Anne Boleyn: A Novel (4 page)

He was restless and angry, because Catherine had spoiled his enjoyment of the bear-baiting that afternoon. They had gone to the royal pits with a large company of courtiers and the Queen’s ladies to watch Henry’s favorite sport, and he’d settled into his seat with Catherine beside him, leaning forward eagerly as the bear shuffled round the post, shaking the chain which tethered him. He was a good bear, he had been starved to make him fierce and the King looked forward to a good afternoon’s sport. Part of his enjoyment was the presence of his wife’s new lady in waiting, Anne Boleyn.

She had been at court a week, but he had only spoken to her twice, and then in the presence of the Queen. Catherine did not like her, he could tell by the way she looked at her and turned away to talk to someone else whenever Anne was near. He had heard that Catherine had reproved her angrily for laughing in the maids of honor’s rooms.

But she came to the bear-baiting that afternoon, brilliant in a scarlet dress and a tiny scarlet cap that framed her dark hair and enhanced her olive skin; and like him, she was excited, smiling and commenting to the other ladies in a whisper which he strained to hear.

When the dogs were released into the pit, he forgot about her in his enthusiasm, and shouted his approval when the first of them crouched and then sprang like an arrow at the bear’s throat. The second and third followed, and the pit became a bedlam of snarls and the yelps of a wounded dog, its chest scored open by the bear’s claws, and the deep, furious growls of defiance and pain from the bear as it plunged on the end of the chain, fighting off its attackers. One of the dogs hung from its leg, its teeth clamped into the fur and flesh, its eyes red with hate. They were a magnificent breed, Henry remarked joyfully, the best in England. Look, the wounded dog had jumped like a stag to the attack again...It was bleeding profusely, spattering great crimson stains on the floor of the pit, but it fought on. Now the bear was bleeding too from several savage bites; maddened by pain, it slashed and snapped and staggered like a drunken man. The King and most of the court roared with laughter at the spectacle.

One of the dogs was dead, its skull crushed by a bite; only two were left, and the second was weakening from loss of blood. Quickly he signaled, and two more dogs were released into the pit and leaped onto the bear’s back and chest, encouraged by roars from the spectators. The bear overbalanced and came to his knees; at the same moment Catherine touched his arm, and he turned angrily; the kill was near and he didn’t want to miss it. Now he was down, one of the dogs would get his throat...

“With Your Grace’s permission, I wish to retire,” she said; she was terribly pale, and to his annoyance he saw that her eyes were full of tears. “‘Tis too cruel. The poor bear...I can’t watch it...”

She was out of her seat, beckoning to her ladies, and the whole finale of the fight was disrupted while they moved. The last to go was Anne; one of the ladies touched her shoulder and whispered urgently before she rose to follow, and for a moment she looked into Henry’s face. She was flushed and excitement had made her brilliantly beautiful; she waited to curtsy to him, and her eyes expressed disappointment. Then she was gone. By the time he settled down again, the bear was dead on the floor of the pit and the dogs were tearing it to pieces.

They suggested another bear and another fight, but he refused and stamped back to his apartments in a savage temper. Why had she come, he demanded furiously, and no one dared to answer him. He knew she was squeamish, always petting her cursed lap dogs and feeding her tame birds; why did she ask to come and then spoil his pleasure? His voice rose to a bellow, while his gentlemen stood about awkwardly. Was it part of her policy to force herself on him, he shouted, knowing her presence embarrassed him, thinking perhaps he was too kindhearted to forbid her?

From that moment he would forbid her! Was there no one to protect him from the Queen’s pestering? He stood straddled like an angry bull, his pale eyes reddening like his own breed of pit dogs.

“Are you all dumb?” he roared. God’s blood, where was Wolsey...Wolsey would have found something to say, Wolsey would probably have stopped her attending. But Wolsey was at York House, working on the problem of the divorce. He ordered them out and sat by himself, brooding and vindictive and as usual when he was depressed or angry, his thoughts turned to the divorce and his grievances against his wife. How many children had Henry fathered in the Queen, the Cardinal asked, and how many had survived? One; the sickly ten-year-old Princess Mary; the rest had died. He knew the kindness of the King, but such a mortality surely betokened the anger of God and his punishment for a union which was incestuous...

