Meanwhile the long-drawn-out drama of King Henry’s choice of a wife was ending. After insisting that a dozen other princesses be considered, he at last gave in to Lord Cromwell’s insistent urgings and agreed to pledge himself to the Lady Anna of Cleves.
To avert war, to assure England’s triumph over enemies whose enormous fleet might yet appear, it was necessary that he submit to a marriage that made him deeply uneasy. And so, Uncle Thomas told me, the king signed the marriage contract.
His brief flirtation with me was over. Anna of Cleves would become his wife. Fortune had decreed it.
“But King Henry may yet choose you as his mistress,” Uncle Thomas told me. “He wants you near him, at the royal court. He insists that if he must marry the Lady Anna, you must be among her maids of honor. Unless this is assured, he will not agree to the marriage. Are you willing to serve the new queen as her maid of honor? I would not advise you to refuse.”
It seemed inevitable to me, in that moment, that I should do as the king wished. As my uncle clearly wished. I agreed.
* * *
We began right away to prepare for the new queen’s arrival. There was a great deal to do, and I realized, as I set about my duties, that it was good for me to be occupied. I had little time to dwell on my losses, my grievances. I was kept busy, kept moving from one part of the royal palace to another, occupied with many different tasks.
My promotion from Grandma Agnes’s household to the royal court meant that I had a great deal to learn. Whitehall was vast, Hampton Court and Greenwich smaller but challenging, with their baffling interconnected corridors and confusing staircases, their warrens of chambers and antechambers. I felt that it would take time for me to find my way with certainty through the royal residences. And I knew that there would soon be another residence: Nonsuch. I was privileged to have seen it, as it were, through the king’s eyes, before it was even built.
A special envoy, Herr Olisleger, was sent from the Clevan court to organize the Lady Anna’s household. He was a short, stout, self-important man of forty, dressed in the outlandish, outmoded garments the Clevans seemed to prefer. He spoke little English and had to communicate with King Henry’s officials and household officers in Latin—and they were overheard to complain, Herr Olisleger’s Latin was hard for them to understand, as it was heavily accented and pronounced in the German manner.
Nonetheless plans were made and many officials and servants appointed—one hundred and twenty-six in all. I could not help but feel a pang as these officials were chosen, wishing that my father, healthy and feeling gratified, had been among them. I was to be one of a dozen maids of honor, Charyn another, my cousin Malyn another. We were to be under the care and direction of a Clevan matron called Mère Lowe, which, we were told, meant “Mama Lion” in the Clevan dialect. Many Clevan ladies were said to be coming to England along with the Lady Anna, and her two sisters, Sybilla and Amelia, and her mother who, it was rumored, had been opposed to Anna’s marrying King Henry.
The late Queen Jane’s suite of apartments was renovated for the new queen’s use, and we were told that as maids of honor we would have two large rooms as our own, plus a smaller one for our wardrobe chests and baskets, and to serve as a sitting room during the day.
Furnishings began arriving, familiar beds and hangings, paintings and silver and napery sent from Cleves to make the Lady Anna’s apartments more welcoming to her. We thought them hideous, but did not say so openly. We speculated among ourselves about whether the new queen’s manners and behavior would be as odd and unwelcome as her furnishings.
And what of the Clevan maids of honor and ladies in waiting? What would they be like? Would they be gracious and accommodating, or unmannerly and domineering?
These were minor matters, we knew, compared to the importance of the alliance between our two realms, and the chain of further alliances that would result from the bond sealed by the coming marriage. All that truly mattered was what Lord Cromwell told Uncle Thomas, a tale that was quickly passed throughout the royal court. It was said that when the Emperor Charles learned that our king had at last chosen the Lady Anna as his bride, he howled in fury, and shouted at his councilors that a breach had been made in the walls of the mighty Hapsburg fortress, and that before long the fortress itself might tumble into ruin.
