Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (24 page)

But Anne was not yet sure of him. ‘
Reculer pour mieux sauter’
was to be her watchword. “Your new French wife will not want me here when she comes,” she teased.

“It will not be what she wants,” frowned Henry.

“She may be less complacent than Queen Katherine. She may be young and clinging,” went on Anne, passing so close to him that the French scent she used was a seduction in his nostrils. Her laughter was low and mocking, and her eyes deep and black as night. “I had best go back to Hever, Henry, for she will expect you in her bed every night.”

He threw out an arm to intercept her, but she eluded him. “You jade, to taunt me!” he cried. “You, who have never yet been there yourself!”

Lissom as a waving branch, she escaped him. With all the glamour that was in her she was fighting some unknown woman in France. A little crazed, she caught up a lighted candle in its silver sconce. Holding it aloft with one hand, and her outspread skirt with the other, she began to dance—beckoning and billowing, as if weaving some fantastic incantation around him; so that he turned as she turned, and ever and anon grasped for her, as for some Fata Morgana, yet found her forever out of his reach. “Will your French wife dance as I do? Will she make you laugh? Will she sing your songs as I do, Henry?” she panted, as she whirled. And when he could stand her witchery no longer and caught her, candle and all, in his arms, she only laughed the more wildly, so sure of her power that she could afford to court danger. “And will all her clinging burn you as my lightest touch?” she demanded, straining from him as he kissed her white throat and half bare breasts.

He would have had her then, had she not held the naked flame between them.

“For God’s sake, Nan, you will burn us both!” he cried. It was the first time he had had to struggle with a woman for his will. It booted him nothing that he was a King.

“Thomas Wyatt risked your wrath for me this forenoon,” she taunted. “And you, the all-powerful Tudor, are afraid to marry the woman you want. Afraid of Wolsey and a pack of statesmen!”

Her cruel comparison caught him on the raw, wringing from him at last the promise she wanted. “By God, I am not! Let me but get my divorce, and I will marry you!”

With an oath and a yelp of pain, he clamped his hand to his chin, where his red-gold beard was singeing. And swift as a cat, Anne took advantage of the partial release.

“You will get me no other way!” she defied him, pulling her torn dress up about her shoulders, and running to the door.

Within a few days Henry was standing with Anne on the wide steps leading up to the great hall at Hampton, watching the preparations for the Cardinal’s departure. They and the whole Court were the Cardinal’s guests; and within the hour Wolsey would be setting forth to persuade King Francis to wring a divorce from the Pope with a marriage between Henry and the Duchess d’Alençon as the bait. His well-fed, restive horses and sleek, crimson-trapped mules made a brave show in the morning sunlight.

“Forty liverymen in crimson velvet. A score of handsome priests to escort his silver cross before him. Cavendish running hither and thither to assemble them. And God knows how many gentlemen of his household to follow after,” counted Anne.

“They should impress the French,” chuckled Henry, thrusting his hands into the jewelled belt that spanned his girth, and strutting importantly where he stood.

“And the hat!” breathed Anne, with a wicked similitude of reverence. “The scarlet, tasselled hat borne aloft and bowed to almost as if it were the Host!”

“That, too, should give us prestige,” agreed Henry, without perceiving her malice.

Anne slipped a hand through his arm and lowered her voice. “It has always been in my mind to ask you, Henry—is it true that when the hat was first brought from Rome, Wolsey caused tapers to be lighted about it?”

The King laughed, and squeezed her hand against his side. Like her young rip of a brother, she always had some new amusing tale to tell. “If he did, I never heard of it,” he answered, making a mental note to twit Wolsey with it. But he spoke a little absently, his mind more on the man’s mission than on his headgear.

“Being a King, I suppose you do not always hear things,” condoled Anne, assuming an engaging air of sympathy.

“Beshrew thee, girl, am I not in a position to hear more than most men?” snorted Henry, who had spent a tedious morning with his Council. But after a moment or two of her submissive silence, curiosity prevailed. “What manner of things do you mean?” he deigned to enquire.

“Oh, not matters of any import,” she hastened to assure him. “Just small amusing things that are common knowledge, but which even people who enjoy your affection would scarcely think fit to repeat to you.”

