Anna of Kleve, the Princess in the Portrait

by Alison Weir

She sighed. When would they end, these silly rumors?

  * * *

  —

  They set out on a brilliant June morning. Waving to those staying behind from the window of her litter, Anna caught a last glimpse of Otho, his hand raised, his expression unbearably poignant. It would be a hard separation for them both.

  The little party took the same road south as before, which led them to Anna’s manor of Chailey, where they lodged overnight. The next night they were at Offham, then they traveled on to the manor of Falmer, where she was much taken with the ancient parish church in its picturesque location by a tranquil duck pond.

  Their next stop was at Ovingdean, near the sea, after which they swung westward to visit Anna’s properties in and around the fishing village of Brighthelmstone. From there, they rode further west, lodging at her rectory at Cuckfield, and at an inn north of Arundel, before finally arriving at Nyetimber, where they received a joyous welcome from Anna’s tenant, Thomas Bowyer, and his wife. Bowyer was a gentleman in every sense of the word, a respected local worthy and a Member of Parliament.

  After two days, Anna complained of feeling sick and feverish. Mrs. Bowyer, a nervous woman, became flustered, but Mother Lowe calmed her.

  “Her Highness just needs to rest in her chamber until she is better.”

  “I am sorry for the inconvenience,” Anna murmured, pressing her hand to her temple, as if to dull a throbbing pain. “There is no need to go to any trouble.”

  Mother Lowe helped her upstairs, as her concerned tenants looked on.

  “Take it slowly, my lady,” she said. “You’ll feel better soon.”

  But of course Anna did not. Mother Lowe told the Bowyers she had aches in her joints, and felt very weak. It must be a rheumatic ague, she declared, caught as a result of staying in that inn near Arundel. The sheets, she could have sworn, had been damp…

  * * *

  —

  Fortunately, the travail was quick, otherwise Anna would not have been able to keep from crying out for much longer. It had been hard enough as it was to stifle her moans. But soon after five o’clock, on a late September afternoon, when she was supposed to be resting and convalescing after her long illness, Anna delivered her silent child into the waiting hands of Mother Lowe, who wrapped it in a towel.

  Lying there exhausted, she saw the nurse shake her head, hurriedly cover the infant’s face and lay it on a chair.

  “I am so sorry,” Mother Lowe whispered, her face crumpling in distress.

  All for nothing, Anna thought. Probably it was for the best. Maybe God, seeing her plight, had shown His hand and taken her child to Himself, knowing it had no place on earth.

  “What is it?” she asked weakly, wondering why she felt so numb.

  “A girl,” Mother Lowe told her, as she busied herself with the afterbirth. “Perfect to look at, but tiny. Poor little lamb.”

  At that, Anna did cry. “It seems I am never to know the joy of motherhood!” And there was no comfort for her.

  She sobbed herself to sleep, and after she had slept a long time, she woke feeling stronger and asked for some food. But before Mother Lowe could hasten away to the kitchen, she grasped her hand.

  “I want to see her,” she said. “Where is she?”

  “Are you sure?” the nurse asked. “The memory will be with you all your life.”

  “It will be my only memory of her,” Anna replied. “The only thing I can cherish.”

  Mother Lowe reached into Anna’s iron-bound traveling chest and brought out the locked coffer in which her money and valuables were kept. “I’ve put everything into a bag,” she said, and placed the coffer on the bed next to Anna.

  Anna pulled herself into a sitting position, grateful that she had suffered no damage during the birth. She looked at the coffer for a few heartbeats, then turned the key, lifted the lid, and drew aside the fine Holland cloth that covered her baby, gazing down on the little white face and the tiny delicate hands. Her daughter was her very image, even down to the pointed chin; there was nothing of Otho in her.

  A great lump formed in her throat, and she feared she would cry out her grief. Tenderly she touched the infant’s cold cheek, then bent to kiss it. She was too chilled in the presence of death to pick up the child and hold it to her bosom. Maybe she was not worthy to be a mother after all. But there was something she could do for her daughter.

