Dear Heart, How Like You This (10 page)
“Lady, my father tells me that you and I will soon be man and wife.”
She quickly looked back at me and then just as quickly looked back down at her wooden trencher.
Dear God
, I thought.
What do I do now? What do I say now?
Taking a long and steadying breath, I tried again.
“Lady, surely you can speak?”
By all the wounds of Jesus—how clumsy and pompous that sounded
, I thought.
The girl again glanced at me, her dark, blue eyes narrowed, looking at me with deep suspicion.
“Yea, I can speak, Master. But I find that no one listens when I do so. Sir, I would rather be left alone to think my own thoughts and keep them to myself.”
And with those words she turned herself away from me and went back to eating. I stared at her—stunned. Obviously she was not pleased with the forthcoming wedding either. But who was she to speak to me like that? Especially since I felt exactly the same way, but at least I had made some effort to forget my own pain, and make some attempt at friendliness.
*
Thus, two days after my arrival from Cambridge, I married Elizabeth. In many, many ways she was just a child then. But I, at seventeen, was also a child. My dreams of Anne had kept me innocent, imprisoned me in a time long gone. Marriage to Elizabeth savagely tore me from all my dreams—made me deal with a flesh and blood female where for so long I had dealt with only the memory and the conjuring of my dream. I was as much a virgin on my wedding night as my girl bride. I suppose on reflection that may have been the beginning of all our troubles. I knew what I was supposed to do, but was clumsy in the doing of it. Elizabeth was still a whole month away from her fourteenth birthday. I know the experience scared and hurt her. But I, too, was scared and hurt. I know also that I took a lot of anger to our wedding bed. Anger at the world and my life that seemed to treat with me so ill. Anger that made me survive the day and able to perform the man’s part for the first time that terrible, loveless night. It was not the best way to begin a marriage.
“They flee from me that sometime did me seek.”
In 1522, France and England were once again at loggerheads with one another, with the grim result of war being declared yet again. It also had another result: Anne’s father felt it best she return from France before the crisis worsened. For a short time after her return, Anne—now fifteen—stayed at Hever Castle, but only long enough for Uncle Boleyn to arrange a post for her as a maid to the Dowager Queen of France, now the Duke of Suffolk’s wife.
Despite a short note from George, written from his studies at Oxford telling me Anne had safely arrived home, I did not realise she had arrived at court until a day I walked down the corridors of Greenwich Palace. At once, I espied a very thin girl walking with a long-legged stride amongst a group of older ladies. As we passed, the girl lifted her face and we both stopped still, staring at one another with astonishment. Indeed, to me it seemed as if time froze in its tracks, only beginning its march again with her cry of “Tom!” followed by my cry of “Anna!” Without further words, we ran into each other’s arms. I swung her up and around, kissing her joyously, to the obvious great disapproval and dismay of Anne’s companions.
How wonderful to have my girl in my arms again! The last time we had seen one another was when we had done our farewells as children at Dover. Now we were no longer children, but two young adults trying to stake out our own claims and lives within the seesaw world making up the English court.
But even these innocent moments of such utter happiness can be threatened and marred by that which surrounds this world. We both became aware of Anne’s companions, continuing to watch us in shocked and disapproving silence.
“’Tis my cousin Tom,” she said to them, in way of explanation after we released one another from our public embrace. Still the women gazed at us with grim and hard faces. We looked at one another, and knew, without saying, the uselessness of trying to make any further explanations. Anne’s eyes illuminated with quick decision, and she curtsied in their general direction.
“Please excuse us, but my cousin and I have seven long years to catch up on.”
With those words she grabbed my hand, and fled with me to the gardens just outside the palace’s doors. Once out of sight of the palace, and hidden from view by a tall and long hedge, Anna flung herself on the grass, pulling me abruptly alongside.
I laughed. I could not help but laugh. I felt so entirely happy. Anne was back with me, and apparently still the Anna I remembered with such love and happiness from my childhood. She sat there upon the abundant grass and gazed down at me, as I laid balanced on my side looking up at her.
“Oh, Tommy! ’Tis so good to see you again!”
I noticed then that Anne spoke with an enchanting French accent; an accent she was to keep until the very end of her life. Anne reached to gently stroke the side of my face.
“You have grown into a man, Tommy, but your eyes are still the eyes of the boy I once knew.”
“And you have turned from a charming girl to a charming young woman,” I replied, resting my hand briefly upon hers.
Anne smiled.
“Dear Tommy! I am so glad we have met. George told me you had gained a post with Cardinal Wolsey, but father gave me so little time before I came here that I had no opportunity to write and tell you of my appointment to the Dowager Queen Mary.”
“George also wrote to tell me that you were at long last home from France.”
I took possession of her hand, marvelling how small boned it still was. I looked up at her, and asked, “Tell me, Anna, did you enjoy your time in France?”
Anne’s face suddenly lit, her eyes focusing as if looking upon all her recent memories.
“France is so very beautiful, coz, and some of their palaces truly defy anything your imagination could conjure up… but I am so glad to be back in England. I had so little freedom while I served Queen Claude. I could hardly ever get on a horse and ride to my heart’s content… I think that is why father sent me so quickly to be maid to Queen Mary. He got sick of all his groomsmen being tired out from following me when I was in the saddle.”
