Anne had been too tired after the birth to even consider how she would handle the inevitable confrontation, but feeling rested and stronger she decided in a flash that in this instance, attack might be the best form of defence. Struggling into a half sitting position, she leaned towards him and hissed “It is entirely your fault!”
Henry was taken aback; his mouth gaped in shock. He was not used to being blamed for anything. “How so?” he bellowed. “How dare you blame me for your own stupidity?”
Courageously she drew herself up further and faced him. “If I, your wife, had not had to compete with that Seymour bitch for your attentions, this might never have happened!”
Henry had a distinct feeling that she was about to get the better of him yet again, so turned his back on her and stamped angrily around the chamber. Anne watched him with contempt then asked in a scornful voice “Well, have you lured her to your bed yet?”
“Do not be coarse Anne!” he snapped. “I have no intention of making the lady my mistress, and even if I had, I do not expect to have to answer to you for it”.
“She may look simple, but she is far too clever to sleep with you!” Anne taunted. “Not with an example like mine in front of her every day, you will see! She will return your gifts, repel your advances and declare that she wishes to keep herself pure for her husband. Given encouragement, she will lure you into marriage!”
“Even as you did” he sneered, in a deadly calm voice.
Her scornful laughter filled the chamber. “I … lure you? I think you should look a little closer into the not too distant past before you start making such observations. Who took care to break up my friendships with other men? Who came sniffing round my skirts at Hever? Who sent me expensive jewels and passionate love letters? Who …?”
“Cease your prattle!” he roared. “In the matter of Mistress Seymour you would be wise to close your eyes as your betters did before you!”
“Betters? Catherine, no doubt”.
In extreme rage, the pitch of the King’s voice became almost falsetto. “Do not interrupt me!” he screamed. “But yes; Catherine was by far your better. She had dignity, breeding ...”
“And she gave you dead children!”
“You have done no better for all your promises”. He advanced towards her bed, a warning hand outstretched, and forefinger jabbing aggressively. “Remember Madam that it is within my power to bring you down from your lofty position in this land. You would do well to recall all I have sacrificed for your sake for I am beginning to wonder if it was all worth it!”
“So am I!” she retorted.
He paused by the door, raking his eyes over her dishevelled appearance, an expression of intense dislike on his face. “I will give you one more chance” he told her. “Remembering all the love that there was between us, you will have one more chance to keep your promise. If you know what is good for you, you will not fail me again!” With that, he was gone. Anne, trembling from the vehemence of their verbal battle, flung herself back on her pillows with fists clenched against her teeth as she fought back her rising hysteria.
Anne was ever a fighter. Within days she was up and about, flirting as merrily with the King and his courtiers as she had in the days before her marriage. Publicly she assumed a mask of gaiety; devising plays and masques for the King’s entertainment and luring him back to her side with her infectious laughter and bantering talk.
“You are looking very run down, Nan” her brother George observed one evening.
“That is no wonder” she replied bitterly. “Think of the strain I am under George. During the day I have to watch him constantly lest the Seymour gets her claws into him; the evenings I spend devising entertainments for him – and I am sure you are well aware how I spend my nights!”
“You are not yet with child?” George enquired.
“Most definitely not” she admitted sadly. “If only I could conceive again I could give up this useless course upon which I am set and retire until the birth of my child”.
Desperately wishing to cheer her up, George slipped an arm around her thin shoulders, pulled her to him and kissed her cheek affectionately. “If the King is as relentless as you say in his attempts to get an heir, surely it cannot be long before you again experience the delights of morning sickness!”
“I would welcome it” she told him frankly, trying to raise a smile at his little joke. Lifting her chin in a determined fashion, Anne noticed Jane, George’s wife, standing a little aside from them, watching their exchange of affections jealously. The sight of her jogged Anne’s memory. “I have been meaning to ask you something, George” she began on a low voice. “Have you noticed that whenever you and I are together, either your wife or one of her confidants are in close attendance?”
“Yes I had noted that” he admitted. “But I did not draw it to your attention for fear of worrying you”.
“Why should it worry me? For God’s sake George, we are brother and sister. What have we to hide? Apart from being family, you are one of the few people around me that I can trust!”
“I have a suspicion that my wife has become an active member of the Catholic party, hoping to discredit you with the King” George confided. “As you know, Jane Seymour is their bait”.
“Henry does seem to have become enamoured of blonde hair, blue eyes and insipid colouring lately” Anne mused. “I am not sure if it because the Seymour is mousy or if he really has a penchant for the colour”. She screwed up her face, trying to remember “Wasn’t his mother yellow-haired? At any rate, it seems he is desperate for a change from black hair and eyes”.
“Perhaps we should throw in our own bait” suggested her brother.
Immediately Anne was interested. “You mean find a blonde temptress from our own circle?”
