My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (22 page)

Besides the carefree pleasure-lovers in that May Day procession there were others who thought along the same lines. Cranmer, noting with a more spiritual eye how this new Queen was riding straight into the people’s hearts, thought in his wisdom, Here is a new and unforeseen complication—more powerful than we know.

And Wriothesley, the King’s Secretary, going in fear of Cromwell’s fate, was heard to whisper later beside the lists, “We must see to it that there are no more public demonstrations until this Howard wench is Queen.”

Yet in spite of their separate, secret thoughts Anne managed to enjoy the Bachelors’ splendid pageant. For three whole days she was able to watch shifting crowds of people, to take note of other women’s fashions and to make new friends. Under the lofty marble pillars of Durham House the Governor of Calais’s charming daughter, Katherine Basset, begged humbly for a place in her household, and out in the sunny lists Sir Thomas Seymour begged—far less humbly—for her favor to wear in the fray. The two gorgeous dukes with their retinues seemed to fill the grounds with stir and heraldry—Norfolk, as hereditary Marshal of England, directing the jousts, and Suffolk with his charming wife, Catalina, explaining all the complicated pageantry. And, best of all, there was Culpepper’s tilting prowess to watch. A devil of recklessness appeared to possess him. Again and again Sir John Dudley and other more seasoned knights went down before him to sprawl in the dust with splintered lance, so that each time his charger thundered along the barrier the women waved and cheered. But he had eyes for none of them. It was enough for him that he wore his cousin Katherine’s favor and that it was stained already with her heart’s blood.

And if she isn’t crazy about him she must be ambition-blind! thought Anne, glancing down covertly from the Kentish squire’s hard, young limbs to her husband’s massive knees. Henry was too heavy now to enter the lists himself and it never occurred to Anne that he was longing to. She didn’t realize how a man can suffer, watching others enjoy a sport at which he once excelled. Or that there had been a time when the King could easily have unhorsed Culpepper or any of the other young competitors with a pike staff.

She only thought how complacent he looked, sitting there applauding the bouts, talking sport with his friends, leaning forward from time to time to catch her maid-of-honor’s eye.

After the tournament came feasting in Whitehall, lights and music on the river, and Morris dances on the village green at Westminster. And after the dancing, prayer. In the dim old Abbey her parents-in-law were buried in a lovely new chapel that looked like stone lacework. And, Lutheran though she be, Anne no longer went to vespers as in duty bound. She was beginning to find comfort in the lighted candles and more colorful ritual of which her father’s churches had been shorn—the sort of groping comfort that the perplexed and homesick find.

As she and her ladies stood in the dim interior waiting for the King she noted how Mother Lowe sniffed disapprovingly at the rich carvings and incense-laden air.

“It’s wonderful to be prayed for in all the solemn cathedrals and little village churches up and down the country,” she said, trying to placate the old lady for her own apparent lack of reforming zeal. “I ought never to be unhappy or afraid, ought I, having the prayers of so many people?”

Mother Lowe’s hawk-like countenance relaxed into grudging gentleness. “And after today, Madam, you may rest assured they mean them!”

Anne turned to Culpepper who had escorted them. He was still in his pageant finery and she gave one of the silver tassels of his shirt a little, friendly tweak. “Do you mean it, Tom, when you say ‘we beseech Thee to bless our gracious Queen Anne’?” In spite of all his triumphs and popularity he looked drawn and glum and she spoke with rallying affection. But he moved sharply so that her hand fell foolishly from his breast.

“Rest assured I do!” he answered, almost roughly. “And God knows no one in England has greater cause to pray for your safe keeping than I, Madam.”

For one crazy moment she thought that he must be drunk or fancying himself in love with her. Wine had been flowing freely and there had been other men that evening who had whispered things that would have been dangerous—had her husband cared.

But Tom Culpepper was neither.

Anne wanted to get him alone—to ask him what he meant. But by his sudden rigidity and the quenched fire in his eyes she knew that the King must have entered the Abbey. She shook herself mentally for a fool and moved to meet him, pacing regally up the aisle at his side. And, kneeling before the High Altar, she let all her fears and frustrations float up on a swell of music.

