My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (3 page)

“Who is that girl?” he asked idly, noting the untamed grace of her most ordinary movements.

Culpepper, helping him into his riding coat, craned over the royal shoulder to get a glimpse of her. “The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk has only just brought her to court,” he answered evasively.

“A poor relation of sorts, so probably her name is Howard,” vouchsafed the departing Chancellor, gathering up his papers and his unbecoming little hat. “An undisciplined wench, anyhow,” he added, remembering how she had distracted the King in the middle of a solemn council meeting.

“I should like to paint her as Persephone,” murmured Holbein.

The Archbishop joined them at the window. “Scarcely out of the schoolroom, I should imagine,” he remarked indulgently. With an apprehensive side glance at the sensual Tudor whose whims he had cause to know so well, he did his best to defend the girl by placing her definitely in the category of the very young and unimportant.

“Young Tom here should be able to tell us her Christian name. I saw them dancing together last night.”

This time the good-looking gentleman-in-waiting could not very well withhold the information.

“It is Katherine, milord—and she’s a cousin of mine,” he mumbled, reddening. And he, too, glanced at the King.

But Henry had turned from the window, cheerfully humming one of his own songs.

“Katherine Howard,” he repeated absently, gathering up gloves and whip from a page. “A charming name!”

2

WHEN DR. WOTTON AND Hans Holbein arrived from Milan a flurry of wild conjecture stirred the quiet duchy of Cleves. Within the walled town itself people gathered in excited groups about the Rathaus square or stood gazing up at the castle with as much curiosity as though they had never seen its famous Swan Tower and comfortable pepper-pot turrets before.

Each house, with a pulley sticking out like a sharp beak from the granary in its high-peaked gable, was sure to hold someone who worked in the ducal household or stables and could bring home first-hand news of the bustle that was going on up there. There were important foreign guests, they said. And Cleves could scarcely credit her own importance when the Burgomaster himself was sent for and told to hang out all the civic banners because two envoys had come from Henry the Eighth of England.

As soon as the dowager Duchess was sure that their interest in her impecunious family was really matrimonial she coached her son in diplomacy and told her two unmarried daughters to put on their best clothes. She realized, of course, that even their best clothes would probably seem dowdy to the messengers of a monarch who had out shone the French on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. But Amelia could be depended on to look sprightly in anything, and Anne was no raving beauty, anyhow. Although her daughters were dowerless she had managed to marry Sybilla, the beauty of the family, to the Duke of Saxony. And what with her own recent widowhood and her son’s ineptitude for affairs, Anne was too useful to be spared. She was capable of running the royal household, and had been so much in her father’s company that she understood a good deal about estate management as well. It was she who had calmed the flustered servants and improvised a suitable banquet, leaving her mother free to concentrate on saying the right thing. Mary had come to depend on Anne. So she sent for Amelia, who was always complaining that Cleves was dull and whose pleasure-loving mind worked with the tinkling briskness of a musical box.

“The gentlemen from England whom you met at supper last night tell me that Henry Tudor is looking for another wife,” she said, watchful for her youngest daughter’s reactions.

Amelia’s hard, bright eyes almost stuck out of her head with suppressed excitement. “I wondered if that was it, when Dr. Wotton asked us so many personal questions, and Anne was so dumb. But why— here, Madam?”

The Duchess had not nurtured her family on false pride. In loyalty to her husband’s religious principles she had even castigated her maternal satisfaction in their well-set up young bodies by dressing them more unbecomingly than she need. She felt it wiser to let her daughters know that they were only a last hope.

“They went to Milan first,” she admitted. “But I suppose that after the way he divorced his Spanish wife and the—regrettable incident of Anne Boleyn—” She left the sentence unfinished and began looking over a pile of mended bed hangings which a sewing maid had left for her inspection.

Amelia readily grasped both inference and warning. Henry would be no romantic lover and Anne Boleyn’s fate indicated clearly that it would be a risky business encouraging any others.

