The Concubine (5 page)

“He’ll gag, and more, at the thought of losing England, but why should that fret us, Thomas? I gag at the thought of his having it as a marriage portion. As for the Pope—I’m a good churchman but I can say to you, surely without offense, you high clerics are skilled in dealing with awkward situations; slippery as eels, all of you. And by Holy Cross, the Papacy owes me something. I was the one who took up cudgels against Luther.”

“That is true.” Wolsey shifted ground. “We must also bear in mind the common English people. On the whole they dislike foreigners but from the first, in their unpredictable way, they took the Princess of Aragon to their hearts and never once, in all the time that she has been Queen, has she acted in such a way as to diminish her popularity. Every time she had been brought to bed every woman in the land has hoped with her, suffered with her, and shared her disappointment. To say now that she was never your lawful wife will, I fear, incense all your female subjects—and all the men whose own marriages have brought them less than they hoped for in children, goods, or simple comfort. That must be thought of.”

“I, too, have some popularity,” Henry said, touched in his vanity. “And naturally if anything comes of the matter it must be presented in an acceptable form. Every man with a conscience will recognize the claims of mine, and every man with his own good at heart will be concerned for the succession.”

“And the French, of course, would welcome it, as they would welcome anything that caused a breach between us and the Emperor,” Wolsey said, musingly, his mind leaping forward. The French would gladly provide some plump, nubile princess to take Catherine’s place in Henry’s bed.

“Has your Grace some Princess in mind?”

“God’s fingers! No! You go too fast, Thomas. The ground must be tested. I’ve thought the matter over and convinced myself. I’ve now asked your opinion. And you have mentioned the Pope, the Emperor and the common people. What does my own Lord Chancellor think?”

It was one of those moments, frequent enough in Wolsey’s complicated life, when truth and commonsense dictated one answer and expediency the direct opposite. He wanted to say—Leave it alone, it can only lead to enmity abroad and rebellion at home; expediency urged that he give the pleasing answer. Also to expediency was added a genuine fondness. It was hard on a man in his prime, a strong, lusty man, to be tied to a woman six vital years his senior; it was even harder on a devoted King to be without a son to succeed him.

“Your Grace knows that in this as in all things I have no other wish than to carry out your will to the best of my ability.”

“That,” Henry said, “is a smooth answer and worthless. And you know it. Save your evasions for those who trade in such things. Give a blunt man a blunt answer. What do
you
think?”

The basic, rock hard, East Anglian realism that neither his friends nor his enemies ever gave its due came to Wolsey’s aid,

“I think—in fact I know—that it will be difficult to bring about, and it will take time, more time than you imagine. But there is this…” Behind the massive brow the brain which even his most virulent enemies admitted to be formidable was already working; cog engaged upon cog. “The whole thing could be eased and accelerated if Her Grace could be persuaded to cooperate. She is a pious woman; she is of royal blood, she understands the need this land has for a prince. If she could be brought to agree that the marriage was no marriage, that His Holiness decreed it void, she might withdraw and retire to a nunnery. That would lift all shadow of blame from you. Your Grace, that is my concern—that you emerge scatheless, that you and Her Grace should seem in equal measure to have been victims of a Papal error.”

“As we were. But you’re right, Thomas. This hinges on the Queen.” He imagined himself facing Catherine and mentioning the matter, and recoiled. “Not yet,” he said hastily. “Time enough to tell her when we have the Pope’s decision.”

Wolsey nodded. “And that will not be yet. I suggest a careful preliminary approach by as secret a channel as can be found; then, in the event of failure there need be no gossip, no embarrassment.”

“The means I leave to you,” Henry said simply. “They missed a rare chance, Thomas, when they failed to elect you for Pope, though for my own part I can’t help but be thankful.”

