Anne Boleyn: A Novel (24 page)

“I think my Lady Pembroke is tired,” Francis interrupted smoothly. ‘This talk of policy and matters of state must be wearying for her, when she’s done so much for our comfort and entertainment.”

“With Your Grace’s permission I’ll retire,” she said and forced herself to smile and kiss Francis’ hand. He bent down and touched her lips with his mouth, and laughing, turned to Henry.

“I’ve a mind to adopt that immoral English custom into my own court,” he said, “But I don’t think Madame my wife would permit it. Like all Spaniards, my dear brother, she’s an excellent woman, but overstrict...Good night Madame, and my compliments once more. As I said, it’s the King who’s to be envied.”

The French visit was concluded without incident.

Back at court new rumors were circulating. It seemed the King was spending more time with his gentlemen; that he no longer spent every night in Anne’s room...Eyes watched them everywhere, and tongues wagged, hoping for disaster; but no one watched more closely than Thomas Cromwell. The relationship was stabilizing, that was all, and the King’s orders were unchanged. To get Cranmer elected Archbishop he was ready to pay the cost of the Papal Bulls out of his own pocket. And when it was done and Clement had fallen into the trap, the Act of Supremacy was to be applied to the laity under penalty of death.

As Cromwell saw it, nothing was changed.

Anne was alone in her bedroom; she and Norreys and Meg Shelton had spent the afternoon playing cards, but the time had come for her women to dress her, and she had sent them away. She was dressed and ready for the evening meal with the King. She wore white, with a long robe of crimson velvet over her dress to keep out the January cold, and a little crimson headdress, studded with rubies. One of Catherine’s immense ruby pendants was pinned to her breast. It was already dark, and the curtains were drawn, shutting out the cold moonlight and the bare trees and the black stretch of the river dappled with light.

She moved to the mirror and looked at herself; she looked tired and her cheeks were thin. Instinctively, Anne picked up the little golden pot of rouge, and then put it down. Rouge wouldn’t help her now. Neither would scent, or the tight fit of her dress under the crimson robe. She knew it, and the rouge pot rolled across the edge of the chest to the floor. Nothing like that was any use. She sat down wearily and closed her eyes. There was a little time before she had to go to him, a little time to face it and think, to face everything that was happening to her all at once.

He was falling out of love with her, after only seven months.

One of the logs crackled fiercely in the grate as the fire ate into it, and she opened her eyes and met her own reflection, staring as if it were a stranger.

He was tired of her.

Now.

It was done; said aloud, admitted. They were all right; all her friends and enemies, right from the beginning when they said that he would tire of her once she gave way. And he had, though it was still difficult to believe; it made her heart heave and loaded a great weight of fear and helplessness into her breast, so that she wanted to run to him and throw herself into his arms and beg him to deny it...

When had it begun, she wondered, asking the woman in the mirror? When was the first night he rolled over and slept and something told her he was disappointed?...The night they quarreled, after he had seen his daughter Mary?...No, not that night. That night he never slept with her at all...Was it then? Was it satiation that made him unenthusiastic sometimes, becoming more casual as the time passed, until she knew the impetus was gone?...Was that the reason? Was that when he began to lose his love for her? Her eagerness...the gradual surrender of herself in mind as well as body...the moment when he knew for certain that she loved him, that every endearment, every caress, came from her heart...Was that what killed his interest? The huntsman turning his back on the stag when the chase was over...

It showed in little things; the way he looked up when she came into a room; kindly enough, and with a warm greeting, but the expectancy was gone, the eagerness which once brought him to his feet with his hands outstretched and his eyes alight; his attention, which wandered at times when they were together; his invitations to Weston and Brereton and the rest of his friends to come and spend the evening with them, when once all he had wanted was to have her to himself.

And the nights when he didn’t come to her...twice or three times in the week since they returned from France. And the nights when he came and she realized in helpless agony that he didn’t really care whether he made love to her or not.

