My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (25 page)

This time the clever gambit might cost him dear. Anne knew that for all his lust there was something he wanted even more than freedom, a family of sons.

“It is only his word against mine,” she had the temerity to point out. “There can’t possibly be—witnesses.”

Cranmer withdrew his gaze from the emblazoned Richmond arms. He could scarcely believe that the expected storm of indignation had not burst. “No,” he conceded. “But there is Thomas Cromwell. It was he who advocated your marriage, and from the Tower he has been forced to bear witness to the King’s unwillingness to proceed with it.”

“But the King chose me!” she protested. “After seeing Holbein’s picture he begged my brother to send me, although I was dowerless. And if I hadn’t been compelled to marry him—”

Cranmer lifted a rebuking hand. “Being already condemned to death,” he said sadly, “Cromwell would hardly damn his soul with lies.”

So it was Cromwell—not she—who must face that expectant hush and those up-turned faces and pay the price of Henry’s disappointment? She tried to feel compassion, and could not. After all, it was just—if any justice were to be found in this mad subservience to tyranny. After bringing her to this sorry pass had he not, each time she sought his aid, avoided her to save his skin?

And now, because he was about to die, everybody would believe him when he bolstered up even Henry’s wildest statement.

Anne allowed herself to relax against the cushions Basset had been piling behind her, her anger damped down by the shock of Cromwell’s fate. She had been about to point out that she might have married someone of her own age, someone like Sybilla’s husband. But in no circumstances would she have been permitted to marry a painter, however famous. So what did it all matter?

Parrying the listlessness that was creeping over her, she became aware that Wriothesley was daring to bait her.

“His Majesty’s unwillingness appears to date from the day he met you at Rochester, Madam.”

Anne glanced in his direction as if she had only just noticed he was there. “Or from the day at Rochester when he met one of my maids?”

Not being prepared to counter such forthrightness, the wretched man sought to cover her words by shuffling the ominous-looking documents in his hands. And Anne felt it was only fair she should know what was in them. “If those papers you are fidgeting with contain a report of milord Chancellor’s testimony, I pray you read it,” she snapped.

Sheepishly, Wriothesley unrolled them. He began with the evidence of the King’s anger because he had found his bride less fair than Holbein and Wotton had represented her. “‘If it were not that she is come so far into my realm,’” he read in a thin travesty of Henry’s mellow voice, “‘ and the great preparations that my States and people have made for her and for fear of making a ruffle in the world, and of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and the French King, who are now together, I would not now marry her.’”

“Go on!” ordered Anne.

And Wriothesley went on with the condemned Chancellor’s testimony—how when he had asked hopefully the following morning if the King liked her any better, Henry had replied coarsely that he couldn’t overcome his aversion enough to beget sons on her.

“Thank you,” she said, after an uncomfortable silence. “Such clarity of expression makes his Grace’s meaning clear even to my limited knowledge of English, and should leave no doubt in any woman’s mind as to his unwilling ness. But I should like to know what particular blemish in me gave rise to it.” From where she lay she could see a reflection of herself in the metal mirror on her toilet table, and she took stock proudly of her well-poised head, her rounded breasts no longer trussed high in the Flemish manner, and the long well-shaped limbs outlined beneath her summer bed wrap. “I pray you,” she asked, “what did he say of my appearance?”

“Madam—” entreated Cranmer, and made a sign to Wriothesley to put away his intolerable papers. It seemed cruel to kill all hope of reconciliation between these two in their new relationship, and he couldn’t bear to see Anne unnecessarily hurt. But it was truth she wanted, not clemency. She had lived too long in an atmosphere of hum bug and uncertainty to tolerate any half tones now. She stopped making a hard round ball of her kerchief with angry fingers and lifted her chin defiantly. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.

“I know that he called me a great Flanders mare,” she said. “Do you suppose that anything else can hurt very much after that?”

All three men reddened with discomfiture. They had no idea that she knew that. Even Wriothesley flinched before her withering honesty.

