Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (28 page)

Anne herself made no comment for a while. It was as though, through her companion’s eyes, she gazed upon a rival drama of which she was not the heroine. A drama which she resentfully recognized as being too big for her own tawdry technique. Katherine, of course, had been magnificent. With half her mind and soul, Anne envied her. To be able to respect oneself without reservation must compensate for a great deal, she supposed. “Please God she
has
walked out of his life at last,” was all she said.

And so the Legatine negotiations, from which she had hoped so much, came to an ignominious end.

Campeggio claimed leave to return to Rome for the accustomed autumnal recess. Katherine retired to Windsor. And Henry, desirous of leaving London as soon as possible—labouring under the delusion, perhaps, that a man can separate himself topographically from an uneasy conscience—discovered the immediate necessity of a circuit through the Midlands.

And now he and Anne and all the Court were awaiting the Italian Cardinal’s farewell visit at Grafton. “And the sooner the better.” grumbled Henry, who had been forced to forego a good day’s hunting. Never once had he referred to Katherine’s trial; but, whatever the bitterness of his disappointment, for policy’s sake he could not vent his spleen upon the foreign Legate. An English Legate was, of course, another matter. Cardinal or no Cardinal, Wolsey was Henry’s subject, and had not been officially invited.

“There is no room in the house for him, and his ridiculous retinue will incommode our host,” objected Anne, when she perceived that Henry would have offered him belated hospitality. “Perhaps our good Hal can find him some accommodation.”

And so the great Chancellor of England, who time and again had entertained them all with princely magnificence, was lodged in a local inn. And waiting, he had time to review his grievances.

He had worked harder than any man in the land, spending money and leisure and health prodigally in the King’s service. Born in an ordinary unpretentious home, he had by his own endeavours won the regard of princes and theologians, become a Cardinal, and made England a power to be feared throughout Europe.

All winter he had been forced to steer a course between two dangers. Either he must disobey the King or offend the Pope—the authors of his hard-won temporal and spiritual power. And all for the sake of a black-eyed devil of a woman in whom ambition, fed on flattery and family urging, soared obscenely. Like some sudden unnatural meteor she had risen into his cloudless sky, darkening the established rays of his power by the speedy brilliance of her progress. Ambition in other men he had never been at a loss to cope with. But with a woman’s white body and tortuous wiles bewitching the King, he was no longer sure of Henry’s friendship.

Humbling himself, he had done his best to propitiate this Boleyn wench. At Henry’s wish he had gone to considerable trouble to provide her with a house almost as resplendent as his own, hanging her private apartments with arras from his own world-famous collection. On her behalf he had incurred the Queen’s distrust and the enmity of Spain. Together, she and Henry had fooled him over that marriage-negotiating visit to France. And when he had come back, there she was, loaded with the King’s jewels, laughing at him.

Just as she was laughing now standing between him and the closed door behind which the King was talking to Campeggio. Always standing between him and the King.

The scene was deliberately set for his discomfiture.

But although Wolsey’s wisdom far exceeded Spanish Katherine’s, he lacked her courage and inherent breeding. Pushing his way into the crowded, improvised anteroom at Grafton, he betrayed embarrassment. Scarlet silk and fine Venetian lace could no longer hide the flabby bulk of his once-powerful body, but served only to enhance the unhealthy sallowness of his pendulous cheeks. His probing, prominent eyes, so accustomed to intimidate, were lowered before the watchful stares of underlings. And he allowed himself to be disconcerted by the impudent popinjays clustered admiringly about Anne, many of whom had learned their fine manners in his house.

From wicked, slanting eyes, Anne glanced across the room and marked him where he stood, a sick and hesitant man. “The wheel is come full circle. If only Percy, my love, were here to see him now!’ whispered the devil of vengeance in her mind.

And Wolsey, meeting her hatred with his own, thought, “If only I could break up
this
love affair as easily as I crushed her first!” It was easy enough to make the London people shout “Concubine!” and “We want no Bullen!” when she rode abroad, and secretly to inflame their demonstrations of affection for the young Princess Mary. But if only he could come by some secret knowledge or some fear to hold over her, as she held over him that chance-gotten information about his youth!

