Anne Boleyn: A Novel (23 page)

“That was the last verse of it,” she answered. “But he wrote another, George, after he played that foolhardy match at bowls with the King, and dandled my locket chain in front of his nose...S’death, the lies I had to tell to explain that! It was long, and I can’t remember it all:

“Who’s list her hunt, I put him out of doubt.

As well as I may spend his time in vain!

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written her fair neck round about

‘
Noli me tangere
; for Caesar’s I am

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’“

“Even he realized it was impossible then!”

“As long as you don’t regret him, Nan.”

She looked at her brother steadily.

“I regret nothing; in my heart’s core I regretted Henry Percy for a good many years, and look what he’s become...No, George. Tom said it best, as usual. Caesar’s I am. And that’s the end.”

“It’s getting late,” he said. “I’d better go and see to my servants. Nan, if I’m going to sail with you tomorrow.”

“Go, and God bless you,” she said gently. “And pray for a good crossing. Besides, His Grace may abandon me if I puke,” she mocked.

“If he does, just send for me, Nan. Whatever happens, you’ll have me beside you.”

He left her, and she stood looking after him; he had laughed as he made the promise, but she was not deceived. If anything threatened her, it would be kept.

Henry had spent three days as the guest of the King of France at Boulogne. It was an extremely friendly meeting, marked by affectionate embracing and offers of precedence on the part of both monarchs, and the French reception was so lavish that Henry forgot his resentment at having been parted from Anne. He had left her at Calais and ridden out with a large and splendid company to meet Francis. At the end of three days, it was arranged that two French Cardinals should go to Clement at Bologna, where he was preparing for another meeting with the Emperor, and persuade him to procrastinate till he met the King of France. The Pope was to be assured that reconciliation was still possible, and, to draw him away from Charles, negotiations were to be opened for a marriage with his niece Catherine de Medicis and the French King’s son.

Henry listened to Francis with open delight. He went out of his way to be gracious to the French nobles, even outraging his careful instincts by playing cards and dice with the most influential for large sums of money, which he contrived to lose. The charm which had attracted so many to him in his youth had lost none of its potency, and he exerted it to the utmost. He was good-humored and splendidly gracious, till his own entourage almost forgot the tyrant he had shown himself at home.

At the end of the three days the French King and his nobles traveled to Calais, to be Henry’s guests, and word was sent ahead to Anne to prepare accordingly.

Calais Castle was a huge, cold, forbidding place, the fortress foothold of England on French soil, all that was left of the great conquests of Henry V. Anne made a tour of the rooms, ransacked the stores for beds and tapestries and furnishings and fitted out a suite for the King of France in the nearby Staple Hall. She had elegant taste, and she fought her boredom and uncertainty of the last few days by organizing everything to please Henry.

The great hall of the castle was a high, stone medieval room, bitterly cold and bare. She had the richest tapestries hung from ceiling to floor and the King’s personal plate was augmented by the plate of the port authorities, so that the sideboards and tables shone with gold and silver.

Huge fires were lit to warm it, and the musicians practiced in the gallery above, their score supervised by Anne herself.

When Francis came he should find that the English had prepared as fine a lodging and entertainment for him as he had given Henry. Also he should find the Marchioness of Pembroke waiting as mistress of Calais in her King’s absence.

The cavalcade arrived on Friday, and she waited in her own apartments, having watched them come into the castle from her window, and recognized the tall thin figure in splendid costume as the King of France. She remembered him well, as he dismounted; he had hardly changed in the years since she had lived at his court in France as plain, unimportant Mistress Anne Boleyn, and brought attention to herself by her wit and her flair for dress.

Late that night Henry came to her, looking flushed and exuberant. He stood in the doorway for a moment and then crossed the floor in a few strides and caught her up in his arms.

“Sweetheart! Oh, God’s blood, how I’ve missed you, sweet!” The door was kicked shut behind him, and he wrenched her bed curtains aside and fell with her onto the bed, his weight driving the breath out of her body. Afterward they talked, and she got up to pour him some sweet wine because he was thirsty.

“It’s been more successful than we could have hoped,” he told her, propped up on the pillows with the wine cup to his mouth.

