Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (26 page)

“Surely, that is an idea as sound as it is new.”

“So the King himself thought. I was with him when Bishop Gardiner told him of it. His Grace slapped his thigh and looked more jubilant than any of us had seen him in months. ‘That man has the right sow by the ear!’ he shouted.”

Anne, too, sprang up and clapped her hands. “It will make us independent of Popes and Cardinals!” she cried exultantly. “The Tudors are always advocates of learning and I believe that, with persuasion, Henry would even agree to a Bible being put in every church.”

“But do you suppose he would dare to ignore the Pope completely?”

“I believe he would dare almost anything to get me legally.” Anne shook back the weight of her hair with a haughty little gesture she was acquiring. “Did I not tell you that he is getting me the lease of Suffolk House so that he can visit me from the Palace without so much scandal? And having it hung with some of the Cardinal’s best tapestries. I wheedled Henry into making Wolsey see to it himself, although he must have been burdened to his drooping eyelid over all the business of the divorce.”

“Nan, you are implacable! I believe that pleases you as much as having a house of your own.”

Anne did not deny it. She herself was momentarily aghast, not at her implacable enmity, but that she, of all people, should find herself speaking maliciously of another’s physical blemish. That, she supposed, was what a long-drawn-out hatred did to one . . .

George was not unaware of the change in her. “That being so, my love, were you wise to boast of it last week before all and sundry?” he chided, disliking her new, vain airs. “It is not like you, Nan. And Jane, you may be sure, took care that the way his plans had leaked out got back to the King’s ears. Norreys warned me that he was furious, Nan, as well he might be!”

“What else is there to talk of here?” countered Anne, who had once been so contented with the country quietness of her home. But she had the grace to look abashed. “And if he were furious he wrote me but gently about the matter. All he said was that ‘lack of discreet handling must be the cause of our arrangements being bruited abroad in London!’ And that he trusts our next meeting could be arranged, not through other people’s light handling, but through my own.” But resentment could not flourish long before Anne’s ineptitude for self-deception. “He was trying to shift the blame from me, which is more than I deserve, although he knew it was mine,” she admitted pensively.

“I sometimes think he is half afraid of you,” laughed George.

Anne turned and regarded him speculatively. “Were not you and Mary, too, sometimes when I wanted my own way as a child?” she probed.

George did not answer, but he knew that it was true; although he had always hated to acknowledge it, even to himself. There had been something about Anne—some passionate urgency, some glitter in her unfathomable, dark eyes—which had half scared, half hypnotized him into doing whatever she had wanted. Something which had made him stuff his ears when the servants told fireside stories of witches being burned. It was absurd, of course, to have felt that even for a moment with someone who could be so lovable.

“I am not boasting now, dear George, but just telling you,” she went on more gently. “Though, God knows, most women would find it something to boast about! Henry has promised that I shall have ladies-in-waiting and a train-bearer and a chaplain of my own. And that, even though his family be there, I shall lead the Christmas revels with him at Greenwich.” Excitement had painted colour on her cheeks again, and although she stopped to cough more often than he liked, her husky voice was lashed with laughter. “Whom shall I choose for my ladies?” Gaily, as though inviting him to tread a measure, she held out a hand, and together they strolled back towards the house.

“Margot Wyatt, of course,” he prompted.

“And that sprightly little Savile girl who helped me get into York House. And I suppose it would be only kind to ask for Mistress Gaynesford because my equerry, George Zouch, is so desperately in love with her.” Anne let go of his hand to tick them off on her fingers as she walked. “And then, I suppose, Uncle Norfolk’s prim daughter, Mary Howard. What fun to dispense favours to them when they never deigned to visit us during all those years! And who else, George?”

Her brother made a wry grimace. “I am afraid convention will not spare you my lady wife,” he reminded her.

But the whole prospect was too pleasant for repining. “Oh, well,” sighed Anne, “at least she excels at backgammon; and it is said that all royal favourites must put up with spies in their households. You had better take Dr. Butts back to London with you, George, and see that the dear man does not succumb to the sickness himself, for if ever I bear a child I should want him with me in preference to all others.”

