinal’s letter,” he said. “I have a high opinion of his judgment, and he recommends you both to me.”

Gardiner cleared his throat.

“We have come to you on a delicate matter, Your Holiness. The Cardinal has undoubtedly explained it, and I am commissioned to place the details before you. His Grace the King of England desires that you appoint a commission to try the validity of his marriage. He has been gravely troubled for some years because he married his brother’s widow, and the deaths of all his male children have convinced him that he is under the judgment of God and living in conditions of scandal before his Maker and before men.”