EIGHT
AFTER months of preparation we were nearly ready to receive Lady Anna into her new home. The late Queen Jane’s apartments were now spoken of as Queen Anne’s suite, and the glaziers had removed all the medallions bearing the initials H and J, for Henry and Jane, and replaced them with new ones honoring H and A, Henry and Anna.
New liveries had been sewn for the grooms and footmen and maids—even the three laundresses sent from Cleves to prepare linens and bedding had new gowns and aprons. The steward of the household, Herr Hoghesten, was installed in his own chambers and the chief cook, Master Schulenberg, was satisfied, or nearly satisfied, with the kitchens and larders and the assigning of places at the newly arranged queen’s table.
We maids of honor, along with the ladies in waiting and the privy chamber women, were given places of respect at the long table, below the steward and the chamberlain Herr Olisleger and Lady Anna’s physician Dr. Cornelius but above the lesser servants, the chamberer and cupbearer and the three chaplains who were expected to arrive from Cleves any day. Mère Lowe, or as we called her, Mama Lion, a tall, strong-looking woman who wound her long grey hair around her head in a bizarre fashion, was in charge of us; we had grown accustomed to hearing her loud, low-pitched voice ordering us to do this or that or correcting us when we made mistakes. Charyn and I were quick and efficient, and rarely displeased her. Malyn, however, grew nervous and confused when in her presence and was often reprimanded.
“But I can’t understand her!” Malyn complained to us, exasperated and worried. “Why can’t she learn to speak English properly! It will be much worse when the German women get here,” was her frequent complaint. “They will all babble away in that peculiar language of theirs, Dutch or German or whatever it is, and we won’t be able to follow a word they’re saying.”
I had already learned a little of the Clevans’ language—I could hardly help learning it, I heard it all day every day—and could not sympathize with Malyn’s distress.
“You just have thick ears,” Charyn told Malyn unkindly. “You need to clean out your thick ears and listen harder.”
By September the last of the obstacles in the marriage negotiations had been worked through, Lady Anna’s small dowry had been put in the hands of the royal bankers for safekeeping, and the marriage treaty itself was drawn up.
King Henry signed it, after being repeatedly assured that his Clevan bride was lovely to look at, sweet natured and of good character.
“Her mother has raised her strictly,” Mama Lion told us—with Herr Olisleger serving as interpreter. “She would never dare to do wrong or disobey. She is modest and quiet—not like you English girls with your loud voices and your wandering here and there. Not like you with your joking and teasing.”
We did joke about the Clevans, behind their backs, and especially about Mama Lion with her heavy, foot-stomping walk and her severe braided hair and commanding low voice, almost the voice of a man rather than a woman. Herr Olisleger too was mocked and ridiculed (the English grooms mimicked him very amusingly), as were the head cook and the few Clevan guardsmen and the footmen, who gave themselves airs and thought themselves superior to their English counterparts.
At least there were no quarrels, or fights between the men of Cleves and our English household members. I hoped that when Lady Anna arrived with her many servants, there would be harmony among us all. With the formal marriage treaty signed, she was due to arrive very soon, leaving the castle of Duren where she had been living and going aboard ship for the crossing at Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee.
She was expected very soon—but in October the harsh weather set in and the sea was too rough to risk the journey. One sto
rm after another delayed her, and while she delayed, King Henry became impatient and worried, bad-tempered, and then ill.
As always when he worried, his stomach pained him and he took cold. Rain spoiled his sport, the harsh medicines his physicians gave him sent him to the place of easement continually and he was unhappy and bored.
He sent for me.
“I am always ready to serve you, Your Majesty,” I said as I was ushered into the presence of the king by Anthony Denny, his lean, suave body servant and privy chamber gentleman.
“He is not at his best, Mistress Catherine,” Master Denny murmured as we entered the room. “I trust you have a fresh pomander with you.”
