by G Lawrence
“I suggested that England was keen to make friends with Spain,” he told me. “Even though we had the support of the French.”
“And did the ambassador believe you?” I asked. “He must have seen the document was unsigned.”
“He was wary,” said Cromwell. “But we need Spain, Majesty. With them, we know where we stand and on what terms. The French switch sides faster than a coursing greyhound.”
“I do not see how Charles would ever accept my daughter and me.”
“It will require some careful handling,” said Cromwell. “But there is word that Katherine is ill. If she were to die…”
“The sand would be wiped clean,” I said, thinking of my dreams. I am your death as you are mine… the whisper came from nowhere and I shivered.
“The sand would be wiped clean,” Cromwell said, seeing nothing of my unease.
“How go your investigations?” I asked, wishing to turn the conversation from this ghoulish notion.
“They go well,” said Cromwell. “Or badly, depending on your point of view. The abbots and monks are not pleased, but the King is. My men have uncovered many ill practices, Majesty, and I suspect there are many more to come.”
“When one mouse is seen, many more hide inside the walls.”
“The inventories, too, are making headway,” Cromwell went on, his eyes lost in thought. “The dissolution of the monasteries will fill the King’s coffers,” he said with an unpleasant smile. It was a curiously unguarded remark for Cromwell, and I saw him start as he noted my icy stare.
“It should be used for worthy purposes. The King agrees with me on this, Cromwell.” I eyed him with disapproval. “I thought that was what you wanted too.”
“Of course, Majesty, but when the King is invested with this wealth, he can decide what it will be used for.”
We always seemed to reach this point, where I all but accused him of thievery and he set the responsibility on Henry’s shoulders. But I had enough to worry about without pitying monasteries about to be caught out for peddling false relics and hoarding money. For now, I set my concerns aside. But they would return.
*
Two weeks later, I made it my mission to show the French they were well and truly out of favour. If François would exclude my brother from his presence, I repay the compliment with his ambassadors.
“Anne,” my brother laughed when he heard my plans for a gathering at my estate at Hanworth. “You are bolder than a cock on Christmas morn!”
“If they exclude you, we will reject them,” I said. “The King and Cromwell agree. France will play no further part in our affairs until they are willing to play nicely.”
The party at Hanworth was joyous, and the French ambassadors were omitted from the guest list. It was a clear, public snub, and did not go unnoticed. Ambassador Dinteville also found he was not invited to court and tried instead to visit Cromwell. He waited at Cromwell’s house in Stepney until ten of the clock one evening, but when Cromwell arrived home, tired and still ill, Dinteville was told to leave.
Henry, too, railed at France and his good brother. “Spain, at least has always maintained the same stance,” he said. “But François once supported our marriage. I see now he is a fickle friend.”
In the presence of my ladies and several of Henry’s men, I tore the French hood from my head, tossed it to Norris, and asked to be brought an English gable one. There was a lot of laughing, and a few shocked faces. Married women were not permitted to display their hair as maidens were. When a gable hood was brought to me, I set it upon my head.
“There,” I said. “This hood will not give me a headache as the past one has.”
“You find England comfortable, my lady?” Norris asked, his bright eyes dancing.
“England is a better choice than France,” I said. “All the French do is copy the Italians. They have no true style, manners or thoughts of their own. In England we think our own thoughts and make our own way. Better to be English than French, my lord. Better to be original and honest, rather than dull and disreputable.”
Although I did not wear it all the time, given that it was intensely unbecoming, I made sure people saw me wearing my gable hood. When the French Ambassador sent me messages, I returned them unopened. Wherever I could, I made scathing remarks about the French, and told my women I wished I could have been brought up in another court, “for the court of France has slid into decline since I left,” I said. “King Louis understood what true majesty was. His cousin was never meant to become a king. François is a country lord with country manners and a contrary heart.”
There was a great deal of laughter about this. Suddenly it became fashionable for everyone to wear English styles. Gable hoods became a common sight, and ladies aped me, telling their gossips they would rather be crowned with loyal England than fickle France.
*
“My man was most thorough, I assure you, madam,” said Cromwell a few days later.
I had no doubt about it. Richard Rich had been sent to interrogate More in preparation for his trial. Rich was a strange man; the sweetest face that ever you did see, which served the blackest heart beneath. He looked like a fresh young maid, yet his soul was dark. Of this I had no proof, but there was something about Rich which sent a shiver down my spine. There was something which emanated from him, like a shallow, creeping mist, which fell upon those near him, making them soiled. Sometimes, when people are perfect in appearance, their intense beauty becomes somehow ugly. Perhaps it is a jest, one of God’s finest, to play such a trick on those blessed with beauty; that when people are struck by their perfection, they are also repulsed by it. To be truly beautiful is to own flaws. This makes a person real. God likes imperfect things… broken things… Fractured pieces brought together to make something new and wondrous.
