Anne Boleyn: A Novel (29 page)

“Pregnancy has that effect on some women,” the doctor replied. “With others it’s nothing but tears.”

“I’ve had plenty of those too,” Henry retorted. “She’s tried me sorely, Butts, and St. Michael himself would’ve lost patience with her the other day! But I’ll mend it, and we’ll go to Greenwich.”

Butts said nothing; he could remember many instances when the man who stood frowning and making excuses had been wild with anxiety in case fever or sickness should carry off the woman he loved. She had snapped then, and with less right than she had to do it now, when she was his wife and bearing his child. They had quarreled like demons, but in those days Henry loved her. That was the difference.

And that was what the foolish woman wouldn’t accept without a fight and, like so many women, couldn’t see that giving a man a bad conscience was no way to win him back.

For her sake. Butts hoped she gave the King his son.

“His Grace is in a very good humor this morning, Madame.” She looked up at Margaret Wyatt and smiled. They were sitting in her apartments at Greenwich; the King had joined them to go to Mass and, in spite of herself, Anne flushed with pleasure when he was announced. He had bent over her, waving her back into her chair when she attempted to rise and receive him, and kissed her warmly on the cheek. Her eyes had filled with foolish tears, so that she turned her head away quickly to hide them.

Several of his gentlemen followed him into the room and soon broke the women up into little chattering groups. Immediately the atmosphere became transformed, and the King’s laugh rang out. He had left her for a moment and was talking to her aunt, Lady Boleyn; much as Anne disliked her, she didn’t mind. At least it wasn’t someone young and pretty like Meg, or just young, like Jane Seymour, who sat in her usual place in the corner, sewing.

“He’s had news of more predictions,” Anne answered. She felt strangely well, almost lightheaded. “All the soothsayers in England promise that the child will be a boy!”

“And so it shall, my Nan.” He had come back and overheard her and laid his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her.

She smiled back, so grateful for his friendliness that she had no pride left. Whatever had happened in the past, he had been good to her since they left Hampton. The quarrel was made up, and to his surprise she responded eagerly to his overture. She knew she looked ugly and enormous, and spent hours painting her face and rearranging her dress to try to please him. And he gave up his evenings with his gambling friends and left the women alone, because Butts said it was only a matter of days.

“How are you feeling?” he inquired.

“Unusually well,” she said. “I woke this morning with an appetite and an energy I haven’t had for months. It’s a fine day, too. I expect you’ll hunt this afternoon, or hawk?”

“Hawk, most likely,” Henry answered her. “When the boy’s born you must take out your own birds again.”

Everything was arranged. The rooms in Greenwich were prepared, and a magnificent tester bed hung with rich curtains of silk and velvet, which was part of a French Prince’s ransom, had been found in the treasury and assembled for Anne’s lying-in. The proclamation was drawn up, bonfires were heaped all over England, waiting for the torch to set them flaming with the news of an heir for the throne; the Tower guns were ready to fire the salute which would tell the waiting crowds of London that the King had a son at last. And all the astrologists and fortunetellers assured him that the child was a boy and would live to reign after him.

Henry was happy that September morning, and he felt kindly toward Anne because she had been no trouble since their last quarrel, when Butts had alarmed him by hinting that she was in danger. He would not want her to die. He might be tired of her, and out of love, but provided he had the son, she could sit safely at his side for the rest of her life.

Right now she was smiling at him, and he thought dispassionately that she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, even though pregnancy had taken the sparkle out of them. As he watched they blinked, and her face screwed up into a sudden grimace; then the eyes were open again, staring at him.

“Your Grace.”

It was Francis Weston at his elbow.

“The trumpeters are outside; when will you and the Queen be ready to proceed to Mass?”

The King lifted the gold watch at his belt and looked at it.

“Soon enough, Weston, soon enough.”

He wasn’t looking at her; for a few moments she sat very still, feeling strangely isolated in the crowded, noisy room, with the early autumn sunshine streaming through the windows. She pressed both feet hard against the floor and closed her eyes. The pain was coming again.

Someone was beside her; she opened her eyes and saw Jane Seymour standing with her cloak in her hands, waiting to fasten it round her shoulders for the procession to the Chapel. The girl was watching her out of those flat gray eyes which never seemed to hold any expression.

