“But, Pope or no Pope, I will wait no longer. This is to be our honeymoon,” Henry insisted, and Anne knew that she could not hold him off much longer.
She, too, was in holiday mood, humming to herself and rehearsing in her mind what she would say to the fine ladies of France. But she might have spared herself the trouble. For when the royal party arrived at Calais, though the King of France sent her greetings and the Grand Marshal sent her baskets laden with fruit, word was brought in from Boulogne that Francis was not accompanied by any ladies. Either by the French Queen’s command or by their own desire, they had chosen to ignore the King of England’s mistress.
In the humiliating circumstances etiquette demanded that Anne and all her ladies must remain like a clutch of nuns within the boring bounds of Calais Castle, with their coffers of devastating clothes unused, while Henry and his fortunate attendants went hunting through the famous French forests with the susceptible French gallants whom they had hoped to ensnare.
Anne stormed and wept, but all Henry could do was to promise her that he would persuade Francis to return with him to Calais, and that everything should be made up to her then. “And so that the time does not hang heavily, devise some entertainment out of that clever head of yours against his coming,” he bade her. “Something that will make Boulogne look like a dunghill!”
With tears of rage in her eyes, Anne watched her father and brother and the rest depart. Not the least of her chagrin was that the Greys, and other highborn English ladies who had been forced to accompany her, were tittering at her expense, and that they would certainly delight her enemies in England with tales of her discomfiture. But Calais belonged to Henry, and she consoled herself with the thought that when the French came for reciprocal entertainment it would be her turn to call the tune. She would be their hostess then with several pretty girls in attendance and, since they had brought none of their own women with them, tant pis for the French Queen’s moral righteousness! Their jealous wives should have thought of that!
Secretly, Anne had believed that Henry had meant to marry her in France, but now she had the sense to see that, in the circumstances, it would be impossible. And when poor Warham of Canterbury passed peacefully away and Cranmer was recalled from Germany to be inducted as Primate, there seemed every hope that he might sway his colleagues to give his court an appearance of authority, so that the Church of England, without assent from Rome, would ratify Henry’s divorce. And even if this should never happen, Anne consoled herself in her more downcast moments, she would not have done so badly—a Marchioness in her own right, with assured succession to her children. At least she would have made a stir in the world and not been fobbed off with a penniless knight, like her fond, pretty sister Mary.
But Anne’s thoughts seldom dwelt upon the second-best things, the compensations of life. Her vitality drove her always to take the initiative. She had her women unpack all the trunks and called the Calais servants about her. Upon their Majesties’ return, she said, they were going to have feasting and a masque, such as the old castle had never seen. The banqueting hall was hung with silver tissue, and decorated with cloth of gold. Instead of torches in iron wall sconces, branches of silver gilt were suspended from the roof so that the tables might be lighted with modern wax candles. Anne herself visited the kitchens, where she saw to it that some dishes were served in the French manner and some in the English. And on a sideboard of seven stages was set out every piece of gold plate in the town. And when, true to his word, Henry and his guests rode in, they were greeted with loving looks and good English cheer.
“I did well to trust my Nan!” thought Henry. And after supper, when the cheerful music from the gallery changed to sweet dance tunes, the great doors between the serving screens were flung wide to a fanfare of trumpets, and four young girls tripped in. Each, with her unbound hair, was a houri to the men’s mellowed vision, and each danced backwards, laughing and beckoning, and leading by multi-coloured ribbons eight masked ladies shimmering in cloth of gold.
The guests rose to a man to greet them, and Henry dug Francis in the ribs with brotherly glee. “Go on and lead the dance! And choose the one with the brightest eyes, look you,” he urged, lapsing in his excitement into the Welsh of his forefathers, and assured that after the most cursory glance Francis of Valois would choose Anne.