15

THE LETTER LAY ON a table beside the Queen’s bed. No one had dared to give it to her. Immediately after the pageant Wriothesley had handed it to the Earl of Rutland, her chamberlain. And he, good man—guessing what it contained—had felt that it would be kinder to let her read it when she was alone.

She had just returned from Westminster. Her ladies were half asleep after three days of unaccustomed gaiety and, with her usual consideration, Anne had dismissed them. She was unusually tired herself. Much as she had enjoyed it all, it was good to be alone at last.

As the servant who had lighted her upstairs closed the heavy oak door behind her, shutting out all sounds from other parts of the palace, she looked round her room with the satisfaction of a holiday-maker come home. It seemed to have taken on a new simplicity since Henry no longer came regularly to fill it with his over-riding presence. It might almost have been the “room to herself” which she had always wanted at Cleves. Only Dorothea was there, kneeling to warm her mistress’s nightgown by a new-fangled coal fire which Guligh had had lighted against her return.

After the warmth of the day the May evening was turning chilly and they had drawn thick curtains against a light-fingered frost which would silver the lawns in the privy garden before dawn.

Firelight and shadow danced cozily over the half-drawn curtains of the four-poster. As the weeks passed Anne had come to think of it as her bed—a blessed square of privacy—and no longer as a monstrous piece of significant furniture. Her glance rested appreciatively on inviting pillows and turned-down sheet. And then she noticed the letter lying on her bedside table with her husband’s royal seal dangling like a splash of blood from the ribbon that tied it.

Strange, she thought, when I’ve just spent the best part of three days in his company and parted from him only an hour since!

She crossed the room briskly and picked up the small rolled parchment; then hesitated, her cloak still about her shoulders, weighing it on her open palm. If Henry had anything pleasant to say, surely he would have said it. She recalled Culpepper’s disturbing words in the dimness of the Abbey, and shivered. All the warm comfort of her room seemed to fade away, leaving her bleakly at bay.

“Do make up the fire,” she called over her shoulder with such unwonted irritation that her kneeling woman looked up in surprise.

When Anne had gathered courage to break the seal she stood reading her letter by the light of a single tall candle. The stillness of the room was broken only by the spatter of fresh coals in the iron cresset and the whisper of the silk-lined cloak slipping from her shoulders. Dorothea rose from her knees and came and picked it up. She had been watching her mistress’s face, sharp-edged against the candle flame.

“What is it—now, Madam?” she asked anxiously.

The Queen stood still as a carved statue. “You are all to go back—to Cleves,” she said tonelessly.

Dorothea gave a cry of dismay. “All!” she exclaimed, with the jeweled garment bundled heedlessly in her arms. “But surely—not I?”

Anne turned and tried to reassure her. “Not you—God help me,” she promised unsteadily. “Not if we can find any means under Heaven to keep you.”

“We must. I will do anything. I would rather turn a spit in the kitchens than go back. Say I am your laundress—that none of these English girls can see to your beaded caps.”

“But everyone knows you are one of my jauntlewomen. ”

Freckled, flaxen Dorothea blushed furiously. “I could marry Guligh. He was here just now, more dumb and devoted than ever.

He doesn’t dare to ask me; but I think he has always wanted me.”

“Anyone can see that, my dear. But, invaluable as Guligh is, he is only a servant.”

“That’s why they wouldn’t bother about sending him back. And are we not all your Grace’s devoted servants?”

Anne smiled very tenderly. She had always hoped that someone kind would take the place of Dorothea’s dashing soldier and give her other children to assuage the longing for her dead baby.

“He is certainly big enough to look after you,” she said, conscious that being attached to William’s court, the girl’s strait-laced parents probably didn’t want her back.

Dorothea seized her hand and kissed it as if everything were settled. “Oh, Madam, you know I couldn’t leave you!” she cried, as if that were of far more importance than whether or not she were in love with poor Guligh. The gorgeous cloak was cast across the bed and, despite the difference in their rank, the two women clung to each other in relief.

Tears stood in Anne’s eyes as they drew apart. “It isn’t that I mind their going so much,” she said. “Poor old Mother Lowe often irritates me with her narrow, domineering ways and one doesn’t need to be told that half the girls are counting the days to get home.

