Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (3 page)

And now the illustrious bridal party was held up by the weather at Dover. Though Henry himself had come to see his favourite sister safely embarked, and Louis of Valois, with so little vigour left to enjoy a bride, waited impatiently in Paris, human plans and passions must wait until the autumnal gales had lashed themselves out.

In spite of the constant round of gaiety with which the King and his crony, Suffolk, filled the grim old castle, there was plenty of time for an unimportant maid-of-honour to daydream and write in her diary. Curled up on a window seat in the Princess’ anteroom, Anne committed to her tablets a vivid description of her mistress’ proxy wedding at Greenwich. The bride had looked adorable, Henry Tudor resplendent, and the French guests had been the last word in elegance. And instead of being partly bald like Louis, the proxy bridegroom had been young and personable.

“Are you not cold over there by the window?” asked Anne Grey, drawing her embroidery frame closer to the leaping fire.

“What do you find to write about, Nan Boleyn?” badgered her bored sister Elizabeth.

“About the royal proxy wedding.”

“The State recorders will do all that,” they told her.

“But they may forget about the piteous paleness of milady’s face and the way the sun shone through the windows spilling a kind of gossamer gold all over her gown,” murmured Anne. Only people in her own bright circle, like Thomas Wyatt, understood the joy of painting pictures with words, she supposed; and, laying down her pen, sat there wool-gathering in the growing dusk.

Dear Thomas, with whom she had so much in common and with whom she would have to part so soon! Was he, perhaps, the reason why her father had as yet arranged no marriage for her? He was so eligible, so constant, and their neighbour. And Jocunda wanted her to marry him.

Anne began picturing a wedding at Allington or Hever. Something like the Greenwich one, only less grand, of course. Her father grave and distinguished, with his dark, greying hair. Jocunda in one of her sober-coloured gowns, with deep contentment in her eyes. And she, herself, in a white pearled dress like the Princess’, with a man standing beside her making solemn vows. Only somehow the man was not Thomas. Her dream bridegroom was as yet a stranger. A girl’s fancy still wrought upon him, peering through rosy mists of the future, trying to mould features as yet unseen. All Anne knew was that he must be tall and ardent. But, when the time came, would he be dark or fair? She never could make up her mind.

As if summoned by her vagrant thoughts, her cousin Wyatt came hurrying into the room, accompanied by her brother. “The wind has dropped,” they announced. “So it may be you will all sail tomorrow.”

Wyatt’s glance went straight to her, though he stopped to make polite conversation with the King’s cousins; but George, with his usual impulsiveness, came across to the window seat. “Suffolk is to escort the Princess and stay until after the wedding in Paris. I have it direct from the King,” he said, boasting a little.

“I don’t much care for the Duke of Suffolk,” said Anne, drawing aside the fullness of her velvet skirt so that he might sit beside her.

“He apes the King too much, but he plays a good game of tennis. And whoever is in charge of the party, I wager you will be a credit to us, Nan.” Sobered by the thought of parting, he threw an arm about her shoulders and appealed to their cousin. “She is conducting herself with marvellous success, isn’t she, Tom?”

“A new Diana in the field!” smiled Wyatt, coming to join them. He spoke with a polished raillery which made him seem much older than George, and snatched teasingly at the tablets on her knee. “And here, if I mistake not, we may find interesting impressions of her new hunting ground!”

Anne clutched at them protectingly, and a small friendly scuffle ensued.

“I must see who my rivals are!” insisted Wyatt.

“You can’t read a woman’s secrets!” protested George, joining in the fray.

But Wyatt only laughed. “Once there is something secret in her life, our Nan will cease to keep a diary,” he prophesied.

“Go and write a sonnet to the bride,” Anne bade him, aware that the two senior maids-of-honour were regarding them with disapproval.

“Wouldn’t it be more fitting to write a dirge?” suggested George. “She, so full of laughter, condemned to bed with an old death’s-head like that!”

“I think it is cruel!” broke out Anne.

But even in this off duty hour it was dangerous to talk so freely.

“Our cousin was obliged to arrange the marriage for diplomatic reasons,” observed the elder Grey sister, adopting the proprietory tone with which she was wont to put the flighty Boleyn girl in her place. “And at least the weather has been kind and given her a month’s reprieve,” she added, beckoning the handsome Wyatt to pick up some dropped silks.

