My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (35 page)

“I’m behaving like a very young sister!” she apologized, trying to dis-entangle a gauze wing of her cap from the gold chain about his neck.

To her surprise he wouldn’t let her go. He was whispering something about this sister business being all a mistake; that of late his feeling for Katherine had become almost fatherly. It suddenly occurred to Anne that he was making love to her. That he wanted her. Really wanted her, for the first time—now that she was out of his reach. It was the sort of thing that she had set herself to achieve, out of revenge; yet here she was so overcome by surprise that she just stood there wondering what on earth she should do.

It was so difficult to think with his demanding hands drawing her closer and lifting her chin. He could make her do anything, she supposed; but what ought she to do? He was lustful and inconstant.

She wasn’t in the least in love with him. But she was used to him and he was her husband. Yes, still. For in that moment of close contact, however unwillingly, she felt through and through the truth of Mary’s words. It wasn’t just that Holy Church said so. A good woman like Catherine of Aragon had counted herself his wife until the end of her days.

He pressed his lascivious mouth to hers. She owed no body anything. It was Life which owed her so much. Perhaps if she let him have his way she might yet have a child of her own. She was no wanton and it seemed improbable in the extraordinary circumstances that any second marriage would be arranged for her. This might be her last chance…What the outcome of such a tangle could be she didn’t know. All she cared for was that the hateful picture of Frances Lilgrave lying naked on Holbein’s bed was wiped out by reckless resolution, aided perhaps by the unwanted warmth of her own good Gascony.

She freed herself from the King’s greedy embrace and moved to the nearest window, jerking the heavy curtains apart. Outside a full moon rode clear of clouds. It was not yet ten of the clock and the grassy ride through the park to Hampton lay clear as day. She looked over her shoulder, mockingly. But her royal guest called firmly for his candle.

Anne herself carried it for him as she had done the night before.

Comptroller, cofferer, confessor—all made way for them, only the mighty Guligh going before. This time Anne turned on the second stair to offer Henry her hand. It was a regal gesture of reconciliation—a remission of all his cruelty and unfaithfulness.

From now on we are friends, she thought, for I’m no better than he. She even managed to laugh, rather deliciously, picturing the procession of women who must at one time or another have gone hand-in-hand to bed with him.

26

MONTHS SLIPPED BY AND ripened into autumn. Anne knew now that there would be no children of her marriage. At first she had rebelled fiercely; then gradually learned to accept the disappointment with resignation. But Mary’s confessor had said that that was not enough, that the only way to triumph over frustration was to make a free gift of the thing denied. So as time went on she spent her aptitude for motherhood more and more in the service of other people’s children, preferably those who were more in need of love than her own could ever have been.

October found her preparing to give some of them a party.

“Not a grand party like the Queen is giving on Twelfth Night with Edward and Uncle Charles’ boys and the Dudleys and our best clothes,” Elizabeth was explaining to her small cousin Jane, who was staying at Richmond. “Just a party in the guard chamber for Aunt Anne’s orphans.”

“What are orphans?” asked Jane Grey, who even at five showed a passion for knowledge.

“Children with no fathers or mothers,” Elizabeth told her curtly, supposing she must be half an orphan herself.

They were watching the rain fall steadily in the inner courtyard.

It raced in rivulets down the outside of the leaded window panes and Jane, who was short for her age, had clambered onto a stool to trace their course with a stumpy finger.

“Then they wouldn’t get pinches and slaps when they fidget over their writing tablets, would they?” she dared to whisper.

Anne heard her and, pausing in the middle of the instructions to Hawe, pulled the child onto her lap. She often held her very close so that if life should frighten her when she grew up she would have some caresses to remember. Jane, for her part, who wasn’t accustomed to being taken onto people’s knees—except occasionally her grandfather’s and on one terrifying occasion the King’s— found sitting with Anne’s arm round her rather pleasant because one could get down whenever one liked.

“Why do you have orphans, Madam?” she asked, playing with the bright bead trimming on her hostess’s dress.

