by Betty Younis
There was no answer to her question and she continued.
“And Cromwell? Where is the Master of the Purse?”
“At Whitehall, Majesty.”
She nodded with satisfaction and dismissed all but one of the women.
“Help me. I must change and leave quickly.”
The woman began unlacing the Queen’s sleeves but mid-point, Anne stopped her.
“No, no, I must think. I can do this and you must go and tell my brother I ride to Whitehall. Tell him he is to meet me there. Tell him alone and no one else.”
The young woman bowed and hurried from the room. Anne continued with stripping off her own clothes until finally, she stood in only a chemise and breeches. She darted into a long room which opened off the main one and served as her wardrobe, then quickly selected an older riding habit. By the time the maid returned, she was dressed and anxious to leave.
“You have told him?”
The woman nodded.
“Now, whenever the king should arrive, tell him I decided to go to London and inspect the plans for my new wing at Whitehall. Tell him I return in one day.”
Again, the woman nodded and Anne pushed her aside as she strode purposefully from the room. She slipped out a side door and after a short directive to the groomsmen, waited impatiently until he reappeared with two horses, one for himself and one for the Queen. With no further words, they galloped towards London. She had not been at Greenwich more than half an hour’s time.
The noon day sun belied the cold, and the blue sky was crisp with frost. Anne rode hard, driven by her thoughts of the morning’s events.
So he has a daughter at Coudenoure – all was just as had always been rumored. After the birth of Elizabeth, in the back hallways and darkened corners of the palaces, she had heard the whispers as she walked proudly past with her royal child in arm. Initially, she had not understood – who was this other child who was more of the king than her own royal-born offspring? Her ladies had ferreted out the answer for her. There was, they said, a child bastard born on a nearby estate. At first, she had let it go from her mind. After all, the king likely had many such bastards. But they continued to bring her tidbits of information and detail about this particular child, and most disturbing of all was what she had seen and felt for herself that very morning.
The woman on the hilltop was Henry in female form – flaming red hair, square jaw and blue-gray eyes. Anne’s steed settled into a steady gallop and she found other details coming to mind. The woman was tall, as was Henry, and had the slimness of youth yet. But there was something more, something ill-defined yet just as tangible as the horse upon which she rode which defined their similarity. She had heard others speak of this quality of personality over the years, and had noted that they too found it a mysterious force, one almost impossible to name. Whatever it was, they possessed it together as father and daughter and it was undeniable. Beyond that, however, was another quality which Henry did not possess – an air of kind intelligence. If he had ever possessed such a trait, it had long since been buried beneath necessities of state. The combination provided the bastard woman a presence beyond what was normally found in anyone, much less a young maid. She had, and here Anne spit as her steed roared on, a certain gravitas, given to those who were in all ways a cut above her own station.
What did this mean for her own child, Elizabeth? Anne had been in difficult positions before and as always, she was confident that if she marshaled her anger and her anxiety, she would find a way through it, one which would put her on the winning side. Her decisions so far confirmed this confidence. They were made with the long game in mind, and there was only one outcome which would satisfy her: this young Constance woman must go, for she posed a threat to her own dynastic plans. Most certainly if she were blessed with another pregnancy she would bear the King a son, but as the years began to slip by that was becoming less and less of a certainty. Even as she rode, she remembered the last in a line of lost pregnancies – it had been a son, and afterwards, for the first time, she found it difficult to keep the king’s attention.
At first, it had meant nothing to her. But as the weeks had progressed, and as Henry had shown no further inclination to come to her bed, she began to feel an anxiety rising up in her chest. It was coupled with the knowledge that Henry’s health was not as it should be. Routinely there appeared on his legs ulcerations which refused to heal and which seemed to sap him of any desire but to dull the pain through eating. His weight increased sharply until it was difficult for him to hunt and joust as he once had, a situation which only exacerbated his problems and his foul moods.
Even if he were to come to her, would there be issue? She was no longer certain, and so her dependence upon her daughter Elizabeth’s position became pivotal to her own security as queen. This Constance must go. But how?
She finally arrived at Whitehall and tiredly dismounted, throwing the reins to the groomsman who had ridden behind her. She went inside and screeched for her maids in waiting to attend her. These were not her most trusted – they did not make progresses with her – but they would have to do.
A long bath and clean clothes helped settle her mind, and she finally sat down at her desk, writing a note for her brother to deliver for her to Hever Castle once he arrived. That done, she dismissed her retinue and went alone to Cromwell’s chambers.
The passageway to his quarters was cold and only dimly lit. There were no rugs upon the cold stone floors, and no tapestries adorned the heavy stone walls. She walked on in silence and the yeomen bowed in deep obeisance as she passed each one. Their Tudor uniforms, red and black with gold braid trim, provided the only color and regalia to her solemn progress through the inmost chambers of Whitehall. Finally, she reached a wooden door guarded by two squires. They looked straight ahead as though not seeing her but bowed as though on cue.
