Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (9 page)

“And it is all some of those popinjays seem to think about, music and making ill-gaited ballads. And boasting about seducing maids-of-honour,” he complained, heartlessly snapping off a jasmine branch that nodded through the aperture between them.

“It is mostly boasting,” proffered Anne, on behalf of her friends.

“Then it is all the more waste of time.”

Whereby Anne gathered that he had not had enough of his ruggedness knocked off to mix easily with his fellowmen. “How then do you spend
your
time?” she asked, in a small voice.

He laughed then, more tolerantly. A little apologetically, perhaps, as if in reality he envied opportunity to learn some of the accomplishments he affected to despise. “Where I live it takes us all our time to keep our sword arm nimbler than our neighbour’s,” he explained. “Not just fancy tilting with heralds telling you when the other man is going to start.”

“Where do you live?” asked Anne.

“Up north. And you?” He looked her over from her pearled headdress to her elegant little brodekin shoes. “Always here at Court, I suppose?”

There was the slightest pause before Anne answered. For the first time since meeting him she remembered that she was about to be married; but she could in no wise bring herself to spoil this new joy. “My home is in Kent,” she said noncommittally; and hurried on to another subject. “Would you like to come and watch the King play tennis?”

“I scarcely understand the game so it would give me little pleasure,” he said.

“People don’t always watch for pleasure.”

“Why? Does he play so ill?”

Anne gave a little shriek of laughter. She did not usually suffer fools gladly. But this strange young man, with his direct manner of speech, was so new to her world. “He still plays extraordinarily well,” she explained patiently. “But most men swell his audience out of policy. And, as a newcomer, it would be wise for you to do so. That is, if you want to get on at Court.”

“I don’t particularly. I only want to get away from it.”

“You don’t approve of us very much, do you?” she sighed. “What
do
you want to do?”

He grinned then, disarmingly. “Sit here and talk to you.”

“That you cannot do, for it seems milord Cardinal is going. There are the horses being taken round. And all your friends are coming this way.”

He got up to look for himself, and the smothered profanity on his lips was sweet to her ears. But she was far too experienced to prolong the occasion. It must seem to him that it was she who sent him away. She stood up, too, smiling a little, her hands folded before her so that the fingers of her left hand did not show.

His gaze came back to her, and he seemed half-angered at his own reluctance to leave her—like a man with his own plans urgently before him, who finds himself caught unexpectedly in the binding tendrils of some thicket. “No woman has a
right
to look so—so fragile that a man could break her in his two hands,” he reiterated.

Her smile turned to laughter. “But I am not in your hands,” she said.

He took up the challenge at once. He gripped her by either forearm, the strength of his fingers biting unwittingly into her tender flesh. And Anne’s whole body remained quiescent, willing him to hold her so.

“I am quite strong, really. I can pull a bow with anyone,” she protested in a flurry, all normal poise forsaking her. She was speaking at random, like a squawking captured bird, deliciously nervous as a silly child of sixteen who has never been touched by a man before. And he knew it. Whatever else he might be slow about, he was no fool about sex. His firm, hard lips parted in a grin of enjoyment. “All the same, you couldn’t pull yourself out of my arms if I chose to hold you,” he told her.

But voices were already calling him. Footsteps were echoing along the cloister. Anne gave him a little friendly push. “Quick! The Cardinal is going,” she whispered. He laughed and released her, and ran swiftly to join his comrades.

Too late, she put out an arm to stay him. “I don’t even know your name!” she called after him. But he only waved and ran on.

She followed more slowly, savouring her new found joy. Out in the courtyard, where Wolsey’s party was moving off, she mingled with her friends again. “Who is that man?” she asked, of no one in particular.

“Which man?” asked Margaret Wyatt, just as if a girl could look dispassionately upon a courtyard full of men and see any other.

“The one with hair like beaten copper, of course. The one whose horse is still waiting.”

“Don’t you know?” said Francis Weston, who always had all the latest gossip. “He is Lord Harry Percy, the Duke of Northumberland’s eldest son.”

Lord Harry Percy. Anne stood staring after him. She saw him vault into the saddle, catch the reins from his grooms, and break into a canter to catch up with the departing cavalcade. She was no mean horsewoman herself, but he seemed to do it all in one fluid movement. She could imagine him riding furiously, in some borderland feud, without any saddle at all.

