A comic picture flits through my mind of her valiantly defending me from the hot advances of the king.
Rumours about her have circulated for years, linking her name with Henry’s in their youth. She was and still is a good-looking woman, but Henry swears there was nothing between them beyond a few dances. I choose to believe him; it is hard enough to imagine Mary in his bed, let alone my mother. Poor Henry, what is it with him and the Boleyn women? I wonder what he makes of Grandmother.
The whole situation suddenly strikes me as ridiculous and a bubble of laughter escapes me, making everyone look up from their dinner.
“What is so funny?” George asks, his eyebrow quirked, ready to share the joke.
“Nothing, nothing at all.” I look into my bowl where slices of carrot swim like fishes, the candlelight dancing like sunshine on the surface of a lake.
“Are you all right?”
I drop my spoon, splashing soup over my bodice.
“Yes, yes. I am fine, just a little headachy after the ride.”
George leans toward me. “Anne, are you sure? You look hot, and your hands are trembling.”
He is right. I clench them together for a moment before trying to pick up my spoon again. It is heavy, as heavy as lead. I drop it again and slump back in my chair. “Perhaps, George, I am not myself after all. Could you help me to my bed? I do feel suddenly so very tired.”
I stand up, my chair falling backwards, and sway on my feet, grabbing for the table. Everyone leaps from their places. George’s hand is instantly beneath my elbow, and Mother calls for a servant to stoke the fire in my chamber. Father stands anxiously at the door, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, his face white, his own hands shaking like one palsied while my brother ushers me from the room. Only Grandmother remains at table. Unaware of the drama around her, she stoically spoons up her soup, slurping like one of Father’s hounds.
I suddenly feel very tall, as if my head is several yards from my feet and my knees do not belong to me at all. Although my head feels light, my neck is not strong enough to hold it up. Just as the room is about to tip over my head, George whisks me into his arms. He takes the stairs two at a time, yelling as he goes for someone to summon a doctor.
Rivers of ice run through my veins and I cannot control my shaking limbs, not even when they tuck warm bricks beneath the blankets. I am so very, very cold, and I know I will never be warm again.
I throw back the blankets, my mind teeming with demons, the people around me made monstrous by my imaginings. “Henry,” I cry, and grasp his hand tightly when he comes to me. “Henry, don’t let them hurt me.”
“No, hush,” he replies in George’s voice, and I remember Henry is far away, cowering from the fever with his accursed wife.
For an instant I recall I am at Hever and I am ill, and then I plunge once more into the nightmare. Thin spiteful fiends are torturing me, they prod me, pull me. They tie a metal helmet about my skull, a helmet that seems to grow ever smaller, shrinking, pinching my brain, my head pincered in a huge claw – excruciating pain.
Someone places a damp cloth upon my brow, I smell lavender and marigold and I am in the garden with Henry again, his big laugh filling my ears, his hand warm on my arm.
“She is hotter than ever.”
The cloth is removed, another applied. I toss and turn like a lost soul at sea, my bed heaving and lurching beneath me.
“She will never be queen,” someone sneers, “she is just a whore, like her sister …”
I sit bolt upright, yelling at Henry to lock them in the Tower. But he laughs at me and the whole court joins in. Queen Catherine looms over me like a giant while I grow very small, as small as a beetle to be crushed beneath her shoe.
“Did you really think he would make you queen?” she laughs as she raises her foot.
“He is here!” someone cries. “Dr Butts is here.”
Dr Butts? Henry’s physician? Why is he here? Is someone ill?
Cool fingers touch head, pulling down my lower eyelid, probing my throat, the back of my neck. They wrench open my mouth, scrape my tongue, making me gag.
I am so hot I feel I am burning, but they heap more covers upon the bed. “Punish her,” someone cries, “burn the witch …” I tumble back into the nightmare to be prodded by red-hot pokers; demons scream at me from the bed hanging, leer at me from the sweat-soaked pillow. They pull my hair, pinch my tender skin, light tapers and drive them into my eyes. Then, through the crowding fiends, I hear a voice I do not recognise. A voice that is calm, and in control. “Let her drink as much as she will, we must flush the fever from her.”
