by G Lawrence
“I will visit soon, with the King’s permission.”
“You have mine to visit whenever you wish,” I said. “I would have her know her friends.”
But George shook his head. “The King has said that any noble, even Boleyns, must ask permission before visiting the Princess,” he said. “He fears sickness might be taken into her house.”
I frowned. Another order I had not heard about.
*
Cromwell’s men, led by Richard Rich, were busy that March, setting out to get men to swear the Oath of Succession. And our sagacious Cromwell was moving on other matters too. Fisher’s illness in the latter half of the year just passed had prevented his arrest in connection with Elizabeth Barton, but that March Cromwell had a special Bill of Attainder drawn up against the Bishop, More, and others, accusing them of complicity in Barton’s crimes. This was passed in Parliament, and Fisher was sentenced to forfeit his personal estate and to be imprisoned at Henry’s pleasure. It was said a pardon would be granted on payment of the sum of three hundred pounds. Thomas More was to face an investigation.
It was also suspected that Fisher had been secretly communicating with the Emperor, asking Charles of Spain to invade and depose Henry in combination with an English uprising. This could not be proved, but it made Henry more determined to see Fisher surrender and swear the oath.
As we waited, I requested that Lady Margaret Douglas be moved into my household. “It is only fitting,” I said to Henry as we watched my ladies and his men dance in my chambers. “You said she would serve me one day. Lady Douglas is my niece, after all. As a princess of the blood royal, her place is at court, and in my household.”
“I would like to see more of her,” Henry said, a sloppy smile spreading over his face. “My little Margett. Although her mother has disappointed me in the past, I have high hopes for her daughter. She is a fine girl.”
“Then we should have her at court,” I said.
I confess I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to punish Mary. Even if Margaret was no longer in Mary’s service, she was at Hatfield. Removing her would pain Mary, and perhaps show her that whilst I had offered friendship and reconciliation if she would recognise me, to do otherwise would earn her more heartache. What is more trying to a lonesome girl than to lose a precious friend?
God forgive me. I think sometimes that was one of the wickedest things ever I did. I stole a friend from a lonely girl.
“It is also best that she comes to court,” I said. “She is now closer to the succession than Lady Mary. It is time she was taught how to perform her role, seeing as she will always be close to the throne, and to her cousins, our children.”
“Her education has not been neglected,” said Henry, sounding a little angry. “She served my sister, who was once a queen, then both my daughters.”
“Now she will serve another queen,” I insisted. “One who is still a queen, not one who was Queen but for a few months.”
Henry’s face darkened. However angry he had been at his sister during her lifetime, he would not countenance her being slighted in death. “You should have more care of your tongue, madam,” he said shortly. “You speak too wild. It is not befitting of your status, nor becoming to your honour.”
With that, he rose and left abruptly. His men followed him and my ladies were sad to lose a pleasurable afternoon in the company of Henry’s gallants. I watched him go and felt anger rise in me. I have taught him to be the King he is, I thought. Yet he would instruct me in how to be a queen…
He has always been that way, said Katherine’s voice. He thinks he is wise, learned and respected.
Then he is a fool, is he not? I asked my personal phantom. Both voices sniggered in my mind.
There were other changes in households as winter drew to a close. Late that month Norfolk and his Duchess separated, swearing never to reside in the same house again. The defiant Duke kept his mistress, Bess Holland, at court in the place of his wife, and to everyone’s surprise, Bess became fast friends with her lover’s daughter, Mary Howard. Mary had no love for her mother. She thought her shrill, embittered and lacking in joy. Bess was her opposite. She was gay, sweet and joyous to be around. It amazed me that such a soul could love my uncle, but it seemed she did love him and he her. When they were together neither had eyes for anyone else.
“Perhaps the happy qualities in Bess make up for those lacking in Norfolk,” I said to my sister-in law as we watched my uncle and his mistress.
He said something and Bess laughed so heartily I thought she might bust the bodice of her gown. She seemed happy in his company, yet I wondered about her, about all women like Bess. Women, especially those of the lower orders, became skilled at convincing their noble lovers of their affection. Sometimes it was a matter of survival. Would she, this once-laundress, have had any true say in the matter once my uncle had beckoned? Most unlikely. Many women in similar situations made the best of what Fate dealt them. I wondered if this was as true of Bess as it was now of me.
“Perhaps,” said Jane. “Some women know how to make men love them. Others were never taught this skill.”
As she spoke, her eyes moved to George, standing, as ever, in the midst of a sea of ladies. As he moved, they moved. It was as though he were the only real person there, and all others were his reflection; bound in servitude to follow him until the end of days.
“Why do you not go to him?” I asked.
Jane stared at me, her bright green eyes sad. “If I went there,” she said. “He would come here.”
I put a hand on hers. Jane had done much for me over the past months. In some ways, I felt closer to her. We both had been hurt by our husbands. We both had to suffer knowing they were untrue to our love. I wondered at times whether she felt more for me now, too. At last she had seen me vulnerable, not the strong, desired, all-powerful woman I had once been.
