Amenable Women

by Mavis Cheek

  Millingtons assured Flora that for a small fee they would proofread the text before binding it and Flora thought this was a sensible expense. The very idea of Hilary taking her to task over commas and semi-colons gave her the shivers. As she arrived home from the town Flora felt that in the nicest possible way she was fulfilling her vow made in Paris and finally laying Anna’s unkind reputation to rest. She also tried, and failed, to convince herself the exercise was entirely altruistic.

  14

  The Winner’s Tale

  Anna has a few more things to say to the assembled portraits before the exhibition opens. She has heard the secrets of the great and the ignoble as well as the grand and the good and she has learned about more wars, more political upheavals, more greed, more betrayal than anyone might wish. Over the years she has listened to other queens with stories to tell. Marie Antoinette who never shuts up about the betrayals of the common people and who vows she never said, ‘Let them eat cake’ and if Anna thinks ‘Flanders Mare’ is bad she should see that disgraceful sketch by Jacques David of Marie in her tumbrel. Louis would have had his head off his shoulders for it if he had not already lost his own. Queen Victoria is another one – with her endless diatribe on the recent (comparatively) granting of votes for women. When she begins on ‘this mad, wicked Folly of “Women’s Rights”, with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent . . . feminists ought to get a good whipping,’ it’s probably best to nod off. Anna has listened to them all and now it is her turn.

  ‘When my Ladies of the bedchamber asked me each morning after the wedding if all was as it should be – I told them that it was – that the King kissed me goodnight and he kissed me farewell in the morning and called me Sweetheart. They said this would not do. I smiled and smiled and said no more. Let them worry and fret if they wanted. Quite soon Henry gave up our bed for Catherine’s. From then I was left alone nightly with that great carved bedhead and I knew why. I expected Henry to return to do his marital duty with me but he never did. It was then that I realised my marriage was over and that I needed to be even more careful and wise.

  ‘From early spring onwards he dined and slept with Catherine only. I was left at Whitehall Palace, alone with my Ladies, who said nothing directly to me but gossiped among themselves from which I gathered enough. I could do nothing but sit and wait. Sit and wait. Contempt when you are on your way downwards is very easy to judge and a good way to behave is to smile and appear to notice nothing. I had quick ears and my days with Mrs Gilmyn did not go unused. It was a useful state of affairs for my negotiations.

  ‘I knew, of course, that most of my own Ladies from Cleves would be sent home a few weeks after the wedding, and so they were. Feeling as isolated as I did those departures were particularly cruel. I was allowed to keep a very few of my women and they – with Olisleger – were my only allies in those first strange months. If you have lived through that fear and without friends, my fine portraits, you can live through anything. There was much unpleasant teasing about my Ladies’ plainness and the gowns they wore but, for myself, what Mrs Gilmyn began, I completed. A month after my arrival I looked no different from any other lady of the court. Henry was a king without any sense of duty and self-sacrifice, two of the qualities that make a great monarch. Had he tried harder then I believe we would have made do very well eventually. A willing woman, so I heard later, is more than half the battle.

  ‘The word Divorce was first mentioned in May and by then I knew the cause of the King’s absence was Catherine Howard. By then Olisleger knew too and we had many a delicate discussion between ourselves on what was best for my safety. At first I assumed Henry would dally with Catherine but remain married to me (as did most men of rank) but he was ever that foot-stamping child and he would not compromise. He did not consider anything but the path he wanted to take, he was not one to bend beneath any yoke nor could anyone make him do so. He wanted a divorce, he conveniently forgot his past experience with Catherine’s cousin Anne, and he would have one.

  ‘I believe Olisleger argued against such a plan with Henry’s advisers, but Henry was unshakeable. Divorce was the only outcome he would countenance – he would marry his Catherine – poor dazzled girl – and it meant hard negotiations on my behalf. There was one moment when I betrayed how much I understood – it was at the beginning of the negotiations and the King’s representatives were a little less than kindly in the way they presented me with the situation – this was when I thought of necks weeping blood and my own body cast off in the streaming red straw. So I broke down. Just once. And fainted. It was a weak, unseemly moment and I am not proud of it. They were foolish enough to overlook the fact that, far from being without English, I understood them very well indeed and grasped the whole history of Henry’s marriages to behave in such a frightened fashion. Blind men, they were and frightened of Henry. And they thought me dumb. So why should I not play them well in the negotiations and get the best settlement a sister of a king could wish for. Jewels and money and property may not mend a heart, but it makes the pain so much less, and there is nothing like the coolness of pearls at your neck to soothe your anger. This is a constant.

