My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (14 page)

And what is more important, thought Anne, it would make Henry Tudor look a fool! So the King had sent for her at last. And she had to admit that there had been nothing mean about the sending.

She had ridden in a gilded chariot with the two sumptuous dukes, as the austere Olsiliger always called them, attending her. And when they reached the last hill overlooking Greenwich it had seemed as if all the inhabitants of London must be waiting to welcome her on the open plain below. The place was called Blackheath, Charles Brandon had told her, though she couldn’t imagine why when it was as full of color as Holbein’s palette. The crimson of velvet coats, the glitter of halberds, blazing heraldry, multicolored tents and white discs of expectant faces stretching away to a splendid palace flanked by a blue river. And all about the wharf the craft of all the city companies, decked with cloth of gold pennants. She had exclaimed aloud at sight of it and could have shed tears of vexation because her family weren’t there to enjoy the honor paid her.

At a word from Norfolk her coach had begun to rumble down the hill and with a feeling of complete unreality she had passed between ranks of knights and merchants and aldermen lined up in a respectful silence that was far more impressive than any of the informal cheering to which she had become accustomed. It was the final touch of some inspired pageant master and had made her realize suddenly how near she was to being a queen. Henry had remembered, too, to give a place of honor in all that splendid throng to the merchants from her own country. And when one of them had stepped forward to present her with a jeweled purse she had declined Thomas Howard’s offer to take charge of it and insisted upon carrying it herself, just as she used to do when people made her gifts at home.

When her new English chamberlain had met her at the bottom of the hill and presented to her the officers and servants of her household she had felt that for the first time in this strange country she had found something that was really her own. And then the King’s two nieces—spirited Margaret Douglas of Scotland and Charles Brandon’s gentle daughter, Frances—had taken possession of her, and led her into one of the tents to wash and warm herself by a scented log fire. She couldn’t help noticing how dainty they were compared with her younger Flemish girls and how quickly their nimble wits dealt with her halting conversation. She had kissed them heartily and would have given much to stay and talk to them. But a fanfare of trumpets had warned them of the King’s approach and the grooms had brought her horse. And so she had ridden to meet her bridegroom.

He had dismounted, bared his ruddy head and embraced her.

And so excellent were his manners or his miming that it had seemed incredible that his courteous greeting and protestations of affection were merely a conventional gesture to please the hoodwinked, show-loving populace.

“I have never seen so many peoples!” she had exclaimed, looking for the end of his retinue which reached like a glittering serpent halfway across the heath to the park gates.

“Nearly six thousand horsemen, Madam,” he had told her, taking her hand and presenting to her some of the foreign notables in his immediate entourage.

“It is grand like the Field of the Cloth of Gold, yes?” she had asked, abashed that so much money should have been expended on her account. And the elegant French ambassador, who had been quizzing the foreign cut of her gorgeous clothes, had assured her gallantly that at least she could not be outshone as his poor countrymen had been. And so she had ridden on at Henry’s side, almost enjoying herself in her golden dress and glad that her mother had insisted upon having the black lions of Hainault embroidered on her horse’s trapping. White swans were well enough embroidered on her underwear, but the fierce lions looked better able to vie with the Tudors’ leopards in public.

Henry himself had taken her to her apartments and left her there. And the great palace of Greenwich had engulfed and overwhelmed her. All the weekend it had seethed with guests and guards and servants—so different from the drowsy ducal palaces to which she was accustomed. One was always changing one’s clothes for some banquet or other, and there wasn’t an hour of privacy.

Only feverish comings and goings and whispering, even in the Queen’s apartments. People didn’t seem certain whether they were preparing for her wedding or for something they called Twelfth Night until Sunday supper time, when Henry announced suddenly that he had fixed their marriage for the following morning. He had omitted to consult the startled bride and then sulked because her poor women hadn’t finished dressing her by the stroke of eight.

And after all that hurry and pother the ceremony had not taken place—as they had all anticipated—in some splendid cathedral, but privately in the palace.

