Anne Boleyn: A Novel (37 page)

She felt the tears filling her eyes, and knew that in a moment they would spill onto her face; he mustn’t see her crying again, it would only irritate him and remind him that he had to be careful, to keep away from his fancies and not upset her while she was carrying the child.

She knew how the restraint annoyed him, and how he broke it time after time, in spite of Butts and the rest of the doctors. He was glad about the child, but he resented her weakness; he wanted his son and his pleasures and he had begun to hate her because she indirectly made demands. And during the hours she lay awake at night, thinking endlessly over the past, she knew his hatred dated from that night at Winchester.

He had behaved like an animal or a madman; he had used her as if she were an enemy. There was nothing in him but lust and the striving for something he had never attained, something the dance had promised him again and forced him to admit he wanted. And at the end, when he got up and left her, and she saw him looking down at her where she lay, she knew that it had still escaped him, and that he was aware of it and felt naked in her sight, as well as his own. His hatred for her had been born that night, the night she conceived, and it only waited, poised, to see if a son would restore his self-respect.

With an effort she got up from her chair and sent Meg Shelton over to the King to tell him she had gone to see Elizabeth, and begged to be excused. When she left the room with her attendants, she turned off down the corridor to the royal nursery, where the two-year-old Princess was lodged for a few weeks, and shut herself up with the child for the rest of the morning.

The King had arranged a joust for the afternoon of January twenty-fourth, and entered the lists himself. He was just finishing his meal, dining privately with Weston and Sir Nicholas Carew and Sir Edward Seymour, the brother of his gentle Jane, when the Queen sent a message asking if she might see him.

Henry paused, avoiding the eyes of Seymour and Carew; only Weston remained true to Anne; if he could find a good word in her favor, he risked annoying the King by saying it. At that moment he half rose from his chair.

“Shall I carry your answer back to Her Grace, Sire?”

“Sit down, Francis. The page who brought the request can return the reply,” Henry said abruptly.

“You haven’t much time, Sire,” Carew reminded him quickly. “The joust is due to begin less than an hour...”

Edward Seymour said nothing; he stared at his plate. Henry knew that he would tell his sister that Henry was on good terms with his wife, had granted her an audience and kept the court waiting at the jousting field. And Jane would be shyer and more distant when he saw her next. Where Anne would have accused and stormed, the quiet, unfathomable woman merely stepped a little further out of reach. And she was already too far for his happiness, Henry thought irritably. She had all the qualities he now desired in a woman; she was gentle, obedient, modest...everything the fierce passionate creature he had married was not and never would be.

But for that night at Winchester, that damnable night when she used little less than witchcraft to seduce him back again, he might have been free to carry out his wish, to rid himself of her and all she represented and begin afresh with Jane.

“What will you tell Her Grace?”

That was Weston again, always trying to promote her interests. He was too partisan to her, too much her friend where he had once been Henry’s. The King scowled. She wanted to see him; she wasn’t well enough to go to the jousting, she was in the fourth month and Butts had been mumbling about her health again. The fortunetellers were obliging him with the same prophecies that this time it would be a son. It might well be; the hope softened some of his impatience with her, and when he thought of having a Prince to show the world, even the charms of Jane receded.

He turned to the page, waiting beside his chair.

“Tell the Queen I shall attend on her within a few minutes.” When he had gone, Sir Francis Weston glanced from Carew to Seymour, and made a little mocking bow to each of them, “Since I hadn’t the pleasure of giving the Queen a message, gentlemen, may I carry one to Mistress Seymour; I fear the King may keep her waiting...”

Anne had sent all her ladies away and was sitting alone sewing, her back to the window. She sewed beautifully, her needle darting through the linen in its square frame, but the fingers guiding it were trembling. Margaret Wyatt had repeated a rumor that the imperial Ambassador Chapuys was making friendly overtures to the King on behalf of the Emperor, and that there was a move to get the Princess Mary declared legitimate by Act of Parliament, in case Anne was delivered of another girl.

