Anne Boleyn: A Novel (38 page)

Norfolk stood up stiffly; Suffolk was shouting for a litter and the stewards and gentlemen were pressing round again, trying to remove as much of the armor as they could.

There was no immediate danger of death. Butts never failed; he knew the King was injured, but not dying. For a moment the Duke closed his eyes, slowly he wiped the sweat off his face. In that moment the idea came to him. An idea so monstrous, so opportune that he sucked in his breath. It came like lightning, and it illumined the dark places of his mind in a piercing flash, touching his hatred, his grievances, his insatiable ambitions for personal power. This was the opportunity, the chance on which his plans for using yet another niece depended. This was the fulfillment of his obstinate hope that something, somehow would cheat Henry of his son, and Anne of her reprieve from the doom of that other Queen, less than a month dead. The idea came, and the risk followed, the risk of failure, the risk of being called to account afterward...Nothing risked, said the Duke, nothing won, and stepped back unnoticed. It was worth trying, anything was worth trying. Anything! He turned and raced towards the palace buildings.

She heard his feet pounding down the corridor, and let her sewing slip off her lap, half rising from her chair. The door crashed open and she sank back when she saw him, hatless and wild, glaring at her in the doorway like some demon in a masque, with one eye twisted almost out of sight and the other blazing at her. She was alone except for Lady Winfield, who was nearly eighty years of age and partly deaf.

“Uncle, what is it? What is it?” she gasped at him. The answer came at her like a blow, delivered at the top of his voice.

“The King! He fell at the jousting! The King is dead!”

Her mouth opened, but no sound came; he saw the shock dilate her eyes and her hands pushing, struggling to force her body out of the chair.

“Dead!” He repeated.

Then she screamed, a high pitiful shriek of terror, and fell on her face at his feet. The old woman stumbled toward her, muttering; he heard her ask his help and saw her try to lift the limp unconscious body. Then he turned and walked out, closing the door of her room behind him.

The King had multiple bruises and a joint of his armor had opened an ugly wound in his leg; he was shaken and bad-tempered, but he sent for Brereton and forgave him publicly for having nearly killed him. Then he remembered to send a message to Anne that he was well and unhurt except for a few scratches.

But the message came too late; before the week was out, Anne’s pregnancy ended at four o’clock one morning. After a night of agony, she was miscarried of a son.

They had lifted her up on the cushions and made some attempt to comb back her hair and arrange the bedclothes when word reached them that the King was coming. Anne let her women do what they could, but when Margaret Wyatt brought a pot of rouge and a mirror, she waved her wearily away.

“I know what I look like, Meg. Nothing can help me now...” She was the color of wax, and her eyes were opened wide in an unnatural stare; her body was rigid and her hands opened and closed on the coverlets every few seconds. She was weak from loss of blood, and she had been terribly, convulsively sick when she heard someone whisper, “God have mercy on us...it was a boy...”

She should have fallen into a merciful sleep, but her whole being was stretched as taut as a bowstring, waiting for him to come. And Henry came.

The room was almost as full as it had been when Elizabeth was born, two and a half years earlier; she heard the same murmur of anticipation in the anterooms and the heavy tread as he approached. Then he was in the room itself, standing astride like a great red-necked bull, his fists on his hips, his eyes two green points of fury in his scarlet face.

Inch by inch she raised herself till she sat up, and her teeth nipped her lower lip to stop its involuntary trembling. He said nothing till he moved round to the side of the bed, and the ladies shrank back against the wall. Out of the comer of her eye she saw old Butts mustering his courage and moving forward to interfere on behalf of his patient.

The King’s roar shook the window frames.

“None of your damned excuses this time! Get out of my way—all of you!”

They held each other’s gaze like two animals at bay, while the women slipped past him and moved to the further end of the room; and finally they were isolated and out of earshot.

She knew what was coming; she knew the depth and insanity of his hatred as he looked down at her, struggling for words bitter enough to upbraid and wound in retaliation for what she had lost. And in her desperate defeat and vulnerability her courage faltered for a moment.

“Harry,” her voice quavered, “Harry, I was frightened...Norfolk did it...”