“Perhaps it has been a reprieve for the King, too,” giggled her younger sister.

The two Boleyns looked up sharply. With the spiteful little jabs of Elizabeth Grey’s tongue one could never be sure. She might have meant only that it was dull these days at Westminster, with a sick Queen surrounded by priests and doctors. But no one could help noticing that Henry had twice gone out hawking here with their sister. They were young, touchy, half-shamed and proud.

“Is it true that Mary is the King’s mistress?” Anne whispered to George, while the servants were lighting the candles against the growing dusk.

Young Boleyn shrugged uncomfortably. “You should know best. She shares your room.”

“She is always singing to herself.”

“It would be for William Carey. She is supposed to marry him next summer.”

“Pooh! She scarcely knows him. And that new necklace she wears! I asked her who gave it to her—”

“And she said ‘Henry Tudor.” A new, clipped hardness seemed momentarily to have eclipsed George’s boyish charm.

“You know?”

“I saw the goldsmith bring it to his bedside.”

“But, George, Jocunda says it is sin.”

“Jocunda doesn’t live at Court,” pointed out her stepson cynically.

“And you mean that neither our father nor you will speak to her about it or do anything?”

“What can we do?” he asked, just as Jocunda herself had done. “One doesn’t thrust one’s head into the lion’s jaw.”

He would have gone to join the others by the fire, but Anne tugged at his modish slashed sleeve. She looked perplexed and childish, much as she used to look when he taught her to read the leaden figures on the sundial at Hever. All her early concepts were lying shattered about her, and she was trying to apply some painfully acquired new ones to herself. “But suppose it were I?” she asked, in a small scared voice.

George turned sharply. “God forbid!” he ejaculated.

“But where lies the difference?” she persisted.

He looked at her with puzzled tenderness, smiling at himself as well as at her. “Only in the degree of my affection, I suppose,” he admitted.

They were talking in whispers. It was unmannerly, unpardonable. They went to warm themselves at the fire and the conversation became general; but although the King’s cousins were so much more important, both the attractive young men hovered about Anne. She was pleasantly aware of it, and her strange, elusive beauty bloomed.

Presently Lord Dacre’s daughter came from the inner room to fetch her. “The Princess needs you, Nan,” she said, with weary friendliness. “To read French with her, I think. And will you take your lute.”

A warm feeling of triumph tingled through Anne’s veins. Officially, her spell of duty was finished, and she was the youngest and most obscure of them all. But the King’s sister had sent for her. She glanced towards the plain, resentful faces of his cousins. Neither of them had any particular ear for music nor a good French accent.

Anne forgot all about her sister Mary. She rose and shook out the folds of her new green velvet. She knew that at least four pairs of eyes were upon her. She gathered up book and lute. Unhurriedly, with that peculiar grace of hers, she walked towards the Princess’ private room. Soon, when they had crossed the Channel, it would be, “Nan, the Queen of France wants you!”

The Princess Mary’s youngest lady came into her presence with a brave attempt at assurance. But just inside the door she paused, the book pressed to her bosom and the gaily be-ribboned lute dangling against her skirt.

Mary Tudor sat alone in the dusk. She had laid aside her heavy, gold beaded cap. Her chair was set before the window as if she had been watching the sunset, and the last streak of its stormy glory seemed caught in the curly bronze mass of her hair.

“Will your Grace have the candles lit?” asked Anne timidly.

Mary did not move. “No, child,” she said listlessly. It was her last night in England.

Anne advanced uncertainly and laid the leather-bound book on a table. Deftly, the slender fingers of her right hand found the place. “Will your Grace have me finish the ‘Roman de la Rose’?” she suggested.

“Not tonight, after all, I think.”

It was then that Anne saw the tears on her mistress’ cheek. She stood very still, trying to assimilate a depth of grief she had never experienced. Humbly, she recalled how it had felt, parting from Jocunda; but this was something more. And her young heart hurt with sudden generosity beneath the tightness of her bodice.

“You had better have someone to pack your trunks, Anne Boleyn. The wind abates, though it still looks very rough.” Mary turned her head and smiled bleakly, without trying to hide her tears. “Shall you be sick, do you think?”

