by Norah Lofts
When Henry came into sight again, however, she knew that something had happened at last. The set, somewhat peevish expression on his face had lightened, and he moved swiftly for so heavy a man on such a hot morning.
“I have news,” he said. “I’ll give you three guesses.”
“The Queen has agreed to come to terms.”
His faced darkened as it always did at any mention of Catherine, and particularly when Anne referred to her by title.
“The Pope has agreed to set a date and a place.”
He looked ferocious.
It was probably some small, homely thing.
“Your brindled hound has whelped.”
“Wrong again. Warham’s dead.”
She saw no reason there either for jubilation or death’s other attendant, grief. The Archbishop of Canterbury was past eighty, and of no particular consequence. Of late he had been out of favor with Henry because he clung to old-fashioned ideas, disliked the idea of the threatened breach with Rome, and kept advising patience.
Henry sat down and reached for Anne’s hand.
“I welcome his death,” he said. “It has saved me from having a serious quarrel with an old man in high office. Now Cranmer can be Archbishop of Canterbury and our way will be clear at last.”
This morning she found his optimism irritating. With every shift of the scene on the Continent, with every new delegation despatched, he had said much the same thing. Not long now, sweetheart. Now things will move.
“In Cranmer,” Henry went on complacently, “I shall have a Primate prepared to acknowledge me as Head of the Church, and to declare that I am a bachelor, and have been all along.”
She said, “Yes, Cranmer is very…pliable.” She spoke in an abstracted tone, and did not look at Henry, but away, over the loop of shining river to the fields where the harvest was in progress, the harvesters burned as brown as the sheaves they handled. She was suffering from one of her intermittent attacks of feeling insecure.
It was a long time now since Henry had first told her that he considered himself a bachelor. He had taken his stand on that, and gone ahead, like a bull, his head down, shoving aside this obstacle, and that. Suppose now…suppose Cranmer, the moment he was in office, said, “Yes, your Grace, you are a bachelor and have been all along,” and Henry lifted his head, even for an instant, and looked around. What would he see? Not the girl with whom he had fallen in love, but a woman, worn thin and sharp by years of waiting and wariness and self-control and chastity in circumstances where chastity was difficult and almost misplaced. She thought of a dog, chained to a tree, with a bone just out of reach; he’d lunge and struggle, thinking that bone the most desirable thing in the world, and never look beyond it. But suppose the chain snapped suddenly and he found himself free in a world scattered with bones, many more succulent than the one he had wanted so much?…
She looked back over their long association and realized that during its course she had given Henry everything except the ultimate favor. She’d been gay, and teasing, eager to entertain; she’d been serious, willing to listen and to try to master a knowledge of affairs—especially after the fall of Wolsey whose place, in a measure, she had tried to fill. They’d been together so long and so constantly that but for the fact that they did not share a bed, they might have been married for years. They knew one another almost too well.
And what was to stop him, the moment he was free, from finding someone young and fresh, whose moods and ways of thought were not as well known to him as his own?
With cruel honesty she admitted that throwing her over would be a most popular move. The ordinary common people had never accepted or approved of her. When she passed through the streets, or along the river in her barge, they came in their thousands to stare—and she knew why. They were everlastingly curious to know what there was about her that had caught and held the King’s attention; men studied her face and figure, women her clothes. But they stared in silence, or broke it only to declare that they didn’t want Nan Bullen for their Queen. And since Catherine had been virtually banished from London, antipathy had hardened…
For a moment she felt small, and lost and alone. In the pride of youth, flattered by the King’s attention, she had thought that since she must make do with second best that second best might as well be apparently the greatest prize of all; but everything had conspired against her. She was twenty-five and her name was irretrievably sullied. They called her whore, and concubine, and paramour. If Henry threw her aside now the future would be bleak indeed…
Well, she had used every nail but one to hold Henry to her—and now she must use the last. It was ironic to think that an old man, who if he had lived would probably have gone to the Tower, had, by dying, forced her to take a step which all Henry’s persuasions had failed to make her take…
“You’re very quiet,” Henry said. “This is not the time for your head to ache, is it?”
You see, she said to herself, he knows even the timing of your links with the moon’s changes.
“Oh no. I was watching the harvesters and thinking…There’s something sad about August. It is the turn of the year.”
“I welcome the autumn,” Henry said. “I like the grease season, when we hunt the fat deer, the misty mornings and evenings, and all the bustle and the moving from place to place.”
Men weren’t as conscious of passing time as women were. They didn’t think, another summer gone! They didn’t peer into a glass, reckoning the damage each year did.
She said, “Where do you intend to make your progress this year?”
And he began to tell her where, and why, whom and what he hoped to see; and that gave her time for thought.
She’d take the last, most desperate risk of all. At once. She might be lucky and become pregnant…and Henry certainly wouldn’t wish to risk having another son born out of wedlock. Yes, before Cranmer was ready to set Henry free, she must, if possible, be ready to offer Henry the one thing he wanted most in the world.
But the suggestion of altering their relationship must seem to come from him. And he must be provoked into making it.