Pausing for a moment by the sundial, George laughed indulgently. But, dazzling as the future seemed, there were moments when Fate seemed to be bearing them along too fast. “If ever you bear a child and it is the King’s, Nan Boleyn, your bedside will be black with physicians,” he prophesied.

“I will see that I do not bear one until I am Queen,” declared Anne, her mouth setting itself into that obstinate line which he knew so well. And then, as if one thought grew out of the other, “I pray you, George, show this Cranmer some friendship; and I will suggest to our ennobled father that the man be invited here into our household.”

They looked up to find their erstwhile governess waiting, sharp-eared, in the Castle doonvay. “Would he be safe, think you, with this hungry spinster always at hand?” teased George, setting all the keys and scissors rattling from her girdle as they joined her.

“Would who be safe?” demanded the outraged Frenchwoman.

“A very brilliant and accommodating scholar who may prove useful in the matter of the King’s divorce,” Anne told her.

“But a tonsured priest,” warned George, ducking to avoid retaliation from a bony hand whose strength in chastisement he had good cause to know.

“Nevertheless,” laughed Anne, “I am sure that our good Simonette will work upon him for my sake.”

“The plain, black-bordered cap—not that glittering piece of frivolity,” ordered Anne, in exasperation. “Have I not told you twice this morning that I am going to the city to bless cramp rings for the poor, not to Greenwich for a masque?”

Anne was late for the ceremony as it was, and Thomas Cranmer and the whole procession must be waiting for her. Perhaps, after all, she had been ill-advised to take Druscilla Gaynesford into her fine new household to please her equerry. The girl had been good company at first, with her love of books and her passion for dancing; but these last few days she had grown as clumsy and forgetful as a zany.

“God in Heaven, girl, what is the matter with you?” she cried, as Druscilla, down on the floor sewing a loose pearl to the hem of her gown, snapped the needle in two.

Druscilla did not answer, but stayed there on her knees, her blue eyes awash with tears. And Anne, dragged from contemplation of her own annoyance, noticed for the first time that, except for dark shadows which betokened lack of sleep, the girl’s face was as white as parchment.

Anne had not been a maid-of-honour all these years for nothing, and suddenly her annoyance mounted to sharp suspicion. She caught at Druscilla’s wrist and jerked her to her feet, so that her searching gaze could the better run over the girl’s full-skirted body. “You are not going to tell me you are pregnant, are you?” she demanded. It was too bad, after she had put herself out to be so kind to the lovers!

But Druscilla shook her head in dumb denial.

Anne let go the unresisting wrist and breathed a sigh of relief. A household as precariously respectable as her own could not afford that kind of scandal at the outset. “What is it then?” she asked sharply.

With the relief of unavoidable confession, tears came in full spate. “Oh, Madame, the book you lent me—”

“The book?” It was with horror that Anne’s mind absorbed her exact meaning. “You mean my brother’s Bible? Mother of God! You have not lost it?”

“It is w-worse than that,” gulped poor Druscilla.

With grim deliberation, Anne put down the mirror she had been holding. Here was a matter more important than any present engagement. “But I told you to read it in private and to take the utmost care of it. Stop wringing your hands, ‘Cilia, and tell me instantly what you have done with it. You know that to possess one is forbidden!”

The girl stood motionless before her. “I lent it to my betrothed,” she confessed, with a sort of forlorn dignity.

“You lent it to George Zouch. And
he
lost it, I suppose?”

“It was taken from him.”

“Stolen, you mean?” This was worse and worse. Her beloved brother was involved, and heresy hunters were everywhere.

“It was the Dean, in the King’s chapel, Madame.” Knowing that her mistress did not suffer fools gladly, Druscilla made an effort to be more calmly coherent. A touch of colour came back into her frightened face. Her mistress was angry, and with monstrous reason, but one had a feeling that she would understand. “My—George Zouch was so carried away by it that he could not put it down. He was reading the story about Dives and Lazarus about the next world! He took it under his cloak to vespers and knelt reading it. And the Dean must have seen him. And afterwards, as the others were leaving, George was still so engrossed that he didn’t even notice until he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard the Dean saying, ‘What is it that so absorbs you during Holy Office, my son?’ And it was too late to hide the book then.”