“I have never had occasion to know, Madame,” stammered Anne. Queen Katherine of Aragon would never have asked one of her younger women so homely a question. Nor let them see her weep.

Anne closed the French book. She had ceased to be the clever new maid-of-honour, dramatizing herself. By thinking of someone else, she was bringing the background of her life into reality. “May I play to you, Madame?” she ventured presently. Above everything, music was the thing these half-Welsh Tudors loved, and it was the one kind of consolation which she, in her insignificance, could offer.

“Play that thing the King composed about ‘Adieu, mine own lady’,” Mary bade her.

Anne was glad that Thomas Wyatt had taught her the song at Hever. She needed neither lights nor score. Indeed, she was happier thus, because of her deformed finger. She took the lute into sensitive hands and played, sometimes softly singing the words. In the informality of the hour self-consciousness fell from her, so that a new tenderness informed her tutored skill. She realized that her mistress was bidding a wordless farewell not only to a beloved brother and to England, but to all her dreams. For her there could be no splendid lover, only a grotesque travesty. She went on playing softly until approaching footsteps intruded on their shared mood. Footsteps, voices, the tail-end of one of George’s audacious jests, and then a deep, boisterous laugh. The King’s laugh.

Mary roused herself instantly and stood up, dabbing at her eyes with a gay silk handkerchief, and motioning to her inexperienced maid-of-honour to withdraw a little.

Anne laid aside her lute and went to stand dutifully in attendance near the door, as she supposed Jane Dacre or even the Greys would have done. She saw the Princess reach for her headdress and wondered if she should have helped her put it on. But before anything could be done about it, the door swung open and the room was stabbed with a pathway of light, warm, golden light from upheld torches, momentarily illuminating a group of courtiers waiting outside. And through the pathway of light came Henry Tudor.

“What, all in the dark!” he exclaimed, in his hearty way.

Charles Brandon of Suffolk followed him, and a brace of servants sidled hurriedly past them to light some of the candles on the table and poke the fire to a blaze. They did not stop to set tapers to the wall sconces, and when they were gone and the door was shut again the centre of the room was lighted like a stage.

Henry moved with a quick, light tread surprising in one so powerfully built. His hugely puffed sleeve brushed Anne’s arm as he passed. Although her black dress was as one with the shadows, for the briefest moment his light, observant eyes appeared to be aware of her, so that she wondered hopefully if he had heard her singing his song or if he recognized her as Mary’s sister. But he was so accustomed to a fringe of lesser people waiting upon his occasions that their presence meant no more to him than the lifelike figures embroidered on the wall tapestries behind them. Even within his family circle, a waiting woman more or less neither concerned nor curbed him. He went straight to Mary and clipped her in a brotherly embrace; while she, who was short and inclined to plumpness, reached on tiptoe to kiss him, French fashion, on either cheek.

“Milord Admiral tells me if this lull continues he will be able to set sail tomorrow,” he said, still holding her before him by a hand on either forearm. “You’ll not be afraid?”

And Mary Tudor’s candid eyes had looked back fearlessly into his quizzing ones. “No,” she said, with that air of almost boyish gallantry that so became her.

Anne Boleyn kept very still, watching the intimate scene from her humble stance against the arras. Never before had she seen the King away from Court functions, quite closely, like this—closely enough to catch each inflection in his voice and to watch the least flicker of his sandy lashes. He was everything that people had said, and more. More powerful, more ruddy, more dynamic. The Duke of Suffolk was handsomer, to be sure, and almost as tall. And he was probably the most important man in the kingdom, except Wolsey and her uncle of Norfolk. Yet somehow even he served only as a foil to his friend. For like all redheads, these vivid Tudors had a way of making other people look drab and colourless.

Anne watched them with profound interest—but not, of course, in the same way that she often watched their squires and young attendants, picking out possibilities of romance. To Anne, at eighteen, the King and Suffolk were just two important people approaching middle age. Public characters, of whom one stood vastly in awe.

“As I came through the anterooms I told your wardrobe women to have everything packed overnight,” announced Henry briskly. And in spite of his regal gorgeousness, Anne was surprised to recognize a kind of forthright homeliness about the man.