Doomed Queen Anne (8 page)

The next morning King Henry was up at dawn, eager to go hawking. And then an extraordinary thing happened, of which we learned later. While following his hawk, the king attempted to vault over a stream. The wooden pole broke under the king’s weight, plunging him headfirst into mud so thick that he would have suffocated had it not been for the quick action of a friend. The friend was Tom Wyatt.

Naturally, the king’s narrow escape was the talk of the banquet that evening, where King Henry celebrated his rescue, proposing toast after toast to the embarrassed poet.

When the dancing began and the king once again sought me as his partner, I dared to twit him, turning back on him his words to me: “I am told that Your Majesty suffered a serious mishap today. I hope that you were not injured?”

“Only bruises to my pride, Lady Anne,” King Henry replied. Then he added, quoting from Holy Scripture, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

“Then certainly I am guilty of a haughty spirit,” I said, laughing.

“That haughty spirit is the source of your great charm,” said the king, keeping hold of my hand far longer than the dance required.

That night I was too excited to sleep. The game of love was in play.

CHAPTER 6: The Game of Love, 1525-1526

With the first cool days of autumn, the royal progress came to an end, the members of the court returned to their estates, and I went to Hever with my sister, who brought her little daughter, Catherine, to visit. When we were at court or on progress, I managed to keep my distance from Mary and her sly taunts, but at Hever there was no avoiding her. Mary and I passed the afternoon hours in the gardens, where little Catherine amused herself by creeping into the bushes and then toddling back, first to her mother and then to me, blossoms crushed in her fat little fists.

As we rested in a sunny bower, sheltered from a chill breeze, sipping goblets of hippocras, our conversation found its way to King Henry, as it inevitably did.

“The king seems somewhat downcast of late, have you noticed?” asked Mary.

“I have not. He appeared both jovial and tireless on the royal progress, hunting all day and dancing half the night.”

And surely
, I thought,
you noticed that he was dancing with me.

“Do not be deceived by appearances. Will tells me that King Henry has much to trouble him. He has increased taxes to support his vast expenditures, and the people are resentful. The king believes himself ill-treated by Emperor Charles, who broke his betrothal to the princess. But the most important thing is this,” Mary continued, bending down to accept the latest offering from her daughter. “The king badly wants—nay,
demands
—an heir to succeed him as the next ruler of England.”

“What of Princess Mary?” I asked. “Or young Henry Fitzroy? We have attended ceremonies in which each received royal titles. Are they not his heirs?”

Mary Carey toyed with her ring—a ring, I remembered, that King Henry had once given her. “The king needs a legitimate male heir. The royal children each satisfy but half—Mary is legitimate but a female; Fitzroy is male but a bastard.”

“Is there no chance that Queen Catherine will produce a suitable heir?” I asked, although I was certain I knew the answer.

“None whatsoever,” my sister said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The queen has had numerous pregnancies, but only one surviving child to show for it. An infant son died within weeks of its birth. Now King Henry is becoming restive. The queen is too old to bear more children, and, besides, he long ago lost interest in her.
Completely
,” my sister added, her brows arched knowingly.

“King Henry is in the mood for a new mistress,” Mary continued. “He demands little of a mistress but amusement, and he gives fine gifts. You could be next, you know. Why waste your time on that poet? He is already married and has no wealth.”

I was shocked by the boldness of her suggestion, but before I could utter a reply, a servant appeared to refill our goblets. I wished to hear more about the king and his mistresses, but Mary abruptly changed the subject when the servant had withdrawn.

“I have good news,” she said, smiling at me over the rim of her goblet. “I am expecting another child.”

“How wonderful!” I said, relieved at the new direction of our talk. “When is your confinement?”

“March,” she said, turning her attention again to little Catherine. “William is quite pleased.”

That explained why she appeared so willing to yield her place as the king’s favorite.
Are you carrying the king’s child?
I wondered, but of course I dared not ask.

I RETURNED TO COURT at Yuletide, although the season was not so merry as one wished. London had seen many deaths from plague, and the king and queen decided to keep a quiet Christmas at Richmond Palace, upriver from the city.

