The Concubine

by Norah Lofts

  He commented upon her obviously well-worn gowns. Anne had noticed them, too.

  “It is curious,” he said, addressing nobody in particular, “how rapidly married women become dowdy. A hanging-up of weapons on the wall, I suppose.”

  His obsession with titles obtruded itself; he would have thought, he said, that the King would have knighted William by this time. And he mentioned innumerable instances of women, less favored than Mary, who had married well, gaining either status or wealth.

  Mary bore it all, answering when she could, otherwise remaining silent; she explained that George had suggested her making the visit because William was to be on duty all through the Christmas season; she admitted that she had had few new clothes since her marriage, “but I didn’t look for them; I knew that William was not rich.” Over the matter of William’s knighthood she merely looked unhappy.

  Sir Thomas’s open antagonism had the effect of welding his children into the close, self-supporting group that they had been in their childhood, after the death of their mother. George, forced on two occasions to go to Mary’s defense, said two things that made matters much worse. A knighthood, he said, no longer meant so very much—there was Thomas Wyatt, their cousin, a prime favorite with the King and still plain Mr.; and there was Harry Norris who had been knighted and was still called Mr. as often as not. Sir Thomas, though discontented with his own title, valued it and did not welcome such remarks. George’s second attempt to help Mary was even more unfortunate; he hit his father’s most sensitive spot by saying, “After all, but for her, we shouldn’t be where we are…” Sir Thomas repudiated that suggestion hotly, and mentioned all the favors he had been shown, all the missions with which he had been entrusted, “before Mary had sense enough to blow her own nose.” He reminded George that he had carried the Princess Mary’s canopy, and asked him to remember to whom he was speaking. George then became prey to a conflict of feelings; he was fond of Mary, he was sorry for her, he wanted to be loyal, but there was expediency to be considered. He and his father were closely associated in several enterprises, were likely any day to be sent together on some business of the King’s; a quarrel would be most inadvisable. So the next time Sir Thomas eased his spleen by baiting Mary there was no one to support her except Anne. The subject was, once more, Mary’s ill-advised and unprofitable marriage, her lack of status, her shabby dress.

  “But, Father, if she loved William she couldn’t have married anyone else. And if you mind so much how she looks, buy her a new gown and I’ll wear what I have for years and years, until…”

  Almost gleefully, Sir Thomas swung round to attack his youngest daughter.

  “You’ll do that in any case, my young madam. I thought you were settled. You could have been at Court, costing me nothing, but you must go and get yourself entangled with a man already betrothed. And let me not hear any more bleatings about love. You’ve only to look at her, to see where that leads. Or look at yourself for that matter. I must say my daughters do me fine credit; one with a bad name married to a pauper, the other thrown back on my hands, like a sheep with the foot-rot.”

  He was wreaking upon them his anger with circumstances. Nothing had come of all that the King had so blithely promised in October; the girl’s marriage to Piers Butler had never been mentioned again, the titles were still in dispute. When he thought how happily he had ridden back to Hever, carrying with him those promises, that delicious hint of intrigue against Butler, he felt quite sick with disappointment.

  Mary wilted under the combination of bad name and pauper in a single sentence, but Anne stood her ground and said in a meditative way,

  “I don’t see why you should so decry love, Father. I don’t know about our mother, but you love Lady Bo and you married her.”

  She had hit her father in his second most vulnerable spot. Sensible, cool-headed, calculating man who had pulled himself out of the mere middle class by his first marriage, what had happened to him one late summer afternoon in Norfolk? A lapse, a total contradiction of all that had so far governed his actions. And it had brought him happiness, he’d never for a moment regretted it. But it was not to be mentioned in the same breath as easy, bedbound goings on of his elder daughter, or the silly vaporing ideas of his younger—which might, at some crucial moment in the future, prove awkward.

  He said furiously,

  “Keep her name out of this, if you please. It’s a different thing altogether. I pleased myself. When you’re my age and have made as much out of as little, and with no help or encouragement from your family, you’ll be entitled to do the same. Go away, both of you!”

