Brief Gaudy Hour

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  “Will your Grace have the candles lit?” asked Anne timidly.

  Mary did not move. “No, child,” she said listlessly. It was her last night in England.

  Anne advanced uncertainly and laid the leather-bound book on a table. Deftly, the slender fingers of her right hand found the place. “Will your Grace have me finish the ‘Roman de la Rose’?” she suggested.

  “Not tonight, after all, I think.”

  It was then that Anne saw the tears on her mistress’s cheek. She stood very still, trying to assimilate a depth of grief she had never experienced. Humbly, she recalled how it had felt, parting from Jocunda; but this was something more. And her young heart hurt with sudden generosity beneath the tightness of her bodice.

  “You had better have someone to pack your trunks, Anne Boleyn. The wind abates, though it still looks very rough.” Mary turned her head and smiled bleakly, without trying to hide her tears. “Shall you be sick, do you think?”

  “I have never had occasion to know, Madame,” stammered Anne. Queen Katherine of Aragon would never have asked one of her younger women so homely a question. Nor let them see her weep.

  Anne closed the French book. She had ceased to be the clever new maid-of-honour, dramatizing herself. By thinking of someone else, she was bringing the background of her life into reality. “May I play to you, Madame?” she ventured presently. Above everything, music was the thing these half-Welsh Tudors loved, and it was the one kind of consolation which she, in her insignificance, could offer.

  “Play that thing the King composed about ‘Adieu, mine own lady,’” Mary bade her.

  Anne was glad that Thomas Wyatt had taught her the song at Hever. She needed neither lights nor score. Indeed, she was happier thus, because of her deformed finger. She took the lute into sensitive hands and played, sometimes softly singing the words. In the informality of the hour self-consciousness fell from her, so that a new tenderness informed her tutored skill. She realized that her mistress was bidding a wordless farewell not only to a beloved brother and to England, but to all her dreams. For her there could be no splendid lover, only a grotesque travesty. She went on playing softly until approaching footsteps intruded on their shared mood. Footsteps, voices, the tail-end of one of George’s audacious jests, and then a deep, boisterous laugh. The King’s laugh.

  Mary roused herself instantly and stood up, dabbing at her eyes with a gay silk handkerchief, and motioning to her inexperienced maid-of-honour to withdraw a little.

  Anne laid aside her lute and went to stand dutifully in attendance near the door, as she supposed Jane Dacre or even the Greys would have done. She saw the Princess reach for her headdress and wondered if she should have helped her put it on. But before anything could be done about it, the door swung open and the room was stabbed with a pathway of light, warm, golden light from upheld torches, momentarily illuminating a group of courtiers waiting outside. And through the pathway of light came Henry Tudor.

  “What, all in the dark!” he exclaimed, in his hearty way.

  Charles Brandon of Suffolk followed him, and a brace of servants sidled hurriedly past them to light some of the candles on the table and poke the fire to a blaze. They did not stop to set tapers to the wall sconces, and when they were gone and the door was shut again the centre of the room was lighted like a stage.

  Henry moved with a quick, light tread surprising in one so powerfully built. His hugely puffed sleeve brushed Anne’s arm as he passed. Although her black dress was as one with the shadows, for the briefest moment his light, observant eyes appeared to be aware of her, so that she wondered hopefully if he had heard her singing his song or if he recognized her as Mary’s sister. But he was so accustomed to a fringe of lesser people waiting upon his occasions that their presence meant no more to him than the lifelike figures embroidered on the wall tapestries behind them. Even within his family circle, a waiting woman more or less neither concerned nor curbed him. He went straight to Mary and clipped her in a brotherly embrace; while she, who was short and inclined to plumpness, reached on tiptoe to kiss him, French fashion, on either cheek.

  “Milord Admiral tells me if this lull continues he will be able to set sail tomorrow,” he said, still holding her before him by a hand on either forearm. “You’ll not be afraid?”