By February the crisis had passed, and the king ordered a Shrovetide joust. Bundled in furs against the cold, we gathered in the tiltyards to watch the competition. King Henry cut a splendid figure, mounted on his great white stallion and clad in armor that glinted in the winter sun.

Many of King Henry’s closest friends were in his company—Henry Norris; William Brereton; the king’s brother-in-law, Charles Brandon—and all got the worst of it, as usual, unseated by the powerful thrusts of the king’s lance. Tom Wyatt undertook to ride against the quintain, a revolving wooden figure that, if not struck accurately, swings around and strikes the unfortunate horseman a mighty blow on the back. I knew that he wanted to ride well for my sake, but poor Tom was thwacked painfully by the whirling quintain.

The king excelled at tilting. Holding his heavy wooden lance pointed straight ahead, he rode at full gallop toward a series of small metal rings. He seldom failed to hook one of the rings on each pass. With more rings jingling on his lance than any of his friends had managed to collect, King Henry rode over to the royal box where I sat watching with Queen Catherine and the ladies of the court. With a great flourish, King Henry presented the rings—not to the queen, to whom the joust had been dedicated, but to
me
. Everyone stared, none more so than the queen; a few of the ladies gasped loud enough to be heard. I, too, was frankly stunned by his open show of attention to me.

“His Majesty does me great honor,” I murmured.

Queen Catherine rose unsmiling from her seat and swept out of the tiltyard. Avoiding my eyes, her ladies hurried after her. Only Lady Honor gaped openly as I passed the collection of rings to the king’s usher, retaining just one as a souvenir of this event.

At the banquet I pretended not to notice that King Henry was observing me. When the dancing began, I expected the king to take me as his partner, but he did not.
Why
? I wondered.
Has his attention already turned to someone else? Then why does he watch me so closely?

Luckily, Tom Wyatt appeared, and I devoted myself to him. That my thoughts were elsewhere must have been apparent. “My lady seems distracted,” Wyatt said, but I smilingly denied that I thought of any but him.

Lent began, and several times each day for the next forty days I knelt in the chapel royal, pretending to pray but thinking only of King Henry and wondering if I occupied the king’s thoughts as well. He gave me no sign. But when the banqueting and jousting and other enjoyments of court life resumed at Easter, King Henry again contrived chance encounters with me. Soon, I believed, the king would make his intentions known. My nerves were as finely tuned as the strings of my harp.

Weeks passed. Then one midsummer evening as I supped in the maids’ chambers, only half listening to their ceaseless chatter, a royal page appeared. The maids fell silent as the boy delivered to me a note. Written in French, it bade me come at once; it was signed
Henricus Rex
—Henry the King—and bore the king’s seal.

He wanted me
now
. I had no opportunity to change my gown, arrange my hair, or do any of those things which a lady might wish to do in preparation for such an interview, no time to become unnerved by this new course I sensed my life was about to take.

I followed the young page, not to the king’s privy chamber, as I had expected, but to an even more private chamber beyond it. King Henry sprawled at his ease behind an enormous table. It appeared that he had been playing draughts, for there was the black-and-red checkered board, but no sign of an opponent. The chamber was empty, save for the king and me. Beyond the open door to a bedchamber I glimpsed an immense bed with several thick mattresses and curtains of blue velvet trimmed with gold.

I dropped to one knee, advanced, dropped a second and then a third time, reverencing the king as he required. “Your Majesty,” I murmured, my eyes lowered modestly. This was the first time I had been alone with him. Slowly I raised my eyes and waited, my heart racing.

King Henry leaned toward me, his elbows on the table, his blue eyes lively, his smile winning. “Lady Anne.” He breathed my name as though it were a sigh.

“Your Majesty,” I said again, still kneeling. I allowed his gaze to wander over me from head to foot.

“You do please me greatly,” said King Henry, and raised me up.

“It pleases me much to please you. Your Majesty,” I replied.

“Good,” he said. “And would it please you just as much to be the king’s mistress?” he asked, stroking his close-trimmed beard.

