Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (14 page)

Anne traced his half-seen features with a tender finger. “You said once that he is old and suffers increasingly from some wound.”

“Old, but very tough,” smiled Percy, guessing at her half-exposed hope.

Anne shivered in the darkness. “How I would that he might die!”

Percy rocked her laughingly in his arms. “My exquisite little Borgia, I admit that my father is not a man whom it is easy to love. But he is still my father. It was he who first showed me how to use a sword.”

“I know, Harry. It is wickedness of me to think of it. Although they use us as pawns for their ambitions, there is still
something
. But if only you were earl now, and had all those castles and men—”

“It would be one’s life’s dream come true. To be uncurbed by his mastery, with you and the family estates. My ancestors built Wressel Castle. Shed their blood for it. And I love every stone.”

“And if it came to choosing between the hateful old place and me?”

He silenced her pouting lips with his own. “The Court Beauty being jealous?” he teased.

Anne laughed up at him, all tenderness at once. “In part, Harry. Yet I would go there with you tomorrow and give up all the pleasures and compliments of Court life. What are they but hollow baubles compared with the full, secret sweetness there can be between a man and a woman?”

“At least you will never have cause to feel jealousy of any other woman,” he assured her; and fell to thinking of what their life would be like together. Mentally, artistically, she was far above him. But patiently she would instruct and humbly he would learn, because he loved her. On every other plane they met, well-matched in courage and vitality, in love of horses, outdoor life and sport. If he could not rhyme or make music like her other admirers, he could always keep her his by the strength of his manhood. Serve her utterly, yet remain her master. In the perfection of their union, lust was the smallest part. “As soon as I inherit we will live up there, and I will fill the place with all the books and musical instruments money can buy,” he went on, speaking out of wishful fancy. “I will send to Paris for rare stuffs for your dresses. We have horses in our stables fleeter and more mettlesome than any I have seen here. You will be like a queen there, but far more dearly loved. Nan, my sweet, for you I swear I will even learn to play upon the virginals.”

“Heaven forbid!” Anne gave a little hastily suppressed shriek of laughter, and then became deadly serious again. “We are only spinning dreams like happy children. But we must weave them into reality.”

“But how, with the King himself promising you to another?” asked Percy, knowing the odds against them and more intent upon enjoying to the full the moments they were sure of.

He would have lulled her with the sweets of present love; but, womanlike, Anne wanted assurance for the future. “The Princess Mary and her duke risked everything and were forgiven,” she murmured, her mind still clinging to the daring example of their secret wedding.

“The Cardinal was on their side. But for that Suffolk might have lost his head,” Percy reminded her, not unmindful of his own.

But clear thinking was well-nigh impossible with Anne’s arms stealing persuasively about his neck and her head resting against the thin silk of his doublet. “There is a way,” she whispered.

“Nan?” The name was no more than a glad, breathless questioning. He did not pretend to misunderstand. He slid a finger beneath her little pointed chin, lifting it until her lips were level with his own. They sat knee to knee, looking deeply into the shadowed mystery of each other’s eyes.

“Take me now while there is yet time,” she urged.

Hers was all the warmth and enchantment man ever dreamed of, and she offered it to him alone. Harry Percy held himself rigid, fighting his hot desires, her perfect body already surrendered in his arms. All these weeks he had restrained himself, honouring her, hoping to make her his wife. And now, goaded by frustration, the maelstrom of undammed passion bore him on its dangerous tide. She was bewitching, altogether exciting, although with him she used no conscious wiles. Different from other women, complimented by kings, desired incurably by all men who came beneath her spell.

“Beloved,” she whispered, “don’t you see that if I tell James Butler I am no longer virgin he will not marry me? That even my father could not force him to it.”

Percy knew that she spoke the truth. “But, Nan, my dear, my very dear, the shame,” he reminded her unsteadily, for conscience’s sake.

“Oh, you have no need to tell me! Don’t you think I have counted it? My stepmother in tears, Norfolk thundering, my new cat of a sister-in-law lapping it up like cream!”

“And you would have to bear it all.”

“Dear fool, do you suppose I should suffer nothing if James Butler used me for his pleasure and the procreation of his heirs?”