Margaret had been white and anxious when she told her, dreading the effect of the news on her mistress at this time, yet more afraid of the success of the intrigue unless Anne made a move to stop it. And she had made that move by sending for the King. Sitting alone in the sunny room, she had rehearsed exactly what to say to him, and her fear was a wise counselor for once. Anger or accusations would not help her; gentleness might; some spark of his old tenderness might reawaken when she asked him to protect her and reminded him about the child. The child was his one weakness, the only weapon left to her with which to fight his love for someone else and the machinations of the men, both great and small, who were trying to anticipate her rain.

He came in unannounced. She started at the sound of the door opening, and saw him swinging his feathered cap, carrying his gloves, obviously on his way to the joust and impatient to be gone.

“You sent for me,” he said. “But I haven’t much time, Nan. The lists will be open in a short while, and I don’t want to delay too long. What is it?”

“I’m sorry, I’d forgotten you were holding the joust so early. But I had to send for you and have a word with you, Harry. I’m very troubled. Please, won’t you come into the room and sit with me, just for a few minutes?”

He sighed and pulled out a chair and fell into it, his legs thrust out before him, the cap still swinging, swinging, so that she could hardly take her eyes off it.

“If it’s a complaint, I beg of you, make it another time,” he said. “I’m in a happy mood today, and I don’t want it spoiled.”

She flushed and folded the linen around the frame and put it down beside her chair.

“I don’t want to spoil anything for you; I fear I’ve done too much of that already,”

He said nothing, but his narrow lips compressed. So it was a complaint, or worse still, an emotional scene. If he was forced to endure one more, to hear her voice raised once again, he’d bundle her off to Windsor for the rest of the nine months.

“Meg Wyatt told me something today,” she began, and saw him stiffen, thinking she was going to mention Jane.

“I haven’t time for women’s gossip,” he retorted.

“I only hope to God that’s all it is,” she said, “She told me that serpent Chapuys is hoping for an alliance with you and the Emperor,”

His eyebrows raised, “And if he were? What’s it to you.”

“My ruin,” she answered slowly, “and you know it. So do I. I’ve lived in the midst of politics long enough to know that I’m regarded as the obstacle to peace between England and Spain. Now she’s dead, they want to make your daughter Mary legitimate in the hope that it’s not a son I’m carrying. Isn’t that true? Isn’t it true that if I weren’t with child, that Spanish dog would be suggesting a divorce as a means of making peace with Charles?”

“You know too much for your own good,” he said at last. “You’ve always stuck your finger into men’s affairs and it isn’t fitting in a woman.”

She smiled in irony.

“What would you have me do? Sit back with my sewing and my women’s tittle-tattle, while the ground is being cut from under me? Would you let them cut it, Harry? Will you listen to Chapuys, who hates you and supports the Pope, and sacrifice me when he asks? Will you deprive Elizabeth of her birthright and restore Mary to the Succession?”

He looked at her as she had seen him look at others, and she knew the answer even before he gave it.

“I should do whatever I think is right. As for the matter of legitimatizing Mary, give me a son, Madame, and there’ll be no need.”

He moved as if to leave, and she sprang up and threw herself down by the chair, clutching his sleeve.

“Will you abandon me, Harry? Is it in your mind while you sit there, knowing I’m carrying your child, probably the son you’ve prayed for all these years...Give me one word of hope; oh, God, I need it, I need it now more than ever in my life...Tell me that in spite of all our differences, in spite of everything I’ve said and done that’s turned you from me, there’s some mite of love for me left in your heart.”

He had never seen her like this, weeping at his feet, and all he could see was the incongruity, the lines under her eyes, already wet with tears, and the ugly, pained shape of her mouth as she struggled not to cry. She bent her head and hid her face against his arm.

“I’ve always been too proud to do this, though I’ve wanted to for months. Though I’ve quarreled with you and screamed at you and gone away and wept until I thought my heart would break, all the time I wanted to do this; just to get near you, to feel there was something left of what we had together.”

She raised her head and stared at him imploringly, until he looked away in sudden embarrassment. This wasn’t what he wanted, this miserable submission at the end, when he had neither love nor pity left; it didn’t gratify him, it only somehow put him in the wrong. There was nothing he could answer.

