My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (38 page)

The following morning she felt very much better. The sun was shining, a cheerful fire crackled between the iron dogs on the hearth and she waked to a happy remembrance that Mary was coming to see her. To make matters better still Dorothea insisted upon attending her. Anne stretched luxuriously, put an experimental foot to the floor and drew a furred wrap round her. She was still dawdling on the edge of the bed drinking a bowl of hot broth when her two chastened ladies returned for duty; but although they were both contrite at having caused her displeasure they seemed too full of indignation against someone else to accept her well-merited reproof in silence.

“It was that spiteful embroidery woman of the Howards who started it all,” declared young Ratsey, going tearfully upon her knees.

“Started what?” asked Anne wearily.

“Scandal mongering about things we said in private—and about Dorothea’s baby—” muttered Ratsey, between injured sniffs.

“And what scandal can there possibly be about that, ” scoffed Anne, “since I specially mentioned her marriage to the King himself?”

“But they say it’s not her baby.”

Anne was still only convalescent and might be excused a little irritability. “Do be more explicit, Ratsey!” she complained. “Who are ‘they’?”

But the crowded events of the past week had been too much for such an excitable scatterbrain. “That snake went straight home from here after embroidering all those lovely birds and told the goldsmith’s wife where she lodges that there was a cradle in the room and that we were all sewing covers for it,” she garbled.

“Well, so we were,” agreed Anne more placidly. “And I’m sure the Antwerp goldsmith’s family are kindly, sensible people—friends of a friend of mine…” She was still completely at a loss to understand what all the pother was about, and looking round for some sort of enlightenment her questioning glance rested on Basset—

Basset who was well-bred and intelligent and still pale with shame at having displeased a beloved mistress by her ill-considered words.

“Unfortunately,” the girl vouchsafed, “she seems also to have spoken of it to Sir Richard Taverner that day we went to Hampton—”

Anne stopped her with a gesture. She couldn’t bear to be reminded of that day. “I suppose the poor Signet Clerk had to fill in his time somehow!” she sighed, recalling how fatally easy it appeared to be for gifted men to fill in their time with attractive widows like Frances Lilgrave. She reached for her half-finished bowl of broth. “Poor little William!” she commented idly. “And whose baby did she tell them all he was?”

There was an awkward silence which for once the loquacious Ratsey didn’t feel disposed to break.

“Yours, Madam,” answered Basset courageously.

Anne lifted her head sharply to stare at her, both hands still circling the bowl. “Mine?” she repeated incredulously. “And why should anyone say such a thing?”

“To discredit you, Madam—lest the King should take you back,” explained the little thoroughbred, intent upon giving true service to atone for her recent lapse. “There are relatives of the Queen who fear to lose their heads over this business if the Protestant party should come into power again. They are hideously afraid because the people want you, and no one can help noticing how merry the King is with you these days. And when we were in West minster we heard it said that the courier who came from Cleves has gone on to Lambeth to see Archbishop Cranmer.”

“I see,” said Anne slowly. She saw a whole new set of possibilities opening up before her, and a net of treachery being woven for her destruction. She only hoped that her brother wouldn’t complicate the hard-won peace of her present life by charging into the lists on her behalf. But probably the Flemish courier was only improving the occasion of his visit to find out how the land lay.

“One member of the Council asked us if it were true that you had taken to your bed, Madam,” chimed in Ratsey, rising from her knees. “Suspecting nothing, we admitted it—and then they wanted to know what doctor had attended your Grace. Oh, Madam, wouldn’t it have been better if you had let us send for one of the King’s physicians? Then no one could have said that the baby—”

To stop the girl’s excited prattle Anne set down her bowl and bade her take it away. As the door closed behind her she looked at her two favorite women—at Basset, slim, dark and piquant, standing before her and at fair, plump Dorothea, sitting by the fire.

She knew that she could trust them both.

“If this Lilgrave person says a thing like that she will eventually have to prove it. Who, in this feminine house hold, does she suggest is the father?”