  “I want her to be decently buried,” she told Mother Lowe, looking for the last time on the still little face and resolutely closing the coffer. “That lovely church at Falmer…”

  “But it’s miles away,” the nurse protested.

  “The weather is turning,” Anna pointed out. “It’s not so warm. If we keep her in the coffer, inside the chest, she will be all right.”

  “But Anna, you’re in childbed! You have to lie in for a time. You’re supposed to be recovering from an illness.”

  “Am I? No one but you knows I have given birth. I am not injured, and I feel strong. Tomorrow I will go downstairs and tell them that I have presumed on their kindness for too long, and am well enough to leave. I’ll say we are taking the journey in easy stages.”

  Mother Lowe was shaking her head. “And have you thought of what will happen when we get to Falmer? How do we explain why we’ve brought with us a child that needs burial?”

  Anna thought for a moment. “We can say we found her abandoned and near death by the roadside, and that she died soon after we spoke the words of baptism over her. I’m sure that’s allowed when no priest is nearby. We daren’t say she was unbaptized, or the priest will bury her in unconsecrated ground. I am lady of the manor—he is hardly likely to gainsay me. He seemed a mild man.”

  Mother Lowe was still looking uncertain, but Anna could tell she was coming around to the idea.

  “It could work,” she urged. “Luck has been with us so far. We just need a little more of it. Heaven knows, I’ve probably committed most sins known to man recently, and in doing this I will doubtless commit more, but my child deserves a decent Christian burial, and she will have it, as God is my witness.”

  “She will go to her grave unnamed,” Mother Lowe mourned.

  “God will know who she is,” Anna replied.

  * * *

  —

  It was a pretty spot, in the shelter of an ancient elm near the lychgate. They stood there, the two women, heads bowed, as the old priest read the burial rite over the little coffer and nodded to the sexton to commit it to the grave. Anna felt as if her heart were being buried with her child, along with all her earthly happiness. But she dared not show too much emotion, and it took all her self-control to stem the torrent of weeping welling within her. When it was over, and the final Amen had been intoned, she thanked the priest for helping her to do her Christian duty; then, summoning all her inner reserves of strength, she turned away and walked back to her chariot.

  Chapter 21

  1541

  “The Queen has been arrested! Queen Katheryn has been arrested!” Katherine Bassett came running up the stairs, calling out the news and waving a letter, and Anna, who had been sitting sewing with her women, listening to Otho playing his lute, felt her heart begin to pound.

  “No!” she cried out. Not Katheryn, kindhearted, childlike Katheryn, whom the King adored! “Why? What crime can she possibly have committed?”

  “My sister is in great anxiety,” Katherine told them. “The Queen has been confined to her rooms at Hampton Court, and no one knows what’s going on. She confessed to one of her ladies that she had indulged in naughty behavior before her marriage, but surely that’s not a crime?”

  “Of course it’s not,” Anna replied, trembling inwardly at the thought of her own “naughty behavior.” Her eyes met Otho’s; he looked as troubled as she.

  Poor Katheryn. The girl was foolish enough to have let herself be led astray—sh
e must have been very young at the time—and who could blame her for not telling the King? Anna could well imagine Henry being devastated at discovering that his beloved Queen was not as pure as he had thought—but to have her arrested for it? “There must be something else,” she said. “Let’s pray that she is found to be innocent. Is your sister all right?”

  “She is confined with the Queen—a few of the maids are—but she is allowed out to take the air. That’s how she got this letter to me.”

  Anna’s household was soon buzzing with speculation, waiting impatiently for news. A letter from Dr. Harst was seized on eagerly, almost before Anna had read it. The King had come to Whitehall, he wrote, and left the Queen under guard at Hampton Court. He had been sitting in Council for hours, from which Dr. Harst deduced that a matter of great importance was under discussion. He’d seen some councillors emerge with troubled faces, especially Norfolk. The court was seething with rumors, and it was bruited that the King would change queens yet again.

