Brief Gaudy Hour

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  The challenge of that lonely, perfect figure, outlined against a scene as wintry as her fortunes, was breath-takingly poignant. It was as if in her own small person she showed her mother’s wrongs to all the world.

  As she rose again and surveyed them quietly, Anne, the Queen, lowered her eyes. And Henry, to his credit and her chagrin, pulled his great horse up short and stayed the following company with an outflung hand, while he bowed low and doffed his plumed velvet cap as if to the highest lady in the land, so that his entire company, perforce, followed suit.

  Once out on the open road, he spurred on ahead immediately so that none should speak with him, and Anne could not see his face. And never once did he refer to the incident. She could only suppose, like all the rest, that he was moved by courage when he saw it.

  For Mary it must have been a signal victory over a bog of legal verbiage, a silent acknowledgment of her rightful place. The sort of thing which Anne, another woman of spirit, might have staged. But Mary was but a chit, with no one in the world. “When I can afford to I will try again to win her to accept some kindness,” resolved Anne. “Once my son is safely born and she but a marriageable pawn.”

  Christmas and Twelfth Night slipped by with all their Holy Offices and feasts and revels. And as the new year wore on, Anne spent most of her time at Greenwich, the Palace officially chosen for her lying-in. Henry was often closeted with Cromwell or in London gathering into his own hands the rich church lands which had accrued to him since Wolsey’s downfall; but whenever he was at Greenwich he visited her apartments more assiduously than during her other pregnancies.

  “Put your feet up and let our son grow strong,” he would admonish, whenever departing upon his state or sportive occasions. And Anne would let gentle Jane Seymour bring her a warm wrap and set her pillows just right. Jane who was always so deft of hand and quiet of step, and so anxious that she should rest; and whose quiet efficiency was ousting even Margaret who, even if for no other cause, had reason to dislike her.

  “This girl must be with me at the birth, Henry,” said Anne, one afternoon when the first pale rays of spring sunshine brightened her room. “Do you not think she would be invaluable in a sickroom?”

  “Or in any other bedroom, come to that,” teased Henry, with his boisterous laugh, trying to make the shy chick lift her downcast lashes. For he always seemed to take a special delight in shocking the Wiltshire wench’s demure modesty.

  And Anne had laughed, too, and sent the girl packing. “Go take the spaniels for a run in the garden and get some roses in your cheeks,” she told her, feeling that perhaps she had selfishly kept Jane indoors too much.

  Henry had bustled away, too, full of plans for the tournament with which he wanted to impress some foreign visitors he was inviting to the christening.

  But that afternoon Anne could not doze contentedly as usual. Perhaps it was the tempting sunshine, or the distant hammering already going forward down in the tilt yard. She had a sudden longing to be out-of-doors herself. She rose and looked from her window.

  But there was no sound of Henry’s voice booming instructions to the carpenters, and no yapping of small dogs along the paths below. She decided to go down and take a turn or two in the gardens. “Bring me my warm cloak with the miniver,” she called to Druscilla, who alone remained in attendance.

  But willing Druscilla fumbled and scolded the wardrobe maids and could not find the cloak.

  “I wore it but yesterday, and soon the afternoon sun will be all gone,” complained Anne irritably.

  At last the thing was found and brought. “But, your Grace, is it wise?” remonstrated Druscilla, all fingers and thumbs at fastening it.

  “Is what wise?” demanded Anne, with mounting annoyance.

  “To—to go out there. Your Grace should know what the King said about keeping your feet up.”

  “And your Pertness should know when to mind your own business!” flared Anne, slapping Druscilla’s agitated face.

  So often afterwards she remembered how, with the tears welling to her eyes and a hand to her burning cheek, the poor fond girl still tried to stop her. “Wait at least until I call Margaret,” she had beseeched, as if for some reason Margaret’s being there could help or her tongue reason more effectively.