Cool water bathes blistered lips, a damp cloth soothes parched skin. I hear murmured voices, my mother weeping, my brother shouting, Jane’s voice tart and hostile in response and then, at last, a cockerel crowing, piercingly loud outside my window.
Is it dawn already?
I open my eyes.
“Water.” They bring me a cup of cool ale that slides down my throat, quenching the fires but not the thirst. Cup after cup I drink until my belly is bursting. I feebly let them know I have to pee. Jenny helps me, my limbs trembling so violently that she half carries me across the room and supports me on the close stool. The piss pours forth in such a gush that it sounds like a horse in a stream. The relief is immense. She pulls down my gown and helps me back to bed, and with eyes full of fear puts a hand to my brow. “Are you better, Mistress Anne? Shall I fetch your mother? She has been in bed but an hour.”
I shake my head and a tear slides from the corner of my eye to fall upon the pillow. I am as weak and pathetic as an infant and there is a great pain within my breast that makes breathing hard. She brings the cup again and again, feeding the insatiable thirst that will never be broken, and I drink deep.
A letter comes from Henry, written in his own hand. I am still so weak that Jenny has to break the seal so I might read it.
THERE came to me suddenly in the night the most afflifting news that could have arrived. The first, to hear of the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own, so that I would gladly bear half your illness to make you well. The second, from the fear that I have of being still longer harassed by my enemy, Absence, much longer, who has hitherto given me all possible uneasiness, and as far as I can judge is determined to spite me more because I pray God to rid me of this troublesome tormentor. The third, because the physician in whom I have most confidence, is absent at the very time when he might do me the greatest pleasure; for I should hope, by him and his means, to obtain one of my chief joys on earth that is the care of my mistress yet for want of him I send you my second, and hope that he will soon make you well. I shall then love him more than ever. I beseech you to be guided by his advice in your illness. In so doing I hope soon to see you again, which will be to me a greater comfort than all the precious jewels in the world.
Written by that secretary, who is, and for ever will be, your loyal and most assured Servant,
Henry has signed it with our entwined initials. I kiss it, hold it briefly to my breast, relieved and reassured that I am not yet replaced in his affections. His fear and longing are evident in every stroke of his pen. Mind you, I think, glancing in the mirror, if he could see me now so peaked and wan-looking, I am not sure his heart would still be mine.
It is but a week since I lay so close to death, and I am still a long way from full recovery. The household is silent, the servants creeping as they go about their tasks, for George and Father have also fallen sick. We were glad to have Dr Butts so conveniently near, and thanks to his ministrations Father and George are past the worst and growing daily in strength, as I do. Though yesterday came news that poor Will Carey had not the strength to withstand it and has given up the fight, leaving Mary widowed.
I wonder what she will do now. The lodging she shared with Will at Greenwich will now be forfeit, her only income the rents from Will’s Essex manor and an annuity from Tynemouth Priory. Wi
thout a penny of her own, Mary will now be in a sorry state.
“Father will surely bring her and the children home,” I say to George as we sit together in the late June sunshine.
My brother is not so sure. “I doubt it very much. Our sister has done little to gain Father’s approval. I fear Mary is on her own.”
“If that is the case, I shall speak to the king. Mary may be wilful but she is still our sister, surely she has learned her lesson.”
George shrugs and tugs the blanket higher about his chest. We are both still frail since the sickness and the summer breeze is sometimes a little too brisk.
“If you think it wise to draw his attention back to Mary, then do so by all means. There is no harm in her, she is just … erm … easily persuaded.”
A robin red-breast perches on the garden wall, cocking his beady eye, looking for crumbs. I obligingly sprinkle what is left of the wafer I’d been nibbling onto the grass. Unafraid, he hops down, pecks at one or two pieces, looks up at us again before deciding we are harmless and finishing his meal.
