For the last time the gaily coloured figures crossed the green. Accustomed sportsmen, they walked together with easy badinage to hide their real anxiety for the issue so soon to be determined. When they turned beneath the lengthening shadow of the chapel wall, Francis Brian, having won the previous end in partnership with Wyatt, took the jack from the eager, unsteady hand of a sweating page. He stooped, and sent the small white ball speeding far along the green towards the spectators in the gallery, knowing well that the King and Charles Brandon of Suffolk preferred playing to a short jack.
“Last end, and the game might go equally well to either pair,” gurgled George Boleyn, in ecstasy. “Double that last wager, Hal?”
One by one, from the cloister end, each man’s wood curved down the green, Henry and Suffolk watching anxiously as Brian’s sidled expertly to touch the jack.
All hung now upon the fortune of their second woods.
Francis Brian sent up a cunning bowl to protect his first, but Suffolk’s second delivery disturbed the clustered head of woods, carried the jack a few inches and came to rest close by.
“Suffolk lies winning shot!” In the abnormal quiet Thomas Howard’s harsh voice echoed sharp as the twang of a bowstring against the tilt yard wall.
With consummate skill Wyatt retrieved the position. Playing up on the backhand, he curled his wood round the two of them, to lie yet closer to the jack than Suffolk’s.
“Oh, fine shot, Wyatt!” rang out Henry’s voice.
“And last cast of the game,” muttered Jane Rochford, within the gallery, having wagered more than she could afford.
As the cheering died down the King took Wyatt’s place.
“And suppose, after all, he does not win?” thought Anne.
With all her heart she wanted Wyatt to win—Wyatt who was part of her life, dear almost as George. But now that she had driven them to this fierce rivalry, she was afraid. Afraid for herself, but far more for Wyatt. Any other day Henry would have lost gracefully and walked back to the Palace chuckling about what a wonderful game they had had. With an arm about his opponent’s shoulder, as likely as not. Arranging some time in his busy life when he would be able to play again. But today he was there to show his woman that he could win. That he brooked no rivalry, either in sport or love. The intention was written in every masterful line of him.
Stooping, marvellously agile for his girth, he balanced the heavy, polished bowl upon his palm, sighting the jack. His hand was cool and strong. Dipping his right knee, he made his final cast. Sweetly the bowl rolled along the sward, turned inward by the bias, lost speed, rolled over and lay a few inches short, almost covering the jack. From where Henry stood at the far end it must have looked a winner.
His tensed features broke into relief, expanded into a grin. Turning, he hit his partner a congratulatory thwack on the shoulder. “Charles, we’ve done it! The end is ours! The final cast is mine!” he cried triumphantly.
But Brian and Wyatt, having delivered their shots first, were standing at the gallery and where all the woods lay clustered, and from whence, like the spectators, they had a more equal vision. And instead of a burst of applause there was an uncomfortable silence. Suffolk seemed uncertain how to answer, and Norfolk, the time server, gave no ruling.
Anne watched her cousin Thomas step swiftly towards the jack. On soft, heelless shoes, he picked his way between the other bowls, concentrating upon his own and the King’s. He glanced up questioningly at Norfolk, and silently, reluctantly, Norfolk nodded.
“’Tis only a game, God send he keeps his mouth shut! For whatever comes of this will be my fault,” prayed Anne, in panic.
She sprang up, her fingers clutching at the window sill, as Wyatt’s voice cut the silence. “By your leave, sir, it is not,” he said courteously, but without hesitation.
A gasp went up at his temerity and the heated pages stood all agog. Anne saw the frown gather on Henry’s brow, saw him come striding towards the end beneath the gallery. It was significant that neither man appealed to the umpire, as they normally would have done. Clearly, it was a matter to be settled between themselves. And herself the reason. Even the most insensitive or casual onlooker must by now be aware of that fierce undercurrent of hostility between them.