It was Basset’s turn to remain mute, but Dorothea laid down her sewing. She alone, who had journeyed with Anne, had the key to her mistress’ frustrated affection, but she was not sure how much Anne had found out about the court painter’s relations with Mistress Lilgrave.

“If you ask me, there is personal spite in this as well as politics,” she said, picking her words carefully. “Master Holbein was about the palace nine months or so ago.”

Anne forced herself to discuss the matter, but withdrew a little into the shadow of her old rose bed-hangings. “But Lilgrave was his mistress. Why should she wish to implicate him?”

Dorothea picked up her needle again, glad that the moment was past. “They may have quarreled,” she suggested quietly. “In any case, it was very clever of her because everybody knows he traveled back with your Grace from Düren.”

“But not quite clever enough,” said Anne, on a low note of triumph, “because he wasn’t the only man here at the time. She probably supposes that the King rode back to Hampton that night I gave him the prince’s picture.”

She sat cogitating on the edge of her bed for so long that Basset brought her ermine-lined slippers. “The sun is shining and you look so much better, Madam. Wouldn’t you like to sit by the fire for a while?”

“No,” said Anne, with the firmness of one who has just made a momentous decision. Having made it, she drew her long, shapely legs back into the inviting warmth of the bed, hugged the covers round her knees and smiled inscrutably over the top of them. “I think I’m going to be confined to bed for some time yet. Another week or two probably.”

The two who had waited for her to come down the King’s staircase that night had never spoken of it, but now they realized that had the Lilgrave’s aspersions been true their shared knowledge would have constituted Anne’s perfect protection. They, too, perceived the flaw in the net of treachery which made it likely to produce unexpected results and rendered it far more dangerous for the trapper than the trapped. Their mistress had only to hold her tongue and bide her time. But deliberately to lead her persecutors on to their undoing and fool the King…The issues were too big, and they were afraid. After a minute or two Dorothea laid aside her work and came and stood beside the bed. She was still weak and steadied herself by a hand about one of the great carved posts that supported the tester.

“You mean—you’ll let his Grace think…”

“It’ll do him a power of good,” snapped Anne, in a forceful idiom she had picked up from the tenantry. “And all the busybodies concerned.” Looking up and seeing Dorothea’s face bereft of its usual rosy hue she sought to reassure her. “There’s no law against staying in bed, is there? And who can blame us for whatever construction uncharitable people choose to put upon it?”

She called for bread and honey for breakfast and settled back against her pillows to enjoy it. It was pleasant lying idly in the warm room while her enemies wasted their energies and became entangled in a net of their own making. Anne wanted to make someone pay for Culpepper’s danger and Katherine’s haunting screams. It was agreeable to think of Henry, in the middle of his self-righteous condemnation of his fifth wife, finding out that he hadn’t quite finished with his fourth one. He wouldn’t know what to do. If he heard that she was the mother of a healthy, red-headed son it would never occur to him that it could be any man’s but his. And he wanted a healthy, red-headed son so badly that—if Anne knew anything about him—he wouldn’t repudiate it for all the money in Christendom. On the other hand, what a fool he’d feel acknowledging his own inconstancy while getting rid of Katherine because of her shocking behavior! He might withdraw the charge against Culpepper in order to hush the matter up, because this time it looked as though his pompous Council would be in the ridiculous position of holding delicate investigations about two of his wives at once! She could of course get up and fight for her maligned virtue; but it was definitely more amusing to stay in bed and bluff Henry.

Every time she fooled him she felt better.

The trouble was that, apart from eating and sleeping, there was nothing to do. And Anne wasn’t very good at doing nothing. “I know! I’ll make my will.”

“But, Madam, you are getting better!” protested Basset, hurrying to her side in consternation.

“I know. But everybody ought to make a will,” she insisted.

“They might die suddenly of the plague or something. So go and fetch Dionysius Thomow and tell him to bring pen and parchment.”

“Please God you won’t need it for a long time!” demurred Basset, feeling that they were somehow tempting Providence. But Anne only pulled her sweet face down and kissed her so that the devoted girl felt that all her small sins had been forgiven her.