  ‘So, ladies, as most of you have done in your lifetimes, I lived two lives during this part of my life and I managed very well. The apparent quiet acceptance of women down the ages has shown itself to be one of the best ways to survive when you have no rights, nor real influence. Perhaps even when you do. Hold your fire and keep your powder dry is the soldier’s maxim, and it was mine in those early days. Well might it be said of me several hundred years later that I was “blessed with a happy insensibility of temper, large, bony and masculine and highly unlikely to appeal to a voluptuary of nearly fifty . . .” But Mr Hume, the writer, can never have looked at my portrait. At the waist which is small, Mr Hume? And my hands which are soft and pretty and small? Mr Hume was no objective observer and can be dismissed where my physical attributes are concerned. Mr Hume was an arrogant, ignorant failure of an historian who accused Cleves of being “a coarse, boorish, petty German state”. He knew nothing: “A happy insensibility of character” is more the description of him than me. Happy insensibility be damned, I would not be the first queen who has dithered and equivocated herself out of a difficult situation, would I, Elizabeth?’

  If there is an intake of breath from Elizabeth, Anna pays it no heed. After all, it is time now for truths and she said it kindly enough. ‘And so Henry’s people and my people negotiated. And I smiled, and smiled, and curtsied, and curtsied – and signed, and signed. After I wrote the letter to my brother as Henry demanded I knew that I could never go home again for the shame of it. They chose those words, I copied them only. It said that Henry had been kind and loving to me. Why not write that? What good could possibly come from my saying anything else? Was I to write to my brother that he said I was no maid, that I was slack bodied, that I was dull to the point of idiocy? No – I allowed the more acceptable terms set down in that letter and did their bidding. I was Anna, daughter of Cleves, but I now belonged to England. Very well, I should have the best life possible in my adopted land and for that I was required to be docile. The shame was not mine but Henry’s and his hypocritical advisers. My signature on that letter pleased Henry very much. He had won.

  ‘But the other letter I wrote to Henry was in my own words and as pretty a form of deceit as you will see; that it satisfied Henry’s conceit so well – after five hundred years still makes me smile. But that letter, amenable, willing, was my carriage to freedom and security for my lifetime. Henry thought he had tempered my stubbornness – you will note my chin in this portrait – Holbein could ignore a nose but not the set of a determined chin – and Henry was always a man who liked to win. I wrote about our divorce which I humbly accepted and that I hoped to have the fruition of his most noble presence sometimes . . . Which he liked very much. I thanked him for taking me as his sister but I signed it Anna, the Daughter of Cleves. I was told Henry wept to read it. I think
he truly believed that I was sorrowful and that I had a broken heart from losing him to another love. After the divorce he even wrote to Sir John Wallop – a nice man, one of the first negotiators for my hand, whom I liked and respected – saying of my state of mind that “when she first knew of the necessity of divorce she was troubled and perplexed in consequence of the great love and affection which she seemed to have only to our person . . .” It is difficult not to smile, even now, for I was ahead of them all.

  ‘Of course I knew that my letters home would be read by spies. Spies were everywhere in Tudor England. So I willingly wrote to my brother of my great love for Henry. It did not matter one jot to be seen as heartbroken. I even sent my wedding ring – the ring that held the words God send me well to keep – back to Henry on the night of the day in which my acceptance of that generous divorce settlement was signed and sealed. I asked him to break it into pieces as a thing which I knew held no force or value . . . Which action was a truth that served both ways – not only was Henry free of me forever, but I was free of him. Six hundred pounds a year and my plate and jewels and dresses – the houses, the palaces and the rental incomes – and the goodwill of Henry and his people. A fair exchange in the end. Yes, the blinding vanity of Henry was astonishing. But vanity goes with tyranny and tyrants love to dress the part, love a mirror. And those who would say that I should have been stronger with Henry and his Council should first look at my settlement and the life I led afterwards. Most remarkably, in a court so jealous of position, no one complained or made difficulties when I took my place as fourth lady at court.

  ‘Which is why, more than a year later, when the crooked tongued Chapuys, the King of Court Gossip, wrote to his Spanish master that after Catherine’s downfall I returned to Richmond to be near the King so that he would take me back as his wife, he was wrong. It is true that I came to be near him but as his friend and his appointed sister. It was the right thing to do. Margaret, Henry’s last surviving sister of the blood, had died just a month before. I was his family and he was a broken man. It was also the right thing to be seen to do which was important. But we repelled each other as lovers. No sons would be made by us – the spark for that business was dead. I had seen enough between him and Catherine to know that we would never share one whit of what they shared, even if, in the end, it was so destructive.

  ‘Most of the tales that were spread abroad by Chapuys were designed to please the Emperor and at home they were not taken seriously. He said that Henry would never take me back because I was too old to be Queen of England and too fond of wine. I was less than two years older than when I arrived, Signor Chapuys, and no one else seems to suggest that I indulged in excesses. Marillac was certain, as he told the French King, that Henry would take me back because I had “conducted myself very wisely in my affliction and was more beautiful than I was before, and more regretted and commiserated than Queen Catherine of Aragon.” Whatever the middling truth there was a great deal of gossip about Henry and me and Catherine over the few months that separated Catherine’s imprisonment from her execution – rumours of my bearing a child – either by the King or by someone else – and of my wish to be Queen again. My brother and Olisleger began negotiations but nothing serious came of it and that, I think, satisfied both of us.

