“I would never harm you,” he was saying. “I enjoy looking at you too much. But I see you are shivering. Come, let us find a warm posset, and a fire.”
He led me back inside the abbey where we settled ourselves in front of the hearth in a room he was using as a guardroom. Four burly soldiers in red livery lounged at the opposite end of the room, rolling dice and drinking from large tankards. The warmth of the fire made my arms and hands tingle and I drank greedily from the cup of hot cider a servant brought me.
“Sire, I cannot help but wonder why you should be talking to me in this way.”
“Shall I be gallant, or shall I tell you the truth?”
“The truth, of course.”
“Because someone must believe me. I need someone to believe me. Someone with nothing to gain.”
“I’ll listen.” That much, at least, I could offer. “What was the truth—about Queen Anne?”
“I despise that name!” He slammed his silver cup of hot cider down on the nearest bench, making the guardsmen jump up and start to walk toward us. With a gesture he stopped them and they went back to their dice and drink. “She never deserved the name of queen!” the king went on. “She was nothing more than a scheming whore. She knew the black arts. She was a witch. From the day I first saw her I was not myself. I felt like a man moving in a fog, wading through quicksand. My mind was not my own.”
He called for more cider and drank deeply. “All those years I was in thrall to her, like a dog on a leash. She made me do terrible things. She disliked Wolsey, and of course he had to go. She hated Catherine and Mary. She tried to poison my poor boy, poor Fitzroy—did you know that? He was sick for weeks. She had a poison room, with all sorts of jars and ointments—a terrible place. Her own sister-in-law Jane Rochford came and told me about it. I had everything in it burned and buried.”
He leaned closer to me, and spoke in a low tone so that the guards could not overhear. “I think she poisoned herself, by accident, mixing those potions of hers. I think that’s why her babies were not normal. They weren’t, you know. Those babies that came out early. One had no legs, just little stumps.” He grew pale, clearly he was frightened. “The last one, I was told, had no eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at it myself. They were freaks. She would have given me freaks for sons, if they had lived.”
He looked around furtively, assuring himself that the guards were absorbed in their gambling. Then he turned back to me and rolled up one leg of his gold-embroidered breeches. There was a nauseating stench as he revealed his naked pale pink flesh, and a wide bandage stained with greenish pus. I drew back, taking a scented pomander of orange and cloves from the pocket of my gown and fastening it over my nose.
“She did this. Just as if she drove a knife into my leg with her own hands. She caused this—by witchcraft. I was riding at the tilt, and she cursed me. She made me fall. The horse fell on top of me. I’ve had bad wounds ever since.”
He rolled his breeches down again and I took a gulp of fresh air.
“Witches have been burned for hundreds of years,” I said, “by the church. Why didn’t you let the priests judge Anne, and condemn her?”
“You forget, I am head of the church in England now. We have severed our ties to Rome. There has been no cardinal legate in England for many years. Our policies with regard to witchcraft, or heresy, or any other crime under canon law, are at present unclear. No, it was better to bring the Witch to justice for treason. And she was guilty of treason. She was desperate to have a son. She began sleeping with any man she could find, just to get a son, to save her life.”
“You could have divorced her.”
“And have her go on living and working her spells on me? And on my future sons? No Cat, I could not.”
At length he rose, and I could tell, from the way he stood, that his leg was hurting him.
“I rely on your discretion, Cat,” he said.
“John will want to know what we have talked about.”
“And do you tell your husband everything?”
I smiled. “Most everything. But only if he asks.”
“It does me good to talk. I’ve had no one to talk to since More and Catherine died.”
But you killed them both, I wanted to say. You had Thomas More executed and you broke Catherine’s spirit and hastened her death by your cruelty. You killed two of those you valued most in the world, and you cannot blame that on witchcraft. Or can you?
I wanted to say these things, yet I held my tongue. The king had confided in me. He had given me his trust, and even though I still feared him, he had brought me within the small circle of those he relied on. Someone must believe me, he had said. I did not believe him, I thought him dangerous and deluded, but I saw now for the first time that he himself believed what he had told me. I saw the frightened inner man that lurked within the frightening king. And I could not but feel that there had been formed between us, during that long and chilling conversation, a bond of honor.
18
I FIRST SAW HIM STANDING, TALL AND LEAN AND ARRESTINGLY HANDSOME, his reddish-blond hair tumbling down to his collar, one foot resting on a chunk of fallen stone, in the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey on the afternoon of Lady Day, in the Year of Our Lord 1538. He was wearing a leather jerkin and his long trousers were tucked into high riding boots of brown leather. I thought he was an architect or builder, standing there. All around him, amid the remains of stone arches and rough walls, were wooden sticks planted in the earth, marking the places where new walls and archways were to be erected, for the royal palace to be built where the old abbey had stood. He appeared to be studying these, thoughtfully, and I assumed he was in charge of the works.
A year had passed since my conversation with King Henry in the moonlit abbey grounds, and in that time much had changed. Hundreds of laborers had come to live and work on or near the grounds of the old abbey—the new Imperium. Men from nearby villages came to make bricks or tiles, or haul stones or timber, their wives and daughters hiring themselves out as cooks or laundresses or what the soldiers called camp-followers. The work never seemed to stop. The Imperium was like a giant anthill, with industrious creatures swarming throughout its labyrinthine depths, each bent on his or her own vital errand.