“Because she is kind, of course,” interrupted Elizabeth, whose quicksilver mind found Jane’s grave persistence rather boring. But Mary, who had brought some gifts for the party, explained patiently that it was usual for ladies in Madam Cleves’ position to keep an orphanage for the poorer children on their estates. She didn’t say what trouble she herself had been to arrange this for her friend’s consolation, nor how much pleasure it gave her to see Anne sitting there in happy serenity just as if she had been born one of the family—with the other Mary Tudor’s grandchild in her lap and tall Elizabeth coming to lean on the arm of her chair.

“May we help make the cakes again this time, Aunt Anne?” she was pleading.

“The little spiced ones perhaps,” promised Anne, glancing through the list her comptroller handed her. “But there’s to be one very special big one which the cooks are busy making down in the kitchen now. A birthday cake with sugar icing for a new baby who is coming.”

“When?” asked Elizabeth eagerly, for Edward was getting much too big for her to lift.

“In time for the party, we hope!” smiled Mary, considering the inconvenience Anne was being put to by the event.”

“Will he be an orphan, too, then?” piped up Jane, and hid her freckled face against the attractive bead trimming when they all laughed.

“No, poppet,” explained Anne. “His father will be Guligh.

That’s why Mistress Lilgrave has been making fresh hangings with all those pretty embroidered birds for Dorothea’s room.”

“Then he ought to have auburn hair like me,” prophesied Elizabeth.

Jane peeped up enviously at her cousin’s tight red-gold curls.

“Guildford Dudley says mine is mouse-colored,” she lisped sadly.

“But then Guildford is a horrid, spoiled little boy,” snapped Mary. She shared her father’s dislike of the Northumberland family and knew better than the others why they encouraged their handsome young son and the King’s plain grand-niece to play together, and in what direction their ambition lay. Her old irritation rose against Elizabeth too. For when excitement painted color on the girl’s pale, high cheek bones she could make everybody else look drab and colorless—and feel it! Mary was glad when she darted back to her stance at the window to see a horseman galloping into the palace yard. The younger child slid off Anne’s lap to join her.

“How sad to see a mere babe of five cherishing a conviction that orphans are a particularly privileged set of people!” Mary remarked.

“The Dorsets must think that book learning is the only weapon with which to equip their children against life.”

Anne dismissed Hawe and drew her chair nearer for a chat. “I should say that a happy childhood is far more efficacious. I know that if I’m able to face up to most things with reasonable serenity now it’s mostly because when I was small I always felt my parents were there between me and harm, standing deputy for God.”

Mary nodded. She, too, had had a wonderful childhood until she was ten. “I hope your mother is better? Last time I was here you had had disquieting news of her health.”

But their conversation was interrupted by Elizabeth’s clear voice calling, “It’s Tom Culpepper’s servant, Aunt Anne, with the wet simply pouring off his hat and his horse all in a muck sweat!”

Anne rose hurriedly. Her eyes sought Mary’s. “You don’t suppose—it’s any ill tidings about the Queen?”

But Mary knew nothing of Anne’s cause for anxiety. “I was with them only yesterday for the festival of the Blessed Saints and my father thanked God aloud that after all the strange accidents that had befallen his marriages he had been given a wife so entirely confirmed to his inclinations as the one he has now.”

Anne was guilty of a grimace. “I suppose I’m one of the strange accidents,” she said.

She was really waiting for the sound of hurrying footsteps and when Culpepper’s letter came she broke the seal and read it where she stood. “He begs me to come at once,” she told Mary, turning the hastily written note about in search of some explanation and continuing to speak in undertones inaudible to the children.

“To Hampton?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever for?”

“I’ve no idea,” lied Anne, struggling with a rare sense of premonition.

Mary always felt that Anne put herself out far too much for everyone connected with her household; but she rose with dignity surprising in so small a person. “Well, as you know, I’m crossing to the opposite bank to spend All Souls’ Day at the Convent of Sion.

But I thought you had Sir Richard Taverner coming to settle about your nationalization papers?”

