My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (15 page)

Cranmer paced beside her, deliberating how best to rebuke this new, unseemly bitterness. He glanced back to assure himself that her attendants were following at a discreet distance. “I would suggest that your Grace has scarcely had time to know, or to judge, him,” he said.

She only quickened her pace, her back uncompromisingly rigid and the fur-lined folds of her mantle bunched aggressively on her stomach in typical Flemish fashion.

“I have slept with him,” she made so bold as to remind him.

“But I have worked with him for years,” he pointed out. “And just as a finely cut jewel has more than one facet so I assure you there is another side to him. Perhaps one day, Madam, you may be privileged to find it.”

They had reached the terrace that separated the garden from the Thames. Below them lay the Barge Walk. The water gate steps were busy with the constant arrival and departure of people who had business with the royal house hold, and the noonday peace was broken by the rough badinage of boatmen waiting for passengers or mooring their craft against the landing stairs. It was scarcely the place Cranmer would have chosen for conducting so delicate a remonstrance.

“In the meantime, is it possible that you are not showing your best side to him?” he probed. “When you first arrived you were so meek and reasonable, whereas now even I am aware of the ‘high-stomached humor’ of which he complains.”

“Would you have me fondle myself into favor like a prostitute with a man who insults me?” demanded Anne, her generous mouth drawing itself into a hard, resentful line.

Cranmer was too shaken by her outspokenness to offer the usual platitudes about wifely duty. “I would have you try to render yourself more agreeable to your husband, Madam,” he countered, with equal bluntness.

“You met me before ever I saw him and no one knows better than your lordship how hard I have tried,” she reminded him.

And something in the directness of her gaze must have shamed him, for he added almost defensively, “It was Thomas Cromwell who asked me to entreat you to consider the expediency of continuing to do so in spite of—everything, Madam.”

“Then why doesn’t milord Chancellor come and talk to me himself?” she asked. “I have besought him to often enough.”

“Being under the King’s displeasure, he was afraid to meddle further in the matter,” admitted his friend. “And now he can’t come because he is in the Tower.”

Anne didn’t ask which tower. She felt sure that he meant that grim, four-square building farther down the river. Passing it once on her way from Greenwich, she had remarked on its strong portcullised water gate, and an awkward silence had fallen on the company. Only Lady Rochfort had taken pleasure in whispering to her that Henry’s second wife had gone there to her death. And now Cromwell, who had manoeuvered her own marriage, was helpless behind those dreadful gates. Realizing the implication, she stood there with her hands folded over her bunched-up skirts staring at the animated river scene from which all cheer and sunlight seemed suddenly to have been wiped out.

“Does Henry hate me as much as that?” she asked, in a stricken sort of way. She was scarcely aware of the Archbishop telling her how Norfolk had arrested his rival in the King’s name just as he was about to take his place in council.

Presently—out of her stony abstraction—Anne heard him say quite kindly, “Does it make it any easier to know that I would willingly serve your Grace if it were in my power?”

Separated from the love of her family, she was compelled to live on small kindnesses. She turned at once to thank him and he could scarcely credit the sudden beauty of her expression. Standing there in her bunched-up blue velvet, she reminded him of his favorite Albrecht Dürer Madonna.

“Have you made no friends in England?” he asked. Her disproportionate gratitude had jolted his sensitive mind into realizing the painful isolation of her position, and if the tone of his inquiry were sharp it was due to an uncomfortable feeling of participated guilt.

Anne shook her head and sat down comfortably on the low garden wall. She had ceased to be either a tragic queen or a famous Madonna, and had become just a lonely woman arranging a few spring buds in her lap. “But since I have your lordship’s good will—”

He waved aside the tactful formality as if warning her not to expect too much from any overtures of his. “Among the women, I mean,” he hastened to explain.

Anne considered the matter gravely. “There was a young niece of the Duke of Norfolk’s who showed me some kindness,” she recalled, with a reminiscent smile for the spontaneity of the girl’s hurried confidences about the Princesses’ clothes. “The King has since appointed her to be one of my maids-of-honor; but so far I have had little chance to talk to her. Katherine Howard, her name is.”

