My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (17 page)

“Oh, Elizabeth can go along if she likes,” he agreed, in the careless way in which he usually spoke of his younger daughter. “It’s time she went back there anyway now the wedding’s over.”

He never referred to her unless he was obliged, and then only to call her his “red-headed little bastard.” But there was something in Nan Boleyn’s daughter, some spark of his very self, that drew his grudging approval; whereas most things about Mary seemed to irritate him, except her manners and her devotion to Edward. But it was his elder daughter he was looking round for at the moment and, because she didn’t immediately materialize, he automatically began to bully his wife.

“Why isn’t Mary out in the sunshine with the rest of you?” he demanded. “She sits indoors too much for her health.”

Just so, thought Anne, he must often have spoken to Nan Boleyn when her sleek arrogance had ceased to entrance him.

It was Katherine Howard who spared her the indignity of replying. “If your Grace will excuse me I will go and find her,” she offered, curtseying herself gracefully out of an awkward situation and leaving most of the others relieved that she had gone.

Henry looked after her desirously as she flitted like a nodding pink rose up the lime-sheltered path. That was the nimble kind of wit he liked his women to have. Everybody about him ought to have learned enough subterfuge to hide up unpleasant things and so deliver him from embarrassment. It made life so much easier.

He sighed and glanced uneasily at his latest wife, standing like an unwanted stranger in their midst, unhelpful save for her silence.

She had been so damned uncompromising over that pre-contract business, which might have saved them both from this travesty of marriage…Probably if he tried to get rid of her now she’d raise hell, and gloss over nothing to that righteous brother of hers in Cleves! He shrugged the prospect aside with the long-suffering patience of an ill-used man, and turned to the diplomat who had had the sense to urge him to marry a Frenchwoman. “Well, Marillac, you’ll want to be getting along!” he said jovially. “That looks like the Northumberland barge coming up stream for you. One can always tell her, she’s so much grander than Suffolk’s or mine!”

Annoyance showed through the frayed edges of his sporting show of laughter. He registered a mental note to speak to Cromwell’s successor about limiting the pennons of ducal barges as well as regulating the clothing of the common people according to their trade or craft. But he explained to Anne courteously enough that the ambassador was going on to one of Sir John Dudley’s famous parties at Northumberland House. She couldn’t help noticing with a twinge of envy how his voice changed as he rested a hand on Cranmer’s shoulder and urged him to stay and dine. It was such a beautifully modulated voice when he spoke of music or poetry or to somebody for whom he really cared. But Cranmer was in no mood for company. He may have been feeling self-conscious still at having told his troubles to a comparatively unknown lady; or perhaps he needed time to forget what his master looked like through the eyes of an unwanted wife.

“If your Grace will excuse me, I have a conference at Lambeth,” he demurred. “I only came to pay my respects to the Queen.”

“Well, next time be sure to come when I am at leisure,” said Henry.

“I want to play over to you my new setting for ‘The Song of Songs.’”

Cranmer’s face lit up with so much pleasure that Anne decided that this love of music must be one of the facets of her husband’s personality to which he had alluded. “Will it be ready for the Children of the Garter to sing at Windsor for Easter?” he was inquiring eagerly.

“Not if half the congregation drown it with the scraping of their spurs as they did last time I allowed something of mine to be sung,” complained the royal composer.

“Does that mean that because some of your Garter knights behaved like vandals the rest of us must be denied the delight of hearing one of your Grace’s anthems?” pleaded Marillac.

“Even the choristers themselves were indignant about it, your Excellency,” Culpepper told him. “My young brother, who is solo boy on the descant side told me they had put in extra practice before school hours for weeks so as to do justice to the honor paid them.”

“I suppose they could be brought to Westminster and sing it there,” cogitated the Archbishop, “for there are no such pure trebles in the country.”

Henry stood with arms akimbo in the middle of them, his mouth pursed consideringly. Clearly, he enjoyed being pressed.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to forbid the Knights of Windsor to come to church in spurs?” suggested Anne, who wasn’t at all clear what this cherished Order of the Garter really was.

