Brief Gaudy Hour

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Anne crumpled onto the nearest window seat. It seemed an eternity, waiting there, with her triumphant laughter cold on her lips. All the modish young men seemed to have melted away. And she was glad enough when Thomas Boleyn came and sat beside her. “It is no good losing heart, child,” he told her kindly. “All diplomacy has its ups and downs.”

  Anne seldom saw him alone these days. She regarded him attentively, as if expecting to find him changed. But perhaps the change was only in the growth of her own understanding—perhaps he had always been the same. After all his scheming towards success he looked much the same as during those happy days at Hever—a little greyer, perhaps, but just as suave and handsome, just as unruffled—whereas she—“God must have been with that bloated son of a butcher then! Just a chance encounter and all our work undone,” she lamented, feeling suddenly very weary.

  The Duke, her uncle, came and joined them. “God will give him over some day. He is getting to be an old man,” he observed vindictively. Norfolk had served his country ably by diplomacy and sword, and England had not room for two such proud personalities.

  “I heard them say ‘If we could lay hold of the Papal brief!’ which means that the King would depend upon him more than ever,” vouchsafed Anne.

  “Then you may be sure Wolsey will leave before noon tomorrow to see Campeggio off in London and persuade him to part with it,” grinned Norfolk, showing his unpleasant teeth.

  “They will be hand in glove again,” she wailed.

  “Not for long, perhaps. If you can use those feminine wiles of yours and prevent the King from seeing him in the morning,” suggested her father.

  Anne sat in ruminative silence, conscious that both men waited upon her cunning. It was a challenge, thrown down at the right moment. Presently she sprang to her feet and faced them with a brilliant smile. “There is supposed to be especially good hunting about here, is there not? And after a day indoors his Grace will be particularly impatient,” she said. “I pray you, milords, have our host come to us here. Perhaps between us we can convince him that a fine stag has been seen in these parts. A king stag, that no one can bring to bay. Something almost legendary that his keepers have seen in some distant brake at dawn. And for my part, I will persuade our hostess to have a breakfast carried thither.”

  “And if the stag should not be oncoming?” enquired Thomas Howard, with caustic amusement.

  “Then be sure your niece will be,” laughed the new Earl of Wiltshire.

  What a daughter, this Nan of his! There had been a time when he had feared she would prove sentimental and recalcitrate; but now, removed from Jocunda’s fond influence, she appeared to have forgotten all about that callow love affair. She was a wench who accepted no reverses tamely. A wench to be proud of!

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Arriving back at Westminster a few days later, Anne had time to assess her gains. She had prevented Wolsey from seeing Henry again at Grafton, but she knew that she had wrought only his discomfiture, not his downfall. And if he obtained the Papal brief to act for Henry, his influence would be paramount again. And how much he must hate her!

  Seething with anxiety, she dismissed her women and bolted herself in her bedroom. It was not only her own disappointment. Her family and her supporters had depended upon her, and their hopes had been laid low. Before all her admirers, the King and the Cardinal had walked past her as if she were no more than a tiring woman, and, as they passed, Wolsey’s scarlet cassock had switched contemptuously against her gown.

  “I will make Henry suffer for that!” she vowed. “After all his fine protestations, his gifts, his kisses, his love letters.” And as she ranged back and forth her eyes rested on the casket in which she kept them. “Were I to show some of those letters I could make him look a pretty fool!” she thought. Always at the back of her mind had lain the shameful notion that if ever she found herself about to be discarded like Mary she could use them. Not really use them, perhaps; but make Henry afraid that she might. It would be a mean weapon; but a woman must have some safeguard.

  In her impatience, Anne had sent away the servants who had come to light her candles, and already the shadows were gathering behind the tallboy and the rich hangings of her bed. But by the western window there was still light enough to read a letter. She would refresh her memory, read again the fond, impassioned things that he would hate most of all for other eyes to see. “Would that you were in my arms, mine own darling, or I in yours; for I think it is long since I kissed you,” he had written. And then again in some later letter, after he had fondled her more intimately, “Sweetheart, I send you a hart that I have killed in the chase. Hart’s flesh from Henry, praying that hereafter, God willing, you may enjoy some of mine. And I would it were now!”

