Anne Boleyn: A Novel (34 page)

And when he came to her bed as he sometimes did, empty of love or true desire, and possessed her as nearly in cold blood as was possible to nature, a new terror emerged. He wanted a son by her; she saw it in his face when he bent over her, and felt it in every nerve of her taut body. The union was forced and joyless, but the outcome was her only hope. And it was the King himself who frustrated what he most wanted, in spite of her frantic efforts to fan his dying fire into a blaze. He was becoming impotent. She fought the realization for some time; it was too much to admit. He didn’t love her or want her, he was drawing further and further out of reach with every day that passed, and on the progress she discovered that her maid Jane Seymour was the present object of his poisoned fancy; all these things she acknowledged, and submitted to the tortures of jealousy and loneliness which ensued. But the horror of this new development threatened her sanity. Impotent, not just tired of her and reaching out for someone else, but actually useless in her bed.

There would be no son if this continued, and whatever the real reason, she would be blamed. That was the way of men and Kings. It was never the man who failed; only the woman who was barren.

She said it aloud to herself one day when they had stopped at Winchester on their way back to London. The plague had abated, and affairs of State were mounting up; Cromwell had pressed for the King’s return, and Henry had abandoned his traveling and hunting through the kingdom and turned back toward his capital.

Only the woman is barren, she repeated, till the words seemed to echo round the bedroom like a scream, and suddenly she threw herself down on her bed, laughing and weeping and tearing at the silken sheets. The irony of it, she choked, oh, God, the cruelty of this fresh danger...The sniggers behind her back, because it was over two years since the birth of Elizabeth, and there was no sign of another child; no one believed the story of a luckless second pregnancy. They said it was invented to gain time, and who knows, Anne wept hysterically, in her fear and insecurity perhaps she had deceived herself...

She was derided, while he came seldom to her bed in any case, and now, now when he did come, the desire ran out of him like wine out of a burst skin, and he sprang up and left her, saying nothing. But she knew how he had begun to hate her in his heart because she knew...

The fit of laughing came again, shaking her whole body; she pressed her hands against her mouth to try to muffle it. And like that, her sister-in-law Jane Rochford found her. She always moved quietly; the door opened and closed behind her and Anne heard nothing till the cool voice full of hatred asked her what was wrong.

“I heard the noise of weeping, sister. Is anything the matter? Are you ill?”

She raised herself from the pillows; the hysteria had passed, and she suddenly realized how she must look to this woman who was her deadly enemy. Disheveled and beaten, with her hair half down her back and her face hideous with tears. Jane Rochford moved slowly nearer to her, still making no sound as she crossed the floor; only the train of her blue brocade dress rustled after her.

“Forgive me for disturbing you,” she said softly. “Is there anything you want? A glass of water, perhaps...”

“Nothing.” Anne cleared her throat and pushed her hair back off her forehead. She sat upright on the bed and her feet touched the floor. Jane Rochford’s pale lips opened in a smile.

“Who knows,” she said slowly. “Your Grace may be with child...”

There was a Book of Hours beside the bed; it was heavy, with metal-tipped corners. Anne flung it straight at her head.

She sprang back, one hand flung up to shield herself, and the book thudded against the wall some feet away from her. Jane Rochford regarded the desperate, trembling woman with a faint smile, then bent and picked up the book from the floor.

“Your Grace may need this,” she said.

Anne was standing, both fists clenched by her sides, fighting the impulse to launch herself like a tigress at that cool, mocking figure and quiet that jeering voice with a rain of blows.

“Your Grace may be with child...”

“Put down that book,” she panted. “I wish to God that it had killed you!”

Jane Rochford rested both hands on her hips.

“Rages like these won’t help you to conceive,” she said. “I’ve consulted almost as many doctors as the King, trying to find a way to help you. It isn’t easy to put a child in the womb, though, is it sister?...It’s easy to mock me, and deride me to my husband, and have me sent to the Tower for saying the same thing as everyone in England: that Queen Catherine was a better woman than you, and made a better Queen...It’s easy to throw something at my head as if I were a scullery maid. But it isn’t easy to give the King his son, and if you don’t, dear sister, why, even I’ll feel sorry for you!”

“Stop it!” Anne shrieked at her. “Stop it, or I’ll tell the King you rejoiced over his disappointment. Stop it, for pity’s sake!”