  “It is not a vain fancy,” the doctor wrote. “The King of France has allied himself with the German princes and wants the King to join forces with him against the Emperor. The time is ripe for reinforcing the alliance between England and Kleve. Monsieur de Marillac, the French ambassador, is hoping for a reconciliation between his Majesty and your Highness, for he believes the King will soon be a free man.”

  Anna was greatly disturbed to read this. Harst had clearly taken the French ambassador seriously.

  “Monsieur de Marillac said he had heard that the Queen was accused of being entertained by a gentleman while she was in the house of the old Duchess of Norfolk. He told me the process against her is the same taken against Queen Anne, who was beheaded. She is allowed no kind of pastime, but must keep to her chamber, whereas, before, she did nothing but dance and rejoice; and now, when the musicians come, they are told that it is no more the time to dance.”

  Anna passed the letter to her ladies. This was truly dreadful; she could barely imagine what that poor girl at Hampton Court was suffering.

  She could not but ask herself: if Katheryn were set aside—she dared not think of what that might mean—would she want to go back to Henry? And would she have a choice? If he and Wilhelm agreed on it, there would be no room for objections. Had she not fallen so deeply in love with Otho, it might not have been so unwelcome a prospect, especially if Henry continued to show the same kindness and affection toward her. She had to admit that the prospect of being queen still held some appeal, although she could not bear to relinquish her cherished freedom. Nor, conscious of all she must keep secret—which, in the wake of Katheryn’s arrest, was all the more imperative now—did she want to lay herself open to the deadly intrigues of the court.

  At Richmond, they were collectively holding their breath. Several of Anna’s household had already assumed that if the King put away Katheryn Howard, their mistress would be queen again, and all she could do was keep saying, “We must not leap to any conclusions.”

  Another letter arrived from Dr. Harst, who had been extracting information from anyone who would talk to him. “Monsieur Chapuys suspects that the lords in Parliament will revoke the annulment of your Highness’s marriage. Monsieur de Marillac thinks there is a strong likelihood of this, because Bishop Gardiner has lately returned from Germany, where it is thought he may have obtained new information about the causes for which you were divorced.” Harst thought a reconciliation between Anna and Henry would promote many advantageous alliances. Yet Anna could not credit that the King really would consider taking her back, for it would not profit him dynastically—unless, of course, having grown fonder of her as a friend, he could be moved to do that which he had been unable to do when they were married.

  * * *

  —

  More shocking news from the court arrived in another letter from Anne Bassett. Sir Thomas Wriothesley had assembled Queen Katheryn’s household together and informed them that she had been charged with treason for lewd and adulterous behavior.

  “Adultery?” Anna exclaimed, as they all looked at each other in amazement. “With whom?” Surely Katheryn had not been so stupid, especially with the example of her own cousin before her?

  Katherine read on: “ ‘We were informed that she had traitorously committed adultery with Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, who was greatly favored by the King.’ ”

  Culpeper! Anna had always sensed something unsavory about him. He was clearly an opportunist and an unprincipled rat!

  “She is no longer to be called queen,” Katherine was saying, “and has been sent to Syon Abbey, under house arrest. Her household has been dismissed. I know not what our mother will say when she hears.” She looked up from the letter, plainly distressed. “She will be distraught, especially with my father still in prison in the Tower. She labored so hard to get that place for Anne. Madam, I beg you, if you see the King, will you speak for Anne and ask him to be a good lord to her?”

  “I will, if I see him, Katherine.” Anna looked at the stunned faces of her women, and thought of how silly Katheryn had been, the grief she had inflicted on herself, the people who would be hurt by her unthinking acts—and Henry. This would break him, she feared.

  “She is young,” Jane Ratsey said.

  “Old enough to know right from wrong,” Mother Lowe declared.

  “And the danger she risked,” Anna said. “What if she had become pregnant with another man’s child?”

