by Norah Lofts
The very thought turned his face plum-colored, made his eyes bulge.
“Not that he would. Wolsey’s aim is to please me. It always has been. I’ve set him very high and in his heart he is grateful. He’ll grumble a little; he has always had this leaning toward France, and he’s getting old and set in his ways; he’d like to see me make a French marriage. But when he knows that my mind and heart are set on you, and that I’ll not budge, he’ll give in. He’s rather like…” Henry fumbled in his mind for an apt simile and found it, the fruit of his long rides about the countryside where he would talk to farmers and shepherds and blacksmiths and millers and plowman, talks which had established the toughest roots of his popularity with the common people. “He’s rather like those old horses that in their last days are set to turn a mill wheel. They have to be blindfolded at first, otherwise they turn dizzy and stagger; later on they become accustomed and the cloth can be taken away. Thomas, blindfolded, has started on the round that will set me free, and I think the time has come to uncover his eyes. When he comes back from France I want him to find you by my side, and to know the truth.”
“And that,” she said in that light, frivolous manner which always took him by surprise, “is why you need me at Court.”
“How you love to tease me. One day,” his voice thickened, “I’ll tease you!” He thought of the form the teasing would take; the two of them, naked in the wide bed. He’d take his sweet, sweet revenge for all the times when she had laughed and he had not known why, for all the openly mocking words like those she had just spoken, and for all the more subtle things, looks, words with which she had tightened the chain that bound him to her. One day his devotion, his patience, his unswerving allegiance, his love, would have their full reward.
He answered her solemnly.
“No; that is not why. It is a reason, but I have another, more urgent. You should understand it, for you have, and rightly, a concern for your good name. And so have I for mine. I know what people will say. Henry of England has tired of his old wife and fallen in love with a pretty face. Simple people always reduce everything to their own simple measure. They’ll laugh at the mention of my conscience. It’ll be a rare man who can understand the full truth, that my conscience is troubled and that I love you and that the two things are separate. I think that no man has ever been placed as I am. There is my conscience, but many with worse settle things with their confessor, and I could, if I wished, take refuge in the thought that Julius sanctioned my marriage. Then there is my lack of an heir. Nothing remarkable in that. Other men suffer the same and fold their hands and murmur about the will of God. So we come to the naked truth. My conscience, my heirlessness, maybe I could bear, had I never seen you. I’m ready now to turn the situation to my advantage, but I did not create the situation, though they will accuse me of that. And sometimes, when I think of the calumny, the arguments—yes, I’ll be honest, when I think of Catherine’s hurt, a black moment comes upon me. And I am in London, you are here; it isn’t possible for me to run here every time I am downhearted.” His face lost a little of its healthy color, the pupils of his light eyes widened. “So I think of you, and, sweetheart, sometimes you seem so near, so close that I can smell the scent of your hair; but there are other times when it seems that I’d fallen in love with a woman I’d dreamed about, or read of. I say your name, Anne, Anne Boleyn, and it is just a name. I’m like a man who has left his safe warm house at night to follow the will-o’-the-wisp that dances two steps ahead and will lead him on, over the quicksands, and will still dance on, over the place where he has gone down—” He broke off, stared into her face and said in a different voice, “Don’t look at me like that! In God’s Name, I don’t want your pity, or your concern. I want you, close to hand, in London, so that when the black dog sits on my shoulder I can see and touch you, hear you laugh. Is that too much to ask? At best, being a King is a lonely business.”
The last feeling that she had ever expected to feel for him was pity; pity was for the small, the weak, the ill-done-by, not for the great, the rich, the powerful. Also, she realized suddenly, she had never, until this moment, given him much consideration as a person; as a King, yes, as a man, yes, but not as a mere human being, capable of feeling frightened and lonely.
She said, “I’m no will-o’-the-wisp, Henry. I’m real enough. I gave you my word and as soon as this troublesome business is settled and I can decently come to London, I will do so, gladly enough.”
