In the doorway he paused a moment to appreciate the unexpected scene. The elegant Sir Thomas Wyatt, in slashed silver, leaning over a dark girl in green. Picking out tunes beneath an apple tree. So this was how his gentlemen spent their time while their betters were in conference. And, by Heaven, the young dog had taste! Who was she, now? A slender creature, dappled in sunshine spilling through the quivering leaves. But, of course, she must be the elder Boleyn girl. The other one. The one Sir Thomas had just been talking about.
Henry regarded her with less impersonal interest. He must have seen her before about the Court, he supposed. But some time ago; and always as one of those shadowy females in someone’s entourage; subservient, mute, withdrawn. Never laughing out loud like this in the sunlight. All vivacity and enticement; not a bit like pretty, placid Mary Boleyn.
And she could improvise, too.
Amused, intrigued, Henry walked on towards the thyme bed with that light tread of his. Wyatt, with his back to him, was pattering scraps of verse as the girl composed a tune for them. Neither of them was aware of him until his shadow fell across them.
The girl saw him first. Caught unawares, hostility flamed in her, to be followed by a revealing flush of embarrassment. Instantly, Henry knew her to be virgin. The hostility was for past misuse of her sister, not for present interruption. But she was too quick-witted to leave an awkward situation unmended. With a movement of extraordinary grace, she was down in a billow of green silk at his feet. “God save your Grace!” she breathed. And Henry, standing over her, saw that her body was even lovelier than her face.
“Wyatt, you dog in the manger, why haven’t you presented this lady instead of hiding her under an apple tree?” he bullied pleasantly.
Even that budding statesman’s savoir-faire was taxed. Proudly, yet reluctantly, he did as he was bid, and would have abandoned their pastime politely. But apparently his Grace wished to participate. His excellent memory was beginning to function. “I have heard my sister say you could sing,” he said, motioning Anne to rise.
“Like Orpheus!” murmured her admirer.
“I pray you, how does milady fare?” asked Anne eagerly.
Henry laughed comfortably as he seated himself on a short pruning stool Wyatt had brought. “Like a nesting bird. I saw her at Westropp and she is already big with child.” He helped himself to a medlar, and bit at it appreciatively. “Whose words are those you were trying over? Yours, Wyatt?”
“No, sir. They are the lady’s own.”
Henry was obviously surprised. He himself was no mean versifier. He motioned Anne back to her bough and handed her the discarded lute. There was nothing for it but to play. Improvising a tune for her own poor little ballad before a sovereign who had composed anthems which were sung in all the royal chapels of England! Anne wished Hodges’ well-raked ground would open and swallow her up. But presently they were as happily absorbed in their occupation as they had been before, and Henry was joining in. Experimenting with a note, suggesting a cadence—only most of his suggestions were a good deal better than their own. Once he reached over and took the instrument out of Anne’s hands. If he noticed the little finger she always tried to tuck away, he made no sign. “Try it in B flat,” he said, and picked out the same notes in a minor key. “I believe the whole thing would sound more plaintive and quite charming.”
Henry pretended to no proficiency on the lute, but his ear was trained and perfect. And he understood harmony. He was enjoying himself. He loved music as they did. He had forgotten all about his host and horses, and his young companions had paid him the supreme compliment of forgetting momentarily that he was a King.
He sang the simple ditty through, while Anne, watching his time-beating hand, essayed to play it as he wished. The result was delightful.
“You must play it for my sister sometime,” he said.
He began talking about the effect of the Italian sonnet on English poetry, and questioning Anne about French composers; and it was not until harassed scurryings and alarms made it apparent that half the household was searching for him that he got up reluctantly. “Do they have to make all this hullabaloo? Could not that fool of a governess have told them where I was?” he complained, filling his mouth with another medlar before leaving.
Sir Thomas and Lady Boleyn escorted him to the courtyard; Wyatt and George became courtiers on duty again, and Anne followed meekly behind. She was still dazed from her unexpected experience, and not a little impressed. She had always worked hard at her music and relied upon such accomplishments for social success. Yet here was someone who picked up an unknown ballad and a half-made air and perfected them casually, in an odd half hour—besides being a redoubtable sportsman, a fine Latin scholar, and a King.
Henry mounted flamboyantly, well aware of his horsemanship and the splendid figure he cut. It was only when his mind was set on bigger issues that he did spectacular things with that easy lack of self-consciousness which he secretly envied in trueborn Plantagenets, like the old Countess of Salisbury. “You must bring your daughter to Court,” he told his host kindly, at parting. But as soon as his broad back was turned, Anne threw Thomas Wyatt a rose.
She stood on the terrace watching the gay cavalcade until it had passed from sight through the gatehouse. After the rest of the household had gone in again, she still stood there, looking at the peacocks and the flowers and the butterflies. Just as she had done that first day she had been invited to Court. But now the thrill had gone, and her thoughts were touched with some indefinable sadness. Perhaps, after all, it would be pleasanter to live quietly in Kent. To be a country gentlewoman like Jocunda. To live in one’s own house, without competition. To be content, and stop climbing. There would always be books and music and cultured friends at Allington. And loyalty and kindness.