We laughed together. Then Anne reached out with her free hand, and gently touched my face again.
“Now tell me, Tom, is your life everything you ever wanted?”
I snorted, sitting upright. I put my arms around my knees, and looked away from her. All I ever truly wanted in this world was sitting right there, next to me.
“Is life ever what you truly want?” I asked her in reply, not daring yet to return my gaze to her.
Anne laughed. A delightful laugh only she possessed. A laugh filling my whole world as if with young gaiety—undisturbed by anything cold or forbidding.
“Oh, Tommy! Still ever so serious Tommy! I am very sorry you feel like that—especially since I know you’re an old married man, with a son no lest! Surely that must make you happy?”
“Yea, Anne. ’Tis good to have a son, though he is only a baby as yet and I see him little.”
Anne laughed at that too.
“And what of your wife? What is she like? Or do you see her little too?”
“Elizabeth is with child again, coz, so I suppose that means I have seen her recently… What is Elizabeth like? Very pretty, I deem, but… she does not like me writing poetry.”
Anne reached out to briefly touch my hand.
“Tom! I am truly sad for you! I would have thought that any woman worth her salt would love to have a poet for a husband.”
We were silent together for a moment. Then I took her hand again in mine, and gazed long at her. Anne still sat on the grass, her ebony hair mostly hidden by the fashionable headdress, yet to me her spirit appeared to be as gypsy as ever.
“And you, Anne. What of your own life—is it what you want?”
“Oh, yes, Tom.” Anne took away her hand from mine to clasp both of hers together. “Oh, yes! My life is what I want, Tom! I am so very happy, coz. Life is so unbelievably wonderful, so utterly marvellous! I want to sing out aloud with joy. Dear Tom. Dear cousin Tom… I am in love with the best of men, and he with me. Is that simply not miraculous?”
My heart sunk down to my shoes. I’d fantasised for years that Anne would come back home from France to be my love, despite all the hindrances the world could and would put in our way.
Swallowing my true feelings, I asked her, “And who is this best of men?”
Anne laughed softly, lying gracefully and carefully on the grass. Her head rested on a hand as she gazed with eyes full of dreams at the clear blue sky.
“Hal Percy,” she said softly. Those two words were said with such a depth of feeling I began to feel sick with jealousy.
“Oh, Tom,” she said, rolling on her stomach and looking up at me with cheek leaning against a hand, just as she would do as a young child.
“Hal is all I ever wanted. Gentle, sensitive, full of humour and pranks. He is so very, very beautiful. I just love to sit where he cannot see me and gaze at him and know him to be mine. All mine! I really do not know, Tom, why he loves me. I am so skinny! I do not believe I will ever grow in the places a woman is supposed to grow.” Anne sat up, placed her hands on her small breasts, shook her head, and laughed. “But Hal doesn’t care! He says I am all the woman he has ever wanted. The woman he wants to be his wife and the mother of his sons. Cousin, fortune has been so very good to me.”
Inwardly I groaned. From the time of my thirteenth year I had known there was only one girl for me, yet circumstances and fate always saw fit to rob her from me.
Determined not to show Anne any of my true feelings, I calmly (as best that I could) continued talking.
“Hal Percy. Your father will be pleased. The heir to Northumberland no lest. But my father told me years ago that an arrangement for you had been made with the Butlers of Ireland?”
Anna remained silent for a time. When I gazed at her, her face seemed tight with thought.
“Anna?” I asked.
She looked at me, picking off strands of grass from her dress and shrugged.
“Yea, cousin, father still hopes to marry me to James Butler. It is the one sure way he knows to make sure that he procures what is his… but I hope he will see that to gain Hal Percy as his son-in-law will be the greater gain. Everything is very secret at the moment. Hal wishes us to wait until he has spoken to his mother, so she can speak for us to his father. I know I am no great prize for the heir of Northumberland, though Hal thinks otherwise. His mother, Hal believes, will be understanding and help us gain our great desire.”
Nearby bells tolled, telling of a new hour now upon us. Anne got up, thoughtfully shaking off the grass from her dress. I stood too.
“I must go Tom… I have been asked to play my lute and sing to Queen Catherine… I’m so very glad you are here, Tom; it will be so good to practice our music together like we used to as children.”
With that she kissed me gently on the lips, and instantly sped off in the direction from which we had come, leaving me standing there alone, looking after her rapidly diminishing form.
*
Anne proved good at her word. For certes, over the next few weeks we did have many opportunities to make music together. But not alone. No, never alone. For at these times a tall, slender, dark-haired singer accompanied us. A young man whose dark blue eyes rarely left the form of Anne. Indeed, Anna’s eyes were likewise engaged, forever seeking out his.
Painfully, I admitted the truth to myself: Anne and Hal were both struck by the same arrow. The Lord Harry and Anne were so much in love that the vibrations of their feelings almost conquered the vibrations of the music we made together. So much in love they were completely absorbed in one another. So much in love they were totally oblivious to the fact I played my lute only through a barrier of bitter pain and jealousy.
But I could not really begrudge Anne her happiness—and she was so happy she brightly shone with its inner glow. Rather, I knew I could not offer her anything she would not rather gain with Hal. So, I took what there was for me to take: an occasional moment in Anne’s company, even if this company included that of Percy.