My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (2 page)

Henry saw his daughter pass on, hands primly folded about her rosary; but he remained at the window, looking down benignly on the laughing, chattering players. They were girls of good family.

And he had only to go down and lift up his finger…

“After all, why should I get married?” he suggested blandly.

“There’s plenty of fruit down there for the picking!” He threw the challenge over his shoulder to his disconcerted councilors, and the answer he expected came back at him pat as a well-placed tennis ball. The careful placing, of course, was Cromwell’s “To secure the succession, Sir.”

Henry swung round on him again in a flurry of purple and fine linen. “Haven’t I already done that?” It was the vindication of the male who after twenty years of frustrated hopes, has produced a son at last. The only possible justification for his having divorced Catherine and defied the Pope. It had always seemed to him the supreme irony that weaklings could beget heirs whilst he, the fine athlete and lusty lover, had been able to sire only daughters and still-born sons. And now Jane’s dying gift to him had both salved his vanity and satisfied parental yearning.

Archbishop Cranmer hated to prick the fragile bubble of his pride, but felt constrained to point out that Prince Edward was far from strong.

Henry’s anxiety for the child far outweighed theirs but he never would look upon the things he did not wish to see. His light eyes flickered over the group of statesmen to the lean, imposing figure of the court physician, who began to understand why the others had pressed him to attend the meeting. “You don’t think he looks any worse, do you, Chamberlain?” he asked.

Chamberlain caught Cromwell’s compelling eye. As a doctor he was above coercion but in order to frighten the King into another marriage it was necessary only to tell the truth—a lamentable and half-understood truth beginning to be discussed in medical circles because it appeared to affect not only the King’s heir but also a large proportion of the population. “There is a kind of wasting sick ness,” he admitted reluctantly, “which in its first stages frequently imparts a fallacious glow of health—” But seeing the stricken look on his patron’s face and being essentially a healer, he tried hastily to allay the gravity of his own words. “With care, Sir, he may improve.”

Henry had evidently been badly frightened, and when he was frightened he blustered. “Care!” he shouted. “Haven’t we denied ourselves the joy of his presence so that he may be safe from all infection at Havering? Hasn’t he every care that human thought can devise? A devoted foster mother. Dr. Butts in constant attendance. His food—and even his tiny clothes—tested for poison. And haven’t I recently given orders that no one, not even his own sisters, may go and dandle him and breathe on him without my signed permission?”

He cared so much that it almost swung his thoughts beyond the necessity of remarriage. If anything should happen to his son—his little, lovable son—who already looked for his coming and talked to him with the marvel of his first words…What did all the women in the world matter compared with this precious replica of himself? And here were these wretched councilors wasting his time when he might be on his way to Havering. He must get rid of them—promise them anything. He looked round and beckoned to Thomas Culpepper, a personable young man whose pleasant manners had already earmarked him for personal service.

“Tell them to have the horses ready for Havering, Tom,” he ordered. “I shall want you to come with me. And bring that toy puppet show we bought in Kingston and some of those big peaches from the south wall.” It would be pleasant riding today. But how often had he set forth quite happily on such a morning only to worry himself into a frenzy on the way lest anything should have happened to the child before he got there! That was the worst, he supposed, of having only one son.

The Archbishop touched him on the arm. The austerity of his heavily jowled face was softened by pity. Of them all, he alone guessed at the Tudor’s inmost thoughts, understanding that mixture of sensitiveness and self-deception which men called the King’s conscience.

“For England’s sake, Sir, settle something definite before you go,” he urged gently.

Henry relaxed from his defiant stance and smiled at him.

Wolsey, the most powerful archbishop of them all, had died lamenting that he had served his king much better than his God.