It was like old times for those two to be dancing together, and when Henry removed all the ladies’ masks, Francis, feigning surprise at the identity of his light-footed partner, made gallant reparation for the deliberate insult offered her by his womenfolk. “Venus etait blonde, l’on ma dit,” said he, carrying her hand to his heart as only a Frenchman can. “Mais l’on voit bien qu’elle est brunette!”
Anne’s ready wit and fluent French scintillated that night as brightly as her elusive beauty. Francis enjoyed talking to her so much that he forgot to dance with any of the other ladies, and it was a long time before any of his subjects, who had flirted with Anne in their youth, got a chance to swarm about her. However determined their wives were to ignore her, it seemed that all of them wanted to brag among his fellows back in Paris that he had danced or dallied with the much-talked-of woman for whom the English King had defied the Pope and set all Europe by the ears.
And the more other men admired her, the higher Henry Tudor prized her. He felt himself to be in the pride of his manhood, still young enough for romance, yet experienced enough for mastery. “This night I will have her though I take her by force!” he promised himself, showing his ardour unashamedly before them all.
Both Anne and her brother were at the height of their exuberance. On the spur of the moment their fertile imaginations devised a dozen different mimes, while Jane Rochford and Arabella snatched banners and tapestries and flimsy silver tissues to clothe the performers in impromptu costumes. Androcles and the Lion, they mimed, with Norreys as the handsome Greek and the Grand Marshal of France as the suffering, noble beast, padding round him in a sheepskin floor rug. Paris and the apple, with Anne, inevitably, as the Love Goddess. An absurd burlesque of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in which Will Somers insisted upon impersonating his master, astride a wolfhound bedecked with heraldry. And finally St. George and the Dragon, with Henry, splendid in cloth of gold and armour, as St. George; Anne in white samite, bound to an iron candle sconce as the Damsel in Distress; and a dozen hilarious young gentlemen of England, head to rump on all fours, swathed in dull silver tissue as the Dragon.
“Here, sir! Hack off the Dragon’s head with this!” cried Francis Weston, clambering on a stool to reach down a great axe from its hook upon the wall.
But Francis of Valois intercepted him in mock horror. “None of your uncouth English axes!” he protested. “We do things in a more civilized manner in France, where even our blackest traitors get their necks neatly severed with a sword, and my executioner has a sharper blade than any. But here, take mine, Harry, for the easy quittance of so fine a dragon, and forbear to disgust the Damsel with your coarse hackings!”
As soon as the dragon had been more decently dispatched the whole riotous party rode down to the harbour to visit the fleet. Henry wrapped Anne in his own ermine mantle and lifted her, laughing, to the back of his great horse. He led the way down through the cobbled streets carrying her across his saddle before him in the hollow of his arm—a thing he could not do in England, although she often rode discreetly pillion. All the wealthy merchants’ houses and the fisherfolk’s quaint hovels were lit up, and as they went singing on their way the bilingual English settlers, to whom the injured Queen Katherine was merely a name, ran before them cheering, taking Anne and the great, ruddy King to their hearts with almost Latin enthusiasm for a pair of lovers.
Never would the folk of Calais forget how their Market Square was en fête that night, with the gorgeously dressed gallants and lovely ladies, the officers from the English ships, the bobbing lanterns and the prancing horses, and how they all joined in the singi
ng, feeling themselves a part of the land across the sea from which their fathers came. And when at last the merchants and the fisherfolk trailed off to bed, the Castle party turned by the great sea wall and Henry put his horse galloping up the rough dark cliff “to show Nan England.” The French knights came scrambling after, full of good wine and laughter, with many an oath for the slippery chalky ground, and Anne, no mean horsewoman herself, thrilled to every effortless movement of Henry’s faultless horsemanship. And all the time, in the romantic darkness, his strong right arm held her, his hand crushing her breast beneath the regal white and crimson cloak.
“Look, sweetheart, yon lies your kingdom—yours and mine,” he cried, hot with exertion. “See the beacon lit by watchful Englishmen upon the cliffs of Dover!”
