Dear Heart, How Like You This (38 page)

I laid my hand upon hers, gripped hard upon the bed’s coverlet.

“You only speak like this because you are sick. When you are better you will see things in a different and clearer light.”

“Nay, Tom. I speak like this because I know the King, and I know my husband no longer has any care for me.”

“But…” I tried to say something to reassure her, but Anne quickly broke in.

“Tom! You do not need to find falsehoods to explain how the King deals with me. I have long known and faced up to the truth! The King’s great love is no more. And I like not that I am only the vessel for his royal seed—a breeding mare he services, not even hiding that he finds the chore distasteful. Harry does not care that I am flesh and blood and hurt. Sweet Jesus, Tom! My life is agony!”

I had felt my face redden with her confidences, but, nevertheless, I felt also comforted that Anna was so close to me that she could freely express her most private thoughts. I glanced over to Anne’s lady, to find that the old woman had gone to sleep in front of the fire. We were then completely alone, thus I felt able to ask her something that had long bewildered me.

“Anne, why, after wanting your love all those long years, did the King stop loving you?”

She looked silently at me for a long moment, and then whispered: “I believe, Tom, that his feelings for me started to change when he began to believe that I came to him not a virgin. I told you long ago that you branded me well. Never did I realise that the branding would be suspected by the King.”

I could not believe what I just heard, but finally sputtered, “Oh, Anne! Sweetheart! What can I say?”

“There is nothing to say, dearest Tom. All of this is of my own doing and making… But, if I have regrets, you are not one of them. Long ago you showed me what it was to truly love. The memory of that one day of love, of how it should be between a man and a woman, is all that I have to sustain me when the King ruts himself upon my body.

“Your face, Tom!” Anne hysterically laughed, and then hiccupped in her attempt to stop laughing.

“Tommy! Your face! Here you are thirty, and still you blush like a boy! Oh, Tom! I am so sorry for having burdened you so! But you are the only one I can speak of such matters to. Dearest Tom, we have made ourselves too sad; let us see if your lute can cheer us up again!”

So, nothing more to say, I played to make us forget all that saddened our hearts.

Another week passed and Anne was well enough to travel by litter to Hampton. In all, more than two weeks had passed since her miscarriage. Those of us who had cared for her during this time could not avoid the stark reality that she had received no personal message from the King since then.

Anne was extremely pale and drawn, still very much the convalescent; thus, we took the journey slowly and with many rests, hoping not to tire her unduly. However, too soon we arrived at Hampton. Anne’s ladies assisted their Queen out from her litter. I could see that Anna had spent the last leg of the journey making what repairs she could to her haggard appearance. In my opinion, the heavy, white powder only worsened her look of illness. Anne shook away the helping hands of her attendants; forcing herself to walk upright and erect up the flight of stairs that led into Hampton Palace. I followed Anne from a distance, and wondered what welcome we would have from the King.

It did not take us long to discover that the King was nowhere to be found. Indeed, the King’s Chamberlain soon informed us that the King was out hunting with members of his court. Anne seemed to be relieved; more than that, it was if a terrible weight had just been taken off her shoulders, and she retired, for the moment, to her chambers.

I gained Anna’s Chamberlain’s permission to leave the Queen’s company, and went to seek out George. He had returned to Hampton after he had assured himself that his sister’s life was no longer in imminent danger. He had felt it was important that there be someone in the King’s household who served best the Queen’s interests.

I found my cousin in his chambers, sitting with his lute near the fireplace, strumming and humming to himself.

“Tom!” he said, stopping his playing when he saw me enter his rooms.

I walked over to where he sat near a window, and pulled up a stool to sit near him.

“You have led me such a search, cousin! I did not expect to discover you here, all alone in your chambers. If it was not that I found Giles running his errands for you, and got out of him where to find you, I think I would be still looking high and low for you.”

George’s fingers strummed idly again at his lute, and then gazed bleakly up at me.

“I had no wish this day to pander myself to the King and his court. How is my sister, Tom? Will she return soon?”

“Did you not hear that we were coming here? Anne is back in her chambers now.”

“What!” George jumped up from his chair.

“Yea… We have been back an hour or more. Anne is resting, before she need face the King.”

George sat back down, and the bleakness returned to his face.

“Face the King… Aye, things have come to such a pass that my sister need fear to face the King…” George put his lute on the floor. He seemed very depressed, and I wondered what other grim happening had taken place during our absence.

“Anne does not feel herself very secure.” I sighed, and picked up from the floor George’s lute and began to slowly play the Irish melody that had lightened Anne’s spirits.

George touched the strings and said: “Peace, Tom. I find I cannot take any joy in music today.”

He then tilted his head to look up at the ceiling, and raised both hands to cover his face.

“Sweet Jesus, what am I to do?” he moaned under his hands.

I got off the stool, putting aside George’s lute, and went to kneel near my cousin. I lay my hand on his arm and asked, “George! Tell me, cousin, what can it be that so troubles you?”

He took his hands away from his face and looked down at me. His blue eyes were extremely bright as if tears hung there, ready to flow loose.

