The Queen of Subtleties

by Suzannah Dunn

  And so we had it, we had it! Yet no one else seemed happy. Not even Henry, really. For all his borrowed bullishness, he couldn’t be happy or confident until he had people on his side. King though he was, he wanted their blessing. Especially More’s. More was behaving impeccably. He did his job, appearing before parliament and, as required, explaining Henry’s reasoning. When someone there demanded his own opinion, he merely said, ‘It’s well-known.’ In the following days, he declined to see his friend Chapuys, to avoid any possible representation from the emperor. And when Chapuys finally succeeded in tracking him down, I have it on good authority that More backed away from him with, ‘Please, you must understand…’

  Oh, but I understood. I knew More’s little game. He’d wanted to resign—that’s what I heard, and I don’t doubt it—but had then decided to stay. Why? Well, think about it: he and his many friends probably felt he’d achieve most by working from the inside. By sticking with it. His polite restraint wasn’t acquiescence; it was politics. Henry liked and trusted him, despite their growing differences, more than he liked or trusted any other of my detractors. So, if anyone could repair the situation—this is how it must have looked, to my enemies—then More could. Or at least limit the damage. Talk Henry round, to some extent. That, I bet, was their reasoning. What never ceases to amaze me was how much they underestimated me, those supposedly clever, worldly men.

  A pity, though, that Bishop Fisher didn’t follow More’s example of apparent good grace instead of spluttering his outrage. Because someone, somewhere, took exception and, a week or so after Fisher’s quivering condemnation to the Lords, his household suffered a catastrophe. Poisoned pottage. Seven dead men. The bishop himself—a poor eater, it seems, at the best of times—had only had a mouthful, and was only very sick.

  I know what people say: that I did it. But I say: prove it.

  If I had been a poisoner, wouldn’t there have been people I’d have gone for before Fisher? Catherine, for starters.

  At Fisher’s, it was the cook who actually did the deed: slipped the powder into the soup. At whose behest remains a mystery. Henry lives in terror of poison; of sickness in general, but particularly from poisoning. It’s the ease of it, I suppose; the mercilessness: anyone could do it. And now anyone had: a cook, whose purpose in life was to sustain and nurture. I mean, who can you trust if you can’t trust your cook? To Henry’s mind, no punishment could be adequate. Oh, except perhaps one: he had a flash of inspiration and the cook ended up at Smithfield, shut into a cauldron of oil and cooked to death.

  There were people I’d have boiled before Fisher’s cook. Several very large pots wouldn’t have gone amiss. I suppose it was a consolation that they didn’t all just hate me, my detractors: most of them hated Tom, too, and some of them also hated each other. Uncle Norfolk and his old pal Charlie for example: those two old women, suddenly at loggerheads. No one could quite fathom their problem; it seemed to be anything and everything. They should never have been given the shared job of running the Council. Best friends too readily make worst enemies.

  I’ve never been naive about blood relations, so it was no huge surprise to me when my cousin Nick began avoiding my company. Especially as I’d spotted that he was spending a lot of time with the Neville lad, Exeter. So, he was aligning himself with the lugubrious old families: the Nevilles, Staffords, Poles. Families for whom the Pope would never be what Henry and I had decided he was: the mere Bishop of Rome. English families who wouldn’t dream of stooping to own a book in English.

  Well, thank God for the Boleyns, for Harry, Billy, Francis, and Franky; for apricot-haired little Fitz, his best friend Hal and his sister Maria. But no Nick, any more. Did it hurt me, this iciness of my cousin’s? It was a shock, but momentary. Almost instantly, I was over it. After all, who was he? Nick Carewe. No one. And I was going to be queen. Of course, I’d have rather that people liked me; if nothing else, it’d have made everything easier. But if they didn’t—if they were too stupid to see me for the good thing that I was—then that was their loss and of no consequence to me whatsoever.

  That’s where Henry and I differed. One of the ways we differed. Still do. He cares what people think, and I don’t. There isn’t time, is my feeling; and anyway, as I’ve said, people are fickle. A waste of time, all round, waiting for people to get behind you. Something else: Henry easily feels misunderstood. For me, that’s not a problem. If anything, I’m understood all too clearly. It’s what I pride myself on: making myself understood.