“Where is Cromwell?” She dispensed with his usual title.
“He is not within, Majesty,” came the reply from one of the men.
“When do you expect him back?”
They shook their heads to indicate they were not privy to such matters. Anne spoke in frustration.
“When did he leave?”
“He has been gone only a very short time, Majesty, and he left with a considerable number of account books and rolls.”
So he would be gone sometime, she surmised. With a wave of her hand she ordered them to step aside. As she entered the room, she pulled the door behind her.
What the hallways leading to his chambers had lacked, Cromwell made up for in this, his own private working space. Deep pile carpets, huge and deeply hued in colors of burgundy and blue stretched from wall to wall. There were no tallow candles with their smoke and smell. Instead, beeswax candles with as many as three wicks burned all round and with the fire roaring in the fireplace the room was as bright as day. Leaded windows gave onto one of the many courtyards of the new palace, built onto York Place, Wolsey’s previous London show place. If her intuition was correct, she would find what she was looking for here.
Thomas Cromwell was the king’s great administrator, having supplanted Wolsey in the king’s affections when the latter could not achieve a divorce from Pope Clement. But Cromwell had not stopped with that act of loyalty. It was he who had shuttered the monasteries and channeled their riches into Henry’s coffers. As a result, Henry had more resources, more wealth, than any king before him. And such wealth translated into great power. But regardless of the monies which poured into Henry’s accounts, Cromwell continued to keep the king’s books down to the penny. He had watched good men come and go over issues as simple as a failure to collect the even minute fines and taxes for chasing down some poacher on the king’s lands. Such would not be his fate.
Anne made her way to the huge, leather-bound volumes which lined the wall behind Cromwell’s massive desk. As she suspected, he kept the accounts by estate, and she hurriedly pulled volume after volume from the shelves, looking for one particular account she w
as certain must exist. Half an hour passed, and she stomped the hard floor in frustration – it was not here. She sat in Cromwell’s over-sized chair, considering the situation. Then, in but a moment, she laughed aloud, rose and pulled down from the shelf once again the final volume she had just replaced. She lay the heavy tome upon its front cover, and opened it from the back. Five pages in, she found what she was looking for. Across the top of the page was a single, underlined word: Coudenoure. So he had indeed been true to his suspicious nature and kept an account of the place. Undoubtedly, he did so surreptitiously in the very back of a volume of miscellaneous records of no great importance because he wanted it to remain as the king surely must have ordered – unknown and unaccounted for, secreted away just as his mistress was. But Cromwell could not risk himself and so here lay the account, open before her.
She perused the pages and her anger grew with each entry. Henry had supported Coudenoure for as long as he had been king. Here were books ordered by the hundreds, improvements upon the estate, horses for the stables and kitchen stock equal to or better than that of her own hearths.
“So the mistress Elizabeth is learned,” Anne observed as she read the lists of books purchased or traded. “And she has a taste for rare manuscripts.”
“And here, she must be artistic, for how many canvases and paints! And from Italy yet! Who is this woman who lives higher than the Queen of England?”
But one thing was missing from the inventory – clothes for Elizabeth, Constance and their ladies. She poured over each page carefully, but there was no indication of any such finery purchased for those on the estate. Instead, there was a yearly notation of plain linen brought from France. That was all. There were wages, but only for minimal staff: stable hands, yardsmen, farm workers and smithies, but very little else. There were no charges for guards, and none for yeomen or squires. Anne leaned back and thought. So this Elizabeth, whoever she was, was a learned, yet simple creature. She obviously had no need for trappings, so how then, Anne wondered, had she kept the king dancing attendance and paying for Coudenoure all these years? Her anger and jealousy grew with each entry she read.
So absorbed was she in her work she did not hear the door open and close.
“Queen Anne, and how are you today?” Cromwell had entered the room. Dressed in his customary dark mantle, he looked at her quietly, warily.
She glanced at him deliberately, turned her attention back at the account book with even greater deliberation, then slowly, methodically, tore each page pertaining to Coudenoure from the volume. Looking back at him, she folded the pages and tucked them into her bosom. The vindictive fury evident on her face could have scorched a thousand lands.
“So you know of Coudenoure?”
Cromwell met her gaze and said nothing.
“Your queen has asked a question and you must answer.”
“Yes, Majesty, I know of Coudenoure. ‘Tis one of King Henry’s smallest estates. It brings in no revenue to speak of.”
She shook with silent rage.
“It is the estate of his mistress and his bastard child!” She flung a large china vase into the fire. Still Cromwell held his silence.
“And did you know of the king’s bastard, Constance?”
Cromwell gave her a small, deferential smile.
“Majesty, there may have been many before you, but you know that only you did he make queen.”
Anne was not mollified.
“If the King provides another coin – even a single one – to that place, I order you to tell me of it. Do you understand?”
