by Mavis Cheek
She turned from the window. At least she had arranged to go to London with him, and alone. At least she would not have Myra and Mrs Vicar and all the others patting her shoulders with kind, unbearable sympathy. Even if their visit together was more to do with curiosity about a dead queen’s facial qualities than romantic desire. It was another chance. Something had been said between them tonight – only Flora was not exactly sure what.
She returned to her researches with renewed vigour. It was a doorway, that much she now knew, and it was not a paltry expense. It was also the product of a cultivated mind. Two virgin survivors were in her investigations now – Anna and Elizabeth – and if she could only find the link, if there was a link, then perhaps it would bring with it the answer to the anomalies of the datestone. Virgins? Survivors? There might, just, be a connection there. The truth of Anna’s wedding night, or the lack of it, seemed to be one of the last great mysteries surrounding her. Did they, or didn’t they . . .
12
God Send Me Well To Keep
The catalogue experts spent most of the afternoon in the harshly lit storeroom. Up and down they paced musing together over snippets of information from various sources, deciding which morsels of enlightenment about which of the portraits would grace the exhibition walls and catalogue. Anna watched them. Much of their morselling was complimentary to Elizabeth, the Great Queen in her Ditchley splendour. The portrait of her sister, Mary, has mysteriously yet to arrive from the National collection whence Elizabeth came hot-foot leaving Mary behind. Anna knows she will be wondering, sourly, why yet again she has been trumped by the Whore Boleyn’s daughter. Much as she tried, and much as both were fond of her, neither Elizabeth nor Mary were reconciled for long, even in Anna’s lifetime.
The experts stopped in front of her portrait and ticked it off their list. They half-heartedly suggested that they might return if there is something to write beyond the well-known anecdotes of her failure to please, her plainness, her ghastly clothes, her likening to a Flanders Mare and her dull wit. ‘It’s a fine portrait,’ mused the senior of the pair in another of his profound musings. ‘Holbein could do no wrong despite the paucity of subject matter . . .’ Anna, still and correct in her frame, feels humiliated all over again. The other expert, though not so expert yet, a sweet-faced young girl with perfect teeth and a double-barrelled name, straight out of the Courtauld, nodded her agreement. They have not looked thinks Anna sadly. Paucity of subject matter was new and the barb found its mark. As if she had not lived interestingly in those interesting Tudor times. As if she had not lived with dignity and loyalty, too, when others, better placed than her, could not manage it. She looked across at Elizabeth and Elizabeth acknowledged her with the briefest connection. Anna, firm in her frame, had the look about her of a woman who thinks that eventually – whatever the odds – her day would come.
Both Queens watched the experts pause before the portrait of Jane Seymour, now properly unwrapped and propped against the wall. Cleaned and brilliant its Holbein colours sang out. ‘Exquisite,’ they breathed.
Both Queens slightly pursed their lips. Jane Seymour, those pursed lips say, was no beauty. It is the painting that is beautiful.
This is what the experts always say about Anna, that it is the painting not the portrait, but in her apparently modest heart Anna thinks she is the more appealing of the two. Jane’s prissy mouth and flat, pale eyes do not excite. It is Holbein’s colours that thrill. And anyway, thinks Anna, allowing herself a touch of hubris, the mythology of Jane Seymour’s perfect marriage was untrue. Anna learned from one of her gossiping Ladies that a short while before Jane became pregnant Henry kept himself from the Queen’s presence because she spoke out too readily in defence of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Unwise lady. Henry was the King who married a woman for her wit and then spent the rest of his life attempting to quieten it. The lesson that Queen Jane learned with difficulty came easily to Anna. She never crossed the King, he admired her for it, and she survived very well. You never, she thinks, find that written about me in a catalogue. That instinct for dignified survival was something she might have passed on to Elizabeth and Mary but the Tudors were not naturally good at dignity. Too passionate, by far.
