Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (7 page)

They went on eating their fruit contemplatively. “There is Jocunda,” said Anne suddenly, as a bustling figure crossed their line of vision from the direction of the house, followed by Simonette and servants bearing flagons and refreshments. “Do go and help her, George! You know how flustered she always gets when the King comes.”

The son of the house rose at once from the sweet, crushed thyme. He, too, adored Jocunda. Anne knew that he would tease her and set her laughing, and keep everybody else in the best possible humour. She watched him run blithely after their stepmother, tossing back his fair hair as he went.

“He is one of those precious people who will never really grow up,” she laughed.

But Wyatt hadn’t bribed a colleague and changed his turn to attend the King in order to look at Anne’s brother. He had all the hours at Court in which to do that. And here, of Anne’s own making, was the one brief chance he had hoped for. Dared he believe that she had purposely manoeuvred it?

“The months you were in France seemed a lifetime, Nan,” he said. “I’ve bitten my pen trying to tell you how I wanted you.”

“I was glad of your letters, Thomas.”

“How glad?”

Anne looked straight before her at the familiar trees, the courtyards and the high, twisted chimneys of her home. “There were times when I used to shut my eyes and picture us here in this beloved garden.”

“And any when you thought but of me?”

“Why, of course.” She knew what was coming and tried to fend it off. “And I loved your Italian sonnets.”

Wyatt came and knelt beside her. “I have given you more than sonnets, Nan. I have given you my heart.”

“My dear!”

“And nothing can ever change it. I’ve so little time to talk to you alone.” He was no longer stringing pretty phrases. He was putting the longing of a lifetime into a few fleeting minutes. He glanced back along the path, even while he seized her hand. “Nan, if I can get your father’s consent—now, today, before I have to go—will you marry me?”

Anne searched her heart. It was so lovely to have him again. “I want your love, Thomas. I scarcely know how I could live without it. I’ve had it so long, haven’t I?” She turned her hand in his, fondling it, with a little diffident laugh. “But as for marriage, truly, dear friend, I do not know.”

“There is no one else?” he whispered urgently.

“No, no, I promise you. But I am so lately come home from abroad. Give me a little while to think.”

Anne was in quiescent mood, caught between two phases of her life. If he had pulled her into his arms and kissed reluctance from her lips, he might perhaps have had her. Might have kept her safely all her life. But, in his chivalry, he took her at her word. “I will try to ride over next week, alone,” he promised.

There were voices calling across the garden. Simonette’s, and her father’s. It sounded as if his conference with the King were over. At any moment their privacy might be invaded. Wyatt got up hurriedly, dusting his knees; and Anne took the lute she had brought and began playing something at random.

“Let us see if we can set that new ballad of yours to music,” he suggested, trying for her sake to recapture their former nonchalance. “How does it go? ‘Fair shines the sun on youth’s short day’.”

On the other side of the wall Simonette had been hurrying to warn Lady Boleyn that Sir Thomas had gone into the house to seal some documents, and that the King would soon be ready to depart. But the King himself had left the stone bench where he had been sitting and was strolling towards her, admiring his host’s flowers. “Where are those two young men of mine?” he called amiably, pausing to sniff at a rose bush.

Simonette supposed them both to be with Jocunda. By all rules of etiquette she should have offered to go and fetch them. But as she curtsied to the ground her quick eye espied the flutter of a green skirt in the kitchen garden, and a more venturesome idea came to her. Whatever the King’s business at Hever, it must have been settled satisfactorily. He seemed in jovial mood. Simonette had always been zealous in the Boleyns’ service; and if Mary had not proved clever enough to make the most of her chances, well-Mary was not her only pupil. “If it please your Grace, I last saw them going through that open archway into the kitchen garden,” she said, without apparent guile.

“An odd place, surely.” Graciously, Henry motioned her to rise. But it pleased him very well to look across Sir Thomas’ bowling green and see branches laden with ripe medlars swaying beyond an invitingly open door in a mellow brick wall. Kitchen garden or not, it looked a delectable place. And just at that moment, sounds of music and laughter were borne faintly thence on the summer breeze.

