My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (7 page)

“I’ve only painted what is there for all men to see.”

“All men don’t look for the same things in a woman.”

Holbein, concerned only with driving the apprehension from her eyes, yet sought in his heart for the most sincere answer. “As long as you are fully yourself, as you have been with me, he must see in you the kind of woman who alone can assuage the devastating loneliness which is in each one of us.” He took her hand gently in his and the still room wrapped them about with the sad intimacy of a shared and finished interlude. “You have come alive, Anna. Don’t ever shut yourself up again!”

She guessed then that he loved her and, woman-like, shied from the knowledge with an irrelevancy. “After all, you didn’t put in the pockmarks,” she reminded him.

“I never even thought about them,” he laughed easily. “Besides they will fade.”

She smiled at him, touched by a demonstrative kindness so much more comforting than the matter-of-fact affection of her family. But when he would have laid the ivory casket away in its velvet-lined case she stretched out a hand to prevent him. There was something so irrevocable about his gesture. The portrait would go to England now. And Henry Tudor would bend over it as they had done—and make his choice.

She lifted her head to look round with new awareness at the pleasant room and a corner of the lake reflected in a rounded mirror on the wall—to let her senses drink in the familiar hotchpotch of small scents and sounds that meant home. Her face was drained of color, and she seemed to crumple suddenly, so that Holbein caught her in his arms lest she should faint. And she, who so rarely cried, began to sob inconsequently against his heart. He supposed it to be the reaction from her illness.

“Oh, Hans, I wish—I wish you had made me hideous!” she cried.

She didn’t want to leave Cleves. She didn’t particularly want to marry a king. Because Holbein had called her beautiful the slumbering passion in her was stirring. She was not as yet in love, but her body was vibrant with the knowledge that she could love lavishly.

5

A WEEK OR TWO LATER Henry stood with Anne’s miniature in his hand. He was bending over it just as she had pictured him and already Amelia’s portrait lay discarded among the books and sheets of music on his table. The five other men present watched his expression, motionless as mummers in a tableau, for the policy of a kingdom was hanging in the balance.

“I believe I’m going to be happy again!” he murmured, and a sigh for the fleeting freedom of his widower’s estate lent weight to the words.

Men moved again. Relief was audible in the suave rustle of a primate’s sleeve; frustration in the irritable clank of a ducal scab-bard. All three Thomases made appropriate congratulatory sounds.

Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer whole-heartedly because it was they who had baited the Lutheran trap; that fine old soldier, Thomas Howard of Norfolk, perfunctorily because he wanted a Catholic queen.

But Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, said nothing. The religious issue scarcely affected his easy-going nature. He wanted Henry’s happiness simply because he was his friend. He had known him intimately since they were both carefree youngsters, and he had seen him mature and suffer. Undoubtedly, most of Henry’s suffering had been his own fault. But Suffolk was not censorious, and life at court was always much pleasanter when the King was happy.

Nicholas Wotton, the only man in the room who was a comparative nobody, stood near the door. Although it was he who had brought the momentous miniature, it was the first time he had been summoned to the King’s private work room and he knew his place among his betters.

Henry’s beauty-loving fingers were caressing the ivory Tudor rose casket, appreciating both compliment and workmanship. Such subtlety always pleased him.

“You do think she’s beautiful, don’t you, Charles?” he inquired urgently.

Suffolk came closer and examined it with him. They were much of a height, but the Duke looked the taller because he had kept his supple figure. The three Thomases couldn’t resist smiling a little, covertly. They seemed to have watched their colleague being drawn into similar pre-nuptial discussions before. Only the King himself appeared to be untroubled by a hovering sense of the ridiculous.

“Holbein’s a genius!” said Suffolk. And he said it with such honest conviction that Henry scarcely noticed that his question remained unanswered.

“It’s quite the best thing he’s done yet, isn’t it?” he agreed. “By the way, Wotton,” he added, looking round the pleasantly littered room for his recently returned envoy, “where is Holbein?”

The doctor detached himself from obscurity to join the finely dressed group standing by a window overlooking the river. “He wished to remain abroad for a while, your Grace,” he explained, with a formal bow. “I believe he has associations—er, early associations—with that part of Europe.” Wotton was sufficiently astute to realize how eagerly the Catholic party would clutch at the least hint of frailty in Anne, and not for worlds would he suggest how dangerously recent was the association that kept Holbein from enjoying fresh laurels in London.