“Norfolk!” He snorted the word; his voice was shaking with rage. “Norfolk! You lying strumpet, hold your vile tongue!”

“Norfolk,” she repeated. “Norfolk who burst in on me and told me you were dead.”

“You lie,” he roared. “God took my son to punish me for having married you! God’s shown me the truth at last.”

Something snapped in her then, something the years of pitiless anxiety and bitter disillusion had strained to the utmost; in that second all hope fled, and with it all fear for herself or the consequences. She dragged herself up on the pillows, so weak that the effort exhausted her, and then gathered what was left of her strength, blinded by pain to anything but the sight of his face, convulsed with hatred as he glared down at her, seeing his fury that he hadn’t found her dead. And for the last time her fatal temper blazed.

“God shows you nothing!” She panted, “You come here and accuse me, you who never spared me anything to try to keep the child. So God’s cast a blight on me now, as He cast one on Catherine? Oh, how convenient for you! What a good friend you’ve made of the Almighty that He always bears responsibility for everything you fail to do yourself. I lost the son you wanted; what a fine excuse you have at last for turning on me...you can run to the Seymour bitch with a clear conscience now and yelp that God’s abandoned you because of me, just as He did when you were tired of
her
! Congratulations, Sire. Congratulations! What God takes from His faithful servant Henry Tudor with one hand, He gives with the other!” She stopped, gasping for breath.

She saw his hand come up, clenched into a fist to strike her, and for one wild moment hoped he would, and that the force of his blow would break her neck.

“Kill me,” she said. “I’d like nothing better.”

“Nor would I,” he snarled. “Why didn’t you die, when you spewed out my son from your miserable body? How dare you live and look at me and open your mouth with abuse and excuses. God, you talk of God! I doubt there is one, when I see such as you! You babble of Norfolk to me...you babble of my failure, you, who couldn’t do what any woman worthy of the name could do—keep a child in your belly and deliver it alive!”

“Give me the chance!” she shouted wildly. “Come to my bed and play the man for a change! You stand there cursing me because you hate me—not for the child but because I’ve seen you as the others haven’t. Mistress Seymour doesn’t know you, does she? She only knows what I knew before I came into your bed and found a feeble pig’s bladder instead of a man!”

“Hold your tongue, God’s curse on you!” he choked, “God’s curse on you, I say. You black whore. I plunged my arms in blood up to the elbow just to have you, just to have the son you promised me! And all I have is this...I let you hound Wolsey to his grave, I sent my wretched wife away and let her die alone because of you...my
wife
, do you hear! More wife than you are, better than you, royal born, worthy of the crown I took from her and put in the gutter when I put it on your head! More, who was my friend, died because of you...Fisher and the others. Good men, true men, when they denounced you. I killed and imprisoned and exiled those I loved because the Devil whispered in my ear through your mouth. By the living Christ, I might have harmed my own poor daughter Mary if I hadn’t seen through you in time! May God forgive me! May God forgive the lives I’ve taken and the sins on my soul—^all put there through you and for you. You lie there, daring to defy me still, you who’ve humbled my manhood by your own inadequacy, and stained my justice! You’ve said your last poisoned words to me this day.”

He turned away from her, and his eye caught the sight of basins and something bundled into a tiny towel. Tears came into his eyes; they hid the yawning cleft she had made in his pride, his self-esteem; he wept for the dead infant in the eyes of his terrified court. In his heart he wept for his own guilt and his own failure and for the echo of her words, which he would spend the rest of his life trying to refute.

Then he turned and looked at her, weeping, once again, and this time they all heard what he said.

“Look to yourself! You’ll get no more sons by me!”

When he had gone she collapsed; her strength ebbed out of her, leaving her too weak to speak or even cry. She lay with her eyes closed, drifting in the limbo of semi-consciousness, struggling for oblivion, and held back by the wordless repetition in her mind of one half sentence, spoken long ago by a voice that she loved...If you value your life, never say one word...if you value your life...

“Thomas, I am accursed.”

Cromwell sat on his low chair in front of the King, his hands clasped on his knees, and watched him without answering.