  Anne pushed Druscilla Zouch aside and opened the door herself, not waiting to change her soft fur slippers for the leather shoes which the weeping fool held ready in her other hand. Poor ’Cilla must have had a quarrel with that devoted husband of hers, or something. But whatever lunacy had taken her, Anne would go down into the garden alone. Out into the April sunshine. To smell the violets in bloom and play awhile with her dogs. And then stroll round to the tilt yard, perhaps, and find Henry, and see some of the preparations for herself.

  But Anne did not have to go into the garden to find Henry. She came upon him, close at hand, in a little room giving off her antechamber. Sitting on the cushioned window seat with Jane Seymour on his knee.

  At sight of them, she stopped short as if some invisible sword had struck her, and the King’s son turned in her womb.

  There was nothing shy nor shocked about the way Jane was abandoning herself to his kisses, with those deft hands locked behind his florid neck, and the grey of her gown draped intimately across his white hose.

  Anne’s slippered footfalls must have been very soft, for Henry did not raise his mouth from her maid-of-honour’s until she spoke his name.

  After that, in her rage, Anne had no idea what she said. Her whole body trembled with indignation, less because of the physical betrayal than because she had found herself so insultingly duped. Her husband tumbled the wench from his knee and stood there, looking sheepish. But Mistress Seymour offered no word or cry, holding herself in Henry’s shadow with amazing aplomb. The sight of her well-nigh maddened Anne, who had shown her scores of kindnesses. “So it was you, that night the French Ambassador came—when I supposed that, in your concern, you had gone to summon the others!” she accused, ignoring Henry as if he were some irresponsible groom. “You, who slunk down the kitchen stairs like any Bankside bawd to huddle with another woman’s husband! You mealy-faced, smooth-tongued mopsy!”

  To cover his discomfiture Henry pshawed and strutted where he stood. “Anne! Anne!” he remonstrated, “I would have you remember it is our good friend Sir John Seymour’s daughter you revile, as virtuous a lady as ever came to Court.”

  “When she came, perhaps! Upon my troth, she looked virtuous, with skirts all spread across your jewelled peascod!”

  At that he calmed into self-righteousness. “Anne, you know you lie! Many a time you have seen me clip one of your maids without this pother. We went no further than that, I swear! Neither now nor at any other time.”

  Knowing him as she did, Anne thought his protest was probably true, but her laughter shrilled through the anteroom. It brought Margaret running, with Druscilla still hand-wringing and explaining in her wake. “Why then doesn’t your innocent honeypot beshrew me, or deny it—or only have the common humanity to speak?” Anne demanded, beside herself with exasperation.

  Jane swept her the correctest of curtsies. “By Our Lady’s Body, Madame, I promise you I am as much a maid as when first I came.”

  “For lack of opportunity, then. That I can well believe,” countered Anne, glad to see the blood mount to Jane’s cheek at last.

  At any other time Henry’s immense vanity would have been tickled at the sight of two women of good birth quarrelling over him. But it was the Queen who was behaving like a fishwife. And exciting herself. In her transport of anger she would have done the Seymour girl some bodily harm had he not put himself between them. He held Anne’s wrists firmly, but without hurting her, and spoke quietly. “Be at peace, sweetheart, and all shall be well,” he promised her, already regretting his own careless folly which might well bring about such dire consequences. “I promise you the fair honeypot
shall be sent back to her father’s house, and all shall be as you wish.”

  “Would that I could believe it,” moaned Anne, dissolving into bitter tears in Margaret’s supporting arms. The sudden discovery had been a cruel shock; but upon reflection, she supposed that he would probably keep his word, at least for the time being, since she knew that all the women in the world were as nothing to him compared with the well-being of his heir.

  Weeping and sick with anger she let her women get her to bed.

  “Nan, my love, you really must control yourself! Remember how it is with you,” exhorted Margaret. And already Anne was remembering. Already the swooning nausea was creeping on her. She would lie still, resolved to fight it with all her strength. By sheer will power she checked her shuddering limbs. Not a second time should her enemies exult over a miscarriage. Never again would she let Jane Rochford’s bright eyes mock her nor her Uncle Norfolk step stealthily nearer the glittering throne.

