Anne Boleyn: A Novel (33 page)

The Act making Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England had been passed in January, and commissioners were sent throughout the country to summon clergy and influential members of the laity to take the oath. Cromwell’s legal instrument had come into full use at last; there was no Warham to denounce it, only Cranmer urging capitulation on his priests and his flock. Again the legal brain of the Secretary framed the laws to make denial of the Royal Supremacy an act of treason to the State rather than the heresy Henry himself believed it. Religion was the issue, but it was robbed of its heroic appeal by being inextricably tied to the State.

And in the same month of January, before that mild and lovely Spring, Cromwell was appointed Vicar General with a commission to examine churches, monasteries and the clergy. The Carthusians were the first victims of both the act and the appointment, and paradoxically the King who ordered their atrocious deaths, sentenced a group of Anabaptists to the stake a few weeks later. In the opening phase of the Reformation, men died for upholding the Pope and others died for denying parts of the Papal doctrine in which the King himself believed. The result was a horrible parody, which left the Mass as the accepted form of worship in the country and applied to Henry Tudor the Gospel promise that the gates of hell would not prevail.

The true Reformers were as persecuted as the stanch Catholics; in one of his bursts of violent autocracy the King forbade the printing of books explaining the Zwinglian doctrine, and English translations of the Bible were publicly burned. Many of the Reformers sheltered behind the Queen; the gentle Latimer, whose original opposition to the divorce had been overcome and whose opinions now leaned toward the new teaching, became her almoner and then Bishop of Worcester, thus taking the first steps toward the stake which waited for him in the years to come. And many others received clerical office and pensions from her, who were surprised that their arrogant patroness should so earnestly beg them to pray for her.

Anne herself had begun to pray and to read the English Bible, which had to be kept hidden from the King; she was groping for the consolation Catherine had had to find in piety. Courage was not enough, though she had never lacked it; nor strength of will, because will was useless without power, and Anne the Queen was far less powerful than her Uncle Norfolk or half a dozen of the great nobles. The realization had come to her slowly; the Queen was a lay figure, lacking even the power to dismiss a maid of honor without the King’s approval. She had tried to get rid of one persistent rival when Henry’s attentions became too obvious, and her order was simply countermanded. The lady was to remain in her service. She understood at last the helplessness of Catherine in the same situation.

But she couldn’t afford pity for anyone, and the attempt to marry Mary to the Dauphin had convinced her that the girl’s death was essential to her own safety and the inheritance of Elizabeth. She loved Elizabeth, but the child was growing up away from her, traveling to different palaces with the desperately sick Mary in her train. There was a time when Mary might have died, and the imperial Ambassador himself begged Henry not to force the Oath on her. Anne was there and she heard him. The Princess would never take it; the pressure was only endangering her life.

Her own position was tenuous enough, Anne realized, as she lay alone in her bed, the next morning weeping because the hope of pregnancy had been disappointed that day, and she had not yet dared to tell the King.

The hope of a son still brought him to her bed; and because she was the Queen she had to wait until he chose to do so. The initiative had to come from him. A mistress might slip into his rooms during the day, or make a tryst with him in the gardens, but the Queen was attended wherever she went. There was no privacy except in her chapel, and even there a lady had to kneel at a proper distance while the Queen made her devotion.

If the King came to her at night, he came in state, preceded by his gentlemen of the bedchamber, bearing a torch, and she received formal warning some time before. However she felt, it was unthinkable that the Queen could leave her rooms and go to him unasked. Custom hedged her in and made her helpless while it left him free to do as he pleased. And it gave other women the opportunity to do what she had once done so skillfully herself. There was another woman, then; she sensed it, as she sensed every change in him and every mood, watching him now as if he were a dangerous animal, with no feeling left in her but a remorseless fear and a wild hatred for him because he had given her everything she asked and then taken away everything that mattered.

Prayer did not help her; it couldn’t calm her spirit, and her fear lashed into her tempers, so that by complaints and abuse she widened the gap between them, until he looked at her with his cold, empty eyes and left, often staying away for days. Her terror fastened on the Princess and her mother; it told her that without these two spurring her enemies into action, and constantly reminding the King that in many people’s eyes his marriage to her was illegal, she might have found security. Without rivals, she argued wildly, there could be no danger. And she urged him to put his wife and daughter to death.

