The Concubine (6 page)

“I can’t sing, Lady Bo. You can hear for yourself, I am as hoarse as a rook.”

“Oh no. Just a little husky. To tell you the truth, Anne, I think it is rather attractive. You’d be doing me such a favor. I feel so awkward you see. If he’d come to our farm and been hungry or anything, I’d have fed him and done anything I could to please him. But here it is different. He has a
right
to expect Lady Boleyn of Hever Castle to entertain him and I simply haven’t any accomplishments at all.”

“You have many. And a talent for music isn’t an accomplishment, it’s like—like blue eyes, you either have them or you haven’t.”

“And you have—not blue eyes, the talent. Anne, if you’d come down this evening and help entertain him, I’d let you have anything out of my jewel box that you fancied. Or my marten cloak…”

“You don’t have to bribe me. I’d do it to oblige you, if I could. But truly, I don’t feel like singing. And lute music is always a little sad. I might break down and cry.”

“You’d feel a great deal better if you did. I sometimes think that God knew women had such hard things to bear that He gave them tears for comfort. I never liked to mention the matter outright,” she said, a little shyly, “but I do think it was harsh. You must try not to grieve, though. Sometimes, you know, things that look bad…When I was young I lost my heart. He was a sailor and he was drowned, the last voyage before we were to be wed. I thought I’d never fancy anyone else again, and I didn’t, for years and years, not until your father stopped at our place that day. And we’re very happy. So you see.” Her mind came back to the present and its problem. “The one thing I
dread
is that one day he should notice the things I fail at and wish he’d chosen somebody with more airs and graces. That is why this music does so worry me.”

“I’ll come down,” Anne said impulsively. “Not to supper, not into the hall; but on to the gallery, out of sight. And I’ll play my best, and sing if I can.”

“Oh bless you! Sweet Anne. I can never be grateful enough,” Lady Bo cried, and she leaned forward to kiss her stepdaughter, who then dismayed her by leaning against her, shaking like an aspen, and laughing and crying at the same time.

Lady Bo thought—Hysterical! and thus diagnosed an ailment which was to puzzle many people. Had the girl been her own flesh and blood she would have slapped her smartly on the face, but a blow from a stepmother could be ill-taken; so she shook her instead and said, “Stop it, Anne. Stop, dear.” Then, under pressure of distress, her mind slipped back a little and she called as though to a restive horse, “Whoa!” At that the sobbing stopped and only the laughter was left, laughter in which Lady Bo joined.

“Country talk will out,” she said.

“It was just what was needed,” Anne said, wiping her face. “I’ve been a fool, torturing myself with hope. When Father went to London and when the King came here, I thought they might have put things right after all. But I don’t suppose even the King can go against the Cardinal. Or perhaps, angry though he seemed, Father didn’t dare mention the matter.”

“Oh, but he did,” Lady Bo said, rushing to Tom’s defense, and then realizing with horror that she was on the brink of a breach of confidence. “He did look into it. And…and the betrothal with Miss…with the other young lady was in order, and must stand.”

“That I shall never believe. Still, it’s over and done with now. Let’s think of other things, plot and plan. If I sing, my voice being so hoarse, I’d better sing as a boy. I’ve done it before, in a masque.”

“And you’ll sing some of His Grace’s own songs.”

“I’ll decide that later.”

She would not. They were too closely associated with happy days in Greenwich; for Lady Bo’s idea of what would be a pretty compliment was far from being original; every Court lady had had it.

“Which pageboy’s clothes would you most fancy?”

“The cleanest. The fit doesn’t matter. Nobody will see me closely.”

Supper was almost over and Lady Bo was still saying to herself, Oh dear, oh dear! She’d been wrong about the music. Anne in her hidden place had played beautifully, varying the instruments, harp, lute, rebec. And the tunes had all been merry or sad in a pleasant way, sad like the scent of cowslips or violets when you were grown up and picking them for practical purposes, the cowslips for wine, the violets to crystallize, and to smell them reminded you of how eagerly you had gathered them just for themselves, when you were a child.

So far Anne had not sung a word, but that was understandable; nobody who valued her voice would sing against so much clatter and the coming and going behind the screens.

The King still fidgeted and had that faintly discontented air.

Actually, for a man laboring under a sense of woeful disappointment, Henry was behaving very well.

He’d come, hotfoot, to Hever, eager as a boy, imagining himself to be about to enjoy four days in the company of the fascinating young maid-of-honor whom he had noticed during the summer. When he went out to hunt, she would stand by, admiring the way he sat and controlled his great horse; when he returned, she would admire his trophies. In the evening she would sing and play for him, and he would sing for her, a good deal of tender meaning could be infused into a song. Then he would suggest dancing and she would be his partner.

Nothing had been as he had imagined. On his arrival he had been told that she had suffered a heavy cold, not yet shaken off, and was still confined to her room. Well, he knew a sovereign remedy for colds, and one which couldn’t be commanded by just anyone. Fresh fruit. A courier had been sent posting back to Greenwich to bring oranges and melons, grapes and pomegranates from the hothouses.