“I see they are still wearing last year’s jerkins up north,” sniggered some wit at her elbow.

“Seeing that they become him so well, perhaps he prefers them,” snapped Anne.

“Well, if he doesn’t employ a London tailor it certainly isn’t because he can’t afford to,” observed Hal Norreys tolerantly. “I suppose in their particular wilds the Northumberlands are as important as any King or Cardinal.”

Anne thanked him gently, as if he had defended her personally.

Harry Percy.

She murmured the words to herself. Of course, she had heard of him. But she was committing the name to her heart, rather than to her memory. She turned and retraced her steps abstractedly across the daisy-strewn lawn. She had quite forgotten that she had been on her way to see Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, to talk about James Butler.

Anne lived in a dream until she saw Percy again. She no longer lay awake dreading matrimony. Her mind was too full of the sweets of present courtship. The Queen rated her for being absent-minded, and her friends chaffed her about being in love. But she went her way and answered nothing. “This time I will use all the enchantment that is in me to make him mine,” she vowed, when next Cardinal Wolsey’s gorgeous cavalcade came to Greenwich.

Purposely, she waited apart from the others. But when she saw Percy come into the Queen’s garden, all wiles deserted her, driven out by an overwhelming simplicity of love. And there was no need for them. He came straight to her and took her hands. He had had a fine slashed doublet made for himself, and his hair had been smoothed until it shone. He wasted no time on social formalities. “His Eminence is inviting the King and Queen to visit the new manor he has had built at Hampton. When we all go thither tomorrow, will you ride with me?” he demanded.

Anne laughed with sheer happiness. “In that case wouldn’t it be more convenient if you knew my name?” she suggested, mocking him from beneath long, dark lashes.

“I know what I call you,” he said.

“Tell me!”

He glanced round impatiently at the chattering groups of courtiers. “Not here,” he said. “What is your name?”

“I am Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn.”

A look of more wary interest came into his face. “So you are Anne Boleyn? I have already heard several men speak of you.”

“Pleasantly, I hope?”

“By the things they said I supposed you must be either an angel or a witch.”

“For you I will be either,” she promised gaily. “And my friends call me Nan.”

“Then, Nan, will you ride with me tomorrow?”

“It can only be if my mistress, the Queen, has no need of me.”

He seemed to remember at last that they were still holding hands. “Could she not have another lying-in or something?” he suggested heartlessly, drawing Anne towards a grassy bank and throwing his cloak upon it.

“Then I shouldn’t be able to come at all.” Anne sat down upon the new grandeur of his garment, and he threw himself down beside her. “Besides, I had forgotten,” she added, pulling at a handful of green blades. “Sir Thomas Wyatt has already asked me.”

“He is the poet everybody thinks so highly of, isn’t he? And in love with you, I suppose?”

With any other man, Anne would have used so flattering a conquest to fan the flames of jealousy. But with this blunt north-countryman she found herself being completely candid. “I suppose so, since he once asked me to marry him,” she said.

“Why didn’t you, since he is so popular?” Percy asked savagely.

“Because my father forbade it.”

“And you were brokenhearted?”

“No. I have always loved Thomas Wyatt, but more as a friend. To know him is to love him, I think.”

The scowl left Percy’s features. “Then perhaps he won’t want to break my head.”

“I can scarcely imagine his wanting to do anything so uncivilized.” Seeing him redden, Anne knew that her shaft had pierced that unexpected sensitiveness of his. “Nor do I suppose he could,” she added quickly, glancing down at his muscular perfection.

“Then that is settled,” he said, rolling over onto his stomach the better to observe her face. “I have bought you a horse,” he added, almost casually.

Anne could scarcely believe her ears. “You bought me a horse? And you had seen me only once? And did not know my name,” she gasped. But, of course, Hal Norreys had said how rich the Northumberlands were. Probably giving a girl a horse was no more to them than giving her a ribbon or an embroidered cap.

Percy smiled at her eagerness, happy at having pleased her. “He is a roan. With a white star on his forehead. And quite gentle.”

Anne sprang up, wild with excitement. “Since I have been here I have never owned a horse of my own. All we maids-of-honour are allowed to keep at Court is a spaniel. May I see him?”

