My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (37 page)

“He was good to me,” she testified, as soon as she could speak calmly again. “And I grew fond of him—in place of my father. And we tried so hard, Tom and I, not to deceive him…but he would keep throwing us together. And then one night Henry lay away from home. We’d no idea where he’d gone and Jane Rochfort kept watch.” She stopped making excited movements with her restless hands and clasped them together against her breast. This time they looked like two birds, buffeted by the storm, come home to rest.

“Together we two owned the world that night,” she whispered, “and we knew that nothing else mattered.”

So it had all been as Anne had feared. And then they had gone up north on this royal progress staying at dozens of different places, and no doubt there had been other opportunities. It had been wrong and dangerous and inevitable. She glanced down hastily and saw Wriothesley and Wotton picking their way across the wet paving of the courtyard and looking up stealthily at the Queen’s windows. There was a horrid, suppressed excitement about their movements. They might have been poachers about to pounce upon their prey.

“For your own safety you must forget that stolen sweet ness— absolutely,” she told the girl. To her surprise some metamorphosis seemed to come over this wayward daughter of the Howards. She stood erect and smoothed the folds of her gown with a quiet, proud gesture. Her head was lifted courageously so that the light crowned her rippling auburn hair; her violet eyes were deep and sweet and sane.

“I would rather die the wife of Culpepper than live as Queen of England,” she confessed.

Anne had never liked her so well. But there was no time for sentiment. She must take advantage of this high, exalted mood before it waned. “I promise you there will be no need for you to die if you go straight to the King and tell him just what you’ve told me now—about your pitiful girlhood and those two men.”

“It’s too late now. They’re all at Mass—”

Katherine would have shrunk back but Anne almost pushed her to the door. “Then you must catch him as he comes out—before his ministers get at him,” she insisted, imposing her own strong will upon the girl’s vacillating one. “He really loves you, Katherine, and he’s such a coward!”

“Henry—a coward?”

“Oh, not physically. Just about the plague and saying hurtful things to people’s faces. He always makes someone else do it. But, of course, you wouldn’t have had occasion to know.”

“Did he do that to you, Madam?” asked Katherine, smoothing her hair and calling for a fresh cap. For the first time she was beginning to understand what this other wife of his must have suffered.

“Always,” said Anne, opening the door. “And not being able to speak your language easily I used to sit quiet and watch him, so I often think I understand him better than any of his ministers do.”

They found the anteroom a scene of consternation. Basset stood by a table with the May Day dress half folded in her hands, looking very excited; but most of the Queen’s women wept aloud or crouched in corners while a pale and breathless page told them that a guard had just been set at the end of the gallery. Whether by Wriothesley’s presumptuous orders or the King’s, Katherine was already virtually under arrest.

“If only we could bribe them!” she moaned, in a fever to take Anne’s advice now that it no longer appeared possible.

“Or find means to distract their attention—if only for a moment,” suggested Basset, her quick wits taking in the situation and her main concern being to get Anne home without being mixed up prematurely in a tragedy from which she might ultimately profit. As she spoke her glance fell speculatively upon the gorgeous stuff in her hands. Instead of finishing putting it away she shook out the folds, inserting her hands invitingly into the armholes as she always did when dressing her mistress.

Anne followed her movements and her thoughts. Out in the courtyard the silvery chimes told the half hour. A few minutes more and Henry would be coming out. But there was still a chance. What was it that incorrigible French ambassador was said to have reported to Paris? “Every day milady Anne of Cleves wears a new dress, and each more wondrous than the last.” Well, a May Day dress of gold tissue should be wondrous indeed on a drizzly day in October! She nodded to Basset and before the astonished onlookers could realize what was happening the shimmering garment was over her head.

Basset opened the door a few inches and peeped. Two tall halberdiers stood at the top of the Queen’s staircase. Anne could see them over her woman’s shoulder. Beyond them, at right angles, lay the long gallery leading to oratory and great hall. If only Katherine could reach it unperceived, run into the oratory and cling to Henry with those unhappy, childlike hands perhaps she might fan to flame that new tenderness she had lit in his heart. Without taking her eyes off the guards Anne allowed her own fingers to close for a steadying moment on the girl’s trembling wrist.

