My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (18 page)

Should she bear him children, she would want them brought up in the fresh air and sunshine. She had imbibed enough austerity from her own parents to believe in untrammeled growth, and she had enough common sense to realize that half the perils that beset childhood come from within the home. Spoiling, for instance, and half-formulated fears. And this house was full of both. It was clear to see that Henry’s fear of infection had communicated itself to everyone who was forced by his orders to take dozens of petty precautions on the prince’s account and to carry out, day after day, all that mediaeval ritual about testing dishes and counting how many times the child sneezed.

But this time it seemed that his forebodings were not without foundation, for the spacious playroom was deserted and the royal visitors were greeted by the thin, protesting wail of a child in pain.

When a flustered major-domo conducted them to the boy’s bedroom they found Edward muffled to the eyes in his heavily carved, hooded cradle before a blazing fire. To Anne, coming in glowing from her ride, the room seemed unbearably stuffy, to add to which a bevy of women were bending over him stifling him with well-meant attention. One shook a toy set of jester’s bells before his face, so jangling his nerves that his peevish crying turned into hysterical screams. Another rocked the cradle with a ceaseless, maddening motion of her foot, while two elegant young girls sat on the floor offering him sweetmeats from an assortment of expensive comfit dishes. As the King strode into the room they sprang up and scattered, leaving a tall, anxious-faced woman to face his inauspicious arrival. By the way Elizabeth ran to her, Anne guessed her to be the Mrs. Ashley of whom the child so often spoke.

“How long has he been crying like this?” Mary demanded of her, going straight to the cradle with that air of bridling importance which even the most self-effacing of women can assume in a sick room.

“Since the dial stood at noon, Madam,” replied Kate Ashley, who—although on the defensive—was clearly relieved to see her.

“Nothing seems to soothe him. We have given him the tansy syrup Milady Bryan recommended and the cooks have been making his favorite almond paste all morning.”

“Which rather explains things!” thought Anne, glancing with horror at the rich contents of the abandoned comfit dishes.

“Where is Margaret Bryan? And that ass Bull? Why isn’t he in attendance?” bellowed Henry, above the yelling of his son. But this only caused the four younger women to sink deeper and more helplessly into their skirts, for had not Lady Margaret applied for permission to visit a sick relative? And was not Dr. Bull himself abed with a quinsy? And wasn’t poor Mother Ashley, stumbling through these explanations, already in a frenzy lest he should have given the infection of it to her precious poppet?

“Then have a man ride hell for leather for another doctor out of Barking and send all these useless women away!” shouted Henry, creeping as far from the cradle as possible because, hero of the tilt-yard as he had been in his youth, the bare mention of infection could make an arrant coward of him. “A fine thing,” he went on blustering to his new wife, “to keep a resident physician and a room full of women who are supposed to understand their job, and when I come to see my son he roars too lustily to notice me and no one can soothe him!”

His complaint was not without reason, for Mrs. Ashley seemed to have come to the end of her resources and the royal nurse maids had been thankful to scuttle out before his wrath like rudderless ships careering in a gale.

And now, except for the middle-aged nurse and young Culpepper, the five Tudors were alone.

Standing unobserved in the shadow of Kate Ashley’s discreetly curtained bed, Anne of Cleves had time to look at each of her new English relatives in turn. Now was a good time to observe them, while they were completely unself-conscious and the attention of three of them centered on the youngest: Henry, who hated illness, straddling the hearth, utterly useless; Mary, suddenly come into her own, lifting her little brother tenderly from his embroidered coverlets; the child Elizabeth, forgetful for once of the need to dramatize her own burgeoning ego, watching in an agony of genuine concern; and Edward himself, an adorable three-year-old, pleasantly curved but too trans parent of skin, beating at poor Mary’s prim spinster bosom with tight-clenched fists and screaming until his face was like a round, red moon. Instinctively, Anne noticed that he was too big to be coddled in a cradle and that he was sweating profusely from the stuffiness of the room. But, although she had ridden many miles specially to see him, she was scarcely thinking about him. She was looking at Mary. Seeing Mary for the first time—with understanding. Learning the story of her frustration, just as she had learned about Thomas Cranmer’s the day before.