  And Mary Tudor’s candid eyes had looked back fearlessly into his quizzing ones. “No,” she said, with that air of almost boyish gallantry that so became her.

  Anne Boleyn kept very still, watching the intimate scene from her humble stance against the arras. Never before had she seen the King away from Court functions, quite closely, like this—closely enough to catch each inflection in his voice and to watch the least flicker of his sandy lashes. He was everything that people had said, and more. More powerful, more ruddy, more dynamic. The Duke of Suffolk was handsomer, to be sure, and almost as tall. And he was probably the most important man in the kingdom, except Wolsey and her uncle of Norfolk. Yet somehow even he served only as a foil to his friend. For like all redheads, these vivid Tudors had a way of making other people look drab and colourless.

  Anne watched them with profound interest—but not, of course, in the same way that she often watched their squires and young attendants, picking out possibilities of romance. To Anne, at eighteen, the King and Suffolk were just two important people approaching middle age. Public characters, of whom one stood vastly in awe.

  “As I came through the anterooms I told your wardrobe women to have everything packed overnight,” announced Henry briskly. And in spite of his regal gorgeousness, Anne was surprised to recognize a kind of forthright homeliness about the man.

  “Can you be ready before dawn?” asked Suffolk, more gently.

  The King had gone to warm himself before the fire, and Charles Brandon’s brown eyes were bent solicitously on Mary. But she did not look at him; only at her brother’s broad, unrelenting back. “I can do anything that is required of me,” she said.

  If Henry noticed the tension in her voice, he gave no sign. Possibly he felt that if he turned his back on suffering it would not—for him, at any rate—be there. Or preferred to steer the conversation towards suffering which he could by no means have prevented. “The reports have come in about those two ships wrecked against the jetty,” he was saying, with a gusty sigh. “Sixty of my sailors were drowned. I must tell that competent secretary of Wolsey’s to send some money to their widows.”

  “You have pity enough for them,” said Mary.

  The rebellious words seemed to be dragged from her; and suddenly the room was charged with emotion.

  The King swung round like a gilded vane slapped by the wind. It was so unlike this even-tempered sister of his to speak with bitterness. If it had been sharp-tongued Margaret of Scotland now . . . “What can I do?” he demanded, angrily. And yet one could see that he, too, was deeply moved.

  Pressing further into the shadows Anne Boleyn held her breath. It wasn’t every day one heard someone taunt the King.

  But there was to be no quarrel. Perhaps the Princess knew that this was really the best way to treat him, if one dared. “You know that I was obliged to arrange this marriage for the sake of an alliance with France,” he protested, with dignified restraint. “You don’t suppose it’s easy for any of us to part with you, do you?”

  “Greenwich will be deadly without you this Christmas,” said Suffolk.

  “It’s always deadly now,” complained Henry. And then, as if the thought of a sick wife reminded him of his own grievances, he added plaintively, “I, too, had to marry where I was bid—only it was Spain that time.”

  “Oh, Harry, I know!” Mary was all warmly human at once. “But Katherine used to play with us. She was already our loving sister-in-law. And Louis is so old.”

  “The sooner he will die!” snapped Henry, strolling to the table to pick up the book of French poems.

  “And then we sh
all have you back again,” soothed Suffolk, quick to cover up the brutality of the words. Again he tried to attract her attention, and this time a long look passed between them. They must have known each other intimately for many years, and it was almost as if he were willing her to do something. Mary glanced at her brother, who stood browsing through the pages, his appreciation already half caught by the beauty of some well-known line. She held her head high. One could almost see her taking her courage in both hands. “Harry!” she began tentatively.

  At the urgency in her voice he looked up, a finger still marking his place. “Well?”

  “I hate leaving you. You’ve always been more to me than the others. And I do know you had to arrange this marriage. But there is just one boon I would ask before we part.”

  He put down the book and came towards her. “Anything, my dear.”