“I don’t rejoice,” she answered. “Truly I don’t; I pitied Queen Catherine when she gave England nothing better than a spindly girl, just as I pity you. And I pity the King sweating his passion out with you for nothing. It’s not right that such a man should waste himself...”

“Waste himself! Ha, by the living God, you don’t know what you’re saying. You taunt me because I have no heir for England. You stand there, torturing me with your malice, jeering at me as if it were my fault! Well, it’s his, do you hear! His!” Anne’s voice rose to a shout; her self-control gone, she stood shaking from head to foot, all the anxiety and humiliation bursting out of her in a flood of reckless words.

“It’s his fault, not mine! Sweating out his passion, you say...I’m the one that sweats; sweats to hold it before it runs away before it’s any use. He’s useless in bed, do you hear me? Useless...”

She stopped and swallowed, and then slowly one hand crept up to her throat in the old nervous gesture, as she realized what she had done.

“You always hated me, Jane,” she said at last. “But you shan’t despise me. Now you know the truth, though I’ve no doubt you preferred the lie.”

“I know nothing, and I heard nothing,” Jane Rochford answered quietly. “If you’ve taken leave of your senses I’ve still got mine. I hate you, sister, as I never believed it possible to hate another human being, but what you’ve just said is beneath my contempt. I know the truth, do I? Well, I don’t believe a word!”

“I said you’d prefer the lie,” Anne said. “I don’t care now what you believe. Hate me and be damned to you. And for God’s sake get out of my sight!”

She turned away wearily, feeling sick with fear and despair, and yet too tired to struggle any longer, to threaten or cajole the woman in whose hands she had placed herself. There was nothing she could do; it was all said. Jane would betray her; she knew it, but the outburst had left her numb. She didn’t care, she thought dully; God knew, she really didn’t care. Let her go and leave her alone and do what she liked...

“You won’t dismiss me so easily,” the other woman said at last. “‘Go, get out of my sight,...You may leave, Jane...’ Ah, no, Madame, not this time. This time you’ll hear me, I hate you; just as I said, I never knew I could hate you as I do. And do you know why?”

Anne looked at her and shrugged. Her head was throbbing violently.

“I don’t care. Spew out your venom if you want to; it means nothing to me.”

“That I believe,” Jane Rochford said and smiled again, “Nothing except yourself has ever mattered to you. Only your own vanity. Vanity, Madame. Vanity made you set out after the King, when you didn’t care a fig for him; you wanted to be Queen of England, so let Catherine lie shut up in Kimbolton, where it’s said you’re having her poisoned...are you, sweet sister, or have you balked at that? Let Mary Tudor live under the threat of death, and she may die, judging by the King’s way of dealing these days...Nothing has ever mattered to you except yourself. You’ve hurt and trampled without mercy!”

Anne swung on her, suddenly blazing. The accusation about poisoning Catherine stung her. It was on the edge of her tongue to say that the King had hinted at it, as a means of solving the problem of the Queen’s existence without bringing her nephew the Emperor to open war. Henry would poison, Anne thought bitterly. But God was witness that she had never sunk to that. The ax, yes; a quick, fierce death to her enemies, but not that slow horror.

“You lie about Catherine,” she said harshly. “Everything the King does is put down to me. But I’ve lost my influence; you said as much in your spite a few minutes ago. You can’t have it all ways; either I hold the King’s heart and have his ear and can be blamed for his doings, or I’m about to be cast off by him unless I have a child. One or the other, my dear sister-in-law, but not both!”

Jane glared at her, twisting a handkerchief between her hands. Her pale blue eyes had narrowed to slits. She looked strangely mad as her composure cracked, showing the turmoil of hatred and emotion seething in her.

“Anything evil in this court is your responsibility,” she said fiercely. “If you’d come between George and me, you’d be guilty of anything!”

“George and you!”

Anne took a step toward her.

“So that’s what it is, is it...all this shouting about Catherine and Mary and my cruelty to them...You lying wretch, you don’t care if they both died this moment! You don’t care about anything except the fact that George doesn’t love you, and you want to blame me for it!”

“I do blame you,” the other woman quivered. “I blame you and only you. He would have loved me if you hadn’t stopped him.”