“He wrote for my permission,” corroborated Cromwell. “And, seeing that he had worthily executed all three commissions, I trust I did not overstep my office in granting it?” Like most of them, he had a weak spot for the unconventional artist and—providing it cost his ambition nothing—could enjoy being indulgent to a friend.

Henry waved the matter aside benignly. “The man deserves a holiday,” he agreed. Picking up poor Amelia’s discarded portrait, he turned again to the envoy and said graciously, “We are much in your hands, Wotton, since you alone have been privileged to meet both ladies. Tell me, do you really consider these to be good portraits?”

“Most lively likenesses,” Wotton assured him.

“Then it seems the Lady Anne of Cleves is even more attractive than her sister, Sybilla of Saxony,” Henry said pompously, passing the portraits round for inspection.

Cromwell remarked a little over-eagerly that Olsiliger, the Flemish chancellor, had been marveling at some subtle change in her and considered that she had grown even more so during these last few weeks while her full-length portrait was being painted.

“Since learning of the possible good fortune that awaits her, no doubt,” suggested Charles Brandon, with a smile.

“Attractive or not, I understand she has no civilized accomplishments and speaks nothing but guttural German,” objected Norfolk. “I can hardly imagine that your Grace will find an evening spent without music or a bed shared without speech particularly entertaining!” To lend point to his carping remark he picked up a viol which was never far from the King’s hand and began strumming a sophisticated little song which Marillac, the popular French ambassador, had introduced from Paris. Every maid-of-honor and page boy about the palace was singing it and it had helped to beguile many an evening for the King.

Henry looked a little crestfallen. “That’s true, Thomas. But, after all, we have plenty of paid musicians—”

“They might suffice till bedtime,” laughed Norfolk, torturing the gut in a final tremolo which set Henry wincing. The Howards might be fine poets and fighters, but he wished the fellow would either leave other people’s instruments alone or learn to play them more tunefully.

Cranmer was quick to smooth out his mounting irritation. “Beauty and accomplishments are what every man hopes for in marriage, Howard,” he remonstrated sententiously. “But for the sake of the realm oughtn’t we to attach at least as much importance to character?”

The prospective bridegroom stood irresolute, one sandy eyebrow cocked inquiringly in Wotton’s direction, and that aspirant to diplomatic advancement made a movement towards Amelia’s portrait as if to bring her back into the conversation. He felt that he should explain to them that she was really the more lively and suitable. But Cromwell, ever clumsy in his movements, brushed against him in reaching for Olsiliger’s latest letter; and as he did so his black, bull-like eyes snapped a warning. One Lutheran princess was as good as another to him, but since by good fortune the King seemed to have fallen for one, why confuse the issue? The Chancellor’s ring flashed under Wotton’s sharp nose—the ring that set seal to so many punishments and preferments. And Wotton, who was no fool, abandoned the conscientious impulse.

In any case, it was Holbein’s responsibility. Any man, confronted with his two portraits, would inevitably choose Anne.

So Wotton made a virtue of necessity. So he harped enthusiastically upon her needlework, her kindness and her domesticity.

Henry gaped at him dubiously.

“Good God, man!” he ejaculated. “I’m not engaging a cook!”

Cromwell pointed out blandly that the same simple up bringing had produced Sybilla of Saxony, who gave her Duke counsel as well as sons. And Norfolk countered that with his trump card.

“Naturally one doesn’t know much about these minor royalties,” he remarked languidly. “But wasn’t this second daughter betrothed to one of Lorraine’s sons?”

Wotton preened himself on having gone into all that. Both Duke William and Olsiliger had assured him that the match had been broken off years ago.

“By the bridegroom’s wish?” insinuated Norfolk, fingering the pointed chin which in defiance of royal fashion, he elected to keep clean-shaven.

But Suffolk’s common sense robbed him of the trick. “My dear Howard, they were almost babes at the time! Besides, I doubt if he’d ever seen her.”

And Henry, looking from one to the other of them, smiled at him gratefully.

