Moth To The Flame

by Angela Warwick

  At once a hubbub of excited voices rose about her. Raising her eyes to Wyatt’s once again, she saw in his face that which she had been desperate to know still existed. Despite all that they had been through, both together and apart, he still loved her. With a start she realised that his continued affection meant more to her than anything in the world; even her desperation to bear the King a son paled into insignificance beside Wyatt’s love.

  Although she threw herself wholeheartedly into the preparations, she found her eyes continually searching him out so to allay any suspicions she made a concerted effort to mix with all present and not show favour to anyone in particular.

  The play was rehearsed time and time again; indeed the idea was two weeks old before Anne decided that all the players were sufficiently accomplished to risk a public performance.

  Finally, the evening before the court was due to leave London bound on its summer progress, the play was performed before a delighted assembly. Anne excelled as the maiden in distress and Francis Weston was totally evil as the dastardly dragon; whilst handsome William Brereton played Anne’s saviour with great panache.

  As the flushed and excited performers took their bows before the appreciative audience, Anne was surprised to see that the King was applauding most enthusiastically of all. Lifting her head, Anne looked into his eyes, pouring all her mysterious sensuality into one intense expression. The King leered back at her, then holding her gaze, clapped harder than ever.

  Anne was content. She felt that she had ensured his visit to her bed that night and hopefully she had inspired the sap in him to rise so strongly that at last their prince would be conceived.

  Anne, sure in her own mind at least that she at last carried the heir, made a scintillating companion on the summer progress. Henry caught her abandoned mood and together they enjoyed some of the happiest times since their marriage.

  It was at Wolf Hall in Wiltshire that Anne’s merry mood rapidly evaporated for it was there that she found she had not in fact conceived as a result of Henry’s enthusiastic attentions on the eve of the progress.

  Her disappointment was so great that she found it impossible to hide and became sullen and argumentative. The King was thrown into an equally tetchy mood and felt himself rejected which prompted him to look around for some small diversion. Anne was aware that his eye might wander and remembered too late just in whose house they were lodged. Their host was Sir John Seymour and it was his daughter Jane who had been the subject of the last violent disagreement between the King and Queen.

  At twenty five years of age, Jane Seymour was still unmarried, but behind her meek and mild countenance there lurked a shrewd and calculating brain. She had failed in her previous attempt to lure the King and made up her mind that she would not fail again.

  Carefully she watched the Queen, quickly ascertained her moods, and then set out to be Anne’s exact opposite. Anne, being mostly irritable and sour, allowed Jane the golden opportunity to be bright and sunny tempered, which she seized gratefully with both hands.

  The King became so absorbed with the daughter of the house that when the time came to leave Wolf Hall, he commanded that Anne appoint Jane as a lady in waiting. ‘Lady in waiting for what?’ Anne asked herself, but feeling totally dejected and defeated, she could do nothing but accept the girl.

  Once back at court the relentless wheels of fate rolled slowly on. History was seen to repeat itself as Jane, openly pursued by her lustful King, primly returned all of Henry’s gifts of money and jewels, solemnly declaring that no man could buy her virtue.

  Each day, Anne dragged herself from her bed and steeled herself to face yet another day of the Seymour’s relentless competition. Was this how Catherine had felt as she had been ousted from the King’s affections by Anne herself? The only small consolation was that the King rigorously continued with his regular nightly visits to her, so not all hope was lost.

  Day followed miserable day; making a supreme effort to be bright and charming towards a man she had grown to hate, and who certainly no longer loved her, was totally alien to Anne’s nature, but somehow she achieved it. Nights were even worse, pretending a passion she did not feel. Then a morning dawned when she was too ill to leave her bed, her head swimming every time she tried to stand. It was late afternoon before she felt able to rise and even then she felt uncharacteristically sluggish and nauseated.

  Although hardly daring to hope that her object might at last have been achieved, she was obedient to her body’s promptings. She stayed in her bed for the best part of three weeks, keeping Jane Seymour especially close and occupied, only finally emerging after a successful consultation with her physician. The prince was on his way at last.

  Still feeling very weak from her extended bed rest, Anne made her way unsteadily through her outer chambers, intending to find the King and inform him of the happy news. But at the door of an ante chamber she stopped dead in her tracks, blinking in disbelief.

  Oblivious to any passers-by, Henry was blatantly caressing and kissing Jane Seymour, whilst she, brazen hussy, sat unashamedly on his lap with her bodice in disarray and her arms around his neck.

  “So this is how you spend your time whilst I am sick!” Anne cried.

  At the sound of her voice, the guilty parties leapt apart and Henry rose to his feet. Walking past him to the cowering Jane, Anne hissed “You were always the one to make the most of your opportunities were you not? Even the last time you were here you did your best to come between the King and me. And now, the minute you escape your duties in my sickroom, here you are again, whispering and pouting in private whilst primly flaunting your chastity in public!”

  Anne stepped back and surveyed them both triumphantly. “Well I am afraid your hand is played out Mistress Seymour” she crowed. “I have outwitted you yet again for in seven months’ time I shall give birth to the King’s son!”

