by G Lawrence
I was with child.
Chapter Twenty
Whitehall Palace and Greenwich Palace
March- April 1535
That Easter George took pity on Master Smeaton and gave him one of his books. “It was a poor thing,” said my brother. “But he admired it, and has no means to purchase such items.”
Books were expensive, and even many crude, cheaply produced ones were out of Mark’s reach.
“Which tome did you grant him?”
“The one Wyatt gave me when I married,” he said. “Liber lamentationum Matheoluli, a translation by Lefevre.”
“The book about the ills of marriage?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “Does Mark think to wed? And do you mean to frighten him off?”
“No,” said George, with a smile. “He simply admired the book, so I gave it to him.” My brother toyed with a small pie of beef and barley on a golden platter. “In truth,” he went on. “I think he reads little. To him, the worth of a book is in its ownership, not its contents.”
“Books have no worth if left upon a shelf. They must be read.”
“I agree, sister,” he said. “But we are in a minority. Do you think Norfolk has ever opened even one of the books in his great library? Surely not, for then he would have absorbed some of their wisdom, and I doubt his mind is prepared for the onslaught of original thought.”
I giggled. “Does our uncle still sulk in the country?”
George inclined his head. “And wails about his woes. I’ll wager his reedy voice is only the more penetrating from afar to the King. Norfolk thinks Cromwell was trying to oust him.”
“He is not mistaken.” I frowned.
“Have you altered your good opinion of our Master Secretary?”
“I find much that worries me,” I admitted. “But nothing certain. Cromwell says it is up to Henry to decide what happens to the monasteries and their wealth, and he is correct.”
“But the King must come to the right decision,” George said. “Which is where you enter, sister.”
“I will attempt to guide him.”
“Do,” urged my brother. “Men think it is easy, Anne, to pull something down and start anew. At times, it is the only way, but sometimes it is better to take a foundation and build upon it. I think Cromwell is urging the King to tear everything down, telling him they will start afresh. This is not the way it should be done. The way I think reform should progress is slower, but will, in the end, be better for England.”
“You know I concur,” I said. “But this has to be handled with tact. Henry is obsessed with Charles’ fleet. He is drawn to the lure of the monasteries’ wealth because he thinks it will save England.”
“What will there be left to save if the poor starve and the streets become clogged with beggars set loose from the monasteries?” George shook his head. “I do not say I have always been a good man, or that my heart has always tended towards charity. I am a sinner, and have far to go before I can call myself a saint. But this is wrong, Anne.”
“Of course, but I know not if Henry is pushing the notion or if it is Cromwell.”
“Either way, influencing the King to do good will produce the desired outcome.”
“And that outcome we will have, once the investigations are done,” I said. “It would be premature to act now, and if Cromwell is influencing Henry, it might be foolish.”
“Bide your time, then,” he said. “But do not forget.”
“What have I ever forgotten that you have remembered instead?” I asked, laughing. “Men think they are the masters of all, but women are the keepers of memory.”
“And the fell mistresses of love,” he said affectionately, kissing my lips.
It was not only my brother who found joy in giving presents. That Easter, I gave Henry one of the greatest gifts I could imagine when I told him I suspected I was with child.
“You are sure?” he asked, delighted beyond measure.
“It may be too early to tell,” I said. “But my courses have ceased and I am constantly nauseous.”
“God be praised!” he said, taking hold of my waist and starting to dance across our bedroom floor.
“Henry!” I giggled. “Set me down!”
“Never will I let go of you,” he said, dropping to his knees and staring up at me. “Never.”
For a moment I wondered if he had been thinking of letting me go.
Emboldened by my condition, which to Henry was synonymous with the favour of the Almighty, Henry declared to Chapuys that he would not allow Katherine and Mary to meet. He then sent a message to Mary, saying he had “no worse enemy in the world but her” and accused her of being the source of all his misery. Publicly, he declared his daughter’s conduct was a calculated move to bring about rebellion or invasion, and said he would have no more to do with her. In his exuberance, Henry also brought Elizabeth to court, so we could spend the spring with our daughter.
If it had never before been clear to me how to win my husband’s love, it was now. I decided to go one step further, and mentioned to Henry that I thought there were too many women at court without true purpose. It was a lie. Men outnumbered women ten to one, but I hoped to be rid of a little bird who had long been twittering in my ear.
“Mistress Perrot, for example,” I said lightly one day. “She has no purpose and she and her husband are a strain on court finances.”
Henry glanced at me, but he did not look angry. Content with Mary Shelton, he had no further need for the parrot. “I will see to it,” he said.
And with that, the parrot was gone.
