Dear Heart, How Like You This

by Wendy J. Dunn

  “What can we do?” he asked.

  “There is nothing much we can do, but try to be always there for her,” I replied.

  And that we always tried to be.

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  “But all is turned, thorough my gentleness,

  into a strange fashion of forsaking.”

  In January 1534, three months after the birth of Elizabeth, Anne was overjoyed to find herself again with child. With Elizabeth’s birth, discovering no true fulfilment in her marriage to the King, Anna realised being a mother would allow her another kind of fulfilment and one she always yearned for. Thus, the thought of another child so soon filled her with considerable delight. For certes, Anna often said to me after Elizabeth’s birth that children were the world’s greatest consolation for every grief that life could bring. Yea, that she was to have yet another child made Anna very happy.

  Being so happy made Anne desire the happiness of others, and the first person she thought of was her stepdaughter, the seventeen-year-old Lady Mary.

  Lady Mary was now with her new sister’s household and very unhappy (understandably) at where the events of the past years had led her. Thus, Anne told me she was determined to do her best to make things up with her, even going so far as to say that, if Mary would meet her half way, she would not have to walk behind her at court, but rather walk alongside her as her near equal. Thus, at the end of March, Anne with her household, which included me at that time, came down from the court to visit her daughter Elizabeth at Hatfield.

  On our arrival, Anne, who understood how strongly Mary felt about her, made no effort at first to converse with the newly usurped Princess, who was now forced by the King to be at the beck and call of her new sister’s household. Rather, Anna expressed her hope to me that by going slowly she would achieve a more lasting and satisfactory solution for all concerned.

  For a long time now, Anna had suffered terrible confusion and indecision about what to do regarding the state of “war” that presently existed between herself and the Lady Mary. I know for certes, being in Anne’s and George’s confidences, that Anne carried around a great deal of guilt on Mary’s behalf. Indeed, more than anything else at this time, when she was so full of hope for the future, Anne wished to make peace between them.

  The next morning after our arrival, a morning that began bright and sunny, promising (so falsely as events soon proved) a joyful beginning for our stay, started with an early Mass. This Mass saw the attendance of both Anne and her stepdaughter Mary. When the service was over, Mary arose and made a brief curtsy to the altar, close by to where Anne was kneeling, then in silence departed from the chapel. Anne, deep in prayer with her dark head bent, remained unaware of her stepdaughter’s departure. However, one of Anne’s ladies had taken notice of her curtsy and mistook it for a curtsy to her Queen, and did not hesitate to comment on it to Anne soon after the service. When Anne heard that Mary had so honoured her in the chapel she clapped her hands, overjoyed. Now Anna hoped she could achieve the solution she desired to end this very bitter situation.

  Thus, Anne sent one of her ladies to Mary, to verbally tell her this message: “The Queen salutes your Grace with much affection and craves pardon, understanding that at your parting from the oratory you made a curtsy to her, which if she had seen, she would have answered with the like. She desires that this may be an entrance of friendly correspondence, which her Grace shall find completely to be embraced on her part.”

  The Lady Mary was enraged by this olive branch now offered to her by the Queen. Saying that she knew of only one Queen, meaning her mother, and that her Lady mother, the Queen, could have sent her no such message since not only was the Queen forbidden to communicate with her daughter but she was simply too far away to send this type of communication. The Lady Mary even went on to say that any friend of Anne Boleyn was no friend of hers, and she would no longer waste any more of her time speaking to one so mistakenly loyal to Anne.

  Thus ended that very brief interview.

  I could see Anna was hurt, embarrassed and extremely angry when her lady brought back the Lady Mary’s message.

  I stood by in an alcove, warming myself with the sunlight coming through its windows, and watched Anne as she stalked up and down her chamber. My cousin was wringing her hands and looking utterly white with indignation.