Wolsey’s face remained impassive, though his casual reference to the greatest disappointment of his life hurt him. He had come very near to being chosen in 1521 when Leo X died, and had tried again eighteen months later upon the death of Adrian VI. His hopes, his dreams of being Pope—now shelved indefinitely—had given him, through anticipation, some insight as to what being Pope involved and he was able to think now that if
he
were in Clement’s place it would take something of a cataclysmic nature to induce him to revoke a bill of annulment granted by one of his predecessors. Yet, at the same time, thinking of his thwarted ambition he was reminded that the Emperor, Charles V, had promised to use his influence to get him elected. How far, how vigorously had he kept that promise? Wolsey, always pro-French at heart, would welcome the annulment, could it be obtained; and welcome, too, the French marriage which must almost inevitably follow. There was a Princess named Renée…

He said, “Your Grace may rely upon me to give this matter great and careful thought, and to do my utmost to gain you what you desire.”

“Then that is all for the moment,” Henry said, and rose. He glanced at the piled papers. “Everything seems to be in order here; I think, since the weather has cleared, I’ll have a few days’ hunting down at Hever.”

“I trust Your Grace has good sport,” Wolsey said.

A few minutes later, when the King had been seen off and Wolsey was back in his room, in the act of handing the papers to one of his secretaries he stopped suddenly and stared into space.

Hever. That brought Thomas Boleyn to mind and that slant-eyed slip of a girl who was his daughter. The King had said, “Break off, as soon as you can, this affair between young Percy and Tom Boleyn’s girl. I have other plans for her. She can marry Piers Butler and that will settle that old dispute. I’d sooner not appear in this business because I have not yet made up my mind about the titles and wish to rouse no false hopes on either side.” Wolsey had said, “I can say, with truth, that she is no match for Northumberland’s heir.” “Good,” Henry said, “and get her away from the Court for awhile. Send her to her father.”

Sir Thomas was then at Blickling, so the girl had been sent there. Now she’d be at Hever. And Henry, besides going there to hunt, would be arranging her marriage to Butler, and it looked as though, arranging it there when he was Sir Thomas’s guest, he had decided to give Boleyn the title after all. And Thomas Boleyn, ennobled, would be more unbearable than ever.

There had been a time—not so long since—when the King would not have made such a move without consulting his chief minister; he’d have said, yes, as lately as a year ago, “Which shall it be, Thomas, Butler or Boleyn?” and Wolsey, after a pretense at pondering, at impartial judgment, would have given some good reason for passing over Boleyn whom he disliked and distrusted, and the King would have taken his advice. Now, without even discussing the matter, off he went to Hever, lightly mentioning a few days’ hunting.

Well, it was inevitable, Wolsey supposed. “If the lion knew his strength who could rule him?” To a degree Wolsey had looked upon Henry as his son, and even the most beloved, the most amenable sons grew up and delighted in a show of independence. Trotting off to Hever to promise Thomas Boleyn a title without having consulted Wolsey probably gave Henry a pleasing feeling of standing on his own feet.

But it was, nonetheless, a little straw which indicated the way the wind blew. For a moment Wolsey was thankful that there were larger, nondomestic issues which only he could handle. Yes, Henry could make Thomas Boleyn, that assiduous toady and climber, Viscount Rochfort without either help or advice from Thomas Wolsey; but he needed him still, and would need him for a long while if one Pope’s ruling was to be set aside by another.

He came out of his reverie, gave the secretary his instructions and sent him away and then sat down to give his whole attention to what, in his own mind, he had already named The King’s Secret Matter.

He propped his chin on his hand so that the stone of his great Cardinal’s ring pressed into the thickening flesh.

And suddenly his mind, instead of working in its usual smooth, logical, sensible fashion, chose to turn freakish, allowed itself to be taken over by the memory of an absurd happening which had taken place years ago and which he would have said he had forgotten.

It was in his Court of Star Chamber; a complicated legal case concerning some property, and one of the claimants was a woman. He had given—as he always did in that Court—a just, an impartial verdict, against the woman who had felt herself aggrieved. She had jumped up and begun to shout some hysterical nonsense accusing him of being unfair to a woman and threatening that some day in the future another woman would make things even. “You sit high,” she had screamed, “but a woman will bring you down!” He had ordered her removal from the Court and calmly proceeded to the next case. Why think of her now?