  Halfway up the stairs Anne said,

  “Come to my room. There’ll be a good fire there. Emma sees to that.”

  The invitation was a sign of total acceptance. Anne’s feeling of revulsion toward her sister had vanished within an hour; Sir Thomas’s behavior had resurrected the old loyalties; but the years of silence, the unacknowledged gift, the good wishes withheld had made a barrier between their new relationship and the former close intimacy. That barrier had now fallen, and as they entered Anne’s warm room, she said,

  “It hurts me to hear him taunt you so. Why don’t you answer him back? You’re not dependent on him any more.”

  “It’d only worsen matters,” Mary said, holding her hands to the fire. “And you mustn’t quarrel with him on my account—though it was sweet of you to take up for me, just now. I had no notion that he would still be so…spiteful. In fact,” she gave a little rueful laugh, “I actually came with the intention of asking him to lend me ten pounds.”

  “Ten pounds! That is a great deal of money.”

  “I know.”

  “He never would.”

  “I know. I asked George first, but you know George; he’s in worse case than I am, though not so shabby. He said that to give me ten pounds in cash he’d either have to sell something, or borrow. But he was kind and said that if he gets Grimston he’d give me what I wanted immediately, but that would be too late; William will have found out before then.”

  “Found what out?”

  “That I’ve been playing cards with money he gave me for other purposes. You see, it wasn’t enough. William is not a pauper, as Father says, nor is he miserly.” She raised her beautiful eyes and gave Anne a disarming smile, “I’m a bad manager and no matter how often I add up reckonings I never get the same answer twice. But now and then I am lucky with cards, so I hoped…But it was just the other way.”

  She spread her hands helplessly and Anne had a strong feeling that the people with whom she had played cards had cheated, or inveigled her into playing some game with whose rules she was not familiar. Mary’s looks and manner, everything about her, Anne thought shrewdly, evoked in all ordinary people either the desire to protect or the intention to exploit.

  Hers was to protect. She said,

  “I have something. I don’t know its worth, but it would help. And you’re welcome to it; it’s of no use to me whatsoever.”

  “I can’t take anything from you, darling. You heard what Father said just now. No new dress for years and years…”

  But Anne had turned and gone to the little leather-covered box which held her few worthless trinkets and the King’s ring. Holding it in her hand she came back to Mary and pressed it into her hand and closed her fingers over it.

  Mary thought—Her ring, her poor little scrap of silver and amber, worth ten shillings at the very most; and the facile tears sprang. Without looking at what was in her hand she put both arms around her sister and kissed her, a warm, wet, tear-flavored, sachet-scented kiss.

  “Thank you, dear Anne. Dear Anne. But I couldn’t possibly deprive you of…”

  “You haven’t even looked at it,” Anne said.

  Mary brought her hand up and opened it, and the ring lay there, the ruby as big and as red as a raspberry, the diamonds winking their rainbow colors, the solid, richly chased gold setting gleaming.

  She’d seen that ring a hundred tim
es; she knew it so well that looking at it she could see the hand, surprisingly shapely and delicate-looking for so large a man, whose little finger it had adorned.

  Anne had been watching Mary’s face, joyfully expectant of an expression of astonishment and delight, for who would have dreamed that she, poor Anne Boleyn, had such a gift to give? But Mary’s face blanched and shriveled, in her eyes the pupils widened until they looked as black as Anne’s own; her expression indicated a dismay, verging upon horror.

  “Mary!”

  “Where,” Mary asked, raising her hand a little, “where did you get this?”

  “I earned it, quite honestly. Well, almost. By a trick really. You see…”

  “Henry gave you this?” For the first time in her life Mary Boleyn cut in upon another person’s speech.

  “Not me; a pageboy…” Anne hastened to tell the whole story, wondering as she spoke why Mary should look so shocked. So ill. Surely she didn’t think…or was it jealousy?