“Kick off your shoes,” she directed. “Wait till they begin to watch me go down the stairs, and then seize your chance.”

Another moment and she was saying loud goodbyes, fussing over the possibility of rain spoiling her finery and finally making her way from anteroom to stairs like a golden galleon in full sail.

Nothing could have been more unexpected than her appearance nor more unsuitable than her garments. The confused halberdiers gaped. In their hastily received orders plenty had been said about not letting Lady Rochfort in but nothing about letting Madam of Cleves out. Everybody had supposed her to be safely put away in a sort of hypothetical spinsterhood at Richmond, poor lady.

Though, if all these dirty backstairs stories about smugglers and music masters were true, what more natural than that she should want to come and crow over a girl who had stolen her husband and her crown? Or maybe the King himself had sent for her, intending to reinstate her. And if that were so it wouldn’t pay to offend her. Neither would anything please most people better for—queer as her taste in dress might be—she was notoriously kind. So, to be on the safe side, the men made way for her and sprang to attention. But the moment she began to descend the stairs curiosity got the better of them. Anne heard their clumsy footsteps and the creak of their cuirasses as they leaned over the stair head. Above the pounding of her heart she could almost make out their muttered remarks. And with some listening sixth sense she was aware of the faint whisper of a flying skirt as a swift presence, light as the girl who had danced like thistledown in Culpepper’s arms, passed along the gallery behind them.

Anne went down as slowly as she could, stopping half way to upbraid the following Basset for some imaginary fault. Framed by the wide archway before her lay the wet courtyard, glistening in the first pale beams of a watery sun. She had only to cross the deserted gardens to her waiting litter. She would be glad to be home again, for nothing less than Culpepper’s desperate pleading would have induced her to interfere and already she was wondering what the outcome of it all would be. But before she set foot on the bottom step a confused medley of sounds broke out above her, warning her that her plan had miscarried. An oath and clatter of halberds, heavy footsteps giving chase along the gallery, scuffling, and men’s agitated voices in the distance and then—from the direction of the oratory—a woman’s piercing screams.

Some passing page must have warned them and they had caught the erring Queen before ever she could open the oratory door.

Anne tried not to picture them wrenching her from it. Henry, too, must have heard those heartrending screams—and his tenderly loved child wife calling desperately upon his name. But he made no sign. Cranmer’s note was already in his hands. The complacent roll of the organ droned on and the screams died away. The public thanksgiving for “her whom I have now” would never be said.

Before slipping away as quietly as she had come Anne leaned for a moment or two against the courtyard wall. She felt too shaken and sick to walk. Though muddy water might still swirl dangerously under Traitors’ Gate, she closed her eyes and thanked God for the strange, safe backwater of her life.

28

WHILE ALL ENGLAND SORTED the soiled linen of the Howard queen, Anne lay tossing feverishly on her bed at Richmond. Like most people who are seldom ill, she was an obstinate patient and gave her women a good deal of anxiety. For one thing, knowing her malady to be rather of the spirit than of the body, she steadfastly refused to bother any of the court physicians and seemed quite content to rely on the homely remedies of Alarde, the house hold surgeon who tonsured her confessor and physicked her maids. She was furious with herself for collapsing in such a ridiculous manner; but the fever ran so high that the whole week since her strange visit to Hampton seemed one confused nightmare.

She had hurried home crazy with anxiety about Culpepper and not at all happy about her own unconventional efforts on his behalf. And on her arrival she had found a courier from Cleves waiting for her with the shattering news that the Duchess was dead.

She could remember sitting huddled in her cloak with the frivolous gold dress crumpled beneath it, shivering before a blazing fire.

Slow, hard tears had rolled down her cheeks as she tried to realize that never again would she receive the very breath of home in a letter from her mother or know the comfort of that efficient, uncompromising personality. She wanted Dorothea, who knew all her family and would know what to do when one felt so wretchedly ill. But poor Dorothea had started her labor and had pains enough of her own. So Anne had allowed Basset and a feckless young girl called Jane Ratsey to put her to bed. There had been two cases of plague in the village, and she knew by the scared look in their eyes that they thought she had caught it. But even Alarde knew better than that.

