Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (11 page)

While he sought a foothold among the branches, his hands and face were still level with the sill. Anne bent over him, radiant and laughing. A woman to grace a Border castle. A woman to share any adventure with. “Heaven send all spaniels pleasant dreams,” she laughed back, her nimble hand already on the latch.

The Queen’s influence was waning. It had been a good influence during those halcyon days when she had first married Henry. But she was considerably older than he, and had never been a beauty. She must always have wanted him, Anne supposed, even during the few short months when she had been married to Arthur Tudor, his sickly elder brother. Even before Arthur died, Henry must always have been there, radiant and vital. And once the Pope had granted a dispensation for Katherine to marry him she had, as everybody knew, been faithful to him with every fibre of her stumpy body and every thought of her straightforward, inflexible mind. But now, what with her righteous obstinacy and his disappointment about an heir, Henry’s affection was almost wiped out with irritation.

Whereas the influence of Wolsey waxed rather than waned. He, too, was older than the King. He had been the athletic, colourful personality who had caught at Henry’s warm imagination when first he came to the throne. And still, by dint of prodigious industry and expenditure, he excited admiration in his master’s mind. If his tall figure had grown too portly with good living to excell in worldly sports, it looked all the more spectacular in pontific scarlet. Henry himself was never indolent. He busied himself with state affairs. But he never had need to worry. Wolsey gave him security. So far did the man’s grasp of world affairs overtop that of his fellows that no dissentient voice was ever raised in Council. There was no need for money passing through his capable hands to be dissipated in trying out the whims of smaller men. It was there to be poured out without delay or question upon whatever project he had persuaded Henry to pursue. By keeping balanced all other power in Europe, England became more powerful and more feared than she had ever been. Wolsey saw to it that that fine soldier, Francis of France, and Katherine’s nephew, Charles of Spain, were forever titubating at either end of the seesaw, while the massive figure of Henry Tudor, straddling the centre, could control their rise or fall by shifting the weight of his favour first to one side and then to the other. Wolsey had made him Arbiter of Europe.

No wonder that the great Cardinal came almost daily to Westminster or Greenwich, and was closeted for hours with the King!

Anne Boleyn was no longer a heedless girl. Public events no longer formed merely a background for her own small pleasures and successes. With maturer vision she began to behold the important personages around her, not only as forces affecting her own life, but as human beings working out their own designs and destinies. She judged the direction of their desires and their hopes of success. She became aware of them as diverse characters. She was aware of the Queen’s stupidity in relying upon argument instead of wiles, of Suffolk’s gradual ascendency over Mary Tudor’s unselfishness, and of the special significance of being in part a Howard because of one’s Plantagenet blood. And because, for all her butterfly gaiety, she had been brought up to think astutely, she was even aware that although Henry Tudor dominated men’s minds, it was Thomas Wolsey who really ruled England.

“When I first came here the Cardinal used to say ‘The King desires this or that’,” said Henry Percy, speaking privately within the circle of Anne’s friends at Greenwich. “But now, when he is off his guard in his own house, he often says, ‘The King and I’.”

“Or, more often, just I,” laughed his friend and colleague, Cavendish.

George Boleyn frowned. “The state he keeps and his overbearing ways give great offence to men like my uncle and the Duke of Suffolk,” he said.

“And to many others,” confirmed Will Brereton, whose family had leanings towards the simplicity of the new Lutheran religion.

“And yet he can afford to be courteous to shopkeepers, and the poorer sort of people flock to him for justice,” observed Margaret Wyatt, pondering on the inscrutable ways of greatness.

“Perhaps it is just that he cannot afford to have equals,” suggested Anne.

But what mattered it whether the Cardinal were loved or hated so long as he came—and brought the young men of his household with him?

All through that winter the Duke of Northumberland’s heir was to be seen about the Queen’s apartments; and whenever Anne could escape from her duties she was with him. The Queen’s senior ladies were too much concerned about their mistress’ ill health to notice. Anne and Percy lived in a daze of happiness, making little effort to hide their mutual passion. And as time went on it was taken for granted even by the gossips.