Mary Tudor’s slight body looked over-burdened, holding the heavy boy in her arms. All her longing for her own adored, persecuted mother and for children of her own found escape in the way she strained him to her poor, love-starved heart. Her thin, tightly buttoned mouth was relaxed in tenderness; her shortsighted, Spanish-brown eyes were beautiful with devotion, the way they looked before the candle-lit altar in church. Seen like that, all her cold reserve was belied, all her waspish irritability excused. One remembered only what a mother she would make.

But such fervor was scarcely soothing to a yelling, perspiring boy of three. And Anne, accustomed to dealing with children in humbler walks of life, foresaw exactly what would happen when his closely cuddled cheek came into painful contact with the jeweled cross which was the sole ornament on his sister’s dark velvet bodice. As she had expected, he stopped in mid-yell, outraged by this sudden scratching of his tender flesh, took one indignant gasp and held his breath. His limbs stiffened alarmingly and his face assumed the purple hue of the velvet against which he found himself squeezed. Poor Mary herself, already sallow from her hurried ride, went white as death.

“Oh, quick, Mrs. Ashley! What’s the matter with him?” shrieked Elizabeth, instinctively turning to the only fount of succor she knew.

“It must be some sort of fit,” declared that much-harassed woman, reaching unceremoniously behind the King’s broad back for a shovelful of wood ash to heat the warming-pan which was her very present help in time of trouble.

“Fetch that fool Bull out of his bed if he’s dying!” shouted the King to Tom Culpepper.

In face of such concerted family panic Anne decided that she had been a spectator long enough. Reluctantly withdrawing her leisurely mind from further fascinating discoveries about her elder step-daughter, she stopped her departing gentleman with a decided gesture. Heedless of the King’s command, she told him to open a window instead; and so astonished was Tom that, after one hesitant glance in his master’s direction, he obeyed. There was a tussle with a long-disused latch and suddenly the room was freshened by an unwonted inrush of sun-warmed air. Meanwhile Anne, noting Mrs. Ashley’s formidable approach with the warming-pan, had fore-stalled her at Mary’s side.

“I am afraid he’s too heavy for you,” she said tactfully, holding out her arms for the breathless boy. In her panic, Mary yielded him up with resentment. And, to the horror of his watching family, Anne proceeded to turn the future King of England ignominiously onto his stomach and slap him smartly on the back. “Please, will someone pull back those heavy curtains?” she asked pleasantly, and carried him to the open window.

Not least surprised was Edward Tudor. Shocked by such unaccustomed treatment, he allowed himself to relax, gulped and lay limp but breathing. She cuddled him up then and after one final sob of self-pity he settled himself comfortably, staring up into her face with comical confusion.

“New pwetty lady,” he lisped gravely.

Because Mary had said that he didn’t take to strangers Anne forbore to kiss him.

“Silly boy, what a fright you gave us all!” she scolded unsteadily.

“Now stop crying and try to tell us what’s the matter.”

Her voice was low and bantering, as if they two under stood each other, and Edward found her strong young arms reassuring, She didn’t hold him as if he were made of glass or seem in the least afraid of dropping him. Neither did she fuss like the rest of them. She just sat down on a chair, made a wide, comfortable lap and took off his elaborate night-cap. For a long time Edward had been wanting to get that cap off, and the way her cool hands stroked the damp hair from his forehead was lovely. One didn’t want to be cross any more.

He leaned back wearily against her breast and continued to stare at her with blue, tear-drenched eyes. Evidently he approved of her; for after another whimper or two and a gusty hiccough he indicated without undue delicacy that the pain was in his belly.

Stuffed with sweetmeats! thought Anne, rubbing it gently. But she had more sense than to say so. Instead she tried her most persuasive smile on his nurse and begged for a bowl of warm water and a napkin to bathe his face.

“But, Madam, he’ll catch his death of cold under that open window—and without his cap too!” protested Kate Ashley.

