The Lady in the Tower (35 page)

The dread disease struck terror in everyone. It spread rapidly through the country and into the towns. It was dangerous to be in the company of anyone who had suffered from it because it was so infectious; and one could never be sure where it would strike. If anyone in a household contracted it, it was necessary that no one should leave or enter that house.

I decided that the best thing I could do was go to Hever. Henry was all in favor of this for he was terrified that I should catch the disease. He himself would leave London and travel with a depleted entourage about the country, for the country was always less dangerous than the crowded towns.

So I returned to Hever.

On my first night there, I awoke feeling alternately hot and cold. I touched my face. It was wet. I tried to sit up but I had not the strength to do so. My nightgown clung damply to my skin, and a fearful lassitude had taken possession of my limbs.

I do not remember very much of the days which followed. I saw vague figures in the room and recognized that of my stepmother. Occasionally my thoughts were lucid. Then I said to myself: So this is the end of all my dreams of glory. I shall never be Queen of England. I am to die, as so many have before me, of the sweating sickness. The Queen will be pleased, and the King…he will love me forever because I am dead.

They were strange thoughts but I must have been near delirium.

Later—it must have been much later for I had lost count of time—I
was lying on my bed aware of my damp sheets and pillows; they changed them frequently but they were always damp. I heard them speaking about the crisis. So they would soon know whether I was to live or die.

In that strange state of being in limbo as though suspended between two worlds, I was not sure which way I wanted to go. I was vaguely aware of a crown for which I was reaching… and on the other hand there was a delicious peace which seemed to me infinitely more desirable.

I learned later on that they were all convinced that I would succumb to the sickness as so many had before me. My stepmother called it a miracle that, when the crisis was over, I was still with them.

I was aware of a man standing by my bed. I heard my stepmother's voice. “The King has sent him, darling. He will make you well.”

So …I was not to die. I was too weak to move but no longer affected by the dreaded sweat. I could recover.

My stepmother was ever at hand, bringing me soothing possets from which I turned away until she begged me to take them for love of her.

“The King is beside himself with anxiety, Anne,” she said. “You must recover for his sake. He has sent his physician, the great Dr. Butts. Dr. Butts says, if aught happens to you, he would not dare to return and face the King's wrath. So you must try, sweetheart. You must get well for all our sakes.”

Dr. Butt commended my stepmother for her care of me. She had nursed me not only tenderly but wisely. Rest was what was needed now—and nourishment. “The Lady Anne is strong and healthy,” he said. “We shall soon have her well again and gracing the Court.”

My stepmother told me that the King was still wandering around the country with a small company of courtiers. If there was the slightest hint of the sickness near any place, he avoided it.

“The greatest calamity to the country would be if aught happened to him,” she said.

She read me the letter which he had sent with Dr. Butts. It was all that I could have wished for.

“What a beautiful letter,” said my stepmother. “How he loves you!

Who would have thought that a King could care so much!” I put out my hand; she took it and kissed it. “Thank you,” I said, “for all you have done for me.” “My dearest child,” she replied, “it has given me great joy to be of ser

vice. As for what I have done, you must repay me by getting well. I long to see you on your feet again.”

My stepmother had kept disturbing news from me, and I was dismayed to hear that my brother had taken the sickness—so had my father. They had both recovered before I was told. Mary's husband, Will Carey, had not been so fortunate. Mary was now a widow.

She came to Hever in some distress, not knowing where else she could go.

My stepmother welcomed Mary but she clearly had not the same affection for her as she had for me. I think she had been greatly shocked by Mary's behavior in France. To have been sent home because of her immoral conduct was something which could not be easily forgotten; and then she had blithely entered into a relationship with the King, which was quite different from mine. Until now her misfortunes had sat lightly on her, but this was a bitter blow, because she had lost not only her husband, of whom she was quite fond, but her means of sustenance as well. Will Carey had been ineffectual but he had—owing to his complaisant attitude to his wife's affair with the King—been awarded certain grants which had given him a fair, if not affluent, income on which he and his family could live in comfort. He had been Constable of Plashy Castle and Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster—both very desirable
posts. On his death, of course, there had been no lack of people clamoring to take them up, and the King had bestowed them.

This was to be expected, but what of Mary? She was left penniless.

“I do not know how I shall live,” she told me.

“Have you never saved anything?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“But all the time you were at Court …”

“I never asked for anything. Clothes I had, which the King's treasury paid for… but there was nothing else. And clothes wear out.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“I thought you could help?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“If the King would listen to anyone it would be to you.”

I felt ashamed that Mary should have been left like this. Of course it was her own fault. She had been feckless—or perhaps I should say over-generous. I felt a shiver of alarm. She had been his mistress—not just casually but over a long period. And here she was… cast off, penniless. What a lesson! That should never happen to me.

I said: “I will speak to the King.”

I wrote to him of her plight.

His reply was another of those love letters which he sent to me while I was absent from him. I had a number of them, all professing undying devotion. There was hardly a mention of Mary except that I should speak to my father, telling him that it was the King's wish that he should look after his daughter. Of course, it was what my father should do, and it angered me that he should need the King's order to do it.

When I pondered on the matter, it occurred to me that Henry had shown no interest or compassion to one who must have been very close to him at one time. It should have been a lesson to me, but I was heedless of lessons in those days. Looking back, I can see many that I failed to learn.