“That’s not a bad idea,” agreed Henry, surveying her abstractedly. “Except that it might give offense to some of our foreign visitors.” And presently his frown gave place to a fat chuckle. “I know what we’ll do, Culpepper,” he said. “We’ll levy a fine of five pounds on anyone who enters Windsor Chapel in spurs, and I’ll let the boys collect the money and keep it themselves. That won’t start a European war, and I think their keenness deserves it.”

“And I warrant, Sir, they won’t let a single culprit escape!” laughed Culpepper.

“So now we may all pass our time in rest and quietness until Easter,” smiled the Archbishop. And seeing that—thanks to the Queen—the matter was amicably settled, the Archbishop made his adieux, remembering to send his loving duty to his little Grace at Havering. “Though I make no doubt he will prefer the toys!” he added, with charming diffidence.

“Of course he will!” laughed Henry. “But I’ll charge Mary with your message.” He turned away as if to make a tour of inspection of his vines and newly planted mulberry trees, and suddenly Anne had a sense of being excluded from everything. They were all going about their various occupations while she, whose life had been so full of everyday concerns and of people depending upon her, seemed no longer to matter to anyone. She had hoped to be able to show some kindness to her neglected step daughters, but almost before she had got to know them they would be gone. Gone to live under the care of this Mistress Ashley she had heard so much about, with the delicate, motherless boy who was in a sense her own son. The only son, perhaps, that she would ever be given. This new thought was fraught with such dismay that she caught in panic at her husband’s finely slashed sleeve as he passed.

“Please, Henry—” she entreated, to detain him.

He swung round in surprise. It was the first time she had asked for anything, the first time since their wedding night that she had called him informally by his name. And never before had he—or any of them—seen her look like that, with her eyes wide and shining and her mouth eager.

“What is it, my dear?” he asked involuntarily.

Her skin was flushed softly with embarrassment, her voice so low and hesitant that the harshness he hated in her accent was blurred. “Do you think—I could go and see Edward too?”

“But of course!” Henry’s face became a florid disc of pleased surprise, and Cranmer, noting how much better that touch of flattering hesitancy pleased him than her usual forthright calm, wished she would always speak to him like that.

“You don’t think Mary will mind?” she asked.

“Mind? Why ever should she?” he scoffed. “It’ll be company for her. The girl’s too much alone, or closeted with that infernal confessor of hers.” He looked at Anne quite attentively and added, “I forgot you hadn’t seen Edward.” He loved showing off his son. And because, like most parvenus, he prided himself on doing the right thing socially he was relieved that she hadn’t resented his lapse. “Come to think about it, I’ll take you myself,” he offered magnanimously.

“Thank you,” said Anne simply. She couldn’t explain that besides wanting to go for her own sake, she wanted to hold the boy in her arms for poor Jane, who had had to leave him so soon.

Sleeping as she did in the late queen’s bedroom, she often thought of the joy and anguish that must so fleetingly have filled its comfortable, sunny-latticed loveliness.

“If this weather holds it should be a pleasant ride,” predicted Henry. “We’ll get to bed early and Culpepper can order the horses to be ferried across soon after day break.” He glanced at a sundial on the wall and saw that it was past noon. “Let’s go in now,” he added, grape vines and mulberries forgotten. “I’m famished.”

“So am I,” agreed Anne.

They went bustling up the garden path together, two gorgeous figures in cloth of gold and blue velvet, followed by the foreign maids-of-honor and a whispering coterie of courtiers. And as they went they appeared to be discussing the best position for a new herb garden.

Archbishop and ambassador stared after them.

“Such heavy, tasteless clothes are enough to make those girls look frightful even if they were
belles comme des anges
,” summed up Marillac, before mincing elegantly down the steps to the Duchess of Northumberland’s waiting barge. “But your new Queen’s no fool!”

“No,” agreed Cranmer, sending a servant to hail his own.

Anne had certainly seized her opportunity of pleasing the King; but he was not so sure that expediency had had anything to do with it. She was such an unusual woman—so incalculably uncomplicated. Perhaps after all she had begged to see Edward quite simply because she wanted to—because she, too, was what that gossiping Frenchman had called a born mother. And if so, well—she was healthy and kind and comfortably sane…while that poor, pampered child at Havering was by all accounts disturbingly delicate…He was still thinking of her when the familiar roofs of Lambeth began to show between the bare trees on the Surrey bank.

