My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (9 page)

Obviously, she was their responsibility now. It made her feel precious, and somehow very safe. She adored all this new experience of traveling and marveled that her women could grumble at the cold, the strange food or the jolting of the cumbersome coaches.

Like a child going to a fair, Anne would willingly have put up with any inconvenience for the sake of seeing a fresh town every day.

Her enjoyment was enhanced because Holbein, who had proved himself invaluable as both friend and interpreter, rode in her train.

Sitting straight and unflagging on a tallish horse, she looked about her with a friendly smile as her augmented party clattered across the cobbled market place. There was nothing but the sweating flanks of her mount to suggest that she had ridden from Gravelines since breakfast. Sharp frost and plenty of outdoor exercise had brought becoming color to her cheeks and, like most large-boned women, she looked her best on a horse. She was interested in all she saw and not ashamed of it. And the crowd, accustomed to the comings and goings of bored, irritable or preoccupied royal personages, appreciated her interest in themselves. A mutual satisfaction, which could be felt, pervaded the cheerful streets.

The Governor of Calais had ridden out to meet her. The gallant Captain of the Guard placed the garrison at her disposal and the King’s Constable knelt before her with the castle keys. And at the entrance to the harbor she met the pompous old admiral who was to take her across the Channel.

Above the confusing strangeness of their words Anne was aware of a booming sound which no one else seemed to notice. At first she thought it must be more salvoes in her honor, but decided that it couldn’t be because the smoke that had completely obscured the view was beginning to drift away. But it almost drowned the admiral’s bellowed apologies about some delay caused by currents, so that Anne, having a vague idea that they were some kind of fruit, supposed him to be talking about dinner and remarked, quite pleasantly, that it was a pity because she had got up early and was very hungry—a remark which sent his second-in-command into ill-concealed gusts of laughter.

“Milord of Southampton would have your Grace understand that it is very ROUGH,” explained the gallant Captain of the Guard.

“Ruff?” repeated Anne uncertainly, fingering the new-fashioned frilling at the wrists of her gown. Lieb Gott, what a language!

Her eyes sought helplessly for Holbein. But he was separated from her by a surge of Calais dignitaries and the handsome second-in-command came to her rescue.

“It’s the sea which is rough, Madam,” he said, pointing through the harbor gateway. “Listen.”

Anne listened. The great, regular booming came from the direction of the cliffs; and now that everyone was silent she could discern, after each crescendo, a sibilant swish like the dragging of tons of stones. Her puzzled face lit up with eager interest.

“The sea!” she exclaimed, pricking her horse forward alone.

The screen of smoke had been torn by a freshening breeze and the sun had come out. Holbein, trying to escape from the fat Mayor, saw her recoil and sit motionless, framed in the rough stone archway with her back to them all.

She had always pictured the sea as something blue and placid.

It came as a shock to her to look out at that expanse of angry, leaden water fringed with white breakers that lashed at harbor masonry and chalky cliffs, fell back in spouts of slopping spume, only to lash and lash again. The tearing wind took away her breath and the unaccustomed tang of salt was a buffet on her cheeks. It was some time before she remembered her own importance or the waiting company.

“Milords, it is the first time I behol’ the sea,” she told them simply.

Their faces expressed amazement and commiseration. With her uncanny insight into other people’s minds, she understood how they must feel about it. As islanders, they regarded it as their own blessed and particular element—and pitied her accordingly.

Proudly, they begged her to look again and observe the splendid ships their king had sent for her.

Anne looked and her stomach turned over beneath the smoke smutted purple velvet of her traveling gown. The masts of the two ships lurched drunkenly together, making the bare thought of dinner suddenly abhorrent. To her inexperienced gaze they looked like a bundle of sticks bobbing against the far end of a toy jetty, and the thought of trusting herself to such cockle-shells in so murderous an element rendered her speechless. Lord Lisle, the consequential Governor, believed her to be overwhelmed by the honor paid to Cleves. And Southampton told her what hours of hunting his king had sacrificed in order to build up an efficient navy. And after that he really did say something about dinner.