  Suddenly she stopped stock still, crying out to all of us in the room: “One day, I shall bring down that girl’s high spirits.” Abruptly the room lost the sway of the sunlit day and seemed to be overcast with grey. I could not stop myself from trembling; ’twas as if someone had just walked over my grave.

  I lived thereafter, day by day, in more great fear of what the future would bring.

  All Anne’s hopes for reconciliation with the lady Mary had been shattered by these events. Anne was made instantly depressed, and deeply so, by this incident. Even when she played with her baby daughter one could detect the sudden change in her spirits.

  We left Hatfield not long afterwards, but ’twas a different journey back to court than the one we had experienced in going. Then Anna had reminded me of Anne of old: very gay, sparkling with health and good spirits. Now she rode with her head bowed in silence and took no notice of the beauties of the world around her. Leaving her small daughter behind had not helped. Anna told me it had broken her heart when the King had insisted on the baby Princess having an establishment of her own. Of course, Anna understood that it was healthier for her to be away from court. Knowing this had made the separation a little easier for Anna to deal with, but it was hard for any new mother who had just had her arms filled to have them made empty again. In sooth, before the move of the Princess to her own establishment at Hatfield, Anne greatly annoyed the King by spending every possible moment with her daughter. Even if was just to place the tiny girl on a cushion, to watch her kick and gurgle in the way that any healthy infant would.

  At long last, we arrived back at Greenwich. Anne looked dreadful at this stage, grey-faced and haggard. I could not prevent myself from moving through the members of her household, so to go near her, hoping that my presence would lend some sort of moral support.

  When I arrived at her side, I whispered to her: “What ails you, Anne?”

  Anne looked at me with frightened eyes, but said nothing. ’Twas as if she was greatly afeared to tell me what afflicted her. She turned to her ladies and asked to be taken with haste to her chambers.

  Later, that same night, one of Anna’s ladies told that the Queen had miscarried of her new baby.

  The King was at this time at Hampton, whilst we had returned to Greenwich. A messenger was sent posthaste to him, but the King came not and the messenger returned to us empty handed.

  The King’s silence said so many things.

  Almost a week passed and I requested and was given permission to go and see Anna. If I had been shocked when I had seen her in Calais more than a year ago, I was more shocked now. She was still very much abed. Her skin had taken on a yellowish hue and one could clearly see the fine bones etched beneath the thin surface. She looked like she had aged ten years or more since I last lay eyes on her. Days before I had heard from George—who had come to be by her side even if the King chose to remain at Hampton—that she had lost much blood. Indeed, the bleeding had been so uncontrollable at one stage, her doctors feared for her life. When Anna saw me, she held out her hand for me to take.

  Years ago I had told her that her hand was cold; today it was dry and felt hot with fever. Her ladies, so used to seeing me in conversation with Anna, were far enough away from us that we could talk without restraint.

  Thus, I was not too surprised to hear her softly say: “Sweet Tom, always here for me when the King comes not near.”

  “Yea, dear heart. That I will be for always,” I vowed to her in a whisper.

  Her eyes shone with tears and she turned her head away from me, closing her eyes. For a moment I thought she had gone to sleep,
but then I saw the tears running down her face. I could see from her expression that she was struggling hard to control herself. I tried to find some words of comfort. Some words to help stop the flow of tears.

  “There will be other babies, Anna,” I at last said, next thinking savagely to myself, What empty words of comfort were these?

  It did not surprise me greatly when I heard her say: “Oh, Tom! You cannot begin to understand.” Anne turned her dark head to gaze at me again.

  I sighed, and squeezed her hand.

  “Anna, you do me wrong. Forgive me my words. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, I say things that I wish I could call back. Tell me all that ails you, dear heart. All I want is to be able to help you, to be here for you. Let me, Anna, try my best to understand.”

