Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (4 page)

“Can you be ready before dawn?” asked Suffolk, more gently.

The King had gone to warm himself before the fire, and Charles Brandon’s brown eyes were bent solicitously on Mary. But she did not look at him; only at her brother’s broad, unrelenting back. “I can do anything that is required of me,” she said.

If Henry noticed the tension in her voice, he gave no sign. Possibly he felt that if he turned his back on suffering it would not— for him, at any rate—be there. Or preferred to steer the conversation towards suffering which he could by no means have prevented. “The reports have come in about those two ships wrecked against the jetty,” he was saying, with a gusty sigh. “Sixty of my sailors were drowned. I must tell that competent secretary of Wolsey’s to send some money to their widows.”

“You have pity enough for them,” said Mary.

The rebellious words seemed to be dragged from her; and suddenly the room was charged with emotion.

The King swung round like a gilded vane slapped by the wind. It was so unlike this even-tempered sister of his to speak with bitterness. If it had been sharp-tongued Margaret of Scotland now . . . “What can I
do
?” he demanded, angrily. And yet one could see that he, too, was deeply moved.

Pressing further into the shadows Anne Boleyn held her breath. It wasn’t every day one heard someone taunt the King.

But there was to be no quarrel. Perhaps the Princess knew that this was really the best way to treat him, if one dared. “You know that I was obliged to arrange this marriage for the sake of an alliance with France,” he protested, with dignified restraint. “You don’t suppose it’s easy for any of us to part with you, do you?”

“Greenwich will be deadly without you this Christmas,” said Suffolk.

“It’s always deadly now,” complained Henry. And then, as if the thought of a sick wife reminded him of his own grievances, he added plaintively, “I, too, had to marry where I was bid—only it was Spain that time.”

“Oh, Harry, I know!” Mary was all warmly human at once. “But Katherine used to play with us. She was already our loving sister-in-law. And Louis is
so old
.”

“The sooner he will die!” snapped Henry, strolling to the table to pick up the book of French poems.

“And then we shall have you back again,” soothed Suffolk, quick to cover up the brutality of the words. Again he tried to attract her attention, and this time a long look passed between them. They must have known each other intimately for many years, and it was almost as if he were willing her to do something. Mary glanced at her brother, who stood browsing through the pages, his appreciation already half caught by the beauty of some well-known line. She held her head high. One could almost see her taking her courage in both hands. “Harry!” she began tentatively.

At the urgency in her voice he looked up, a finger still marking his place. “Well?”

“I hate leaving you. You’ve always been more to me than the others. And I do know you had to arrange this marriage. But there is just one boon I would ask before we part.”

He put down the book and came towards her. “Anything, my dear.”

But her eyes still implored him. “As you love me, Harry—”

The words were scarcely audible, and he stood staring at her in perplexity. And presently she went down on her knees, her brocaded skirts billowing out about her, and caught at his hand. “You know that I will do this if I must, for you and for England. And that I will go through with it proudly, in a manner which will never shame you. I will do everything to please Louis. Tomorrow I will obey you. Only give me this one hope to take with me. That when he dies and when I marry again, I beseech you, Harry, let it be someone to please myself.”

It was a long time before the King answered, and still she clung to his hand. Anne fancied there were tears in his eyes. “What do you think, Charles?” he asked at length.

Suffolk started a little, as though he had expected to be the last person to be consulted. “It seems reasonable,” he stammered, the words half smothered in his fashionable spade-shaped beard.

“Holy Mother in Heaven, make them let her!” prayed Anne, trying to imagine what it must mean to a woman to be bartered twice.

To her relief the King bent down and raised his sister to her feet. “Very well, you minx, I promise,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t bear to do things by halves, he laughed boisterously and bade Charles be witness to it.

“You hear, Charles, how generous he is?” echoed Mary, between laughter and tears. “Oh, Harry, it will be so much easier to be kind to Louis now!”

She ran to a little side table and poured three glasses of wine. Charmingly, she handed a glass to each of them. And gallantly they drank to
la nouvelle reine Marie
.

“And if you are bored by an old husband, I pray you, don’t beguile the time by making eyes at his handsome young nephew, the Dauphin,” teased Henry.