The advice reached other ears and the few who hesitated in their loyalty to her, though some of them owed her a great deal, shrank away and drifted toward her enemies. Her words suggested to Henry that no life was too sacred to be taken; his shrewdness dismissed the idea, because he knew that his people and the Emperor Charles would take up arms against him if he killed either the woman or her daughter. But others had quietly moved within reach of the ax.

On a blazing July day Sir Thomas More climbed the Tower scaffold and jokingly moved his beard out of the way. That, as he reminded the executioner, had committed no treason...

When Fisher died, the King openly rejoiced. But on that day in July he was found by the messenger playing cards with Anne in her apartments. He was bored and restless, and Mistress Seymour had retired to her brother’s estate in the country for a rest. So he went to his wife, and for once she welcomed him without mentioning any of the topics he least wished to hear. She looked well, that day, he thought critically; there was no doubt she was elegant, and the pale green and silver satin dress was set off by Catherine’s emeralds. The sight of his first wife’s jewels had no effect upon him now. Nothing connected with her affected him anymore, except to make him angry.

He was tired of Anne and he still had no son—he banished the memory of the false hope at the end of last year because it made him angry all over again—but Catherine’s obstinacy was arousing every brutal instinct in his nature. Nothing of his compunction for her in the past remained; he had not seen her for years, and the mental image had gone right out of focus. She had nothing to gain by opposing him, and she was losing more and more; her only function was that of an irritant. When he received the imperial ambassador, her name or Mary’s was always mentioned; when his daughter was ill, Catherine reminded him of her existence once again, by begging to be allowed to nurse the girl. There was a core of anxiety for Mary somewhere in his heart, buried so deep by self-will that he could never have found it, but it found expression by savagely refusing Catherine’s request, and allowed him with a clear conscience to send Dr. Butts to Hunsdon to attend his daughter. His cruelty to the one wiped out his weakness for the other.

One of the instances which had angered him most with Anne resulted from that action. She had faced him like a tigress when she heard Butts had gone to the Princess, and dragged into the light the parental feeling he was trying to hide, accusing him of loving the rebellious bastard child of Catherine more than her own daughter Elizabeth. And the French proposal to marry Mary to the Dauphin had produced a tirade of abuse against Francis and a volley of threats which ended in his shouting at her to be silent. He was used to fear in his courtiers now; he knew the signs of cringing, the flattery, the uneasy smile, but it never occurred to him that the white-faced, furious woman was blind with rage because she was mortally afraid. He would not have excused her even if he had known. He rejected the French proposal, because he saw through Francis’ diplomacy and had no intention of being reconciled to Rome. They presumed too quickly on Anne’s failure to produce a son; he would still have his Prince even if he had to beget it with her when desire had turned close to aversion...

They sat by the window, with Sir Henry Norreys and Margaret Wyatt, and there was a pile of gold coins beside his elbow. Henry was winning, and he rearranged his cards with satisfaction. In the old days he used to lose if he played with Anne; she must have lost her skill...

“I bet three nobles, Sire,” she said.

She watched him and smiled quickly when he lifted his eyes. She might delude herself that the old days of their courtship had returned, that this was one of the many gay games they had played for very high stakes, often ending with herself and Henry at the table while the others withdrew and looked on. Only the fact that she dared not risk winning destroyed the illusion. However good her hand, she had to misplay it and lose, if the game was to continue.

He was staring at his cards, hesitating on what stake to put up, and for the moment he had completely forgotten that one of the men he liked best was due to be executed that day. The cards had driven Thomas More from his mind. Until the last moment he had never believed that his former Chancellor would be fool enough to follow that bigot Fisher and a parcel of mangy monks to the scaffold, rather than take the Oath for his friend the King. More was cultured and brilliant; he was also one of the driest wits at Henry’s court, and the King had spent many pleasant evenings with More and his family. More was loyal to him, and incorruptible, but he was worldly enough not to throw his life away for nothing; not to die for the sake of a Pope in Rome he had never seen, when favor and safety were promised by Henry himself if only he would take the Oath. As Cromwell said, if someone as universally respected as Thomas More acknowledged the Act of Supremacy, many who wavered would follow his example. This was the day set aside for his execution, but the King believed that the messenger he was expecting would bring news of More’s capitulation. He would be genuinely glad to order his release and welcome him back.