  Anne’s lips curved into a smile. She forgot her ill-humour. Humming a gay little tune she crossed the room with briskly tapping heels. As she approached her table, she noticed that the casket stood a little awry, showing a thin angle of undusted oak beneath one end. Margaret, who had charge of that and her jewel case, was always so particular. It must be those careless chamberers, thought Anne. She must speak to them about it. But with the tiny key half lifted from her girdle, suspicion assailed her, holding the flowing grace of her movements suddenly taut. After a horrible moment or two she stretched out her left hand, the hand she used so seldom. And the carved lid lifted to her touch. The familiar scent of musk and amber came up to her, making her feel faint. But there was no uplifting of tightly pressed letters.

  Panic-stricken, incredulous, Anne pulled the golden thing towards her, carried it to the light and peered in. Search as she would with frantic fingers, only one piece of parchment remained, partly unrolled, at the bottom. “Forget not yet the tried intent—forget not yet!” Part of the poet’s elegant script was plainly visible. The story of Thomas Wyatt’s constant love lay there, mocking her. Something sure and unswerving, which once she might have had. And for the rest the casket was empty—rifled.

  The King’s love letters were gone!

  Anne almost froze with horror. All the raging anger and petty resentment was burned out of her. For an optimistic moment her hunted mind toyed with the notion that Margaret, or that young Savile hoyden, might have played some trick on her. But before she could reach her bell to summon them she knew that they would not dare. Not with the King’s letters. Besides they, too, had been away.

  Because her legs would no longer support her, Anne sank into a chair and sat staring at the open, empty casket. Trying to think. Of course, this room had been unoccupied, and all her house left in the care of servants while they were all at Grafton backing her to make a fool of Wolsey.

  Wolsey!

  The man who had owned the house before her. Who must know every nook and corner of it, and who had made such a pother about personally supervising the hanging of his precious tapestries. Wolsey, whose own house, full of spies and agents, no doubt, was hard by. Wolsey, whom she had fooled when he went to France.

  “An enemy hath done this thing!” The apt words sprang to her lips, hot from the Scriptures which she had been reading, though no longer surreptitiously.

  And now she was certain that it was Wolsey who had fooled her. Who else would know about the letters, and be so subtle? It was the deadliest thing anyone could have done to her.

  Henry would be furious.

  He would never know what eyes were reading his inmost thoughts, what men made merry over the sincere expressions of his private desires. Though it were not her fault, would he not remember that she had been careless before, and that he had long ago urged her to burn his letters? And say that had she really loved his letters, she would have kept the casket near her. Much he might forgive her—but never, surely, would he forgive the person who made him the laughing stock for all the civilized world.

  Anne lifted the golden box, shielding it almost furtively with her arms. “I will not tell him,”
she thought. “I will let him think I have them still. If Wolsey had them stolen he will never dare to produce them. It is only that he wants to have something to hold over me. Something about which I shall never be sure.”

  A low fire was burning in the grate. She turned towards it with the casket pressed to her bosom. “Better get rid of this, too, in case the sight of it should remind Henry.” Her thoughts darted this way and that, and the sight of the warm embers gave her an even more daring idea. “Or could I, perhaps, pretend that letters and all got accidentally burned?”

  But even as she stood there, cogitating, the colour came back into her cheeks and the brightness to her eyes, “Merciful God, that I could be so witless!” she cried softly. “If Wolsey would not dare to tell, neither would he credit me with courage enough to accuse him. Oh, my fat Cardinal, at last you have played into my hands!”