Music, medlars, and laughter. Henry Tudor loved them all. Until the horses were brought round he had time on his hands. And he, too, had caught a glimpse of the green skirt. He nodded to Simonette with a kind of conspiring bonhomie and went briskly down the path between trim box-bordered flower beds.

In the doorway he paused a moment to appreciate the unexpected scene. The elegant Sir Thomas Wyatt, in slashed silver, leaning over a dark girl in green. Picking out tunes beneath an apple tree. So this was how his gentlemen spent their time while their betters were in conference. And, by Heaven, the young dog had taste! Who was she, now? A slender creature, dappled in sunshine spilling through the quivering leaves. But, of course, she must be the elder Boleyn girl. The
other
one. The one Sir Thomas had just been talking about.

Henry regarded her with less impersonal interest. He must have seen her before about the Court, he supposed. But some time ago; and always as one of those shadowy females in someone’s entourage; subservient, mute, withdrawn. Never laughing out loud like this in the sunlight. All vivacity and enticement; not a bit like pretty, placid Mary Boleyn.

And she could improvise, too.

Amused, intrigued, Henry walked on towards the thyme bed with that light tread of his. Wyatt, with his back to him, was pattering scraps of verse as the girl composed a tune for them. Neither of them was aware of him until his shadow fell across them.

The girl saw him first. Caught unawares, hostility flamed in her, to be followed by a revealing flush of embarrassment. Instantly, Henry knew her to be virgin. The hostility was for past misuse of her sister, not for present interruption. But she was too quick-witted to leave an awkward situation unmended. With a movement of extraordinary grace, she was down in a billow of green silk at his feet. “God save your Grace!” she breathed. And Henry, standing over her, saw that her body was even lovelier than her face.

“Wyatt, you dog in the manger, why haven’t you presented this lady instead of hiding her under an apple tree?” he bullied pleasantly.

Even that budding statesman’s
savoir-faire
was taxed. Proudly, yet reluctantly, he did as he was bid, and would have abandoned their pastime politely. But apparently his Grace wished to participate. His excellent memory was beginning to function. “I have heard my sister say you could sing,” he said, motioning Anne to rise.

“Like Orpheus!” murmured her admirer.

“I pray you, how does milady fare?” asked Anne eagerly.

Henry laughed comfortably as he seated himself on a short pruning stool Wyatt had brought. “Like a nesting bird. I saw her at Westropp and she is already big with child.” He helped himself to a medlar, and bit at it appreciatively. “Whose words are those you were trying over? Yours, Wyatt?”

“No, sir. They are the lady’s own.”

Henry was obviously surprised. He himself was no mean versifier. He motioned Anne back to her bough and handed her the discarded lute. There was nothing for it but to play. Improvising a tune for her own poor little ballad before a sovereign who had composed anthems which were sung in all the royal chapels of England! Anne wished Hodges’ well-raked ground would open and swallow her up. But presently they were as happily absorbed in their occupation as they had been before, and Henry was joining in. Experimenting with a note, suggesting a cadence—only most of his suggestions were a good deal better than their own. Once he reached over and took the instrument out of Anne’s hands. If he noticed the little finger she always tried to tuck away, he made no sign. “Try it in B flat,” he said, and picked out the same notes in a minor key. “I believe the whole thing would sound more plaintive and quite charming.”

Henry pretended to no proficiency on the lute, but his ear was trained and perfect. And he understood harmony. He was enjoying himself. He loved music as they did. He had forgotten all about his host and horses, and his young companions had paid him the supreme compliment of forgetting momentarily that he was a King.

He sang the simple ditty through, while Anne, watching his time-beating hand, essayed to play it as he wished. The result was delightful.

“You must play it for my sister sometime,” he said.

He began talking about the effect of the Italian sonnet on English poetry, and questioning Anne about French composers; and it was not until harassed scurryings and alarms made it apparent that half the household was searching for him that he got up reluctantly. “Do they have to make all this hullabaloo? Could not that fool of a governess have told them where I was?” he complained, filling his mouth with another medlar before leaving.

