My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (20 page)

“You know the world, and you’re the only person whose advice I can trust now Olsiliger’s gone,” she pleaded, lest he should imagine that she was trying to blow upon the smouldering embers of their relinquished love. “If only I could see you and talk to you sometimes!”

“As you know, I am out of favor these days,” he reminded her gently.

Anne picked up a massive shoulder chain and seemed to examine the workmanship. It was fashioned from a series of inter-locking S’s in a design which was all the rage at court. But it might just as well have been made of peasecods.

“Because you made me beautiful,” she whispered back.

“Because a man who has succumbed to shoddy charms can no longer perceive your kind of beauty, Anna.”

“You used not to talk about him like that.”

“I had come in contact with only one side of him. The widely informed amateur, the generous patron. His sex life didn’t concern me—then.”

His words, half regretful and half contemptuous, corroborated what Cranmer had said about the different facets of the King’s character. “Since everybody seems to agree that he can be generous, I will ask him to have you back at court,” offered Anne, who hated asking him for anything.

But Holbein began mixing some pigments with concentrated fury. “Do you suppose I should enjoy seeing the way he treats you?” he muttered.

His caring like that was oil to her wounded self-esteem. Her glance passed like a caress over the worn velvet of his favorite painting coat, and the practical part of her that was good at adding up accounts began to won der if he had enough money. She handed the chain to a hovering apprentice and in order to get rid of him asked him to take it outside and show it to her ladies.

“Without all the commissions at court…” she began anxiously.

But the great painter only laughed. “Ever since I did my first portrait in this country for Sir Thomas More—God rest his lovely soul!—I’ve had more work than I want,” he assured her. “And surely you know by now that however much I earned I should never have a groat?” Under cover of bending to select a finer brush from one of the little ledges at the side of his easel, he turned to smile at her. “So don’t worry about me, liebchen, even if you hear that Horenbout or even that woman painter, Livina Teerlinc, has been commissioned to paint this new Howard hussy.”

Anne hadn’t even heard that Henry wanted a portrait of her.

“So everybody in the city knows about her too?” she exclaimed through stiff lips. She looked sharply from the goldsmith’s absorbed face to the long window that lighted him at his work, and her soft brown eyes held a hunted expression reminiscent of one of the King’s stags before the kill. A sharp squall of rain had whipped the grey Thames into angry little wavelets and made the cobbles on the quay glisten beneath an unnatural, stormy light. From where she stood she could see a Flemish ship with furled sails being unladen in the Pool and some of her crew lounging against her bulwarks. One man spat expertly in the direction of the royal barge moored alongside with its impressive standards. She heard their outbursts of coarse laughter and wondered if they were laughing about her. About the unwanted bride. The bride, who, two or three months ago, was supposed to be making such a brilliant match.

Some of these men might even have seen her set forth from Cleves with so many grand new clothes and so much pother. Suppose they, too, had heard rumors of a rival—already? They would carry back the story of her degradation to all the lowland ports and a dozen busybodies would ride hot-spurred with it to Cleves. Staring out across that rain-swept London wharf, Anne suffered all the unmerited humiliation of a woman scorned. She must pull herself together and go. And, going, she must look serene.

As a parting gift Holbein presented her with one of the new ostrich feather fans with ivory panels of his own design; and as he did so she felt his fingers, warm and strong, close momentarily about her own. She heard his comforting voice saying:

“This infatuation of his can’t last, Anna. What has this girl with her baby face to pit against you? Au fond, he’s a man who wants more than that…Beat these alluring English women at their own game, my Anna. Let yourself laugh and dance. Get rid of that accent that irritates him…learn all you can…” He turned back to his easel as Mother Lowe appeared like an anxious hen in the doorway. “God knows it’s the last advice I want to give you!” he complained, grinding a stump of used crayon to powder beneath his heel. “But you’ve got to be happy somehow. I can’t bear to see you look like this…”

In her anguish at parting from him Anne’s heart was deaf even to the Flemish seamen’s cheers. The fact that she had been mistaken about their feelings scarcely comforted her. Out of habitual graciousness she managed to smile at them and to thank her hosts. And then, somehow, she was on the water, being rowed home to Greenwich. Home to her magnificent husband—when all the homeliness she knew in this perplexing country was with that kind, unconventional man in the worn velvet coat. She held his advice in mind.