They had discussed it so often that the King had begun to believe it; he was profoundly superstitious, the religion of form and ritual was a passion with him, and theology a hobby with which he sharpened his intellect, in common with most brilliant men of his time. But the seat of his religion was within himself; he held the same beliefs as the rest of Christendom until that time, because the beliefs had never conflicted with his own will. The possibility that the two might differ never seriously occurred to him; once he believed that Catherine had deceived him, that he had committed incest and been punished by the deaths of all but one of his children, then the belief became an unshakable truth. And he had Wolsey to assure him that the Pope would share the conviction.

The Cardinal never missed an opportunity to praise the Princess Renée; he was shrewd enough to know that sixteen years of marriage to the admirable Catherine had predisposed his master toward a congenial union as well as a political one. The Princess was intelligent, graceful and very womanly, and as eager to marry Henry as her modesty allowed. He would find her an excellent wife, and the French royal family were notoriously prolific; her brother Francis had bastards in every corner of the Kingdom.

Then he stressed the need for the French alliance. The Emperor Charles was too powerful for the safety of Europe; he was expanding his dominions at the expense of the Italian states, and his armies ringed the Vatican. His dominions in the New World had made Spain fabulously rich, and the great trading center of the Netherlands had been added to his inheritance by his father, Philip of Burgundy.

At this point, Henry had surprised his Minister by remarking that the English people, whose principal trade was the export of wool to the Netherlands, would hardly welcome the loss of their best market in exchange for an alliance with their hereditary enemy, France.

The point irritated Wolsey, whose interest lay with politics rather than economics, and he brushed it aside a little too quickly. The King’s vanity was touched and for a moment he watched his Minister with dislike; he interrupted again, to say shortly that the poverty resulting from a break with the Netherlands might well prove a greater danger to the security of his throne than all the might of the Emperor, mustered thousands of miles away.

The Cardinal had recovered himself, within seconds he was humbly admitting that the King was right and he was wrong, and that whether Henry married the French Princess or not, the trade in wool must be maintained. But he made the mistake of confounding Henry’s argument, by pointing out that it was in the Emperor’s interest to keep the Netherlands market open; he was too realistic to avenge the divorce of his Aunt Catherine at the expense of his dominion’s prosperity. Either way, there was nothing to lose.

Henry had listened in sullen silence. There were times when Wolsey’s opinions carried him too far, when he forgot that the young inexperienced King of former years was now a man and a ruler. The Cardinal had retired from that audience, unaware that his very plausibility had cooled Henry’s enthusiasm for Princess Renée or any other candidate he might put forward.

The King moved restlessly in his chair, and his foot kicked the lute; the strings quivered and the sound suddenly drove his thoughts into another channel. He forgot his anger with Catherine and the scene at the bear-baiting; he forgot Wolsey and the divorce and the difficulties which harried him.

The lute reminded him of Anne Boleyn. He remembered her letter and his excitement when he read her acceptance of the post at court. God, but she was beautiful that afternoon, and as keen on the sport as he was himself...He remembered the lively atmosphere in the group where she was sitting, and the looks of some of his gentlemen as she took her place. Wyatt had been among them, but he knew that she had never seen Wyatt alone since she came to Greenwich. That was over, then; his vanity suggested that it had never really begun. He wondered if she was a virgin, and then rejected the idea; the only certain virgin at court was his own daughter Mary...his thoughts shied away from her and returned to Anne.

It was odd how Anne’s image heated his imagination. A week passed already, and Catherine had kept her so occupied that she might as well have been buried in Kent for all the good it did him! Three months of thinking about her, driving out of his mind that memory of the figure in the window in a white nightgown because it made him sick with desire; remembering her wit in the rose garden, and the ease he felt in her company, and then suffering jealousy for the first time in his life when he heard that Tom Wyatt was her lover...

He sighed and stretched; his bad temper had gone, only his loneliness remained, and there was a remedy for that. He bent and picked up his lute and struck a few chords; the sweet tones echoed in the quiet room. A boatman called out on the river below, and he looked out of the window.