But even Anne’s hunger and healthy zest for sightseeing were rather daunted by the grim Norman castle in which custom decreed that she must lodge. It sprawled, lion-like, along the cliffs, as if keeping a last aggressive foothold on the conquered shores of France. If this were the first taste of the queenly grandeur to which her journey must ultimately lead, then how much pleasanter, she thought, to sleep in one of those comfortable houses out there in the square in close contact with the friendly people! Already their voices were growing fainter as the thick, grey walls closed about her. Just for a moment she felt that she would give anything—even the hope of furthering her brother’s interests—to turn back. But the press of men-at-arms behind her and her own strict training bore her forward. Irrevocably she was in her future husband’s strong-hold. She sensed his power. She turned in her saddle and Holbein managed to press his horse through the throng.

“That last gate seemed to shut out the fields,” she complained, as if discussing the view.

It was the first time he had heard her speak carefully in metaphors.

“There are other fields in England,” he reminded her gently.

Anne was beginning to feel overwhelmed by ceremony. Every man presented to her seemed to have some strange title. Over there, perhaps, she wouldn’t be allowed to see much of a mere court painter. Lowering her voice, she asked, “Does one walk in them with freedom—and friend ship?”

“Not if one is wise,” he warned her, with his usual uncompromising honesty. “But why not think of the gateway as the opening into a fine new city?”

She knew that he was right and rode resolutely forward.

At the foot of the castle steps people were waiting to help her dismount. They fussed kindly about her being cold and seemed anxious to hustle her upstairs to a fire. But she made a little gesture beseeching them to wait. She couldn’t find the right words to explain to them how much she wanted a few farewell moments with her own people. Standing halfway up the short flight of steps, with her shivering women huddled about her, she watched her retinue come crowding into the bailey—three hundred Flemish gentlemen who had ridden with her from Cleves. The cost of their upkeep and grants towards their new clothes had appalled her. “We must send you well turned-out,” William had insisted, when she had suggested half the number to save him the expense. But, in spite of Francis’s promise of safe conduct across the northern corner of his kingdom, she knew that her brother had feared treachery. “Union between us and England is the last thing the French want,” he had kept saying anxiously the night before she left. So Anne smiled on her escort affectionately, suspecting that although many of them were past middle-age they had not come with her merely for show. Now that she had seen more of the world and could compare their comfortable befurred figures with the lean and hardy English they didn’t look quite so martial a body as she had supposed when they first set out. There was a suggestion of play-acting about their antique culverins which made her wonder whether, after all, they would have been of much use in a fight. Many of them she had known all her life—some of them had taught her to ride when she was a child and told her the fairy legend of the Swan Knight who had come long ago to woo a princess of Cleves, and some of them she had cured of various ailments with her famous herbal remedies. And as if to keep them with her a little longer she beckoned to the white-haired count who led them.

“Will you thank them for me all over again, Waldeck Harderwijk?” she said. “And give my tender love to my brother and assure him how kind everybody has been.” And because she had caught some of the well-equipped English men-at-arms looking superciliously at the culverins, she leaned down and kissed the old man on both cheeks; whereat the three hundred gentlemen from Cleves raised feathered velvet caps which Anne reckoned must have cost enough to keep the Düren servants in liveries for a year. Tomorrow, as soon as they were rested, they would be going back. Back through the gay, evil-smelling French towns; through Antwerp, where the English wool merchants had made her a lovely torchlight procession; through Guelderland; up the Rhine valley, where fields grew flatter and peaked gables higher until the unpretentious palace of Düren and the famous Swan Tower of Cleves became dear realities…The tiled stoves would be lit there and the embroidery frames brought out—her mother and Amelia would be talking about her, perhaps, as they stitched at their Christmas gifts or the new spring bed-hangings—and William, pacing back and forth along the snow-covered city walls, would be worrying about how the English were treating her and how he would manage without her when the trouble in his head next took him…Poor, nerve-wracked William…Anne shut her eyes hard and quickly until the hot, homesick tears were pressed back into her heart and she could turn and face these foreigners without shame. Up till then it had all been a holiday, a splendid adventure—and she was such an unimaginative fool that only when it came to saying “Good bye” had she begun to realize that this was the end of her familiar world. She clutched the decent defenses of cour age about her, grasping desperately at the things which were left. At least there would be her women. Even if they went on grumbling and sniveling they would still be part of home. Particularly Dorothea, whose baby had died after all, and who had begged to come with her—poor, sad, shamed Dorothea who never grumbled but tried to show her gratitude in a comforting gift of unobtrusive service. And stiff, grumpy old Olsiliger—until he went back after the wedding.

