The Heretic’s Wife (38 page)

But God was apparently not in the mood to give good speed. When next she heard from Henry, it was the middle of February. He was hunting in the rain in New Forrest. He sent her a brace of coneys and a deer “killed by the king’s own hand” and a message that the cardinal had sent word that he was delayed by frozen seas and flood tides and did not know when he would come. Henry said nothing of his meeting with the queen’s nephew, but told her with winsome words how he longed to have her by his side. Pretty words. She crumpled the message and threw it in the fire and wondered if Katherine had accompanied him to Richmond. He might not be sleeping with her, but he still traveled with her. The people still hailed her as queen. She’d heard the women sometimes lined the streets when she passed in procession, calling her “good Queen Katherine” and throwing flowers at her feet.

By April the sweating sickness had broken out in London. Henry sent word that she should stay away. If the cardinal did not come soon and exercise his legatine rights to let the English archbishops decide, then he would be driven to break with Rome and do it himself. At any rate, he said, as he would be in progress from one duchy to the next, wherever the sweating sickness was not, she should remain at Hever. But he said he was sending her a special gift, the anticipation of which lifted her spirits somewhat. But her flagging spirits soon returned. What good were diamonds and gold, if one had no place to wear them?

And when her special gift finally came, it had nothing whatsoever to do with diamonds and gold.

. . . I would you were in my arms or I in yours for I think it is long since I kissed you. Written after the killing of an hart at axj. of the clock minding with God’s grace tomorrow mightily timely to kill another by the hand of him which I trust shortly shall be yours.

—F
ROM A LETTER NOW IN THE
V
ATICAN
L
IBRARY
WRITTEN IN
F
RENCH TO
A
NNE
B
OLEYN

A
nne Boleyn, as she did each day, kept watch from her chamber window for the king’s livery. She was not alone. Her sister Mary Carey had decided to bring her children to Hever Castle because the sweating sickness had reached the Careys’ manor in Pleasance Park. When her husband William had come down with it, she’d packed them up and fled. But Anne, in spite of her loneliness, had not been pleased to see her. She was aware of Mary watching her with a catlike expression as she watched for Henry.

Her little niece, named for the queen—how like Mary to flaunt it; did she think the whole world blind?—played with her dolls at their feet while the other, aptly named Henry, slept in the nursery. One of the dolls bore the painted visage of Queen Katherine and the other Princess Mary. This irritated Anne considerably. When she looked at the child playing at her feet, she imagined she could see Henry’s petulant mouth and intelligent eyes, and she felt something very akin to jealousy—which fact surprised
her. Why should she care that he’d slept with her sister, unless she was growing fonder of her splendid Goliath than she had ever intended?

She had spent the last twenty minutes explaining the nature of her relationship with the king, trying to make her sister understand that she, Anne, had chosen a different path. Mary missed the point entirely.

“You mean to say you have not lain with him yet?” she chortled.

“I am not as easily put on my back as you, dear sister.”

For her answer, Mary reached down and smoothed the doll’s dress. “Don’t ruffle the queen’s gown, poppet. Your father is very fond of both the queen and the princess.” She smiled at Anne innocently. “William gave her the dolls. He was given them by the queen’s own usher as a gift for . . . his daughter.”

Anne resisted the urge to slap her. What if Henry should visit while she was here? Would seeing her with his child playing at her feet rekindle attraction? They had avoided the awkward subject of his relationship with Mary Boleyn. “You slept with my sister” is not something one hurls at a king. And the king was much too chivalrous to bring it up in her presence.

“I’m sure Lord Carey misses his children terribly,” Anne said archly. “It is probably safe to return home now. It has been a fortnight, hasn’t it? Aren’t you worried that your husband may be dying and you are not there to comfort him?”

Mary shrugged. “He has his royal grants to comfort him.”

Grants that you earned on your back,
Anne opened her mouth to say, but was interrupted when her watchful gaze fell on a lone rider approaching the entrance, dressed in a plain brown cassock rather than the Tudor livery. Anne turned away, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed. It had been two weeks since her last message from the king in which he’d promised her a special gift. But all things considered, if he was going to bring the gift himself, she’d just as soon he wait until Mary had departed.

A soft tap at the door interrupted this wishful thought.

“If that’s a servant with refreshment, I hope it doesn’t bear the taint of vinegar. I am sick to death of the smell of vinegar.” Mary wrinkled her nose. “It permeates the very air we breathe.”

“Small price if it keeps the pestilence away. It was the king who insisted it be used at Hever.”

“Well, he was ever a coward whenever sickness was abroad. If you’re thinking he’ll come calling, I would not wait by that window overlong. He’s
probably holed up in some wilderness lodge with only Brandon and Neville for company,” she said as Anne opened the door.

“Lady Anne,” said a steward, “there is a priest without. He would speak with you.”

“A priest!”

“He says he is a parson from Honey Lane. He says to tell you he was sent to you as a gift from the king. To give you spiritual comfort during these difficult times and to offer prayers for your well-being.”