“It makes no matter,” she said. “Long have I known my place.”
I envied her in that. I did not know what my place was. I teetered on a cliff top of Henry’s love, not knowing from one day to the next if I would fall.
The Duchess of Norfolk moved to a rented house in Hertfordshire and started to write endless letters to Cromwell, complaining about her reduced status, and accusing Norfolk of beating her. I have no doubt it was true. My uncle had a hot, violent temper, and I had more than once thought he would strike me in the days before I was Queen. Henry’s love had prevented him from bashing my brains out with his walking stick, but as his wife, Elizabeth Stafford had nothing to protect her. It was the right of husbands to correct their wives. Many women had to suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands, sanctioned by law and the Church.
The Duchess demanded financial retribution. She claimed the night before they separated, Norfolk had locked her in her chamber, and stolen her jewels, clothes and money. She claimed she was a prisoner at her house in Redbourne, as no one but Norfolk’s servants dared visit her. She was kept poorly, she protested, not in keeping with her upbringing or status. My aunt even claimed that Norfolk had dragged her from childbed by her hair and thrown her around the house, wounding her head with his dagger.
Although it did not stretch my imagination to think my uncle was capable of beating his wife, I did find this one accusation hard to believe. Why would Norfolk have been in the birthing chamber at all? And why would he have beaten a wife in childbed?
“She claims it was just after the birth,” said Cromwell. “When he found she had borne a girl.”
I looked away. Should I think myself fortunate my husband had not done that to me when Elizabeth was born, if this was how the birth of a daughter afflicted men? Although this cleared some of the issues up, it did not explain why Mary Howard supported her father against her mother, nor how a woman with the sense and beauty of Bess Holland loved him.
“My mother gave as good as she got,” Mary confessed when I questioned her. “I do not mean to shock you, Majesty, but our house was not a happy one. I do not deny m
y father was cruel to my mother. I often saw him beat her. He would drag her before all the servants and us children to teach her a lesson. But she would shriek and cry at him before others too, lash him with her hands, claws or throw anything in grasping distance at him. They beat each other, for they hated each other. However unhappy a truth that might be, they are better apart.”
Norfolk flatly denied he had ever dragged his wife about after childbirth. He said the scar on her forehead was the work of a surgeon who had opened it to release a swelling caused when she had two teeth drawn. He freely admitted he had chastised her, and in front of their servants, but since that was his right, there was nothing the law could do against him. Mary and her brother, Surrey, sided with their father. The Duchess, my old enemy, was left to languish in the countryside. I should have exulted at her misfortune, but something inside me told me she had been punished already, perhaps too much, for any sins she had committed.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Whitehall Palace
Spring 1534
“Take me to the King, at once,” I commanded. I had just had news that Suffolk’s sole male heir, Henry Brandon, was dead. Although a part of me was pleased to know Suffolk’s hopes for the throne were at an end, I knew Henry would be distressed. It was not long since we had lost his sister, and now her only son was dead.
“There are still the girls,” I said. “Your nieces, Frances and Eleanor. Take comfort that the bloodline of your sister will live on through them.”
Henry clutched my hand. “Aye,” he said. “Although sometimes it seems all we are left with are girls. Where are the boys of my fine house?”
“There is a half-Tudor prince in Scotland,” I reminded him. “And another, just here, my lord.”
He caressed my belly. “Here is my hope,” he said. “And my sole comfort in this hard world.”
Am I not your comfort anymore? I thought. There was a time when you said I was all you needed. A time when you told me I was all you could ever want.
*
The arrival of Margaret Douglas at court was carefully timed to coincide with that of the Scottish Ambassador, Sir Adam Otterburn. With relations between Scotland and England unsteady, I invited the ambassador to my quarters so he might see Margaret there. I thought seeing a princess of his country in Henry’s court might well convince the ambassador we wished only for peace with his nation.
Margaret was a beautiful creature; impudently pretty and brim-full of wit. Her mother, Queen Margaret, wrote, hailing me as her “dearest sister” and asking me to care for her daughter. I would have done so in any case. From the first moment, Margaret and I got along. She was playful, bright and intelligent, could play any instrument handed to her and had a merry, sweet voice; all virtues I admired. She became fast friends with Mary Howard and Bess Holland and seemed to leave her friend, Lady Mary, behind with ease. Being gracious and charming, she also proved an immediate hit with the men of court, who not only admired her beauty and talents, but her pedigree. My uncle Thomas Howard, Agnes’ son and the much younger half-brother of Norfolk, could not steal his eyes away.
But as this happy season unfolded, I became aware that Henry was absent more than he was present. I sent my sister Jane out to discover why, and I did not like the answer.
“Joanna Dingley is now a Parker,” said Jane. “I am told the King sent a gift of money to her husband upon their marriage and Norfolk has taken them both into his house.”