“What, in God’s name, will be the end of it, Nan?” asked George anxiously at Christmas time. He had twirled her off into a new French measure lest she should make herself too conspicuous by dancing throughout the revels with Percy.

Anne suffered his loving interference patiently. “It is an honest love,” she pleaded. “Something utterly different from all the light, worthless affairs I have known before. Something that makes me for the first time the kind of woman God meant me to be. And you, yourself, admit that you like Harry, now you have come to know him.”

“True,” admitted George, considering how lovable she had become. “And it is a thousand pities you cannot marry him. But what will happen when our father comes home?”

“Oh, George, I dare not think!” sighed Anne, acknowledging the King’s smile almost absently as they passed the dais. “But surely, apart from the enduring quality of our love, he would consider an alliance with the mighty Northumberland worth more than the Ormonde title?”

“Even if he did, is it not true that Percy himself is contracted to the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter?”

“He hates the sight of her. Mary Talbot has a body like a brood mare. He swears that whatever happens he will never marry her,” declared Anne, speaking in a series of triumphant sentences as the dance ended in leaps and twirls. But as her brother led her to a window seat, she added in a fierce undertone, “Are we cattle to be sold like this for the fattening of the family estates?”

George was less revolutionary, and had taken no part in Mary Tudor’s daring matrimonial defiance. “It seems we are. And for my own part I see no way out of the market pen,” he answered bitterly, his eyes on the sweet face of Wyatt’s sister as she passed with William Brereton.

Anne looked up in swift contrition and pressed his arm, “
Mon cher
, I am sorry! I had forgotten,” she murmured. “I loathe your Jane.”

But dislikes touched her lightly when all the world was filled with this new radiance of love. Anne’s whole nature was softened and her tongue grown more kind. Even when her future sister-in-law showed jealousy of her happy comradeship with George, she evaded all contest; and when people asked pointedly if Mary Carey’s new baby had Tudor-coloured hair she refrained from the repartee of which she was so capable. She wrote to Jocunda of her lover, and was very gentle with Thomas Wyatt. Patiently, she taught Harry Percy the newest dance steps and even trained his passable baritone to the lute. When he was inclined to be awkward or farouche, she smoothed out resentment and turned the conversation so that he might shine in the world into which she had coaxed him. For the first time she knew what it was to be more ambitious for another’s accomplishments than for her own.

“What can she see in the fellow?” demanded the polished Wyatt, alone with his friend.

“He is no courtier, but I like him,” said George. “Only—”

“Only what?”

“Only sometimes I can’t help wondering whether, with all his toughness and contempt for poets, he would in a crisis have more endurance than you or I.”

They would glance across the room to some alcove where the dark head of Anne and the Northumbrian’s flaming one were sure to be in close proximity over her embroidery frame, which was usually but a screen for dalliance. “Now she is to marry Ormonde’s son, he has no more right to her than I, who have loved her faithfully all my life,” Wyatt would mutter.

For the first time, out of sheer misery, he began to pester her, using his nimble wits to pay her compliments beyond the limited powers of her lover, and infuriating him by referring casually to mutually remembered incidents from which Percy was excluded. He would hug his knees on a cushion at Anne’s feet or lean over the back of her chair, emphasizing the familiarity of their youth and indulging in friendly scuffling as they had been wont to do. “That chain, Nan. Did I not give it to you upon your fifteenth birthday?” he teased, one morning in the Queen’s gallery. He lifted a slender gold pomander chain that hung from her girdle and inspected the small jewelled mirror at the end of it. “I am amazed and gratified that you still wear the thing.”

“I still value it, Thomas,” said Anne gravely.

“But scarcely as you did then, I fear. I well remember how you raced across the lawn at Hever and tiptoed up to kiss me when I brought it. You were not so tall then, my sweet.”

Both of them were aware of Percy, ousted momentarily from her side, leaning against the window with folded arms. Of his scowls, and of the covert amusement of their watching friends. “A girl must have a mirror,” pointed out Anne, as lightly as she could.