Halfway across the green Henry stopped and pointed. “Wyatt, I tell you it is mine,” he affirmed, with an attempt at conciliatory reasonableness.
But Wyatt stood in respectful silence, patently unconvinced.
Why, why must he be such a foolhardy idealist? Offering himself as her knight. Trying at this late hour to tilt against the attempt upon her virtue, or to shield her tarnished name!
And then Anne saw the sun sparkle on the ring on Henry’s pointing ringer—her ring, which Wyatt must inevitably recognize, since he knew her trinkets much as he knew the jewels in his own verse. The small, private drama was played out immediately beneath her window, so that she could see the expression of their faces. She saw Henry point again. She saw him go slowly, calculatingly closer, until his outstretched finger was almost under his daring subject’s handsome nose. “Wyatt, I tell you it is mine!” he repeated dangerously.
Anne knew it was not the game they cared about so passionately, but herself.
She sensed the exact moment when Wyatt’s eye fell with realization upon the flashing thing—saw him go white and draw himself suddenly erect, shivering a little like a thoroughbred, as he took the blow against his constant heart. What would he do? Or say? Any other man, she knew, he would have struck or challenged.
One could not strike the King.
Not a man moved. The whole assembly held their breath, aghast that one of their number should defy the Tudor, in such a mood, about what seemed so trivial a thing.
“Measure them, then!” snapped Henry.
But before Norfolk could do anything about it, Anne saw her cousin’s hand go to the opening of his shirt and bring forth the gold pomander chain that he had once filched from her to stake his claim against another lover, and which he always wore. The jewelled initials, A.B., dangling from the end of it, flashed in the sunlight too. Ostentatiously, he stretched it to its full length, before the King’s darkening gaze. “If it pleases your Majesty to give me leave to measure the cast with this, I have good hopes yet it will be mine,” he said coolly.
Anne’s whole heart cried out to him. “Oh, Thomas! Thomas! And I taunted you that you would not risk the King’s displeasure for my sake!”
She felt Margaret Wyatt’s hand clutch at hers, heard poor Margaret’s frightened sob.
For a moment it looked to both of them as if Henry, in his jealous fury, would fell Thomas to the ground. But Wyatt looked him unflinchingly in the face, before turning with the chain taut between his hands to measure the relative distance of each wood from the jack.
“Mine is the nearer, an’ it please your Grace, by two links’ length,” he announced quietly; and Norfolk could not, before so many bystanders, deny it.
Blind with fury, Henry found himself in the position of a taunted lover. Yet outwardly nothing had been done amiss. Wyatt had been too subtle for him. Upon Wyatt the gods had showered all their gifts, it seemed—wit, genius, beauty—and, most indubitably, courage. He had everything that would make a woman love him. And, above all, his body had not thickened, and he was on the right side of thirty!
He had known Anne Boleyn all her life. Had called her “pretty coz” and kissed her when he liked. Among those tempting yew arbours at Hever. “God knows what intimacies she has allowed him!” fumed Henry, in the coarseness of his uncomprehending heart and the frustration of the intimacies he was still denied.
Meeting his courtiers’ covert stares, he made an effort to gather his public manner like a mummer’s cloak about him. And to accept defeat decently. “It may be so,” he allowed, haughtily to Wyatt. “But if you have the advantage of me, then have I been deceived.”
She knew exactly how he felt.
Instead of showing her what a fine fellow he was, he had been made to look an unsportsmanlike clod. By a subject who was less accommodating than the Blounts or the Boleyns.
It was the first time any of them had stood up to him when he, King Henry the Eighth of England, had wanted a woman from their family.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The viands on the supper table grew cold and, for all her anxiety, Anne grew hungry. “The King will not come now,” prophesied Margaret.
“I tell you he will!” snapped Anne. “Have them bring in some brushwood and light a fire.”
Up and down her fine room she walked, the ivory beads of her rosary clicking and swinging from her girdle as she went, stopping only when Will Brereton found time to look in for a moment to tell her that his Majesty had supped with the Queen.