And Anne’s bright eyes had strained across the twenty miles of dark water towards the familiar little port from which they had embarked in sunlight, and either saw or thought she saw, to please him, a dim speck of fire burning in the night. And Henry had sat his horse in silence awhile, forgetful even of the woman in his arms, gazing through the darkness towards the unseen land that was the very blood of him.
“I would not lose this outpost in Europe for a thousand crowns. And Mary, a woman, might have it wrested from her,” Henry whispered in Anne’s ear. “So do you not see, my sweet, how surely we must breed a stalwart son?”
And then some woman, less wrapped about in love and ermine, had complained that the northwest wind was cold; and they had all clattered back through the deserted streets again, with boats and nets making a magic, foreign, exciting place of it, and the grim lighted castle before them as a friendly goal.
There had been amicable “good nights”—more genuine, both monarchs felt, because of the Boleyns’ crazy escapades than from any long sitting in Council Chambers. A final drink set out by sleepy servants, and a handsome gift from Francis for the English Venus, as he teasingly called Anne. And even while she thanked him, her watchful eye was on the sparkling glasses. She knew that the end of her defiance had come. And that it was true, what Henry had once told her, that in the chase he never let his quarry go. Henry was seldom drunk, but tonight, knowing herself to be no virgin, she would not have him specially sober. The stolid English servants were too slow. But a nod and a captivating smile to Francis’ own dapper, quick-witted squire and the half-empty glass at Henry’s elbow was unobtrusively refilled, and then filled again. His full-throated, good-natured laughter was echoing to the vaulted roof, filling Calais Castle with the warm assurance that her master was come from overseas again.
And then they had all trooped up to bed. Margaret had been too tactful to offer to sleep in Anne’s room that night, and when Arabella had undressed her and brushed out her long hair and gone away to bed, Anne surveyed the room which had been allotted to her and knew that there was no escape. It was a round room built into one of the massive towers in some ruder age. Along the rough stone walls went Anne, feeling carefully beneath the freshly hung arras; but there were no doors except the one through which that giggling jade Arabella had departed, and the only window looked down upon the rocks and a tempestuous sea. The boom of beating waves came up to her and Anne closed the old-fashioned wooden shutter, the better to listen. But she did not bolt the door.
Instead she stood at the bed foot, watching it. By the light of a single candle on a tall iron stand the unfastened black bedgown revealed the alabaster whiteness of her body, making her a snare for any man.
And presently, as she had expected, the door opened quietly and Henry Tudor let himself in. For a moment, he leaned against it breathing quickly, and her mind noted gladly that he shot the bolt behind him. He looked spruce and younger, as he did on the tennis court, in a pair of dark velvet trunks and a silk shirt carelessly open at the neck; and the new French hair crop suited him, showing up the attractive copper lights in his hair. He came straight to her and looked her over slowly, from the aureole of candlelight on her dark head to the white nakedness of her slender feet. It was a very different look from the first lewd survey he had given her at Hever. “You are more desirable than any woman God ever made!” he said huskily.
He took the black bedgown from her gleaming shoulders and flung it across a fireside stool as if it had cost him a mere song. Anne made no protest—only stood there with the sable cloak of her hair about her as she had done years ago when first she knew she was to go to Court, knowing herself, even then, to be more beautiful like that than in any bejewelled dress. But this time instead of shyly seeking her reflection in a simple maid’s mirror, she saw it blazing in her royal lover’s eyes.
“Like any country wench bedevilled by the romance of a foreign town and the masterfulness of a new man,” she jibed softly, hanging on to the remnants of her sophistication even when she was irrevocably in his arms.
“Scarcely a new man!” laughed Henry, stopping her feint at cynicism with the hungry ardour of his mouth.
He had known when he had fondled her on his horse that he would have her, and now to his exceeding joy he felt all the long-pent ardour of her desire rising to meet his own. Her white arms reached up to cling, her warm, slanting eyes both promised and invited.