Yet when I saw him on that day, in the midst of all the activity, he was uniquely still.
“Pardon me, I wonder if you could help me?”
He looked up, saw me on my roan palfrey, and started toward me. He walked slowly, gracefully, a smile gradually irradiating his sun-browned face. There was an airy lightness about him. He was blithe. His eyes were very, very blue.
“Are you in charge here?”
For an instant he looked surprised, then laughed. “You could say that, yes. How can I help you?”
There were other men at work nearby. I heard the sounds of hammering and of sledges striking stone. Carts loaded with timbers and barrels passed by among the structures. But they faded out of my awareness as the man who spoke to me, his voice deep and rich, came closer, so close that he reached out to seize the bridle of my horse, steadying her.
“I’m looking for one of your stonemasons. A Frenchman. Monsieur Herbault.”
“There are many stonemasons here. Hundreds I believe. They live in temporary quarters, on the other side of that hill.” He pointed to a hillock on the far side of the Imperium grounds, some distance from where we stood.
The sound of his voice lulled me. I could not stop looking down into his eyes. He rubbed my horse’s neck, his large brown hand gentle against her coat, and she whickered with pleasure. For a man responsible for a large and complex building operation, he seemed remarkably unhurried. He was looking at me with evident pleasure. My lips were parted. I was smiling.
“I’ll take you there, if you like.”
I slid down off my horse and he half-caught, half-supported me. Simply, naturally, a feeling came over me: I wanted to be in his arms.
“I’m Tom,” he said as he took my horse’s reins and, l
eading her, we began to pick our way through the expanse of stones and piles of bricks. A path led off across a meadow, with flowering hedges of dog-roses and veronica.
“Watch out for the nettles,” Tom said. Strong sunlight warmed my face and neck under the broad-brimmed cap I wore, and the scents, sounds and colors around me now seemed heightened. The small blue flowers at the edge of the path were intensely blue, the green reeds that grew in the water-filled ditches were pungent in their rank odor, the crunch of Tom’s boots as he took each step seemed particularly loud and distinct. I was caught up in each melodious bird call, each buzzing fly. The very rustling of my skirt as it swept over the stones of the path, catching on withered blossoms or fallen twigs, arrested my attention.
The slanting rays of the afternoon sun struck the leaves, the grasses, and our slowly moving bodies at what seemed a perfect angle, and we seemed to walk in a timeless moment, through the landscape of a dream.
We came to a stile and he led my horse around it, through the tall meadow grass, then came back to help me over the stone steps. His strong brown arm was bare almost to the elbow, with a fine dusting of reddish-brown hairs. I reached for it to steady myself. When I touched his arm it was rough but warm; touching it, I could not help but shudder slightly, as tremulous as the leaves of the dog-roses that shivered in the faint breeze.
I looked into his eyes, and what I saw there, in that long-ago moment, I can never forget. It was as if we had known each other for a lifetime—knew all, and understood all. We were complete. There was nothing more to do or say. Without hesitation I surrendered to the truth of that indescribable moment. I have never been the same since.
We spoke as we walked along, though our words had nothing to do with what we felt. They were only words, empty things when compared to the wordless tie between us.
“I am looking for Monsieur Herbault’s cottage, but I am really on an errand of mercy. Father Croally from Grundleford sent me. He heard there was a woman in the cottage, a stranger, and that she may be ill.”
“We must hurry then.”
We quickened our pace for the last half-mile, though the path grew narrower and more stony, and Tom had to lead my horse through sweet-smelling waist-high grass for much of the way. At last we came to a row of newly built cottages, hastily thrown together (by the look of them) for the use of workmen constructing the Imperium. A few inquiries led us to a cottage at the far end of the row, somewhat apart from the others, screened by a row of shrubs.
Lean pigs rooted in a dung-hill only steps from the low doorway, and thin chickens pecked at the barren ground, watched listlessly by three small children in dirty shifts. The oldest of the children, a boy, I took to be five or six years old, the two girls perhaps four and two. The youngest, her fingers in her mouth, looked up at me as we approached, her gaze vacant as she wandered by the pigs and reached out to touch them.
Tom tied the horse to a tree and helped me down. His arms were warm where they touched me. I took my basket of food and herbs from the saddlebags and pushed open the cottage door.
The room was dim, the ceiling low. An odor of dirt and decaying food and unemptied chamber pots made me gag at first, though I managed to overcome my reaction and walked toward the narrow, uncurtained bed where a woman lay, her tangled and matted hair spread out around her. Her eyes were closed.
Except for the bed, there was no furniture in the cottage. Indeed it looked abandoned. A few candle-ends lay on the overmantel of the hearth, and an ancient kneading-trough stood against the single window. But there were no chests and no tables, no shelves for food—only a single string of onions hanging from a rafter. I wondered how long it had been since the children had had anything to eat.