“Six nobles,” Henry said. His hand was very good.

“Sire,” Norreys interrupted. “There’s a courier just come to the anteroom door.”

The man was waiting, cap in hand.

The King looked up and laid down his cards, “Call him in, Hal.”

The messenger’s riding boots echoed through the room, which was suddenly very quiet until Anne snapped her cards together and half of them slipped out of her hand and scattered on the floor.

There was a movement to pick them up.

“Leave them!” Henry’s voice froze Norreys to his chair.

He turned to the messenger. “What news do you bring me?”

“Word from the Governor of the Tower Sir Henry Kingston, may it please Your Grace. The prisoner Thomas More was executed an hour ago.”

Nobody said anything; Norreys opened his mouth to say something and then closed it at the sight of Henry’s face. The King was not looking at him; his eyes were almost closed, but a deep red flush was spreading over his neck. He was staring at Anne, sitting opposite to him, and the rush of pain and guilt in his heart found a scapegoat, and suddenly his indifference and his boredom turned to hatred. More had not taken the Oath. More had died as other men were dying and languishing in prison because he had once loved this woman enough to make her Queen.

Henry threw his hand of cards down on the table, and his chair fell back, clattering to the floor behind him; his arm shot out, one shaking finger pointed at her in accusation.

“A good man died this day because of you!” The words were bellowed at her; he stood like a giant, hunched with rage and loathing, his hands itching to seize the table and overturn the cards and the money into her lap. He heard Margaret Wyatt gasp. Then he turned away and a moment later the door crashed behind him.

Margaret was at Anne’s side with a cup of water, begging her to take it, and when she sent Margaret for wine instead, she found that Norreys’ hand was on her arm, and his arm was round her shoulders. She was trembling and she let him hold her; she hardly knew what she was doing, or clearly heard his voice, urging her to be calm. And then she listened, and his face came into focus, a few inches away from her own. She saw him closely for the first time, and there was something in his blue eyes that startled her.

“Take no notice of him, Nan...sweet Nan, to hell with him and what he said to you...He killed More as he killed the others...”

“As he’d kill you if he saw that expression on your face,” she quavered. “Take your arm away from me, Hal...are you mad? Someone might come in...Margaret with the wine...I thought it was Margaret you wanted.”

“It is.” He recovered himself and stood up. She shook her head slowly; this was something new, something to stop her thinking about what had happened for a few more moments. If she thought about Hal Norreys’ being in love with her she might yet stave off the hysteria rising in her throat.

“You looked to have me...” she insisted. At that moment she heard the sound of Margaret’s soft velvet shoes crossing the floor with the wine she had asked for. How lucky Norreys was on his feet, and standing away from her. Probably Margaret had not noticed anything.

She took the cup and swallowed the contents.

“I’ll go to my room, I think,” she said, and the lady in waiting caught her arm and helped her up.

“I’ll go to my room.”

The plague broke out in London that summer, and many hundreds died; the crops failed, and rumors swept the country that war with the Empire would soon destroy what remained of the Netherlands trade. The Emperor would invade England to protect the lives of his aunt and his cousin, whom the hated Queen Anne was planning to poison. The people suffered from sickness and hunger, and the heads of those who had been executed rotted on bridges and city gates as a reminder of the evils the King’s marriage had brought to the country. Hatred for the woman concerned manifested itself in fresh demonstrations in favor of Mary, and sullen silence when Anne appeared. The silence was also accorded the King, who escaped the plague by making long progresses through the countryside, and amusing himself with jousts and entertainments wherever he stayed. The court traveled with him, and Anne, worn out with anxiety and strain, followed from one house to the next.