The red and gold barge of Cardinal Wolsey was drifting into the jetty and he could see the figure under the rich canopy, the Cardinal’s boatmen drawing in their oars. He suddenly resented Wolsey’s state; the barge was too big and too splendid; he had too many attendants with him, and his musicians played a fanfare when he landed; for some time that ostentation had annoyed the King. He frowned, watching the long graceful boat edging into the landing steps, and the noise as people came running. A crowd always gathered round Wolsey, self-seekers hoping to be noticed.

The King raised his voice for his page, and the boy hurried in from his post outside the door.

“Go to the Queen,” Henry ordered him. “Request her to send Mistress Anne Boleyn to me; I have a mind for music, and command her to play to me.”

Anne did not become the king’s mistress that night at Greenwich, nor on any of the other occasions when he sent for her that winter.

They supped together and rode together, and he ordered her place at the maid of honor’s table to be moved higher, so that he could see her when he dined publicly with the Queen. But she refused as firmly each time he approached her as she had done on their first evening alone. No one even considered the possibility that Henry’s relationship with her was still technically innocent, certainly not Wolsey, who viewed it with dislike but a certain complacency. He knew his King too well to fear Anne’s ascendancy would be of long duration. Henry hungered quickly and was quickly appeased; the new mistress would be retired like all the others—better provided for, perhaps, as the King was unusually generous to her. He began sending her little sentimental gifts; a gold pomander filled with French perfume, a well-bound book of love poems, gloves and small trinkets, and presents of delicacies for her table. He sent for her at all hours on some pretext; attendants used to hear them laughing as soon as they were alone; sometimes they played and sang duets, Henry’s baritone blending with her clear voice.

The King was in love, but only Anne and her brother George knew that his love was unfulfilled.

The first night he had come up behind her and caught her in his arms, and been abashed when she begged him to let her go. Completely unused to resistance, for a moment he was angry. But she stood before him meekly, all vivacity and impudence forgotten, and asked him gently not to attempt anything against her honor.

She was virtuous, she said, and by God’s grace she hoped to remain so. After a moment she asked him if he wanted her to leave. Moodily he turned from her but swung round as she went to the door, telling her to stay where she was. That evening, like the bear-baiting, threatened to be spoiled, and his disappointment changed to irritation with himself. The harmony between them was disrupted; he supposed he had better dismiss her...But Anne had gone to the window and picked up the lute. She began to play one of his compositions; and by the time it was finished, the King was standing by her, listening, and they were perfectly at ease again.

When she left, he kissed her on the cheek according to court custom, and his desire leaped like a flame, but she withdrew before he could make a move. The urge to touch, to kiss and fondle was so strong he sweated when she came near him, and though the form of his desire was the same with Anne as with all other women who aroused his fancy, the intensity was not. The violence of it bewildered and goaded him, and when she did surrender, he thought hotly—and she would in time—he might well find the satisfaction neither wife nor mistresses had ever given him.

The King gave a masque and a ball before Christmas, and Anne spent days choosing her costume and headdress. She ordered a dress of scarlet velvet, with a collar and long sleeves lined with cloth of gold, and a mask of black satin, sparkling with gold embroidery. The theme of the masque was the elements, and she asked Catherine’s permission to symbolize Fire. The Queen assented coldly; thanks to the King’s brutal display of preference, her natural dislike of Anne had become hatred. Once she had gone so far as to order Anne to stay upstairs and mind her dogs at one court function, because her nerves were quivering at the insult offered her so publicly. Furious, Henn’ had turned to his wife and ordered her loudly to send for Mistress Anne, and after dancing several measures with her he kept her by him for the rest of the evening.

She made him laugh, Catherine thought bitterly, which she had never been able to do; she was witty and scintillating and impertinent, and the unhappy Queen used to pray earnestly for grace not to feel so jealous of her. But she never dared try to keep her from the King again, and when she asked to choose her costume for the masque Catherine wearily gave permission. Fire would suit her, she thought, watching her as she moved round the room. There was an aura of sensuousness about her which made the Queen uncomfortable. Standing, kneeling or sitting on a stool at her mistress’ feet sewing, she seemed to emanate seduction like a poison, and she reminded Catherine of a serpent when she walked. Often she ordered Anne out of the room, and then hurried into her oratory to weep and pray for help before the Blessed Sacrament.