“My sister loses her babe and almost loses her life, and what does the King do? Come to her side to comfort and console her? No! Does he send a message of love and sympathy? No! What does he do when my sister is near death? What else does the King do but find another woman to favour with his clumsy bed sports. Yea, Tom! Yea! That is what the King has done since the news came that my dearest sister had lost their son. Never mind how ill she was because of it. Tom, I think I begin to detest the King.” He had harshly only whispered those final words, but I still stood up and looked around to ensure that we were safely alone.

“Oh, George. We must tell Anne before some other person does. She is so sick and hurt, that if the wrong person blabs, I feel she will lose her reason completely.”

“Aye, Tom.” George stood up from his stool, and walked over to his bed to take up his cloak. “You are right, ’tis best we two tell Anne.”

But we were too late. Some person had taken much pleasure in gleefully informing their sick Queen about the King’s new mistress. Thus, Anne had rushed to angrily confront the King, now returned from hunting, with the result that they had the worst argument of their marriage. The King had ended this interview by violently pushing away his very fragile and ill wife and saying as he left the room: “You have reason to be content with what I have done for you, and I would not do it again if the thing was to begin again. Consider, woman, where you have come.”

George and I arrived in time to pick up the fragmented pieces of a woman whom we both so loved.

CONTENTS

“Busily seeking continual change.”

The King and Anne were very good at play-acting. Thus, it appeared to those who were not close to them that their marriage swiftly returned to normal. The King would say to all and sundry that Anne was the best of wives, while she searched long and hard for more gifts that would be pleasing to the King, her husband.

But long months would pass before there was any sign of a new baby.

George and I remained close to court, both of us very concerned for Anne’s well being. Her sudden bouts of hysteria, which I remembered so well from her breakdown over Hal, as well as make her fresh enemies, often threatened to destroy any chance she had of reclaiming the King’s shallow affections. Though the making or breaking of the King’s marriage was not the only event I had any concern in. My own life too had its share of drama.

’Twas not long after Anne’s miscarriage that I was walking through some alleyways of London at dusk. Suddenly, I turned a corner to be confronted by some drunken, brawling men-at-arms. Seeing that one of the men was someone I knew, a guard whom I sometimes spoke to at Greenwich, I went up closer to break them apart. Another man suddenly appeared on the scene. He must have thought I wished join the foray, because, before I knew what was happening, I had a man crouched before me, snarling and with a glinting dagger in his hand. I fast drew out my own dagger—wishing desperately that I had kept myself out of this predicament—and was soon engaged in fighting for my very life.

The man immediately went for my throat. I bent back my upper body as far I could from his fast approaching knife, and stepped to the side. I then swung my own dagger up, to feel it go into the soft flesh of his belly. Frightened, I yanked the weapon out. Blood spurted out all over me, and I dropped my dagger in disgust. The man crumbled before me, emitting a scream that would have done justice to a fury straight from Hades, and I watched helplessly with shock as his life’s blood poured out of his body, into the dirt and mud at my feet.

Holy mother of God,
I thought.
I never meant to kill the man!
The noise of the brawling and sudden death had brought more men running to see the fun, including a troop of Sergeants of London. One of them came up to me; standing over the newly-dead man; he bent and turned the body face up.

“Look who we have here! ’Tis Black Jack!” he cried to his mates, casting a wary glance at me.

I began to think frantically: a friend of the man I killed? What if he decided to seek revenge? And here was I, with my dagger lying on the ground, too far for me now to reach without drawing their attention. I cursed myself for being the biggest fool born under God’s Heaven. Why did I ever see fit to leave my lodgings this evening? More importantly, why did I leave my sword behind? The only weapon left to me was my tongue, so I began, in earnest, to use it.

“By all the Saints in Heaven I did not mean for this to happen! I tell you, it was an accident, if it was anything! The man came at me with a knife. What else could I do but defend myself?”

The man straightened his form and wiped his bloody hands upon his tunic.

“That sounds like Jack—fight first, ask questions after. But he is dead, and you are alive, so needs be that you may have to pay some penalty for being the winner of this fight.”

“What in God’s good name do you mean?” I asked him, feeling like the situation was worsening with every new moment.

The man shook his head, and pointed at the still form at our feet.

“There is a dead man, mister, and though the City of London will always have a place for dead men, I am a Sergeant of London who tries hard to do his duty. And my duty now tells me ’tis best that you are taken to the Fleet, and let my superiors decide what best to do with you. But fear not; Jack was well known to us. Drink always gave him an evil temper, and many a man will thank God at his just passing. But justice needs to be seen done, so we will have you as our guest, but rest yourself easy. I swear to you, good sir, you’ll not regret giving yourself freely over to our care. Your visit at Fleet will not be a long one, of that I can assure you. Jack was no friend of ours.”

The man before me was an easy man to be reassured by. Thus, without further ado, I allowed myself to be taken to the Fleet—feeling certain that my status at court would, in any case, make certain that my stay in the gaol would be a short one.

This proved to be the case, and I—with less coin in my pocket but somewhat wiser about concerning myself in brawls where I had no business—was soon on my way back to Kent and home.