“Dear Basset,” she laughed, “think how useful it will be to have one already drafted out when I do!” And when her beloved, white-haired chaplain came in he was delighted to find her well enough to undertake even such a lugubrious occupation. But somehow with Anne it wasn’t in the least lugubrious. She made a cheerful kind of game of it, remembering her good friends and providing for the needs of her dependents. The old man had his writing desk placed beside her bed and together they spent a pleasant and diligent morning. So diligent, indeed, that Mary Tudor was announced before they were through with it, and unfortunately neither of them had considered what a shock it might give her to find them so strangely occupied. While priest and gentlewomen rose hurriedly Mary stood at the foot of the bed, her face grave with anxiety.

“Why, Anne, they told me you were better!” she exclaimed, peering shortsightedly at all the ominous-looking legal paraphernalia.

“So much better, Madam, that I had to be doing something,” laughed Anne. “I think we have remembered everybody at last, haven’t we, good Dr. Thomow?” She took the imposing document from his frail hand and laid it at the bottom of the bed where Mary could read it, but—seeing that it was all set out in high-sounding Latin phrases—she herself had to rely upon memory. “I’ve left my best jewel to you, dear friend, and one to Elizabeth. There are keepsakes for William and Amelia and all my family. A small sum apiece for the education of my alms-children and for the poor of Richmond, Bletchingly and my other manors. Something for each of my people who came over with me—in case they should want to go home, and a small dowry for two of my poor maids who want to get married over here.” An anxious furrow creased Anne’s serene forehead. She hated asking favors and rarely did so for herself; but once or twice in a lifetime one incurred the debt of a devotion which one would walk barefoot to repay. “And about Dorothea and Guligh—” she entreated. “You will remember how his Grace, your father, so generously promised that he would count my servants as his own, and their good services done to me as it were done for him? Well, I was wondering—in the event of my dying before you—if you would of your charity make room for them in your own household? If I were really dying it would make me so much easier to know that.”

Mary wasn’t really reading the Latin effusion, but she fingered it gently because she thought it the most beautiful homemade will she had ever heard. She was touched to the heart by Anne’s bequests.

No one from august relatives to the laundry woman had been forgotten. Her warm, Spanish eyes were suddenly wet with tears.

“Of course I will,” she said brusquely.” But you haven’t asked anything for yourself.”

“What is there to ask for—save the tender mercy of Christ— when one is dead?”

“One might need a tomb,” suggested the worthy Dionysius, with an affectionate twinkle in his faded blue eyes. “Her Grace does well to remind us of a clause we have omitted. Where would you like to be buried, Madam?”

Basset, zealous for her mistress’ status in this world and the next, suggested eagerly, “They say there is room for three coffins in the great vault at Windsor where poor Queen Jane lies.”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Anne, feeling that it was enough to have shared Henry in his lifetime. From the height of the great four-poster her gaze wandered over their heads to the wide vista of the park where oaks and beeches were still warm with the last burnishing of their autumn reds and browns. Why, she wondered, must people like herself always be buried in stuffy vaults, or at any rate indoors? “Oh, wherever it shall please God,” she added, seeing that her scribe’s pen was raised expectantly.

Mary handed him back the parchment. “If I were Queen I would have her laid to rest in Westminster Abbey—as near the High Altar as possible,” she said positively.

Anne flushed with pleasure. It was one of the best compliments she had ever received. “Well, write ‘where God pleases,’ but remember what her Grace said and have my will kept until the time comes,” she bade the equally gratified chaplain, dismissing him with a smile.

When he had gone Mary came and sat beside her, looking round the great bedroom with its cheerful tapestries and contented occupants. Already everything Anne owned was typically English. And everywhere Anne went, Mary supposed, she would turn palaces into homes and paid service into devoted friendship. And—if she played her cards carefully—she would go on living the enviable life of a private gentlewoman. Whereas she, Mary Tudor, might be called upon to become Queen…That unheard of thing that some men deemed impossible—the first Queen Regnant of England…

She had just come from Havering. And as usually, whenever she heard her young brother coughing badly, apprehension wracked her nerves. But because she was both Tudor and daughter of Aragon all the amazing courage in her small-boned body rose to quell it.