“Would it be unseemly in view of the Archbishop’s death to proceed with the entertainment that I had planned for this evening?”
“I didn’t know you had anything planned,” Henry said, all delight and expectation.
“It should have been a surprise.”
“Never mind Warham. He had outlived his time; and had he lived on…”
But why speak of such things on such a bright morning? Death had saved Warham as it had saved Wolsey.
God’s Blood! Why think of Wolsey now? He never thought of Wolsey. Not that any qualms of conscience were involved; his treatment of Wolsey had actually marked a change in his life. He was right, always and indisputably right; anyone who opposed him was wrong. The Pope, the Emperor, Catherine, Bishop Fisher, his daughter Mary…and More, he wasn’t sure about More yet. But if they were against Henry Tudor then they were wrong and had only themselves to blame for what happened.
“What is this entertainment, sweetheart?”
“Oh, that is still a secret. And I should go now and busy myself with it. I was waiting to see what the day would do. Emma, my woman, who claims to be weatherwise, predicts thunder; and yet, it being so warm, I thought to have the mumming out-of-doors. It seems settled enough, don’t you think?”
“I am, I think, as good a weather prophet as any old woman who spends her time huddled in bedchambers; and I say it will be a fine warm evening. You go to your plans, I to my work; and I shall look forward all day to what you have to offer for my entertainment.”
But it will surprise you, none the less, she thought.
An entertainment, and not just any entertainment, one with a purpose, to be made ready within a few hours. She sped into the house and sent pages running. Her brother George, Norris, Weston, Brereton, Wyatt, and Smeaton, all to come at once to the chamber overlooking the Knot Garden. She ordered wine, dishes of rip
e plums and pears, cold meats, cakes.
When the six men had arrived and the doors were closed, she said,
“You will have heard the news. Canterbury is dead.”
“So perish all your enemies, my dear sister,” George Boleyn said.
“He was old,” she said tolerantly. She had not rated Warham very highly, even as an enemy, and her thought now was to use his death as an excuse. “He was out of favor, too. Nevertheless, to hear of a death is never pleasant, so I pretended to the King that I had an entertainment planned for this evening. That seemed to cheer him. The question now is, what can we possibly make ready in the time?”
She seated herself in the window, spreading her tawny skirts about her; topazes glowed in her ears and at her throat. Alert and intent she looked her very best, and the men crowded round, eager to please, anxious to make suggestions; all except her brother who stood a little to one side and gnawed his knuckle. Up to something, he thought, and more than likely mischief!
The relationship between them was a rare one. In their distant childhood days they had played together, he as the boy and the senior always the leader and instigator. Then they had parted, and when she had appeared at the English Court they had met almost as strangers. But they had quickly found that they were so much in sympathy that they could communicate in half-finished sentences, in the lift of an eyebrow, the flick of a finger. Once he had said to her, “If I didn’t know otherwise, I should swear we were twins.” And once his wife had snapped at him, in the middle of his recounting some tale about Anne, “If she weren’t your sister I should suspect you of being in love with her. You talk of nothing else.” Jane, like many other women, was very jealous of Anne, always demanding to be informed what in the world the King could see in her, and angry when given the answer, “Only a man can understand that.”
He now said, “We could do The Man Leader. It is largely in mime and what words there are matter very little.” It was a clowning comedy, a caricature of the world, in which bears were the ruling race and one bear made a living by leading around a performing man.
“That wouldn’t be suitable,” Anne said.
“It’s cheerful.”
Norris said, “Who wants to wear a bearskin in this weather?” and George saw her throw him a grateful glance.
“That is what I meant when I said it wouldn’t be suitable. Think again. Here I sit, surrounded by the wittiest men in the wittiest Court in Europe, two poets and one musician; and all I ask is something easily prepared and suited to a hot summer evening.”
“To be performed out-of-doors, by the river?” Weston asked. And he drew a grateful glance.
They were ready enough with suggestions, but nothing pleased her.
Finally George Boleyn said, “Anne, saying “no” is becoming a habit with you.” They all laughed except Smeaton who thought the remark in poor taste. “But if you go on refusing every suggestion we shall end with no entertainment at all. Or be left with”—he saw her look at him expectantly—“Leda and the Swan,” he said.
Smeaton said quickly, “Oh no! My lady disliked that piece and refused to have it performed. Did you not, my lady? more than a year ago.”
“After George and I had sweated over it, too,” Thomas Wyatt said, lightly. “It broke our hearts! One of the best things we ever devised and you called it gross and lascivious and altogether unsuitable. George and I cried ourselves to sleep night after night; didn’t we, George?”
George made a sound of assent, his eyes still upon Anne.
“I wonder…” she said. “Did I judge too hastily? It was designed for out-of-doors, and made good use of the river…It would be better than something hastily devised and ill-finished…perhaps.”
“I remember all Leda’s touching words,” Weston said eagerly. He was a very beautiful young man, most deceptively slim, almost frailly built, very fair of complexion and with eyelashes that all women envied. He was usually cast for the leading female role. “It is for George to decide,” he added, “the Swan’s outfit is almost as hot as the bearskins.”
