My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (19 page)

Henry himself stood blinking at the becoming revelation. “As Mary says, I don’t see why…”

“I didn’t want to deceive your Grace,” explained Anne desperately. “But you took me unawares at Rochester—when one of the English ladies you sent had brought me a wig. She said you would be disappointed—because you usually liked—because the late queen was fair.”

Henry’s arched brows came down in a prodigious frown. “Oh, she did, did she?” He waited for the usual tale-bearing. But Anne sat mute. And finding, much to his surprise, that he was not going to be furnished with the lady’s name, he couldn’t resist making a guess at it. “Sounds to me like that poisonous Rochfort woman!” he said, with a malicious grin for her ingenuity.

Anne neither confirmed nor denied his guess. She tried never to think of that unfortunate meeting—the one meeting when they might have started differently—before he had looked into Katherine Howard’s face and been caught in the sweet spell of her youth.

“I’m afraid it never suited me,” she murmured ruefully.

“Neither do those stiff, elaborate dresses of yours,” he told her.

“You would have done better to take her advice about that.”

Anne recognized in his criticism the same personal resentment which had tinged his laughter when he had poked fun at the grandeur of the Dudley’s barge. Evidently she had been doing the wrong thing again in trying to dress up to him. Involuntarily, she recalled a splendid peacock she used to watch at Greenwich as he strutted with gorgeous spread tail before his trim, neat hen. Probably that was the way all male creatures really thought things ought to be.

“I will ask Mary to help me,” she said meekly, bending to retrieve her pearl-studded cap from the dangerous proximity of his heel and to hide a smile which brought that elusive dimple to her cheek. Was she, perhaps, beginning to understand this difficult husband of hers? And, in getting amusement from his foibles, to find that he wasn’t quite so formidable as he seemed? At any rate, it had been stupid of her not to appreciate sooner the similarity between Henry and the peacock and to choose her clothes accordingly. By the time he began to fidget about his dinner she had regained sufficient confidence to try her hand at humoring him.

“Why not go and eat now,” she suggested, “and let the child have his sleep out?”

“His little Grace can go back in his cot, Madam, away from the draught,” suggested his nurse pointedly.

Anne was hungry too; but there was Kate Ashley to humor as well, and she realized that if any good was to come of this visit, she must establish friendly relations with the woman. “I think I will have a dish of well-seasoned capon and a draught of Malmsey sent to me here if I may, Henry, so as not to disturb him,” she said. And, surprisingly enough, he backed her up tacitly about the open window. Already halfway to the door, he collected up his daughters and Culpepper with a nod. Obviously, he was glad enough to quit the hushed room and get his knees under a laden table.

As soon as they were alone Anne turned to Mrs. Ashley with that comfortable, receptive movement which invites confidences between women. “To tell you the truth, I wanted a chat with you,” she admitted. Human nature was much the same, she found, whether in Cleves or Havering; and however ignorant she might be of book learning she was well versed in conciliating people. “I’ve been wondering all the time how you’ve managed to bring up a delicate, motherless baby to look so plump. What did you feed him on? And what sort of foster mother did you get for him at first?”

The flattered nurse was only too willing to tell her, and in the telling all sourness went from her thin, kindly face. Anne insisted upon her sitting down and drinking some of the wine brought for her own meal, and so free from haughtiness was she that—as Kate boasted afterwards—it was as good as a gossip with a friend. She had never had so good a listener; and all the time Edward slept peacefully, breathing in the good fresh air, while Anne, by means of judicious prompting, was able to form a pretty clear picture of her step-children’s lives. She appreciated the wisdom that kept them away from court, but perceived the flaw. While receiving the best possible mental instruction and—in the case of Edward— almost fanatical physical care, their characters were being molded mainly by dependents. A flaw which Henry was probably aware of and which, in marrying her, he had done his best to remedy. What they needed was a woman of their own class to love without fear.

She must do her best to help him…

“I hope I’ve not talked too much, Madam,” apologized Kate at last, seeing that the Queen was absorbed in some considerations of her own. “It’s so wonderful having someone who understands all the difficulties, begging your Grace’s pardon. Especially when one is stuck right away in the country away from all one’s friends…”

“That must be trying for you, Kate. But it’s worth it, don’t you think, to be so trusted?” said Anne, smiling down at the rosy boy asleep in her lap.