Thomas Cranmer started. Could even this placid, unsophisticated foreigner be so simple? So ignorant of all the stale gambits of court intrigue? Churchman as he was, he could almost have shaken her for her complacent good ness.

“I would not advise your Grace to make a confidante of her,” he warned drily.

“No?” Supposing that he spoke out of antagonism towards the girl’s religion, she surveyed him from beneath drooped eyelids with covert amusement. “Strangely enough, the only other English woman who has gone out of her way to befriend me is a Catholic too. No less my enemy than Mary Tudor herself.”

“Naturally, as a member of the family, she would wish to show you hospitality. In spite of all this increasing divergence in religious opinion you mustn’t think we’re all savages, entrenched in two separate camps.” The learned archbishop permitted himself the informality of sitting beside her, and his personal charm melted the last of Anne’s reserve.

“But it wasn’t merely hospitality,” she assured him; and in her eagerness to show him what sort of things she had to put up with and to do justice to Mary’s unexpected kindness most of her newly acquired mastery of English verbs deserted her. “In the procession at Blackheath I do something foolish. I am overjoyed to see among so many strangers a group of merchants from the Hanseatic ports—”

“Given place there by the King’s forethought—to welcome you,” murmured Cranmer, with a smile.

“Hans Holbein often spoke to me of them. They were good friends to him when he first came to England. They commissioned him to paint their portraits and to decorate their buildings in some place called the Steelyard, yes?”

“Their wharf extends like a walled city all along Thames Street from Barking Creek to Dowgate,” explained Cranmer. “The nobles go there to buy their falcons and all manner of rich stuff, and it’s quite the fashion to invite one’s friends to caviar washed down with Rhenish at the Steelyard Inn.”

“So?” Nodding her head appreciatively, Anne savored the welcome fact that her countrymen were held in such high esteem.

“Well, these rich merchants offer me a purse and I keep it. It appears I should have passed it to one of your fine dukes to distribute to the poor. But at home my brother’s people were always hurt if one so gave away a present. So I carry it to my apartments in the palace. And afterwards that old—” out of respect for his cloth Anne bit back the low-German epithet which best expressed her feelings—“that old Norfolk woman told everybody I have the manners of a chambermaid. That I am greedy and hold out my hands for—how do you say—”

“Gratuities?” suggested Cranmer, interpreting the rubbing gesture of her finger and thumb.

“They are all laughing about it in the long gallery after supper,” went on Anne. “I think sometimes my husband encourage those pretty girls to amuse him by making fun of me. But when my step-daughters pass I see her bite her lip. Two spots of color come high up on her cheek bones as if she is angry. And she take the trouble to turn back and remind them that perhaps I do not know your English customs.” Gradually her resentment gave way to a sort of pleased pride. “It was a beautiful thing for her to do, don’t you think, milord Archbishop?”

“Katherine of Aragon’s daughter is always scrupulously fair,” admitted Cranmer, a little absently. “But as regards power to help you she is—negligible. Whereas only a few short weeks ago Thomas Cromwell ruled England.” His voice dropped so that he seemed almost to be communing with himself. “And now the Norfolk star is in the ascendant. It is like the swing of a pendulum. And what has happened once can happen again.”

Anne made an exasperated little movement as if to brush all these vast, perplexing contentions from her. In Cleves things were so much simpler. Conscientious councilors didn’t walk in fear of their lives, hanging on her brother’s moods or his fancy for some woman.

“Can I help it if the King is indifferent to me?” she asked wearily.

Indifferent? Would that he were! thought Cranmer, rousing himself. But he tried to speak patiently. “Don’t you see, Madam, that nothing remains static—least of all the King’s affections. You tell me that you love this place. You seem prepared to settle down sensibly and make the best of your new life, enjoying the sports, the jaunts to London and the people’s liking for you. To put up with your husband, in fact.”

“Well, isn’t that what you all want?” she asked, wondering if she would ever do anything right in this mad country.

“It’s not enough. Particularly if he should come to realize it. You must make every effort to please him, to keep him.”