I moved closer to the bed and saw that the woman cradled a sleeping newborn in her arms. The tiny infant was so still I thought at first it might be dead, but then I saw the merest flicker of movement in one of the small pink fingers and felt reassured. The baby was alive—but what of the mother?
Her face, half covered with hair, was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. I looked around for firewood and, seeing none, went back outside where I found some sticks leaning against a hedge.
“How is she?” asked Tom as he helped me gather the bits of wood.
“Poorly. I think she’s just had her baby. It’s alive. There are loaves in my saddlebags. Would you give the children some bread? I’ll try to make a fire and boil some tea.”
I busied myself breaking the sticks and laying them on the hearth. Using a discarded bit of coarse cloth lit from the burning candle I kindled the fire, and hung a kettle of water over it into which I sprinkled a restorative herb. There was no sound from the bed. I could hear Tom talking to the children outside. His voice was cheering. He was making the children laugh.
When the tea was ready I poured some into a cracked cup and sat down gently on the bed. The woman heaved a sigh and opened her eyes. I saw fear in her eyes and held out the tea with what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“You must be very tired. Here, drink this. It will restore you.”
Her look of fear changed to bewilderment. Without waking the baby she raised herself up, painfully, until she could take a sip of tea from the cracked cup I held out to her.
“Thirsty,” she whispered through bloodless lips. “So thirsty.”
She drank again, then sank back into her thin pillow, eyes closed. Presently she opened them again, and looked at me, somewhat dazed.
“Are you my guardian angel?”
“In a way. The priest from Grundleford told me you might be ill and need some help.”
I reached over and gently brushed the matted hair from her cheeks and temples. The firelight illumined her features. I blinked, then looked more closely.
“I’ve seen you before. But I can’t remember where.”
She turned her head away. “It doesn’t matter.” The baby woke and began to whimper.
“Were you employed at Snape Hall? Or in the household of the Duke of Richmond?”
I studied her face, the face of a woman who had suffered. Who was suffering.
“The Duke of Richmond!” she was saying, a note of contempt coming into her weak voice. “How the king used to cosset him! A weakling! Bessie Blount’s brat!”
“Anne? Is it Anne?” I remembered that high-pitched, contemptuous voice, and saw, in the ravaged face, my once beautiful and imperious sister-in-law, Anne Bourchier Parr. The woman who had run away from my brother Will so many years before.
When she heard me say her name she began to weep. I could tell that she was struggling within herself, struggling not to give way to an overwhelming emotion. But she was too weak. The dammed-up feelings flooded out.
“Cat! Oh, Cat!”
I bent to embrace her, and for a long time neither of us could speak. She was so thin, so ill. I rocked her in my arms like a child.
The baby began to cry and Anne offered him her breast.
“Dear Anne, we had no idea where you were. We heard that you were living with a priest. What happened? Where have you been? What have you been living on, you and the children?”
She shook her head and swallowed. “There is too much to tell.”
“Of course. Never mind all that now. The important thing is to get you well again, and taken care of, you and your children. I take it that Monsieur Herbault—”
She waved one hand dismissively, and I said no more about the absent Frenchman.
I went outside. Tom had one of the children on his knee, and the two others were at his feet, in the dirt. They were munching on hunks of bread.
“Is there a way we can get the family to Grundleford, do you think? The mother needs a midwife.” Becca would take them in, I felt sure, until I could provide a place for them to live. There would be plenty of time to think about that later.
“Leave it to me.” Tom lifted the child off his lap and set her gently down. He strode off purposefully toward the building site, his long stride swift.
By the time he returned, driving a workman’s cart, the sun was low on the horizon. We laid Anne and her baby on blankets on the floor of the cart and I held the two girls on my lap. The boy sat beside Tom as he drove, whistling, along the cart track toward the village, with my horse bringing up the rear.
19
YOU’RE HERE AGAIN, I’M SO GLAD.” TOM REACHED FOR MY HAND, GRASPED it firmly in his, and led me off into the meadows again, where we had been the day before.
“I couldn’t stay away.” There was no sense in pretending, in inventing an excuse for coming again to the building site. I told Tom the truth.
He nodded. “If you hadn’t come, I would have tried to find you.” The air was sweet with the scent of gillyflowers, there were bluebells massed on the hillside and from somewhere nearby a blackbird shouted. I was exultant.
We walked along the same narrow path we had followed the day before, but instead of crossing the stile we turned toward a stand of old trees, and presently stepped into their shadow. Here the scents were of moss and fern, decaying leaves and fresh water. I leaned toward Tom as we walked beside a small stream for a ways and then he took me in his arms. His lips were warm. He kissed me gently at first, then with more urgency, until with the pounding of my heart and the great surging of my emotions I lost myself in the power of his kiss. I was lost—and I was found. For in that rapturous moment I felt utterly taken out of myself. I was a new being, the old self had passed away forever.
“You are in my heart,” he said.
“And you are in mine.”
A frown flitted over his brow. “Let’s stay this way. No names, no ranks.”
I agree.
We kissed again, a lingering, unhurried kiss and I felt my heart expand. I had no defenses, and wanted none. I belonged to Tom, and Tom alone.
The Last Wífe of Henry VIII Page 14