“And milord Cardinal, I suppose?” questioned Anne.
Brereton tarried just long enough to glance out at the swiftly flowing Thames. “Wolsey is not yet back from Westminster, and his bargemen will have still going against this tide. It is thought the King will not wait up for him.” As a silvery clock chimed somewhere he hurried away. “It wants but a quarter to nine, and I should be on duty with Weston in the bedchamber,” he excused himself.
“It was a terrible risk to take, trying to make his Grace jealous!” expostulated Margaret Wyatt, as soon as they were alone again.
“Those who take no risks arrive nowhere,” Anne told her tersely.
“Please God, it bodes no ill for poor Thomas,” murmured Margaret; and that was the nearest she ever came to recrimination.
Anne’s friends were very loyal to her.
She stooped to warm her hands at the new, crackling blaze. “Don’t fret so, Margot,” she encouraged, with a confidence she was far from feeling. “Let me but see Henry for a moment and I will right the world for Thomas!”
“But how can you hope that he will come after this morning?”
Anne turned and laughed at her. “Because of this morning he will not be able to stay away,” she prophesied.
And as if to prove the truth of her boast, the door was thrown open and Henry Tudor stood there, glaring in as if he expected to find her in Wyatt’s arms.
“Mistress Margaret and I are honoured,” mocked Anne, making obeisance. “And mercifully, since your Grace is so precipitate, not yet undressed.”
Henry neither smiled nor apologized. And at a glance from her friend, Margaret sidled past him, thankful to close the door behind her.
As he moved across the room, Henry’s searching eyes never left Anne’s face. “I must talk with you before I sleep,” he said abruptly. His rings and gold chain had been taken off. Obviously, he had been to his room, intending to go to bed in dudgeon, and the turmoil of his caring had in the end driven him back to her.
Anne could think of nothing to say. The relief of seeing him was so great. She had only made herself believe in her own power—made herself believe that he would come.
Her heart-shaped face had grown white with strain, and she passed a hand across her brow. “I will readily tell your Grace anything,” she offered. “But I—oh, Henry, I am so hungry!”
None of her usual clear-cut, calculated phrases could have served her better. He almost pushed her into a chair, awkwardly patting her shoulder as if she were a starving child. “Eat then,” he ordered, with exasperation. “You were a fool to wait.”
“I hoped and prayed that you would come!”
He lifted the lid from some spiced lampreys, sniffed appreciatively, and helped her lavishly with his own hands. Then set a cold capon before her. “Carve it for me, Henry! Let’s not call the servants,” she entreated, seeing that the homely occupation was already beginning to make his heroics look foolish.
Silently, expertly, he obeyed. The last thing he wanted was to call the servants. Heaven knew, it was seldom enough he got her alone! And the spiced dish compote smelt so good he wished he hadn’t supped. Katherine had been a bundle of injured self-righteousness, and the food, brought all the length of the great hall, half cold. Whereas here—Extravagant wench, to order a fire in June! But how homely it looked. With the one woman he wanted sitting there eating her supper like any squire’s wife. He leaned across and poured her a glass of his own Burgundy. And when she had drunk it the colour came back into her cheeks, which was the one thing needful to make her ravishing.
When Anne judged that the edge of his anger was blunted, she rose and faced him across the table. “You were gravely displeased about the gold pomander chain,” she stated, carrying the war into the enemy’s camp.
“You must have given it to him,” he accused, sullenly.
Anne moved the stem of the Venetian glass round and round, weaving patterns on the linen cloth. And Henry, fascinated, watched her tapering fingers. “He is my cousin,” she explained, with a reminiscent smile. “As you know, we have always lived within a few miles of each other. He and Margaret played with us when we were children. We all loved each other so much that, when we were too young to have money, we were wont to make each other gifts.”
“But not the kind of gift a man delights to wear against his naked skin,” growled Henry.