“I was hoping that you would want to. Then we can get away from all these people. My groom is walking him round by the stables.”

It meant a few precious moments alone. They talked as they went. The roan was glossy as silk, and nuzzled at Anne’s caressing hand. She was delighted with him. “How clever of you! He is just up to my weight. But you need not have worried about his being gentle. I have been used to hunting with my brother since I was small.”

He looked at her approvingly. To be a good horsewoman, and fearless, meant more to him in a woman than all the gifts of the Muses. “It would matter to me supremely if you were hurt,” he told her quietly.

“I shall call him Bon Ami,” said Anne.

“Have you anywhere to keep him?”

They glanced at the full rows of stalls. She knew quite well that only lords’ daughters were allowed to have their own mounts. But nothing, nothing must prevent her from keeping this first wonderful gift. “My father is away,” she said, thankful that he was in France. “But I am sure my brother will arrange something. Put him for the moment in Sir Thomas Boleyn’s empty stall, and tomorrow I will ride him.” She turned in a flurry from efficient groom to exultant master. “There is the chapel bell. I must fly to attend her Grace to Mass.”

“And tomorrow you will make sure that someone else attends her in her stuffy coach,” he insisted.

“Poor Margaret! And poor Thomas!” giggled Anne, picking up her skirts above dainty ankles and scurrying back towards the Palace.

But what was a girl to do when an excitingly persistent young man not only plagued her to ride, but also brought her a horse?

And so on the morrow it was Margaret who was being jolted, back of the horses, in the coach, holding cold compresses to the Queen’s aching head, while she, Anne, rode with her new admirer in the morning sunlight. “Someday I will make it up to poor Margot!” she vowed.

The September day was perfect. Little wisps of mist pegged themselves like shining cobwebs about the hedges, making the familiar Thames meadows a land of fantasy. The tops of the oaks were turning to autumnal gold, and every now and then startled swans flapped furiously along the surface of the water.

“And God knows how few such perfect days are left to me,” thought Anne.

Bon Ami went faultlessly along the soft earth of riverside lanes. By the time the walled silhouette of London was lost to view, she and Harry Percy were lingering as far behind the royal cortege as they dared. And as they rode they told each other precious small things about the years before they met, exploring each other’s minds, and building a foundation for their love. Utterly wrapped in the wonder of attraction and dissimilitude. Until they came to Hampton.

Henry Tudor himself drew rein then, involuntarily. Russet, his horse, flicked away the flies and cooled his fetlocks in the clear shallows where, mirrored on the river’s sparkling bosom, stood the fairest domestic building imaginable. Moat and walls were but a gesture to the dangers of a bygone age. Behind them all was peace and comfort. Roofs and pinnacles and towers rose in a kind of harmonious jumble, homely yet dignified. A jewel set in green gardens and sprawling to a gleaming Watergate. “It is the loveliest manor I have even seen!” exclaimed Henry, above the ecstatic comments of his followers. His delight exceeded anything that Wolsey, in his proud complacency, could have hoped, and when the King, guiding his great horse across the drawbridge, added pensively, “It is big enough to be a summer palace,” such excess of appreciation may well have occasioned the wealthy prelate’s first faint feelings of uneasiness.

From the moment Henry was inside the courtyards, the beauty of the place had him in thrall. Great hall, chapel, kitchens, fish ponds-he insisted upon seeing them all. While the Queen rested, his sister Mary accompanied him, inflaming his gusty Tudor enthusiasm with her own. And by the time the fat Cardinal finally showed them his own workroom he found himself quite breathless, and for once uncertain of his own wisdom; for Henry touched the exquisite linen-fold panelling with expert fingers, and stood for a long time before the stone fireplace with its splendid carving of a cardinal’s hat. “I could work here myself,” he said, enviously. And it was too late then for Wolsey to regret his ostentation and to recall with misgiving the story of Naboth’s vineyard.

But work was for neither of them that day. There was good cheer and rare wine, with service and entertainment unrivalled even at Windsor. Wolsey was an incomparable host. And Thomas Cromwell, his plain indefatigable secretary—plunging hither and thither seeing to the comfort of their guests—acted as a complete foil to his master’s leisurely graciousness.