The sobs of her sister, Mary, had almost faded from Anne’s mind.
But then she would overhear Henry speaking sarcastically to the Queen or snapping at Wolsey’s lumpish secretary. And her courage would fail her.
And so the weeks went by, and the first month of summer brought her father home from France. She and George met him warily. He was affectionate and affable, and mightily set up because new honours awaited him. His travelling days were done and he was to be created Comptroller of the King’s household. George and Anne perceived sadly that their days of liberty were done, too. He would always be at hand, controlling their lives. Almost the first thing he did was to arrange a grand wedding for his son and Jane Rochford. But oddly enough, although he must have needed his share of the Ormonde estates to go with his new position at Court, he said nothing more about Anne’s marriage.
“Perhaps your Irish cousin has had the bad taste to prefer someone else, and your father puts off telling you,” suggested Percy, deceived by Sir Thomas Boleyn’s suave manner into crediting him with a compassion which Anne was beginning to learn that he did not possess.
“It could be,” she admitted doubtfully.
“And then my father might repudiate this contract with Shrewsbury’s daughter in view of the fact that your mother was a Howard.”
It sounded more than ever like clever bidding at a cattle fair.
“Anything may happen,” agreed Anne, echoing her lover’s optimism without conviction. But whatever happened now would be too late to rid her brother of Jane. And it was Jane who ultimately betrayed them.
It happened at Greenwich, during that idle hour of a summer afternoon when people talked in desultory groups or strolled about the gardens. The young Princess Mary and Henry Fitzroy were playing hide and seek among the bushes, and several of the younger courtiers had been inveigled into the game. Margaret Wyatt and George Boleyn, who both adored children, had joined in with zest; Thomas Wyatt had been pressed into acting as umpire. Anne and Percy stood talking by the sundial. Only the new bride, Jane Rochford, feeling piqued and neglected, beheld their happy absorption with an envious eye and noted how, after awhile, they wandered away down the river path towards a little grotto where a lewd stone cupid spouted water into a lily pond.
The children’s excited shrieks and George’s ready laughter rent the drowsy hours. The aged Countess of Salisbury, that authentic Plantagenet to whose care Mary had always been entrusted, sat watching them, surrounded by her ladies and her dogs. And presently at the height of the fun, the King and Wolsey came across the lawn from the Council Chamber, followed by the new Comptroller, a pack of solemn councillors, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk—everybody, in fact, who mattered. But there was no need, it seemed, to stop the game. Henry was in benign humour and he, too, loved playing with children. He stopped, with all his splendid entourage spread out like a peacock’s tail behind him. “Run, Harry! Catch the wench!” he exhorted his handsome, misbegotten son.
But the royal wench was too quick for him. With a flash of pale blue satin she emerged from behind a fat dowager’s skirts and touched “home” at the sundial. Everybody laughed and clapped, and Wolsey, who was Mary’s godfather, made his master a graceful compliment. “Now it’s Fitzroy’s turn to hide,” decreed Wyatt. And, guided by some spiteful imp of fate, the lad must needs make his way down the grassy path towards the grotto.
Mary Tudor counted twenty, lifted her flushed face from the beloved Countess’s lap, and listened. Unerringly, she followed the direction from whence came her playmate’s whistle. Grownups who were taller than she could see him dodge from behind the bush she was making for and double further down the river path. George Boleyn stopped laughing and moved, as if by accident, to block her way. Casually, Thomas Wyatt and Norreys joined him. Together they formed a brightly hued group almost screening the little grotto from the King’s vision. Supposing them to be on her side, the child would have allowed herself to be quietly headed off.
“Keep your hounds to the right scent! The stag’s at bay!” rallied the King.
“I can’t find him anywhere!” panted Mary.
Jane Rochford caught at her flying sleeve and pointed.
“Quiet, little fool!” muttered her husband, trying to glare her into obedience. Even then it did not occur to him that anyone would betray his sister intentionally for spite.