But, as her mother had anticipated, she was prepared to sacrifice a good deal for the sake of a crown. “Well, at any rate, his last queen died a natural death!” she recalled optimistically. One couldn’t think seriously about blocks and executions in the peaceful security of her mother’s room in the old Swan Tower. She stood, watching the Duchess’s busy hands until their familiar, methodical movements had soothed away her momentary trepidation. “Are the two gentlemen going to stay long?” she asked, helping to refold the hangings.

“Long enough for Master Holbein to paint you both.” In spite of her campaign against vanity, Mary of Cleves couldn’t prevent a certain amount of complacency from creeping into her voice as she surveyed Amelia’s slender neck rising from the heavy metal embroidery of her collar and the neatness of her feet visible beneath a full round skirt. “Besides the full-length portraits he will do two of his famous miniatures to send immediately to King Henry. So naturally I want you to look your best.”

It would mean sitting still for hours. Amelia wished it could be with Dr. Wotton. The suave doctor of divinity had plied her with questions which had made her feel important, whereas the self-effacing artist—apart from acting as interpreter—had said nothing at all. He had only watched her and Anne in an appraising way which she found confusing.

“And I must arrange for you to have some English les sons,” continued the preoccupied Duchess.

Amelia looked up quickly. “Anne as well?”

Mary met her glance with complete understanding. She was comfortably sure that Amelia was the right one to go. “Anne always seems to have so much to occupy her,” she said, preparing to start on her daily inspection of the kitchens with a comfortable leisureliness that disguised the astuteness of her mind. “But, of course, she can learn English if she likes.”

Later in the day, in the seclusion of their bedroom, Amelia passed on to her sister some of the information she had gleaned.

Anne had come in from one of her frequent visits to the ducal tenantry. She stood just inside the door, a tall, serious girl with a penciled list in one hand and a cheap earthenware bulb pot in the other. She was always making lists of things to be attended to and things the servants and farm workers needed. And in return the tenantry were always presenting her with humble gifts. She balanced the cheap bowl with its straggle of flowers some child had grown for her as carefully as if it were spikenard and looked across at her sister with beautiful, lazy-lidded brown eyes.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked, seeing Amelia’s entire wardrobe spread out across both sides of the enormous bed.

“Looking out my most becoming dress to be painted in. Deciding that they are all old-fashioned. And giving Saskia a lot of things I shan’t want any more,” answered Amelia, categorically. Anne glanced from her sister, preening herself before her mirror, to the plump, well pleased lady-in-waiting holding an assortment of heavy looking garments across her out stretched arms.

“But you may be glad of them in the winter,” she said stolidly.

For Anne was what her upbringing had made her—a thrifty soul, given to hoarding. Besides, like most elder sisters, she had contracted the habit of looking after people. Because Sybilla had always been the showpiece of the family it had fallen to Anne, the second daughter, to shepherd an excitable younger sister and a small, neurotic brother through state functions, muttering firmly at intervals, “Don’t dirty your dress, Amelia!” or “No, William, you can’t possibly be sick in front of all these people!”

Glad that she would soon be finished with such admonitions, Amelia dismissed her laden lady with a smug little smile.

“You must make William buy us some new clothes, Anne,” she insisted. “You know as well as I do why that charming Dr. Wotton has come to Cleves. He says the King of England wants to get married again.”

“Why?” asked Anne indifferently. “I should have thought three times was enough.” She crossed the room and put down her latest gift by a window overlooking the moat. Like a fine etching in sepia, the whole facade of the palace was mirrored in the sluggish water.

Anne often wondered why, with such rows of unused windows, convention demanded that unmarried daughters of a ducal household should share a bedroom. She wanted a room like William’s, uncluttered with Amelia’s fussy toilet accessories and Amelia’s ceaseless conversation.

“Because they want an heir, stupid! I should hate that part, wouldn’t you, Anne?”

“No. I should like lots of babies,” said Anne. “But I thought his last queen had a little boy?”

“People say he’s delicate. Which is more than anyone could say of you!”

Anne made no reply. People who liked her and wanted to speak well of her always said that she was not quarrel some. But she was sufficiently honest with herself to know that part of that rather negative virtue was just laziness. At twenty-four she had come to realize that she saw most things from an angle so much simpler than most people’s that even to begin arguing with them took more time and mental energy than she cared to expend. All this delicacy about babies, for instance. If one was expected to love them once they were born why should there be something shameful about either wanting them or getting them?