  Chapter 31 - Failure

  On 9th January 1536 a message reached the court that at last sad, obstinate Catherine of Aragon had released her hold upon life.

  Henry shed a few crocodile tears, stating to all who would listen that she had been a good woman, and then ordered new yellow garments for himself and Anne. For yellow was the colour of Spanish mourning, he twinkled, carefully omitting the fact that in England yellow was the colour of gladness.

  When Anne was brought the news, she cried loudly “At last I am free; the only true Queen in England no matter what my enemies may say!” Then turning to Margaret Lee, who of all her ladies was never far from her side, remarked “But although this should be one of the happiest days of my life, I cannot truly rejoice. Catherine’s death only makes my private position all the more perilous!”

  Margaret was close. “How so, Anne?” she questioned. “You cannot deny that you have prayed for her death these many years”.

  “Yes Meg, but think! You know how relations between me and the King have been slowly worsening since the birth of Elizabeth. And then, after I lost his six months son he told me he would give me one more chance to produce a prince. If I was to fail again, he swore that it would be the worse for me!”

  Margaret’s face registered shocked surprise. “He said that to you? A woman who had recently suffered so cruelly in fruitless childbirth? How could he be so callous?”

  “He has many facets to his character, Meg” Anne murmured. “Sometimes he is cruel and coarse; at other times the most kind, gentle and cultured man a woman could wish for. The trouble is, I never know which man I will get; he is never the same for two days in succession”.

  “And you yourself are so changeable” Margaret observed.

  “Precisely” Anne agreed. “We are similar in that respect but sadly our good moods never seem to coincide these days as they did in times past”.

  “Then you are afraid he wishes to be rid of you?”

  “I am sure of it” Anne replied. “And now Catherine is dead he can put me aside with a clear conscience should he so wish. Whilst Catherine lived I was safe,
for if he wished to divorce me he would have been forced to take her back. I have terrible dreams and visions when I am alone at night! I am sure some terrible fate will befall me if I do not carry this son to term!”

  Margaret could see by the tell tale high colour of Anne’s usually pale complexion, and by the way that her expressive black eyes protruded slightly, that she was close to another bout of hysteria. Such outbursts had occurred all too often since Anne became Queen, Margaret remembered. It was imperative to distract her from such destructive thoughts, but to tell her to calm herself and think of the child would be to topple her over the edge of her reason.

  Walking briskly to the chamber window, Margaret observed brightly “The gardens are looking charming; it is inordinately warm for early January and a walk would do us all some good”.

  Anne mutely nodded her assent so Margaret quickly called other ladies to assist her in dressing the Queen warmly for a short stroll.

  It was indeed a most pleasant walk and Anne and her ladies returned from the palace gardens with glowing cheeks and frost tinged veils. The weather was really not particularly warm; Margaret had made that comment purely to lure Anne away from her misery. It had worked though; the inconsequential chatter of her younger maids had amused Anne, who kept her eyes averted as much as possible from the figure of Jane Seymour walking quietly at her left side.

  Whilst the weather remained kind, with just a nip of frost in the air, Anne insisted on a daily walk for her health. And it was walking thus in the gardens towards the end of January that Anne received the calamitous news which wrecked all her hopes.

  The King had organised a joust, promising to take on all-comers whether they be courtiers or commoners. Anne, in an uncharacteristic expression of wifely concern, had warned him to be careful in the slippery conditions. He had promised to take the utmost care, kissing her heartily on the lips as he prepared to leave for the tilt yard. “You too must take care” he told her solicitously. “For you are shortly to become the mother of my prince and together you will be the jewels of my kingdom!”

  Anne had nodded her head ruefully as he had left her. ‘The jewels of the kingdom’ she muttered, more to herself than any, laying her hand on the bulge of her four months child. ‘Certainly the boy will be of far more import to the King than the mother who bears him’. Then sighing gently she had summoned her ladies and prepared for her daily stroll.

  It was strolling thus some time later that she heard a great tramp of feet approaching from behind. Half expecting it to be guards come to arrest her, she spun round awkwardly, but smiled with relief to see it was merely the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk accompanied by her father and lesser minions.

  However her smile of relief faded as she read their serious expressions. “What is it!” she cried in alarm. “What has happened? Not the King?”

  “He had had a serious accident” Norfolk burst out, never the most tactful of men and careless of the shock it would cause to her in her delicate condition. Both hands clasped to her mouth, Anne said nothing, watching his face fearfully. “We fear he may be dead” Norfolk continued lamely, “or at least even if he has survived the fall, it is possible that he will not regain consciousness. The accident came about when …”

  Anne heard no more. Visions of a future without the protection of the King assailed her. She would be alone and hunted; hated as she was by her enemies within the court and the common people. Her child would never be born for surely the pair of them would be murdered before she had a chance to give birth. The grey landscape in front of Anne’s eyes turned rose pink, then darkened to an inky blue. She had a vague awareness of the pathway tilting up to meet her before she hit the ground with a sickening thud.