I knew that Henry hated any mention of Mary. She troubled his conscience not because of his affair with her and her present need but because he feared her relationship to me might prove a stumbling block in our union.

Henry was single-minded; he had no thought to spare for a discarded mistress who had fallen on evil times.

The tragic summer dragged on.

Cardinal Campeggio had left Rome and was on his way. He had been
on his way for weeks. He was so old, so full of gout, that traveling was painful to him. He would travel for a day and rest for two in order to regain his strength.

At home in Hever, I fumed. Sometimes I despaired. I believed that the Pope had decided that the matter should never be settled and that, terrified of the Emperor as he was, he was determined to drag it out— hoping perhaps that Henry would grow tired of me. Perhaps that thought was in my mind too. Mary's affair had not helped to appease it. But I would get those letters of his, pulsating with his desire for me—and my optimism would return. I would beat them all—Katharine, Wolsey, Campeggio…every one of them.

My relationship with Wolsey would always be uneasy; no matter how we displayed our new friendship, for the pleasure of the King, the animosity was never far below the surface. I knew that he regarded me as an upstart. Is it not upstarts who are most antagonistic to other upstarts? At least
I
had not been born in a butcher's shop. Wolsey respected me now, but as a formidable enemy. Before, I had been a foolish girl. That was the difference.

Wolsey could see that another—as he would say—had the King's ear. Before my coming, Wolsey had been closer to the King than anyone. The King had, from the first, seen Wolsey's tremendous capabilities and moreover had a deep affection for him. Wolsey had carried him through many a difficult situation, but this matter of the divorce was defeating him. He had been thrust into an almost untenable position. He was a Cardinal who owed allegiance to the Pope, and it was almost impossible to serve two masters. Many powerful forces were against him. Before, his own power had been so great that he could withstand his enemies; now they were crowding around him, seeing the champion weakening, waiting for the moment to give him the
coup de grâce
.

I was not sorry for him. Mine was not a forgiving nature. I often thought of what my life might have been: the peace of it in Alnwick Castle with my husband who would love me devotedly all our lives, our children sturdily growing up in the clear northern air to be strong men and women. The Northumberlands were the kings of the North. I should have been a queen in a kingdom more congenial to me than that of the Court.

Wolsey had prevented that. No, it was the King, who had commanded it because all those years ago I had had a special attraction for him. But why had he let me go for so long? All that time he had been sporting with my sister Mary who now, poor girl, was cast aside and was
an embarrassment to him. He simply did not want to know of her; he wanted to forget she had ever existed.

Was that the first warning sign? Perhaps my guardian angel was showing me a signpost on the dangerous road along which I was traveling. But I did not see that then and it was only afterward that these thoughts came to me.

If only I had had the wisdom to take heed!

Mary stayed at Hever. My father would of course have to provide for her, which he would have done, I suppose, though grudgingly. But now he must do it with a fair grace since the King commanded it.

Perhaps I wasted sympathy on Mary. As soon as she knew that she would be able to live in some comfort, she cast off her dejected looks and was almost her old self. Misfortune sat lightly on her.

My stepmother wanted me to be quite well before I returned to Court. I was nothing loath to remain at Hever during this time. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hold off Henry. He was impatient. He was not going to go on being content with a few caresses. All the time he was urging me to greater intimacy. Instinct told me I must hold back. If I submitted, where would be the incentive to fight for this divorce when he could have what he wanted without? It was a very difficult position for me. I often wondered whether I dared hold out, whether his lack of satisfaction might indeed curb his passion. On the other hand, if I submitted, would he decide to drop this contentious matter of the divorce which so many people seemed determined to prevent?

It was a quandary which hung heavily upon me. This was why I was delighted to stay at Hever and was in no great hurry to end my convalescence.

Mary and I were sitting in that garden where I had had my first encounter with Henry. I always remembered it when I was there, for it was the beginning of all that happened afterward.

She told me that she had had a letter from her sister-in-law Eleanor Carey, who was a nun.

“The Abbess of Eleanor's convent has recently died,” she was saying. “That means her place is vacant. Eleanor would dearly love to step into it.”

“Perhaps she will.”

“It needs influence.” Mary looked at me. “Eleanor asks if you would help.”

“I? What do I know of convents?”

“You don't have to know anything about them. A word from you to the King is all that would be needed.”

“I don't usually meddle in such matters.”

“Oh come, Anne, this is one of the family. Everyone knows that the King dotes on you. You have only to say the word and it as good as done.”

I must confess that I liked to feel I had influence with the King, so I wrote and mentioned the matter to him.

To my intense annoyance I heard that Wolsey had passed over Eleanor Carey and given the appointment to one of the other nuns.

Who became Abbess of the convent was of no importance to me, but that my wishes should be slighted was.

As soon as I heard, without waiting to hear any explanations, I wrote angrily to the King. Wolsey had deliberately ignored my request. He had known I wished the appointment to go to Eleanor Carey and because of this he had appointed someone else.

It was characteristic of Henry's devotion to me that he immediately called Wolsey and wanted to know why Eleanor Carey had been passed over when he had mentioned my interest in the matter.

Wolsey had his reply. Before appointing a woman to such a post, he must discover whether she was worthy of it. Under cross-examination, Eleanor Carey had admitted to having not only one illegitimate child but two—and with different fathers. Two priests, in fact, which made it worse. Wolsey had thought there was no need to report such a sordid happening because he was sure that all concerned must agree that such a woman was unfit for the post.