“Accursed,” Henry repeated. They were alone in the royal apartments at Greenwich; it was late at night and the King was in his night robe. He sat before a blazing fire, with a ewer full of posset beside him, and opened his heart to his secretary, Cromwell.

Cromwell had been in bed when the summons came, but he had dressed with lightning speed and presented himself at the private door into the sovereign’s bedroom, where he found the King already prepared for bed, sitting alone, with his head in his hands.

The picture of regal despair, Henry could have been sculpted in that posture, Cromwell thought as he moved soundlessly to his place. The secretary was the audience for the play which was about to take place; he was not deceived; he knew it was a play. Over the years of his long climb to power on Henry’s shoulders he had discovered that in all personal matters, the King lied and postured while he conveyed his wishes. The wise man obeyed the wish and ignored the hypocrisy.

He had heard of the scene in the Queen’s room, and that sentence pronounced on her before witnesses, the sentence which everyone knew meant her divorce, and he had been expecting to be summoned.

Cromwell had helped Henry to marry her; now he would have to help Henry put her away. The King raised his head and stared at him with bloodshot eyes.

“It is a week today since God took my son,” he said.

“I know, Sire. All England grieves with you.”

“No,” Henry shook his head. “No, all England rejoices. The world rejoices. Henry of England has no son!”

“No one who loves you is glad,” Cromwell said gently, “Only your enemies. And they are nothing compared to your friends. You are not hated, Sire, believe me.”

“While she is, eh? You tell the truth, Thomas; my people hate her and always have. They will never wish me well through her. Out of evil, good does not come...God’s proved that once again. She is evil, and I am still in mortal sin; the good I want for my kingdom will never come through her, I know that now.”

“What will you do?” Cromwell asked him. He was going to get rid of her, and Cromwell knew it without doubt. All the reasons had been put before him; the anger of God, the hatred of the people, the evil in the woman. All the reasons Henry was putting forward to himself as well as to him, reasons which would have to be accepted while the real one remained a mystery. What was it, he wondered for a second...The King was tired of her and wanted someone else...was it as simple as that?...Was it political as well?...No one would ever know. And it was not important.

“I want to take a true wife, Thomas; I want to purge myself of this sin I’ve committed. I won’t suffer for the Queen’s ill-doings, and I won’t let England suffer.”

“Cranmer can look into the marriage,” he suggested quietly. “If your Grace’s conscience is uneasy...” He let the sentence die away.

Henry leaned back, his eyes fixed on the fire; the muscles worked in his heavy jaw.

“Another divorce, Thomas...another Queen in exile, with a daughter to make claims for...a rallying point for malcontents, like Catherine for the last six years. Is that what you suggest?”

For one moment the Secretary couldn’t find an answer. His lids lifted a hair’s-breadth, showing the dull unfeeling eyes, with a gleam of astonishment in them like the vague stirring in the center of a muddy pond.

Then the expression vanished. Henry did not intend divorce. He did not want to send her away, or imprison her as he had done with Catherine. He wanted her death.

Cromwell moistened his suddenly dry lips and decided to make sure.

“This makes me wish she had died when the child miscarried,” he murmured. “Death would resolve this problem.”

The King did not look at him, but something flickered across his face, something gratified, which meant he knew his wishes had been understood.

“She urged the execution of Catherine and my daughter Mary often enough,” he said, as if he were speaking to himself. But Cromwell heard. “She showed no pity for any man or woman either. Urging me to be merciless, when I wanted to show mercy. Her crimes are worthy of nothing less than what she brought on others.”

“Then she should pay for them,” Cromwell suggested. “And for any others she may have committed—perhaps unknown to Your Grace.”

“God knows,” Henry said harshly. “God knows, I don’t.”

“It might be possible to find out,” the Secretary suggested, “if you will trust in me and give me time.”

“I trust you, Thomas,” he said quickly. “No one knows my mind but you. Pray for me, friend, I’m grievously tormented...”

“I’ll pray, Sire. Only have patience. It may take a little time.”

“How much time?” the King demanded suddenly. “How long must I bear with this, and keep a virtuous and honorable lady waiting...”