“Learn all you can,” he had said. Hard words—to a queen.

Particularly to one who had already tried so hard, and failed. But by the way they were torn from him, she knew he must feel them necessary to her safety.

And how can any stumbling drudgery of mine, she asked herself, compare with the way he must have worked?

She sat apart under the awning and let her thoughts close tenderly round him. The boy Hans wearing his woolen hose shiny on the benches of some Augsburg school and, when it came time to leave, painting a signboard for his master so that he might go on learning the Latin in which he now answered letters from famous people all over Europe. Holbein the apprentice, helping his father illuminate manuscripts and patiently acquiring the incredibly fine art of limning for woodcuts. Still later, learning to illustrate books and embellish altars and paint people until he could cover walls with such splendid perspective that his figures seemed alive. And then picking up a playing card and making a miniature so small that a man might wear it on his heart! Surely, thought Anne, no other man has ever worked so hard or made himself so versatile!

And if he, a world-famous painter, is not too proud to go on acquiring knowledge in his early forties, why can’t I, a dullard, begin to educate myself at twenty-five?

Back in the palace, she waylaid Cranmer coming from the King’s work-closet and asked him to help her about books. He was, she felt, uncommonly eager to do so. Feeling that French and Latin, begun at her age, would probably prove beyond her powers, he persuaded her to confine herself to striving after fluency in the one language she already spoke quite passably. He read aloud to her to improve her accent, and for the first time Anne began to perceive the beauty of the thing she labored at. He lent her Tyndale’s translation of one of the simpler books of Erasmus and the beginnings of his own liturgy; and, very astutely, insisted upon her reading her husband’s treatise on the Seven Sacraments. Anne thought it all very dull and stodgy; but Mary pointed out that it was her lack of theological training that was at fault and helped her through the harder parts, trying to hide from her the humiliating fact that Elizabeth could already read it in French and Latin.

Patiently, doggedly, Anne worked, setting so many hours a day aside for study. Hours when most people believed her to be playing cards with the ladies or trying on new dresses. Sometimes, when her head ached with tasks at which she was naturally lazy, she would ask herself why she was doing all this. She knew now that Henry wanted his freedom, and it wasn’t as if she wanted to live with him.

But there were other things driving her. Fear, perhaps. And duty to her brother. And more than either, dislike of failing to perform anything she had undertaken.

She knew that had she had good tutors as a child she would have been as well informed as the next woman. Not brilliant, of course, like the Tudors. But she was both intelligent and observant.

All that she had lacked was opportunity, stuck away all her life in one country where book learning for women was counted temptation and accomplishments to pass the idle hour sin.

In the matter of the arts Anne relied upon her own judgment.

She had real feeling for line and color, coupled with some acquaintance with the Flemish school; these advantages had been fostered recently by friendship with a master. One of her chief pleasures was studying the good collections of pictures in the royal palaces and in the great houses where she visited. But knowing herself to be hopelessly unmusical and having observed how her husband winced at a wrong note, she declined the offer of Master Paston, the princesses’ music master, to teach her to play upon the virginals.

No matter how frequently the Duchess of Norfolk or Lady Rochfort remarked that in this country such accomplishments were considered in dispensable to a woman of breeding, she remained adamant.

After hearing her younger step-daughter practicing at Havering, she felt sure that a smattering of them would only make her look ridiculous against a background of family proficiency.

Her dancing gradually improved. Neither she nor her instructors had any illusions about her being able to romp like thistledown through a gavotte or hold the company breathless in a stately pavane; but before long the rhythm falling sweetly from viols and hautboys in the minstrels’ gallery began to guide her unaccustomed feet through the maze of steps, and the steps themselves to form a gracious pattern. The very fact that she had been brought up to consider dancing an abandoned pleasure would always flavor it with the spice of excitement for Anne.

Where other women danced with boredom, she brought to each new measure a smiling zest which her partners found flattering.