Through her satellites, her mocking hostility flowed towards him. No one made way for him, no usher announced him, no single group of persons ceased their chatter—and yet, he felt certain, everyone in the room was watching him and wagering whether the King would receive him or not. Whatever lesser men had suffered awaiting a moment of his own valuable time, Thomas Wolsey suffered now.

“I know the night crow who has the King’s ear and misrepresents my every action,” he muttered to his bullet-headed secretary, Cromwell; certain in his own mind that, without persuasion, Henry would not have misused him so. And because, in order to cover his embarrassment, he must needs speak to someone, he—the most gifted speaker in all Europe—began a pitiful, pointless conversation with his usher, Cavendish.

“See how cleverly Anne baits him,” whispered Jane Rochford.

“Another few moments of this and he will give up all hope of an audience and call for his milk-white mule,” laughed Anne.

But she had mocked too soon. In the middle of her excited laughter the door behind her was flung open by a page and Henry’s genial voice, together with scraps of his relieved leave-taking, drifted out into the anteroom. And presently Henry himself appeared, accompanying the departing Cardinal. Anne had not counted upon that. Pleasantly, a little absently, Henry stood a few paces within the room, watching him go. And as his eyes followed one scarlet-clad figure they lighted upon another.

Anne tried to intervene, to head Henry off with the preamble of some hastily recalled jest. But he did not seem to hear her. The habit of old friendship was too strong. Wolsey made a pleading gesture, not wholly from self-interest, and seemed to totter a step or two forward. His face was all broken up and working painfully, like a child’s that has been shut out. And generously Henry hurried to meet him, all grudges and malicious insinuations forgotten. “Why, Thomas!” he exclaimed, just as if it were the other who had absented himself.

“Your Grace!” stammered Wolsey.

And there before all his abashed enemies, they embraced. Two men who had worked and feasted together, each moulded by the same events, sharing the same memories and tastes, comfortable to each other as a pair of well-worn slippers. Two men who, each in his own way, had just been through a trying time. “I had an idea, now that that foreign nincompoop is gone,” began Wolsey, lowering his voice.

“Yes, yes,” encouraged Henry eagerly, drawing him into his own room.

“I could act alone, with his Holiness’ brief of authority. It included us both—”

“If we can get hold of it—”

Already they were closeted together in the King’s room. Anne could see them standing close together in the window recess, Wolsey making confident gestures with his white, puffy hands, and the King listening attentively. She was aware of her uncle Norfolk, craning his neck round the jamb, and of the smothered oath that escaped her father. And then Henry, glancing over his shoulder, snapped his fingers impatiently and someone closed the door, shutting out all jealous prying.

Anne crumpled onto the nearest window seat. It seemed an eternity, waiting there, with her triumphant laughter cold on her lips. All the modish young men seemed to have melted away. And she was glad enough when Thomas Boleyn came and sat beside her. “It is no good losing heart, child,” he told her kindly. “All diplomacy has its ups and downs.”

Anne seldom saw him alone these days. She regarded him attentively, as if expecting to find him changed. But perhaps the change was only in the growth of her own understanding—perhaps he had always been the same. After all Ins scheming towards success he looked much the same as during those happy days at Hever—a little greyer, perhaps, but just as suave and handsome, just as unruffled— whereas she—”God must have been with that bloated son of a butcher then! Just a chance encounter and all our work undone,” she lamented, feeling suddenly very weary.

The Duke, her uncle, came and joined them. “God will give him over some day. He is getting to be an old man,” he observed vindictively. Norfolk had served his country ably by diplomacy and sword, and England had not room for two such proud personalities.

“I heard them say If we could lay hold of the Papal brief!’ which means that the King would depend upon him more than ever,” vouchsafed Anne.

“Then you may be sure Wolsey will leave before noon tomorrow to see Campeggio off in London and persuade him to part with it,” grinned Norfolk, showing his unpleasant teeth.

“They will be hand in glove again,” she wailed.

“Not for long, perhaps. If you can use those feminine wiles of yours and prevent the King from seeing him in the morning,” suggested her father.