  She unbolted her door and pealed at her bell. And when her women came running, there was everything to do at once. “Go, one of you, and tell Master Heneage of the King’s chamber that I must see his Grace at once; about something which touches him closely. Entreat him that he see me tonight. Here, take the King’s ring which he gave me. And someone call for lights, I can see nothing in this accursed gloom. Margot, bring me my jewel box. And fetch Mary Howard, who is so clever with my hair, Arabella, Druscilla, come and make me beautiful! More beautiful than ever before. No, ’Cilla, dear, not the rose pink. Beautiful, mais un peu triste.”

  And then the arrival of Heneage, a short journey in a closed litter, and Anne was facing Henry, alone, in his workroom. Though it was long past supper time, she had found him still busy with affairs of statecraft. But now Wriothesly, his secretary, had been dismissed. Even the handsome French ambassador, who had settled down to discuss something, had been unceremoniously bundled out. And the little gold casket stood on the writing table between the ponderous treatise Henry was preparing about his divorce, and an unsigned death warrant.

  He himself was standing with his back to the fire, with perplexity and anger written on his face. “But it is incredible, what you suggest!” he broke out for the second time.

  Together he and Anne stared at the empty box, the silence broken only by the pleasant crackling of the logs. And presently Henry moved to the table to examine the broken lock. “Any rogue with daring enough might have stolen them,” he said. “But to suspect Thomas Wolsey—”

  “Who knows my house so well as he?” pointed out Anne, looking a picture of injured innocence. “He had duplicate keys and remained here at York House until we were on the point of leaving Grafton. And he is jealous of your love for me.”

  Henry laughed shortly, although he felt far from experiencing any mirth. “He worked hard for a French marriage, if that is what you mean. But think what you are saying, girl. A man of Wolsey’s standing!”

  “Stood Wolsey always so high?” she challenged.

  Absently, the King had picked up his learned Latin treatise on divorce, and now he banged it down again angrily on his table. “That old story!” he scoffed. “At least his people were not butchers, but intelligent landed graziers, who managed to send their son to Oxford. You have been prejudiced against him ever since he did my bidding about that presumptuous Northumberland pup.”

  Anne was always careful not to provoke him on that matter and in the face of her obstinate silence her maturer lover’s pent-up jealousy flared up more generally. “You listen overmuch to the gossip of all those young men whom you encourage,” he complained.

  “At least my friends are all young men of good family,” she flamed back impudently. “How else could I be at ease with them?”

  She knew the way to taunt a Tudor. Henry flushed darkly. But insolence was so new a thing to him that he knew not how to deal with it, particularly the oblique insolence of a beautiful woman whom he desired. And Anne was very, very beautiful tonight. Perhaps if he humoured her in this crazy notion she would be kind. “But why should the Cardinal do such a dastardly thing?” he asked weakly.

  She came to him at once, all clinging gentleness. “Oh, Henry, Henry, how can we read his tortuous mind? Has he ever really helped us to come together as we wish? And in what way is he better than the rest of us? Churchman as he is, has he ever denied himself the things of the flesh?”

  Having been his intimate friend, Henry had no wish to go into that. “He had been a fine Chancellor,” he submitted.

  “Fine at condemning others,” laughed Anne. “Surely you can see that he is no fit friend for you? A man who once sat like any common thief in the stocks!”

  Halfway to snuff a guttering candle, Henry stopped abruptly. “The stocks?” he echoed, staring.

  “For drunkenness.”

  Without seeing what he did, Henry laid down the silver snuffers on a pile of exquisitely illuminated manuscripts. Slowly he came towards her. “What is this you are saying?” he demanded dangerously.

  Sure of herself in the flattering firelight, Anne stood her ground. “When he was a young parish priest at Limington, in Somerset. I suppose he made a beast of himself at some village fair.”

  Henry seemed to tower over her, his huge shadow flung grotesquely on the wall behind him. He held himself very still lest he might do her some injury. “You must be crazed to say such things,” he growled, momentarily blind to her beauty.