He knew the answer to that. This new, heavy, dangerous business which the King had just flung into his lap was concerned with a woman, Catherine the Queen. If she chose to be obdurate…

Nonsense, he rebuked himself, superstitious nonsense, but he sighed and knew a moment’s envy for Henry who could broach such a subject, say “The means I leave to you,” and then go off, lightheartedly, to hunt at Hever.

S
IR THOMAS BOLEYN’S SECOND WIFE
was a plump, pleasant woman, who left in her proper social sphere would have been competent, a little managing, and as fully self-assured as a woman of good sense and virtue had a right to be. As the wife of a great man and mistress of several large establishments she suffered painful moments of self-distrust.

It was not that she felt inferior; she came of sound Norfolk yeoman stock and was proud of the fact, but she did often feel misplaced. Sir Thomas had met her, fallen in love with her, and married her during one of his visits to Blickling where he had gone to sulk after suffering what he considered to be a slight at Court. He was consoling himself by playing the part of a rather bucolic squire, a shrewd judge of cattle, knowledgeable about crops. He had spoken of retiring from public life and settling down in Blickling. And Blickling she could manage; what was it, after all, but a magnified farm? They’d been married less than a month when an urgent messenger had summoned him to London; and there was the London house, and new dresses, and there was Hever, and there was Sir Thomas saying, “My dear, I realize that nobody can cure a ham as you can, but I cannot have you ruining your hands.”

Then there was this business of being stepmother, of its very nature, an awkward, thankless role. If the children had been babies, she would have tended and reared them, and loved them like her own—she was just too old to expect children herself. But even Anne, the youngest, was fifteen, a maid-of-honor in France; Mary and George were fully adult. And Tom’s attitude toward them all kept Lady Boleyn constantly conscious of a difference in behavior between classes. The great put their babies out to nurse and that act was symbolic; there was none of the cozy family life such as she had known. George and his father got along very well, two worldly men, with common interests. Mary her father seemed to dislike, which was understandable; she had disgraced herself twice, even before becoming the King’s mistress for a short time; but she was now respectably married; and as Lady Boleyn had once tried to point out, she had lacked a mother’s guidance at the time when a girl needed it most. Tom had said, “God knows what she’d have done
with
it! Elizabeth was a trollop.”

That did sound rather a dreadful thing for a man to say about his wife who was dead, but there again, great people looked at things differently; and Tom was so truly fond and loving one couldn’t help feeling that if he spoke so of his first wife she must have led him a dance.

Lady Bo—George had given her that name, being, as she shrewdly guessed, unwilling to call her “Mother” yet thinking “Lady Boleyn” too formal—was pleased, and ashamed of herself for being pleased, when Anne arrived at Hever, utterly miserable and suffering from the worst cold Lady Bo had ever seen. They’d come from Blickling and the hard-faced, short-spoken woman, Norfolk born by her speech and therefore to be trusted absolutely, had given such a shocking account of the state of the house there, that Lady Bo bitterly blamed herself for not accompanying Tom on his last visit; but he was only planning to stay for a day or two, and wanted her to go from London to Hever.

“She wasn’t fit to travel,” Emma said, “I could see
that
. But there wasn’t a decent aired bed in the house, the chimneys all smoked. And she was very anxious to get to her father.”

Anne—and really despite having been in France and then one of the Queen’s maids-of-honor, she was nothing more than a child, a sick child—had been put to bed with hot bricks wrapped in flannel, with possets hot with ginger and cinnamon and clove, with linseed plasters on her back and chest, with a cup of honey and vinegar to ease her throat and restore her voice. Lady Bo had been in her element and quite happy until Tom came home from Edenbridge and was told of his daughter’s arrival and said, “In God’s name, why was she sent home?”

“That I can’t tell you. She can’t speak, and the woman didn’t say, even if she knows. She did say that Anne was anxious to see you. But you’re not going into that room yet! Colds like that are as catching as measles. And you know what happened with your last cold; deaf for a fortnight.”

