Anne Boleyn: A Novel (13 page)

“Sit down, I beg you, Madame.”

In spite of her splendid dress and her jewels, Henry saw how tired and white she looked. And old, he thought uncomfortably. It would be so much easier if Catherine were young and less defenseless.

“Thank you, Sire.”

He moved a chair for her himself, and avoided her eyes when she thanked him. He knew what he would see in them. Tears, and love for him, that genuine love which he resented so much because it made his treatment of her so much worse. If she had only hated him, or blamed him, or abused...like Anne, sometimes...he could have convinced himself that she deserved his unkindness and neglect.

“It was good of you to let me come,” she said gently.

“Indeed, Kate, I’ve never wished to hurt you, whatever else you think,” he answered slowly.

“I know that, and even if you did, even if you took my life, I’d still love you as truly as when we were first married. I’ve always loved you, Henry, both as a man and my King.”

He looked flushed and quite handsome sitting there in the light of the spring sunset, plainly dressed in a white shirt and breeches of green velvet; his doublet hung over the back of his chair. In the old days she would have warned him he was creasing it by leaning back, and taken it away and hung it up herself, while he chided her for doing his body servant’s work. But those days were past.

“I had to see you,” she said. “I don’t ask for your pity, but I beg of you, think what I’ve felt these last months, knowing Campeggio was here to annul my marriage, that everyone in Europe was talking about it! And never being able to see you alone and talk to you, even for a minute.”

“I thought it was best,” Henry murmured unhappily. “I thought we’d wrangle, and I didn’t see how any good could come of it.”

“Good always comes from husband and wife being truthful with each other,” Catherine reminded him. He shook his head.

“We aren’t husband and wife, Kate, and never have been. It’s no fault of yours, nor of mine, God knows. We married in good faith, but the marriage wasn’t valid. I’m convinced of that, that’s why God’s taken every son born to us. That’s what’s so hard about the business, but I’ve accepted it, and I only wish you’d do the same.”

“I would if it were true,” she answered, “but it isn’t. Your conscience tells you we lived in incest, Henry, while mine tells me we lived together lawfully, joined by God. You mention the deaths of our children...But what about our daughter Mary? God left her to us, even if he took the others. Oh, I know how you’ve longed for a son! Do you think I haven’t wanted one too? I know you were grieved when our children died, but do you suppose I didn’t suffer, I who carried them in my body and bore them, and saw them die before they left my breast...”

“I’m not denying that,” he said. He had hardly thought of her feelings in his own disappointment, and he didn’t want to hear about them now.

“But grief doesn’t alter the fact, Kate, whether it’s yours or mine. We’ve lived in mortal sin for all these years, and Campeggio’s coming to see into it and conduct a fair trial.”

“Fair?” Catherine questioned bitterly. “With Wolsey beside him and the revenue from his English cardinalate at stake? Henry, I’ve come to you for justice, not for myself, but for your daughter,”

“Mary shan’t come to any harm,” he protested. He didn’t want to think about Mary, either.

“Already you see less of her than you did,” Catherine pointed out. “The child is devoted to you; and now she’s grieving because she’s not allowed to come to you.”

Henry got up and poured some wine into a golden cup. He held out the pitcher to his wife but she shook her head. He came back to his chair, frowning and uncomfortable, and sat sullenly with his elbows on his knees, tipping the wine backward and forward in the cup, his eyes half closed. He was being spared nothing this time, he thought angrily. Catherine’s grief over her children, her humiliation, her coming trial before prejudiced judges, and now the accusation of neglecting Mary.

He loved his daughter in his own selfish way, and above all he enjoyed her simple adulation. He was proud of her too, because she had his red coloring and green eyes, and was pretty and accomplished. She did him credit even if she wasn’t a son.

He did love her, more than he dared admit lately, and whatever the outcome of his disagreements with her mother, the thought of injuring Mary never entered his head. She’d lose the succession of course, but that was no hardship; a woman had little chance of keeping the crown of England anyway. He meant to arrange a brilliant marriage for her, not quite as brilliant as if she were legitimate and Princess of Wales, but with a Prince of high birth and a rich dowry. He was prepared to go to endless trouble to make up to her for the loss of her birthright but he had reckoned without the jealousy of Anne.