But Rich was the perfect man to be sent to trip More into either confession of his sins against Henry, or to dupe him into swearing the oath. Rich was Cromwell’s Solicitor-General, and an intrepid commander in his investigations.
After that interrogation, Rich arrived at court with a merry twinkle in his eyes. “He has secured an outright denial of the supremacy from More, which states he does not accept Parliament’s authority to bestow supremacy on the King,” said Cromwell with a contented smile.
“So, he succeeded where you failed, Master Cromwell?” asked George, his tone none too pleasant and his eyes kindled with deep suspicion.
“He did, my Lord Rochford,” said Cromwell smoothly. “And now the King cannot deny any longer that More is a traitor.”
“If indeed he did succeed,” said my brother after Cromwell had departed.
“You think Rich’s evidence false?”
“I do.” George shook his head. “If More is too clever to be drawn out by Cromwell, I see no reason why he should fall for the charms of Mistress Rich.”
I snorted at his jest, but rapidly turned serious. “If that is so,” I said. “More confessed nothing that would make him a traitor.”
“Aside from his failure to swear the oath,” my brother pointed out.
“We knew from the start he would never do so. He said as much to Henry when he resigned as Chancellor and he was promised it would not be held against him.”
I walked to the window and looked out on the day. Summer was almost upon us, but even the coming of the balmy breeze and the light glow of the sunset, bright, pale pink, and white, could not stir me from my unease.
“You think More should be acquitted?” asked my brother.
“No,” I said, staring at the sunset. It was mother-of-pearl spread across the heavens. “He is guilty of not supporting the supremacy, and we cannot allow that, but more and more, brother, it feels as though we are racing ahead without truly considering the consequences.” I turned to him. “Men have died for failing to recognise me as Queen, George. If that is the case put against More, I will say nothing, for he knew the consequences. But if he is attained on false evidence, we set a dangerous precedent.
”
“Only the guilty will die.”
“I wish that were true. Guilt and innocence seem to be one and the same at this time. It all depends on the King… not on evidence, confession, or actual sin… just on what Henry believes.”
*
At the end of May there was news from France. Not from flighty François, but a request for aid from Marguerite de Navarre.
The Queen wrote to me in secret, using friends we had in common to reach me. Knowing of her brother’s annoyance with all things reformist, she begged me to intervene to aid Nicholas Bourbon. Cranmer had already spoken to me of this when Bourbon first got into trouble. Many reformists François had previously protected were in peril. With François no longer sheltering them, they were vulnerable, for they had spoken about their beliefs openly in the days when it was safe to do so.
Bourbon, hearing of Marguerite’s plan, wrote to me from his cell. “A poor man,” he wrote. “I lie shut up in prison. There is no one who would be able or who would dare to bring help. You, alone, Oh Queen; you, oh noble nymph, both can and dare, as one whom the King and whom God Himself loves.”
Dare I did, indeed. Through Jean Dinteville, who was eager to regain favour, and had been a school friend of the philosopher and poet, I sent word that I would help. I went to Henry, and he agreed to ask François to consent to Bourbon being sent to us. Since François had no wish to keep Bourbon, he was released and shipped to England.
Bourbon was housed with Doctor Butts at my expense. I took him on as a tutor for my ward, Henry Carey, and also for Norris’ heir and the son of my dead friend Bridget. I wrote to Mary, telling her about engaging Bourbon, and she was pleased. Her husband, she wrote, was a staunch supporter of the new learning, and she believed in reform too. She said that Calais was full of those who upheld evangelical ideals, and she had been persuaded of the evils of worshipping idols.
Bourbon, too, was grateful. “You saved me, most gracious lady,” he said in French when he was brought to me. “Never can I repay all that you have done for me.”
“You can,” I said, smiling. “Teach my nephew and the other boys at Syon well. Fill the minds of the next generation with wisdom, Master Bourbon. In doing so, you will repay me a hundredfold. I want my daughter’s England to be blessed with the light of Christ. By educating young minds, by setting them on the right path, you can help to craft this future for the good of our people, and for the peace and happiness of my beloved child.”
In the months that followed, Bourbon wrote many verses about me. He became a part of the reformist circle at court, and made swift friends with Cranmer.
“Just as the golden sun dispels the gloomy shadows of night and at day-break makes all things bright, so you, O Queen, restored as a new light to your French and enlightening everything, bring back the Golden Age.”
Bourbon extolled me as a Frenchwoman, the highest compliment a native might offer, but he also saw me as a significant figure, with international power. He hailed me as a beacon, a light that would illuminate both England and France.
I only hoped I could indeed be this light, this torch shining in the darkness, bringing peace and hope.