  But her eyes still implored him, “As you love me, Harry—”

  The words were scarcely audible, and he stood staring at her in perplexity. And presently she went down on her knees, her brocaded skirts billowing out about her, and caught at his hand. “You know that I will do this if I must, for you and for England. And that I will go through with it proudly, in a manner which will never shame you. I will do everything to please Louis. Tomorrow I will obey you. Only give me this one hope to take with me. That when he dies and when I marry again, I beseech you, Harry, let it be someone to please myself.”

  It was a long time before the King answered, and still she clung to his hand. Anne fancied there were tears in his eyes. “What do you think, Charles?” he asked at length.

  Suffolk started a little, as though he had expected to be the last person to be consulted. “It seems reasonable,” he stammered, the words half smothered in his fashionable spade-shaped beard.

  “Holy Mother in Heaven, make them let her!” prayed Anne, trying to imagine what it must mean to a woman to be bartered twice.

  To her relief the King bent down and raised his sister to her feet. “Very well, you minx, I promise,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t bear to do things by halves, he laughed boisterously and bade Charles be witness to it.

  “You hear, Charles, how generous he is?” echoed Mary, between laughter and tears. “Oh, Harry, it will be so much easier to be kind to Louis now!”

  She ran to a little side table and poured three glasses of wine. Charmingly, she handed a glass to each of them. And gallantly they drank to la nouvelle reine Marie.

  “And if you are bored by an old husband, I pray you, don’t beguile the time by making eyes at his handsome young nephew, the Dauphin,” teased Henry.

  It was almost dark and the chapel bell began to ring for Vespers. “Well, we must be up betimes,” he said, setting down his empty glass with a yawn. “And for all friend Louis’ infirmities, I should advise you to get some sleep while you can, sweet sister!” He tweaked her lovely hair in passing and dug Suffolk in the ribs. “I know if I were your bridegroom you’d have need of it, eh, Charles?”

  He chuckled, well-pleased with his own magnanimity, and waited while Suffolk bent courteously over her hand. “I shall come aboard to see you both off,” he promised, laying an affectionate arm about his friend’s shoulder as they went out together.

  Almost before they were gone Anne noticed that the Duke had left his fine fur-lined cloak lying over the back of a chair, but she did not dare to call out or run after him. Majesty had too lately left the scene. Even Mary herself still stood in the middle of the room, staring a little dazedly after them, as if there were more she would have said. The tall candles on the table made a ravishing picture of her ruddy hair and creamy skin. And suddenly a swift, wordless drama was enacted before her maid-of-honour’s astonished gaze.

  The door opened hurriedly and, with a word of apology to someone outside, Charles Brandon strode back into the room and gathered up his cloak. Mary Tudor did not move, and as he passed her he pulled her close against himself and, with one wary glance towards the half-open door, kissed her passionately on the lips.

  Taken off her guard, Mary tried to push him from her—to warn him that they were not alone. Not a word was spoken, but he turned to follow the direction of her warning glance. His hands dropped from her waist. “Mary Boleyn’s sister!” he muttered with an oath, when his eyes had had time to pierce the gloom.

  Seeing their dismayed faces, Anne wanted to cry out. To swear that never would she betray their love, no matter how near the King her sister was. But instead she stood waiting, dumbly, as if it were herself who was in fault. For the first time since she came to Court her wits deserted her and as he passed her, Charles Brandon looked straight into her frightened face. His own was full of malevolence. He brushed her aside brusquely as if she stood between him and something he strove for. Even after the door closed behind him, Anne felt cold with his suspicious anger.

  She went slowly to her mistress.

  Mary stood twisting her rings. “What you have seen, child, is nothing evil. I would not have you think that, for your own sake as well as mine,” she said, picking her words with care. “The Duke and I have always known each other, and I have always cared. When I was even younger than you I used to hide letters for him in all sorts of places about the Palace. It was exciting and a little dangerous. And now—” Mary raised her eyes and looked straight at Anne. “I love him, but we have never sinned.”

  To see her was to believe. Her quiet statement had more weight than any protestations.