What a fool I was. The mother of all fools. I had allowed my traitorous heart to convince me that this affair was over, but Henry had kept it going, under my nose, in my own home.
Again I was humiliated. Again, my heart broke. By God! All I wanted was to take up a dagger and cut Henry’s heart from his chest. At least then he might have some understanding of what he had done to me.
Was there anything left of my heart? When I thought of all I had done against Katherine and her daughter, I wondered if my heart had become black as a rotten apple on the ground in November.
I thought longingly of Hever. Of days long since passed when everything was simpler, cleaner than it was now. Once I had thought the court was my home, but much had altered. I yearned to return to the home of my family, to find a scrap of my old self, she who had thought the world would change for her, still wandering in my mother’s rose gardens. That passionate girl… where had she gone? When had her belief that the world would alter at her bidding departed? I knew now that I had to change, and I did not welcome that thought. How much of myself would I have to alter in order to survive? Would there be anything left of me?
I knew not, and suddenly I knew I had to hold on to something, some light, some path… some honesty. I had to keep the best of me alive, even if there were some things I would never be able to change.
A pain passed over my belly, as though my child felt my heartache. “Fret not, little one,” I whispered. “Your father is false, but I will ever be true.”
*
“I wish you were not going,” I said to my brother as he came to take his leave. “Every time I look around you are running off to France.”
Although I had viewed François’ decision to prevent his cardinals voting on Henry’s marriage as, at worst, a neutral position, Henry was suspicious. Henry thought François should be providing committed, enthusiastic support. It amazed me, at times, that Henry’s view of the world should be so blinkered. Whilst it is normal for a king to expect devotion and loyalty from his subjects, to demand that a prince of another, greater, nation should do the same was nonsensical. But that was what Henry wanted. George was being sent, with Sir William FitzWilliam, to convince François to abandon Clement and declare himself free from Rome. They were to tell François he should invade Milan, and arrange a meeting between François, Henry, myself, and my old mentor, Marguerite the Queen of Navarre. If this was not enough, Henry also wanted François to swear he would not give his daughter in marriage to James of Scotland.
Not surprisingly, the mission was a secret, and George was not looking forward to it. He had had many dealings with François in the past, and was a skilled ambassador, despite his green years, but to get François to agree to break with Rome, reject papal authority, allow Henry to dictate the marriages of his children, and invade Milan, effectively declaring war on Charles of Spain, was a heady, if not utterly insane, list of demands.
“Believe me, sister,” George said. “I would rather stay.”
“You can only do your best.”
“The best of most men is not good enough for the King.” George sat beside me. “I fear, sometimes.”
“I will always protect you,” I said. “And the King must know his demands would test the skill of any ambassador. Fight hard and he will be satisfied.”
“Although I value your love and support,” George said, “at times I wish I were not your brother.” He smiled as my face dropped. “Not because I do not love you, Anne, never think that. It is just… our connection makes other men, jealous men, believe the only reason I hold my posts is because of you. They doubt my skill, yet fall hard and heavy upon me for any failure. I must work harder than any man at court, and will always be found wanting, no matter what I achieve.”
“Then you would that I should not protect you?” I asked, plucking Purkoy from the floor. “I can try, brother, but to deny such natural impulses is like teaching a sheep to dance.” I stroked Purkoy absently, and he settled on my lap. His large eyes closed, and soon he was twitching, chasing imaginary hares in his dreams.
“Perhaps we should just agree to protect each other,” said my brother.
“Did we not swear that, long ago, when you stole eggs from a nest and gave them to me?” I asked. “How I longed to be a boy on the day I saw you scampering up that tree! I was not allowed to climb.”
“That did not stop you the moment Mother was out of sight, despite your skirts hindering you.” George chuckled. “Bold as a cock you were, Anne.”
“And when you came down from th
e tree, you made me swear to protect your spoils as though I were a general,” I said. “I swore fealty to you, as you swore loyalty to me.”
George kissed my hand. “Once sworn, never forgotten,” he said. “I am yours, sister, until the end of my days.”
“As I am yours, brother.”
*
“Fisher will be taken to the Tower,” Henry said to Cromwell. “He can join his good friend, More.”
Cromwell’s men had come to report that the Bishop had refused to take the Oath of Succession, again. There was also suspicion Fisher had been more deeply involved with Barton than he wanted to admit. More had been taken to the Tower but a few days ago. He had attended Mass on the morning Cromwell’s men came to hand him a summons to appear at Lambeth Palace and swear the oath of succession. He returned to his house, spent the night in prayer, went to Mass again, then bade his family farewell. More knew he was not likely to come home.
He sailed downriver from Chelsea, to Lambeth Palace, Cranmer’s seat as Archbishop. There, before Cromwell, Audley, Cranmer and the Abbot of Westminster, More read aloud from a copy of the Act of Succession and compared it to the oath.