It was almost dark and the chapel bell began to ring for Vespers. “Well, we must be up betimes,” he said, setting down his empty glass with a yawn. “And for all friend Louis’ infirmities, I should advise you to get some sleep while you can, sweet sister!” He tweaked her lovely hair in passing and dug Suffolk in the ribs. “I know if I were your bridegroom you’d have need of it, eh, Charles?”

He chuckled, well-pleased with his own magnanimity, and waited while Suffolk bent courteously over her hand. “I shall come aboard to see you both off,” he promised, laying an affectionate arm about his friend’s shoulder as they went out together.

Almost before they were gone Anne noticed that the Duke had left his fine fur lined cloak lying over the back of a chair, but she did not dare to call out or run after him. Majesty had too lately left the scene. Even Mary herself still stood in the middle of the room, staring a little dazedly after them, as if there were more she would have said. The tall candles on the table made a ravishing picture of her ruddy hair and creamy skin. And suddenly a swift, wordless drama was enacted before her maid-of-honour’s astonished gaze.

The door opened hurriedly and, with a word of apology to someone outside, Charles Brandon strode back into the room and gathered up his cloak. Mary Tudor did not move, and as he passed her he pulled her close against himself and, with one wary glance towards the half-open door, kissed her passionately on the lips.

Taken off her guard, Mary tried to push him from her—to warn him that they were not alone. Not a word was spoken, but he turned to follow the direction of her warning glance. His hands dropped from her waist. “Mary Boleyn’s sister!” he muttered with an oath, when his eyes had had time to pierce the gloom.

Seeing their dismayed faces, Anne wanted to cry out. To swear that never would she betray their love, no matter how near the King her sister was. But instead she stood waiting, dumbly, as if it were herself who was in fault. For the first time since she came to Court her wits deserted her and as he passed her, Charles Brandon looked straight into her frightened face. His own was full of malevolence. He brushed her aside brusquely as if she stood between him and something he strove for. Even after the door closed behind him, Anne felt cold with his suspicious anger.

She went slowly to her mistress.

Mary stood twisting her rings. “What you have seen, child, is nothing evil. I would not have you think that, for your own sake as well as mine,” she said, picking her words with care. “The Duke and I have always known each other, and I have always cared. When I was even younger than you I used to hide letters for him in all sorts of places about the Palace. It was exciting and a little dangerous. And now—” Mary raised her eyes and looked straight at Anne. “I love him, but we have never sinned.”

To see her was to believe. Her quiet statement had more weight than any protestations.

All the opportunist in Anne Boleyn ran hand in hand with her affection. She kissed her mistress’ hand impulsively. “What I have seen, Madame, is none of my business,” she said.

Right from the outset, it seemed, the new Queen of France would have need of her and of her silence.

Anne’s gaudiest hours began in France. Louis’ Court was a dazzling parterre of pleasures for her delectation. Like the bright butterflies at Hever, she had emerged from her chrysalis of adolescence to sip heady essence from them all, and to flutter her wings awhile in the warm sunshine of success.

All the splendour and wit of Paris scintillated about her, and she served a Queen whose love of gaiety matched her own, and Mary had shown her special favour. Not merely calculated favour for her silence, but favour with affection.

It was Anne who had helped her to bear the Duke of Suffolk’s departure, since she alone knew what it meant to her. And when the jealousy of his own people forced Louis to send most of his new Queen’s women home again, he suffered Anne to stay. Because of her fluent French, Sir Thomas Boleyn told her. Father and daughter had both called down further blessings on the diligence of Simonette, and though Mary raged at finding herself waited on by foreign strangers, Anne was secretly glad. All those impressionable French gallants, she thought—and just one English maid-of-honour!

And apart from that one arbitrary act, Louis had been exceedingly kind. Not only had he loaded his “fair Tudor rose” with costly gifts, but for her sake he had pinned all sorts of belated reformations upon the remnant of his misspent years. He adored her, and merely by being her lovable self she quelled the brutish in any man who cared for her. She never indulged in tedious religious discourses, as so many modern women did to advertise their learning; and she seldom appeared shocked. In a land of light love affairs, she laughed merrily at most of the lewd jests told at Court, but herself remained unsmirched. And Anne Boleyn was clever enough to take her cue from one who seemed to have solved the problem of being both irresistible and chaste.