“I’ll suffer uncomplainingly, if Leda is what you want,” George said.
“It is a vile piece,” Mark Smeaton said. “And why should keeping have improved it?”
“Mark,” Wyatt said, with some rancor, “has turned—what’s the new word? Puritan? Your reputation will not be sullied, my dear fellow. Everyone will know that you are responsible only for the tunes.”
Smeaton scowled. From the moment when Anne had appointed him, he had lived in a world of fantasy. His mind no longer accepted the fact that Anne belonged, or ever would belong, in any way, to Henry. She was not his mistress—every honest person about the Court admitted so much—and she never would be. Nor could she be his wife, circumstances would not allow it. Things would go forever as they were now, with Anne a goddess of purity whom all men might worship, but none touch. And her most devoted worshiper was Mark Smeaton, that man of genius.
And it was not fitting that she, so pure, so far removed from all fleshly things, should sit and watch—and by watching share, with Henry and other men, a vicarious excitement—while Leda and the Swan put up their lecherous performance. It might be a myth, it might be classical, it might be acceptable to these curled and scented young fops—but in the country, where he was bred, people had a word for such goings on, and not a nice one.
Smeaton would have been surprised had he known that George Boleyn’s mind was running on much the same lines, though in a different direction. When he and Wyatt had first proposed the masque of Leda, pleased with themselves because it was spectacular and full of most ingenious devices, she had recoiled. Now she was in favor of it. Why? There could be only one answer. Where formerly she had feared to provoke Henry’s lust, now she was willing to do so. Yet nothing had changed in the situation; at least nothing that anyone knew about. But Anne was clever; so far she’d handled things well, and if she now changed tactics, she must have good reason. It might well be that Henry’s passion was cooling; not to be wondered at. Few men had ever been tried so highly, frustrated upon one side by legal nonsense, and on the other by Anne’s caution.
George said, “Is it decided then? There’s not a man who will not sit there, sweating, and envy the Swan his watery progress—and his capture.” He looked into his sister’s eyes and knew that he had guessed aright.
“I grieved to shut Leda away,” Wyatt said. “And we can have it perfect by evening. There are few speeches. It was designed to appeal to the eye, rather than to the ear.”
“To the eye?” Brereton murmured. “I’d have set it lower.”
Mark said, “Shush” through his teeth.
“Shush yourself, Smeaton; and save your breath to blow your whistle.” Smeaton turned dizzy with fury. That was how they spoke to him, contemptuously, as though he were of no account, simply because he was lowly born. Yet they would say things that no decent yokel would dream of saying in the presence of a woman he respected. He controlled himself and said,
“Whistle? There is no whistle in Leda, surely?”
“There is also,” Anne said, “no sufficiently memorable song. Was that not one of the things I complained of, Thomas? It needs a song, a song of farewell from one of her human suitors, to be sung as the Swan carries her away. Could you make one, in the time? If you let Mark have the words an hour before supper he could set them.”
“My small talent is always at your service,” Wyatt said.
He was in love with her, too, but realistically, even at times cynically; capable of writing poems inspired by her, and as he wrote, of thinking that a hopeless love affair was an excellent spur for a poet.
She had asked for a farewell song; and she should have it. Immortal words were already assembling themselves in his mind as he left her apartment. Yet, finding himself going along the gallery with George Boleyn, he grumbled a little.
“Make me a new song, she says, as she might ask me to pluck her an apple. Good songs don’t come so easy.” He t
ook a few more steps and added, “And it’s all very well to say that Smeaton can set the music in an hour. Given the words any musician could. I don’t like Smeaton’s manner lately. He has a swollen head.”
“Anne spoils him,” George agreed. “Poor oaf, he’s in love with her.” His sharp, not particularly kindly and yet tolerant eye had seen the truth about the musician’s state, and he thought—If what I think is about to happen happens, it’ll be such a shock to him to find that she’s only human after all, he’ll probably go off his head.
“It’s damned presumption on his part,” Wyatt said. “And he called Leda a vile piece. One of these days he’ll provoke me into cuffing his ears.”
They walked on. Within five minutes one of Thomas Cromwell’s young men, in a hiding place cunningly contrived, had scribbled down every word that had been spoken. Cromwell had learned one lesson from Wolsey’s fall—as you rose you made enemies and it was essential to know who they were. He had recruited and trained a little ring of spies, his very own; all young men who looked to him for preferment presently, and never questioned the orders he gave them. In every place where the Court was they had their secret posts, where they listened and scribbled.
“It may be the merest nonsense; but you need waste no time on trying to understand, or to discriminate. Merely write what you hear, as nearly as possible in the same words. And let me warn you,” he looked at each recruit in the same hard way, “that any man who mentions his employment, or anything he has learned while pursuing it, will rue his indiscretion for as long as he lives—which will not be long.”
Each evening they presented their day’s gleanings and before he slept Cromwell sorted it through. Much was tedious meaningless rubbish; much was of interest. It was truly amazing what people would say at a stairhead to a friend who seemed trustworthy.