  ‘Of course, had Henry wanted me for his wife I could not refuse. But instead Henry and I held good company together and that was enough. I was a generous hostess whose small court was well-fed and well entertained – certainly the King liked to visit me and he came to Richmond in those dark days his appetite at my table, not my bed, was huge – as indeed by now was he. My experiments with fish made me particularly good to visit at Lent or on the meatless days. Being a good Catholic did not mean keeping a dull table – perhaps that was why Chapuys thought I loved excess.

  ‘The years after this and before Henry’s death were my happiest time in England. All dangers were past and my settlement was secure and so I emerged, to the great surprise of the court, like a gorgeous butterfly – wearing the brightest of frocks, the prettiest of jewelled hoods, the daintiest of slippers and surrounding myself with music and dancing and cards and players and all kinds of entertainments. I loved Richmond. The Palace had good hunting in the park and good access to the river and Henry’s other palaces – where I was often invited. I kept my counsel. Who knows whose head I saw on my Richmond bowling green as I sent a ball down the line to crack the skull of the jack – but never a breath of ill-temper came to the court. Always, always, it was My Lady of Cleves is most charming and gracious. Marillac, I think, knew, for he commented quite openly about my conduct – and wrote to his French Master that “Madame de Cleves, far from appearing disconsolate, is more joyous than ever and wears new dresses every day . . . and passes her time in diverse recreations and much sport.”

  ‘All the things I came to love about the way the Tudors lived their privileged lives were mine. Mary and Elizabeth were allowed to visit me, and I them, and we enjoyed our times together. Particularly at Richmond. With me they lost their watchful, anxious air for there was nothing that I needed from them except good company and the pleasures of life.

  ‘My star shone high and no one called me plain or dull or evil-smelling ever again. I was curtsied to with proper accord, and when the men bowed and straightened they had an appraising look in their eyes. Not that I went further than flirtation. I was the King’s sister, I knew his mind and weaknesses and he would never tolerate it if I took pleasure in another man’s bed. It was of little concern to me. What you have never had you never miss and many of those courtier husbands were devoured by ambition and mistrust. I was above it all, and the happier for it. My life was my own. How many of you women, so beautiful in your frames, can say the same? Elizabeth, you were bound by the heavy weight of the crown; Mary, by the oppression of your Spanish husband and terrible religious strife; Christina, by one, two, three marriages; Jane, by early death, and so on it goes. But I was single, free and independent. All I had to do was curtsy and smile. It was easy enough.’

  15

  Confrontations and Considerations

  Flora, having had two sleepless nights trying to calm herself down before the trip to London, gave up, gave in to everything, and became happily and uncharacteristically neurotic. She jumped every time the telephone rang and ran out into Blowhorn Lane whenever a dog barked or a delivery van slewed by. But Miss Murdoch was booked, the history was being bound, Ewan was coming to meet Anna with her, and that was that. The action was on. Virtue must shape itself to the Deed. Anna was the reason, but hope sprang eternal.

  It was gratifying, if slightly annoying, the way the whole village acted suddenly as if the stone were personally theirs. Gossip – and from who knows where – declared the stone to be found before Flora was ready for it. A hasty meeting was called in the village hall to decide what was best done with such a prize. ‘I think,’ she said to Ewan before the meeting, ‘that we should keep quiet about our little trip until we have seen the portrait and can think a little more exactly about what we should recommend for the stone and its safety . . .’ To which he, dear ordinary, honest man, agreed.

  The Parish Council was sure that something should be done as it could not, it simply could not, just be left there. Well, why not, was what Flora thought, but she kept quiet being rather afraid of the assembled getting wind of the visit to London and tagging along. Horrible thought. Ewan – as putative village elder – was often called upon to make decisions. In the old days it was Sir Randolph but he had happily slid into his dotage by now and though Foot was a doughty champion for him and the old ways, time had moved on. Ewan ceded the responsibility to Flora, and put her on the platform, which just showed the sensitivity of the man.

  Myra thought the stone should be taken out and put into a display case in the library. When asked why she said because the library – though small – was the seat of learning and where all the history books resided. ‘No,’ said Flora. ‘It needs to be seen all the time
and you’re only open fourteen hours a week.’ Mrs Vicar then said the church would be more appropriate, given that Anna represented the break with Popish ways – which just showed how much interest Mrs Vicar had actually taken in the Princess of Cleves. The Reverend Arthur, who said the church was at the heart of the village and who ought to know better about the Protestant/Catholic question regarding Anna, said he was forced to agree, which Flora thought was probably very true. Mrs Vicar could be redoubtable. ‘Anna of Cleves was a Catholic,’ said Flora stoutly. ‘So I’m afraid not.’ That shut them up.

  Giles, whose house and wine shop were next to the post office, stood united with Betty (who lived above the post office): the stone could be a feature on their joint frontage, it being the first place any tourists would see on entering the village. They both kept repeating the word Heritage, like a mantra. Flora wondered how on earth Giles would manage with a tourist influx when he was iffy about Germans, let alone any other more exotic race or culture that might descend on Hurcott Ducis. And Betty, under different conditions, would almost certainly have signed a petition for Anna to be sent home. Who needs another foreigner living on our taxes?