“He must have said that in the heat of anger,” he hastened to protest. “Because milord Chancellor remarked on your queenly manner that day you arrived at Greenwich and the King agreed with him. ‘Her person is well and seemly,’ he said.”

And even he had the grace not to tell her that Henry, in a desperate bid for escape, had impugned her honor. That in a burst of post-nuptial confidence he had said to Cromwell, “I have felt her breasts and her belly, and to my way of thinking she is no maid.”

Suffolk and Cranmer breathed a sigh of relief. They began to feel that the worst of this painful interview was over. Could it be possible that she was going to agree meekly to everything they had come to say—to relinquish her crown without a struggle? Could it even be possible, they wondered, that this particular wife didn’t really mind being divorced?

Charles eyed her covertly. He was beginning to suspect that this was the truth and to derive considerable enjoyment from the situation. He would have liked to clap Anne on the shoulder and say, “Good for you, my girl!” But instead he cleared his throat rather pompously and delivered the rest of Henry’s message.

“If you will be reasonable about this and renounce your title of Queen, Anne, the Council is agreed that you should take precedence over all other ladies at court.”

“Except, of course, the King’s daughters,” put in Wriothesley.

Charles had not liked to say that a child of seven, and a bastard at that, was to be put before her. Being more or less a parvenu himself, he was touchy about precedence; and it seemed to him a big thing to expect a woman who was a princess in her own right to accept. But surprisingly, and to his intense relief, she made no protest even about that.

“What are the children to call me now I am no longer their step-mother?” she inquired, almost idly.

“You are to be styled the Lady Anne of Cleves,” said Cranmer.

Anne received the information almost indifferently. It was their affection, not titles, she wanted. She knew well enough that if she was to be the King’s sister they would all call her “Aunt Anne” in private. She even smiled a little, picturing them doing so. Elizabeth and little lisping Ed ward and solemn little Jane Grey, their second cousin, who was Charles’ and Mary’s grandchild. “Aunt Anne” was a good enough name to hear being shouted joyfully about a house.

And now that she had a home of her own and would have no children to fill it with she would like to invite them often.

“May I sometimes see Elizabeth?” she asked tentatively.

“As often as you wish,” they assured her. They were only too pleased to offer her anything, now that she had passively agreed to give up her husband and her crown. They almost beamed upon her, basking themselves in the certain approbation of their master. Life at court hadn’t been easy since she came, with the King like a raging bull kept from the cow of his choice and the late Chancellor’s fate hanging over them like a dreadful warning. But now with Anne’s amazing acquiescence the worst of the tension would be over. There would be another wedding and another spell of royal smiles and expansive moods. And instead of all Europe being set by the ears or England being bled by war, only one person would suffer. And by that one woman’s loneliness and humiliation everybody but Thomas Cromwell would benefit. Was it any won der then that they viewed the unresisting sacrificial victim with new appreciation?

The business part of their meeting was over. Wriothesley had withdrawn with his papers and the midsummer morning seemed sweeter without him. Out in the Queen’s gallery Basset was taking instructions from the doctor and Dorothea was fussing with some food a servant had brought on a tray. The homely smell of freshly baked bread and new-brewed ale pervaded the room and the rest of the deputation suddenly remembered that milady of Cleves hadn’t yet breakfasted. No wonder she had fainted.

Before leaving Charles Brandon lingered for a moment or two by the open window, watching a wain laden with fresh hay from the Richmond meadows lurch through the gatehouse arch and turn in the direction of the stables.

“Mary, my first wife—who, as you know, was Henry’s sister— was very dear to him,” he told Anne. “She made him—kinder—I think. She was his confidante in youth and even now he misses her more than most people guess.” Not being an expert liar he floundered a little and turned to Cranmer for co-operation. “Do you not think, milord Arch bishop, that in suggesting that Anne should be his sister and wishing her to remain in England he may be prompted by a desire to regain something of the happy relationship he lost?”

Cranmer was grateful to him for the inspiration, which sounded plausible enough. But Anne was nothing if not logical. “If he can divorce me behind my back is it likely he would ever tell me anything he really felt?” she thought. But not wishing to hurt Charles’s feelings she only smiled that Mona Lisa smile of hers.