“Not fit? God’s breath, girl, am I an ogre with no sense of humour?”

“Then I see I must be your harbinger.” Anne began to hum a lively little tune, and glanced up at him mischievously. “Has
that
tune come to your Grace’s ears?”

“It has a catchy air,” allowed Henry, who hated to be baffled by a melody.

“‘Tis a ridiculous little
rien du tout
the Londoners sing about the Cardinal’s hat.” Because her dancing feet could in no wise keep still where there was any sort of rhythm, she began tapping it out on the stone step, and with diabolical gift of mimicry caught the very accents of an Eastcheap ‘prentice.

‘While’s the red hat both endure

Proud Wolsey makes himself cocksure.’

“They do not love him overmuch, do they, Henry?”

“They have every reason to love him, considering the hours he spends in their stinking courts striving to show even the smallest shopkeeper justice,” reproved Henry, loving her all the same for her gamin gaiety.

“With a herb-stuffed orange held delicately to his fastidious nose against the plague.”

“You should show more respect for your betters, sweetheart,” laughed Henry.

As he bent to caress a pair of his favourite hounds recently uncoupled from the kennels, Anne’s flexible voice took on a more serious tone. “But, of a truth, Henry, it irks me that they should so sharpen their envious wit on one whom you esteem so highly. My brother says there is some low rhymester who is forever railing against his Eminence in the streets and taverns.”

“A jailbird, no doubt. When men bear a grudge like that it is usually found that the dignitary they deride has, at some time or other, had occasion to punish them,” Henry told her.

“I doubt not your Grace is right,” agreed Anne. “Else why should this poet be so envious of milord Cardinal’s magnificence? He makes a kind of roundelay, so that the very potboys are singing it. ‘Why come you not to Court?’ he exhorts some imaginary sprigs of nobility. And then, mincingly, as if they had answered him in doubt, To which Court? To the King’s Court? Or to Hampton Court?’ And when people of the baser sort encourage his satire with their laughter he pretends to show how, by the richness of its treasures and its opportunities, Hampton eclipses Westminster.”

Henry frowned, and his mouth pursed roundly. “You did right to tell me,” he commended. “I will find out who he is and have the presumptuous fellow whipped naked through the streets so that the Londoners may see where such ignorant insinuations lead them.”

Anne knew quite well who the poet was, and he had her esteem and sympathy; but she was enjoying the ease of her own guile. All the same, when Henry invited her to dine with their host before his departure, she hung back a little. There was something very impressive about Wolsey, and it would be the first time she had sat at the dais table with him.

“The Queen keeps her room,” added Henry, misinterpreting the cause of her hesitation. “She has been high-stomached with me this last week because she mistrusts Wolsey’s mission.”

“Unless she were a complete fool, how could she not mistrust it?” thought Anne.

“Well, sweetheart, are you not coming to wish Thomas Wolsey Godspeed and a happy denoucement for both our sakes?”

But Anne still lingered, although the King held out a hand to escort her.

“When my father was Ambassador to France he was wont to say that the Cardinal enjoyed snaring foreign statesmen into an alliance as most men enjoy the chase.” Anne lowered her voice, with a wary eye on the waiting pages. “Would it not be better to leave it at that? Might he not ply his wits the better were he in ignorance of our intent?”

The green Tudor eyes began to twinkle. “You mean let him exploit Francis in good faith? Believing that I mean to go through with this French marriage.”

“Would it not be kinder to his ecclesiastic conscience?”

Seeing that Henry was beginning to bluster and knowing how he would hate to take advice from a woman, Anne hurried on with what she had to say. “All the more because he thinks but disparagingly of me. When you spoke flatteringly of me when you were first come from Hever, saying, in fond foolishness, that my wit and beauty were worthy of a crown, did he not look down that long nose of his and say, ‘It is sufficient if your Majesty finds her worthy of your passing fancy!’“

Henry stared at her and reddened. After all this time, the irritation of having his enthusiasm pricked like a schoolboy’s came back to him. “Yes, it is true,” he admitted, “and very like a pedagogue he said it! Though I know not how you came by his words.”