“Francis has promised to influence the Pope in our favor by every means he can, and he’s consumed with eagerness to meet you again, love. He told me he well remembered you, the most bewitching Englishwoman in my sister’s train, he called you.”

“I was a child when I accompanied your sister here,” she reminded him. “He’s thinking of me at a later date.”

She wondered how well Francis remembered her; whether he remembered all the young men who had tried to seduce the Belle Brunette, as they called her, and of the occasion when his own eyes had lighted on her, and a casual, lascivious hand had been stretched out, and skillfully avoided. Even then he was a notorious libertine, but without malice, and had never held that refusal against her. He didn’t have to; there were a hundred women waiting to take her place.

She climbed back onto the bed, drawing the fur coverlet around her for warmth.

Henry explained the plan to influence Clement before Francis met him, while she listened.

“Harry, don’t think me stupid, but why is he taking all this trouble on our behalf? Surely he doesn’t care that much for friendship that he’s willing to negotiate a marriage for his son and travel all that way to talk the Pope into granting a divorce?”

“You’re not stupid, Nan.” He grinned, “Only unwise in the way of politics. Friend Francis wouldn’t care if I were chewed alive by the Devil, nor you either! But he cares very much for the Emperor’s power. He’s fought Charles and isn’t likely to forget that little lesson. He doesn’t want Charles to be supreme in Europe and one way of stopping him is to diminish his influence with Clement. There’s a saying which I don’t believe, but Francis does. Who holds the key of Rome opens the door of the world...If he can divide Clement from the Emperor, and unite the Medicis by intermarriage with France, then he’ll take all the pains he can to do it. And achieve our object in the process.”

“How wise you are,” she said wearily. “I knew there must be a trick somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. He sent me a jewel by the Provost of Paris, did you know that?”

“He showed it to me,” Henry said, “A fine ruby, cut like a drop. It’ll look well on you, sweetheart.”

“Was he pleased with his apartments?”

“Delighted; and so was I. God knows how you’ve transformed the place, it’s a joy to the eye. You’re a clever woman, my love, and I’m proud of you indeed.”

She smiled and flushed suddenly at the praise; and in response she bent and kissed him on the cheek.

“Now that you’ll let me draw breath, I’ll tell you how I missed you, Harry.”

He patted her arm. “Did you, Nan? I hoped so.” He yawned and stretched his thick arms above his head.

“Jesu, I’m tired. And it’s late. Sleep well, beloved.”

She sat up, staring as he threw back the covers and began searching for his clothes on the floor.

“Sleep well...where are you going?”

“To my own apartments,” he said over his shoulder. Seeing her expression, he explained quickly, pulling his breeches into place, “It’s not fitting for me to stay here openly while my brother of France is my guest. And it does you no honor, sweetheart. I must wake in my own bed tomorrow morning and breakfast in public as he does. Good night, my Nan. I’ll send you word tomorrow.”

On Sunday night the two Kings supped in the great hall in the presence of a crowd of French and English notables. The King of France sat on the dais at the right hand of the King of England. Francis was as tall as Henry, but lithely built, and his dark handsome face was lean, with a short black beard. He had a shrewd, saturnine face, the face of a sensualist, with the sharp eyes of a diplomat and a narrow cynical mouth. He was in a gay, bantering humor, and kept asking when he was going to see the Lady Pembroke and refresh his pleasant memories of her.

All in good time, Henry responded, and clapped him on the back. The musicians played above the noise of conversation and the clatter of plates as the guests ate and drank their way through twenty courses, and the roof of the hall filled with a blue haze of smoke from the torches and the great banked fires.

Eventually the tables were cleared and both Kings rose to move down into the body of the great hall.

“An excellent feast, my brother,” Francis complimented Henry as they left the dais. “I can’t praise your hospitality enough.”

“It lacks only one thing,” the King answered gaily, “and that lack is already made good!”