Why, wonders Anna, couldn’t the catalogue experts record the words of Marillac, the French ambassador, who praised her wit and vivacity and wrote of her kindly. In those difficult years it was perhaps better to be known for one’s wit than for one’s beauty – though Marillac later wrote that she had both qualities. It would be nice if they acknowledged that now but no – it is always the old insults they prefer. ‘I wonder,’ says one of the experts, ‘whether Henry really did find her so repellent that he couldn’t make it with her in bed?’ Anna colours. It is always that question. The wedding night. Did we or did we not consummate our marriage? Did I, or did I not, cause Henry’s impotency? Was I, or was I not, left a virgin for the rest of my life? Well, certainly it was in that marriage bed that the fairytale wedding and all the fine trappings of the day crumbled to a stark reality. You could not have found a greater contrast between the preparations and the night.
‘It was at Shooters Hill that Henry welcomed me, finally, to London. The crowds were huge, and happy, the river full of decorated craft of every size, some firing canon to welcome me, and all the courtiers were dressed in their furs and velvets. The whole display, that thing the English do with such brilliance, was perfect. I had never known any celebration like it and that it was for me was thrilling beyond measure. I looked very queenly, I think, and Henry looked almost foolish he was so weighed down with jewels. He was a hulking jewelled giant his hat, his cloth-of-gold gown and slashed crimson coat, the collar about his thick neck – all ablaze with gemstones and gold. As if that could make him attractive. But he played the willing husband to perfection and he was impressive. In our jewels and in the January sunlight we both seemed on fire, which was the effect the court and the people wanted and which Henry’s Masters of Ceremonials had arranged. Those who saw us could only be humbled by our shining majesty. We shimmered in our cloth of gold – and shivered in all that wintry cold – but the tents in which we waited, separately, to come out to meet each other were swathed with warm hangings and perfumed with heated spices. These were the last moments of being made to feel as if I were the most precious woman in the world.’
Jane Seymour firmly keeps her face turned away from Anna during the telling of it all. As the mother of Henry’s Prince she not Anna – should have enjoyed such a day – in preparation for her proper coronation – but it was Anna who stood there in her stead. Anna who was made welcome as the Queen of Queens. And Anna who was made to pay for her usurption. No one could take the place of Jane the mother of his son, no one.
‘It was there at Shooters Hill that Henry showed how false he could be. Gross as he looked, he acted the perfect lover and none of the thousands assembled – not even I – recognised how angry he was. Olisleger kept from me the full extent of the desperation behind Henry’s advisers’ hunt for any means to stop the wedding. They hoped they had found one in my earlier betrothal to the Duke of Lorraine but Olisleger swore this was properly annulled. The ceremony must go ahead.
‘Our private wedding took place early in the morning of January 6th 1540, and still Henry was all charm and gallantry.
He wore cloth of gold embroidered with silver and I wore, in my Cleves style, cloth of gold and pearls in my hair, which I wore loose to show my virginity. Remember that. My virginity. We then heard Mass – and I suppose Henry will not be the first Prince of Royal Blood to attend his own wedding with a black heart. I took it all as my duty, as a wife and queen must, no foot stamping for me. We changed our clothes, took a little wine in our separate apartments, and then heard Mass again before feasting. Henry was attentive and just as a new bridegroom and King of England should be. Pity both of us.
‘Mary and Elizabeth behaved affectionately. But Henry, sitting there and smiling at us, had already set the divorce in motion. He
told Cromwell not an hour before the ceremony that, “Were it not that she has come so far into my Realm and the great preparation that my people and my states have made for her – and for fear of making a ruffle in the world . . . I would not do this day what I must do . . .” He meant the wedding but he could, just as well, have meant our wedding night.