But Jane only showed him the tip of her pink, contemptuous tongue. She would teach him to neglect her, spending all his time with his proud sister and that soft lovesick piece, Margaret Wyatt! “Look, your Grace! Up there by the Cupid grotto. Can’t you see the bushes move?” she whispered.
It was too late to warn the lovers then. Straight down the path ran Mary. Fitzroy escaped unseen, but she pulled up triumphantly at the grotto, thinking she had found him. With eager arms she pushed aside the sheltering branches of a yew tree. “Nan Boleyn!” she squealed in surprise. “Oh, Mistress Anne, I’ve caught you instead!”
She had indeed.
At first she had not noticed Lord Percy, standing there beside her mother’s embarrassed maid-of-honour. And, as far as she knew, there was no particular reason why he should not be there. But a sudden silence must have warned her. She was a singularly intelligent child and not vindictive. In her half-understanding of the situation, she would have turned away and gone on searching for her playmate.
But the King had looked up quickly when she called Anne’s name. He had seen her standing there and thought it part of the game, admiring her lifelike assumption of dismay. But then Nan Boleyn was a clever girl! “You’ve run a pretty quarry to earth this time, poppet!” he called out, with his hearty laugh. “But your stag seems to have turned into a startled fawn.”
No one seemed to echo his laughter. Only Cromwell gave vent to a nervous, ill-timed snicker. And as Mary turned away Henry caught sight of Northumberland’s redheaded son. In the confined space of the grotto he was perforce almost touching Anne. His face reflected her abashed dismay, and his whole bearing had all the possessive protectiveness of a lover. Henry’s own face darkened like clouds before an approaching thunderclap. His fair skin reddened as if someone had made a bad joke at his expense. He turned abruptly from the afternoon’s merriment and walked on towards his private apartments, leaving his daughter disappointed and amazed. The countenances of the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn were a study as they tried to keep up with him.
As their ways parted, Henry bade the Cardinal a curt good-bye. “The young fool is of your household,” he barked. “Look into it, milord.”
And before going on to the Watergate, Wolsey turned and said something to Cavendish.
Anne, herself, scarcely knew how it had all happened. One moment she had been in her lover’s arms, enjoying a few stolen moments in the seclusion of the grotto. All around her had been shouts and careless laughter. And then quite suddenly the King’s daughter had pulled the branches aside. Mary had stood there, with a bramble scratch on her face, panting and friendly. And in her surprise the silly minx had called her name. Called it aloud so that the King could hear. And then there had been an awful silence, and people staring. Someone had giggled; and Anne had felt like a kitchen slut taken with some scullion. She had seen the King glaring at them, and had wanted to call out that in the midst of so much greed and intrigue their love was the one clean, beautiful thing. And when he had turned away without a word, she had been desperately afraid.
She had caught sight of her father’s face—white, angry, and contained. Of her brother and sister-in-law glaring at each other as if they had quarrelled. Then everybody seemed to melt away. The fragile Plantagenet countess had gathered together her ladies and her dogs. And the children, aware of one of those inexplicable blights which grown-up people sometimes bring, had suddenly tired of play and gone off together to watch the watermen turning Wolsey’s barge against the tide.
And here was Percy’s friend,
whispering something to him and hurrying him away. He must follow the Cardinal, and leave in that barge for London. At the moment of parting Percy had pulled her to him, warming her with passionate lips. But he had looked grave, and dared not stay. “Keep up your heart, for it is mine,” he had said. And then he and Cavendish were gone, too. Everyone was gone.
Anne would have hurried along the path to follow him. But dread dragged at her feet. When she came to the sundial, she stood alone and hesitant where so much gay company had lately been. The sun was already slanting westward behind the pinnacles of the Palace towers and their long pointed shadows lay across the grass. She shivered as their chill pierced her sun-warmed body. If Wolsey had sent for Harry Percy because the King had ordered it, she would indeed have need to keep up her heart.