“Why not? There is nothing to lose”
With her forefinger tapping her lips, Anne thought very hard. “It must be someone he hasn’t seen much of before. Your wife is no good, he doesn’t like her …”
“The King displays much good taste there” George interrupted with a grimace.
“We have a blonde cousin” Anne remembered. “Madge something… Shelton! Madge Shelton. But I have not seen her for years”.
“Bring her to court anyway” suggested George. “If she is suitable, we can then find out if she is agreeable to our plan”.
Within a few weeks Madge was at court under Anne’s patronage, being surreptitiously schooled in the ways of tempting Kings. As soon as Anne saw her again, she knew the girl was eminently suitable. She had a look of Mary Boleyn, but was even fairer and more voluptuous.
Obviously before Anne could thrust her cousin under the King’s nose, she had to be sure that the girl herself had no ambitions of queenship. It did not take long to discover that Madge was totally devoid of any ambition; again displaying similar traits to Anne’s sister Mary.
When Anne eventually confided to Madge the nature of her plan, the girl was shocked and protested that she did not desire the King for her lover.
“You have had a lover before?” Anne enquired sharply.
“One or two” Madge admitted cautiously. “But I have not really had a great deal of experience in such matters.
“All the better” said Anne with satisfaction. “For in many ways, at this stage of his life, the King feels unmanned by the attentions of hard, experienced women. You would be ideal for our little scheme Madge. Will you do it for me? For our family?”
She took a lot of persuading, but eventually Madge agreed with reluctance and Anne lost no time in bringing her to the King’s attention. At first she was subtle, keeping the girl quietly by her side at all times so that the King could not fail to notice her.
He noticed her at once, which led Anne into the second phase of her plan. Madge was frequently sent to the King’s chambers bearing private messages from the Queen. One night, Madge did not return from the King’s rooms until well after midnight and was able to report triumphantly to Anne that Henry had
well and truly taken the bait.
Anne was both delighted and relieved. The King thought he was indulging in a private love affair of which his wife knew nothing and would have been extremely shocked to know that she had engineered the whole scheme.
Despite spending a good deal of his private time with Madge, the King did not neglect his visits to the Queen, or stint in his efforts to get his heir. However it was a great source of worry to Anne that by the end of June 1535 she still had not conceived the King’s child. Although it seemed, neither had Madge.
Preoccupied though she was with her own troubles and schemes, Anne had lately observed a distinct roundness to her sister Mary’s body and suspected that she at least was proving fruitful. The question was, by whom was she pregnant? Mary had been a widow since the 1528 epidemic of sweating sickness had carried off William Carey.
Discreetly, Anne watched Mary for several weeks before she accused her to her face. When the sisters were briefly alone one afternoon, Anne asked slyly “Do you have something to tell me sister?”
Mary looked fearfully at her, confirming Anne’s suspicions. “It is not the King’s?” Anne continued sharply.
“Of course not!” Mary exclaimed in disgust. “You may have thought me promiscuous in sharing my bed with so many, Anne, but I am not so depraved as to wish to share the King’s bed with my own sister!”
Anne was at once apologetic. “I am sorry Mary, but you must understand how I feel. I have been trying to conceive for months, and then you, without a husband, appear miraculously with child!”
“I have a husband” Mary said quietly, refusing to meet Anne’s incredulous gaze. “I married Sir William Stafford four months ago, secretly”.
“Do you realise what you have done?” exclaimed Anne angrily. “You, the sister of the Queen of England to throw yourself away on a simple knight?”
“Why should I not?” Mary retorted, displaying a rare flash of temper. “For all our family’s present lofty eminence, you and I were merely knight’s daughters before the King noticed us. Anyway, which is the greater shame; marrying for love or bearing a fatherless child?”
Anne had to admit that Mary had perhaps done the right thing by her child in marrying its father, but her sister’s fruitfulness did nothing to assuage her personal frustration at her own apparent inability to conceive.
However, apart from that, things were going reasonably well; Madge was continuing to divert the King’s attention away from Jane Seymour, which gave Anne the opportunity to send her faithless maid of honour back to her family in Wiltshire. With Jane absent, the Catholic faction were quiet. Most importantly, the King continued to spend his nights in her bed and often during the day sought out her company as he declared that no other could provide such mental stimulation. It seemed that despite his other fancies, he could not do without his Anne Boleyn.
Chapter 30 – Misery & Joy
However, whilst Anne was reasonably happy with her life, the King was not so pleased by his. He felt that he had lately endured more than his fair share of disappointments and was not prepared to admit to anybody that he was beginning to feel that he had been wrong in choosing Anne to be his Queen.
Henry the King was a man who always had to be right, and as a result of his turbulent life with Queen Anne, he began looking around for a scapegoat on whom to vent his spite.
Eventually his ex-Chancellor Sir Thomas More came to mind. Thomas More had been a great friend of both Catherine and himself, but had not supported the divorce. Being a quietly spoken, well-educated man, he had not railed against it like some, but had shown his disapproval by resigning his Chancellorship in May 1532.