Anne sat in ruminative silence, conscious that both men waited upon her cunning. It was a challenge, thrown down at the right moment. Presently she sprang to her feet and faced them with a brilliant smile. “There is supposed to be especially good hunting about here, is there not? And after a day indoors his Grace will be particularly impatient,” she said. “I pray you, milords, have our host come to us here. Perhaps between us we can convince him that a fine stag has been seen in these parts. A king stag, that no one can bring to bay. Something almost legendary that his keepers have seen in some distant brake at dawn. And for my part, I will persuade our hostess to have a breakfast carried thither.”

“And if the stag should not be oncoming?” enquired Thomas Howard, with caustic amusement.

“Then be sure your niece
will
be,” laughed the new Earl of Wiltshire.

What a daughter, this Nan of his! There had been a time when he had feared she would prove sentimental and recalcitrate; but now, removed from Jocunda’s fond influence, she appeared to have forgotten all about that callow love affair. She was a wench who accepted no reverses tamely. A wench to be proud of!

Arriving back at Westminster a few days later, Anne had time to assess her gains. She had prevented Wolsey from seeing Henry again at Grafton, but she knew that she had wrought only his discomfiture, not his downfall. And if he obtained the Papal brief to act for Henry, his influence would be paramount again. And how much he must hate her!

Seething with anxiety, she dismissed her women and bolted herself in her bedroom. It was not only her own disappointment. Her family and her supporters had depended upon her, and their hopes had been laid low. Before all her admirers, the King and the Cardinal had walked past her as if she were no more than a tiring woman, and, as they passed, Wolsey’s scarlet cassock had switched contemptuously against her gown.

“I will make Henry suffer for that!” she vowed. “After all his fine protestations, his gifts, his kisses, his love letters.” And as she ranged back and forth her eyes rested on the casket in which she kept them. “Were I to show some of those letters I could make
him
look a pretty fool!” she thought. Always at the back of her mind had lain the shameful notion that if ever she found herself about to be discarded like Mary she could use them. Not
really
use them, perhaps; but make Henry afraid that she might. It would be a mean weapon; but a woman must have some safeguard.

In her impatience, Anne had sent away the servants who had come to light her candles, and already the shadows were gathering behind the tallboy and the rich hangings of her bed. But by the western window there was still light enough to read a letter. She would refresh her memory, read again the fond, impassioned things that he would hate most of all for other eyes to see. “Would that you were in my arms, mine own darling, or I in yours; for I think it is long since I kissed you,” he had written. And then again in some later letter, after he had fondled her more intimately, “Sweetheart, I send you a hart that I have killed in the chase. Hart’s flesh from Henry, praying that hereafter, God willing, you may enjoy some of mine. And I would it were now!”

Anne’s lips curved into a smile. She forgot her ill-humour. Humming a gay little tune she crossed the room with briskly tapping heels. As she approached her table, she noticed that the casket stood a little awry, showing a thin angle of undusted oak beneath one end. Margaret, who had charge of that and her jewel case, was always so particular. It must be those careless chamberers, thought Anne. She must speak to them about it. But with the tiny key half lifted from her girdle, suspicion assailed her, holding the flowing grace of her movements suddenly taut. After a horrible moment or two she stretched out her left hand, the hand she used so seldom. And the carved lid lifted to her touch. The familiar scent of musk and amber came up to her, making her feel faint. But there was no uplifting of tightly pressed letters.

Panic-stricken, incredulous, Anne pulled the golden thing towards her, carried it to the light and peered in. Search as she would with frantic fingers, only one piece of parchment remained, partly unrolled, at the bottom.
“Forget not yet the tried intent—forget not yet!”
Part of the poet’s elegant script was plainly visible. The story of Thomas Wyatt’s constant love lay there, mocking her. Something sure and unswerving, which once she might have had. And for the rest the casket was empty—rifled.

The King’s love letters were gone!

Anne almost froze with horror. All the raging anger arid petty resentment was burned out of her. For an optimistic moment her hunted mind toyed with the notion that Margaret, or that young Savile hoyden, might have played some trick on her. But before she could reach her bell to summon them she knew that they would not dare. Not with the King’s letters. Besides they, too, had been away.