“And the Dean took it from him?”

Druscilla nodded in shamed assent. “He seemed very angry, and yet somehow excited,” she volunteered.

“I make no doubt he was excited,” said Anne grimly. For what could better serve men who were always seeking a handle against her than to stumble upon heresy in her own household? When Margaret Wyatt and Arabella Savile would have come to remind her of the time, she waved them away. “Send George Zouch to me,” she ordered.

It seemed that the young man had been waiting in the anteroom.

He came forward with manly promptitude and, seeing that Druscilla had been crying, he took her hand and held it. He was a plain young man, but likeable.

“Druscilla tells me that she disobeyed me and lent you milord Rochford’s Bible,” accused Anne.

“By your leave, Madame, she did
not
,” denied Zouch stoutly. “I seized it from her lap in sport, and though she fought like a tigress and babbled of your displeasure, I would not let her have it back.”

Anne looked from one to the other of them. The girl’s face was red enough now. And presently the suspicion of a smile softened her own. “You took it only to tease her?” she suggested more gently, remembering how Wyatt had once snatched at her pomander chain.

“She had been wrapped up in it for days. I could get no word or smile out of her. So I took it. I did not know what it was.” Zouch dropped Druscilla’s hand and stepped closer. His eyes were bright and eager. Though he lowered his voice, he spoke with respectful urgency. “Back in my own room I began reading, and it gripped me to the exclusion of all companionship or duty. You must remember, Madame, how it made all of life seem different. But I would sooner have died than endanger one you love. You have been so good to us. You do believe me, Madame?”

“Yes, I believe you.” Turning, Anne slid a finger beneath his betrothed’s drooping chin and raised her troubled face. “You must love him very much to lie like that,” she said, with a rarely tender smile. “And what has the reverend and excited Dean done with it, do you suppose, Zouch?” she enquired, beckoning Margaret to put the finishing touches to her sober grey gown.

“He carried it immediately to milord Cardinal, who has f-for-bidden it.” Zouch was very young, and the enormity of what he had done tied up his tongue.

But Anne, ready at last, swept round in regal disdain. “And who is milord Cardinal, to forbid the word of God?” she demanded, withdrawing from them completely the focus of her wrath.

The door was flung back and all the retinue Henry had promised her stood outside waiting to escort her to the city. Incapable of bearing yet more suspense, Druscilla ran to catch and kiss her hand. “And what will you do, my lady?” she entreated.

Anne’s quicksilver brain had only that moment decided, but she took prayer book and herbal nosegay from the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter with an air. “I will mention it to the King when he comes to sup,” she answered negligently.

“Tell the King!” the guilty pair echoed, aghast.

“Before Cardinal Wolsey does.” Anne knew the value of thrusting first. She laughed lightly and brushed her equerry’s smoothly shaven cheek with the stiff sprigs of lavender and rosemary in passing. “You will see,” she promised. “It shall be the dearest book that ever Dean or Cardinal detained.”

And after supper when the cloth was drawn and Henry asked her to sing for him, she leaned against him with a pretty air of languor and begged to be excused. The ceremony of the cramp rings had exhausted her, she said. “And weeks have passed since your Grace played to us,” she reminded him, persuasively.

Henry was nothing loath. He moved to a stool before the hearth and drew her harp between his knees, and in the cheerful glow of firelight the lovely instrument looked no more golden than his close-cropped head. Softly, experimentally, his thick white fingers began to pluck at the strings until all the room was flooded with sweet melody. His young men and Anne’s maidens at the far end of the room forgot their whispered flirtations to listen. Accustomed to good music as they were, their love-making and their wagering died on their lips as they drew near, not because the harpist was King of England, but because he was one of the finest musicians in the land.

Sensing the difference between appreciation and flattery, Henry was very happy. Happy in the wistful beauty of his own creation, and in the gentle mood of the strange, elusive woman with whom he was in love. And presently, in his happiness, he began to sing. A song of his own composing, popular in hall and guardroom alike.
“Oh, western wind, when wilt thou blow?”
And as the well-known words fell from his lips, Will Somers, forgetting his jester’s tricks and misshapen little body, took up the alto line in harmony with his master.