“Of course, Madam!” agreed the refreshed nurse.

“I hear you have been very kind to the Lady Elizabeth too. She speaks of you so often that it is clear she loves you.”

Kate’s face suffused with pleasure. “Small wonder, poor lamb! I’ve let her have her will more than is good for her because she suffers so much with her teeth all these years.” The woman stopped abruptly, glancing nervously over her shoulder. Making a martyr of Elizabeth was dangerous, but it was clear where the woman’s heart lay. “Perhaps,” she ventured, with a cautious glance at this latest step-mother, “things will be better for her—now?”

Anne put aside her plate. “Does she know—about her mother?” she asked, in a low voice.

“It is difficult to tell, Madam. I think she sometimes wonders why she doesn’t have a lot of pretty things like her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, who sometimes comes to play with them.”

Here was a problem most new step-mothers are spared.

“Wouldn’t it be kinder to—to tell her?” suggested Anne.

“The child resents it if her mother is mentioned.”

“Surely that is very bad for her.”

“She is still a child in some ways, Madam, but growing so secretive in others.”

“Don’t be hurt by it, Kate,” advised Anne kindly. “I’m sure it’s only her armor against life.” Edward began to stir as the servants came to clear, and she put him into his nurse’s arms. “You were worried, I believe, because the Lady Elizabeth has need of clothes?” she said, in a more businesslike manner.

Kate looked abashed that she should know. “Chancellor Cromwell always scolded me so for bothering them. But believe me, Madam, I never wrote before I had need—”

Evidently the news of his downfall hadn’t filtered through to Havering yet. “I don’t think he will scold you anymore,” said Anne.

“It was nightgowns, I heard someone say, that she is shortest of. I will see that she has some.”

“Oh, Madam!” The gratitude in the woman’s eyes was greater than could have been inspired by any gift to herself; but it was swiftly chased away by fear. “But, if I might make so bold as to warn your Grace, you won’t bother the King about it? He hates to be reminded of— her. ”

Anne rose, thankful to ease her stiffened limbs. “No, I won’t speak of it to the King,” she promised. Did these people never realize, she wondered, what it felt like to be constantly reminded that one was successor to a beheaded wife? To know oneself undesired—to be far from the protection of one’s own people—to lie awake wondering and fearing—to keep pushing away that picture of the wide-arched, portcullised water gate that led to Tower Green? She sighed, gathered up her gloves and riding whip, and went with a sort of forlorn dignity to join her step-daughters.

Later on in the hall, while Henry and Elizabeth romped with Edward and his new toys, and the boy’s midget jester and half-a-dozen dogs added to the din, Anne found herself standing beside Mary to watch the fun. The shyness of two reserved women who are beginning to like each other was upon them. Mary had that “buttoned-up look,” as her younger sister called it, which made it so difficult for people to approach her; but Anne remembered how she had looked when she held her brother in her arms.

“It was good of you to remind all those people at Greenwich that I was not acquainted with your customs when I kept the Steelyard merchants’ purse,” she said.

Mary smiled stiffly. “My mother must have gone through much the same annoyance with their boorishness when she first came,” she replied. And the disdainful way she spoke seemed to include her vociferous relatives and their horse play, and to make Anne realize for the first time that Mary herself was half a foreigner.

“As a matter of fact I didn’t keep it,” she explained. “I sent it the next morning to a lazar house. It must be so dreadful to be diseased and cut off from all the enjoyment of life!”

Mary looked at her admiringly, wondering perhaps what enjoyment she could find in her present unenviable position. “I knew you couldn’t be mean with a mouth like that,” she said, trying not to envy her such health and zest for living. Presently she went and sat in a chair and passed a hand over her eyes so that Anne inquired anxiously if she were ill.

“It’s only one of her headaches,” vouchsafed Elizabeth, with youthful hardness. Prettily flushed and tired of play, she had come to join them. Her manner implied that Mary’s headaches occurred too frequently to be anything but a bore. But Anne was all concern at once.