And during her wedding day, between a confusion of meals and masques, she had attended Mass and Evensong. Both William and Olsiliger had warned her that she would be expected to do so, and she had intended allaying her Lutheran scruples by conforming with blank or abstracted mind. Once she had become sufficiently familiar with the office to follow it automatically, she would use this as a quiet time for following her own thoughts. But the beauty of Henry’s private chapel had held her spellbound. All the candles on the altar had been lighted for the feast of the Epiphany and the silver star of the Magi shone softly through a haze of incense. Never had she seen anything so wonderful as the embroidered chasubles of the officiating priests or heard singing like the pure, sweet voices of the King’s choristers. She had stood in a daze beside her new husband, following his movements and listening uncomprehendingly to the Latin responses that fell so tunefully from his lips. She had offered her lighted taper with the rest, and even raised her eyes with a sense of guilt to the pictured face of the Madonna. And she had come away oddly comforted.

The remembrance steadied her now. After all, other women had endured this suspense of waiting for Henry. Anne fell to thinking of them. Catherine of Aragon couldn’t have been afraid. She was a daughter of mighty Spain, armed with learning and accomplishments and she had known Henry from childhood. Besides, he was young then—young and handsome and kind. And Nan Boleyn, eighteen years later, had no need to wait; for already she must have carried the seed of his child within her. Their first ecstasy must have spent itself in some more secret bed. Else how could Elizabeth be a tall girl of seven?

Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tudor. Out of the gorgeous kaleidoscope of the day’s doings, the sea of strange faces, there swam up into Anne’s consciousness the pleasing memory of a bright-haired child. A dutiful curtsy and an unresentful kiss, followed by shrewd inspection from eyes absurdly like Henry’s. The child had been presented to her by a grave elder sister. That must have been Mary. And they were both her step-daughters. The very nature of the relationship was a challenge; but it was the kind of relationship with which Anne felt qualified to cope. She was homesick and avid for affection. Perhaps, after all, life with the Tudors wouldn’t be so bad. If only Henry’s ready-made family accepted her…

But so far the only Englishwoman she had made any real contact with was Katherine Howard. Although the King had arranged for her to become one of the new maids-of-honor there had been no further opportunity to talk to her. She wasn’t important enough. Anne had caught sight of her in the Hall after supper and had been glad to see that someone had given her a new dress and that her grandmother was being quite affable.

Perhaps that was why Katherine had dared to flaunt the Saxony necklace. She looked like a newly opened rosebud and her voice had rippled with low, excited laughter as she danced past the dais in Tom Culpepper’s arms. But Anne, watching them, had wished that she had given her pearls. Rubies, as Dorothea had pointed out at the time, were just the thing to brighten up a dull grey gown. But they contrasted so sharply with white damascene that one could almost imagine they were drops of blood encircling the girl’s white throat.

Anne had had plenty of time to notice things like that because when Henry had invited her to tread a pavane she had to confess that she couldn’t dance. He must have known this from Nicholas Wotton, but he had raised his eyebrows a little and turned away to talk to Cranmer. And presently he had left the dais and he, too, had danced a turn or two with the radiant little maid-of-honor.

And she—the bride—had sat there all the evening, feeling prim and mature and unwanted, while other girls enjoyed themselves.

And now at last all the Twelfth Night reveling and the distant dance music had stopped. Anne became aware of men’s laughter outside her door. She could picture them standing there in an unsteady group, their fine clothes a bit disheveled, capping each other’s threadbare jokes—the kind of jokes men make in their cups about brides. She caught only a sentence here and there and most of them she didn’t understand. But her face burned and her heart seemed to go hammering up into her throat. And then she heard her husband’s voice, deadly sober and enunciating each syllable too perfectly for her to miss a word.

“If it were not to satisfy the world and my realm I wouldn’t have put my head into this yoke for anything,” he was saying to somebody. And then more clearly still, with his hand on the latch, brute careless whether she heard or not: “That fool of an admiral knows I like ’em small. He ought to have stopped her at Calais, instead of bringing me a great Flanders mare!”