Chapter Twelve
When the Cardinal came again Anne looked in vain for Harry Percy. All morning the Queen kept her in attendance while she dictated letters to her secretary. She was more exacting than usual, and obviously worried. Ever since Wolsey’s visit to France she had been writing privately to her nephew, the Emperor. Whether Katherine knew about the French Princess’ portrait or not, she must have felt that the diplomatic visit boded her ill. And with the uncanny swiftness of such rumours, words dropped in the Cardinal’s household about some secret matter of the King’s had already become whispered gossip in the Queen’s apartments.
Her own entourage were horrified and indignant. Even people who did not particularly like her heard hints of her downfall with pity. But Anne Boleyn, longing to be free from her orders, knew only irritation. Her own plight was so much more pressing, so desperate with the egoistic urgency of youth. A dozen times or more she ran surreptitiously to the windows overlooking the garden. Other gallants from York House dallied with other maids-of-honour, but nowhere could she see her own. They would all be leaving presently, and if the old harridan kept her much longer she would know nothing of what was happening to him. And all her future happiness might depend upon it.
“If he be not there, seek out George Cavendish,” she had managed once to call down to Margaret Wyatt, who was keeping watch for her in the garden.
And at last Margaret had come to relieve her. “Say that you have a migraine. Say anything,” she whispered, taking the Queen’s box of wafers from her friend’s hands. “Cavendish has at last got away from that taskmaster Cromwell. He is by the garden gate.”
Anne hated malingering to a mistress whom she had seen many a time attending public functions whilst in direst pain. But her strained white face was a sure advocate. Instead of going to her room, as the Queen had given her leave, she crept down the back stairs. People were coming and going through the gate, and Cavendish drew her into the herb garden. “I promised Percy I would try to have speech with you,” he said.
“What news have you?” she asked breathlessly.
“None that is good, I fear. But he sent you his undying love.”
The words had an ominous suggestion of finality. “He cannot come again?” she stammered.
“The Cardinal has forbidden him to see you. He is virtually under arrest.”
“Oh, God have mercy on us!”
They had to speak in whispers because Donna Maria da Salinas and the Queen’s confessor were strolling in the garden. Anne strove her utmost to be calm. “I beseech you, Master Cavendish, tell me everything.”
“That afternoon when the King saw you in the grotto, we had scarcely stepped ashore from the barge at York House before Wolsey sent for Percy and told him that he had given offence to his Grace.”
“How did he take such interference?”
“Proudly, so that I was glad to be his friend. He held up his head, and although he spoke respectfully he showed defiance.”
“He would! He would! But how do you know?”
“Wolsey rated him before us all. It is a way he has.”
“How Harry must have hated that!”
“His Eminence says it makes for humility.”
“Which he has not himself!”
“Yet loses no opportunity to point out to us how he, who once rode the proudest chargers, now bestrides a mule like any parish priest.”
“A mule that cost as much as most men’s horses and looks well against his scarlet vestments! It is all part of his showmanship,” scoffed Anne, forgetting that she had once believed him to be kind. “But go on, my dear one’s friend. What did this swollen upstart say next?”
Cavendish stubbed at an unoffending root of marjoram with a fashionably shod toe. “It will not please you,” he warned.
“No matter. I must know.”
“He said that Percy had demeaned his state as heir to one of the noblest earldoms in the Kingdom by dallying with ‘that foolish wench yonder in the Court’.”
Anne’s pale face flushed scarlet. “Wolsey, the upstart son of a butcher, dared to say that? God in Heaven, give me patience!”
“You asked me, Mistress Anne.”
“I know. I know. Forgive me.”
“I do assure you that although some think Percy haughty and too quick with his blade, most of us could have struck his Eminence for that.” Cavendish stepped out from their retreat for a moment to make sure that the Queen’s friends were out of earshot, and then took up the tale. “His Eminence went on to say that the King had previously been very well disposed to Percy, and would have advanced him. But that now, by the King’s orders, he would be obliged to send for his father out of Northumberland.”