Behind her she heard Mary’s snicker. “And to think all I ever got were a few paltry land grants and some fine clothes.”

“Tell the parson from Honey Lane I shall meet him in the chapel presently,” Anne said, trying to ignore her sister. “And that I am much moved by His Majesty’s dear regard for my physical and spiritual well-being.”

“I wouldn’t be too moved, dear sister.” Mary sank into the wide window seat and gazed out the window. “And if I were you I’d be very careful to whom and what I confess.” Then she looked back at Anne, all trace of humor gone from her face. “After all, you are my sister. I would hate to see you bring disgrace or worse upon yourself . . . upon us all.”

But Anne was in no mood for such sisterly advice. “You must be confusing my litany of sins with your own. I have not entertained half the French court between . . . as intimately as you. Flirting is not a sin. But you need not worry. I only confess my sins to God. As this priest well knows. The king knows my mind on such matters too. He sent this particular parson at my request. But you were never one to take such things too seriously, were you?”

She threw this last over her shoulder as she exited and looked back to see if the barb had found its mark.

Mary frowned, her eyes still sober. “And you may take them too seriously,” she said. “A simple maid might drown in such deep waters as you are wading in. Take care, sister. Take great care.”

But Anne was not worried. The hated Wolsey was gone, and she was almost sure Thomas Cromwell was already on her side. She would circle herself with reform-minded priests like this parson from Honey Lane and the scholars from the fish cellar who had been so ill-used. Once they were safe at court, they would be in her debt. Such friends would drive the wedge deeper between Henry and his Catholic queen. No. Anne was not worried. Why should she be when the king of England had promised to make her his queen?

By mid-May the floodwaters of the Scheldt River had receded; the merchants were once again in full industry; and Kate was pregnant. But she had not yet told John. She wanted to be sure.

“You have that look about you. You are carrying right enough.” Mistress Poyntz looked wise in her certainty, especially when Kate told her she had been queasy in the mornings, and just last night she’d had the strongest urge to have a paste of goose liver when she’d hardly ever been fond of it. She confessed this as she helped herself to another helping of the hearty fish chowder bubbling in the great kettle on the kitchen hearth.

“Sorry to be so greedy. At this rate, I’ll grow as fat as the goose that sacrificed the liver,” she said, sopping her bread in the creamy soup. “This broth is delicious!”

Mistress Poyntz, who was plucking a chicken for roasting, laughed. “There’s plenty.” She gently nudged the pile of feathers with her feet into a wide-mouthed sack, then lowered her voice because the wide kitchen door was open to the adjoining solar. “You may be eating for two, you know.”

But there was no need to lower her voice. John, as usual, was engaged in animated conversation with Chaplain Rogers about the theology of the Eucharist, in particular their views that the Roman doctrine was all wrong. John’s voice intruded through the open doors, louder and more excited than usual.

“To argue for the Real Presence of Christ is a superstition. The baker doesn’t make the miracle of the mass, God does.” She heard the thumping of his fist on the table for emphasis. “The miracle is in the change wrought in the recipient, not the physical attributes of the bread and wine.”

To which Rogers responded, “I’m with Luther on most things. He’s dead right on the theology of justification by faith and not works, but in his defense of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, I quite agree with you; he’s wrong as wrong can be.”

Since there was nobody to dispute the other side, they carried on both sides of the argument with an almost sporting zest.

While Kate agreed with their espoused view that the bread and wine were symbolic and did not literally turn to the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ in her mouth—she wasn’t sure she could swallow it, even to save her soul, if it turned to the real thing in her mouth—she sometimes wondered why this was such a sticking point for all sides. The miracle of the mass was not being denied.
She would have expressed this view to Mistress Poyntz, but she had finished with the plucking and moved on to deal with the hapless bird’s innards. Kate helped herself to another half bowl of chowder. But she ate it with distraction as she thought about the conversation going on in the next room.

Wasn’t the true miracle of the mass in the transformation of the participant’s heart, in the forgiveness of sin? But where was the harm in believing it also became the real blood and flesh? Either way, it was an act of obedience, an act of worship. She sipped her soup and thought of the children who came with the Bible women, how gladly, how quickly, they absorbed the simple truth of love that Jesus taught. Love God. Love your neighbor. What really was there left to argue about?

But she dared not say this to John, who was more and more absorbed by such finer points of doctrine. He had even mentioned writing and publishing a polemic on the subject of the Eucharist. She wished he wouldn’t. Translating the Bible was dangerous enough. That could be done in secret, even anonymously—in point of fact, she’d wondered why Tyndale signed his name to his translations. But to sign one’s name to a direct challenge to any doctrine of the mass was like laying down a gauntlet to the supporters of the old faith. Men had been burned for less.

Would John be more discreet if he were a father? She sighed. Probably not. Luther was a father six times over, and it hadn’t stopped him.

But it had stopped her brother John.