Mary begged her rather irritably not to fuss because it only annoyed her father. “It was riding so fast, I think—and the worry of Edward holding his breath like that.” She raised her head and peered anxiously across the hall. “Look, he’s made poor Dr. Bull get up from his bed and is telling him all the symptoms. I do hope Edward hasn’t caught the quinsy!”

They all three watched in silence for a minute or two while the King and the pallid-looking doctor and Kate Ashley went into grave consultation over the boy. Through a hustle of servants beginning to clear up the chaos of toys they could see Dr. Bull tapping Edward’s chest and making him stick out his tongue.

“They seem to think now that his Grace may have been suffering from excess of bile this morning,” whispered a passing nursemaid, hurrying towards the serving screens to fetch something the doctor had called for.

Anne felt Elizabeth pulling at her arm. “What do you suppose was really the matter with him, Madam?” she asked, in that terribly penetrating young voice of hers.

Anne looked down into the shrewd green eyes that saw through everything. She couldn’t help laughing. After a swift glance to make sure her husband’s back was still turned, she laid a finger to her lips and—catching Mary’s eye to include her in the confidence—whispered, “Mostly temper!”

13

AFTER HER HONEYMOON WAS over Anne often longed to go back to the informal life at Hampton Court. But affairs of state made it necessary for Henry to stay at Greenwich.

Since their visit to Havering she had seen less of him than ever.

But now he was never rude. And at times, she thought, he seemed almost afraid of her.

After supper he would sit awhile watching her covertly, as if he were planning something and wondering what her reactions would be. Once or twice she even felt he was on the verge of discussing some important matter with her quite amicably. Wriothesley, his secretary, came and went with an air of importance. Worried-looking councilors hung about the anterooms. And by the way they all stopped talking whenever she appeared Anne felt sure that whatever was going on concerned herself. She had no means of finding out anything definite because Olsiliger had gone back to Cleves. And whereas she had begun to feel one of the family, she now found herself very much alone because Elizabeth had remained at Havering and much of Mary’s time was taken up by the attentions of her unwelcome suitor, Philip of Bavaria. And whenever Henry did break away from these seemingly endless and mysterious discussions, he was always hunting with the Duke of Norfolk or supping with his pretty niece.

In spite of her smouldering resentment Anne found life much easier without him; but she hated it when the English ladies of her household made a point of coming early to her room and staring at her husband’s pillow and asking impertinent questions if it happened to be undented. She knew that they gossiped about her.

Once Lady Rochfort, who was related by marriage to the Howards, asked with an exaggerated air of sympathy whether she had “acquainted old Mother Lowe of the King’s neglect.” They were at one of the Dudleys’ popular river fetes at the time, and Jane Rochfort took care that her spiteful words should carry across the water to their hosts in the Northumberland barge. Anne had seen the smiles begin to spread on their faces and had answered a little louder still so that their final sniggers should be for Henry. “If it eases your ladyship’s curiosity, I have not,” she had said, in her carefully enunciated English, “since, truth to tell, I receive quite as much of his Majesty’s attention as I wish.”

She had been so angry with the woman that she had to say it, straight out of her wounded pride. And it was not until Dorothea spoke anxiously of the matter that she began to wonder what the consequences would be should any of them repeat her words to Henry. She tried to recollect how many of her enemies had been in the other barge. It was a dreadful thing to Anne to realize that she had enemies. And so beset and bewildered was she by all this mysterious intrigue that she began to suspect Jane Rochfort of having angered her in public on purpose to make her say something indiscreet.

But however true her scornful words, Henry’s neglect left Anne with long, empty days. And she, of all people, was ill equipped to endure inactivity. When her loneliness and anxiety became more than she could bear she asked Dr. Kaye, her almoner, to take her to the Steelyard—ostensibly to encourage the crafts of her countrymen—but in reality to see Holbein. She had heard that he was painting Hans of Antwerp, the goldsmith, while he made a christening cup the King had ordered for Catalina Bran don’s baby; and it seemed natural enough to everyone that the Queen should linger to watch two such famous men at work. So there, amongst exquisitely wrought sword handles and crucifixes and goblets, Anne managed to tell him hurriedly about her predicament.