Whenever he saw his daughter, Anne made a scene, sometimes sneering or else weeping and storming at him. Her weapons were cruel, and they won easily against the tears of his thirteen-year-old child. If it meant quarrels with Anne and disturbing the harmony of their life together, then Henry submitted and chose the easiest way for himself. He kept Mary at a distance; but sometimes he resented the necessity. He disliked being harsh to Catherine, but he hated being unkind to his daughter.

“I can’t have the girl hanging round my neck with Campeggio here in England,” he retorted. “She must be obedient and keep her complaints till the matter’s settled.”

“Mary will never disobey,” Catherine said gently. “She fears you’ll cast her out of your heart as you’ve cast me. Can’t I take her one word of affection from you?”

He swallowed the wine and pushed the cup aside; he looked at his wife sitting quietly before him, her large eyes watching his face. Patient, gentle Catherine; God, she was serene even in distress. Suddenly, with one of his rare bursts of emotion, Henry’s eyes filled with tears.

“Tell her I’ll always cherish her,” he said hoarsely. “As I do you. Oh, Kate, why in Christ’s name couldn’t a son have lived...”

She was on her knees before him, weeping helplessly as she clung to his hands. He squeezed them, and then put them aside. It was useless; if he listened any more he’d weaken and say something he would afterward regret. He couldn’t soften toward her; she was the barrier to Anne, to the possession of that quick, maddening body which would never be yielded outside marriage. And the son Anne was always promising him, the son with her black eyes and his red hair...

“Come back to me,” Catherine implored. “Give me another chance; I can give you another child, I know I can, even now...”

If Anne had not existed, he would have raised her up and taken her back, and in his heart he would have been relieved. There need be no public trial with Wolsey and Campeggio, no need to disinherit Mary; no more struggles with the Pope, no more anxiety and frustration, not sure in his heart if he were married or free... He would have taken her back and resumed his old life of calm domesticity, enlivened by a young mistress when he felt like it, with sport and hunting and his friends round him, and Wolsey back in his confidence.

“Forget this creature you’re living with,” Catherine urged. “That’s sin, Henry, and a greater sin to cast off your true wife for the sake of your mistress. Send the woman away...”

At that moment the illusion of reconciliation fled. He looked down at her, his eyes still red, but he was frowning and his little mouth was drawn in a tight line.

“What mistress? Of what are you accusing me?”

Catherine rose stiffly to her feet; his tone had changed, and his heavy face was reddening slowly. Her fingers twisted in and out of the long rope of her pearls.

“Anne Boleyn,” she answered.

“Anne is not my mistress,” he said coldly. “Not now, nor ever has been. She is a woman of great virtue. The accusation dishonors her as well as me.”

He felt righteous and ridiculous at the same time, as he saw the incredulity on his wife’s face. Catherine knew him, and naturally she didn’t believe that any little maid of honor could withhold what he wanted. He could hardly believe it himself. But she had charged him with something he hadn’t committed; the fact that he wanted it so badly and had been denied it made him resent the imputation even more.

“You have an evil mind, Madame,” he said shortly. “I’ve less sin on my soul with regard to her than I have with you, God knows!” He was becoming really angry; his confidence was restored, he was firmly in the right and Catherine was wrong for once, and he revenged himself for his own qualms of conscience by turning on her bitterly.

“You come to me, pleading for Mary, and use the occasion to speak against one of the most worthy and virtuous women at court. You had her among your ladies long enough to know her character!”

Catherine swallowed; she was trembling with emotion.

“I know it well enough,” she retorted. “And God pity me, I’d rather suffer the presence of her sister!”

The reference to Mary Boleyn brought Henry out of his chair.

“There’s no comparison!” he roared. “What I did with one I’ve never enjoyed with the other! Withdraw, Madame, withdraw it, I say!”

Catherine faced him, blazing. She loved him as much then as when they had first married, and she answered with the bitter tongue of a desperately jealous woman, an old woman, with a young and beautiful rival.