On that old state bed at Calais no phantom lover lay between them. Anne had believed in and waited for her own heart’s lover. She had seared her soul to revenge him. And now that there was no such person, it was all too easy to give herself in lust. Rome and England were mere names in some other world. Ambition, cool calculation, her sister Mary’s warnings—all were drowned by the hot beat of her blood. Neither coerced nor overawed, Anne gave herself freely that night in Calais, not because her lover was a king but because he was Henry Tudor, a virile redhead who alone could satisfy all her frustrated clamouring of sex.
Chapter Thirty
It was St. Paul’s Day in January.
In very different mood Anne stood in a disused attic of the late Cardinal’s town house, which the King had taken for himself and renamed Whitehall. A sense of unreality pervaded her as she looked round at the white-washed walls and sloping beams. Such rooms, she supposed, the servants slept in. There was no furniture, no fireplace, and only a small window set deep in the eaves; but a brazier had been brought in to counteract the midwinter cold.
A hastily contrived altar had been set up beneath the sloping roof, and before the lighted candles hovered a group of anxious-eyed priests. There was the new Archbishop, Cranmer, giving instructions, and Dr. Lee from the King’s chapel arguing, and an unknown monk who still held the smoking taper in his shaking hand.
For this was Anne’s wedding day. Her secret wedding, like Mary of Suffolk’s, which in her girlhood she had always envied. And yet how little like! Anne’s mind flew back to that spring morning in Paris, with Mary’s radiance and the romance of young lovers. Whereas now, somehow the romance seemed to have withered to a kind of furtiveness.
The small, insignificant room seemed full of people. Apart from the Franciscan monk, Anne knew them all—but how different they looked, sleepy-eyed, hurriedly dressed and pulled from their beds at dawn!
On the opposite side of the room from the altar and the whispering priests, stood her own family. They had a wary yet triumphant look. All except Jocunda, who was crying secretly into a handkerchief from which a little nostalgic whiff of country lavender trailed across the ugly room. The Duke of Norfolk headed them, trying his best to appear at ease in such peculiar surroundings. Her father and brother held themselves stiffly, as if determined to support her. And immediately behind her, thrilled to the soul at having been selected to attend her mistress on so venturesome an occasion, Arabella Savile bent to spread the white froth of Anne’s simple white train.
It seemed only a moment or two before the key turned cautiously in the lock and the King himself came in, followed by Norreys and Heneage. Henry was dressed in no particular finery and after one hasty kiss upon Anne’s cold hand, he joined the whispering
, candlelit group about the altar. Even now he was not free, as other men, to think only of his bride; for Anne heard him assuring their troubled consciences that, although his former wife still lived, he held a dispensation for a second marriage. He did not say from whence it had come.
Presently the new Archbishop went to join the other witnesses; for no one must ever bring it up against the Primate of England that he had bigamously abused the sacrament of marriage. Dr. Lee seemed to suspect that it was he, and not the Pope, who had prepared the dispensation. And how right he was, thought Anne, passing proud hands over her still slender hips. For was he not the King’s tool, and should he not do something to legitimatize the King’s heir. For she, Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke, was two months gone with child.
Only yesterday she had told the King and, overjoyed, he had immediately sent her his best physicians. Dr. Butts had confirmed her momentous news, and Cranmer had been told to make plans for this secret wedding. But as yet Anne herself scarcely believed it. It was not as if she were about to bear a child for a man with whom she was passionately in love; and, while fully appreciating her father’s reiteration that this was the final steppingstone to success, she resented the sharing and marring of her body which would take from her, at any rate for a time, the personal feminine advantage with which she had always faced life.
Perhaps it was this strong division of feeling which lent to everything within the obscure little room such a sense of unreality. As if she were standing outside herself, objectively watching the untoward proceedings.
She was aware that Henry had returned to her side, and that her cold hand was now firmly held in his comforting warm one, and that it was to be the tall Franciscan monk, who from time to time regarded her with covert admiration, who was to marry them.
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