At times it seemed impossible that one day the people of England, of the world, might see me, the true me, past the shadow and smoke of my enemies’ slanders. At times I thought I might become the nightmare they imagined me to be; this evil Queen who called for blood to bathe in, and bone that she might suck its marrow. Yet some, like Bourbon, saw me in another light. A light I hoped to take into my soul, to replenish my heart and feed my spirit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Windsor Castle
June 1535
On the 1st of June, the Emperor sailed. Four hundred ships carrying over thirty thousand soldiers left the shores of Spain to reconquer Tunis from the Ottomans. As the first reports of battles arrived, suspicions that the French had been secretly working with the Ottomans against the Spanish were confirmed when cannon balls bearing the brand of the fleur-de-lys were discovered.
“That was careless,” Cromwell gloated, almost crowing with pleasure. “The Emperor may well wage war on France, rather than looking to England.”
“You think the Emperor will look to England for alliance now?”
“I think the Emperor will look to England.” Cromwell smiled. His face had taken on an appearance of youth, despite his long years.
Henry did not want the Emperor victorious in case triumph made him consider sailing for England next, but as Chapuys detailed the fleets’ accomplishments, I could see Henry’s eyes igniting with the fire of warfare that had always lain within his heart. Henry had always wanted to be seen as a second Henry V. He not only feared his royal cousin of Spain, he was jealous of him.
Another kind of war was being fought in England as Cromwell’s men spread far and wide. So much ill was reported back to us at court that I wondered how abbots and bishops could bear to stand in the light of day with such dark sins weighing them down. Slovenly practices, as well as sinister reports of sodomy, orgies with nuns, worship of money over God, and hoarding of wealth, swiftly arrived, and although some declared that Cromwell may have ordered his men to invent crimes, to paint an even blacker picture, it was hard even for those who supported the Church to remain on their side as such sins as these were uncovered.
Publicly, I was firmly behind the investigations. I could not be seen to be anything else. Henry and I needed a united front, especially whilst the Emperor’s future plans were as yet undecided. These reports were a vindication of everything we had said about the Church, and it was important for Henry’s people to understand our motives. But even as I spoke in support, I wondered if the gossipmongers were right, and Cromwell had commanded his men to invent sin if they could not find it. The more lax a religious house, the more likely it was to be shut down; the more houses that were closed, the more money for the Crown.
With France suddenly on less firm footing than before, George was dispatched to François. A compromise was offered, saying that if the Duc de Angouleme was sent to live in England for six months before marriage, we would be satisfied. My brother returned a week later. He had failed.
“I did all I could,” he said. “François seems to think he is not in such a precarious position, and does not require our friendship.”
“The Emperor will give life to his disillusionment in that matter,” I said. “And when he does, we will witness how well French worms crawl when they come begging for our affection.”
Bold words, but they meant nothing. I was aware that I was standing in the way of political alliance with Spain. As long as Katherine lived, there would be no peace. As long as her daughter lived, there would be no alliance. Did I plot to kill them? No. Did I wish for them to be removed? Yes. It is hard to find oneself alone. Loneliness breeds much that is ill. Terrors that would not touch us normally draw close, and fear infects the blood, turning all minor slights into mighty ones. All I had was Henry and Elizabeth, and only one of those people had any power to protect me.
*
With Cromwell’s investigations turning up all sorts of scandal, faith and worship were all anyone could talk of. Two days after the Emperor sailed for Tunis, Cromwell had written to Henry’s bishops, demanding they support the supremacy and weed out those who would follow Rome. Many came out in public support, knowing that if they did not they would be subjected to inspections. Court was on fire with debate, and reformers were bold. At one of the gatherings in my rooms, perhaps inspired by my sister’s secret letters, I spoke to Henry about iconoclasm.
“Whilst I do not hold with men taking matters into their own hands, I can understand the sense in worshipping God over idols,” I said. “Do these sculptures not distract the common people from God? For in our churches there are no images of God the Father, only of the saints, Jesus and Mary. Some ignorant souls look to these idols, my lord, and believe them to be God.”
“I understand what you say, Anne, and I promise to think on it
.” He ran his finger along my hand. “You always know how to word things, so I might understand my people better.” He gazed at me with affection. “But I will continue to keep statues in my church,” he said. “I do not find they detract from my study of the Word of God.”
“Of course, my lord,” I said. “You are blessed with learning and understanding. When I say this of others, I mean those who are not educated… those who rely solely on the signs they see in churches to steer them. For, without a Bible in their own language, what have men to guide them? Those who cannot read use signs to find their path. This is as true of a man trying to find an inn in London, as it is for a soul trying to find God in church. That is why we must ensure that the signs they see are the right ones. Putting statues of saints before such people makes them believe that this is where God is to be found; inside marble, captured within stone.”
“There is something to what you say,” he admitted. “I will speak with Cranmer further on this, as he has said something similar.”