When they came back from France, she said to herself. That’s when it was; only a few short weeks ago, when all their hopes were high and she felt closer to him than ever before; that was when the light of his love for her dimmed, faintly, like a blown candle flame, while hers flared like a torch, burning away her independence and her judgment, leaving her possessive and clinging and jealous, at the mercy of herself and her enemies, as only a woman of her kind could be when she loved without security.

She was his Nan, his sweetheart, but his caress was casual and his thoughts were often absent.

Anne’s hand touched her breast, and the great rubies swayed on the points of the pendant like drops of blood. Was this what Catherine felt the first time he was unfaithful? Did the same dull pain throb in her all those years ago? Had Catherine and her own sister Mary and all the other women who had slept with him seen the same signs that she saw now, and felt the same fierce anguish of despair?

They hadn’t kept him; kind, dull, pious, damnable Catherine had never really had him, not as she had—that was one compensation—and she had believed in her pride that she would succeed where everyone else had failed, that the desire he placed such store on was really as compelling as he made it out. That was her mistake. She laughed wretchedly to herself and leaned forward, mocking the reflection. It was the lust of the mind, the lure of preliminaries, the itch of curiosity...a woman had more hope of keeping a libertine like Francis through sensuality than Henry Tudor! Then the mocking face contorted. Her own words to her brother George came back to her! “There’s more to his love for me than that.” There were tenderness and generosity, companionship and protectiveness; had they no value? They still remained to her; they hadn’t faded like his passion.

Couldn’t she control herself and be content with those? Where’s your cool head, Mistress, where’s the sharp sense that got you a fortune and a marquisate in time? Fool, she spat at herself, fool, fool, to fall in love with him at the end like this, and sit here making grief lines on your face. If you’ve lost his love you haven’t lost the rest...Gather your wits now, and thank the living God for the ace he’s put into your hand. Get up and go to him now and play it. And even now, her hope insisted, you may get him back.

She rose quickly and looked at her body in the mirror, and pulled the loose red robe round her.

Supper was laid in the King’s room where the fire was built up, filling the room with cheerfulness and heat. He sat drinking by himself, with a fur-lined doublet pulled over his open shirt, staring into the fireplace. He was tired and hungry and she was late. He was also low-spirited, and depression made him restless. He felt more like company than dining alone with Anne, and he shifted irritably because he didn’t like to send her word and alter the arrangements at the last minute.

He was unused to quiet and solitude; usually there was a crowd round him and something to be done; his mind was always occupied these days with the things that used to be attended to by Wolsey, but he dismissed them and let his thoughts rove to himself and his own feelings.

He frowned; it was a mistake to sit there thinking when he should have sent for his gentlemen and avoided the introspection. He didn’t want to be alone with his own restlessness and boredom and above all he didn’t want to be alone with Anne that night.

There was no reason for not wanting her, he protested. She was gay enough these days and sweet-tempered...it would have been easier if she were difficult. He could have blamed his feelings on that, or his lack of feeling, he admitted suddenly. That was the truth. She didn’t anger him as she used to in the days before they became lovers, and she didn’t torture him, either, so that in spite of himself he came back for more. In the old days he would have looked forward to her coming; he would have sat waiting with his eyes closed, indulging in those heated imaginings of what they would do when the meal was over, till he was quivering with impatience. Dalliance with her had been an extraordinary agony of pleasure; it promised the kind of fulfillment he had wanted all his life and always found a disappointment. Now the promise was a fact, and the part of love-making he liked best was robbed of its subtlety and its suspense. There was no need to stop short and protest that he wanted to go on. What began could be finished, had to be finished, and the finish had become as ephemeral with her as with all the other women he had known.

At first he had believed in the miracle; consummation was a magnificent relief in the first weeks and he had plunged into it like a man dying of thirst with his head in a well. Then it began to fail him, and the shock of that failure had driven him back to Anne for a denial of his fear. Again it failed, and he had no excuses left except the one he made to himself as he sat there in the middle days of that cold January.