  Bearing a bastard child had not, in Anna’s case, hurt anyone but herself, but Katheryn had betrayed a loving husband, and risked impugning the royal succession. At least Anna had known when to say no more, condemning herself to living daily in close proximity to the lover she had rejected, with both of them suffering for it, as was plain in the misery in Otho’s face, which people naturally imputed to his wife’s notorious infidelity. Katheryn had apparently exercised no such restraint.

  “I cannot bear to think what they will do to her,” Frances Lilgrave said mournfully.

  “Surely the King will not sign her death warrant?”

  “She has done a very wicked thing,” Mother Lowe sniffed. “How can he forgive her?”

  “I shall beseech God to move him to mercy,” Anna vowed. Inwardly, she was not confident. The reformers at court would be jumping at this chance to overthrow Norfolk and the Catholic party, and they would be out for Katheryn’s blood like a pack of baying hounds.

  * * *

  —

  Tongues were clacking furiously. Speculation that Henry might take Anna back was becoming rampant, at court and in her household, as it became clear that the reformists were pressing the King to rid himself of Queen Katheryn and the entire Howard faction. And who would they set up in her place? One who, despite her Catholic faith, was unavoidably aligned to the cause of reform because she represented an alliance with the German princes.

  Anna was not surprised to receive a letter from Dr. Harst, in which he insisted on her being ready for the summons he was certain would come. She was to hold herself in readiness at Richmond, or at a place nearer the King, if possible. Above all, she was to show herself joyous at the prospect of being restored to the throne. Her brother, and all Kleve, would wish it.

  She stared at the letter. Her restoration would depend on Katheryn’s ruin. She could not stop thinking about the terrible fate that had overtaken the vivacious young woman who had been so friendly and generous to her the previous winter. She might deplore Katheryn’s stupidity and its far-spreading consequences, but she still felt sympathy for her, all alone at Syon, where she must be wondering what they would do to her.

  “You must show yourself glad that such wicked treason has been discovered,” Harst exhorted. It was wise advice, yet how could Anna be glad about something that was causing such pain to others?

  She tried to reconcile herself to what Fate probably had in store for her
. She was tense with anticipation. Henry might soon be a free man, and she would have no choice but to do as Wilhelm wished.

  She took Harst’s advice. “I cannot but rejoice at the uncovering of this heinous treason,” she told her officers and ladies, as they were discussing the scandal over dinner. “I shudder when I think how closely it touches the King.”

  “The Queen will pay dearly for it, poor soul,” Frances said.

  “His Grace has been suffering too,” Anna reminded her. “He is no longer young or in good health. I fear for him, what with the shock of finding she was not the rose without a thorn he had thought her, and the grief of his loss.”

  “But think of what she is going through.” Jane Ratsey spoke up. “Is that not worse suffering? To live daily in fear of death?”

  “We should all live daily in fear of death,” Anna said gently. “We never know when our souls will be gathered. I do feel sorry for her. But, whatever my personal feelings, I cannot condone her treason, and neither should any of you. Who are we to question the King’s justice? If I am restored as queen, as my brother wants, you will all benefit.”

  “So your Highness really thinks it will happen?” Gertrude asked.

  “I have been advised to hold myself in readiness and wait for a summons to court.”

  They all stared at her, awestruck.

  * * *

  —

  She waited for news. The short November days ran into each other, and the skies were louring and gray, reflecting the heaviness that lay upon the kingdom. The only messenger who came was a Privy councillor with orders to retrieve the ring Katherine had given Anna. Anna handed him the pretty thing, remembering how impulsively Katheryn had made a gift of it—and the little dogs, who were full-grown now. It had been such a happy occasion.

  Harst wrote again. He had heard from Dr. Olisleger, who had written to the Earl of Southampton and Archbishop Cranmer begging them to urge Anna’s reinstatement. “The Archbishop is a great reformer,” Anna read, “and has been instrumental in the proceedings against her who was lately queen. He and the Earl might be counted on to press for an alliance with the German princes. The general opinion here at court is that his Majesty will remarry you. Nearly everyone thinks it. I urge your Highness to exert prudence and patience.”