“I was told she’d denied you,” she said harshly. “And I couldn’t believe that she’d dare. I couldn’t believe that tradesman’s daughter had snapped her fingers under her King’s nose and refused him the favors she’d given others! By the living God, Henry, I thought more of you than to believe you’d descend to that!”

“Others? What others? What are you saying...Name them, then. Name them!” he shouted.

“Wyatt,” Catherine cried out, “and most likely Henry Percy as well!”

All her life she had disliked gossip, but she spat out the only two names ever mentioned in connection with Anne.

Wyatt...He panted with fury. It was a lie; it must be a lie. And Percy, that was a lie too...He remembered his jealousy of that gawking Northumberland when he noticed that the new maid of honor preferred to walk in the gardens at Greenwich with him, instead of responding to the King...And Wyatt’s impudence with that gold chain, dangling the locket with her initials in front of his eyes...

His enormous fists clenched, and a thick vein throbbed in his neck. For a moment there was silence; slowly his hands opened and he breathed hard. It was a lie. He knew it was a lie because she must be a virgin or she would never dare to marry him...

“This does you no credit,” he said at last. “I love her too well to be blackened against her. You’d have been wise to leave these things unsaid.”

“Wise, perhaps,” Catherine answered, “but not truthful. I retract nothing in respect to her, but I beg you to forgive me for accusing you. I see she has made marriage the price. Then you are determined to try to repudiate me?” Catherine’s voice was low.

He spoke to her calmly now, as if she were a stranger.

“I cannot live in a state of mortal sin. Our marriage was illegal; I believe you were truly Arthur’s wife.”

She turned slowly, moving her chair aside.

“I was not, but now the matter doesn’t depend on that. I had hoped to avoid this, Henry. I had hoped we might have resolved your doubts in private. The issue was foreseen by my father. King Ferdinand, when marriage between us was first discussed. He obtained a second bull of dispensation from Pope Julius, permitting the marriage if my first union had been consummated. The bull is in Spain, but my nephew Charles has sent me the copy of it.”

Both were quiet now; Catherine stood listlessly in front of him, leaning on the back of the oak chair. She noticed that Henry’s green and gold doublet had fallen on the floor. The sun had disappeared behind the trees lining the riverbank; the sky was a magnificent glowing pink streaked with red, and outside the oriel window, one of Wolsey’s graceful gilt weathervanes turned lazily on top of an adjoining turret.

Already the room was quite dark; the linenfold paneling seemed black, and the figures on the painted ceiling were indistinguishable. The King said nothing.

“You had better have the tapers lit,” she muttered. Still he didn’t answer, and she stood there helplessly, waiting to be dismissed. She wiped her swollen eyes with a handkerchief, and thanked God that the dusk would hide her face from the prying courtiers standing about in the long gallery, waiting to see the King go down to dinner. She wondered whether Anne would be among them, and made a great effort to compose herself. Henry’s head was lowered; he was staring at his shoes, green velvet shoes with slashes cut across the toes. It was a new fashion which everyone had copied; it was rumored that he suffered from gout, and the new shape hid the swelling.

He looked up at last and said evenly, “The copy of the bull won’t be enough. As your nephew’s been so accommodating, let him send the original to England. I bid you good night, Madame.”

She curtsied deeply, and he heard the door creak on its hinges as she opened it, and the murmur of her ladies’ voices in the anteroom before the door closed again.

He waited some minutes, immobile in anger; rage with Catherine because she had upset him, and now threatened his plans with this new document, and a subconscious fury against Anne were mixed in a simmering emotional storm. He had an impulse to throw back his head and bellow, to strike out wildly with his big fists and bring someone crashing down, to relieve his feeling by sheer violence.

Women...women...His wife and his daughter and the woman he loved...At that moment he felt an extraordinary urge to kill them all, to be rid of them and the problems inherent in their existence; to be at peace...

He strode to the door and threw it open till it crashed against the paneled wall. He was aware of a group of startled faces in the anteroom, of mouths falling a little open and frightened eyes staring up at him. Courtiers and his new squire of the body, George Boleyn—he glared at Anne’s brother and then looked away—and a man in dull black doublet and hose, with a heavy pale face and clumsy hands. Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey’s secretary.