“My dear, I must risk the cold or have a sleepless night. Girls aren’t sent home from Court in October for nothing. There’s something behind this, and I must know what it is.”

“Then I will make you a pomander, and you will hold it in front of your face all the time. Wait here.”

She ran up the main staircase, holding her skirts high, looked into the room where Anne lay and said, “Take the honey and vinegar, child, because your father wants to talk to you,” and then ran down the back stairs into the kitchen, where she took a fresh orange and pressed cloves into its skin and then, as an extra precaution made a little posy of lavender, rosemary, and borage. Presenting these to her husband she said, “Ask just what you must and then come away.” She added, under her breath, “God shield you!” for he was dear to her, and when his last cold had deafened him he had been extremely worried, saying, “His Grace would never send a deaf man on an errand; one needs sharp ears in his service.”

He was with his daughter for about fifteen minutes and when he emerged from the room Lady Bo was certain that despite all her precautions he had taken the cold. He looked ghastly. But that was soon explained. He said,

“They’ve gone behind my back again, God damn them!”

She knew by this time who “They” were. His enemies. And first and foremost amongst them was the Cardinal. Lady Bo found that very awkward; Thomas Wolsey had always seemed to the middling sort of people a triumph for their kind, and particularly to those of East Anglia, a justification of their claim that there were no people to match the East Anglians.

The son of a butcher and grazier at Ipswich, with nothing but his own wits and merits to aid him, he had climbed to the very top of the tree. Nothing but foreign prejudice had prevented him from being elected Pope. Lady Bo, like all her kind—except a few near heretics who mattered little—had been, until her marriage, very proud of Wolsey. Then she had learned, rather sorrowfully, that he was one of Them, the people who were jealous of her Tom; and he was so mighty, so paramount in importance, that when Tom burst out with his complaint, she said,

“Oh dear, what has he done now?”

“Broken off…no, prevented her betrothal to Lord Harry Percy, Northumberland’s heir.”

That was one thing that had come easily to Lady Bo, this nominating of men by their lands; in Norfolk, when you said “Ten Acres” you meant John Bowyer, when you said “Pond Farm” you were speaking of Will Riddle; so she knew instantly what Tom’s mention of a county implied.

“That would have been a match indeed—if she liked him.”

“From what I gather, she did. Not that that matters. What worries me is
why
. The Percys never concern themselves with affairs. They’re not courtiers. They sit there in their stone fortress, guarding the border and think themselves little kings, like Darcy and Dacre. Why, in the name of God, should Harry Percy’s choice of wife matter to anyone? Still, no doubt about it; the Cardinal acted; and the blow was aimed at me. But I’m damned if I can see why.”

Lady Bo surreptitiously crossed herself; to say I’m damned, or damn me, was to invite disaster.

“How did they prevent it?” she asked. Sir Thomas told her, and she said, as soothingly as she could,

“Perhaps that is the truth of it—that the young man was already betrothed to this Mistress Talbot.”

“My dear, she is not plain Mistress Talbot; she is the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter and a betrothal between two such families would not have been unremarked.” He frowned and pulled at his beard. “No, this is a move against me, and may I be—sorry, my dear—blessed if I can see its purpose. But I shall find out. His Grace is on progress, working his way back, he’ll be at St. Albans or thereabouts. I shall go and see what I can find out.”

Lady Bo sighed; she always felt apprehensive when Sir Thomas ventured into a world largely peopled by his enemies. She thought of them as wolves. Lurking, ready to spring. And suppose he had taken Anne’s cold and fell ill in a place where there was no one to tend him properly.

“How long will you be away?”

“That depends,” Sir Thomas said darkly; then he added fondly, for he loved his wife,

“No longer than I can help, you may depend upon that.”

He was back, safe and sound, in less than a week and the moment she saw him she knew that in this latest brush with the wolves he had got the better of them. He looked pleased with himself, almost sleek. And he was unusually willing to discuss the business with her.