“Perhaps I shall need more than one,” was my rejoinder as we exchanged a fleeting smile. Anthony Denny, I had noticed, was the most benevolent and accommodating of King Henry’s servants, and was becoming the one he relied on most often to attend to his personal needs. Master Denny was calm and well disposed. I had never seen him act otherwise.
As soon as the king saw me, with Jonah draped around my shoulders, his face brightened. But my own face fell. The king was seated on his close stool, and the stink was intolerable. I reached for my pomander and held it under my nose.
“He trusts you,” Master Anthony whispered. “This is an honor he rarely confers. He trusts few people, especially women.”
“Come closer, Catherine, and sit near me. Bring the little beast.”
I obeyed, though the smell threatened to make me retch.
“They are purging me,” King Henry said. “Dr. Butts and the others. This Cornelius fellow, the German. He’s given me some physick so strong that I have to sit on the stool all day.”
Offensive as the situation was, even after Master Denny brought in a screen to shield the king and give him privacy, I could not help feeling sympathy for the sufferer. I remembered how my father lamented the effects of the medicine he took to purge his kidney stones, and how it made him wet his bed and offend my stepmother.
“Tell me a story and make me laugh, Catherine. I am in sore need of laughter.”
I told him Lord Cromwell’s tale about the Emperor Charles and how furious he was about King Henry’s betrothal to Lady Anna. I lengthened it and added more to it, so that the king was amused for quite a while. He then asked me to bring Jonah to him—but Jonah was too quick. He jumped down off my shoulders and went behind the screen quite on his own. The king called and clapped and encouraged Jonah to come to him and have his head scratched.
“I’ve decided I’m not going to show Lady Anna the building site of Nonsuch,” King Henry said at length.
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Because I only want to share it with you.”
I chuckled. “You don’t want to make her jealous.”
“She won’t know.”
He sighed. “And how is her household progressing? Are all the preparations complete?”
“For the most part, yes. But there are still complaints about Herr Olisleger and Mama Lion—I mean Mère Lowe. They cannot make themselves understood very well.”
“About what?”
“Many things. Recently there has been some question about Lady Anna’s travel. Herr Olisleger is in a conflict with one of Your Majesty’s ship masters, Richard Couche. Master Couche speaks no Latin, and Herr Olisleger speaks almost no English, except to say, ‘Pardon me’ and ‘If my lord pleases.’”
The king groaned in exasperation.
“Must I solve every dispute!”
He sent me to the new queen’s apartments with Father Dawes, who lost no time in realizing that the disagreement concerned which route Lady Anna and her escort ought to take when they left Cleves for England. As Father Dawes explained to me, there were two routes she might take on her journey. She might come by sea through the Zuider Zee and along the coast, then crossing to the mouth of the Thames and going on upriver to the capital. Or she could take the much slower but safer land route from Dusseldorf through the imperial lowlands to Calais, embarking from there to make the crossing.
“Master Couche prefers the sea route, but Herr Olisleger says that Lady Anna’s mother, the Dowager Duchess Maria, has sent him word that she is strongly opposed to it. She says Lady Anna is afraid of drowning. And she might freeze or become ill while on the rough seas. Also the harsh sea air would mar her complexion.”
The disagreement was explained to the king, who shouted and threw up his hands in exasperation.
“Must I debate with the old mother now! First the theologians, then the diplomats and lawyers, and now the old mother of the bride! It is too much!”
He had recovered from his indisposition, and was no longer taking the purgative, but his temper had worsened. I brought him my favorite calming drink, poppy broth, in hopes that it would help him to compose himself. But he took on the quarrel with Herr Olisleger himself—his Latin was fluent—and we maids of honor could hear the angry words going back and forth between the king and the Clevan chamberlain. The queen’s apartments were very near the king’s; what was said in King Henry’s sitting room could be heard in the queen’s bedchamber and private closet.
The turmoil seemed to go on for days. A map of the coastline was brought, and endlessly argued over. The king insisted loudly that his ships would blockade the coastline if necessary to ensure Lady Anna’s safety, and that he would send his own flagship, the Great Harry, to protect her. In the end, quoting Virgil, he accused Herr Olisleger of exaggerating something of little importance.