  “Dear Margot! Let me hold your hand awhile and dream myself back at Hever until I am cool and sane,” she murmured. Then, after a time, when she could laugh again, she grinned across the coverlet at her lifelong friend. “You know, Margot, if he sends that Seymour trollop away it will not be for love of me. I warrant you right now he is sweating with fear lest, with my vile temper, I bring forth an idiot!”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  For weeks Anne saw nothing of Henry in private, but in spite of her bitter resentment she joined in her ladies’ cry of delight when one morning he clanked into her room in full armour.

  It was a new suit of shining gold, sent him by Katherine’s nephew, the Emperor, in token of renewed friendship; and before practising in the lists, Henry could not resist showing himself off in it. He had brought Norfolk, Suffolk, and a crowd of friends and competitors with him and, judging by their animated conversation, it would be difficult to say with which Henry was the more pleased, the gift or the consummation of his political endeavours.

  “You look like a sun god!” breathed Anne, walking round him, forgetful of past dudgeon in her admiration of both man and craftsmanship.

  “I feel like a suffocating felon clamped in the stocks,” he laughed ruefully, passing a finger round the top of the heavy gorget.

  “Now your Grace knows how we women feel in our leather stays,” giggled Anne’s cousin, Madge Skelton, mischievously.

  “But you don’t have to hold in a plunging sixteen-hand destrer and couch a fourteen foot lance,” retorted Henry, making as if to pinch her rosy cheek with his mailed fist. But once he had bent his comely head so that his squire could fit the great ceremonial heaume upon his head, the conversation became as muffled as it was technical. “Does it not seem to you, Charles, that this joint is riveted a shade too high?”

  “And I would have them ease the left gauntlet, Harry, so as to give the rein hand more play.”

  “The vizor needs a drop of goose grease, sir, lest it stick.”

  “Here, Norreys, let them see to it down in the armoury as milord of Suffolk and my squire say, and have it ready for me presently at the barrier.”

  Unbuckled and unbraced, Henry took a deep breath and limbered up his muscles, flexing and unflexing his mighty biceps. “God’s teeth, ’tis good to be tilting again,” he exclaimed.

  “Your Grace should take it gradually, having laid aside sport for work of late,” warned Norfolk. And all knew that he spoke sourly because his interests lay, not with Spain, but with France.

  Henry turned and landed him a good-natured thrust in the doublet. “Tush, Thomas, you old raven! D’you suppose my limbs are rusted? For all your croaking, I can make my destrer rear more dangerously than anyone’s, and though it be but showmanship, that is what the spectators like! And yesterday, in the preliminary trials, did I not overthrow our coming champion, Brereton, there? Not so bad, eh, cousin, at our age.”

  Anne knew it for a gallant mixture of obstinacy and vanity, and hoped he had not strained himself. Knowing how a woman clings to her armour of feminine wiles, she realized that once Henry, the great athlete, was forced to give up sport, some good part would die in him. She called to Madge for scissors and cut a ribbon from her sleeve. “Will your Grace wear this for me, since I shall not be there to see?” she invited.

  Always, even in informal practice tournaments like this, he had been wont to wear her favour; but this time, either from embarrassment or from preference for another, he had not asked for one. And as he took it and put it to his lips as custom demanded, both of them knew that the scrap of gay silk was a peace offering. An effort to efface his faithlessness and her anger in their quarrel about the Seymour girl. “It should look well in your new gold helm,” smiled Anne, only too thankful that he had accepted what once he had so humbly sought.

  For a moment or two he stood with her apart, while the others jeered and jested over the laying of their wagers. “Truth to tell, Nan, when it comes to actual combat I would as lief wear my old, dented steel,” he confided, with a little less confidence than usual. “It may not look so fine, but it has seen me through many a fray. I am at home in it.”

