Dear Heart, How Like You This

by Wendy J. Dunn

  As soon as Anne arrived at Westminster she was given food and drink; with a smile of gratitude she swiftly passed the refreshments to her attendants. Anna then left by a side door to go to Whitehall to spend the rest of the evening in the company of the King. The next day, Sunday, the first of June, was the grand finale: my cousin’s crowning. On this day, Anne wore a long train the colour of royalty: purple velvet.

  I could not help remembering—my eyes filling with tears I quickly blinked away—that early morning so many years ago, after we had made love for the first and only time. Then I had a vision of Anna as some sort of regal figure. I could hardly believe, even as I watched it happen before my own eyes, that it was all coming true.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, who had done so much to make this day possible since his appointment, anointed Anne’s hands and breast with warmed holy oil. Solemnly, he placed the crown upon her head—the heavy St. Edward’s crown. Too heavy for my Anna? Oh how that question gnawed away at me, leaving a belly ache of fear in its place. The loud drumming of my heart left me deaf to the Cranmer’s final words.

  At last, the symbols of royalty were placed in her outstretched hands; Cranmer placed the jewel encrusted sceptre in one thin hand and in her other the golden orb, dulled to seem greenish-blue in the haze of candlelight and ornamented round its middle by blood-red rubies and sapphire gems. Even from where I stood—quite a fair distance away—I could see several of Anne’s nails were badly chewed. Suddenly I felt deafened with the roars of the people within the confines of Westminster, and I added my own voice—trembling with emotion—to the deluge of sound.

  Anne. Anna. My beloved. My dark lady. Now the anointed Queen of all England. Queen Consort to King Henry.

  The die was cast, she had once said. Aye, the game, for the moment, was won. All she needed now was to have the Prince all England prayed for and the game would be forever won.

  King Harry took no part in the proceedings, but I heard that he watched closely from a screened gallery. The King would have had no cause for complaint. Anne—the girl whom Wolsey had once called foolish and an upstart—struck everybody that day in Westminster as a woman foreordained to be Queen.

  I returned after the day of the coronation to my father’s home for an extended stay. He was still very much bedridden and thus unable, as yet, to look after all his affairs. Despite the distance separating us from the court, I still managed to keep myself closely informed about events happening there. Despite everything that had gone before, eventuating in Anne’s coronation, the King was still determined to have his new wife and Queen recognised by the papacy. George was sent again abroad; this time to Lyons, where he was one of the party of English diplomats who had gone with the Duke of Norfolk to parley with the Pope. England was still trying desperately to avoid a complete schism with Rome. However, Pope Clement’s hand was forced by the pressure of the Imperial Emperor—who was the old Queen’s nephew—to threaten to excommunicate the King if he did not take back Catherine of Aragon as his Queen and wife. The force of this excommunication was promised for September.

  Not long after all this occurred at Lyons, my father insisted I leave his sickroom and visit the court, even if but for a short time. He felt it was important that the King forget not his loyal servants by the name of Wyatt.

  While at court, I was immensely delighted to see George, who had just arrived home back from the Continent. My cousin had been sent briefly back to England so to be able to receive further instructions from the King about how he desired that they should proceed. When we spoke together, George told me of this threatened excommunication and these new demands of the Pope. When I heard all his news I could not help but laugh. As if a King who was lacking heirs would put away a wife who was due that same month to correct that very situation. However, George told me that, understandably, the English party was badly shaken by this threatened excommunication, as was, similarly, myself and most of the court. George’s uncle, the very Catholic Duke of Norfolk, had taken it so badly that he had fallen down in a dead faint.

  We at court were not the only ones to be shaken up by the news. All of England wondered what would happen next. For myself, I was astonished to find that the King, instead of raging loudly as he usually did, took the news as if he was more than half expecting it. Without delay, George was sent on his way back to France with a message from the King for the Duke of Norfolk to bring the English party home. Even if the King appeared to us at court to have expected this development, it was easy to see that it still worried him greatly that things had come to such a pass.

  George, when he arrived home again, stayed at court to give Anne the support she needed during the final months of her pregnancy. Soon August of 1533 had come to its end, and it was September. The time was drawing near for Anne to give birth. I could not help feeling like the spouse myself (yea, if only I was!), experiencing more concern than what I had felt when Beth had brought her own children into the world. I was so worried that Anne’s fragile frame might not survive the tortures of childbirth. It was easy to see that the final stages of pregnancy had been an absolute trial for her. Every time I saw her she seemed to have grown more grey and gaunt, while her belly grew and became huge. Thus, every day I lit a candle to the Madonna and prayed hard for my dark Lady’s safe delivery.

  At last, on the eighth of September, I received a messenger from George that informed me that at 3 o’clock, in the afternoon of the previous day, Anne was safely delivered of a daughter. A daughter! Yea, how does fate laugh upon all our hopes!