Being loyal to her friends, Anne did not enlighten him. “It is not for an inexperienced woman like me to meddle in such matters, but for your Grace to do as seems best,” she apologized, knowing full well that she had meddled quite successfully enough for one morning.

As they entered their host’s crowded hall Anne knew that all eyes were upon her; and that when the tall, portly Cardinal came from his canopy of state to meet them, Henry was as anxious as any young swain for her to make a good impression. For the first time he was producing her openly before the minister who ruled both church and state, whose opinion he had always valued. Producing her as his mistress. And as the King’s mistress Wolsey received her, according her just that right degree of esteem which was consonant with his duty to the Queen, and enriching the occasion with all the tactful resources of his suave worldliness.

“As a plaything I am probably welcome—to keep Henry occupied while he, the master statesman of Europe, works out his own brilliant schemes,” Anne concluded shrewdly, looking into the brown, probing eyes and listening with unwilling admiration to the assured, cultured voice. But he had not looked like this, standing in his London hall, watching with drooping eyelid and curling lip while Northumberland baited his son and heir. Although Wolsey had been serving the King then as now, Anne chose to ignore the fact, and threw Henry an approving, conspiratorial glance. “And for all butcher Wolsey’s fine statesmanship, he does not know that this time it is
we
who are fooling
him
!” she thought.

And the thought restored her confidence.

If Henry had feared that she would be either gauche or over-haughty, he had underestimated her manners, which matched the Cardinal’s own. With pretty deference she listened to the great prelate’s words, pleasantly aware that her assumption of shyness was calling forth all Henry’s protective chivalry. She praised the master cook’s
chef d’oeuvre
, a sweetmeat confection fashioned in the form of a chessboard complete with bishops, knights and pawns; and admired the Cardinal’s priceless tapestries, and gold plate. Particularly she admired the set of gold plate which, over and above the vessels in use at table, was set out in shining splendour upon the shelves of a great carved sideboard, catching the glint of heraldic glass so that the whole hall seemed ablaze with light. The gold plate was always set out for royalty. Habitués of Hampton noticed it only with a sort of shared, complacent pride and the King was accustomed to seeing it there. It was only now, for the first time, while the artless questions of a newly exalted maid-of-honour dwelt so persistently upon the value of each piece, that he began to realize that Wolsey’s collection was more rare and costly than his own. Vexatiously lending point to that absurd roundelay she had been humming.

Usually, nothing pleased Wolsey more than to talk to someone intelligent about his treasures, enhancing his prestige by telling how everyone on the Continent, from the Doge of Venice to the rich Flemish merchants, had sent or sold him works of art to curry favour. But soon his keen social sense warned him of an uncomfortable restraint, and he fell to talking of the previous day’s doings instead.

“A long day, I fear, my dear Thomas, since you were home so late,” observed Henry.

“So diligent for the well-being of the realm,” smiled Anne.

Shaking off some indefinable stirrings of anxiety, Wolsey plunged with relief into a witty account of some of the more interesting Chancery court proceedings. And like all astute men discussing their own calling, he was well worth listening to.

“‘Twas but this very day his Grace remarked how well the Londoners should love you,” encouraged Anne.

“At least they know I am no respecter of persons,” smiled Wolsey, complacently.

“As was well proved when your Eminence passed sentence upon Sir Amyas Paulet, confining him within his own precincts for seven years, although he be Treasurer of the Middle Temple,” offered an ill-advised but enthusiastic chaplain.

By the sharp way Wolsey frowned at him Anne gathered that this had been one of the cases he had
not
intended to discuss and Henry, who knew and liked the defendant, looked up with a chicken bone poised between his forefingers. “A severe sentence, surely,” he commented. “What was the offence?”

“Oh, the usual heresy charge of encouraging Lutheran leanings. He was found to have a copy of Tyndale’s Scriptures in his possession and to be lending it round among young law students,” answered Wolsey, a shade too negligently; and excused himself dexterously from the conversation by giving some order to a passing servant.

“That must have pleased the rabble—all the more so because he is not a Londoner,” said George Boleyn, whose tongue was nearly as privileged as that of Will Somers, the King’s jester.