  When she regained her senses she was lying on her bed with her ladies fluttering anxiously around her. Despite her very public resentment at being merely the King’s brood mare, her thoughts flew immediately to her unborn child. She searched the faces around her, moving from one to another until she found Doctor Butts, then weakly motioned him closer. “Doctor Butts” she murmured. “Is the child safe?”

  It was with great relief that she heard him say “Your Grace has had a severe shock but happily it does not seem to have affected the royal infant”.

  “Thank God!” she sighed, relaxing into her pillows. Then suddenly she remembered the reason for her faint. “The King! What of the King?” she cried in alarm.

  Her physician gritted his teeth. He had very much hoped that she would not ask about the King; he had hastened to give her a potion to make her drowsy and muddle her thoughts the moment her consciousness began to return, hopeful that she would remain docile and calm. However, she was the Queen and if she demanded to know the condition of her husband, he had no choice but to tell her. “He has not yet regained consciousness, Your Grace” he told her gravely.

  With a swiftness which belied her drugged state, Anne swung her legs to the floor and attempted to stand. However in her haste she had mistaken the footstool beside the bed for the firm floor and as she applied her weight to its edge, the stool catapulted away, causing her to fall heavily to the floor. Again she lost consciousness.

  When she awoke for the second time, there was no need for her to ask about her child. She knew by the ominous pains gripping her body that the shock of Henry’s accident coupled with two heavy falls in consecutive hours heralded the onset of her labours and sure death for her prince.

  So tiny was the infant that she barely felt it pass from her body, although she knew from the whispering voices and hands about her that the moment had come. Jane Seymour’s foxy little face swam into Anne’s vision. “A little boy, Your Grace” she said harshly, making no attempt to mask her triumph. As Anne’s loyal ladies removed Jane forcibly from the chamber, she called back over her shoulder “Yet another dead boy!”

  Anne pulled herself up the bed with difficulty. Looking towards her kind Doctor Butts she cried “No! Please tell me it was not a son! Please say it was a girl!”

  Coming swiftly to her bedside Doctor Butts awkwardly begged her to calm herself. Distraught and hysterical she clutched at his robe, drawing herself close to his face. “Tell me it was a girl!” she pleaded. “That is why I have come to this. It was a girl, was it not?”

  His face grimly set, Doctor Butts cleared his throat then gently prised her fingers from his clothing and eased her back on to her pillows. “It was difficult to tell” he admitted slowly. “The child was not … whole”.

  She stared at him, horror-struck, then whispered “You mean it was deformed?”

  “No, no” he soothed. “I believe the infant may have been dead for some little while, long before you fell. It seems that your body had been in the process of breaking it up prior to expulsion”.

  She could well imagine it and grimaced delicately, huge tears rolling soundlessly from her eyes. “So you could not tell its sex?” she asked in a faint voice.

  “It is difficult to be sure” he admitted. “But the evidence does point to the child having been male”.

  Anne could take no more; she closed her eyes, turned her face into her pillow and gave herself up to the bitterest grief she had ever experienced. She was in her twenty ninth year and past her prime. Even if Henry was disposed towards giving her another chance, her childbearing history looked like following a course distressingly similar to Catherine’s before her.

  A gentle hand was lifting her head, wiping away her tears and replacing her tear sodden pillow with fresh linen. Anne opened her eyes expecting to see a member of her family or Meg but instead fastened upon the smiling face of Jane Seymour. “I have conveyed the news of Your Grace’s unfortunate occurrence to the King” she whispered, viper like. “You will be delighted to hear that he appears to be recovering, for his accident was not as serious as first thought. He was not … very amused, shall we say, to hear that you had cheated him of his son yet again”.

  With strength she did not know she could possible muster, Anne lifted her hand and slapped
the Seymour’s long nosed face as hard as she could. With some sort of savage pride she surveyed the wheals her rings had made on the soft white cheek, then raising herself on her elbow, screamed “Get that slut out of my sight! Away, I say, before I squeeze the breath from her sly little body with my own bare hands!”

  Days later the King hobbled painfully across the threshold of her bedchamber, his leg heavily bandaged and the pain of his injury written across his face.

  Anne, who was fast recovering, glanced fearfully up at him, waving her women away from the bedside. “I was so worried for Your Grace… “ she began humbly. Henry silenced her with an irritable wave of his stick, which caused him to place his full, not inconsiderable weight upon his bad leg.

  He swore horribly, then limped to within inches of her. “You have killed yet another boy, I hear!” he snarled, displaying broken yellow teeth, his stale breath fanning her face. “I told you to take care, but you insisted on rambling around slippery paths in wintry weather!”

  “It was not my walking which brought me to this” she protested. “My concern for your safety prompted both my falls and the cruel way in which my uncle of Norfolk broke the news of your accident helped my condition not at all!”

  He regarded her silently for some moments before speaking in a voice thick with contempt. “It becomes increasingly obvious to me that any boy I give you will be killed long before his time by your shrewish ways and violent tempers. You have squandered your last chance Madam; you will get no more boys by me!”