Once again Simonette was calling her. But this time it was her father who wanted her. Anne went slowly indoors. She walked thoughtfully with down-bent head, indecision on her mind, and a tender smile on her lips. It was not until she was halfway across the Great Hall that she realized that her father and stepmother were waiting for her. It seemed that Jocunda had been arguing about something and had broken off suddenly in mid-sentence.
‘Where have you been, Anne? I sent for you as soon as the King left,” said Sir Thomas, from the dais.
Anne lifted her head and stood stock still, like a startled doe scenting danger. She noticed the rolls of legal-looking deeds spread on the table beside him, and saw Jocunda pull a chair to the light of an oriel window and take up some needlework, as if to disassociate herself from whatever he was going to say. A strange foreboding seized her, weighting mind and limbs. And the foreboding was somehow associated with her momentary sadness in the garden.
“You will be glad to hear that this long dispute with the Butler branch of the family is being settled at last,” Sir Thomas told her, tapping one of the documents. “By the good offices of your uncle of Norfolk it is mutually agreed that the Irish estates are to be shared. That is, when one or two matters are satisfactorily cleared up.”
There was nothing remarkable about that. Anne was his elder daughter, and he often spoke to her about family affairs. “You will be Earl of Ormonde then?” she asked, knowing that the title had been one of the main causes of dispute.
“No,” he admitted regretfully. “But my grandson may be.”
Anne stared at him uncomprehendingly. She turned to Jocunda for enlightenment, but her stepmother avoided meeting her eyes. “Your grandson?” she repeated. “But why not George?”
“Naturally, I should have preferred it that way. But we had to give way about something. That is where Thomas Howard has been so clever.” He came down from the dais and seated himself near her. He looked pleased and genial, but Anne felt that he was trying to wrap up something unpleasant in smooth words. “You may have wondered, my dear Nan, why I had you fetched home from France?” he asked conversationally
.
After a year of Queen Claude’s austerity, Anne’s relief had left little room for curiosity about the reason. “I supposed it was because of the strained relations since our new alliance with Austria,” she said, such matters being but daily bread in an ambassador’s household.
“That certainly furnished an official excuse.” Sir Thomas placed his long, immaculate fingertips together as he frequently did when announcing the outcome of debates. “But on your uncle’s suggestion we are settling these family differences by offering you in marriage to your cousin Sir James Butler, who is, as you know, the Earl of Ormonde’s heir. I was speaking to the King about it only this morning, and he has been gracious pleased to approve.”
Anne’s dreams of a love match died within her as she stood. So this was why her father had left her free so long. Allowing her an extra hour to try her wings; and then bartering her, like all the rest, in the end.
“James Butler,” she repeated, scarcely above a whisper. She remembered him vaguely as a quarrelsome, redheaded little man, with a sword cut over one eye. He lived somewhere in Ireland, and she and George had made fun of him as children. In a detached sort of way, she was grateful to Jocunda for not poking consolation at her by suggesting that he had a nice disposition or wasn’t quite as old as he looked.
She still stood there in the middle of the familiar hall. She had walked in a free woman and now, suddenly, found herself trapped. She knew now what a rabbit must feel like, scuttling busily across a thyme-scented hill and suddenly caught by its soft foot in an iron gin. Not killed outright. But with all future excursions just blotted out by pain. She opened her mouth to speak. To remonstrate. To let loose all the uprising, clamouring rights that filled her. But Jocunda looked up at last and shook her head, and Anne knew that the dear, peaceable woman had already said all there was to say. And that it had been of no avail. How could it be, sneered some savage fury in Anne’s mind, when the Boleyn trap had been baited with an earldom?
But like a foolish rabbit before it learns there is no hope of escape, she made a last bid for freedom. “Thomas Wyatt has just asked me to marry him,” she said, in a voice which sounded too flat and expressionless to be her own.
“You should feel honoured, my dear,” approved her father. “Thomas is a very personable young man and our very good neighbour. He should go far.”
Anne turned to him, her control broken. “The King likes him. He certainly will go far. Will you not let me marry him instead?” she begged desperately.
“Not now. It is too late,” said Jocunda.
Anne found herself down by her father’s chair. Shaking his arm, looking close into his inscrutable face. “But you have always encouraged me to be friends with him, both of you. And you said just now that he is—”
“He is not the heir to an earldom,” concluded Sir Thomas quietly. “But I assure you I have always kept him in mind as a reserve, shall we say?”
Anne watched him smooth out the sleeve of his best doublet which her despairing fingers had crumpled. For the first time she almost hated him.
Chapter Eight
Because the King had invited her, and because her father wished it, Anne resumed her position in Queen Katherine’s household. Court life no longer dazzled or intimidated her. Experience abroad and careful cultivation of her talents made personal success almost too easy. The spur of ambition had gone. Why strive for advancement when life as a maid-of-honour was but a temporary state, and all the hours of every day led to the dull future of undesired matrimony?
She began to spend her talents thriftlessly on present pleasures, seeking popularity among her equals, even neglecting her duties. Living for the moment, and making the most of the months that were left. The precious months while she was still Anne Boleyn, the attractive unmarried daughter of the Ambassador to France. Only her closest friends guessed at those spells of solitary depression hidden between her bursts of reckless gaiety.