  I could well imagine what the King’s feelings were at this time. All had been prepared for the birth of a son. Anne’s lying-in-bed had once formed part of a French prince’s ransom; a magnificent bed meant to welcome into the world the new Prince of England. Indeed, so much did our King believe in the birth of his son that it was well known two names had been put forward for the new prince: Edward and Henry. So sure had been the King, aided in his beliefs by the confident predictions of stargazers and the like; they foretold all about the birth of a child that would be all he and England desired. (I found out later, Anna herself had to alter the Prince to Princess before the proclamations were sent out.) Poor little lass—how unwelcome must she be.

  But it was the child’s mother who I was most concerned for. It was the mother whom I loved, and have always loved. What if the King decided to blame her for this all too natural mishap?

  Already it was obvious that there were gigantic cracks in Anne’s marriage to the King. It was common knowledge that he had, uncaring for Anna’s feelings, taken a mistress during the last months of Anne’s pregnancy, even though Anne was sick and ailing. It was the main reason that George had chosen to remain at court with Anne. When Anne had discovered this affair she had gone straight to the King to confront him. This was when she was more than seven months with child—six months after her marriage in January. I think it says much about their relationship at this time that the King had told her to shut her eyes, do as her betters had done, and endure. And Anne, being Anne, refused to talk to the King for days.

  George’s messenger told me that the baby was to be called Elizabeth, named after the King’s mother, Elizabeth of York. It was also the name of Anne’s own mother, but that was of lesser importance. Nonetheless, despite the obvious and great disappointment felt by the new parents, a magnificent christening was put under way to baptise England’s Princess Elizabeth, with the baby’s own godfather, Cardinal Cranmer, baptising her. King Henry put on his brave face that day; he carried his new daughter around as if she was the most precious thing in the world. I suppose it may not have all been pretence. It had been a long time since he had held a baby of his born in wedlock. For certes, a healthy and living baby—even if only a girl.

  If September had been the month that the King had been promised his much-wanted son, September was also the month that the King faced the prospect of a very dreaded excommunication. If he was less than delighted with the birth of a daug
hter, I am sure it pleased the King that the Pope had somewhat relented and postponed the excommunication until November.

  Stephen Gardiner, who had only recently been an ambassador at the French court, had stayed behind at Lyons when the rest of the party had been recalled. Now he was joined by another diplomat, Edmund Bonner, who had in his hand a document prepared months before in anticipation of these events—a document calling for an appeal to the General Council.

  The Pope (accompanied by his two mistresses) was now with the French King in Marseilles, so it was to here that the two Englishmen went to meet with him. The meeting was a failure from start to finish. Pope Clement refused to give King Harry his appeal and refused to back away from the threat of excommunication. In all of this, our own King felt badly let down by the French King. François had promised to support King Henry but, on this occasion, had appeared to the English diplomats to be more interested in pandering to the Pope’s desires; thus, gaining a better settlement for the marriage of his second son, Henri, to the Pope’s niece Catherine Medici. When King Harry heard of this, he went into one of his more violent rages, verbally abusing the French King in the presence of his entire court. The King’s rage was also witnessed by visiting French officials.

  These officials lost no time in informing their King about what the English King had said, and the mood in which he had said it. François’ usual even temper was shaken by these outbursts, and he replied angrily that Henry had done just about everything the wrong way. Rather than handle the matter delicately, as François would have done, King Henry had angered Rome with one transgression after another.

  “As I study to win the Pope, ye study to lose him. Yea, ye have marred all,” François angrily said to Gardiner.

  It frightened many people in England that such things had come to pass. My poor ailing father muttered that an excommunicated King virtually meant an excommunicated kingdom, and he thanked God that He had seen fit to take my mother into His eternal care before this day. My mother, my father believed, would have had a broken heart over all that was happening and was bound yet to happen. In the worst scenario imaginable, we could all be plunged into a civil war or have another Christian king attempt to battle England’s king to the death, bringing all our country to bloody war.

  Thus, Parliament moved swiftly to prepare itself for all possibilities; stating that if the Pope made any move to denounce the kingdom, then all monies to Rome would immediately cease and be given over to the King for defence of his realm.

  ’Twas not only events over the seas that caused us great concerns. Not long after the baby Princess’s birth, the situation with a woman who called herself “The Nun of Kent” reached crisis point, resulting in this woman’s arrest and trial. Elizabeth Barton claimed to be a visionary, and said she had received messages from God to condemn the actions of the King. She promised that if he married Anne, he would be dead within six months of doing so. God, she said, was very displeased with the “infidel prince” of England, and King Henry would have to be prepared to face divine vengeance if he insisted in casting aside Catherine to marry Anne.

  However, at her trial the Nun confessed to being involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy of Henry Tudor. Elizabeth Barton had tried to draw powerful figures into this conspiracy. She had even sent messages to Catherine, now Dowager Princess of Wales, and her daughter Mary, but Catherine wisely decided that she would have none of this plot, and her daughter followed suit—unlike Bishop Fisher, who had believed so strongly in this woman’s visions that he had written to the Spanish Emperor encouraging him to invade England.

  From what I gathered from the gossip at court, her trial ran wild with savage emotions. Many people there often cried out: “Burn her! Burn the witch!”