“But I want you there now. I shall want you when I face Wolsey. I shall get my way with him in the end, but he’ll produce a thousand reasons why I should not follow my heart. And Catherine, stubborn as rock; nothing will shift her until the Pope gives his verdict. The worst part lies just ahead, Anne; and I mean it when I say that I need you.”
She heard the warning, clear as a trumpet call. One of these days, when the black mood was on him, when Wolsey argued and Catherine wept, and she seemed no more than a woman he’d dreamed of, he’d give in. He’d go running to Catherine, put his head on her motherly bosom and say he was sorry and let all be as it was before, love. He could do it tomorrow, all too easily. As yet he had given no reason for his desire to deny his marriage, save the pricking of his conscience, and he could say that Wolsey or Warham had managed to set his conscience at rest.
Thoughtfully she twirled the rose she was carrying. She often carried a flower or a trinket, for apart from the marred little finger her hands were of exceptional beauty, long and slim, the color of cream, and toying with some object—the little finger tucked away—was a means of drawing attention to them. This evening, however, she moved the rose without any conscious design, and was hardly aware of breathing in the scent set free by its movement. But into her indecisive mind the fragrance sent a pang of memory. Four years now since she and Harry Percy had kissed in the Greenwich gardens; the wound healed, the scar sensitive in certain weathers, like the arm and leg stumps of old warriors. And to think of Harry brought Wolsey to mind; Wolsey, so devilishly skilled in finding reasons why one shouldn’t follow one’s heart. To retire now, to let consideration for her good name weigh against the ultimate advantage, would be to let Wolsey triumph yet again.
And she thought—I’m twenty, no longer really young; I might never get another chance to marry; and my father, very tolerant now because he sees in me a way to favor, would, should that favor be withdrawn, show quite another face.
Yet still the thought of the greedy, hard-glinting eyes, the flicking, forked serpents’ tongues, was horrible.
Until marriage—however long that may take to attain—nothing but a few harmless caresses; and if anyone says otherwise I shall demand a panel of matrons to refute the slur.
The thought was so fantastic that she laughed and Henry, waited anxiously, looked at her in amazement.
“I’m laughing,” she said, “at you. Asking for what you could so easily command. You have only to order me to be at Greenwich on such a day, at such a time, and I should be there, careful to be punctual.”
He said, with an earnestness that was almost pompous,
“I should never dream of giving you an order, as you should know by now. You are my lady and I serve you, hoping that in return you may grant me some small favor. I promise you that if you will come to London I’ll ask nothing more, make no demands, never embarrass you in any way. All I need is your presence. You shall have your own apartments, your chaplain, trainbearer, everything. In all but name you shall be Queen. And that, too, before long.”
She said, “I will come.”
He began to babble. “Bless you, my sweet Anne, bless you. You strengthen and hearten me. Now I can fight them all. And never think that your position will be in doubt. You shall at all times, and from everyone, receive the respect that is due to my bride-to-be. I thought,” he said thickly, “that I loved you as much as a man could love a woman, but for your kindness I now love you a thousand times more.”
He leaned forward and kissed her in the way he had
mastered, passionately, but with passion hard held in control. And she kissed him, coolly, but with infinite promise. Oh God, he thought, how long?
Sometimes it worried him a little. He loved her so much, he longed for her, with every nerve and fiber of his body, yet always his mind must rein his flesh. He’d set himself to wait—and four years had gone by. What did four years of celibacy do to a man? He imagined a man, accustomed to feeding full, fond of his food, cast away on one of the desert islands sailors told of, or clapped into jail. Would the appetite shrivel, fit itself to hard circumstances and make him unable to eat well when at last the full board was spread before him? The thought had so troubled him that once or twice he had thought of taking another woman, some almost anonymous female body, as a kind of medicine. But he knew that it would be useless. In all the world there was only this one woman; and though half of him grieved over her refusal to allow him to become her lover, the other half rejoiced. Chastity was a virtue; and she was compounded of all the virtues. On the whole, willingly he kissed the rod.