  At the end of the story, Mary said,

  “But he knew who was singing. He must have known. He is generous when it suits him to be, and he can be impulsive, but even he wouldn’t have sent this to a pageboy, however pleasingly he had sung.”

  “He did. Ask Lady Bo if you don’t believe me. She tried to bribe me to sing and I wish now I’d taken something from her and then you could have had it as well as the ring.”

  Mary, whom everyone regarded as a fool, heard in those words the ring of clear innocence. And innocence must be guarded.

  “Of course I believe you. Has he been back?”

  “No.”

  “He’ll come, with the better weather and the harder roads. Anne, listen! When he does, be firm; have nothing to do with him. Dearest, forget everything else; believe this; if I were now on my deathbed and had only enough breath to say a few words, these are what I would say. Don’t have anything to do with him. I know. I can tell you. He’s dangerous. There’s something,” she paused, hampered by her inborn inability to express herself in words, “something twisted about him. Half of him is just a simple, lighthearted boy, greedy and selfish as boys are, but there’s another side, dark and ugly, like the Devil. He wants to be loved, he really does want to be loved, but anyone who loves him he is bound to despise. It’s like…” she paused again. “In the lists, it is the same; he always wants to win; but if an opponent lets him win, he despises him for evermore; if an opponent puts up a fight and beats him, then he hates him for evermore. I do know what I’m talking about; I could give you a hundred examples. Only I’m so bad at explaining things. Take the Cardinal,” she was so intent upon her analysis that she did not notice Anne’s sudden stiffening. “Henry loves him, calls him his True Thomas, heaps favors on him, and for one simple reason only, he knows that Wolsey in his heart esteems the Pope more. Henry would deny that and so would his True Thomas, but they both know it, and it holds a kind of balance. Women can’t do that. He is so handsome and so charming, and then…Oh I know that Father thinks I managed badly not to have got something out of the loss of my good name; but in the beginning it would have seemed like selling what I was only too anxious to give, and at the end…” She gave a small, convulsive shiver. “I couldn’t ask,” she said.

  “You loved him, Mary. I think you still do.”

  The color which had fled from Mary’s face flowed back.

  “Don’t think,” she said hastily, “that that is why I spoke as I did. He’s finished with me, long since; and what he does is no business of mine. But I wouldn’t wish to see any girl, least of all you, dearest Anne…” She left the sentence unfinished, and then, after a second said, very definitely, “He’s cruel. Not always. Not often. But it is there. I do beg you, keep out of his way. If you can, though of course, with Father…That is what is so unjust; he speaks now as though I had disgraced him, but at the time he was delighted. And if it happened again…Oh, Anne, isn’t there anyone you could marry, quickly?”

  Anne had listened to the admonition, but hardly heeded it, since it seemed to deal with a situation which existed only in Mary’s mind. What did interest her deeply was that Mary was still in love with the King, and yet had insisted, against her father’s counsel, on marrying William Carey.

  She said, “No one has asked for me, yet. And if someone did I think I should be more vexed than pleased. You see,” she colored a little, “I’ve been…I am…in love, too.”

  “Harry Percy?”

  Anne nodded.

  “I was sorry when I heard,” Mary said. Then she went on, in a more worldly-wise manner, “Still, you mustn’t spend your life grieving over that. One falls out of love, as well as in.”

  “Yet you just admitted that you still love the King.”

  “That didn’t prevent me from marrying William, and being very fond of him. And being happy. Besides, there is a difference. I have lived with Henry and he isn’t like any other man. Yours was just a romantic, boy-and-girl affair.”

  “Like yours, in France, when you were my age!”

  “Oh don’t!” Mary cried. “When you’re angry you sound just like Father. I didn’t mean to annoy you. I was trying to encourage you. This,” she held up the ring and the firelight caught the great ruby which blinked at them balefully, “bodes no good. I know. And you should marry anyone, darling, anyone who is kind and decent and who could keep you. There’re worse things in the world than wearing the same gown three years running. He’d hurt you far more than he hurt me, and that was bad enough. You’re not so…pliant. Or so experienced. In fact…I’d sooner see you in a convent.”