But the King himself knew this to be much more true of Cranmer, who, however troubled in his conscience, invariably helped to get him what he wanted. So he listened to his appeal. Beyond the trivial pastime on the terrace, his eyes sought the Thames, bearing laden ships from half the world’s ports to the wharves of his throbbing capital. The river had flowed past all his palaces—that was part of his daily life and the very life stream of his land. A land weakened by the interminable Wars of the Roses and which he, born of a Lancastrian father and a Yorkist mother, had solidified and made strong. No weakling could have done that, he thought, expanding his mighty chest. The vigor of his manhood had both reflected and inspired the resilience that always lay coiled at the slow-beating heart of England waiting on necessity and some leader’s call. In this he had not let England down. Strength and physical courage and heartiness he had shown his subjects, and these were the credentials they demanded of their rulers. His private life was his own. But he would do much to secure the succession, to keep England peaceful and prosperous as he knew and loved her now.

“I tell you what, milords,” he suggested, turning towards the waiting group. “If I can’t go myself and see these prospective brides, we’ll send Holbein to paint ’em. For, upon my soul, he catches people’s expressions so marvelously and is so scrupulous of detail that this should help me to decide. Have them send him up,” he ordered, almost genially. “I saw him down in the garden but a few minutes ago being besieged by ladies who hope to get their miniatures done.”

While waiting for his court painter to come, Henry went and stood before his portrait of Queen Jane. He had ridden to Windsor the moment the breath was out of her body sooner than sleep in the same house as her corpse; but immediately on his return he had her painting hung where he could see it from his work table.

And so truthfully had Holbein reproduced her fair gentleness that it seemed to all of them as if Jane Tudor herself looked gravely down at him. Only once—to Catherine of Aragon—could Henry give the clean, uncalculating love of youth, and his body had never burned for Jane beyond control of reason or religion as it had for Nan Boleyn; but so happy had their short married life been that he felt no desire to replace her. In fact, after the first shock of her death he had rather enjoyed playing the new role of widower, and—giving himself up to an orgy of self-pity and sentiment—he had managed to wrap her memory in a shroud of perfections which would have startled diffident Jane. But all his life he would be sincerely grateful to her for the tranquillity she had brought him after the disappointing torments of his second marriage, and because she had died in giving him his son. Never, he knew, would she have defied him as proud, virtuous Catherine had done or deceived him like Anne. If he must marry a fourth time he could imagine himself marrying a Catherine or Jane— but never, never another girl called Anne!

Hans Holbein brought into the room a breath of the wider life of art, unbounded by nationality and uncontaminated by scheming politics. The King welcomed him with genuine pleasure. Here was a man whom he felt he had made and who—unlike Cromwell— had remained unchanged. Henry’s appreciation of the arts had been quick to recognize Holbein’s genius, and it was his own generosity that kept him in the country. And because so many of the things he did made Henry feel shabby he found it comforting to warm himself at times in the glow of his own good deeds. So he laid an affectionate arm about the painter’s shoulders and led him to the late Queen’s portrait.

“It’s more than two years since you painted it, Hans,” he said.

“And I would sooner lose anything in the palace.”

They stood side by side in front of the canvas, not wholly unalike in appearance. The fortuitous resemblance was accentuated by the light, spade-shaped beard Holbein had grown in deference to his patron. The color of it, like his eyes, was warmly brown and the width of his face was refined by half a lifetime of diligent seeking after perfection in his art. However unconventionally he lived, there was little of the gross about him—it had all been whittled out of him by hard work. In his brown velvet he would have passed for any kindly, middle-class student. But he was master of his craft and that was the kind of equality the King recognized.

With mutual appreciation they examined the texture of Jane’s brocaded bodice and the fine network on her sleeves.

“I remember that dress well and how happy we were when she wore it!” sighed Henry, his small, light eyes suffusing with easy emotion. “You know, Hans, I sometimes think if she were alive today my little son would be stronger. And there wouldn’t be all this pother now about getting married again.” He made a gesture as if to wash his hands of the whole wearisome business and turned Holbein over to his councilors.

The Archbishop drew him into their midst and they discussed the commission at length.

Milan was a painter’s paradise—particularly to one who had not been able to afford such opportunities in his youth. But when they told him it was the young Duchess they wanted him to paint and Norfolk explained eagerly what a famous beauty she was, Holbein looked skeptical. He had usually found these famous beauties to be remark ably uninteresting sitters—smug and expressionless. “Are they expecting me?” he asked practically.