“I am so bored, George. How will I ever pass my days until Henry sees fit to call me back to court?”
“There was a time you hardly had your nose out of a book. Don’t you have anything to read?”
“Nothing I’ve not read before. I’ve tried re-reading Father’s books but I can settle to nothing. I am as restless as … as a –”
“A bitch on heat?”
“George!” I punch his arm playfully but do not take umbrage. It is hard to be offended when his words are so near the truth.
I miss Henry more than I had ever dreamed possible. It is weeks since I saw him last, and distance and the debilitation of the Sweat makes our romance seem like a lingering dream. “He writes to me often but I wish he would visit. I have a need to see him … in the flesh.”
“He will come,” says George, “just as soon as he is sure all risk of contagion has passed. You know what he is like when it comes to sickness.”
I know only too well how Henry fears illness. He has shown me his stillroom, where he likes to concoct remedies and unguents. And should any of his household suffer a cold, he likes to minister to them himself, ordering them to keep to their chambers until the malady has passed.
When Henry does come he is full of concern, raining kisses on my face and on my hands. “You are thinner,” he says. “Are you eating properly? Did you get the stag I sent you?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer but continues to speak, holding tight to my hand as he greets my father and brother and nods reservedly to my mother.
We walk ceremoniously about the gardens, my hand on the king’s sleeve while Father talks expansively of his plans for improvements to the house. Henry places his hot hand over mine, tracing my fingers, every so often giving me a little squeeze to show he is glad I am there. It is some time before we are alone. He pretends he wants me to show him the fish ponds and politely extricates himself from my family’s company, bearing me off toward the meadow.
As soon as we are out of sight of the house he stops and draws me into his arms, swamping me with the scent of rosewater and underlying horse sweat. My smile is wide when I pull away a little and look up into his face. There, in his eyes, I see all the love and concern I had feared he had forgotten.
“Anne,” he says, pulling off my peaked cap to let my hair fall loose. He buries his hands in it, his fingers digging into my skull, his lips hot and searching on mine. A sensation erupts deep in my belly like a scattering of red hot cinders. My breath grows short, the hammering of my heart loud in my ears. When his mouth slides from mine and I feel his tongue lick like a flame along my neck, his hands sliding down my bodice, I grow dizzy with desire, remembering just in time to be chaste and a little frightened. I pull away and drop my head, willing my lustful blood to cool. “Henry, My Lord, please.”
With a hand to my mouth I pretend to be overcome by his demands, and he is instantly contrite. “Anne, forgive me. I could not help …”
“No matter,” I say with what I hope is great compassion. “I understand.” Then I shake myself, smile into his eyes and lead him to a fallen bough. “Let us sit here and enjoy the view to the house while you tell me how the divorce is going. When can I come back to court?”
He rubs his kerchief across his face, the bough creaks and bends beneath his great weight as he settles beside me. “Before too long, Sweetheart. Cardinal Campeggio is on his way from Rome but he is an old man and, so Wolsey tells me, suffers from the gout which forces him to make more stops than are desirable. We must concentrate on the future, on our marriage and the sons we will have.”
“Sometimes I dream of the son we shall have, Henry. I imagine him as a tiny babe, a cap of red hair like yours, and I see him older too, dressed like a little man, forceful and strong like his father.” I do not confide in Henry that I also see him years from now, taking his place on the English throne. Sprung from the loins of a Boleyn, he will be the best, most powerful king the world has ever seen. It is a happy dream and one that I cling to as I drift unhappily in the limbo that is my present.
“A happy dream indeed, and one that is too long in coming to pass.” Henry shifts uncomfortably on the branch, his thigh pressed against mine. He takes off his hat and mops his head with his kerchief. “Are you not too hot, Anne?” he asks, and with a short laugh I shake my head.
“Since I was ill it is all I can do to keep warm. I crave the sunshine for it is so much warmer outside than indoors.”