Sir Thomas and Lady Boleyn escorted him to the courtyard; Wyatt and George became courtiers on duty again, and Anne followed meekly behind. She was still dazed from her unexpected experience, and not a little impressed. She had always worked hard at her music and relied upon such accomplishments for social success. Yet here was someone who picked up an unknown ballad and a half-made air and perfected them casually, in an odd half hour —besides being a redoubtable sportsman, a fine Latin scholar, and a King.

Henry mounted flamboyantly, well aware of his horsemanship and the splendid figure he cut. It was only when his mind was set on bigger issues that he did spectacular things with that easy lack of self-consciousness which he secretly envied in trueborn Plantagenets, like the old Countess of Salisbury. “You must bring your daughter to Court,” he told his host kindly, at parting. But as soon as his broad back was turned, Anne threw Thomas Wyatt a rose.

She stood on the terrace watching the gay cavalcade until it had passed from sight through the gatehouse. After the rest of the household had gone in again, she still stood there, looking at the peacocks and the flowers and the butterflies. Just as she had done that first day she had been invited to Court. But now the thrill had gone, and her thoughts were touched with some indefinable sadness. Perhaps, after all, it would be pleasanter to live quietly in Kent. To be a country gentlewoman like Jocunda. To live in one’s own house, without competition. To be content, and stop climbing. There would always be books and music and cultured friends at Allington. And loyalty and kindness.

Once again Simonette was calling her. But this time it was her father who wanted her. Anne went slowly indoors. She walked thoughtfully with down-bent head, indecision on her mind, and a tender smile on her lips. It was not until she was halfway across the Great Hall that she realized that her father and stepmother were waiting for her. It seemed that Jocunda had been arguing about something and had broken off suddenly in mid-sentence.

“Where have you been, Anne? I sent for you as soon as the King left,” said Sir Thomas, from the dais.

Anne lifted her head and stood stock still, like a startled doe scenting danger. She noticed the rolls of legal-looking deeds spread on the table beside him, and saw Jocunda pull a chair to the light of an oriel window and take up some needlework, as if to disassociate herself from whatever he was going to say. A strange foreboding seized her, weighting mind and limbs. And the foreboding was somehow associated with her momentary sadness in the garden.

“You will be glad to hear that this long dispute with the Butler branch of the family is being settled at last,” Sir Thomas told her, tapping one of the documents. “By the good offices of your uncle of Norfolk it is mutually agreed that the Irish estates are to be shared. That is, when one or two matters are satisfactorily cleared up.”

There was nothing remarkable about that. Anne was his elder daughter, and he often spoke to her about family affairs. “You will be Earl of Ormonde then?” she asked, knowing that the title had been one of the main causes of dispute.

“No,” he admitted regretfully. “But my grandson may be.”

Anne stared at him uncomprehendingly. She turned to Jocunda for enlightenment, but her stepmother avoided meeting her eyes. “Your grandson?” she repeated. “But why not George?”

“Naturally, I should have preferred it that way. But we had to give way about something. That is where Thomas Howard has been so clever.” He came down from the dais and seated himself near her. He looked pleased and genial, but Anne felt that he was trying to wrap up something unpleasant in smooth words. “You may have wondered, my dear Nan, why I had you fetched home from France?” he asked conversationally.

After a year of Queen Claude’s austerity, Anne’s relief had left little room for curiosity about die reason. “I supposed it was because of the strained relations since our new alliance with Austria,” she said, such matters being but daily bread in an ambassador’s household.

“That certainly furnished an official excuse.” Sir Thomas placed his long, immaculate finger tips together as he frequently did when announcing the outcome of debates. “But on your uncle’s suggestion we are settling these family differences by offering you in marriage to your cousin Sir James Butler, who is, as you know, the Earl of Ormonde’s heir. I was speaking to the King about it only this morning, and he has been gracious pleased to approve.”

Anne’s dreams of a love match died within her as she stood. So
this
was why her father had left her free so long. Allowing her an extra hour to try her wings; and then bartering her, like all the rest, in the end.

“James Butler,” she repeated, scarcely above a whisper. She remembered him vaguely as a quarrelsome, redheaded little man, with a sword cut over one eye. He lived somewhere in Ireland, and she and George had made fun of him as children. In a detached sort of way, she was grateful to Jocunda for not poking consolation at her by suggesting that he had a nice disposition or wasn’t quite as old as he looked.