  She wiped away her tears, grimacing as she said: “Tommy, you are a man. You mean well, I know, but just like a man you say that there will be other babies. Even George said those same words to me yesterday morning before he left to return to the court. Only a woman could understand how much this baby meant to me. Only two weeks ago I felt it quicken inside of me for the first time and I rejoiced, Tom, thinking that my child was growing and living within me. Now it has been cast out of my body, perfect in every way except that it was far too early for my little one to be born. I dared not tell the King that it was his Prince. Oh, God! Oh, dear God! What care I for that? The babe was my son—my baby son. And he is dead! Dead! Oh, Tom, I have lost him. My little boy, Tom!”

  With those final words, she crumbled before my eyes and began to cry out loud; so loud that all her ladies came rushing over to her. One of them took me aside firmly and led me to the chamber’s door.

  “Go now. Our poor Queen needs time to rest and grieve in peace.”

  So I left, my body shaking for all the misery that I had just left behind.

  I acknowledge that my own history as a husband is nothing to speak of. I acknowledge that to maintain good sympathy between husband and wife is not an easy thing. But in the early days, when I tried to do all that I could to encourage the growth of sympathy, if it could not be love between Elizabeth and I, I would never have treated Bess like the King now treated Anne. I remember that for both Elizabeth’s babies I was home to greet their births. Even when I began to harbour grave misgivings about my wife. Soothly, I am sure of the first being mine, as he was conceived that first dreadful night, but the girl? Not long after the birth of my son Tom, I had begun to suspect that Elizabeth had taken to playing harlot in my absences.

  But I will speak no more of my own doomed marriage.

  My dearest Anna lay sick and the King made his feelings plain by staying firm at Hampton palace.

  Not long after my first visit to Anne’s sickbed, one of her ladies came and told me that Anne requested that I come again to her chambers with my lute. So I took my lute out of its case and followed Anna’s woman back to the Queen’s chamber. Anne sat up in her bed, cradling tightly her own instrument. As I entered the chamber, she gazed agitated at me.

  “I cannot play, Tom. My fingers… Oh, Tom, my fingers refuse to do as I tell them,” she said, her dark brown eyes looking bright and enormous, still feverish in her too-thin face.

  The woman, once she led me to Anna, retired to the other side of the room where she sat down, picking up some discarded sewing. This elderly woman was the only other person in Anne’s bedchamber. Thus, as the woman was seated far enough away from us, Anna and I had another opportunity to talk freely.

  “Dear heart, of course you can still play. ’Tis just that you’re so weak at the moment. Let me take your lute and put it back on its stand. Then I will come back and let my fingers and voice do what they will for you.”

  So I took her lute gently from her hands, handing her mine in its stead, and carried it over to the window where there stood a stand for it. I returned to Anna to find her cradling my lute as she had hers, like a newborn child. I stared at her, my heart cold with fear. What if the events of the past week had broken her in a way that was irreversible? I tried to break the mood by speaking with a cheerfulness I did not feel.

  “I have a new song for you, Anna. ’Tis a tune from Ireland, and I have no doubt that you will enjoy it.”

  I took my lute carefully out of her arms, tuning it before I began playing this merry melody I had recently learnt to amuse my son. Tom loved music but as yet had little success in the making of it himself. It was one of those songs that had been composed by an Irishman to make fun of others of his race. Thus, it was full of insights that rang true and could not help but amuse. Especially since Anne and I both have Irish blood running through our veins.

  When I finished my song I looked closely at Anne, her eyes were still bright, but now it seemed the brightness of amusement. I began to relax. Perhaps Anna could be healed of this new grief.

  “You must promise to teach me that song, Tom. When Elizabeth is older I will play it for her.”

  “When you are well I plan to teach you many new songs. I might even teach you some of my own new songs, but only if you promise to be a good girl and get better as quick as you can.”

  Her smile disappeared and she looked again the very sick Anne that she had been minutes ago.

  “Oh, Tom. Please don’t speak to me as if I am a child. My life is so full of adult problems that I can never feel myself a child again. Cousin, if you would know the truth, sometimes I think that it would have been better if I had died when Elizabeth was born.” She said this very quietly, in a voice suggesting she struggled, with great difficulty, not to cry again.