Sad it was but neither of us wished to be alone with the other. ‘How this point of my story has mangled the minds of men and women – for half a millennium. Did Henry, or did he not, consummate our marriage that night? How well it has been documented, and how cruelly, that he said he had felt my breasts and my belly and found me not to be a maid. As if he were any judge when he was fooled so easily by Queen Catherine. This I can say – that I was a true maid when I married him. Though whether I was still a maid after our marriage I do not know. Certainly Henry did not lie still and silent with me but I was in such a state of terror and repulsion at the sight of that gross body that I can remember almost nothing of what took place. Gone were the jewels and grandeur, now he was white-gowned and gross and had eaten so much and drunk so voraciously that he was red and hot as if he were in a rage and came heavily perfumed into the bed. I lay there while he lifted my nightdress and felt my body in its most intimate parts. He rubbed against me, put his hand on my belly and then below, and the shock of all this sent me numb with fear. Muttering and murmuring, he was, his mouth working on my shoulder and my neck, and there was nothing of pleasure in it for either of us I think. But he was a king and my husband, this was spoken of as a holy moment and I knew something of what was expected, which was acquiescence to what was ordained by God as good between a man and a woman. When that great leg of Henry’s, with its putrid smell half hidden in the pungent scent of roses and other heavy perfumes, moved near to me, the vileness of it fairly knocked the breath from my body. How thankful I was when the rubbings and graspings and wetmouthed wipings stopped and Henry simply kissed my forehead and said, ‘Goodnight sweetheart,’ and sighed and slept. “God send me well to keep” was the motto I chose as Henry’s bride. It was well chosen. Nothing better could reflect what I felt that night. I yielded myself to God – and my fate. As the new Queen of England I could only hope that children would be my reward. Carved above me were the lewd and pregnant cherubs of the great bedhead to remind me of what Henry and I were expected to achieve. For all I knew, or cared that night, we had achieved it.’
‘This,’ says the senior of the two catalogue experts, pausing at a gap on the wall opposite Anna, ‘is where the Mary Tudor portrait will hang when it arrives. We will hang it quite near Anne of Cleves – but not next to her – that would be too close.’ He peers and smiles. ‘Two rather frumpy women together. Not good. We will hang Mary next to her sister – tremendous contrast – Gloriana and Bloody Mary – and we’ll hang Anne of Cleves opposite them both. That will show the Ditchley to perfection. It will be the one the press want to use. They always do.’
The sweet-faced assistant expert nods at her colleague’s comments. The Ditchley portrait is safe ground for publicity. Elizabeth, thinks Anna, is a celebrity. But what does this modern young woman know yet? What does she bring to the pictures she sees? She knows – as Anna knows – how to read a painting. That a skull represents mortality, that a pomegranate is resurrection, a hare means lust, an owl means wisdom – and so on. She does not yet know how to look at the heart of the matter. How to look at the paint and beyond it. That way of looking takes a few more rings on the tree of life and Anna has half a millennium’s worth of them.
Hearing all this banal chatter about publicity and press and beauty or not, Anna is glad that Mary has yet to arrive, for she will be Bloody Mary to the experts and Mary finds the title even more painful than Anna finds her Flanders Mare, though there is good reason for it. If she cannot remember her wedding night, she can remember that she lived through enough of the burnings and executions of those Marian times – heard about Latimer and Ridley (wept as did half of England to hear that the pious Bishop of London took nearly an hour to burn, screaming all the way to oblivion) – heard about the ordinary folk whose ignorance sent them to the stake. Anna escaped to Hever, Bletchingly, Hurcott whenever she could. It was hard to be Mary’s friend during those years.
It was, thinks Anna, the wisdom and diplomacy that she learned when she arrived in England that made her choose her last public appearance to be Mary’s wedding to Philip of Spain. Those Tudors would never listen. Anna knew it was not a good match and dared to suggest that a far better husband for Mary would be the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the Emperor’s brother – but Mary declined. Philip was merely ambitious for the English throne, and not in love, and he made the poor and careless husband Anna predicted. Mary suffered rejection all over again. First from her beloved father when he married Anne Boleyn, now her husband. It was as if by burning her way through the love of the people Mary could burn her way to Philip’s Catholic heart. And it was cruel. Anna lived away from it all as much as she could, in a quiet, virtually unseen, existence. It was safest, though Mary loved her. No one was truly safe in those times and Anna read the signs. She knew very well how to keep her head low, her name from the lips of spies, her character unblemished, and she was safe in her religion. One of the strongest of the bonds between her and Mary was that Anna, unlike the much spied-on and harried Elizabeth, was a true Catholic. Mary wisely never questioned her. One or two of Anna’s servants were removed during Mary’s reign for holding the sacraments in contempt, but Anna never suffered so much as a shadow of a stain on her name.
