Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (23 page)

“It was a terrible risk to take, trying to make his Grace jealous!” expostulated Margaret Wyatt, as soon as they were alone again.

“Those who take no risks arrive nowhere,” Anne told her tersely.

“Please God, it bodes no ill for poor Thomas,” murmured Margaret; and that was the nearest she ever came to recrimination.

Anne’s friends were very loyal to her.

She stooped to warm her hands at the new, crackling blaze. “Don’t fret so, M argot,” she encouraged, with a confidence she was far from feeling. “Let me but see Henry for a moment and I will right the world for Thomas!”

“But how can you hope that he will come after this morning?”

Anne turned and laughed at her. “Because of this morning he will not be able to stay away,” she prophesied.

And as if to prove the truth of her boast, the door was thrown open and Henry Tudor stood there, glaring in as if he expected to find her in Wyatt’s arms.

“Mistress Margaret and I are honoured,” mocked Anne, making obeisance. “And mercifully, since your Grace is so precipitate, not yet undressed.”

Henry neither smiled nor apologized. And at a glance from her friend, Margaret sidled past him, thankful to close the door behind her.

As he moved across the room, Henry’s searching eyes never left Anne’s face. “I must talk with you before I sleep,” he said abruptly. His rings and gold chain had been taken off. Obviously, he had been to his room, intending to go to bed in dudgeon, and the turmoil of his caring had in the end driven him back to her.

Anne could think of nothing to say. The relief of seeing him was so great. She had only
made
herself believe in her own power —made herself believe that he would come.

Her heart-shaped face had grown white with strain, and she passed a hand across her brow. “I will readily tell your Grace anything,” she offered. “But I—oh, Henry, I am so
hungry
!”

None of her usual clear-cut, calculated phrases could have served her better. He almost pushed her into a chair, awkwardly patting her shoulder as if she were a starving child. “Eat then,” he ordered, with exasperation. “You were a fool to wait.”

“I hoped and prayed that you would come!”

He lifted the lid from some spiced lampreys, sniffed appreciatively, and helped her lavishly with his own hands. Then set a cold capon before her. “Carve it for me, Henry! Let’s not call the servants,” she entreated, seeing that the homely occupation was already beginning to make his heroics look foolish.

Silently, expertly, he obeyed. The last thing he wanted was to call the servants. Heaven knew, it was seldom enough he got her alone! And the spiced dish compote smelt so good he wished he hadn’t supped. Katherine had been a bundle of injured self-righteousness, and the food, brought all the length of the great hall, half cold. Whereas here— Extravagant wench, to order a fire in June! But how homely it looked. With the one woman he wanted sitting there eating her supper like any squire’s wife. He leaned across and poured her a glass of his own Burgundy. And when she had drunk it the colour came back into her cheeks, which was the one thing needful to make her ravishing.

When Anne judged that the edge of his anger was blunted, she rose and faced him across the table. “You were gravely displeased about the gold pomander chain,” she stated, carrying the war into the enemy’s camp.

“You must have given it to him,” he accused, sullenly.

Anne moved the stem of the Venetian glass round and round, weaving patterns on the linen cloth. And Henry, fascinated, watched her tapering fingers. “He is my cousin,” she explained, with a reminiscent smile. “As you know, we have always lived within a few miles of each other. He and Margaret played with us when we were children. We all loved each other so much that, when we were too young to have money, we were wont to
make
each other gifts.”

“But not the kind of gift a man delights to wear against his naked skin,” growled Henry.

Anne saw that she must pick her words more carefully. “In twenty-five years I must have given Thomas Wyatt a variety of things,” she agreed. “But not that chain.”

“I saw the initials. And the meaning way he held it to enrage me.”

“Oh, I do not deny that it was mine. But he filched it from me one day at Greenwich.”

“You mean, before I—”

Anne had an enchanting way of looking up suddenly at anyone she was talking to, and her eyes sparkled at him, warmly as the wine. “Before you noticed me. While I was busy at my embroidery frame he tweaked it from my belt—” She had been going to say “To tease me”, but suddenly the bolder words slipped into her brain. Words which were difficult to say, but which would make the King trust her and draw his grudge from Wyatt. “To annoy another man whom I preferred,” she substituted.