  “And, best of all, you like to feel at home,” answered Anne gently. She was thinking how spurious his few love adventures had been and how at heart he was a home-loving man. And how, in his homelier moments, she liked him best. Then, and when he was pulling that great, wide-nostrilled charger of his to its haunches. Even if a woman were not in love with him she could get a thrill out of seeing him do that. “I wish I could be there to see you ride,” she sighed involuntarily, and for no particular reason found herself in memory back on the wooded hill at Hever, a young girl again, and Henry bestriding a dead stag, with the ruddiness of beech leaves on his face. And somehow, just remembering, her breath was caught with all the old, mad stir of the senses.

  “So do I,” he was saying in a matter-of-fact way. “But it is only a little while now, and we must be sensible. All the excitement would be bad for you, sweet, and there might be some hideous accident.” Since she had caught him philandering with Jane Seymour he had not spoken to her so pleasantly; but already the trumpets were shrilling and he was champing to be up and doing. “You shall come and Queen it at the real tournament with all our foreign guests; and bring the boy!” he called back to her with his great boisterous laugh.

  With his cropped head rising from the golden gorget he looked eager as a boy himself. As always, when engaged in open air sport, more braced and young. “At least our son should be virile,” thought Anne.

  A flatness fell upon the room when King and courtiers were gone. “Surely it could not hurt me more to watch from one of the towers than to sit moping here,” she thought, half-minded to disobey him. But remembering how malevolently both ambitious Dukes stared at her now she was enceinte again, she thought better of it. A month or two more and she would be able to Queen it at any tournament in Europe. To ignore black looks at home and meet the Queen of France on equal terms. Better to be bored now than barren later!

  Her brother and Brereton were already down in the lists, preparing for combat. Anne had given Jane Rochford leave to watch George tilt; but Norreys and Weston stayed as long as they dared to cheer her. And when they, too, were gone, she saw Mark Smeaton waiting moodily by the window. “Why do you not go, too?” she asked irritably.

  “I am a musician, Madame, not a courtier,” he answered; sulking, no doubt, because, being but a craftsman’s son, he had no call to change into armour or to attend the King.

  “That is no reason why you should moon about me until your eyes are like dark-rimmed platters,” she retorted. But her women were all agog at the windows watching the crowds and competitors come past, and Smeaton, when he forgot his amorous pretensions, was good company. “Well, how shall we pass the time, Mark?” she sighed.

  “Very well, I wager, now they are all gone.”

  Anne could not help laughing. “Marry, what a spoile
d coxcomb it is. Why should you be so glad that all the gay company is gone?”

  Smeaton came and stood close beside her, his eyes smouldering jealously as they had that night when Henry had lifted her in his arms after the Circe masque. “Because you never look at me nor speak to me when they are here,” he blurted out.

  Of a truth, the youth was making himself ridiculous, with this notion that he could be her swain; spending most of the money the King paid him on modish silks and velvets in which to prink himself for her presence! “But, Mark, they are my friends, and gentlemen,” she tried to explain kindly. “You cannot expect me to draw you into the conversation when they are by.”

  “Then you love me only for my voice?”

  “I do not love you at all,” Anne told him coldly, amazed at his effrontery. “But you may sit at my feet and sing. And I will pay you for it.”

  He dragged a cushion to the floor before her chair, but made no attempt to sit on it. Lifted out of his own world and spoiled with flattery, he must have been living in some hallucinatory realm of romantic fantasy. “Everyone knows that I would die for you,” he dared to say, lowering his voice so that the women at the windows could not hear.

  “You mean, everyone about the backstairs?” mocked Anne.

  “And everyone shall know it,” he went on wildly, “from the King downwards!”

  “The King would make short work of you,” yawned Anne, half despising herself for arguing with such inflated lunacy. “Already he has complained that you are always under his feet, hanging about me.”

  “Then he has noticed?”

  “Mark Smeaton, you must be mad!”

  Anne was really angered now, but in his crazy passion he went down on his knees before her. “Have mercy, Madame,” he implored. “Whatever my birth, I am a man the same as all those others whom you jest with and touch so easily. And because of our music there is an affinity between us. Consider the way our minds worked as one over that masque. I know when your Grace is perplexed or sad, and my songs can soothe you. I do not want to go gallivanting to every sport, but am always happy here at your feet. Is it not true that you like to have me here?”