Anne thought—Presently we shall go into the house and I shall tell my father and Lady Bo that I am going to London and they’ll hold me cheap.
She said, “There is one thing, so silly and small that I hate to mention it to you, because, born royal, you can never understand how hard other people must fight for precedence. But I have been at Court before. It would amuse you to know how strictly we were graded. As a mere knight’s daughter, for example, I should not be allowed stabling for my own horse. And that comes all the harder because my father has claims, not yet recognized, to higher titles.”
“The Butler dispute,” Henry said, coming back to earth. “I’ll make him Viscount Rochfort immediately, and presently he shall be Earl of Wiltshire. Does that content you?”
She was still aware that up to a point she had given in; the awareness was there, raw and touchy. Presently her cousin Thomas Wyatt was to write to her, “And wild for to hold, though I seem tame,” and he knew her well. Temper flared.
“Content me? Content me? Henry, if you threw your hound a bone for which he begged you might ask that. But if you eased his collar, too tightly buckled, would you use those words?”
“You are right. I should have said—Will it ease things for you?”
“Not that neither. You should have said that you were sorry not to have observed sooner that the collar pinched.”
For as long as he could remember nobody had said to him “You should…” His father could have done, would have done, but there was never any need, he had always been a dutiful son; and at eighteen he had been King of England and any advice or admonition offered him had been tactfully wrapped about—If your Grace would consider…It would be well if…Perhaps I should point out…
He said, “You are right, sweetheart. I should have advanced your father before suggesting your return to Court. I was thoughtless.”
She smiled at him, twirling the rose. He thought that one of the first things he must do, once she was established in London, was to get her portrait painted. In a picture which must stay as it was and could not be forever changing, he hoped that he might find some clue to her elusive and bewildering charm which had so little to do with any accepted standard of beauty. Her brow was broad and high, her eyes widely spaced and beautiful, and then the face sloped away to a little narrow jaw and chin. Her mouth varied. There were times when the top lip seemed full and sharply curved, hardly able to cover the small childish teeth; there were other times when it seemed thin and taut and the lower lip dominated, slightly protruding, kiss-inviting. Yet none of this meant much; he could, any day, look around and find inside the immediate circle of his Court a dozen women prettier. Except for the eyes. And even their charm was due less to color and size than to something there was no name for. Expression did not serve, for their expression was constantly changing; one thing remained constant, though, a curious farseeing look, it was there when she laughed, when she looked thoughtful, when her eyes flashed with anger. As though, Henry thought, with the poet in him coming uppermost, some part of her sight was always directed at some far spread vista, seen by her alone.
He said, “Look at me, sweetheart.” She looked, smiling, and the smile hung there, as real, as visible as the necklace she wore, and just as little part of her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, almost querulously. “I never know what you are thinking.”
She said, “I was wondering. About the future. Suppose the Pope never agrees to declare you a free man.”
“But he must,” Henry cried blusteringly. “He’s hedged, and learned his lesson. He needs me now.” He looked at her, drawing his eyebrows together. “Driven too far, I’d make Wolsey act. But I don’t want that. Clement is a weak, vacillating, pusillanimous fellow, but he is Pope, the supreme authority on all spiritual matters; and marriage, being a sacrament, is a spiritual matter. I want his admission, made known to all the world, that I was never Catherine’s husband. Our marriage must be perfect, sweetheart, proof against all question, legal beyond all doubt.”
IX
Even if hostility towards the Church did not assume the proportions of a national revolt, it was still there to be reckoned with…
Charles Ferguson, Naked to Mine Enemies
EDENBRIDGE. JUNE 1527
AFTER A LONG PAUSE DURING which the haberdasher was plainly giving the matter his undivided attention, he spoke.