He crushed her to him. “Nan, Nan, be quiet! I tell you no man shall have you—”

“It is separation I cannot bear.” Anne could have won him easily with that strange power she had over men’s senses, but she was too proud. Because she loved him with all of her, body and soul, she had to persuade his reason. “When will you understand, Harry, that I love you utterly?” she pleaded. “That nothing life has ever given me, nothing that it can yet offer, can weigh against a moment of your approval, against your most casual touch or smile. That I would lose the whole world to keep your love.”

Already she was his past saving. “You make me very humble, Nan,” he muttered, against her breast.

“Then I am cleverer than the Cardinal,” laughed Anne, caressing the bright disorder of his hair.

Love like this was a rebirth. It burned away all cruelty and bitterness, running over in a measure of human kindness that made the world a lovely place. Crushed against her lover’s heart, all the long disciplined desire in her rose to its consummation. Metamorphosed by love, she knew it to be no longer something evil—some snare, some super-abundant force to be feared—but something natural, sane and good. In Percy’s arms that night Anne lived the brief rich transport of her life. Throwing aside security and favour, she made the reckless surrender which could have kept her sweet.

He held her to the uttermost moment, risking his life to do so. By his ardour he stripped the future of each of them of any real satisfaction in any lesser loves.

Dawn was breaking before they parted. A faint streak of pink across the Essex marshes heralded the unwanted day. Anne stepped from the grotto to the grassy river path, stretching ecstatic arms to a late-risen sickle moon. “Whatever happens, my love, we shall have this night to remember,” she said softly. “And even if we must pay for it with all our lives it will be no price at all.” She turned to him suddenly, earnestly, as if she had just made some momentous discovery. “You will always remember that, Harry, won’t you?”

He stood watching her, a few yards apart. “Why do you speak like that? Almost as if something terrible and unborn in our minds?”

“I don’t know.” A new, portentous gravity was upon her. “Only if the future should hold only sorrow for us and you saw me suffering, you must say to yourself, ‘She chose it so. Together we lived that night.’ Promise me, Harry!”

“I could not see you suffer!”

“Jocunda says we must all suffer for our sins, in this world or the next.” Anne broke off, trying to laugh lightly. But laughter would not come. “Yet this is no sin,” she tried to reassure him. “The sin lies in parting us and selling our young bodies for prestige and power. Neither is there any shame in love like ours,” she declared, standing before her lover in the silvery sable of a still shadowy world. “All the shame is in the bartered beds our parents bound us to.”

Either he was more conventional than she, or still too bemused with the wonder of her to pay attention. “Your little shoes are soaked with dew,” he observed irrelevantly, kneeling to wipe them tenderly upon his cloak.

She, too, came back to concern for present reality. “Go quickly or someone will see your boat!” she cried, almost pushing him from her in a sudden panic for his safety.

“Not until I have seen you back at your window,” he said, perceiving that the Palace servants would soon be astir. And when she proved mutinous, he was the more masterful. “No accident must befall you. You are mine now,” he told her.

Anne’s face burned, but she met his gaze with bravely shining eyes. “That is what I will tell them,” she promised, with returning optimism. “I am happier than I have ever been, Harry! They cannot marry me to anyone else now. And if I should bear your child, my father may be glad for you to take me.” She looked around at the beauty of the brightening world, wondering why such cruel interference and recriminations must be suffered. “And perhaps, who knows, by the time he is born they will forgive us,” she added softly.

In his saner moments Percy had never shared her optimism. There was still Mary Talbot. And in his heart he knew how he, and all his brothers, feared their father. He pulled Anne to him and kissed her farewell. Because of his uncertainty and his sense of unwilling guilt towards her, his parting words were weighty with sincerity. “Remember, Nan, since the first day I saw you I have wanted you to be my wife. I shall always want it.”

“And remember, Harry Percy, whatever happens I would rather be your wife than Queen of England!” Gaily, heedlessly, Anne Boleyn threw the words back to him as she sped, with lifted skirts, towards Henry Tudor’s splendid Palace.