“The mountain groans in labor, and out comes a silly mouse,” he pronounced in solemn Latin, adding, “No more of this quibbling. The girl will do as I say—if she wants to marry me. She will travel by sea!”
But it did not end there.
On a day of bleak early November rain, a carriage arrived at Whitehall and seven weary travelers alighted onto the muddy courtyard.
It was the Dowager Duchess of Cleves and six of her attendants. We maids of honor hurried to make the newcomers comfortable, while Herr Olisleger rushed to find the king.
“So this is the infamous palace of the infamous king who kills his wives!” the duchess remarked acidly, her voice strident. “And now he wants to kill another one! My daughter!”
So insulting were her words that her chaplain—her interpreter—was reluctant to translate them. But I was able to puzzle out their meaning clearly enough. The dowager duchess was a large, scowling, fleshy woman, her plain face deeply lined, with broad shoulders and big hands and feet. When she opened her mouth her pink gums were bare of teeth, and she whistled when she talked. Her gown of a deep plum color shrouded her body rather than flattered it, and her headdress, in the spaniel-eared Clevan style, did not entirely cover her untidily arranged grey hair. A faint stale odor clung to her; when she passed near me I smelled mold and onions and a whiff of lilac scent.
Mama Lion quickly gave orders and the Clevan ladies were taken to comfortable rooms in the queen’s suite and a cold collation was prepared for them. But the Dowager Duchess Maria was not satisfied until she was presented to the king, whose mood darkened when he was told of the presence of his unwanted guests.
Still, he invited the duchess and her ladies into the throne room where he awaited them, arrayed in a splendid blue velvet doublet winking with gems. Lord Cromwell stood near at hand, along with the mariner Richard Couche and an array of officials. We maids of honor were present to attend to the guests should any need arise.
The ladies entered with a loud clacking of shoes—the Clevans, it seemed, did not believe in wearing soft slippers indoors. The king frowned at the noise, but kept his face set in a forced smile.
The duchess gave only the shallowest of curtseys before addressing the king, in very halting English.
“You wish to marry my daughter, ja? But you also wish to kill her!” Her heavily accented English was extremely difficult to understand.
“I assure you, madam,” King Henry interrupted, “that my only wish is for the safety
and protection of your daughter, who is, after all, going to be the mother of my children.”
“You make her go over the sea! You make her drown!”
“Not when she is traveling with me, dear lady.” At Henry’s signal the ship master Couche came forward, with a bow to the duchess and a deferential touch of his cap.
“I know the waters of the Zuider Zee. I have sailed them. No one has ever drowned who sailed with me.”
“But the cold! But the storm!”
“We will keep Lady Anna and her servants, all her precious cargo, safe and warm in her cabin.”
“But her beautiful face! It is ruined by the sea! So dry, so full of cracks! So dark, like a black duck!”
The duchess put her large hands up to her own ravaged, wrinkled cheeks to show what she meant. I saw the king shudder.
“Madam,” Lord Cromwell interjected, “if you will allow me, I know an apothecary who is wonderful with all manner of unguents and creams—”
“No!” The duchess stamped her foot, making a resounding clatter. “No! I forbid it! She goes in her gold carriage, not in a ship! Not until her gold carriage comes to Calais, the English town! Then she sails quickly quickly across the small water.”
And with that she folded her arms and prepared to stand her ground.
King Henry rose and approached the frowning Dowager Duchess of Cleves, the frozen smile still on his lips.
“Dear lady,” he said cordially, bending down so as not to tower over the Duchess Maria, “you honor my court by journeying all this way to tell me your thoughts. I am grateful. We are to become one family, are we not? Our blood will mingle in the veins of our descendants, will it not?”
She looked up at him suspiciously, then murmured, “Ja.”
The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife Page 13