  “Me?”

  “You’d be safe. And you’re so clever; you’d be an Abbess. Nunneries are the only places where women really count for anything. Had you never thought of that? I have, often. Everywhere else in the world it’s what your father is, or what your husband is. I thought about it the other night, at supper; all the women seated according to their husband’s ranks, and mine a low place; and I thought if I had been a nun, home for Christmas from Ramsey, I should have been near the top of the table, and treated with great respect.”

  Anne forgot that a moment earlier Mary had annoyed her, and only thought, with a pang of pity—She minds! She forfeited all claim to respect long ago, and didn’t make the grand marriage which would have thrown a cloak over the past, and she pretends not to care, but she does. Anyone who wishes she were a nun must be in a low state of mind indeed.

  She said, “Such respect has its price. I should think that unless you had a real vocation it would be unbearable. Always the same dull clothes, only sacred music, a life governed by bells, prayers at midnight and no pets, nothing of one’s own. I think you would have to be very pious to bear so bleak a life.”

  “The rules aren’t always kept. I know at least one nunnery where they lead gay lives. The Abbess is said to have had two children.”

  “I should dislike that kind of establishment just as much; or even more.”

  Mary said mildly, “It was only a suggestion. I’m just so afraid that if when Spring comes you are still at home, he’ll come. He’ll flatter you and charm you and you’ll be fascinated. And then…then suddenly it is all over. The things you did and said, that used to please so much, no longer please. And then, for a long time, maybe forever, life is like…like a banqueting hall next morning, early, in winter, all cold and gray.”

  “Is that how life seems to you, Mary?”

  “Sometimes. And I would hate it to happen to you.”

  “About that you need not worry. It has happened already. But I don’t want to talk about it. And I think you attach too much importance to the ring. I did sing very well; and he had been royally entertained; I think he just snatched off the first thing that came handy. He has plenty of others. Do you think you could sell it for ten pounds?”

  “I don’t think I could even try,” Mary said, laying the ring on a table. “It was his and I should feel…”

  Anne entertained three thoughts almost simultaneously. The f
irst was that Mary was incurably sentimental; the second was that she herself might well feel the same way if confronted with something that had belonged to Harry Percy; and the third was that she would give the ring to George and ask him to dispose of it and give the money to Mary, he’d certainly strike a better bargain.

  “You will remember all that I have said?” Mary asked, earnestly.

  “If I ever need to,” Anne said.

  V

  He in the end fell to win her by treaty of marriage, and in his talk on that matter took from her a ring, which he ever wore upon his little finger.

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  HEVER. JUNE 1524

  BY MIDSUMMER OF 1524 LADY Bo had ceased to be shy in the King’s presence, or worried about the standard of her hospitality. She had a graver cause for concern. Henry had paid, in all, four visits and in the intervals he had sent letters and valuable presents. Lady Bo had no doubt at all that his object was to seduce Anne, and her sturdy, yeoman-class standard of respectability was outraged by the very thought. Mary had been bad enough, but that was in the past, when the family had been drifting without a feminine hand at the helm. If it happened now, under her eye, under her roof, she would be ashamed forever.

  Talking to Anne was useless; she had tried it. Anne had said, “I never ask him to come.” And that was true. It was true, also, that she never—at least never in public—seemed to give him any encouragement at all. She adopted a stiff, grand manner which aged her by several years; she never looked at him with any expression but that of grave attention when he addressed her directly; she never matched his wit—which Lady Bo knew she was well able to do if she chose; and she always had to be persuaded, almost compelled, to play for him.

  But Lady Bo had an uncomfortable feeling that this demure, touch-me-not manner was only a façade. There was a good deal more in Anne than met the eye. And if, when they were alone, she behaved as she did in public why, why, why did he persist in paying her attentions?