There was no mistaking his meaning, and I had long prepared myself for just such an invitation. I well knew there were two kinds of “mistress.” First was the courtly mistress, to whom romantic poems and tender looks were addressed, and with whom chaste kisses and tokens of love might be exchanged. Second was the
other
kind of mistress—a lover. I understood that King Henry spoke of the latter kind. I was to replace my sister, Mary.

I also understood that, should I yield, I would immediately lose my advantage. I knew well what became of the king’s former mistresses—my sister, for one; Bessie Blount, for another: When he tired of them, as he always did, they were discarded and then married off to a willing courtier. I was certain that many ladies had been approached in this manner by the king; I doubted that any had either the desire or the will to refuse what he asked of her. Who would have dared?

I did.

I dared because I wanted so much more from King Henry. I wanted the love of his heart and his soul, which I knew would be much harder to win. Once again I was a little girl on a storm-tossed ship, bound for an uncertain future—frightened, but also exhilarated.

Now I drew a careful breath and replied with feeling, “It flatters me to believe that Your Majesty thinks so highly of me. But surely Your Majesty understands that it is no small thing that he asks. My virtue and my honor are of the greatest value to me, and I cannot risk the loss of them.”

My heart was hammering loudly as I made this bold claim of virtue and honor, for I knew that my reputation had been badly damaged by my betrothal to Hal Percy. I clasped my hands to still their shaking and waited for the king’s response.

King Henry stared at me in amazement. “Are you
spurning
me, Lady Anne?”

I was trembling, but my voice remained strong. “Spurn the wishes of my king? Never! Surely, I could wish for no higher honor than the undeserved attentions of the handsomest and most godly man in all Christendom! But, I must weigh the cost to my reputation. I beg you, my lord, give me time to think on it.

“Then I bid you good night, madam!” said the king brusquely. “We shall talk another time.”

“Nothing would please me more. Your Majesty,” I murmured, and repeated the ritual, kneeling three times as I backed out of the king’s chamber. As I ran through the several passageways on my way back to the maids’ apartments, I could not help smiling to myself. The score: Lady Anne, one point; King Henry, naught.

NOT LONG AFTER that interview, the king and queen prepared to leave on summer progress. I was again invited, along with my parents, to be a part of the royal retinue, and I ached to go. But before the day of their departure, I asked to be allowed to return home to Hever.

There was guile in my request. I believed that King Henry, once he had set his mind on a goal, would be relentless in his pursuit of it. My delicate task now was to lure him close to his quarry without allowing him to capture it. Yet he must not abandon the chase or become so discouraged that he sought another lady of the queen’s court. I had to remain the object of his desire and yet manage to elude him.

Separation was part of my strategy; while the king was on progress, hunting with his friends in the shires to the north and west of London, my memory would haunt him, my absence sharpen his desire. I held the advantage, and at summer’s end the king would return to court, eager to continue his pursuit of me. Who knew what might happen in the future? I was enjoying the game and not then thinking far ahead.

On the eve of his departure, the king summoned me once again. This time I was prepared. I had dressed in unadorned black damask, and as I was about to follow the king s messenger, I snatched up my rosary and wove the silver beads through my fingers.

“Mademoiselle Anne,” said King Henry as I made my three reverences. “Let us converse in French, the language of love.”

I was happy to comply. The king often spoke Latin to his courtiers, but I had not been well tutored in Latin and did not speak it easily. French was another thing altogether.

“Tell me. Mademoiselle Anne,” said the king. “Have you given thought to our conversation? I confess that you have captured my heart, and I can only hope that I may now claim yours.”

“I am flattered by Your Majesty’s kindness,” I told him. “And I have spent many hours at prayer on the matter.” Here I flourished my rosary, piously kissing the cross that hung from it. “I assure Your Majesty that he does now and will always enjoy my deepest affection. But virtue, once lost, cannot be regained.”

The king sighed deeply. “God will hear your prayers,” he assured me in a voice filled with disappointment, “and will no doubt one day answer mine.”