Some of the statesmen exchanged uneasy glances. Knowing the lady’s objections they had proceeded no further with the negotiations. Cranmer stole a glance at the King’s uncompromising back.

“We could send an envoy, could we not, milord Chamberlain?” he suggested uncertainly.

“Send Wotton,” snapped the King, without turning round.

“But he is only a Lutheran doctor of divinity,” objected the Duke, whose connection by marriage with the Tudors gave him considerable liberty of speech.

“He’s the most discreet man I know for the business,” said Henry.

“And I don’t want to be compromised until I’ve seen the portrait.”

“And if there should be any hitch in Milan,” demurred Thomas Cromwell obstinately. “Have they your Grace’s leave to proceed to Cleves?”

“Hitch? Why should there be?”

Cromwell had learned his able statecraft as Wolsey’s secretary but, being the son of a blacksmith, he had not been brought up to soften his blows. “Sir, we have combed Europe,” he explained bluntly. “And, failing the Duchess of Milan there seem to be no others available.”

It was a humiliating thought and Henry swallowed it in silence.

“I don’t know anything about these two Cleves women. I don’t even know their names!” Henry burst out presently, pacing back and forth beneath Jane’s portrait.

Cromwell hastily consulted a document in his hand. To his legal mind the ladies themselves had seemed relatively unimportant.

“The Lady Anne and the Lady Amelia,” he read.

Another Anne! And they would probably foist her onto him because she was the elder! “But of what consequence is this duchy of Cleves? Nothing ever happened there.”

Cromwell could have reminded him for the hundredth time that an alliance with Cleves would send up his stock with the Emperor and keep France guessing; but it was Holbein who unexpectedly relieved the tension. He looked up from a clever little cartoon of the King which he had been drawing surreptitiously on the back of a book.

“Nothing—except that I was born near there!” he said.

“Why, of course—one forgets you are really German!” exclaimed Henry. “You’ve lived here so long and you came to us from Basle—”

“My father had to go there to illuminate manuscripts. He used to paint people’s portraits within the initial letters of their important documents. They were so small and exquisite that their lovers used to cut them out and keep them in lockets. That’s how I got the idea of making miniatures.”

“But you remember Cleves?”

“As a small boy I lived in the lower Valley of the Rhine. I loved the vast skyscrapes—the long, straight canals—and the windmills.”

Henry gave him a friendly punch. “Why, all this time we’ve been keeping a homesick man!” He laughed good-naturedly. “And avidly as the artist in you yearns for the art treasures of Milan, all the little boy in you wants the windmills! Well, go on there if you like, and paint all the Flemish princesses you want to. In all their stuffy petticoats! But mind you let me have young Christine of Milan’s portrait first!”

Good humor was restored. Henry’s great laugh rang through the room so that the maids-of-honor outside remembered their duties and scuttled from the terrace; and the solemn, middle-aged men within smiled as they were wont to do at home, without the closed and wary look that concealed their tortuous minds at court. The King made a gesture of dismissal and they bowed themselves out, streaming thankfully into the anteroom and corridors. Only Cromwell and Cranmer and Holbein remained, arranging a meeting with Dr. Wotton; and young Culpepper who was to ride with his master to Havering.

“You can see how it is, Hans,” said Henry. “The two parties on at me all the time. And the brides only ciphers for the men’s separate ambitions. Religious faction wrapped up in romance!”

“Like the carvings I’m designing for Hampton, of the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown,” laughed Holbein.

Henry stretched himself, looking down appreciatively at the great muscles that still swelled on either forearm. “Ah, well, now we can get out,” he yawned, relaxing from a public character to a private individual. “Have they brought round the horses, Tom?”

“They’re in the courtyard, Sir.”

“Then we’ll get going. I wonder now if Mary would like to come with us? If she’s finished her everlasting devotions!” He was all brimming over with kindness now, and it pleased him to know how his proud elder daughter, now a grown woman, adored her half-brother. He stepped back to the window to see if there was any sign of her, but the terrace was deserted save for the slim, auburn-haired girl who had laughed so deliciously. Having nothing in particular to do, she was putting the shuttle cocks back in their box.