  However, there were other people who had begun to regard the poor, misguided woman as some kind of saint; saying that she was like an English Saint Bridget or a Saint Catherine of Sienna. Thus, the King, wisely in this case, moved very carefully, though the woman was eventually burnt at the stake.

  Not long after this mad woman’s arrest and execution, George and I followed Anne into her chambers after an afternoon spent at the hunt.

  Coming into her rooms, we saw her standing still, looking down at an opened book placed on a small table. Anne’s usually clear brow puckered up into a frown, and it was clear that something she saw in the book worried her.

  When George and I approached her, she glanced at us, and lifted up her eyebrows.

  “George and Tom, look what I’ve found here.”

  Anna gestured to the book. It suddenly struck me that she had no wish or desire to touch it. She laughed, lifting up her chin.

  “So, I see some kind soul wishes to provide me some light reading material.”

  Going to the table, I picked up the tiny manuscript, to see that it was none other than the Book of Oracles, the ramblings of the so-called Nun of Kent. It had been left open to the page predicting Anne’s eventual death by fire—the death already suffered by Elizabeth Barton not long after Anne’s marriage to the King.

  “And what do you say, Tom? Should I be afraid?” Anne asked me. She stood there before me, looking down at her hands placed together, palm to palm.

  “Nay. If I remember rightly, this book also predicted that the King would be dead six months after divorcing Catherine. Well, Anne, six months have come and gone, and the King is still hale and hearty.”

  Anna sat on a stool with her head tilted to one side. Her dark eyes, so very pained, hinted that she wished to be somewhere, anywhere other than where she now found herself. For an instant, I remembered the young deer we had hunted down in the forest only an hour before. When it had collapsed from exhaustion, finally run to ground by the dogs, it had looked at me with the same expression I now saw in Anna’s eyes.

  In a voice suggesting she but spoke the thoughts going through her own head, Anna said to no one in particular: “I wonder if the person who left this book here was the same person who left this book in my chambers before I married the King. I suppose it must be so.”

  “This is not the first time you have seen this rubbish?” I asked her, holding out the book to her.

  “Nay, Tom. You remember, George, when I found another book, twin to this one?” She turned to look at George.

  “Yea. I remember.” George came and took the book roughly from my hands. “And as I did then, I do now.”

  With a savageness so unlike him, George tossed the book into the fire. We all watched silently as the flames began to take a firm hold on it. The parchment turned brown, then black, and at last began to turn to ash before our eyes.

  Anne let out a great sigh, and I glanced over to her to see she had wrapped her arms around her body, as if she suddenly had grown very cold.

  George, too, had looked up at her sigh. He now moved over to her and put his arm around her thin shoulders.

  “Do you remember what you said when you first saw that accursed book?”

  Anne leaned on him in a kind of half embrace. It reminded me so much of when they were children, and how Anne would seek out her comfort by being as close as she could to him.

  “My brave words, George?” she replied, looking up at him with a slight smile.

  “Yea, your very brave words. Were they not to the effect that no matter what the future would bring, you would not turn one bit from the course set before your eyes?”

  “You remember my words better than I do, George. But I was big-bellied with Elizabeth. Knowing that the near future held in store my child, thinking my daughter would be my son… it made me braver than I feel now.”

  She sounded so sad that I too tried my best to comfort her.

  “Take heart, Anna. That book is worthy only to feed a fire. ’Twas written only with the intention to do what it is doing now: destroy your peace of mind. Surely, you realise that is the only reason why it was placed where you would see it?”

  Anne looked at me fleetingly, and nodded.

  �
��That I well know, Tom. ’Tis painful that I am hated so. ’Tis strange, coz, so very, very strange. The first time I saw that book, I laughed. Even more when George threw it, as he did now, into the fire. But now sometimes I find it so hard to shake off this sense of impending doom…”

  And Anne began to cry. George put both his arms around her, saying quietly: “Nan, please don’t. I hate it when you weep.”

  Of all the bad timing, Jane, George’s wife, chose this moment to come into the room. Jane was a stern-face young woman, with little to recommend as regards to her appearance. When she saw Anne in her husband’s arms, her face screwed up in a grimace of deep jealously.

  Even so, she soon recovered herself, and curtsied.

  “Madam. The Chamberlain has asked me to tell you that the King, your husband, wishes you to attend him.”

  The way Jane uttered the words “your husband” instantly made me focus more of my attention onto her. Jane’s eyes were fixed on George with a look speaking of anger and jealously—even hate. It reminded me how my wife Bess sometimes gazed at me.

  “I must not let him see that I have been crying. I cry too much, he says.”

  Anna quickly went over to the bowl of water placed in her room, and splashed water all over her face. “Can you please help me get ready, Jane?”

  “Of course, my Grace.” Jane looked away from her husband and again curtsied, following Anne as she went into the next room, the Queen’s bedchamber.

  George’s eyes followed his sister, and then looked piteously at me. I had noticed all the time I had watched Jane that George had taken not one jot of notice of his wife. I could understand that. We both had more important things to worry us than the care of Jane’s spiteful feelings.