And there were plenty of men at court who, whichever party they belonged to, secretly admired her spirit. Suffolk and Marillac were particularly punctilious about asking her to dance, the one because he was her husband’s brother-in-law and the other because he liked her. And to spare her embarrassment Culpepper practiced over all the new French dances with her in her own apartments.

Anne often wondered whether Henry had appointed this likeable young man to her household because he wanted him to see less of Katherine or whether Tom himself had asked for the appointment because he couldn’t bear to see them together.

“Why are you so kind to me, Tom?” she asked, after trying his patience even more than usual in an intricate measure. “Particularly when you ought really to be on the other side.”

They were in a room overlooking her new herb garden. The candles had not yet been lit and he stood before her with the gold of an April sunset touching his fair hair and lacing his white doublet with the diamond pattern of the leaded casements.

“What side, Madam?” he asked cautiously. In the throes of a fourth domestic Tudor crisis when even skilled diplo mats skimmed over realities it was the only way to meet her embarrassing refusal to beat about the bush.

Anne sank rather breathlessly onto a brocaded pallet and looked him up and down appraisingly. She was thinking how dangerously attractive he was in the first strength of his manhood, and what an ideal couple he and Katherine would make, and what a shameful pity it was that Henry should want her too. There was an uneasy elation about the girl these days that ill became her and, remembering how she had seen the cousins standing together in the gallery at Rochester, Anne guessed how grievously Culpepper must feel her growing response to the King’s blandishments.

“Well, you are related to the Howards, aren’t you?”

“Only by marriage, Madam.” He placed a refreshing drink and the fan Holbein had given her within reach and, preparing to depart, looked round to see if there was anything else he could do for her comfort. “May I send someone to light the candles for you?

And shall I call Mistress Guligh?”

In all walks of life, Henry chose his servants well. Tom Culpepper was the perfect squire, combining a charming deference with unobtrusive efficiency. But he had been far too glumly efficient these last few days. He didn’t go round chaffing people and challenging other exuberant young gallants to exhausting games.

Anne sensed that he was at breaking point, and that only talking to somebody about it could ease that strained expression which was beginning to harden his good looks. She was only a year or two older than he, but now that he was of her household she felt responsible for his well-being and happiness. And she, too, endured strain and needed some outlet…

“And this girl, Katherine—” she prompted.

“Her mother was Jocunda Culpepper—”

“What a pretty name!”

“So she is my kinswoman,” he explained carefully.

“And nothing more, Tom?” To her practical mind it seemed so absurd that they shouldn’t speak of this thing—they two who, each in a different way, must suffer for this fresh love of Henry’s.

But Culpepper’s proud young reserve was still unbroken. And after all, was she not the last person to whom he could speak of the King’s infidelities? He bowed himself from her presence and it was not until he was at the door that some sort of response was wrung from him. And because he cared so much it came haltingly.

“She is also your Grace’s maid-of-honor…”

“Only by title,” sighed Anne. “She seldom sups or sleeps here—now.”

He winced, but went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “And if she isn’t always—very circumspect—I pray your Grace to remember that her mother died when she was a child.”

Anne had to check herself from harsh laughter. The word circumspect seemed so inadequate when they both knew her to be supping at Durham House with Henry. But she sat there with her new fan in her lap, looking gravely across the room at him. She saw that his eyes were dark pits of anxiety above the modish white velvet and guessed that he hadn’t been sleeping.

“I am glad you told me. And whatever happens, I will try to remember,” she promised.

Culpepper went out and shut the door quietly—almost reverently. He felt oddly comforted. By the window of the deserted anteroom he stood for a minute looking down on the orderly pattern of her small, healing herbs. It reminded him of a less formal garden where Katherine had some times come to play with him when they were children. Of late, his world had been largely made up of the flatteries handed to one near the person of a king, of royal kind - nesses that could be withdrawn at a whim, and the worth less promises of self-seekers. But there were still people who meant what they said. Dependable people like those he had loved at home. In that simpler world where his father had taught him old-fashioned virtues and his mother had put up preserves with her own pretty hands.