Henry pushed aside a chair unseeingly and came closer, his eyes hot on hers. “So you made Wyatt jealous, too, poor devil?”

Anne made no answer, content to observe that jealousy was veering from the particular to the general.

“There must always have been men here and in France.”

Anne lowered her lashes and endured his persistence. “Could I help it?” she murmured modestly.

He stared down at the curve of her cheek and the white division of her breasts visible beneath the straight, low-cut bodice of her gown. “No, damn you!” he allowed at last.

He stamped angrily to the hearth and stood there, kicking a charred ember into a shower of sparks. Then swung round on her again, and caught her watching him. He could almost have sworn that he had detected a fleeting smile. “The man you baited him with—that was Northumberland’s young whelp whom I caught you with at Greenwich, I suppose?”

Anne’s head shot up, and all suspicion of amusement died. “Yes.”

“And I dealt with him. He’s out of the reach of your wiles. Bedded with Shrewsbury’s daughter.”

“Yes,” said Anne again, without flinching, defending with a calm assumption of indifference the only man she had ever loved.

“But Wyatt,” Henry began pacing back and forth again, goaded by miserable uncertainty. “He is still here, under the spell of those witch’s eyes of yours, and he has always wanted you. Your stepmother favours him. He was always about at Hever. Playing ‘Catch as catch can’ about the staircases, winter evenings, no doubt. Beading you his cursed poems in the walled garden. He has had every opportunity. Did he—?” Quite suddenly Henry Tudor’s jealous fury broke up, leaving him utterly vulnerable. He seized Anne’s hands, kissing them again and again. “Oh, Nan, Nan, don’t you see?” he pleaded. “You and he are both young and I am nearly middle-aged. You don’t know what it is to lose one’s youth and still love ardently.”

Compassionately, because he was being sincere to the point of self-depreciation, Anne pressed the palm he had been caressing across his mouth. She would not hear his humiliation, nor did she make any pretence of misunderstanding what he wanted to know. “No, he never has,” she said.

Henry caught her to him in a transport of gratitude. “Swear it, sweetheart! Ever since that game this forenoon I have feared that I have been deceived.”

“I swear it, Henry.”

He laughed a little, apologetically, already embarrassed by the crudity of his own behaviour. “You see, my heart’s darling, I had to be sure. All the more, because I am King, I couldn’t take another man’s leavings.”

Anne’s left hand groped among the folds of her skirt for the feel of her rosary. “I am not forsworn! Though he be in truth deceived, I have not lied,” she told her bargaining soul. God be thanked, he had put the question of her chastity only in that way! Seeking time to steady herself, she moved to a table by the window where her private casket stood. Lifting a key from the chain about her waist, she unlocked it, revealing a pile of letters.

And Henry, peering over her shoulder, had the satisfaction of seeing that they were his own. “Fond little fool! So you have kept them all,” he chided, tweaking her ear, well pleased. But as Anne lifted them, searching for something else, the sight of his seal must have curbed his vanity with caution. Shrewd Welshman as he was, he glanced at her askance. “They are not for prying eyes,” he warned her, recalling certain amorous passages. “Better burn them, poppet.”

But Anne hugged them to her breast, and her laughter sounded quite spontaneous. “Oh, Henry, are all men so stupid? To destroy a girl’s love letters so that she cannot nourish her love by rereading them.”

“Do you reread them, Nan?”

“Over and over by candlelight in bed.”

“Why waste your time?” guffawed Henry shamelessly. “I know of better ways to nourish love in bed.”

But Anne had found what she wanted. It was not his letters she had meant to show him. She wanted to prove to him Wyatt’s integrity beyond all future doubt. She, too, was loyal to her friends. “Thomas never comes here now. He knows that I am yours,” she said. “But sometimes, as you should know, a man’s jealousy overmasters him. You must forgive him, Henry. Here is his beautiful farewell to me.”

She held out to him Wyatt’s latest verses, letting him read them through in silence. And presently, touched and ashamed, he read parts of them aloud.

“‘Of such a truth as I have meant . . .

Forget not, oh! forget not this,

How long ago hath been and is

The love that never meant amiss . . .

Forget not yet thine own approved,

The which so constant hath thee loved,

Whose steadfast faith hath never moved . . .

Forget not yet, forget not yet.’