They were all trying to be kind, but she rather wished they would go. Her long nose wrinkled a little, sniffing appreciatively at the crisp manchets and golden honey. Her brother-in-law and Dr. Chamberlain were preparing to depart together; but apparently milord archbishop had something more to say.

“There is one other thing, my child— ”

He spoke too low for anyone else to hear and Anne waited apprehensively, her dark eyes raised to his kind ones.

“Can there be anything else?” she murmured with an almost comical grimace.

Her face had lost much of its unlined serenity during the six months of her disastrous marriage, and he realized that she had minded all that had passed that morning much more than she had shown.

“I shall no longer be able to have public prayers said for you in all the cathedrals and churches,” he was obliged to tell her.

The beautiful dark eyes filled with tears. “That too?” she whispered back. One or two tears brimmed over and she made no effort to hide them. “I am sorry. I loved having the people’s prayers. And sometimes I need them so much.” It was the only admission she had ever made about her private suffering and there could be none bitterer, he deemed, than that of a woman publicly spurned, and denied the children she desired. Her simplicity touched him, and he was torn with envy for her courage.

“Wherever I am—in Canterbury, Lambeth or Croyden—you will always have my personal prayers,” he promised.

She bent her head beneath the hand he lifted in blessing. For the moment he was her confessor, not the King’s servant. He would render only unto God what was God’s, so it didn’t matter what she said.

“I don’t mind so much about Henry—or even the shame of it all,” she stammered hurriedly. “But I did love being Queen of England.”

Nan Boleyn, too, he recalled, had loved being Queen of England. But how different their conception of the honor! To one it meant adulation, to the other service. This time the loss was England’s.

18

ALL DAY ANNE HAD wandered alone in the privy garden, trying to decide what her attitude should be to this strange new life in which she would be neither wife nor widow. To her methodical mind it seemed that—if she would preserve any semblance of dignity—she must approach all its eventualities, both large and small, according to some consistent plan.

Because I am stuck away in a dower house I needn’t be useless, she thought. I must turn myself into a sort of universal Tudor aunt.

During the afternoon Mary, who dared not come to her, had sent her confessor instead. A strange thing to do, perhaps, since Anne was still supposed to be a Lutheran.

“Acceptance takes the sting out of adverse fortune; and smiling acceptance may even turn it into moral victory,” he told her, with an endearing mixture of spiritual and worldly wisdom. So Anne strove to relinquish her grandeurs with good grace and to gather up gratefully the good things which were left. For her there would be more than for most women. She had good health, good sense and good temper, and there would be everyday loves and pleasures which she must cherish and lay as comfort to her cheated heart.

When at last she returned to her apartments she found Wriothesley waiting for her. He had brought a large sum of money from the King. An advance on her pension to cover current expenses, he called it. Anne called it conscience money. A hardy little sprig of cynicism was growing up in her mind, providing a certain amount of protection from the vagaries of men. And she accepted without a qualm the manors of Lewes and Bletchingly and the rent roll of Denham Hall and another new dress, to say nothing of a pearl-dropped pendant which she remembered seeing in Holbein’s portrait of Jane Seymour. Everything had its price, she supposed, trying on her predecessor’s jewelry—even the crown of England. And loading her with gifts probably made Henry feel less uncomfortable. But in return he wanted her renunciation in writing. Otherwise, he had explained to Wriothesley, he had but a woman’s word and she might change her mind. Which was funny, coming from Henry.

But only by keeping her temper could Anne hope to keep the remnants of her pride.

So after they had supped quietly in her own part of the palace because the great hammer beam roof of the disused hall had long been shrouded in cobwebs, she wrote to Henry agreeing to “repose herself in his goodness” and dutifully subscribing herself his sister and servant.

Laboriously her pen scratched over the paper. Such fulsome compositions didn’t come easily to her and when she had finished, not knowing how to sign herself now she was no longer his wife, she indulged in an unnecessarily flamboyant “Anna, daughter of Cleves.”