“I see no necessity when she had the mirror of men’s eyes,” said Wyatt. He glanced mockingly at her resentful lover and proceeded to hold the thing this way and that, admiring the reflection of his newly grown brown beard—a small, pointed adornment which was all the latest craze at Court. “It is I who need it to watch the advance of fashion.”

“Put it down, Thomas, and don’t be so conceited!” laughed Anne, making a grab at her property.

“But it must seem such a worthless trifle to Mistress Boleyn, who sings for the Princess and dances before the King! Who keeps her own blood horse at Court, and whose dress is fastened by a jewel from a Duke’s son’s cloak.”

Avoiding her defensive hand, he suddenly jerked the chain from her girdle, bending to plant a light kiss on the back of her shaven neck as he did so, then holding the stolen trinket aloft in laughing triumph.

Percy’s hand flew to his dirk. And, knowing his hot temper, men marvelled that he did not use it. They could not know that gratitude restrained him. That Wyatt, slim, debonair and unarmed, could provoke the lovely Boleyn’s fierce northern lover with impunity because he had once warned her of the Queen’s approach, and had not betrayed them.

Anne herself was well aware of this; but, all the same, a warm spark of triumph flamed in her because two men were hating each other on her account.

Wolsey stayed longer that day, discussing some secret matter with the King. “What do these statesmen find to talk about all this time?” grumbled Percy rudely, after his rival had gone.

“I thought you had been wont to find the time all too short,” retorted Anne.

“When we leave this time, I shall not come again perhaps for weeks.”

That had shaken Anne. She looked up, needle suspended and all social subtlety driven from her face. “Not come again for weeks?” she echoed, in dismay.

“Milord Cardinal is going to France.”

“To France? But my father is on the point of returning thither. Harry, what is all this secret business of the King’s?”

Lord Percy shrugged. It was true that his friend, Cavendish, who sometimes assisted the Cardinal’s secretary, had hinted things in confidence. But he wasn’t much interested. “Some say that it is to promote a French marriage.”

“You mean the King’s?”

“Hist, Nan! It would be death to speak of it.”

Yet it was such tremendous news. One must speak of it. “But the Queen?” whispered Anne.

“If she had given him sons it would be different, I suppose.”

Anne’s mind flew back to her mistress, whose solid body she had helped to dress that very morning. Self-assured Katherine, whose very rooms were full of dignified security. The Queen whom scandal had never touched, whose gracious kindness the people venerated and who had been part of England for twenty years or more. It was simply unthinkable. “But how will he get rid of her?” she asked.

The Northumbrian shrugged. All he wanted was to get Anne alone and show her that he would not share her. “Everybody knows he would do anything to get a legitimate son.”

Well, it could be true. And now Anne came to think about it, had she not seen a painting of the French king’s sister being carefully unpacked when her father sent a messenger from France?

She thrust her needle into the canvas of her embroidery and rose. She was still shocked by the rumour Percy had passed on to her but she pushed it to the back of her mind, anxious only to give him the opportunity for privacy which they both desired. “I will walk with you to the garden gate,” she said, and sent a page for her cloak.

They left the anteroom and went down the backstairs and out into the early March sunshine. A stiff breeze was blowing up from the river and the Queen’s garden was deserted. When they were come nearly to the gate they paused, as if by mutual consent, between a great briar bush and the garden wall. The bush, as they knew well, hid them from all prying eyes at Palace windows. But for once Percy did not take her hungrily in his arms. “What will Wyatt do with that chain?” he asked sulkily.

“Wear it, I suppose, to plague me,” laughed Anne, plucking an over-blown rose and letting a small shower of pink petals fall from one palm to another.

“And pretend that you gave it to him.”

“And what if I did? Are we not cousins?”

“To boast that you were his before you were mine.”

The charge was ridiculous, but his jealous caring was sweet. Anne shrugged, and went on shredding petals.

Percy came a step closer. He seized her by the arms and almost shook her. His eyes searched her enchanting face. “And you do love him. You said so. He has had all the precious years of you that I have lost, because I didn’t come and find you sooner. He has made love to you a hundred times with that glib tongue of his—and kissed you.”