“Poor Wyatt!” he said. “It is the heartbreak of a man who wanted you as desperately as I do.”

Anne drew her ripe mouth into a hard, purposeful line. “But he wanted to marry me. He is that sort of man,” she said, locking parchment and letters away.

When she turned round the King was regarding her in a new, strange way. “Anne, I am that sort of man, too,” he said, not to be outdone. But almost immediately he qualified it. “I would marry you tomorrow if I could.”

Though her heart knocked in her breast, Anne was clever enough not to pursue the subject. But the seed was sown.

He seated himself before the fire and drew her onto his knee. After letting him fondle her in silence for a few minutes, she had the temerity to ask what had first made him think of divorcing the Queen.

“It was when our daughter was but a few years old and we were arranging a marriage for her with the little Dauphin. Morett, the French Ambassador, began making difficulties; and I found that France looked upon Mary as illegitimate because I had taken my deceased brother’s wife. At first I was furiously angered. And then, as each son I begat upon her died at birth, I began to think they must be right. And that God was punishing me.”

“And then?”

“When my conscience could no longer bear it I spoke to Wolsey about it, and to the bishops, and to learned men like Sir Thomas More. More would give no opinion, and there are evil-minded persons who suggest that it is because I would be rid of Katherine for the sake of my own light desires, because she is eight years older than I. But even Wolsey, who is devoted to the Queen, agrees that somehow I must get an heir for England.”

Wolsey would agree to anything, at the easy expense of a woman’s happiness, thought Anne.

“These last few years must have been grievous for you,” she said, encouraging the King’s self-pity. “But now that you have sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to plead with his Holiness in Rome, and milord Cardinal is going to see King Francis, surely you will soon be free.”

“Free to marry a French princess!” grimaced Henry, who for months had been moving Heaven and earth to do so.

“And will your new bride have to live beneath the disapproving shadow of Spain as I do?” teased Anne.

Henry was only too pleased to speak of something which he had so far avoided discussing even with his Chancellor. Most people, he found, were so touchy about what happened to Katherine. “I have had it in mind to set up a separate establishment for the Queen at Richmond, where we both lived with my parents before she married my brother Arthur. It is, in a sense, our Tudor dower house.”

“She will not go back to Aragon?”

“Nothing will persuade her to. And, in truth, I—” It sounded weakly inconsistent to say that, when it came to the point, he did not wish her to, that she had been his background and his sustaining companion for so long. “I must do everything possible to avoid war,” he concluded, rather lamely.

“And your daughter, the lady Mary’s grace?”

“Mary can visit her,” said Henry, magnanimously.

Anne lay back against his encircling arm, but presently, realizing it was high time to put another distracting thought into his head, she began to giggle.

“Why do you laugh, sweetheart?” he asked, feeling the shaking of her body beneath his urgent hands.

“Oh, ‘tis nothing,” trilled Anne. “Only last night at cards her Grace said the oddest thing. About marriage and you, I mean.”

“And what was it?” asked Henry, curious, but not much caring.

“After I had turned up the winning card, she said, ‘Nothing less than a
Queen
will do for Mistress Anne!’“

Henry’s ardour slackened. Katherine’s opinion, it seemed, still counted for a good deal. “You mean
she
had considered it
possible
?”

“Oh, I did not hear her say it,” answered Anne, playing for safety. “I but repeat what my sister-in-law told me.”

Henry got up, almost pushing her from his knee. “But everybody knows that I must marry someone of royal blood,” he muttered, in great perturbation of mind.

Anne drew herself up haughtily, and faced him across the hearth. Compared with kind-hearted, dumpy Katherine, she looked arrestingly regal. Merchant as her great-grandfather was, through her Howard mother, Bigods and Mowbrays, all of them part of England, had poured into her that pulsing blood, bequeathed her those tapering fingers, that proud carriage and that grace. “Is there any blood more royal than Plantagenet?” she asked quietly, reminding him of the lineage which each of them, through their mothers, shared.

Never had she looked more beautiful, more fit to be a queen. Even Katherine had acknowledged the possibility. And from the two attenuated streams of Plantagenet blood a future King of England might be born, wiping out the uneasy stain of a usurping house. Henry looked at her and knew that he must have her. As more than a mistress. As a wife and Queen.