My eyes follow his as he examines my hands, the tracery of veins beneath the skin, the bones of my wrist standing out. I have never been plump and the sickness has left me thinner than ever. He turns his gaze back to my face. “You must put some meat on your bones; a plump woman is healthier, more fertile so they tell me than a thin one.”
A pulse of fear beats in my throat. I swallow it and feign nonchalance. “Don’t worry, My Lord. I am eating like a horse at the moment and my strength grows from day to day. By the time I return to court I will be as fat as a cook.”
His big laugh fills the sky, sending up a crowd of rooks from their roost. “Don’t overdo it, Sweetheart. I want you plump, not portly. If I wanted to bed a pig I’d look in the royal pigsty.”
Our laughter merges, trickles away until we are solemn again. We stare at one another for a long time. “Can you stay the night, Henry?”
He flushes, hesitates, shakes his head. “Nay, Sweetheart. Think what the court gossips would say about that.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that we should …”
His hand covers mine again, drawing me closer. “I know what you meant,” he says, and I lay my head against his padded coat. For a long time we sit in silence, watching the light change as the day dwindles into dusk.
September 1528
It has been a wet month, and cooped up indoors all day my temper is short, my patience frayed. I have just summoned Jenny to tease the parlour fire back into life and she kneels at the hearth, vigorously poking the embers, looking for a glimpse of flame. Grandmother snores in her chair, her cap askew, her mouth open, a trickle of drool on her chin. Emitting another gusty sigh, I get up and begin to pace the floor, one moment looking from the window, the next sifting through some sheaves of paper on the table.
I pick up a poem written for me years ago by Tom Wyatt. On the day he presented it I made light of the honour, teasing him that it didn’t scan. Now, the gentle words, so full of honesty, make me smile sadly, longing for those happier times.
I let the paper drop from my fingers and it floats gently to the floor, coming to rest on the rush matting that flanks the hearth. Jenny picks it up, scrambles to her feet and places it on the table. “Can I get you anything, Mistress Anne?”
“What? No, no, thank you, Jenny. I am just bored with being indoors for so long.”
“I expect it will clear up later, like it did yesterday. Then you can walk in the gardens.”
“Perhaps.”
Jenny
has no idea how dull it is at Hever compared with the goings-on at court. She can have no concept of how much I miss the king, how I worry that I will be replaced in his affections. Greenwich is full of girls clamouring for the honour of a romp in the royal bed and it is imperative I am there at his side, keeping his eyes and his hands away from them.
Buried here in the countryside I am starved of news. I know that Campeggio has not yet arrived at court, and Henry seethes as much as I with frustration at his tardiness. A snail could have travelled faster from Rome, and it seems to me that our most urgent business is in the hands of the slowest and most ancient cardinal they could find.
I know that Henry’s patience is wearing thin for George brings me what news he can, often carrying letters and love tokens from the king. He is due back today but it is now past twelve of the clock. Knowing he may arrive any moment, I am unable to relax. At last, after another hour of floor-pacing and chewing at my fingers, I hear the sound of hooves on the gravel and raised voices in the yard. Within moments I am at the door.
“George! How tiresome you are, I had expected you long since.”
“Well, that’s a fine welcome,” he says, handing his reins to the groom before kissing me and allowing me to lead him into the house. “The weather is awful for September. I am wet through.”
He holds his hands out to the flames, which are now beginning to lick along the outer edges of the fuel, and when Jenny enters with a tray of refreshments, he selects a pastry, takes a huge bite.
“Did Henry send me anything?”
George nods, speaking with his mouth full. “There is a letter in my luggage, I will fetch it presently. I need to get out of these wet clothes. I have something for you, too. Something to keep your mind active even when your body is not.”
Still taking bites of his pastry, he quits the chamber and begins to mount the stairs. I follow him, sit on his bed and rummage through his pack while he strips off his sodden clothing. He tosses his jacket and shirt onto the floor and begins to peel off his hose.
The Kiss of the Concubine: A story of Anne Boleyn Page 8
