My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (34 page)

Anne averted her eyes, for even after all this time his agony was painful to look upon. If he—the vainglorious Tudor—had been forced to woo patiently, had believed himself tricked and then allowed himself to risk being cuckolded for the sake of a son, then such final frustration must have clouded his mind with veritable fury. Anne knew all about frustration, and what it could do to people. She could understand now why he hated the Dudleys. So what possible pity could there have been for Nan?

“Well, at least you have a son,” she comforted him. It was more than she had.

His face softened and he crossed himself. “Yes, Jane gave me Edward—may God preserve him and rest her sweet soul!”

Trying to keep the conversation on more cheerful, everyday subjects, Anne asked how Katherine liked the boy. But it seemed that the day Henry had taken her to Havering Edward had been particularly fretful so that she feared to take him on her lap and didn’t want to have him at Hampton.

“What chance has she had to know anything about children?” laughed Anne generously. “Wait till she has a nursery of her own!”

Henry wasn’t too optimistic. “It’s nine months now and no sign,” he complained. “You know, Anne, I’m not too happy about her these last few weeks. I believe she’s frightened about something.

If one comes into a room unexpectedly she jumps.”

“But I thought— ”

“Oh, everything was wonderful while we were alone. That’s why I stayed away so long. I wanted to keep my domestic happiness like any other man. It was like a bright bubble safely out of reach of people’s dirty, clawing, ambitious hands—the interfering hands that have managed to burst most of my brief bubbles of happiness. But now since we came back there are all these people clamoring to take service with her—people out of her old life…I don’t want to thwart her, but is it wise?”

“Lady Rochfort—” began Anne tentatively.

“Oh, Jane Rochfort’s her cousin, so I suppose that’s natural enough. But now there’s this Bulmer woman who calls herself her secretary—and Heaven knows the ill-taught child needs one!” He broke off to laugh indulgently, and then went on half amused, half vexed. “And this week we’re plagued with another relative of sorts she’s taken into her household. A ferocious fellow called Derham just back from Ireland who seems to think he has some claim on my little Kate and glares at poor Culpepper if he so much as writes a sonnet to her. And a greasy-looking musician called Manox who used to teach her to sing or something.” Having found so good a listener, Henry warmed to the subject of his grievances. They must have been weighing on his mind a good deal or it might have occurred to him how incongruous it was to be telling them to Katherine’s predecessor. “That Rochfort bitch is always closeted with her. I wouldn’t mind so much in the daytime when I’m not hunting or busy with my ministers. But only the night before last I had to stand outside my own wife’s bedroom door in my nightgown among a pack of snickering pages before they undid the bolt.”

Anne began to see where the first thorn had scratched and the reason for his early morning visit to Richmond. Did he wonder who was behind that bolted door? Had he by any chance heard any rumors about this second music master? Anne held her rival’s reputation in her hands. But instead of trailing it in the mud she told the King that she had a pleasant surprise for him.

25

HENRY HAD AN ALMOST childlike love of surprises, and by the time Anne had led him to the great hall he was in the best of humors. He spoke affably to Mistress Lilgrave and her departing women, pleased with his own magnanimity in sparing them. Anne envied the grace with which the slender widow sank into the billows of her skirt and sent her humble duty to the Queen and Lady Rochfort. While Henry glanced round approvingly at their almost completed work she drew aside the piece of cloth veiling Edward’s portrait and called a servant to light a candle on either side of it.

Henry was delighted. He viewed it first from one angle and then from another, and each time he looked at it he felt prouder of his paternity and more sure of his son’s health. Evidently the children had loyally kept her secret about the sittings although Edward was always chattering about the monkey his Aunt Anne had given him.

“There’s nothing anyone could have done that would give me more pleasure!” their father kept saying. “Although the boy is like his mother, he’s growing more like me. And Holbein has caught the likeness. I must congratulate him at once. Where is he? I haven’t seen him since—since our wedding.”

“We were afraid—that it—” stammered Anne, always more nervous on her friends’ behalf than her own.

“You were afraid that I would punish him—like Cromwell?”

“God forbid!” she shuddered. “But it was rumored that he might lose his appointment as court painter.”