  All the opportunist in Anne Boleyn ran hand in hand with her affection. She kissed her mistress’s hand impulsively. “What I have seen, Madame, is none of my business,” she said.

  Right from the outset, it seemed, the new Queen of France would have need of her and of her silence.

  Chapter Four

  Anne’s gaudiest hours began in France. Louis’ Court was a dazzling parterre of pleasures for her delectation. Like the bright butterflies at Hever, she had emerged from her chrysalis of adolescence to sip heady essence from them all, and to flutter her wings awhile in the warm sunshine of success.

  All the splendour and wit of Paris scintillated about her, and she served a Queen whose love of gaiety matched her own, and Mary had shown her special favour. Not merely calculated favour for her silence, but favour with affection.

  It was Anne who had helped her to bear the Duke of Suffolk’s departure, since she alone knew what it meant to her. And when the jealousy of his own people forced Louis to send most of his new Queen’s women home again, he suffered Anne to stay. Because of her fluent French, Sir Thomas Boleyn told her. Father and daughter had both called down further blessings on the diligence of Simonette, and though Mary raged at finding herself waited on by foreign strangers, Anne was secretly glad. All those impressionable French gallants, she thought—and just one English maid-of-honour!

  And apart from that one arbitrary act, Louis had been exceedingly kind. Not only had he loaded his “fair Tudor rose” with costly gifts, but for her sake he had pinned all sorts of belated reformations upon the remnant of his misspent years. He adored her, and merely by being her lovable self she quelled the brutish in any man who cared for her. She never indulged in tedious religious discourses, as so many modern women did to advertise their learning; and she seldom appeared shocked. In a land of light love affairs, she laughed merrily at most of the lewd jests told at Court, but herself remained un-smirched. And Anne Boleyn was clever enough to take her cue from one who seemed to have solved the problem of being both irresistible and chaste.

  There were few restrictions in Queen Mary’s household, yet those who served her knew the grief it would occasion if they erred. Besides which, Anne had the grace to remember that she was daughter to the Ambassador from the Court of St. James. All that she did could bring fame or shame to England. And blithely as she enjoyed the sophistication of Paris, the quiet gardens of Hever had helped to mould her heart.

 
She was very careful not to err. But it was not always easy. She was too talented, too quick of wit not to draw attention. Even, at times, the Dauphin’s dangerous attention. And with each conquest her strange beauty bloomed less fitfully. When ardent young men forsook acknowledged beauties and pressed about her for favours, Anne began to understand that there was something which bewitched them more than classic colouring and features. Some elusive charm which stirred their sex upon the briefest encounter. Something which she possessed and must learn to wield adroitly. When some enamoured courtier presumed too far, she would glance at him with that devastating sidelong look of hers, provoking him to desire, yet keeping him uncertain of fulfilment. But there were those, more bold or more experienced, who soon taught her the necessity of hiding her own too warm response beneath a deceptive show of coldness. Not just to tantalize, but to save herself from shame.

  Life in France was teaching country-bred Anne many things. Among them, the quickness of her own desires. But she was shrewd enough to recognize them as a weakness—a mortal enemy which might at any moment betray her, undoing all the carefully built up perfections of her other parts. So she bound her sexual impulses with strong cords of fear and prayer and self-interest, and pushed them, like a caged beast, into some limbo of her being, so that no one would guess at their exuberance and so that her own pride could usually forget their power.

  For Anne was beginning to know herself, although as yet she did not recognize the elements that warred in her. It had not occurred to her that the cultural urges which Simonette had implanted, the suave vaulting ambition of her father and her stepmother’s good middle-class moral code were elements that made her character more complex than it need have been. That they had made her a prude, capable of being consumed by passion. That because of her father’s diplomacy she was growing into a woman who might lie to others, but on account of Simonette’s clarity of vision she was already incapable of deceiving herself. Always she would be sure of her own motives, so that the comfort of sinning unwittingly was forever denied her.