“I know. It’s terribly inconvenient. And besides—” Anne stood for a moment or two in indecision. It was eight or nine months now since Henry had come to stay. Part of the time he had been on a progress up North. But on several occasions he had ridden over or stepped off his barge on the way to Westminster to sample fresh trials of cookery or bring her a present of grapes from his vinery and show her what a properly grown bunch should look like. Her lips curved into a smile at the recollection of their amicable encounters, for their relationship was now on the safe and true basis where affection thrives on mutual banter. But all the same she didn’t like the idea of going to Hampton Court without being officially invited.

“And besides,” Mary concluded for her impatiently, “why should you of all people put yourself out over the Queen’s affairs?”

But Anne didn’t measure out kindnesses like that. “I did promise her my gold tissue May Day dress to have cut up into angels’ wings for the Christmas nativity play,” she remembered. “But it’s Tom Culpepper I’m thinking of.”

Hurriedly she sent for the lavish-looking garment, made her excuses to Mary and left instructions for the luckless Clerk of the Signet to occupy himself as best he might until her return. By the time her closed horse-drawn litter reached Hampton the rain had ceased. She went in by the garden entrance and found Culpepper waiting as he had promised. No one else appeared to be expecting her and as it was nearly time for Mass there were very few people about. On their way across the Stone Court he drew her into the quiet gloom of the chapel cloister. There was an urgency about his speech and manner that precluded ceremony.

“In less than an hour the King will have found out,” he said.

Even by the light of a horn lantern fixed above the chapel doors he looked years older. All the boyish gaiety was gone, all the ruffling swagger of his fashionable court clothes was belied by the drawn gravity of his face.

“About—you?” she whispered back aghast, thinking of his danger and realizing how much she cared for him.

He shrugged his uncertainty, but made no admission. “About Manox—and Derham,” he said.

“Derham?” A whole pit of hideousness opened before Anne’s imagination, blackening the lovable picture of Katherine—the picture of a child neglected, more sinned against than sinning.

Could it be possible that this high-born girl whom she had felt sorry for in spite of all her own wrongs was just a lustful wanton? And that when Henry behaved like an ogre he sometimes had provocation? “The King once mentioned to me a man of that name. But I’m sure he never dreamed—”

“But most of us knew,” interrupted Culpepper, in that strained, low-pitched voice that seemed to have lost all its laughter. “It was madness to have all those people here who had served in the Duchess of Norfolk’s household. I went to Katherine’s rooms one night and reasoned with her for hours while Jane Rochfort listened for the King’s coming. The poor sweet believed it was the only way to keep them from betraying her. She couldn’t see that it was only piling up suspicion and dangerous evidence against herself.” Voices were audible from the courtyard—the enviable, carefree voices of men who weren’t face to face with disaster—and Culpepper glanced uneasily over his shoulder, talking against time. “It was the Duchess herself who urged her to stop that swine Derham’s mouth with a good appointment. I suppose she was terrified of what the King would do to her if he found out that she had encouraged him to marry her granddaughter, knowing her to be no maid.”

“Tom! Was it as bad as that? And you loved her in spite of it?”

Anne put a hand on his arm, moving closer against him to let the approaching chapel officials pass. Coming in out of the light they might easily take her hooded figure for any maid-of-honor indulging in a mild flirtation.

“It wasn’t her fault,” he declared obstinately. “Even the King might have admitted that if only she had thrown herself on his mercy instead of fooling him. It all happened before he married her and the most he could have done would have been to divorce her.”

“I see,” said Anne, avoiding a lively crowd of choristers scuffling along the cloister kicking a muddy ball before them. “And then someday perhaps you could have married her?”

“I would have waited all my life,” he said, quite simply.

“And as it is?”

“As it is some cursed busybody has laid all the facts before milord Archbishop, and he feels it his Christian duty to write them down and hand them to the King.”

“Cranmer—” Anne found it difficult to reconcile the prelate’s habitual friendliness towards Culpepper with the young man’s bitterness.

“Oh, to save his own skin, no doubt—now the Howards are in power with their Popish bishop Gardiner. Fear will make a man do anything. Sir Thomas Seymour thinks he means to hand it to the King here in chapel this morning.”

The doors stood wide now and people were beginning to come in twos and threes from both directions. “But why in chapel?” asked Anne.