Much later, to add a few more insults to their reputations the plainness of these two women was considered to be the basis for their friendship. If it were not so pitiable it would be funny to Anna. As if two women would look each other over and finding each other to be unhandsome would say, ‘Yes – she’s got a really plain face – we can be friends because I’m plain, too.’ What more foolish notion could there be? Rather, they were two high-born women, living in difficult times and fond of each other, one of whom kept the bond supple by a liberal dousing of discreet good sense.
Anna shakes her head. How little these moderns can know of being a woman of intelligence in those times, she thinks. Even Henry’s kind Queen-nurse Katherine Parr nearly lost her life for being intelligent, for arguing points of theology with her apparently loving husband who very nearly took her off to the Tower for it. History might paint these women out or change them – but so it was. How, thinks Anna, the experts could possibly call me slow-witted when I learned to balance such political and religious pitfalls, and retain the affection of all, remains a mystery. Or it should. For it was not easy. I cannot say how I achieved it. Instinct and intelligence is the nearest explanation. And the very human love of simply being alive. It makes you quite amenable.
Elizabeth. So hard it was to be a friend to her. As a young woman during her sister’s reign she was more watched than any princess in history. Keeping a friendship with both Mary and Elizabeth at the same time – as adults on the Tudor stage held its dangers, Anna remembers – and when Mary began to loathe her sister and watch her for plots and suspect anyone who came into contact with her – the success of Anna’s continuing friendship to both was a valuable achievement. Particularly notable to Elizabeth.
On her way back from imprisonment in the Tower and on her way to her years of imprisonment in Woodstock, Elizabeth spent a night at Richmond Palace. Anna returned it to the Crown many years before but she still had use of it. At least Elizabeth would have good memories of her times there with her step-aunt before the world turned on her. Later Anna learned that Elizabeth had talked of that night as one she spent ‘doleful with fear’. The contrast must have been great. But the next morning, so the rumours flew, when she left the Palace for the barge and Woodstock, the people gathered to see her – Henry’s daughter for sure – and they rang bells to celebrate her release from the Tower, and they cheered her and they showed their loyalty and their love for her so that Mary’s
men warned the crowds to be silent and the bell ringers were pursued.
Elizabeth could take comfort from knowing, just as Anna once took comfort, that the people were with her – that it was hard to harm one who was so loved. People power. It has saved many from the gallows. It undoubtedly saved Elizabeth, and it saved Anna from a more deprived existence. God send me well to keep indeed.
It is late now. The portraits have re-settled themselves. Those that have been singled out for special mention are content. Those that have been given the briefest of entries sigh and accept it as the usual way of things. What, after all can a portrait do? Except Anna, who feels peevish.
‘Does no one ask why, in a time when bad words were rife, no bad word was ever written of me? Does no one ask why my tomb is in Westminster Abbey instead of somewhere half forgotten and obscure? And on the right hand of it, too? How could I be buried there if I was considered a dull woman of no importance? If the portrait owned a foot, its subject might copy its onetime royal husband and have stamped it. “Come, then, Flora Chapman,” she whispers crossly to the dusty air, “and come soon.”
13
Touching Stones
Reading about Anna’s wedding night made Flora think about her own. Something she had not done for years. Their bed was hardly remarkable, unlike poor Anna’s where nothing was left to the imagination; a cheerfully lustful cupid and nothing small about him and another cupid with a full and pregnant belly to show exactly what was expected of Anna and how it was to be achieved. Not surprising, thought Flora, if she failed. It was not unlike offering a Tudor version of a porno movie to get an innocent girl going. After Henry’s marriage to Catherine Howard this great bed was banished by Henry, and a new, more delicate bed, made by a Frenchman and decorated with pearls, replaced it. The other bed was consigned to Scotland where it remains. Perhaps the Scottish nobles still needed help? Who didn’t, Flora thought, remembering. There was something of a reminder, too, in the scent of the freesias on the kitchen table . . . Her love of them remained with her, even when her love of marriage and love of husband had long gone . . .