  Anne laughed and turned away, pivoting lightly on one heel. “Ask Sir Amyas Paulet if you do not believe me,” she suggested, and left him there to think it out while she began turning the pages of his treatise.

  “Sir Amyas was my Justice of Peace there,” he recalled, speaking more to himself than to her.

  Anne only hummed an infuriating little tune.

  “A fine shot, Amyas Paulet, with some good West country hunting. Wasn’t there something about his being confined in the Temple for heresy? I haven’t seen him for years,” added Henry on a rising note of anger.

  “Perhaps that is why,” suggested Anne negligently.

  Suddenly his rage burst forth. “Why wasn’t I told?” he demanded. “A man swineherds have thrown their refuse at eating and drinking with me as freely as your uncle or Suffolk!”

  Anne closed the ornate cover of his book. “Have I not explained that people are afraid to tell things to a King, especially about his friends?” she said. “It is only those who really love him who will dare to do so.”

  Henry came and took her by the shoulders, turning her to him and searching her face with anxious eyes. “And you honestly believe that Thomas Wolsey stole my private letters?”

  “A man with so odd a background might do anything,” shrugged Anne.

  “Late as it is, I will have him sent for.”

  That was the last thing Anne wanted. After all, she was not sure. Face to face with Henry, Wolsey might be able to clear himself. Before Henry could reach his bell, her fingers were about his wrist. “If he has your letters he would scarcely dare to keep them here,” she hazarded.

  “You mean that he might send them abroad?”

  “Possibly by Campeggio?”

  Henry’s ringers slid from the bell. His face seemed to sag visibly. “You mean to Rome?” he almost stammered.

  He must have been picturing an assembly of tonsured Cardinals trying to look suitably shocked, and statesmen in Paris and Spain sniggering enviously. Seeing him as a figure of fun because he had been a steady domesticated figure for eighteen years—and now, when he was beginning to put on weight, he had fallen desperately in love like this.

  Anne was unfeignedly sorry for him. “If he shows them to the Pope, mon ami, there are pieces of them that will not help us very much,” she warned.

  She could see him trying to recall them. His face was now as red as it had been grey. “Whatever I wrote, I wrote for you alone, Nan,” he said, with a kind of desperate dignity. He threw off his short, flared coat the better to rummage through some memora
nda on his table. “Campeggio leaves for Dover at dawn, so there will just be time.”

  Henry’s voice was crisp and businesslike, with that little intake of breath it had when he was very angry. As a onetime ambassador’s daughter, Anne realized the enormity of the thing he proposed. The unforgivable international insult of tampering with a foreign Legate’s luggage. But Henry would try to get his letters back at all costs, even though his methods put him on a level with the thief. “And there is always the chance that you may find the missing brief,” she encouraged.

  “The brief?” Henry’s sandy brows shot up and his hands stopped busying themselves with instructions for his secretary. “Did I not tell you, sweetheart? I have been so beset by affairs since my return. That wizened rat Campeggio burned it as soon as Katherine’s trial was ended.”

  It was Anne’s turn to stand rigid with surprise. “By the Pope’s orders?” she asked.

  “As like as not. What has Clement ever done but delay and deceive me?”

  “Then Wolsey is—” Almost faint with relief, Anne bit back the word “finished” and substituted “of no further use to you?”

  “In this matter, no. Nor in any other, if he had a hand in the disappearance of my letters,” declared Henry. “Henceforth I will fight for my divorce alone.”

  Anne looked up at him with shining eyes. “Oh, Henry, it will be better so, though we two defy the whole of Christendom. You are strong enough. And what do the people of this country want with foreign interference and the ecclesiastic rulings of Rome? Most of them have no taste for foreigners.”

  “Unless they happen to take them to their incalculable hearts,” he agreed grimly, thinking of his impeccable Spanish wife. “My people’s sense of insularity is at times most inconveniently strong; but it comes second to their unfailing sense of fair play.”