Joyous, I took Elizabeth into the gardens every day, and together we played. I showed her birds in the skies and the bright catkins on the trees. Watching my daughter with a spray of yellow buds in her hands, her black eyes mesmerized by the blossoms, brought a joy like no other.
Each morning, I rose into the blurred and fuzzy grey dawn, where the world wears that loose, baggy, look, as though God’s mind, still slumberous, has not yet formed its thoughts clearly enough for the world to possess shape and clarity. The day still had dew upon it as I went to Elizabeth and dressed her myself. We took to the gardens when it was sunny, and played in the long galleries when it was not. Above us, the dawn became a haze of gold, cresting into a wide, warm skyline of pink and shimmering pearl. Wet afternoons allowed us to huddle together, playing at the fireside. Grim nights brought me to her bedside, where I told her stories until her eyes fluttered and closed.
If only I could have just been a mother, and a wife.
If only I had been allowed to know joy and keep it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Greenwich Palace and Hampton Court
April 1535
On the first day of April, the Lady Mary was moved closer to Katherine. Chapuys had not relented in his mission to reunite mother and daughter, and despite my urging to keep them apart, Henry made a partial surrender, thinking it might appease his people and the Emperor. As had been promised some time ago, Mary moved from Eltham, where Elizabeth was, to Hunsdon, thirty miles from Kimbolton Castle, but was still not permitted to see her mother. This did not content Chapuys, however, who pressed for Mary to move closer still, but this was denied.
“They are close enough,” Henry said.
In truth, they were so close in spirit that no miles would make a difference.
It was not only the ex-princess who was moving. That month, Cromwell’s investigations began. It was a cautious start, but Cromwell wrote to bishops, the nobility and Justices of the Peace, commanding them to imprison those who “had been seduced with filthy and corrupt abominations of the bishop of Rome or his disciples”. In these letters Cromwell described himself as Henry’s eyes, whose task it was to remedy the abuses of the clergy. All his letters carried Cromwell’s stamp, and Henry’s.
Some said Cromwell was becoming as powerful as his master. Others whispered he desired nothing less. I wanted to believe in him, but even I had cause to deliberate on his motives. Power i
s a slippery beast. It crawls into the heart and whispers it is not enough. There must be more. More and more, for power is never satisfied. I wondered if Cromwell was reaching too high, influencing Henry into sin. But I could prove nothing. I had to watch, I had to wait, and see what would unfold.
Many quaked to discover Cromwell’s letters on their desks, for the twin stamps of Cromwell and Henry seemed to signal that a new power was dawning. But if some shook to see these letters, others did not. There was unrest, and it was growing.
“We need a sign to show what will happen to those who disobey,” Cromwell said as we wandered in the fresh spring air in my gardens at Whitehall. “All who support Rome are traitors,” he continued, tearing a straggly thyme twig from its nest of branches and rubbing it into his palms. “And, Majesty, the King is determined to make a public demonstration.”
“So the rebellious Carthusians will be executed?” I asked. There had been whispers of this for some time.
“They will, Majesty, but only those who refuse to swear the oath.”
“Of course…” I stared at him with puzzled eyes. “For what reason would you execute others?”
Cromwell shrugged. “Some may only have sworn to save their bellies from the hook.”
“We cannot delve into the souls of men, Cromwell,” I said. “If men swear and refrain from treason, this should be enough.”
I wondered if he thought the same. The new regime was fixated on dominating and controlling the thoughts of Henry’s subjects as well as their actions.
Cromwell’s men started to visit monasteries, and the inventory of goods also got underway. This, in particular, was taken as an ominous sign. It was widely rumoured this inventory was the true purpose of their visits, and Cromwell and his men were less concerned with corruption than they were with coin.
Cromwell’s survey eventually became known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus. It revealed in ferociously accurate detail the wealth, property and rents of England’s religious houses. Cromwell said it would grant Henry means to tax his clergy more effectively, but detractors claimed it was a means to convince the King to dissolve all houses and keep the riches for himself. The clergy owned perhaps two-thirds of England in land and estates. It would have been a tempting prospect for anyone, but for Henry, who was fixated on security, and maintaining the ostentatious show of his position, it was perhaps far too alluring.
*
We moved to Greenwich in the second week of April, but within a week were forced to hurry to Hampton Court when one of my women was struck down with a pox.
Frances de Vere, the wife of my cousin, Surrey, seemed to only have a cold at first, but rapidly developed a cough and a fever. Her eyes waxed red and little spots erupted inside her mouth. Within a few days, a red-brown rash appeared on her creamy skin. It was then we knew it was something more serious.
Henry, fearing it was plague, carted the court off to Hampton Court as soon as possible. I was separated from Frances and he refused to allow me to see her.
“You are carrying our child!” he exclaimed in horror when I spoke of nursing her.