  “Anna! Sweetheart! What an utterly dreadful thing to say!”

  “I tell you, Tom, ’tis only the truth. If I had not had grown to love my little girl, I could easily have let myself die when I bore my dead boy into the world. But I do so love my beautiful Elizabeth. More than I could ever have imagined possible. I cannot, and will not, leave her alone in this world with only a father who curses her every time he sees her, curses my sweet daughter just for being born not the Prince he desired!”

  I laid my hand upon hers, gripped hard upon the bed’s coverlet.

  “You only speak like this because you are sick. When you are better you will see things in a different and clearer light.”

  “Nay, Tom. I speak like this because I know the King, and I know my husband no longer has any care for me.”

  “But…” I tried to say something to reassure her, but Anne quickly broke in.

  “Tom! You do not need to find falsehoods to explain how the King deals with me. I have long known and faced up to the truth! The King’s great love is no more. And I like not that I am only the vessel for his royal seed—a breeding mare he services, not even hiding that he finds the chore distasteful. Harry does not care that I am flesh and blood and hurt. Sweet Jesus, Tom! My life is agony!”

  I had felt my face redden with her confidences, but, nevertheless, I felt also comforted that Anna was so close to me that she could freely express her most private thoughts. I glanced over to Anne’s lady, to find that the old woman had gone to sleep in front of the fire. We were then completely alone, thus I felt able to ask her something that had long bewildered me.

  “Anne, why, after wanting your love all those long years, did the King stop loving you?”

  She looked silently at me for a long moment, and then whispered: “I believe, Tom, that his feelings for me started to change when he began to believe that I came to him not a virgin. I told you long ago that you branded me well. Never did I realise that the branding would be suspected by the King.”

  I could not believe what I just heard, but finally sputtered, “Oh, Anne! Sweetheart! What can I say?”

  “There is nothing to say, dearest Tom. All of this is of my own doing and making… But, if I have regrets, you are not one of them. Long ago you showed me what it was to truly love. The memory of that one day of love, of how it should be between a man and a woman, is all that I have to sustain me when the King ruts himself upon
my body.

  “Your face, Tom!” Anne hysterically laughed, and then hiccupped in her attempt to stop laughing.

  “Tommy! Your face! Here you are thirty, and still you blush like a boy! Oh, Tom! I am so sorry for having burdened you so! But you are the only one I can speak of such matters to. Dearest Tom, we have made ourselves too sad; let us see if your lute can cheer us up again!”

  So, nothing more to say, I played to make us forget all that saddened our hearts.

  Another week passed and Anne was well enough to travel by litter to Hampton. In all, more than two weeks had passed since her miscarriage. Those of us who had cared for her during this time could not avoid the stark reality that she had received no personal message from the King since then.

  Anne was extremely pale and drawn, still very much the convalescent; thus, we took the journey slowly and with many rests, hoping not to tire her unduly. However, too soon we arrived at Hampton. Anne’s ladies assisted their Queen out from her litter. I could see that Anna had spent the last leg of the journey making what repairs she could to her haggard appearance. In my opinion, the heavy, white powder only worsened her look of illness. Anne shook away the helping hands of her attendants; forcing herself to walk upright and erect up the flight of stairs that led into Hampton Palace. I followed Anne from a distance, and wondered what welcome we would have from the King.

  It did not take us long to discover that the King was nowhere to be found. Indeed, the King’s Chamberlain soon informed us that the King was out hunting with members of his court. Anne seemed to be relieved; more than that, it was if a terrible weight had just been taken off her shoulders, and she retired, for the moment, to her chambers.

  I gained Anna’s Chamberlain’s permission to leave the Queen’s company, and went to seek out George. He had returned to Hampton after he had assured himself that his sister’s life was no longer in imminent danger. He had felt it was important that there be someone in the King’s household who served best the Queen’s interests.