Anne saw that she must pick her words more carefully. “In twenty-five years I must have given Thomas Wyatt a variety of things,” she agreed. “But not that chain.”
“I saw the initials. And the meaning way he held it to enrage me.”
“Oh, I do not deny that it was mine. But he filched it from me one day at Greenwich.”
“You mean, before I—”
Anne had an enchanting way of looking up suddenly at anyone she was talking to, and her eyes sparkled at him, warmly as the wine. “Before you noticed me. While I was busy at my embroidery frame he tweaked it from my belt—” She had been going to say “To tease me,” but suddenly the bolder words slipped into her brain. Words which were difficult to say, but which would make the King trust her and draw his grudge from Wyatt. “To annoy another man whom I preferred,” she substituted.
Henry pushed aside a chair unseeingly and came closer, his eyes hot on hers. “So you made Wyatt jealous, too, poor devil?”
Anne made no answer, content to observe that jealousy was veering from the particular to the general.
“There must always have been men here and in France.”
Anne lowered her lashes and endured his persistence. “Could I help it?” she murmured modestly.
He stared down at the curve of her cheek and the white division of her breasts visible beneath the straight, low-cut bodice of her gown. “No, damn you!” he allowed at last.
He stamped angrily to the hearth and stood there, kicking a charred ember into a shower of sparks. Then swung round on her again, and caught her watching him. He could almost have sworn that he had detected a fleeting smile. “The man you baited him with—that was Northumberland’s young whelp whom I caught you with at Greenwich, I suppose?”
Anne’s head shot up, and all suspicion of amusement died. “Yes.”
“And I dealt with him. He’s out of the reach of your wiles. Bedded with Shrewsbury’s daughter.”
“Yes,” said Anne again, without flinching, defending with a calm assumption of indifference the only man she had ever loved.
“But Wyatt,” Henry began pacing back and forth again, goaded by miserable uncertainty. “He is still here, under the spell of those witch’s eyes of yours, and he has always wanted you. Your stepmother favours him. He was always about at Hever. Play
ing ‘Catch as catch can’ about the staircases, winter evenings, no doubt. Reading you his cursed poems in the walled garden. He has had every opportunity. Did he—?” Quite suddenly Henry Tudor’s jealous fury broke up, leaving him utterly vulnerable. He seized Anne’s hands, kissing them again and again. “Oh, Nan, Nan, don’t you see?” he pleaded. “You and he are both young and I am nearly middle-aged. You don’t know what it is to lose one’s youth and still love ardently.”
Compassionately, because he was being sincere to the point of self-depreciation, Anne pressed the palm he had been caressing across his mouth. She would not hear his humiliation, nor did she make any pretence of misunderstanding what he wanted to know. “No, he never has,” she said.
Henry caught her to him in a transport of gratitude. “Swear it, sweetheart! Ever since that game this forenoon I have feared that I have been deceived.”
“I swear it, Henry.”
He laughed a little, apologetically, already embarrassed by the crudity of his own behaviour. “You see, my heart’s darling, I had to be sure. All the more, because I am King, I couldn’t take another man’s leavings.”
Anne’s left hand groped among the folds of her skirt for the feel of her rosary. “I am not forsworn! Though he be in truth deceived, I have not lied,” she told her bargaining soul. God be thanked, he had put the question of her chastity only in that way! Seeking time to steady herself, she moved to a table by the window where her private casket stood. Lifting a key from the chain about her waist, she unlocked it, revealing a pile of letters.
And Henry, peering over her shoulder, had the satisfaction of seeing that they were his own. “Fond little fool! So you have kept them all,” he chided, tweaking her ear, well pleased. But as Anne lifted them, searching for something else, the sight of his seal must have curbed his vanity with caution. Shrewd Welshman as he was, he glanced at her askance. “They are not for prying eyes,” he warned her, recalling certain amorous passages. “Better burn them, poppet.”
Brief Gaudy Hour Page 18