Slowly she pulled herself up and stood half turned away from him, wiping her eyes. Then she went back to her chair and sat down.

“I needn’t ask again,” she said dully. “Very well, I’ll ask you something easier instead. If I have a son for you, will you protect me from my enemies?”

He rose, and pulled the cap on his head, pushing the drooping feather back.

“What’s done is done, Nan,” he said heavily. “And no one regrets it more than I, but I promise you this at least: Give me a Prince for England, and you shall have nothing to fear from anyone, neither abroad nor at court.”

The jousting field was crowded with spectators; in spite of the time of year, the weather was crisp and sunny, and the King’s courtiers sat in the stands wrapped in their cloaks, the woman’s jeweled headdresses flashing in the light. It was a colorful, brilliant scene, charged with the excitement which reached its peak as the massive figure of the King moved from among the group of challengers, his armor gleaming. He mounted, took the long pointed lance from his squire, and waved toward the stand where the ladies were sitting. Jane Seymour’s kerchief fluttered from his helmet. He saluted, snapped down the visor, and settled the lance in its cradle, at the ready. His opponent was Sir William Brereton, who waited at the end of the jousting field, a rather small figure in his heavy armor, balancing the cumbersome lance, his horse moving restlessly.

There was a burst of cheering for the royal challenger; he had unseated three men already that afternoon, and though Will Brereton was popular, he had become too closely associated with the Queen. The Seymours, the Norfolks, the Exeters and half the great nobles either watching or taking part in the tournament would be glad to see him fall to the lance of Mistress Seymour’s champion. Brereton knew it. He sensed the hostility as he waited, watching the huge armored figure holding the heavy lance as lightly as if it were matchwood, and he tensed, sighting his opponent through the slits in his visor. They wanted him to fall, not just because it was politic for the King to win, but because they felt it would be an ill omen for the Queen they hated. “Damn them,” Brereton said under his breath, not knowing why he resented her unpopularity so much, except that all his life he had sided with the loser. He liked her better now in her adversity than he had ever done in the high summer of her beauty and her favor with the King. She represented the Protestant faith he believed in, the faith which had begun to flourish quietly under her protection.

He saw the signal given to begin; there was a split second’s silence, then he drove his spurs into his horse and charged toward the galloping figure of the King.

A woman screamed first when Henry fell. The scream was lost in a pandemonium of shouts as the crowd leaped to their feet, and the stewards came running across the ground toward that figure lying sprawled upon the ground, anchored by the massive armor.

Brereton’s splintered lance was flung aside; men were holding his horse’s head and helping him to slide off its back. He pushed back his visor. The King was surrounded now, but he could see that he still lay there without moving.

The Duke of Norfolk was among the first to reach him; he had leaped over the low parapet of the stand and had run; he saw them lift the King’s helmet off and bellowed at them not to move him, but to send for Dr. Butts. He knelt beside Henry, staring at the closed eyes and the failing pallor; his breathing was heavy and uneven.

Thank God the lance had not struck his head. Though the deadly steel point was masked for safety, a direct blow might have broken his neck.

There was a deep dent in the breastplate; Brereton had caught him squarely on and sent him flying with such force that God knew what injuries he’d suffered. Kneeling there, waiting for the physicians, Norfolk trembled. He looked up at the white, frightened faces round him and saw the dread in Suffolk’s eyes and knew what he was thinking, what they all were thinking. If the King died, Anne would be Regent for her daughter; worse still, for a son if she had one. And Anne would show as little mercy as she had received. If Henry died...

“Where’s Butts?” he snarled. “In God’s name where is he?”

“Here, my Lord, here...Let me through and get back, please.”

Butts ordered the crowd back and went on his knees beside the King. He unbuckled the heavy gauntlet and drew off the wristpiece and for a moment that seemed to Norfolk and the watchers like a hundred years, he felt for Henry’s pulse.

“I can’t tell his injuries,” he said under his breath to the Duke. “But there’s no danger of immediate death. Bring up a litter and we’ll move him now.”