Although the King had been angry with him at the time, he had taken no action against his old friend and had allowed him to live quietly in retirement with his family at their riverside house in Chelsea.
Thomas More had also refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy recognising Henry as supreme head of the English church. As the King remembered More’s gentle but firm refusal of his support in that matter, a fresh paroxysm of rage took hold of him. Henry had always been possessed of the childish desire that a person whom he loved and admired should also love and admire him. Thomas More had trespassed upon that unwritten rule; he had rejected his sovereign and now approached the time when he should pay for that betrayal, along with all those others who had equally thwarted their King.
Sir Thomas More, arguably the greatest Englishman of his time, was arrested, brought to trial and marched from his prison in the Tower to face the executioner on Tower Hill at 9 in the morning on 6th July 1535.
Henry and Anne, standing silently together at the great oriel window overlooking the river at Whitehall, heard the Tower guns booming the tragic news that More was dead.
As Anne stared through the window, in the direction from whence the firing came, she pressed her clasped hands to her chin as an involuntary shiver overtook her whole body. Was her fear some terrible portent of her future fate? Without turning her head, she threw a swift sidelong glance at her husband. Henry was breathing quickly through clenched teeth, his expression one of evil resentment.
Turning so suddenly that he caught her eyes upon him, he hissed “Perhaps now you are satisfied. The greatest man in my kingdom has died this day so that you may sleep peacefully in your bed of nights, safe from your enemies!” With that, he turned on his heel and stalked down the gallery. As he reached the top of the flight of stone steps, she heard him call out for his horse to be made ready.
Sighing with exasperation, Anne made slowly for her apartments, musing as she walked on how shallow the King’s love had turned out to be. From the King’s sweetheart to the King’s encumbrance, she thought dejectedly.
On reaching her great presence chamber, she found it to be a scene of merriment. Her musicians and dearest friends appeared to be working on a new play amid much hilarity. Ever ready to throw out sadness in exchange for joy; for she did not care to ponder on her future, Anne cried “Greetings all. So my apartments are become rehearsal rooms?”
Henry Norris detached himself from a cluster of bodies and bowed low before her. “It is an extract from an old English legend” he explained. “A tale of a lovely maiden who is rescued from the very jaws of a fearsome dragon by a handsome, gallant knight. Your Grace shall have the star part!”
“And what would that be?” she laughed. “The dragon?”
“You jest, Madam” Norris replied, entering into the spirit of her banter and so far forgetting himself as to chuck her under the chin. “There is only one part fit for Your Grace”.
The intimate tone of his soft voice delighted her and was balm to her wounded pride. It was in her very nature to wish to inspire love and admiration from the opposite sex; she needed to feel herself desired by many.
One of her musicians, a certain Mark Smeaton, had been avidly listening to the lively exchange of words. He was but a simple lad, low born but plucked from obscurity by Anne and the King who had heard his singing and playing whilst on a summer progress together. Mark was inordinately sensitive; his great love of music made him so. However there was also another great love in his life; Anne the Queen.
Seeing a chance to bring himself to her notice he broke in “Our good Norris forgets himself” he began, pausing as her bright eyes turned to his face. “He should have acquainted Your Grace with the fact that the maiden of the legend is the most beautiful and virtuous creature of her times, therefore she could be played by no other than yourself”.
Anne was slightly taken aback by this passionate statement as she had never before realised quite how devoted the boy was to her. Looking into Mark’s spaniel eyes which mutely begged that she give a sign to show that she approved of his words, Anne stretched out a tentative hand and patted him gently on the cheek. As she made to withdraw, he seized her hand and kissed it fervently. Although her impulse was to snatch her hand away, she did not wish to hurt his feelings or kill the slavish devotion which was so gratifying to her senses.
Instead she said softly “Play, Mark. Let me hear the music to which I must perform”.
At once Smeaton reluctantly released her hand and reached for his lute. The other musicians struck up on cue, and as the haunting melodies filled her chamber, Anne found herself transported back to the days of fire breathing dragons, giving her vivid imagination full rein.
As the last notes died away, Anne clapped her hands in delight. “Quite magical!” she declared. “Who wrote the music?”
“Myself and Master Smeaton” replied a well-known voice behind her.
Anne threw back her head and laughed joyously, then without turning around, flung her outstretched arm behind her. At once fingers grasped hers and he came into view. “Tom Wyatt” she murmured intimately. “I had no idea you had returned to court”.
“I could not long stay away from Your Grace” he replied seriously.
Then there was silence; the two drank in the others every feature until Anne became uncomfortably aware that all eyes were regarding her and Wyatt with great interest. Reminding herself that she was wife to a jealous husband and that spies were everywhere, she released her hold on Wyatt’s hand and cried gaily “So, I am to be the gentle maiden, but who, pray, shall be my rescuer, and who is the dreaded dragon?”
Moth To The Flame Page 22