After the wedding. Her wedding—to a complete stranger.

Now that it had come so close, Anne wondered how she could have gone on placidly from day to day, concerned with the small things of life, not bothering to find out what this bridegroom of hers was like. Everyone knew that Henry Tudor was massive and ruddy.

But what was he like to live with? Suddenly, as she stood there on the thresh old of this castle which was the southern bulwark of his kingdom, it mattered tremendously. Why hadn’t she been more curious, like Amelia? After dinner she must get away from all these people. Somehow she must get Hans Holbein alone…

Anxious to get the ceremonials over, she motioned to her party to follow the Constable inside. But in the darkness of the winding staircase she hung back a pace or two until her searching fingers caught at Dorothea’s. And Holbein, who had never before touched Anne deliberately, bungled one of the steps so that she might feel the warm strength of his shoulder against hers.

As she reached the royal apartments on the first floor a door opened near the serving screens of the hall, emitting a delicious smell of roasting meat which brought things into good, everyday perspective again and cheered her consider ably. She sniffed knowledgeably, then she hurried on, with an amused smile, remembering that she would no longer have to concern herself about culinary preparations. From now onwards she would be royalty.

In the hall they had placed a chair of state for her in front of a huge central fire. Anne bore it as best she could. Nothing compared with the fact that all those people seemed prepared to like her. But while they all talked and ate she did some hard thinking about those lurching ships and before the company retired she caught at the finely slashed sleeve of the handsome, swaggering second-in-command. He had kept the table lively with laughter and seemed to her more easy and human than the rest.

“Tell me,” she whispered urgently, “do your ships always— gambol—like that?”

He looked like a swashbuckling pirate with his trim beard and fine golden chain, and he smiled down at her kindly from his great height. “Don’t worry, Madam, we shan’t put to sea until the wind changes,” he assured her.

“Then I hope it won’t change for a very long time!” she said involuntarily; and so great was her earnestness that only Olsiliger’s dry cough and her ladies’ shocked faces made her realize that she had made another unfortunate remark. But the tall, blond Englishman only laughed. He had done full justice to the French wines and liked a woman without affectation who didn’t finick with her food.

“I, too, Madam, begin to feel less eager to weigh anchor,” he confided, scanning her with bold blue eyes.

Anne withdrew her urgent fingers from his sleeve but pursued the matter with true Teuton persistence. “Haf you no flat bots?” she asked.

The poor man looked mystified.

“Like I saw on the canals as we came through Bruges.”

“Oh, barges—”

“Yaa! They would be more safe.”

He threw back his head and laughed, showing enviable white teeth. “But they wouldn’t carry your Grace to England!” Impulsively, he lifted her hand to his lips. Anne had very lovely hands and he felt that they were beginning to get on well together. There was something about her that made people want to serve her.

“We’ve had the best cabin on the flagship prepared for you, and we shall do everything for your comfort,” he promised more gravely.

“And you will persuade the Admiral to wait until it is quite calm?”

He looked quite surprised. “Madam, it doesn’t rest with him, or with any of us. The King’s orders are that we sail as soon as we can.”

But the idea of a king who presumed to rule even the sea was new to Anne. “With or without safety?”

He shrugged. “What man among us, Madam, can condemn his impatience,” he asked, with his most engaging smile.