When Anne heard that the Earl of Northumberland had visited upon the King and then gone immediately to York House she scarcely knew how to bear the suspense. The Court was back at Westminster, and the Cardinal’s fine town residence only a few yards further down the river. From the royal wharf she could see the barge that had borne him thence still bobbing, moored, upon the slapping tide. Sturdy watermen in the Northumberland livery sat about her thwarts, chatting casually, as if the purport of their master’s visit were of no particular moment. Yet within the Episcopal Palace he must even now be closeted with Wolsey, discussing his eldest son’s unsanctioned love affair.

Anne leaned over the river wall, gazing downstream at the unrevealing windows of milord Cardinal’s private apartments. Had they sent for Percy yet? Would he hold out firmly against his father’s wrath as he had done against Wolsey’s? And would either of them listen to his arguments? It was intolerable to stand waiting like a pawn, knowing nothing of the next move. Somehow or other she must see for herself and know what was going on.

People jostled against her as she stood unheeding, the stiff breeze whipping at her skirts. The Spanish Ambassador and Sir Thomas More were put ashore to see the Queen, a hay wherry was being unladen for the stables, minor state officials and their clerks kept coming and going. A woman who looked like some sort of seamstress stood chaffering with a waterman, and was finally rowed to the steps of York House. And then a carpenter, with his bag of tools. Anyone could go except herself, it seemed. Yet her whole future was being decided there—now, at this very moment, perhaps. Unable to bear inactivity, Anne began to pace up and down. Who was there to whom she could appeal for help? Whom could she trust? Even Margaret Wyatt knew nothing of the surrender which had made her Harry Percy’s beyond all question of formal contract.

Someone was calling to her gaily from the Watergate. She looked up in annoyance. But it was only young Arabella Savile, who had recently joined the Queen’s household. When she had first come, Anne, remembering her own homesickness, had been kind to her. And already the girl’s cheerful good nature had made her a general favourite with gentlefolk and servants alike. She had a merry round face, blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose. The thought occurred to Anne that one could trust Arabella.

“Come down and feed the swans!” she called, throwing a groat or two onto the tray of a pieman patronized by the ferrymen. But as soon as she and Arabella were leaning over the wall throwing crumbs of pastry to a hungry family of cygnets, she lowered her voice. “You have an aunt who is in charge of the maids at York House, haven’t you?” she asked.

Arabella nodded, flattered that the fêted Boleyn should take so much interest in her.

“And you get permission to visit her sometimes?”

“Whenever I am not on duty.”

Anne threw the last of her crumbs upon the water. “Bella, could you go now?” she asked.

The Queen’s youngest lady looked amazed at the urgency in her companion’s voice. “I suppose that I could. I have only to ask Donna da Salinas.”

To her surprise she felt this strangely attractive girl whom all men quarrelled over tugging desperately at her arm. “Go now! And take me with you,” she was entreating. “It means everything to me. You probably know that milord Percy’s father is there.”

There were people passing all the time, and Arabella Savile caught only part of what Anne was whispering. But to her Nan Boleyn was a glamourous personality, whose casual kindness she had long been waiting to repay with some acceptable service. And here was the opportunity. It promised an amusing adventure with just that spice of danger which appealed to her. “Right willingly,” she agreed, her blue eyes sparkling. “But how will you—”

“That serving wench of yours. She is about my height. You could, perhaps, make some pretext to borrow her cloak?”

Together they hurried back to the private apartments. And when Mistress Savile reappeared and called for a waterman to row her to York House it excited no surprise. As usual she took her woman with her. A tall, slender wench muffled against the wind in a hooded cloak and bearing a basket of gifts upon her arm.

“I will learn all I can from my aunt,” whispered Arabella, as they disembarked. “But while I am with her I am afraid you will have to stay with the servants and tradespeople at the end of the hall for fear she might recognize you.”

Anne had scarcely bargained for that. But maybe it was the best place to pick up gossip. Avoiding the unwelcome attentions of some pages who had probably seen her at Greenwich, she went and seated herself on a form between a group of shaveling clerks and an aging priest who scarcely looked up from his beads. As she sat there, with her borrowed hood held close as though she suffered from a toothache, she noticed that all manner of people kept drifting in either through the open door from the courtyard or from behind the serving screens. Carpenters, upper servants, scullions, they all had an air of expectancy—as if they knew not what they waited for but, by being about, would make sure of missing nothing.