There were few restrictions in Queen Mary’s household, yet those who served her knew the grief it would occasion if they erred. Besides which, Anne had the grace to remember that she was daughter to the Ambassador from the Court of St. James. All that she did could bring fame or shame to England. And blithely as she enjoyed the sophistication of Paris, the quiet gardens of Hever had helped to mould her heart.

She was very careful not to err. But it was not always easy. She was too talented, too quick of wit not to draw attention. Even, at times, the Dauphin’s dangerous attention. And with each conquest her strange beauty bloomed less fitfully. When ardent young men forsook acknowledged beauties and pressed about her for favours, Anne began to understand that there was something which bewitched them more than classic colouring and features. Some elusive charm which stirred their sex upon the briefest encounter. Something which she possessed and must learn to wield adroitly. When some enamoured courtier presumed too far, she would glance at him with that devastating sidelong look of hers, provoking him to desire, yet keeping him uncertain of fulfilment. But there were those, more bold or more experienced, who soon taught her the necessity of hiding her own too warm response beneath a deceptive show of coldness. Not just to tantalize, but to save herself from shame.

Life in France was teaching country-bred Anne many things. Among them, the quickness of her own desires. But she was shrewd enough to recognize them as a weakness—a mortal enemy which might at any moment betray her, undoing all the carefully built up perfections of her other parts. So she bound her sexual impulses with strong cords of fear and prayer and self-interest, and pushed them, like a caged beast, into some limbo of her being, so that no one would guess at their exuberance and so that her own pride could usually forget their power.

For Anne was beginning to know herself, although as yet she did not recognize the elements that warred in her. It had not occurred to her that the cultural urges which Simonette had implanted, the suave vaulting ambition of her father and her stepmother’s good middle-class moral code were elements that made her character more complex than it need have been. That they had made her a prude, capable of being consumed by passion. That because of her father’s diplomacy she was growing into a woman who might lie to others, but on account of Simonette’s clarity of vision she was already incapable of deceiving herself. Always she would be sure of her own motives, so that the comfort of sinning unwittingly was forever denied her.

Among the lesser things that France taught Anne was how to dress. Beneath her mistress’ amused, indulgent eye Anne began to experiment. Cautiously, with small details, at first. Intriguing little gold bells tinkling at the points of her velvet cape, so that everywhere men’s eyes followed her. Or a headdress of plaited gauze, costing more in ingenuity than in money. A headdress which looked like a gossamer halo above her shining dark hair, and drove richer women with heavier features to distraction.

And then, becoming more daring, she discovered that a graceful girl can wear anything, and that fashionable women are but sheep.

A pert French girl, grudging her an admirer, had remarked too audibly that it was amazing how a man of breeding could desire to kiss a foreigner with a deformed hand and an ugly mole upon her neck. Actually, Anne’s mole was small; but her sensitiveness was great. Floods of tears soaked her pillow that night, but not for worlds would she have let her rivals see her mortification. After much thought she rose and went to her duties and, while putting away the Queen’s jewels, asked humbly if she might borrow a deep pearled collar that Mary seldom wore. The pearls were set on tiny bands of black velvet and it suited Anne’s long, slender neck to perfection, making her look more mature and adding to the lustre of her eyes. Quite effectively, it hid the offending mole and deprived quite a number of other French girls of their dance partners. And then two important duchesses began to grace the Palace in high, jewelled collars, and half the Court followed suit. “Why, Nan, you have set the fashion with my poor little trinket! You had better keep it,” laughed her mistress generously.

With such encouragement, Anne’s courage soared. At last she dared to do what she had always wanted to. With the help of her sewing woman she designed a full, hanging sleeve which afforded cover for her blemished left hand. Lined with silver taffeta, such sleeves were immensely effective against her gown of midnight blue. Burning with self-consciousness, she took her place at supper and braved the barrage of her rivals’ titters. And it was that night the Dauphin Francis asked her to lead the dance with him. And because Anne was as skilled in the dance as she was about clothes, a new French fashion was born. The Boleyn sleeve.