She had lain like a log for days, but with the uncanny perspicacity of a woman accustomed to running her own household, she had been irritatingly aware of what was going on and of all the arrangements they made. Dorothea would have made them quietly outside the patient’s room, hiding any agitation she might feel as cleverly as she had concealed the recent change in her comfortable shape. But Basset and Ratsey managed to bring the backwash of domestic disturbances to the bedside. It seeped up through flurried whispers as they smoothed the sheets, or over flowed in scraps of self-important conversation with people just outside the door; so that although Anne lay between drawn curtains with her eyes shut she knew that little Jane Grey had been sent home and that, after much discussion as to the propriety of letting Elizabeth return to the home of her disgraced step-mother, a wealthy and recently widowed neighbor, Lady Katherine Parr, had eased the situation by inviting the girl to her manor at Wimbledon. The King, apparently, had gone off to Oatlands and, with his mind full of his own grief and his wife’s inevitable trial, had left no instructions about his daughters. As for Sir Richard Taverner, after being told that milady of Cleves had been called away on urgent business, he had been put off a second time with the excuse that his hostess had suddenly been taken ill, and Anne gathered that the poor man, unable to conclude the business of her nationalization papers, had displayed understandable scepticism and departed in dudgeon. And to crown the domestic upheaval, a baby had been born.

It was all a jumble in Anne’s aching head, mixed up with grief for her mother, genuine horror at the latest tragedy in her adopted family and disappointment at not being able to see the new baby. As she began to get better she was annoyed, too, by an air of smug elation about all who served her. Basset must have told Jane Ratsey and all the other women what had taken place at Hampton. All that Henry and Katherine and Culpepper were suffering was, in their eyes, divine vengeance for the way in which their beloved mistress had been slighted.

“It’s God working in his own way to make Milady Anne queen again!” she overheard the chatterbox Ratsey proclaiming to someone. Anne roused herself sufficiently to rebuke them feebly; but outside her room their tongues must have wagged on, for a day or so later she found herself being nursed by two inept women-of-the-bedchamber who told her some wild story about Lady Katherine Basset and Jane Ratsey having been put in prison. Mercifully, Dorothea came into her room at that moment.

Seeing how her mistress was placed she had made the effort to come and sit with her, and Guligh had brought their little son to cheer her. The great fellow seemed almost ludicrously overawed at having sired anything so minutely perfect. Anne made him lay his precious bundle on her bed while all three of them hung over it.

“Milady Elizabeth said he would have red hair!” Anne laughed weakly. “What are you going to call him?” And when they both promptly answered “William” she realized that they were her very own people and that though they might spend a lifetime in England nothing would ever lessen their loyalty to her house. And, seeing that she was alone with them, she spoke of the things that had been worrying her. “What is all this about Basset and Ratsey?” “

Only that they were sent for to Westminster and questioned by the Council, Madam,” Guligh explained. “They were over-excited and said things, and someone must have reported them.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, only what we all think, Madam,” said Dorothea, beginning to stitch at a microscopic shirt. “Ratsey remarked that it was impossible for so sweet a queen as yourself to be utterly put down, and Basset—you know how impulsive she is, Madam—exclaimed, ‘What a man the King is! How many more wives will he have?’ And apparently in this country that is treason.”

Anne couldn’t help smiling. She appreciated their passionate partisanship, but it had created just the vulgar sort of talk she had striven so hard to avoid and had she not been taken ill it would never have happened.

“It’s really nothing to worry about, Madam,” Guligh tried to reassure her. “Master Hawe rode down to West minster for news and he says the Council are letting them come home tomorrow, which all goes to show which way the political wind blows.”

“But I do worry, Guligh,” Anne reproved him gently. “Because I should hate people to think that I exhibit such odious eagerness myself.” It amazed her that even those who loved her best could suppose that, because she had taken her losses in the matrimonial game quietly, she had no more pride than to allow herself to be picked up again like a discarded shuttlecock.