And of Henry, who had done nothing but complain about her since she came, and who was already flattering the Howard girl into becoming his mistress. And, stepping ashore at his fine episcopal palace, Cranmer—confirmed Erastian as he was—caught himself thinking what a fool Henry was!

12

AT HAVERING-ATTE-BOWER ANNE WAS able to take stock of the other four Tudors. At last there are just the five of us together, Anne thought, looking round her little step-son’s overheated nursery. And in spite of her original reluctance to become one of them and all that she had suffered in the process, the feeling gave her an odd sense of satisfaction. But then she was essentially a family sort of person.

The ride from Greenwich had been a pleasant, informal jaunt with only a handful of followers. The sunny weather had held, the roads were in good condition and young Elizabeth’s excitement had been a joy to behold. Realizing how seldom Nan Boleyn’s child could have been invited to accompany her father on such an expedition, Anne remembered with gratitude the Archbishop’s kindly thought for her loneliness.

“How well she rides!” she had exclaimed involuntarily, watching the tall, straight-backed seven-year-old race across a stretch of common land with the wind in her crisp, red-gold hair.

And Henry had looked pleased and had said complacently, “Yes, she has my hands.”

Though less spectacular, Anne herself was no indifferent horse-woman, and it had increased her pleasure to find there was at least one thing she could do as well as these talented new relations of hers. The flat country north of the Thames reminded her of home.

And, finding that she could talk intelligently about beasts and crops and buildings, Henry had enjoyed assuming the role of guide.

There was a likeable pride in him, and a robust grasp of the common man’s conditions, when he talked about his villages and towns. And, best of all, almost throughout the journey he had been affable with his daughters.

Elizabeth, sunning herself in this rare intimacy of family life, was all high spirits and self-importance. It was good to see her discard for once the unnatural assumption of grown-up discretion with which she had learned to parry the dangers of her pitiful youth, and to give rein to an unspoiled interest in the exciting-looking parcels of toys piled on a pack-horse for her brother.

“Which do you think he will like best—the spotted hobby horse or the dragon that belches fire or the lovely red unicorn?” she had kept asking of all and sundry. Tom Culpepper had teased her by pretending that the bundles were full of the household stuffs her nurse, Mrs. Ashley, was always writing for, and the King had laughed and reminded her that they were bringing Edward a new step-mother as well as toys. Whereat the child, all unconscious of the travesty of their marriage, had paid poor humbled Anne an unwitting compliment.

“He won’t be able to help liking her best of all, will he, Sir?” she had said, in the fearless way she had of talking to her neglectful father.

“He doesn’t take to strangers as a rule,” Mary had warned them, with a prim puckering of her mouth. And Anne had hoped that she wasn’t going to spoil everything by being jealous.

But only as they had neared Havering had the shared pleasant-ness of the morning been spoiled, and that by reason of Henry’s growing uneasiness. He had hurried them all on, getting himself and his horse into a sweat lest his son should have caught another of his frequent chills. When Mary lagged behind, complaining that the jolting made her head ache, he had barked at her impatiently. And Anne, torn between a conscientious instinct to keep her company and the natural desire to prove her horsemanship, had felt relieved when Culpepper, seizing an opportunity to prick his horse close to hers, had explained in a hurried undertone that his master always behaved so and that there was usually no cause for anxiety.

Anne had heard a lot about Havering-atte-Bower, the sequestered Essex mansion where the royal children were brought up. She had made it her business to talk with Lady Margaret Bryan, who had charge of them, because she felt—both as queen and woman—that it was one of the places in which she should take an active interest. She had carefully verified Katherine Howard’s words about Elizabeth’s shameful need of clothing. She knew also all about the care with which the little prince’s food, and even his clothes, were tested for poison, and how none but members of the household could come near him without a signed permit from the King.

As she dismounted in the courtyard her practical glance took in the double guard at the gatehouse and the gloom of encroaching woods which would, it was hoped, ward off any tainted breath of town-bred pestilence. Following Henry into the house, she noted the splendid proportions of the room in which the heir of England played—the expensive toys, the carefully closed windows, the tapestries thick enough to exclude every possibility of draught. And how everything, from the vigilance of picked servants to the ridiculous way her companions began to tiptoe anxiously from room to room, gave the impression of a gilded cage. The great Tudor had lavished everything on his only son. But the place appalled Anne.