He was tired of her body. He had waited and wanted her for too long, and found in the end that she was only a woman like any other. There was nothing wrong with his manhood. He was just out of love...The ardor, the excitement—above all, the promise was gone; he had nothing left to look forward to; she had given it all, and after the first emotional and physical catharsis his desire was emptied. It had happened before. With Catherine his wife—^but then she was old—and with Bess Blount, who gave him a bastard son, and Mary Boleyn. And all the others he had sampled over the years. All had palled on him quickly; disappointed him, even, but disappointment was the most acute of all with Anne. No woman, he thought suddenly, had ever held out such hopes and proved such a disillusion...

Anne wasn’t like the others, to be sent away without explanation when he wanted someone new. She wasn’t just his mistress. He had turned his kingdom inside out to marry her, banished his wife, estranged his daughter, and embarked on a vast diplomatic and political campaign to secure his freedom. He couldn’t abandon her, he said quickly to himself; she had done her best...besides, she loved him.

Admittedly, Catherine had loved him, and that had made it difficult to hurt her. Less difficult now because she was out of sight and still thwarting him, though it would gain her nothing. His mind was made up. He had taken his stand against the Pope, and if he sent Anne away, he would never demean himself by taking Catherine back.

He bore Mary no malice; God knew he would have loved her and had her with him, whatever Anne said, if she would only admit that she wasn’t legitimate. But no girl could inherit the throne of England! - The last Queen Regnant was the Norman Matilda, and the country ran with blood for twenty years. He must have a son; a strong son like himself, a son he could teach to sport and rule as well as he did. A King of England.

The woman who gave him that would never be asked for anything else. Neither beauty nor wit nor the pleasure he thought he’d found with Anne. Nothing like that mattered, he cried to himself, and covered his face. Only the son. Only the secure succession and the fine motives, and the great power he was arrogating through leveling the English Church. If lust came into it, if he abandoned Anne now for that, then he had to admit that he was base, as base as his enemies said he was, and small, with a vision restricted to his own loins...No! His head came up. No! His flesh was unimportant. He hadn’t been cruel to Catherine and his own child and struck down his old servant Wolsey for the sake of his flesh. God knew that, God must know it...

“Harry.”

He turned to see her standing in the doorway; he hadn’t heard her come in. He forced himself to smile.

“Why, Nan; I was nearly asleep,”

He got up and came to her, and kissed her automatically. He was irritated suddenly because she looked pale and he felt himself constrained to make an effort when he didn’t want to.

“You look weary,” she said.

“I am.” He seized on the excuse and yawned. “I need sleep, sweetheart. Come and let’s sup; you must be hungry.”

“Supper can wait for a while,” Anne said. She went to the sideboard and poured out a cup of wine for herself; then she hesitated. This was not the way to do it. This was the clumsy way of a woman who was about to lose her temper. He yawned when he saw her and said he needed sleep...God in Heaven...the hand holding the wine jug shook, and tears of pain and anger filled her eyes. Slowly she poured out two cupfuls, and the temptation to break down and storm at him passed.

“Do you remember the night I first came to you?” she asked him.

“I do, love. What of it?” He watched her, puzzled.

“We drank a toast, then, Harry.”

She came to him, holding out the cup of wine. “Take it. Do you remember the toast?”

He stood still with the cup in his hand looking at her, beginning to feel angry. He didn’t want to be reminded.

“We drank to me, Harry. To the King’s goodwife.”

“So we did,” he agreed. “I drink to you again, sweetheart, all the days of my life.”

She shook her head and smiled strangely at him. This was the moment she had foreseen all those months ago when she quarreled with her father and writhed under the jibe that she was losing her hold on the King. This was the safeguard against the warnings of her friends and the hopes of her enemies. She would have given anything not to have had to use it, but in the pain of hurt pride and disillusion there was a mixture of hope. Hope that his face would soften and his arms open; that the man who was slipping further and further away from her every day, almost without noticing, would come back with his love alive again.