“Send for the Earl!” gasped Anne, who had come to cherish a secret terror of that almost mythically fierce personality.
“And that, if that didn’t bring him to reason, the King would have him punished.”
Anne moaned and covered her face with her hands. They now had the herb garden to themselves, and her companion drew her compassionately to a nearby seat. “It appears that the King and your father have some other man in mind for you,” he said.
“That will be my cousin, James Butler,” agreed Anne drearily.
“I make no doubt of it. Percy knew of it almost from the first, didn’t he?”
Anne nodded, and sat staring at the sweet-scented parterre of thyme and rue and fennel before her. “Did Wolsey say how soon it was to be?”
“It appears that the King had declared himself almost on the point of bringing the matter to a conclusion, and that for some reason he himself intended to advise you of it. In such a way, he said, that you would be glad and agreeable to it.”
“Glad and agreeable to marry James Butler!” cried Anne bitterly. “What sort of man-starved frappet does he take me for?”
“Percy answered right arrogantly then. You know that way he has of standing with his hand on his dagger and tossing back his hair? ‘Am I not a man grown?’ he demanded, almost baring that blade that has killed a mort of lawless men in the keeping of the King’s Marches. ‘Old enough to fight his Grace’s enemies and my father’s, and fit to take a wife of my own choosing.’
“‘But she is already chosen for you, as you well know,’ says milord Cardinal. ‘Was not Allen, milord Shrewsbury’s chaplain, sent to you but a few days since to talk of this matter?’
“Percy fairly snorted at him, ‘Chosen! And what a choice! After Mistress Anne, who is straight and slender as a birch tree, with skin and hair like ivory and moonlight—though she be no earl’s daughter, but a simple maid.’”
Anne’s dark eyes glowed with joy. “He said that to the great Cardinal? Before you all!”
“Yes, and milord Cardinal sneered in that smooth way he has. ‘Simple maid, prithee!’ he said. ‘The simplest thing about her is that she has but a knight to her father.’”
“Oh, Master Cavendish! How I hate him!”
“But Percy was quick to defend you. ‘What, is her lineage less than mine, even when I come into my full estate?’ he cried. ‘Was not her mo
ther of Howard blood, own sister to the Duke? And is not her father heir general to the Earl of Ormonde?’”
“And then I suppose Thomas Wolsey began prating about my paternal grandfather being but a mercer, and Lord Mayor of London,” raged Anne, who had many a time had to bear the spiteful taunts of the blue-blooded Grey sisters and of Jane Rochford.
“So he did,” admitted Cavendish. “And then shifted his line of attack and said that in any case your father had already promised you, and that the King was privy to it.”
It was all past bearing. Anne sprang up impatiently. “But Harry Percy and I—Surely Harry told the Cardinal that we two—”
“Of a truth, Harry told him.” Cavendish rose and faced her. He had seen the incredible thing happen. “It is not easy to tell so haughty a man as the Cardinal anything. He does not wait to listen to the opinions of others. But Percy stopped him, almost standing in his way as he would have swept out of the chamber. ‘Sir,’ he persisted, ‘How was I to know the King’s mind in this? And, not knowing that his Grace was interested in the matrimonial affairs of Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter, I have already contracted myself to her. We have for weeks past sought each other’s company before witnesses as promised man and wife. I have already gone too far to be forsworn.’”
Anne hugged her arms across her heart, almost dancing in her proud delight. To be loved like this, by a man of Percy’s high temper, was worth everything. His love was like a golden cloak about her, making her impervious to other men’s anger. “He said it before you all! In spite of our both being betrothed elsewhere, he had the courage to claim me!” she cried. “Did not that shake milord Cardinal?”
Cavendish hated to damp down the flame of her precarious joy. “But little, I fear. Only as the irritation of a fly that can be beaten off, or squashed. ‘Foolish boy!’ he said contemptuously, brushing him out of his way with a swish of Italian silk. ‘Do you suppose that the King and I know not means to deal with such matters?’”
Brief Gaudy Hour Page 10