Henry laughed boisterously and shook her arm in kindly pleasantry. “My good woman, what sort of a Philistine do you take me for? I could create a whole regiment of new Chancellors tomorrow, but not another Holbein!” he assured her. But all the same—with disquieting tales about music masters fresh in her mind—she was thankful to be able to say that he wasn’t staying in the palace.

“He lodges with a Flemish friend in Goldsmith Row,” she told Henry. “I’ll send one of my men to fetch him to Hampton first thing in the morning.”

She turned to recall the servant who had lighted the candles but found only Frances Lilgrave at her elbow, ready cloaked for her homeward journey.

“Perhaps if Madam will allow me to deliver the message—” she was offering, in her mincing French way. Anne looked at her coldly. It was true that the King was momentarily occupied with some of Holbein’s rough sketches, but the Howards must have spoiled this invaluable craftswoman of theirs very badly that she should so presume to thrust herself into a royal conversation.

“Why should you?”

Mistress Lilgrave drew back with exaggerated meekness. “Only to save your ladyship the pain,” she murmured, “because I live there too.”

Anne caught the malicious gleam in her dark eyes and instinctively recoiled, pulling aside her skirts.

“Very well, then,” she agreed ungraciously, because it seemed ridiculous not to, and stood staring at the closed door even after the woman had gone. Henry was making a running commentary on a dozen or so crayon studies which Holbein with his usual prodigality had left behind, but she had no idea what he was saying.

Frances Lilgrave…Of course, that would explain her own instinctive dislike. Hans had never made any secret of his way of life—but that it must be this Lilgrave woman! A spy in the pay of her enemies—always in her house—watching her…that was how he knew about poor Basset’s letters being opened. Anne heard Henry say something about the sketch of Edward’s clenched fist being marvelously modeled—

“Yes, just like the Holy Child’s hand in the Solothurn Madonna,” she agreed, but all the time she was trying frantically to remember what she and Holbein had been talking about in front of this woman that afternoon he had drawn it.

Henry was holding out something he particularly admired.

“Yes, lovely!” said Anne vaguely, looking down at a half-finished nude. It certainly was lovely—a woman’s sinuous white body lying across a bed in candlelight, with night-black hair cascading to the floor and the flesh tints cleverly thrown up against an exotic black and gold gown she had just discarded. The easy smile died on Anne’s lips as her mind registered recognition of the material. It was so like Holbein to leave the thing lying about without subterfuge in her house!

“It’s that Lilgrave hussy,” Henry was chuckling obscenely. “And isn’t this one of your women? In a stuffy blue Dutch dress with her hair down?”

Anne glanced at the more formal painting he held aloft which she herself had ordered and paid for. “It’s Dorothea—one of my women-of the-bedchamber,” she said woodenly, stretching out her hand for it.

“The plain one who was with Kate Basset last evening? These painters get all the opportunities. Who else would have supposed she had such red-gold treasure screwed up beneath her appalling cap? Why, it’s almost Tudor color!”

“I specially wanted him to paint it because it’s her only beauty,” explained Anne. “I’m having portraits made of the few Flemish servants who were allowed to remain with me so that they may send them home to their relatives.”

“But she looks a lady. And I said all your ‘jauntlewomen,’ as you used to call them, must go back.” His heart applauded her rare kindness, but to offset a hint of pre occupied terseness in her manner he spoke sternly. For herself there were few things Anne considered worth fighting for; yet there was a streak of obstinacy in her that would stand for certain principles and promises to the death. She tucked the small painting carefully into her pocket and looked at him challengingly.

“Dorothea is a gentlewoman, but she married one of my servants sooner than leave me. Guligh, the red-headed giant who helped you undress last night, is her husband.”

Henry’s eyes fell before hers. He had the grace to realize the distress his arbitrary command must have caused, and the devotion shown her. “Don’t they quarrel—your English and your Flemish servants?” he asked uncomfortably, for the sake of something to say.

“If they do I never hear of it.”

He stared at her incredulously. The background of all his domestic life seemed to have been perpetual bickering among the officers and servants of his various wives. “What an unique household!” he remarked.

But presumably he found it to his liking for although Guligh himself appeared at that moment to announce that supper was served in milady’s private apartments the King made no mention of departure.