“You know, Anne, this is the most important thing that ever happened to us,” Amelia was saying. “It appears that Henry Tudor wants one of us and doesn’t mind much which.”

“How revolting!” murmured Anne, picking up a comb to tidy her hair.

“I wanted to talk to you about it last night, but you were so disinterested and sleepy.”

“It was one of William’s bad days,” Anne reminded her. “And what with Mother not wanting Dr. Wotton to guess, and the Margrave of Guelderland coming to see us specially about that dispute over his land, I had to go into all the details so that I can explain it to William when he’s better. And then, of course, the stewards wanted extra money for entertaining our guests.”

“I don’t know how you can be interested in such dull things, especially when we so seldom have a really cultured and interesting visitor like Dr. Wotton!” Amelia came and seated herself on the broad window seat, prepared for a pleasant gossip. “You know Master Holbein is to make miniatures of us, don’t you? I have asked him to show us a picture of Henry. It is only fair, don’t you think?

Dr. Wotton says that when Henry Tudor was eighteen and married Catherine of Aragon he was the handsomest and most sought-after young man in Europe.”

“Whatever he was then, he must be quite old now,” said Anne, making sure that every wave of luxuriant brown hair was well hidden beneath the severity of her round, winged cap. “Forty-five, at least, I should think.”

“But he’s very rich. And much more important than Sybilla’s husband.”

“William says he is fat and red-headed.”

Amelia stared at her, finding it difficult to believe in such detachment. “D’you really mean you don’t want to be Queen of England?”

“I believe I should hate it,” Anne said. “I like our life here.”

“Life!” scoffed Amelia. “Stagnation, you mean.”

Anne’s only answer was a lift of her finely marked brows. She pulled an apple from her ample pocket and began munching it contentedly. Having a large frame that used up much energy, she was usually hungry. Her gaze strayed to the flat fields beyond the city walls, with industrious villages dotted comfortably here and there beneath a limitless canopy of sky.

“Think, Anne, what it would mean being queen of an important country like that!” Amelia leaned forward in her eagerness, hands tightly clasped and eyes acquisitively bright. “Dancing and masques and low-cut dresses—all the things our father thought wicked— amusements we’ve never been allowed here. Poets like Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey paying you compliments and other women envying you—”

“And hating you!” laughed Anne. Touched by her sister’s naive eagerness she stopped to drop a light kiss on her forehead. She hoped there would be some kind person at hand to guide her through the pitfalls of such a marriage.

But Amelia tossed her pretty head. “Who cares about the women?”

“I do,” said Anne gravely. “And I should think they could make or mar one’s life in a foreign country. Besides, I like other women to be fond of me and tell me things. When they’re thrilled about something—or when they’re in trouble. People do, you know.” She paused to impress the fact on herself as well as her sister almost as if it were a new and pleasing discovery. “You do yourself—and William—and even Mother sometimes—and people like Dorothea—” Anne broke off with a little cry of consternation, and reached for the list of things she had to do.

“Ach, dear God, I had forgotten—”

“Forgotten what?” asked Amelia.

“All about Dorothea’s baby. The poor mite’s terribly ill and none of the neighbors will help because he’s come out in some sort of rash. You know how stupidly nervous they are about the plague!”

“You mean they won’t help because she isn’t married.”

“But if they see me going into her father’s house it may shame that prude of a doctor into making some attempt to save the poor little thing’s life,” sighed Anne, who didn’t in the least want to go out again.

“Surely the shame is Dorothea’s!” remarked Amelia primly.

Anne wanted to say, “So was the shining glory!” but remembered how shocked her father would have been. All the same, she couldn’t help thinking of the summer morning when her favorite waiting woman had asked leave to be excused from her duties. The roses had been in bloom and poor plain Dorothea had been trans-figured by happiness and Anne knew that it hadn’t seemed like sin then. “They were planning their wedding,” she explained hurriedly.