Poor Anne lay rigid as a corpse beneath the crimson damask, gripping the sheet defensively beneath her chin. She knew just how that baited bull must have felt at Rochester. Her gaze turned entreatingly to the comforting candles, as if they were God. In her extremity she even crossed herself—an act she had been taught to regard as idolatrous.

Then Henry stood at the foot of the bed, holding one of the drawn curtains in either hand. His bulk blotted out the candlelight, blotted out everything dear and familiar in life. It was the first time they had been alone. His eyes were only wells of shadow, but Anne could feel them stripping her straight young body—apprizing it point by point like a farmer buying a heifer.

She stared back, hating him. Outlined by a yellow rim of light like that, he was ridiculously like the crayon sketch Hans had made of him in Calais. She had thought it cruel. But now she saw how exquisitely clever it was and guessed how sensitive its victim must be about his obesity. All the baffled fury of sex antagonism was rising in her, swamping inherent meekness. So that now—at the most momentous hour of her life—she must needs hit back.

“You look exactly like—” she began. Some residue of caution in her brain held back the words for Holbein’s sake.

“Like what?” asked Henry coldly.

“You look so square,” she amended lamely. Even in her own ears the words sounded perfectly inane.

He turned away, contemptuous of her gaucherie, and began to snuff the candles. Even had he come to her in co-operative mood she could have said nothing more calculated to mar their marriage from the outset. But she was glad she had hurt him.

Henry in a bad temper was incapable of assessing the smouldering disgust of those who suffered him. He had been told his bride had no languages, and he had not bothered to find out how much she had improved her English for his sake. And—as his cousin of Norfolk had prognosticated—he didn’t find a bed shared in silence particularly amusing.

Yet presently in the shameful darkness Anne had to endure the resentfully exploring hands.

10

ANNE SPENT HER HONEYMOON at Hampton Court. From the moment she stepped ashore she felt she had recaptured something of home. This was no pretentious palace or comfortless mediaeval castle, but a pleasant manor, modern and convenient, sprawling along the river meadows in a mellow warmth of red brick. Even the moat and draw bridge on the landgate side were a mere sop to architectural convention, making no pretense to fortification but providing a formal setting for the casual beauty of the court yards. The rooms were gracious with wide fireplaces and the latest linenfold paneling, jolly little gilded weather vanes gleamed on the pinnacles of the great hall, and the kitchens hummed with good cheer and well-ordered service.

“I love this place,” she told the Archbishop of Canter bury when he came to visit her.

Because he had something difficult to say to her, Cranmer had chosen a day when the King was at Westminster. It would have been less difficult, he felt, had she received him formally in her private apartments. But he found her strolling in the privy garden.

Some of her younger women, more shapeless than ever in their winter wrappings, followed her in a chattering bunch. Apparently she felt that everybody should take the opportunity of enjoying a burst of early February sunshine. And although Cranmer hunched the collar of his gown almost to the lappets of his tight-fitting cap by way of protest, he soon found that the beautiful walled garden was soothing away some of the fret and anxiety of the awful weeks since her arrival.

“Everybody loves Hampton,” he agreed. “And the King himself prefers it above all his other palaces.”

Anne, the bride of a month, had just discovered a bunch of snowdrops half hidden, like harbingers of better things to come, among the brittle wintry stalks of an herbaceous border. She straightened herself in surprise, a few pale buds dangling from her hand.

“Does he?” she said, her naive joy in the spring flowers instantly masked by an expression of hard indifference. “I should have thought something more ostentatious—like Greenwich—”

Cranmer, realizing how much she must have suffered at Greenwich, spoke more gently than he might have done.

“He liked this place so much, Madam, that he took it from my predecessor, Cardinal Wolsey.”

Anne had never heard of the man. But she glanced back consideringly at the comfortable huddle of roofs and turrets and twisted chimneys. “There’s a cardinal’s hat still carved over the Clock Court gateway,” she observed. “And every time I go upstairs I see the Boleyn falcon decorating the vaulting of the roof.” She sighed, and resumed her walk towards the river. “I suppose it’s easier to get rid of people than to pull down bits of buildings.”