“To—keep him?” repeated Anne. Nothing would have pleased her better than to lose him; yet the thought of doing so raised a cloud of frightening possibilities.

Cranmer had no wish to emphasize them. “It’s not for a mere man to suggest the means to your Grace,” he hurried on, with nervous urgency. “But I beseech you to forget your pride and use your wit. For your brother’s sake—for all our sakes. Most of all, perhaps,” he added, more quietly, “for the sake of England!”

Such fervor coming from so self-possessed a dignitary could not fail to impress Anne, and the thought of William had power to shake her out of her own personal sense of grievance. Besides, as the Archbishop must have observed, people seldom appealed to her good nature in vain. “I will take the first opportunity that offers,” she promised.

“It may save Thomas Cromwell’s life.”

Anne laid down her snowdrops on the sun-warmed bricks between them and glanced at him anxiously. Although he was about the same age as her husband, he seemed much older. “I am afraid I have been stubborn and tired you,” she apologized, in her best English. “It is difficult to think of others when one has been so badly hurt oneself.”

Having accomplished his errand, the Archbishop allowed himself to relapse into the kindly theologian; in the role nature intended for him, he was at his best. “Life is so full of various kinds of hurt,” he said. “That is why a wise man builds for himself some sort of retreat to which he can occasionally retire. And because the young are very vulnerable it is as well to begin building early.”

He looked up to find Anne’s eyes fixed on him, no longer sleepy or gently mocking, but wide, surprised and full of intelligence.

“What does one build with?” she asked.

“Oh, with very ordinary things. One’s talents and hobbies and interests.”

“I haven’t any talents. That’s just the trouble,” she told him.

“No,” he agreed, recalling several painful occasions during the last few weeks when she had only averted fiasco by confessing candidly that she couldn’t sing or dance or play upon the virginals or whatever people expected her to do. “But there must be somethings you are good at. What can you do best?”

Anne considered. “I suppose—just sew and cook and see that things are properly run—like any hausfrau.”

Cranmer regarded her with fresh interest. He liked her candor and her common sense. She seemed devoid of petty vanity; and it was always easier to put things right when dealing with people who had been brought up to see themselves without blinkers.

“Then why not specialize in that?” he suggested. “Take pride in running your household efficiently. Study the King’s comfort and keep your servants from quarreling. And try to do it all a little better than—than his other wives.”

Anne indulged in a small complacent sniff. All these things were as child’s play to her; but she was surprised that he should set any store by them, and a little sceptical.

“You’d be surprised how much interest the King himself takes in the vacheries and wine cellars and so forth. Underneath all his regal trappings, he is really a very domesticated man.”

Anne had already found that out, although whether he wanted a domesticated wife was another matter. But it was certainly a relief to be asked to shine at things which she had been taught to do at home instead of being expected to compete with the English court ladies in their more fanciful sphere of accomplishments.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Anne was a restful woman to be with and he had evidently given her an idea to turn over in that deliberate mind of hers. “I’ve a lawn almost as fine as this at my palace at Lambeth,” he mused aloud. “But I never wanted to live in palaces.”

Anne studied his thoughtful profile. Although he looked so austere, there was a lovable courtesy about him. “Is that how you came to understand—about the need for making some kind of retreat?”

She spoke so quietly, hands idly folded, inviting confidence, that he found himself telling her how it had all come about.

“The happiest part of my life was spent at Cambridge,” he said.

“Men sought for truth there, not how to confound it for their own ends. Men like Erasmus of Rotterdam. And I found vast contentment in teaching theology. You see, when I myself was at school my master was so severe that he daunted even the finest wits among us.

So that when I grew up and found the beauty of words for myself, I wanted more than anything to present literature to the young people of this generation in such a way that they must needs enjoy it.”

Anne’s brown eyes were soft with pity for his hurt youth. “How I wish I could have been one of your pupils! I might have learned to talk to you in Latin as all the Tudors do. But how did you come to be connected with them?”

“It was pure chance really. I’d taken two of my pupils to their father’s country place in Essex, because of the plague. It must have been in fifteen twenty-nine, the year it was so bad in Cambridge.