The King had turned back to her and he too was staring; she was unaware of her white, frightened face and the hands pressed against her body. The next spasm came so quickly and with such violence that she caught her breath in an audible gasp.

She held out a hand to him and he took it awkwardly.

“Nan...Nan, what’s wrong...”

She shook her head at him, gripping his heavy fingers as if she would never let them go.

“This is one morning I fear I’ll have to miss Mass, Sire, Someone fetch Dr. Butts!”

It was late in the afternoon when the king was brought to her. She looked like a child lying in the enormous gilded bed, flat and motionless under the covers, and they had cleared away the basins and towels, and smoothed back her hair and wiped her face clean of tears and sweat with a cloth dipped in rose water.

Her eyes were open and they watched him as he came through the press of people in the room, and she saw his glance move swiftly to the midwife who stood at the head of the bed, holding a bundle in her arms. The bundle was wailing. Anne was too tired, almost disembodied, to move; it was impossible that after all those hours and that last unbelievable convulsion of agony, that she had a body left. She wanted to sleep, to die, if she could, but she held herself poised on the edge of unconsciousness, waiting to see him, petrified by fear and a feeling which was much like guilt. She knew by his walk and the expectancy on his face that no one had dared to tell him.

Even in that moment he remembered what was expected of him, and he stopped by the foot of the bed and saluted her and turned to Dr. Butts.

“How is the Queen’s Grace?”

“Well, thanks be to God.”

And then it came.

The eagerness burst out of him, and he caught the doctor by the sleeve.

“Now let me see my son!”

No one moved. For some seconds it seemed as if every person in the room had stopped breathing. It was Butts who answered.

“You have a daughter, Sire.”

He said nothing; he stood without moving, while the news sank in, aware that the heart felt as if it were slowly being torn out of his body; it was the only way to describe his disappointment. It was a physical sensation and for the moment it numbed his brain. A daughter, another girl! He could see the Duke of Norfolk standing a few feet away, with his wife beside him; Norfolk’s face was a mask, but the Duchess was plainly gratified. There was another one there who was as near smiling as she dared. He narrowed his eyes, trying to recognize her, and saw Jane Rochford, Anne’s sister-in-law...Hadn’t she spent a month or two in the Tower at Anne’s request, for speaking publicly against the marriage? This was her revenge, then, for that punishment. The bitch. The Rochford bitch and the Norfolk bitch, and all the others who hated Anne and begrudged him his son and were rejoicing because he only had another daughter, no better than Mary, after all. The rage rose in him till he trembled. He heard a whisper from the bed.

“Harry.” It was quite unlike her voice. “Harry, I’m sorry.”

Butts murmured quickly to him. “Try to make light of it, Sire. The Queen nearly died. I would have kept it from her if I could.”

He came to the head of the bed and his heavy hand patted her cold one where it lay slack on the covers. It wasn’t her fault, he insisted. No one should see how he felt; not one of the partisans of Catherine and Mary should have their guess confirmed by anything he said or did.

“Have good cheer, sweetheart,” he said loudly. “We’ll have a fine son yet!”

Her lips moved and words came. “Forgive me, Harry...I tried...” They seemed like a trumpet call to her, but they were too faint for him or anyone to hear, and she closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of his strained face and empty eyes. In spite of everything he had been kind, while she had lain there, quivering inwardly because she expected him to show his disappointment publicly, and she shrank from the ordeal. Only a daughter after all. When they showed the creature to her she turned her head away and struck feebly with her hand. A girl. After the months of dragging illness and that nightmare birth...Oh, God, she wouldn’t think of that...she wouldn’t think what he had said about a son, about enduring it again...and then this blow to both their hopes.

If he had turned on her then, she would have died.

Instead he looked at the infant in the midwife’s arms, parting the edges of the shawl that covered her, and stared for a few seconds at the tiny crimson face, with a fuzz of bright red hair covering its skull.

Then he left the room with his head high, and his arm round Norreys’ neck, and said in the same loud, harsh voice, “Thank God for our daughter, Hal. England has a fair Princess!”