  Take Sir Henry Guildford. Controller of the Household, at this time. One day in the summer of 1530, he and I had the last in our series of rows; I can’t even remember what this final set-to was about. It’s not important, what it was about. What’s important was that he didn’t like me and he didn’t try to hide it. A smile for everyone else; a sneer for me. Well, I was going to be queen, and very soon. No way could I tolerate insubordination. Let’s say this spat was about building noise: it often was; it was the bain of my royal life, building noise. I knew Sir Henry Guildford wasn’t responsible for construction; but as controller, he would’ve known who was. I made my complaint, whatever it was, but his reponse was—as usual—infuriatingly off-hand. Patronizing, dismissive.

  I decided I’d ask him, ‘Why are you always like this with me? Don’t you get tired of keeping it up?’

  He frowned, hard, aggressive, and challenged me: ‘Like what?’

  I made a show of searching for the word. ‘Well, unhelpful, shall we say.’

  The frown sprang into raised eyebrows. ‘If you’ve a problem with my work, take it to the king.’ He was about to say or queen; he definitely was, and he only didn’t, I imagine, because I couldn’t possibly have taken it to her. For once, she wasn’t hanging around but was away visiting that malingering child of hers.

  ‘Listen,’ I went right up to him, ‘as soon as I’m in, you’re out.’

  He folded his arms, cocked his head. ‘You listen: I’ll save you the trouble. I resign now.’

  And off he stalked, treating us to a fantastic slam of the door.

  Slammed doors were nothing new to me. Auntie Liz specialized in them, Wet-fish Charlie occasionally couldn’t help himself, and Uncle Norfolk favoured an unnecessarily firm shutting if he felt I hadn’t grasped the importance of what he’d been saying. Norfolks and Suffolks: door-slammers, all of them, with their fraying nerves and centre-stage roles. But Guildford? Bloody boring Guildford. A slam from him? A resignation from him? That, I hadn’t expected. Nor, by the sound of it, had anyone else: the room hummed with what pretended to be embarrassment but was, I knew only too well, excitement.

  Play it down, I told myself, and quickly. ‘Well, good,’ I said. ‘Good riddance.’ And returned to my chair, sat back, crossed my ankles: job done.

  The news would have been with Henry in minutes, but he must have gone to see Guildford first because it was a good half-hour before he came along to me. He arrived with that look on his face, an increasingly common look for him at that time: anxious and tired. It made me tired, that look of his. He crouched beside my chair, laid a hand on my arm, whispered, ‘Anne, how could you.’

  No point pretending ignorance; I was no Guildford with his Like what? ‘Did you hear what he said?’

  He lowered his head for a moment, as if he needed time to think. ‘Nothing much, by all accounts.’

  All accounts? Not mine. But anyway, it was what he hadn’t said. ‘It’s his attitude,’ I snapped. ‘He gives me nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Anne,’ still a whisper, ‘the fact that some of our peers aren’t keen on us marrying isn’t news to us, is it? If you can just…’ He placed his hand over mine, patted it. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s a difficult time, passions are running high—’

  ‘Yes, they are: mine are.’

  He half-laughed. ‘Yes, I know. But if you can perhaps just avoid certain people, rather than—’

  I turned in my chair to face him. ‘Henry, that’s condoning it. It’s not goin
g to go away, this pettiness. They’ve had years to get used to the idea, and nothing’s changed. They’re better confronted. Shouted down.’

  Henry rose, knees cracking.

  ‘And I bet he retracted that petty resignation of his, didn’t he, as soon as he had you crawling to him.’

  Henry spoke over my head. ‘Actually, no; no, he didn’t.’

  Oh. ‘Well, good. He was useless.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry, without conviction, and with that look. ‘Now all that remains for me to do is to find someone else for the job.’

  I couldn’t understand it, this keenness of Henry’s to be seen to be doing the right thing. If he was Head of the Church in England, why couldn’t he grant himself the annulment? It was a matter of state, was how he’d put it. ‘And not—’ anxious smile pretending to be indulgent ‘—one of your shouting matches.’ The situation, he’d tell me, needed to be handled with care. Sometimes he’d say, ‘If we can just persuade her to withdraw her appeal to Rome…’

  But she won’t.