“I do not think it is plague, Henry,” I said.
“Even if not, it could still be dangerous.”
Perhaps Death was listening, as plague did break out in London. Frances, however, recovered and her rash was gone in little more than a week. But one morning as my ladies pulled off my nightshirt, I saw the same rash upon my belly.
In fright, I called for my doctors. Fever settled upon me, and the same hacking cough Frances had experienced infested my lungs. Henry was wild with terror, but he was not allowed near me. Hampton Court was shut off and the court hunkered down to see if the dreaded sickness would come upon us.
It did not. A few more of my ladies contracted a fever and the rash, but they recovered, as did I.
When my rash receded, Henry came to my chambers at night. He needed reassurance, for in the depths of his heart he was troubled by many things… France’s offer to Mary, the unrest in England and Cromwell’s investigations… they all weighed upon him. He needed me to confirm that he was right, and I tried to offer support.
But we were merry too, each night talking of our boy, this new life growing inside my body. To Henry, my pregnancy was proof that he was righteous.
It was but a few days after I was recovered that it happened. I was sitting with my women, making clothes for the poor, when I felt a lurching pain in my lower abdomen. At first, I thought I needed to go to the privy, as I had suffered from loose stools in the days after my recovery. But then there was a sudden rushing sensation between my legs and I stood abruptly, dropping the tunic I had been sewing to the floor.
“My lady…?” Nan’s voice was scared. She could see the pallor on my face.
“It hurts,” I groaned, doubling over.
They took me to my bed and brought the doctors. Within an hour, bright red blood was flowing from between my legs. The doctors gave me potions to stem the bleeding. They poked and pulled about down there, but their worried faces told me the terrible truth.
My child was dying.
“Do something!” I sobbed. “What use are you? Save my child!”
But there was nothing that could be done. Over the next few days the bleeding came and went. Each time it vanished, they clapped themselves on their backs and told each other all was well. Each time it returned they hastened into work again.
Over and over, they raised my hopes and dashed them to the ground. In the end, all I could do was lie on my bed, feeling my child leave me, slowly… agonisingly slowly… over the course of a few days.
I stared at the cloths they removed. The blood called to me, asking why I was not doing more to save my child. I curled up, my hands about my belly, begging my baby to stay. “I have so much to show you,” I whispered, stroking my belly. “So much love to offer you. Please… please do not leave me.”
But my child could not, or would not hear me. Within a week, the bleeding stopped. I experienced no more nausea. My breasts were tender no more. When I told the doctors this, they looked at each other and left the room.
They left it to Henry to tell me I had lost my baby. But rather than be kind, he was furious. “You took too many risks!” he shouted, standing at my bedside like a tower of rage. “You should not have kept company with Frances when she showed signs of sickness!”
“Am I to send away every woman or man who coughs?” I demanded, tears racing down my cheeks. “Do you think this horror was my aim, husband? Do you think I wanted to know this pain?”
I doubled up, pulling the covers about me as though they could protect me from his wrath, and I cried. Hot, bitter tears of loss and abandonment flowed. My child was gone, and in the hour I needed him most, my husband was not Henry. He was the King.
“Anne…” I felt a hand on my shoulder and I shrank from it. “Anne, I should not have said that. I forget you feel as deeply as I.”
I threw off the covers. “How?” I demanded with hatred in my eyes. “How can you forget? Have you listened at last to my enemies, Henry, and decided I am without feeling? I am none such. I have a heart, and it is broken.”
He pulled me to him and held me. “We will bear the loss together,” he said. “It will not be spoken of. The pregnancy was not announced in any case… so none will know of this, my love.”
As he moved away, I saw tears in his eyes.
I watched him leave with a blank expression, and a barren heart. Another child not acknowledged. Another grief I was not permitted to express.
Another secret kept to save Henry’s pride.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hampton Court
April 1535
In dreams, my children found me.
Abandoned by the memory of the living, lost to the light of the world, they came to me in darkness. Sometimes those visions were sweet; images of three children playing together… Elizabeth and her brothers. I saw them in the gardens at Hever, Greenwich and Hampton Court, racing alo
ng gravelled paths, trying to catch each other, as laughter rang out, caressing the skies. Sometimes I sat upon a stand, watching my two, fine, young sons as they donned glittering armour and competed in the joust. Sometimes I watched them with their father, their faces the image of his.
But more often, nightmares came. I chased my lost sons along dark paths in a maze of blackness. Hands tore at my clothing and pulled me backwards. I could not find them. I could not defend them. Their wailing screams, pleading for my help, ruptured my soul.
At times, my dreams made no sense. They came as brief, passing images; visions of childbirth… my son’s perfect, dead face… flashes of bright red blood glistening on glaring white cloth.