She’d be better tomorrow.

But she was not; and now the last evening of his visit was dragging its weary length along, and Henry was trying to hide his boredom and displeasure out of consideration for Lady Boleyn, who did try so hard and was so aware of something not being as it should. Every now and then Henry would see her eye him anxiously and then look at her husband. He had an impulse to pat her on her firm square little shoulder, as one would a pony, and say, “Easy, then. Easy.” She had done her very best and it wasn’t her fault.

Of Tom Boleyn the King was less sure. He’d been complacent about Mary—it had paid him to be; it was possible that he realized that in Anne he had a more valuable asset; it was also possible that he was resentful over the short duration of Mary’s sway and the fact that she had been dismissed without much reward. Tom Boleyn didn’t know how Mary had behaved at the end, the tears—and he hated women to weep—the tirades, the pleadings and the refusal to take anything from him. For whatever reason, Tom always backed up his wife’s excuses for Anne, “Very poorly, your Grace, very poorly indeed, I’m sorry to say.”

Henry was deeply puzzled by his own attitude toward this heavy cold—assuming it to be genuine. He hated any kind of illness, had a morbid horror of it, and the thought of a woman with a heavy cold should have been utterly repellent; coughing, hawking, blowing the nose, wiping the eyes. Any kind of physical disorder in a woman must, by a simple law of nature, repel a man. You pitied them, you did what you could to relieve them, you pretended, but you kept away. And yet, if he could, with any decency, have been admitted to Anne’s sickroom, he felt that he would have left his fastidiousness outside the door. He’d have lent—yes, he would—his own handkerchief!

The meal was ending, the topcloth was being withdrawn, and the clattering dishes had been collected. On the stiff starched, lace-inset undercloth only the wine flagons and glasses, the dishes of fruit and nuts remained. The hall was suddenly quiet.

Into the quiet broke a voice, sexless; the voice of a boy just broken; the voice of a girl not yet fully recovered from a cold. Henry stiffened and looked toward the gallery, whence the voice came. He could see nothing; behind the heavy carving it was in darkness.

“Your Grace, ladies and gentlemen all, if it be your pleasure I will now sing for you.”

Henry looked questioningly at his hostess who gave him one of her anxious, deprecating half-smiles, and then looked at her husband. Henry glanced at him, too. Sir Thomas was busy, probing a walnut. Poor dear, he thought, this is all a sad trial to her. It hurt him to see her look so anxious. Yet if he had stepped in and said he would arrange the entertainment she would take it as a criticism of her efforts, and even for the King’s approval he would not risk hurting her feelings. And however badly this half-fledged boy in the gallery performed, it would just have to be borne.

Anne began with a merry ballad, well known to Lady Bo and to anyone else who had been near a field at harvest time, for on account of its rhythm it was very popular with reapers. It was, like most ballads, a little bawdy, not quite what a young lady should sing, but that didn’t matter this evening, because no one knew that it was Anne singing. What did matter was that the King was pleased. At its end he shouted in a voice accustomed to issuing orders in spacious places.”

“Come down, boy! And be rewarded.”

Oh dear, oh dear, Lady Bo thought. Now they would know. Tom would learn that she had entered into a plot without telling him, and the King would know that Anne’s cold had just been an excuse, and everyone would know that those saucy insinuating words had been sung by a young girl. Oh dear, oh dear.

The voice from the gallery said,

“I thank your Grace, but I am already rewarded—by your attention.”

Now
would
a pageboy have said that?

The music began again, and then the singing. This time a sad song.

The lute made its plaintive, dying outcry and was silent. Lady Bo did not look at the King, or at her husband; their approval no longer mattered. She looked down to hide the tears that stung her eyes. It was more than twenty years since she had lost her Johnny, and life had mended itself, and she loved Tom; but the song affected her because it so exactly recalled how she had felt when the news came. Alone forever.

In the hall there was a perceptible silence. The song was a love song and the audience was largely composed of people to whom romantic love meant little or nothing. Possibly the most genuinely romantically minded person in the hall was the King himself, and even he had been furious when his sister Mary had made a love match with Charles Brandon and thus deprived England of a useful pawn in the diplomatic game. But to the English love songs were new; until lately there had been solemn church music, merry marching tunes to keep weary men in step, and ballads; so purely sentimental songs were making their first impact upon people who, through lack of immunity, were particularly vulnerable. Lady Bo was far from being the only person with moist eyes. Tomorrow the men who were blinking and the women who were dabbing their lower lids would unhesitatingly arrange advantageous marriages, if they could, for themselves, or for their children, and give no thought to any heartbreak involved; but for the moment they were touched, and paid the singer the compliment of silence before the outbreak of applause.

Henry shouted through the noise,

“A sweet song, well sung. Come out and show yourself.”

For answer Anne plunged straight into a ditty with which hired performers often ended.