“I never bothered you with all this before,” he said, “but my mother was a coheir to property and titles, my claim to which has been long disputed by my cousin Piers Butler. His Grace has decided that the best way to end this old quarrel is to marry Anne to Piers and leave the property in their hands, but to confer the titles—now in abeyance—upon me. That is why he asked the Cardinal to break off this other arrangement; and I must say, I think it was a wise decision. Anne will be well provided for. And you, my dear, will be a Countess.”

She was one of the few women in the world whom the prospect dismayed rather than pleased, but like a dutiful wife she concealed her feelings and pretended to share her husband’s delight.

“Though I’m well enough as I am,” she said. “What I can’t understand is why the Cardinal couldn’t give his real reason and save you all the worry. And Anne too,” she added, remembering some of the events of the last few days. “If he’d just said that he was acting by the King’s order…”

“Ah, but that is diplomacy. My unbeloved cousin is going to be taken by surprise. If he knew what the King intended he’d run straight out and marry someone else, from spite. He’s always regarded himself as heir to the property and the titles. So not a word of this to anyone, my dear. We get the wench on her feet again and His Grace will indicate to Butler what he wishes. And all will be well.”

It seemed to Lady Bo’s simple mind a bad beginning to a marriage.

“I don’t like these arranged matches,” she said. “Such things should be left to chance, and liking. Nobody said a word or lifted a finger for us, and we…”

“Fit like hand and glove. But we were come to years of discretion—at least, I had,” he said gallantly. “Now, tell me, how have things been here?”

“She’s better now; but for two days and nights I was sorely worried. Every breath creaked, and she raved. Thomas, some of the things she said frightened me. I lay in her chamber myself, not wishing the servants to hear, though that Emma she brought with her seems a very decent sort of woman. But her hatred of the Cardinal, and some of the names she called him! It was horrible. I shouldn’t have thought a gently reared girl would have known such words, even.”

“But you recognized them,” Sir Thomas said, teasingly.

“Of course. Well, on a farm. I mean I wasn’t gently reared and never pretended to it. I heard carters and plowmen and drovers.”

“Just as Anne has heard pages and ushers, grooms and ostlers.”

“This was different.” But she knew that she could never make him understand. “That great dog that came with her and she will have him by her bedside. She’s changed his name.”

“Quite right too! He had a French name, and we want nothing French in England just now.”

“But his new name is Urian.”

“Well?”

“That’s another name for Satan.”

“Then I consider it a good choice. I can see you’ve had a very trying time. Come and sit on my knee. I saved one piece of news till last. His Grace is coming to visit us. Not part of his progress, just a friendly visit, to hunt a little. No formality, he said, and no ceremony.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Lady Bo said.

She was still saying it, mentally, days later, when the royal visit was almost at an end. It was all very well for Tom to say no formality; the truth was that wherever the King went some formality was bound to follow. And there was this everlasting worry of how to entertain him during the evenings.

She had counted upon Anne for that. Even while she was sitting on Sir Thomas’s knee, with the announcement of the visit still in her ears, she had had a comforting thought. Here under the same roof was a young woman, daughter of the house, experienced in the ways of Courts, and reputed to be a musician of more than average ability. Anne would know just when, and to whom to curtsy, who should sit where, and why; and she could provide entertainment. Coming, as she did, direct from Greenwich, she would know the latest songs, and His Grace’s personal preferences.

Anne had been no help at all. She said, “I’ve done with all that,” and pleading her cold as an excuse, had refused to make an appearance.

On the afternoon of the last day of the visit, Lady Bo went to make one final plea.

“Your father hasn’t noticed, I’m thankful to say, but then I don’t think men do notice things about people. I can see that every evening His Grace gets uneasy and fidgety. He seems discontented, somehow. I think it is the music. Lady Forsyth lent us her musician and I hired some as well, and they seem to me to play very sweetly. And that young man who goes everywhere with His Grace—Groom of the Stole, they call him—Norris is his real name, he sang extremely well. But something is lacking. Anne, please, come down this evening and bring your lute and sing some of his own songs. Wouldn’t that be a pretty compliment?”