All he seemed concerned about was that he should not be parted from her gift. He had it set up opposite to them while they ate and called for a flagon of Gascony to toast the artist. And after supper he settled down to cards again. But Anne played badly. Her mind was following Frances Lilgrave home—home to Goldsmith Row. Picturing her at supper with Holbein. In his littered studio, embroidering his shirts perhaps. While she herself sat here, neither wife nor widow, playing Pope Julian—a game based on the first divorce proceedings of the man she strove to entertain. Why, even then he had been ridiculously concerned with a Katherine and an Anne, and the very points of the game—King, Pope, Matrimony, Intrigue, Divorce—showed with what shameless publicity the affair had been discussed. Well, there was no wrangling and publicity this time—everybody concerned could keep their dignity—and only one person had to pay for it. Three times in succession Anne was stopped by “intrigue” and lost twenty crowns.

“You are reckless tonight, Madam,” grinned Henry, scooping up his winnings.

“I feel reckless,” she said.

He had been intent on the game but, looking up quickly, he noticed that her cheeks were flushed and her lazy eyes wide and bright. Such restless animation suited her, and yet he thought she looked more unhappy than he had ever seen her. His vanity led him to mistake the meaning of her mood. He had come to Richmond on the spur of the moment, piqued and in search of change and rest; but the excited twittering of her household hadn’t escaped him and by staying like this no doubt he had given them cause for optimism. Obviously they adored their mistress and hoped that he would take her back, and he was well aware that a large proportion of his subjects still looked upon her as their rightful queen. But Anne herself was an enigma. He pushed the cards aside and leaned across the table, covering one of her jeweled hands with his own.

“Do you still want to go home, Anne?”

Anne shrugged her shoulders but made no effort to escape from his caressing gesture. “Home?” she repeated bitterly. “Where do I belong, or to whom? What family have I? Or—come to that—what nationality?”

He had never heard her speak like that before. And he was surprised to find that, quite apart from political considerations, he didn’t want her to go back. “You can be naturalized,” he suggested.

“I should like you to be naturalized. I will send Taverner, the Clerk of the Signet, to take out your papers.”

“I will think of it,” she promised listlessly. “But—English or Flemish— when I look round at other women I feel that I am nothing.”

He still supposed himself to be the wellspring of her rare mood of bitterness. “You feel that the Queen has everything?” he questioned, glancing round to make sure that her women and the servants were out of earshot. He was beginning to enjoy himself immensely. Anne withdrew her hands and began moodily twirling the black enameled ring on her thumb. She hadn’t been thinking of the Queen, but there, too, was a grievance.

“She has Elizabeth,” she said. It was stupid to mind so much, of course. But the joy of the child’s companionship had been denied to her of late because, owing to their blood relationship, Katherine had made a point of having her at her own table. Henry was still more pleased. For all he might call young Bess his bastard, he was rightly proud of her boyish carriage and quick brain, and loved to hear her praised.

“She shall come and visit you often,” he promised. “And if it’s any comfort to you to know it, she’s been plaguing me to let her live with you altogether. Though of course I can’t allow that. It would seem slighting to the Queen.”

But Anne was so touched that her unhappy eyes filled with tears. That—from Elizabeth, who adored the pomp and circumstance of courts. For no particular reason than that she was overwrought, Anne began to laugh with the tears still running down her cheeks. Henry rose and went to her. He was quite alarmed at seeing so restrained a women upset.

“Did you want children as badly as that?” he soothed, patting her shoulder with endearing awkwardness.

In her hurt and emotional distress Anne caught at the comforting reassurance of his arm. “I would rather have been her m-mother than Q-queen of England,” she confessed, between sobs.

But it was only because so much had been taken from her that she clung so tenderly to what little had been left.

Almost immediately she hated herself for her hysterical outburst.

It was just the kind of weakness she always wrestled against for fear of becoming like William. Subconsciously, it did something to you, having a brother like William. If people would only realize—the people who thought her dull—that that was why she always used to hold herself so still and calm. But now, perhaps, there was no longer any need. She wiped her eyes and found herself in Henry’s arms, sniffing ignominiously against his familiar shoulder.