“You flatter yourself!” Anne laughed aloud. “By God, you do. I stopped George loving you? Ah, sister, you don’t know much of life. You stopped him! You nagged and carped and jeered at him from the moment he married you, and when he turned away from you, you had to find someone to blame except yourself. You never made him happy. You never even tried. When were you loving to him, when did I ever hear you say a gentle word, or see you put your arms around his neck...Or did you think that sneering at him for a tradesman’s grandson was the way to make him love you!”

“He never loved me,” Jane Rochford cried out. “Never! He only married me for my inheritance. He wanted the Rochford estates, not me! And I knew it. If I said things to hurt him, he deserved them!”

Her face contorted and she began to cry, weeping noiselessly, with her eyes half shut and her thin mouth drawn down.

“George liked you well enough,” Anne said. “He’s not bad-natured, and if the marriage was arranged between you, I’d like to know whose isn’t in these days? George would have tried to make you happy; he did try, for I saw him, but you wouldn’t have it. Oh, no, Madame Jane, you married my brother and thought you’d be able to insult and humble him and make him miserable, and still have him dangling after you! And only when you saw you’d lost him did you find out this great love for him that I’m supposed to have spoiled! You were a spiteful bitch to him from the beginning, and if he doesn’t love you it’s your own doing. Try mending your ways, if you want him so badly.”

“I do,” she sobbed. “I do, I do. I want him to come back to me. I want him to look at me the way he looks at you!” Her voice rose to a shriek and her eyes opened, glaring at Anne, vapid and mad with jealousy.

“You’re the one! If it weren’t for you, he’d have to come back to me!”

“You’re mad,” Anne accused her slowly. “By God, I really think you are...”

She saw the smile creeping back over Jane Rochford’s white, wet face, and was suddenly afraid. The quarrel had restored her senses. She remembered her crazed outburst and the things she had said, the secret she had given away to that livid, quivering woman who had begun to sway back and forth like a cobra about to strike.

“If you think to destroy me,” Anne said quickly, “remember this. If I fall, George falls with me. If I go to the Tower because of anything you tell the King, don’t think he’ll spare my brother. And you won’t have the stomach to sail down the Thames at midnight and pick his head off a spike on Tower Bridge, as Thomas More’s daughter did...Remember that, Jane, before your jealousy tries to injure me. Remember that George will suffer with me. George, whom you say you love so dearly.”

The woman’s hands were at her mouth, and she was staring; Anne thought she was about to faint. She came and caught her arm, but Jane Rochford wrenched away from her.

“Don’t! Don’t touch me!”

“Collect yourself, then,” Anne said. “Oh, for God’s sake, woman, what’s the use of quarreling like this? Go to my dressing mirror, if you like, and put some rouge on your face.”

“I don’t need it,” came the answer. She looked at the handkerchief in her hands and pushed it into her sleeve. The color was slowly coming back into her face and she was calmer. She raised her eyes and looked at Anne for a long moment.

“You’re safe enough,” she said slowly. “Because I can’t bring myself to harm him, even though he deserves it almost as much as you do.”

She walked to the door and pulled it open, still making as little noise as possible, and when she had gone Anne ran to the ewer and basin of water that stood in a corner and bathed her aching head. The water cooled it, and she leaned against the little chest, exhausted. The light was failing; it was October and already the nights came early. And the King was having a masque that evening to amuse himself before he set out for London the next day.

It was probably the last time they would be together for the next few weeks for when he returned to Greenwich or Hampton or Windsor, they were separated immediately by court custom. Tonight was the last chance of drawing near to him again, the last time probably that he might be induced to come to her bed and try again, for God knew how long...The last opportunity to whip those flagging senses into potency.

She ran to her clothespress and flung the doors open, pulling out one dress after another and thrusting them back. There was a ballet to be performed in the middle of the masque, and she had the principal part. It was the stiff, stylized performance customary at such functions, danced to a solemn beat. Dull and dignified, unsuited to her purpose. She swore. That could be changed; she could send orders now to the musicians. But what could she wear...Her hand touched a bedgown of pale yellow satin, and she pulled it free of the rest and took it out. The color was one that suited her best, but the material was so thin as to be nearly transparent, and it was too long to dance in; she needed her sewing mistress. And her ladies in waiting, and her body servants. She swung quickly to the mirror, holding the yellow gown against her body, and moved so that the reflection in the polished steel swayed in the fading light.