“If only they would have let you marry my brother, we could have gone on being together always—you and Thomas and George and I,” sighed Margaret Wyatt, whose presence at Court was Anne’s constant solace.
Margaret took it for granted that her friend was as brokenhearted over Thomas as she herself was because George had been betrothed to Jane Rochford. But in her heart Anne knew that she had never really wanted to marry him. That she had only grasped belatedly at the comfort of his charm and loyalty in the hope that it might save her from the boorishness of James Butler.
She knew that arrangements were being made for her forthcoming marriage, and that tedious litigation would probably insure the earldom to some unborn son of hers and James’. She tried to shut out the thought of him from her mind. Yet there were times when she was obliged to face it. Sitting at her embroidery, afraid to make a sound, while the ailing Queen dozed; and at night, lying awake after the rushlight had flickered out, she would imagine James’ harsh face, close up, making lusty inarticulate love to her, demanding his conjugal rights. She would have to live in an isolated Irish manor where nobody cared two pins whether she could dance or sing, so long as she could renew the family tapestries and breed. In an orgy of self-pity, Anne pictured herself down a vista of years. Always cumbersome with pregnancy, like Katherine. Growing rustic in mind and less lissom of limb, until all that strange sweet power she had over men was wiped out, unfulfilled.
With a man one loved, she supposed, it would be different. The Duchess of Suffolk was delighted with her new baby daughter; and Margaret Wyatt would give her pretty eyes for a chance to produce a small replica of George. But Anne did not want children. The maternal urges of most women were not in her. She knew herself to be capable of lavish giving in some grande affaire; but her nature was not made for the endless, self-effacing sacrifices of motherhood. She often wondered if this were a sin in her, but shrank from confessing it.
Willingly, out of gratitude, she would have given Wyatt children. But that employment of her better nature was denied her. And never had she appreciated him more than in his dignified acceptance of bitter disappointment. Although he saw her frequently in the performance of their several duties, he strove not to pester her with protestations which she was no longer free to accept, yet never ceased to make her feel precious with proofs of his constant regard.
But it was George who understood her best. He knew she had not half the virtues with which Wyatt’s adoration endowed her. And shared experience had taught him that she grieved less for what she must accept through a loveless marriage, than for what she must forego.
“Take heart, my poor sweet,” he whispered, one morning when he came to visit her in the Queen’s apartments at Greenwich. “You see that it has happened to me, too. Imagine having to live with Jane after knowing Margot Wyatt all one’s life.”
“Why could not the Fates decree that James and Jane marry each other, and so leave us free?” lamented Anne. “But at least Jane wants to marry you.”
“And at least through her I shall get back our mother’s Rochford estates,” jibed George flippantly. People waiting upon the Queen’s pleasure in the crowded anteroom began pushing past them, hurrying towards the windows. “Well, let us be merry while we may,” he suggested, leading her towards a group of friends who were watching something going on down in the courtyard. “Judging by the commotion, the great Wolsey has arrived.”
They joined Margaret and a handful of courtiers, most of whom had been appointed to the royal household since Anne went to France. Among them were three of her new admirers. Handsome Hal Norreys, whose cultured mind and charming manners especially commended him to the King; and two gentlemen of the privy chamber, Francis Weston and William Brereton. They all turned to welcome the Boleyns, for both had that indefinable quality which made them the light of any circle in which they moved. And if of late there was a new feverishness about their gaiety, a streak of cynicism in their sparkling wit, it but served to make them the more
modish and sought after.
“Quick, Nan! Here comes the Cardinal!” called Margaret Wyatt, and as usual they all crowded to the open casements as if his coming were the event of the day.
And a fine sight it was in the morning sunlight. The imposing figure in scarlet riding upon a tall, snow-white mule, beneath the wide, tasselled hat which had brought such prestige to England. The long retinue of priests and wealthy pupils and well-fed henchmen. The Palace grooms and baying hounds running out to welcome them. And all the importunate hangers-on who invariably followed the most powerful representative of church and state, filling his legal courts with their pleas or seeking the pontific blessing of his uplifted hand.
“How diverting to see the way half the great families in the country send their sons to be trained in his household now he is both Chancellor and Cardinal,” mused George, looking down upon a veritable colour box of plumed velvet caps and richly hued doublets following immediately behind the display of scarlet.
“It amazes me how he can find time to instruct them,” said Margaret, waving discreetly to some of the young gallants whose eyes boldly raked the casements of the maids-of-honour.
“Besides building a fine new college at Oxford,” added dapper little Francis Weston.
“One day he may go too far and outbuild the King,” prophesied Will Brereton lazily.
“Well anyhow it would be amusing to know whether our wealthy nobility pay for their precious offspring down there to grow up in the odour of sanctity or success,” speculated Anne. “If they did but know it, our young men here in the royal household are lambs of innocence compared with milord Cardinal’s. Are they not, Margot?”
“You should know best, my love,” teased her friend.
Brief Gaudy Hour Page 6