The following Wednesday the child was christened at the Church of the Friars Minor at Greenwich. It was a splendid ceremony; the church was hung with fine arras; the font was made of silver and sheltered by a crimson satin canopy fringed with gold. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk carried the infant Princess, while the Earl of Essex bore the gilt basins, the Marquis of Exeter the taper of virgin wax, and the Marquis of Dorset the salt. The child’s grandfather Wiltshire and his son Rochford and its Great-uncle Norfolk were among the nobles who walked in the procession, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was godfather.

The Bishop of London, attended by four abbots, christened the child Elizabeth. Anne was slowly recovering in the palace, and the King didn’t think it necessary to be present.

“There’s no use pretending, Thomas, it’s the worst blow to my hopes!”

The King glared at Cromwell from his seat in the Council Chamber after the other members of the Council had been dismissed. A dish of sweetmeats was at his elbow, with the quills, ink and paper necessary to the business of the meeting. Whatever Henry did, he managed to eat or drink something at the same time. In the month since his daughter’s birth he had put on still more weight.

“I know it was a personal disappointment, Sire,” Cromwell agreed. “Everyone hoped for a Prince, but at least it proves the Queen can bear living children. Her infant Grace is thriving, I hear.”

“Everyone did not hope for a Prince,” Henry retorted, ignoring the last remark. “A good many were hoping for exactly what they got. A girl! Think what proof it would have been to the world that my marriage was justified, if, after all these years, the new Queen had given me a son! By God, Thomas, probably the Pope himself would’ve retracted in the face of that. Now I’m in a weaker position to withstand his damned excommunication. I thought I’d have a Prince to show my people as an answer...I was sure of it!”

“It’s still possible,” Cromwell comforted. “If the child had died or miscarried, it might have looked bad indeed, but there’s every hope of a Prince next time.”

Henry stared at him and put down the gold toothpick he’d been picking his teeth with. It rolled a short distance across the polished table.

“She’s not strong, Thomas,” he said slowly. “She almost died; the child’s brawny enough, with lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows, but
she
is not! Each time she bears a child there’s danger to both. I hadn’t reckoned on that when I sought to marry her.”

Neither had Cromwell, and he kept his muddy brown eyes fixed on the gleaming toothpick so that the King shouldn’t see the disquiet in them. A woman too delicate for childbearing was no ally in the circumstance, and no fit Queen, either! But who could have foreseen that, he asked savagely; Catherine was big-boned and wide-hipped enough, God knew, and she spewed out dead children like grape pips...This one was delicately made, but some of the smallest women bred the easiest...

Really, there was nothing he could say.

“We must try to gain another stay of execution from Rome,” he said at last. “It’s not wise to risk a complete breach until we’ve made it law. We’ve temporized before, and each time it gives us the chance to advance a little. I suggest, most humbly, that you do the same now.”

“I’ve no intention of doing anything else,” the King snapped. “We must await the outcome of this meeting between Francis and the Pope; in the meantime, ask for a further prorogation of the sentence. And prepare some new bills to be passed through Parliament.”

“If Your Grace will let me know what you require,” Cromwell murmured.

“I will,” Henry said. “First, an Act confirming my marriage with the Queen; second, an Act that the Realm should acknowledge the General Council of Christendom to be above the authority of the Pope...”

“That’s complete schism,” Cromwell said quietly.

The King looked at him; he had the toothpick again and he tapped it gently on the table.

“I am excommunicated by a suspended sentence, Thomas...don’t beg the question. Suppression of the monasteries was your idea for the future, so why bleat about schism now? Hold your tongue till I’ve finished!”

The Secretary bent his head.

“Thirdly,” Henry continued, “an Act whereby any persons obeying the Pope’s commands in connection with the marriage with Catherine shall be guilty of treason. Get these ready for their passage through Parliament. In the meantime, when Clement meets Francis at Marseilles on October i6th, we’ll send a straight-spoken Englishman to present our final petition for annulment from the Spanish marriage and recognition of this one. If that is refused, Thomas, and I feel it will be, since I’ve no son, and a daughter of four weeks isn’t much better than a daughter of seventeen, then the bill goes through Parliament, and we break from Rome.”