Besides, of late I have felt that it only makes me look ridiculous going about with a bunch of dowdy women.” In spite of the hurtful letter, a smile began to curve the corners of her mouth. “I can see now why even the chivalrous French ambassador thinks they’re not exactly ‘belles,’ and why the King always called their favorite terrace at Hampton Court the ‘vrou walk’ and avoided it like the plague.” She began to pace up and down, tugging at the fastening of the metal belt circling her trim waist. “But why couldn’t he have told me himself? Consulted me as if I were a reasonable human being. Haven’t I shown them all—dozens of times—that I try to be reasonable?” Coming back to the foot of the bed she gripped a fold of the hangings with their everlasting pattern of Tudor roses, and leant her forehead against her clenched knuckles.

“And why—why—can’t I bear him a son?” she demanded, in a voice muffled by brocade and anger. “He wouldn’t do these cruel things to me then.”

Dorothea knew that was the one thing that would bring security and happiness to her ill-used mistress. Scarcely less than Anne she wished for it as a weapon with which to make a mere plaything of the blue-blooded maid-of-honor who basked in the King’s smiles and shared none of the work.

“There is plenty of time, Madam,” she soothed, coaxing the Queen into a chair and drawing off her shoes.

But Anne wasn’t so sure about that. The way Culpepper had spoken in the Abbey had taken away her sense of security, made her feel on the verge of some calamitous happening. In spite of all the people’s prayers! And it was characteristic of her that in the midst of her own disappointment she considered theirs. The whole nation will be so frightfully disappointed, too, if I don’t have children! she thought. And for a moment the armor of self-restraint deserted her. She leaned forward, her eyes shining like stars, the cruel parchment crumpled in her lap.

“Once he gives me a child everything will come right!” she reiterated. It was the old proviso that she had tried to comfort herself with on her wedding night. In the astounding importance of it everything else appeared puny—the machinations of her enemies, Henry’s infidelity, the burgeoning affection of her step-children, even her abiding love for Hans.

Sinking back at last against the pillows, she tried to picture herself living the safe, pampered existence Queen Jane would have enjoyed. It might still be possible. All those horrid, half-understood things that Lady Rochfort had hinted at need not be true. People whispered about the sore on the King’s leg but it didn’t necessarily prove that he was sterile. Anyway, it wasn’t so very long ago that Edward was born. And apparently if one produced sons Henry wasn’t such an ogre. Anne had brought herself to accept the obligations of her birth, dutifully renouncing love almost before it had flowered. She might even yet find that other facet of her husband’s character which people spoke of and sun herself in the ordinary contentment of living with a man for whom she had some liking.

In the morning she collected all her women together and told them the King’s wishes. Most of them tried to hide their joy beneath perfunctory expressions of regret, but she cut them short.

“There is nothing to be ashamed of in wanting to go home,” she said, with a wistful smile. “I would give almost anything to be going there myself.” Whereat some of the younger ones wept in genuine pity.

But Anne was determined to be businesslike. She would show these high and mighty Englishmen.

“I want no commotion, no fuss,” she told Mother Lowe. “Please see that everyone’s things are neatly packed and you must all be ready to go at an hour’s notice.”

On one point she was adamant. She wouldn’t answer the letter, either to Henry or to his secretary. She would see them, face to face. But Henry had cautiously withdrawn to Oatlands. So she had perforce to send for that reptile, Wriothesley. And she made sure that before he was shown into her presence he must pass along a gallery stacked with chests of women’s gear, already marked with the cipher of her brother’s court. Such promptitude unnerved him. He was a man who enjoyed bullying and he had come expecting tears and exhortations. Instead he found the Queen calmly arranging a bowl of late tulips. She further upset his calculations by receiving him with an inclination of the head more regal than anything he had seen since Catherine of Aragon left court.

“I have sent for you, Master Secretary,” she said, “to assure you that the ladies of my retinue will be ready to return to Cleves as soon as arrangements can be made for them to do so.”

He muttered something about the Council not wishing to hurry her, but she silenced him with a gesture. “Only in the case of a woman married to my body servant, John Guligh, I would crave his Grace to make exception. My English maids do not understand our Flemish way of stiffening beaded caps and it will spare me embarrassment if she may stay.”