“To my mind, Mrs. Arnett, you’d do a sight better to go along and stay close. She’s young, she might be shaped. And she’s going to be mighty powerful. The Cause could do with a friend in a high place.”
“You hadn’t gone and give in your notice already, had you?” the haberdasher’s wife asked anxiously.
“Only in my own mind,” Emma said. “I’ve seen which way the wind was blowing for a long time now, and I always told myself that if she left home, and took up with him in that way, I’d have nothing to do with it. I like things decent.”
“But you said she said…”
“I know what she said. And I daresay she meant it. But what chance would she stand? Once she’s there, and the King so set on his own way.” She looked into their faces, noticing the innocence of their eyes. What could they know of the ways of the Court? But she knew. Only too well she knew, from firsthand experience, what it meant to be involved in an illicit affair; the lies that must be told, the messages to be smuggled out, or in, the candles set in windows as a sign. She knew it and loathed it; and the haberdasher’s answer had surprised her; she’d expected that he would say that she, as a decent woman, couldn’t possibly lend her countenance to such goings on.
“And what can I do?” she asked. “By staying, I mean. Ladies don’t set much store by their servants’ notions.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” the haberdasher said. “There’s more than one case mentioned in the Scriptures of servants bringing their masters to the truth. A word here, a word there; and always the example. You’d be a fine example to any belief, Mrs. Arnett, if I may say so. If you was a Turk and lived and talked and behaved as you do, always so decent, I should feel bound to ask myself if there wasn’t some good in whatever it is Turks hold with.”
“And so should I,” his wife agreed. Why, the first time you ever set foot in the shop I said to myself—There’s a decent woman, and right-minded, if ever I saw one.”
Such tributes were gratifying, especially as the haberdasher and his wife and their friends had become more and more the ruling influence in Emma’s life.
She said deprecatingly, “I was brought up to be decent. And then I had that one good master. And this bothers me. I don’t like the idea of being mixed up in…well, anything shady.”
“But you can’t say that yet, Mrs. Arnett. You have to take the long view. The way I look at it the King’s no more married to her we call Queen than he is to…to my missus here, or you. There it is, plainly writ in the Bible, a man must not marry his brother’s wife, which she was, and n
obody can deny that. And who gave them leave to marry? The Pope at Rome, and he’s got no more power to set aside God’s given law than I have. We no more believe the Pope can alter God’s law than we believe in pardons and relics and images, do we now? All right then, we don’t reckon the King is a married man. Nor, according to what I hear, straight from my brother in Milk Street, do he. He’ve asked, so they say, quiet like, to be set free; and mark my words, if he ain’t set free, sooner or later he’ll get free. And your little lady’d be Queen most like.”
Two rings, one of emerald, one of amber, shaped themselves before Emma’s inner eye. Troth-plighted? Just for once she found herself regretting that Anne was not garrulous, easily confiding or even girlishly naïve. What had she said about the rings? Amber was good for cramp, she’d got the better bargain, the emerald was too big for her. And these simple people thought that she, Emma Arnett, could influence a young woman capable of such cool behavior, such secrecy.
“Even so,” she said, “I don’t see that I can do much.”
“You could try,” the haberdasher said sternly. “After all, it’s us God work through and it look to me He put you just in the right place. Say for instance what my brother say is true and the King have asked to be freed and the Pope dilly-dally, couldn’t you every now and then edge in a word so she could see that he was no friend to her. That’d be something to start with. And suppose you could get her, just once, just for curiosity to look inside an English Bible and then next time some poor chap was in trouble for reading in it she could say to the King, well, what’s wrong with that, I read some myself. That’s the kind of thing. Nothing much, just little things, but they’d mount up. I tell you what, Mrs. Arnett, I only wish I stood in your shoes and had the chance. Like they say about pitch, you can’t touch it without getting yourself black, and the same is true of the truth; if you’re in touch with it, as close as she must be when she’s being tended by you, then some must rub off. Stands to reason.”