Cromwell bowed but said nothing. Furious at his lack of responsiveness, Anne struck out and swiped her hand across his desk, creating chaos as his work. His ink, his whatnots, all fell to the floor in a giant splintering crash. She swept out and slammed the door behind her. She careened down the hallway, stopping only when she caught sight of her brother. Pulling him into a nearby chamber, she spoke hoarsely to him.
“My lady’s maid has a note for you. You are to take it and ride to Hever Castle. I need three bowmen loyal to the Boleyn’s and not to Henry, do you hear?”
George Boleyn looked at her in alarm.
“Anne, you cannot strip the king from the throne and put yourself upon it! ‘Tis treason to even …”
“Do not be stupid.” She hit him on the side of the head before continuing. “I have this day found out that the king has a great mistress and a daughter who might one day replace our own Elizabeth in his line. Do you understand now? I must pull the bastard from the shadows along with its mother and expose them at court. Only then will our line, born of a royal marriage, be truly secure.”
He nodded an immediate understanding.
“Where shall they go?”
“Tell them to take a barge, and not one of the king’s, to the bend in the river just before Greenwich Palace. I shall look for them there should their services be required.”
“And you? What is your next move?”
There was no hesitation in her response.
“I shall return to Greenwich, by barge, immediately, and await the king.”
*****
Henry passed under the great arch of the Greenwich Wall at sunset. The day had worn on him badly, and the gentle snow which had begun to fall earlier in the afternoon chilled him to the marrow. He ignored the hordes of mendicants and vendors who pleaded with him to buy this or give aid for that. The saddest simply sat in the mud and dirt, wrapped in filthy rags with their dirty hands extended, as though a small display of alms might change their desperate situations. Surrounded by his men of arms, he was isolated to the extent that he wanted to be from these lost creatures, but Elizabeth always implored him to remember them, and almost without fail, he would pause at Greenwich Gate and throw a handful of sovereigns toward the waiting masses. He did so now before turning away and entering the regally quiet and ordered grounds of his favorite palace. Two beefy guards waited at the main palace entrance to assist him from his steed, and without a word he passed on through the heavy doors. A chorus of musicians and song pealed out from the main hall but he ignored it, as he did the myriad calls from maids and courtiers for the king to join them. Not today. His leg ached and as he moved step by slow step up the central stairway, he shouted for his doctor. It seemed an eternity before his men completed his disrobe and eased him into his new copper tub before the fire. One end of the bath abutted an interior wall and two faucets extended from it – one for hot water and one for cold. The hot water was fed from a hearth on the floor above, and Henry was thrilled with this particular renovation of his. As the water filled the tub around him, the aroma of medicinal herbs began to float upon the air. He sat with his leg on the edge of the bath and his doctor examined it as Henry drank the first of many glasses of wine.
“Well, Dr. Butts?” he asked. “And what do you find? Will the medicinals you put in my bath water be of help?”
“Let us hope so, Majesty.” He looked up at Henry. “You have a recurring ulcer, and you must take care that it not become infected again as it did last year.”
“And how much are you paid for such sage advice?” Henry smiled at the man, for he knew well there was no cure for the pustulating sores which afflicted his lower extremities. “And bleeding? Should we bleed them?”
The doctor shook his head.
“No, I think the problem lies not with the king’s diet but with the king’s mood.”
Henry listened intently as the steward refilled his glass and the doctor continued.
“You must get out more and enjoy the fine air of the county,” he began, “…and you must engage in sporting diversions, for we all know the salubrious benefits of exercise to your person.”
“‘Tis difficult, doctor, at my size,” Henry observed.
“Well, to a lesser man, perhaps, but not to the King of England. Now, enjoy your bath and let your mind wander to pleasing thoughts, for anxiety is the devil of the flesh.”
A loud knock on the door interrupte
d the sermon Henry was about to receive, and without warning, Anne appeared. The men present bowed and scraped their way from the room, and Henry pulled a cotton throw over the top of the tub.
“You did not ask permission.”
“Nor did you.”
He looked at his queen sharply. She was about to pounce but he was ignorant about what. Henry realized, however, that she was angry enough to ignore the sanctity of a man’s bath in order to claw at him. Her dress was of an older style, the type she usually reserved for days when she would not be out and abroad, and her look was disheveled – the hem of her gown was muddied and still damp from some adventure unknown to Henry. He wondered idly what was coming his way, what was so important that she could not robe herself appropriately nor soothe her own anger.
“Nor did YOU!” Anne repeated her previous statement but with an ominous tone.
“I ask permission from no man, and certainly not my wife, for anything. What is it on your mind then?”
She looked at him with smoldering eyes.
“Coudenoure.”
Henry cocked his head. So the Queen had learned his secret. Even though she said nothing more than the name, Henry noticed that her breath was hard, shallow and rapid. He was tired and had no desire to engage in the discussion she was apparently determined to have with him. His voice was weary with fatigue.
“What do you want, Anne?”
She threw back her head and gave a dramatic laugh.
“What do I want? Why, Henry, I want many things.”
“List them.”