The minstrels had begun to play the graceful openings of a sarabande and from behind the immense carved screen at the far end, a company of ladies wearing masks approached the two sovereigns. All were magnificently dressed, and Francis searched them all, trying to penetrate behind the silk visors and headdresses and distinguish the Marchioness of Pembroke, for he knew she was among them. It was difficult, until he slyly followed Henry’s gaze, and picked out a slim figure in blazing red satin, with a petticoat of cloth of gold and a gold mask and headdress. She moved with the elegance of a swan gliding over water; she had always had that gift, he remembered, and she held her left hand close to the folds of her vivid skirt, so that it was partly hidden.

“I claim the fairest lady for myself,” he said quickly to Henry. “The guest’s privilege, Sire!”

She curtsied low when he approached her and answered him in perfect French. Holding the tips of her fingers, he began the complicated figures of the dance. Henry and the other gentlemen had also chosen partners, and they turned and swayed to the rhythm in two lines, making a pattern of brilliant color and synchronized movement in the center of the floor.

She remembered the first time he had singled her out for that honor at a court ball at his magnificent new Chateau Chambord. She had been very young then, and as vain as the peacocks he kept on his lawns; glad that so many were jealous of her, and flattered by his attention in spite of her indifference to him as a man. He hadn’t changed at all, she thought, watching his narrow eyes through the slits in her mask. He could never look at any woman without conveying the cold lust of a forest wolf...And he knew her, by some means or other, she was convinced of that. But if he liked to play at ignorance, it might be wise to humor him.

“It’s said, the King of England cannot hide his stature, and the King of France his skill, Sire,” she remarked. “Both are true indeed; I’m shamed by your performance of the sarabande; I’ve never been honored by a more brilliant partner.”

“You surprise me, Madame,” Francis answered. “The King of England is famous for his talent. Isn’t it true that he excels?”

“His Grace excels in everything,” she said coolly.

“Not least in his choice of women; I hear he’s made happy by the most enchanting of all his subjects.”

“It’s the subject who is made happy, Sire. Don’t you think she’s to be envied?”

The King smiled; she was clever and he liked clever women; she deserved to have him repeat her little flatteries into King Henry’s ear.

“I shall answer that, Madame, when I see you,” he said gallantly. The music stopped; he bowed to her and she sank into a deep curtsy. She smiled at him, and removed her golden mask.

It was the same face that he remembered; the same fine features and magnificent black eyes, but it was thinner, showing the line of her jaw where it joined the frail neck, and she had lost the smooth, careless beauty of extreme youth and irresponsibility.

“My Lady Pembroke!”

Henry was moving toward them, watching Francis, anxious to see what impression she had made.

“Indeed, it’s the King and not the subject who’s truly to be envied!”

“Well spoken,” Henry agreed. He raised her to her feet and kissed her on the mouth. “But I’ll not lose you to my brother Francis, however well I love him!”

She smiled at Francis, and held on to Henry’s hand. “With all honor to our guest, I hope you won’t,” she said.

It was Francis who offered her his arm, while Henry gracefully gave way, and led her to the dais. The other ladies had also unmasked, showing themselves with wives and daughters of the English suite and garrison at Calais, and soon the music began again and the King gave permission for dancing while he and Francis and Anne sat together and talked.

They talked of the marriage, and the meeting with the Pope, and Anne answered and listened, trying to keep the anxiety out of her face because she knew it made her haggard, and banished the sudden pang of rage when she suspected that the King of France was condescending when he paid her compliments. She knew Francis, better than Henry or his Ambassadors, thanks to the years spent at his court, and she knew exactly how ridiculous he thought the situation was. She was Henry’s mistress, and the obstinate fool was still going to all this trouble to legalize something he could enjoy in any case...Defying the Pope and driving some of his best men from his service, men like Thomas More, for instance; bullying his daughter and banishing his wife and rewriting the laws of his kingdom...

Francis’ attitude infuriated her. All this was nobody’s concern except Henry’s and Henry’s people’s; he could have his way in England, Cromwell had showed him how, through the Act of Supremacy. The devil take the Pope, and all these foreigners who wanted to interfere to twist the situation for their own ends, at her expense and Henry’s. The devil take the interminable talk, the wrangling over trifles; above all, let something put an end to the cruel suspense, and set her feet on solid ground, let her relax her ceaseless struggling and feel safe. She had a trembling impulse to burst into floods of tears and run to her own rooms.