  Or, ‘It’d look so much better if we could just get her to agree to something…anything…’

  On and on, wasting time. Time I didn’t have.

  I never regret a showdown nor anything I’ve ever said about anyone I despise. Not even that I wanted to see Catherine hang and all Spaniards drowned. But there is something that’s haunting me, now, in these last few days of mine, and it’s the smallest aside. It was a joke I made at Billy’s expense at a picnic, that spring, in Windsor Great Park. Henry and I had woken to a big wet kiss of a spring morning, a full-on smacking surprise of a day. The bold, glossy sky might have been freshly painted. Indisputably a day for a picnic, so Henry placed the order and by mid-afternoon they were there: four skeletal trestle tables cloaked in blinding tablecloths and laden with silverware that shone daggers at us. Confectionery in shyest pink and moody amber: pearl-like, rose-tinted comfits, and squat, spice-dusted gloops of marmalade. And the bare-faced sugar of a spectacularly bow-necked swan.

  Even Tom came along, later on, to join us; all no-rush and a knowing smile, So, here you are. Pocketing delicacies in those fat lips and reclining on the grass in a show of having finished a hard day’s work. This was the day when I first noticed Mark Smeaton: whenever the musicians took a break, he stayed on, strumming. I don’t know why; I don’t know who, if anyone, asked him. I remember feeling that he suited the occasion, that he was a good find, a good omen: his newborn blue-white complexion, and sunshine a cream on his dark hair.

  We stayed all afternoon in the shade of breeze-streaming oak trees, stayed on until the sun was long gone and the air itself was shining. And it was sometime then, in my contentment, that I allowed myself my habitual lament, a half-sigh and half-wail to Henry: ‘Oh, why aren’t you divorced?’

  He gently kissed my nose, and teased me: ‘Impatient, aren’t you.’

  ‘Thirty, is what I am. And, worse, known all over the world as your “intended”: no suitors in line for when you give up on me.’

  He moved his kissing into my hair. ‘I won’t, I won’t; you know I won’t.’

  ‘Oh,’ I continued, ‘unless you count Billy.’

  Billy—cross-legged at our feet, whittling a stick—glanced up. Of all the boys, Billy—absurdly blond—was the most beautiful. Wide-eyed, he obviously hadn’t caught what I’d said, and we laughed, as I’d intended, at his guilelessness. He graced us in return with his smile. People called it wicked, Billy’s smile, but he was such an innocent. And I keep seeing him, now, exactly as I saw him then: sun-smashed, ever-obliging Billy, so very alive. And I can’t stop wondering: if I hadn’t said it—that one, silly remark, that joke at his expense—would he have been spared?

  Henry finally did it, that July, five years ago: he walked out on Her Oldbagness. After all that time. For four years, we’d had her trailing along with us but keeping to her own rooms. The queen in residence at court; the wife in her home. Henry would only ever see her to ask her to agree to the annulment, which she never did. Earlier in the year, though, it’d looked for a while as if we might get shot of her of her own accord. That pallid daughter of hers had taken to her bed with another of her imaginary complaints, and Catherine asked Henry if Her Sickliness could join us. Henry’s response was, ‘Why don’t you go to her, and stay there.’

  Catherine, they told me, lowered her eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ she murmured, ‘I’d never leave you.’ Regrettably, she’d been well-advised: if she went, it could be construed as desertion.

  He relented, in March: a compromise, whereby Mary was moved to Richmond and her mother scurried there to nurse her. In May, Henry went one step further and risked playing happy families: Mary, now well, joined us all at Windsor. Whey-faced, knees prayer-hard, and a head crackling with Latin, that girl was no use to anyone. At least she now knew what was happening. She couldn’t be at court and be unaware that the world had changed and she and her mother were finished. No, she didn’t like it, of course she didn’t; not one bit. But she had to know sometime, didn’t she.

  Mid-July was when Henry rode away from Catherine for good. We set out early from Windsor for Woodstock, and didn’t tell her. As simple as that, in the end. It was done. Word was left that she should vacate Windsor within a month. We only got so far, though, before she was pestering us. She’d sent a messenger speeding behind us; he reached us in the evening. Didn’t dare look at me, directed his little speech to Henry: the queen very much regrets not having had a chance to say goodbye, was the gist, so she’s sending me with her good wishes. But Henry wasn’t having it: ‘I don’t want her good wishes!’