In a score of emergencies Anne had learned to rely on her own judgment in such matters. “I don’t think so. It’s so mild today,” she said; and although she was well aware that the woman was shocked at the idea of a queen knowing how to do such things she began placidly freshening him up herself. Elizabeth brought his jeweled comb and Anne let her tidy his straight, fair hair. It was so much better for him than having half-a-dozen anxious underlings hovering over him. “Now you look fit to kiss your father,” she declared, plumping the little fellow round on her knee to face his family.

Edward held out his arms and smiled enchantingly. And his great, red-headed sire came and kissed him so tenderly that Anne, looking down on the back of his closely cropped head, felt a stab of pity for him.

“May he see his toys now?” begged Elizabeth, whose love for this one being smaller than herself was probably the only completely spontaneous, uncalculating emotion in a nature already beginning to be warped by her precarious bastard state.

Henry was as anxious to see him play with them as she; but he had been badly shaken. “Ask your step-mother,” he said, hiding behind the usual domestic formula of a domineering man who finds himself at a disadvantage in a sick room.

“Just one, Elizabeth,” decreed Anne. “The nicest you can find— for him to cuddle while he goes to sleep. You see,” she added at sight of their disappointed faces, “he’s quite worn out with all that—that—” not being certain of the exact significance of the English verb “to yell” she substituted the euphemism, “weeping.”

Elizabeth, who adored bright colors, danced away to select the lovely red unicorn. But she stopped short with the creature in her hands and, with a politic sense unsuited to her years, offered it soberly to her father.

Henry glanced uneasily at Anne. He was beginning to have a glimmering idea that she wasn’t as slow-witted as he had supposed, and that behind that meek mask of hers she was often criticizing him.

“Give it him yourself,” he told the child, with the rough awkwardness of a man unaccustomed to making even small sacrifices; and went back with pompous virtuousness to his favorite stance before the hearth.

The unicorn was a vast success and Edward beamed impartially on them all. But soon his sandy lashes were drooping and a healthy flush was warming his cheeks. Anne wished she could come often and play with the two children, banishing that shrewd look from Elizabeth’s pointed face and the sickly petulance from Edward’s.

She began to sing softly and tunelessly under her breath. Some nonsensical nursery rhyme in her native tongue. She had forgotten the grown-ups. She might have been back in Cleves, soothing Dorothea’s sick baby. And presently her little step-son fell asleep on her lap, his round head tucked into the soft hollow of her neck and his father’s gift clutched in his arms.

She looked up to find Henry watching her. He was thinking how much her placid ways resembled his gentle Jane’s—except, of course, that Anne was a hundred times more capable. He could almost imagine that it was the boy’s own mother who held him and, had Anne but known it, her neck was safe on her shoulders from that moment. But the soft, sentimental expression on his face embarrassed her. So she beckoned him to her side as if he were any ordinary husband and had to laugh at the docile way he came, stepping with exaggerated caution from rug to rug for fear of waking the boy and undoing all her labors. Quite unwittingly, to cover her lapse, she said the thing that never failed to please him.

“He’s ridiculously like you, isn’t he?”

For the first time in a month of marriage they were talking in intimate domestic whispers. “He has the Tudor coloring,” he agreed, “but less pronounced than Elizabeth’s. You see, my wife had honey-colored hair like yours.” The woman who had given him an heir would always be “my wife” to Henry. He had never been violently in love with her, but she had earned her status and it satisfied his sense of fitness to put her on a different plane from the rest.

But Anne was suddenly too conscience-stricken to notice, much less to feel slighted. “My hair isn’t really honey-colored. It’s dark, like my eyes,” she confessed. She had always wanted to tell him the truth and now, with his son warm in her arms, somehow she was no longer afraid to.

Mary looked up sharply and Elizabeth’s eyes were wide with astonishment.

“Show me,” he ordered curtly.

With her free hand Anne fumbled at her headdress until the hated yellow wig was on the floor and her own warm brown tresses about her shoulders. Her cheeks burned with shame. Why had she allowed herself to be persuaded into wearing the thing when such deception was so utterly alien to both her upbringing and her nature? How vulgar they must think her!

“It wasn’t just silly vanity,” she stammered, and was touched to the heart when Mary, who would have shrunk from doing such a thing, came and stood by her defensively and said:

“How could it have been when your own hair is so much more beautiful? I only wish mine were half as thick!”