“I suppose there are no other—er—entanglements?” asked Cranmer, with a clever air of impartiality. He shrewdly suspected that it was a pretty safe question to put to anyone who had been forced to spend eight rather boring weeks at that innocuous court.

“She was never far from her mother’s elbow, milord!” protested Wotton, just as he had been intended to. “Why, even her brother, who naturally has more opportunity, appears to enjoy no good cheer in his own country!”

The Duke of Suffolk was understood to mutter something about an insufferable prig and Henry, remembering their own hot youth, gave a rude guffaw. But the Arch bishop of Canterbury reproved them.

“Apart from the question of morality, your Grace knows we can’t afford to risk any more scandal,” he said quietly.

And Henry, whose vanity still writhed at the lightest allusion to his second wife’s lovers, was instantly sobered. “You’re quite right,” he said, pressing the prelate’s shoulder with a kindly hand. “And, added to this lady’s unquestionable virtue, just think what a thorn a Flemish marriage will be in the flimsy friendship between Francis and the Emperor! Neither of them, without the Lowlands, will be strong enough to attack the other or to combine forces and invade us.” He was so pleased with his own diplomatic acumen that he felt well-disposed even to the man who had fostered it. “A nice piece of work, Cromwell!” he approved condescendingly. “Carry it to a swift conclusion for me and I shall certainly have to find you an earldom before I present you to my new queen!”

In high good humor he dismissed them all, remembering to soften the losing Duke’s moroseness with a jest and to commend Wotton for his pains. But when all of them were gone except Suffolk he let fall the mask of omnipotence with which he faced his world.

“It’s all very well for them, with their everlasting party squabbles,” he grumbled. “But I’ve got to live with the woman!” He carried Anne’s miniature to the light and seated himself on the wide stone window seat. “I would have preferred her a little younger—a shade more vivacious, perhaps,” he muttered broodingly.

Suffolk, turning over a pile of new songs at the table, lowered his handsome head to hide a smile. It occurred to him that the lady might feel the same way about him. But, as always, he was touched by the urgent need for reassurance in the King’s off-duty voice. “She looks comely, and amiable,” he said. Long ago, even before he became the King’s brother-in-law, he had determined never to lose his own integrity by saying what Henry wanted him to. All the same, he recognized Holbein’s cleverness in attempting nothing grandiose, in painting Anne of Cleves as he saw her each day in her own home. The painting he had sent was essentially the portrait of a capable gentlewoman and as such was bound to appeal to the desire for sympathetic understanding and domestic comfort in a much married, middle-aged man with an over-sensitized ego.

“The pink and gold of her against that celestial blue!” sighed Henry, as much in love with the artistry as with the woman.

Suffolk stopped grinning and looked across at him with impatience. He had so often been called upon to witness the rising tide of the Tudor’s tremendous enthusiasms and then left to clear up the ugly wreckage left by their inevitable ebbing.

“But only two inches of vellum on which to stake all your happiness!” he pointed out. “With the others, you knew them, saw them almost daily, first.”

“And could I have been more deceived—in the second?” demanded Henry, his voice sibilant with self-pity.

There was no answer to that.

“Besides, this is different,” he went on. “With a diplomatic marriage one doesn’t expect—”

“But that’s just the trouble. You do expect—everything…You know you do, you incurable old optimist!” Suffolk threw down the songs and came and sat beside him. “If you were content to consider it just as a thorn in the side of Francis and the Emperor it would be all right. You wouldn’t be risking a domestic tragedy if she disappoints you. But already you’re trying to turn it into a romance.”

Henry laughed sheepishly and set down the exquisite little casket between them. “I suppose I am,” he admitted, and sat there with his hands loosely clasped between his knees staring abstractedly at the square toes of his great slashed shoes. Sunshine and stained glass conspired to bring out the warm lights in his thinning, reddish hair. When he looked up there was something at once gallant and pathetic about his forced smile. “I do so want it that way, Charles,” he confessed. “Just once before the fires of my manhood go out.” It was the best part of Henry speaking. All that was left of the adventurous knight, the ardent lover. “You’ve been married three times, Charles, and always happily. There’s peace and homeliness in your house. Something I envy every time I come. How do you manage it?”