  The kid’s legs had been shaking with exhaustion as he knelt, and now his bottom lip was going.

  Henry didn’t let up. ‘What is it with the woman! I don’t want to hear from her. Not ever. It’s over. Listen: I never want to see you here again—do you understand?’ He flapped a hand in dismissal, but, ‘Oh—’ as the kid stumbled away, ‘—and you make sure she’s clear about this: she’s to be out of there by mid-August.’ Uncharacteristic was the order that he bellowed to the yeomen: ‘Throw this man out!’

  They did make a show of doing so, of course; but, of course, that was all it was: show. They’d have seen that he was given a good meal and a bed. They weren’t inhuman.

  If Henry was never to see Catherine again, the job of badgering her to drop her case had to fall to other people. Most of whom had already tried, at various times. Everyone from Wolsey onwards had had at least one unenviable audience with Her Stubborness. My Uncle Norfolk had been in the gaggle of nobles who had visited her, earlier in the year. Afterwards, he’d mused to me, ‘It really does have to be seen to be believed. She’d burn, first; really, she would, she’d burn.’

  ‘Rather than give me what I want?’ I couldn’t believe how ridiculous she was continuing to be.

  His eyes clicked into life. ‘Rather than concede that she’s lived a lie.’

  And I saw it: the admiration that had been my cousin Nick’s, too, when he’d talked of her ‘faith’. No one ever spoke of my faith; no one ever spoke in that way of my own lost years. But that Spanish cow’s stubborness, they all saw as faith.

  More nobles made an attempt, when she’d left Windsor and settled at Easthampstead. Last ditch. This time, Charlie Brandon drew the short straw and had the task of reporting back to Henry. He made heavy weather of it, of course, flopping down into the offered chair. There was the barest acknowledgement of me, but at least there was the semblance of a truce between us. His wife, for all her royal blood, had been unable to manage that. He said nothing, which was his wet-fish way of telling us that it was bad news. I was unsurprised, of course, but still suffered the inevitable twinge of disappointment. Henry lowered his face into his hands.

  It was then that Charlie spoke. ‘To be honest,’ he said to Henry’s hidden face, ‘I think she’d obey you in anything, except when it compromises the allegiance she feels she owes to two higher powers.’

  Henry looked up, wear
y: Don’t tell me, ‘The Pope and the emperor.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘God and her conscience.’

  Henry finalized the separation by moving her to The More, which was a gracious ruin of a place, one of Wolsey’s. There she was, comfortably installed with several hundred staff, as the year crawled to a close. In November, she honoured a long-standing arrangement and made her last public appearance as queen, at a banquet in Holborn. Henry was co-host, but was able to keep to a separate hall and never saw her. At Christmas, she sent him a present—an engraved gold cup—but he sent it back.

  New Year’s Day, 1532, I arrived back at Greenwich from Hever, and finally moved into the rooms vacated by that Spanish dog-in-a-manger. Literally a giddying experience, because of the change of view from the one I’d been accustomed to for the past few years: I was at a slightly different point along the river, and one floor up. I hadn’t stood at those windows for years; not since I’d been cooped up as one of Her Holiness’s ladies, spending the long days dreaming of Hever or Harry Percy. Catherine had loved Greenwich, not least because of the short walk—waddle, in her case—along the covered walkway to her beloved friars in the Observatory. How I remember that walk—or, more often, avoiding it. Fabricating reasons to be elsewhere. Anything to avoid ‘Mass duty’, hours of kneeling behind that gibbering Spanish bulk. The Observatory was where she’d planned to end up, buried. Well, tough luck: Greenwich was no longer her home.

  That first day, I missed my old apartment. I had happy memories of it. And there were the bad associations of the new place: it was where she’d lived, all those years. But none of that was the point. Liking or disliking didn’t come into it. There was a job to be done: I needed to get underway with preparations to be queen. Evidently, Henry agreed: he’d employed a lot more staff for me; so many new faces that I could never know them all. That first day at Greenwich, I felt quite at sea.