The Concubine

  Between threats and plans he had talked away the worst of his hurt and disappointment, and when two pages hurried in bringing the dishes of cherries and sugar-strewn raspberries which Anne had ordered to be served on his arrival, and the Rhenish wine that he loved, nicely chilled from being hung down the well, he was ready for refreshment. It was some moments before he realized that she had been very silent and that her look of seeing something invisible to others—and not much liking it—was more than ever in evidence.

  Wiping his sugary lips on the back of his hand he said,

  “You’re downcast. So was I until I put my thoughts in order. And Wolsey did betray me.”

  The fury in her wanted to cry—And if you let the case go to Rome, you’ll betray me! The night you brought the little dog you promised that if things went wrong you’d break with the Pope.

  Angry words which it would be bad policy to utter burned in her brain. More waiting! And she was twenty-two, already; no longer young by any standard, and worn sharp and thin by waiting, by constant vigilance, by the dreadful insecurity of her position. In a man, of course, it mattered less, but the years were not improving Henry either. Denied one fleshly pleasure he indulged too freely in those he could command, he both ate and drank too much. Look at him now! He was growing thick and heavy. And he was thirty-eight.

  She thought, with a sudden burst of spite, of Catherine, stubborn, impervious, and arrogant. Catherine, who, having failed to give Henry an heir was doing her best to make sure that no one else should. Catherine had behaved throughout as though she were the whole garrison of a beleaguered city: she would not even discuss terms of surrender; she was sure that eventually her allies would come to her aid. And so far no pressure had been brought to bear upon Catherine at all; a few feeble arguments which she ignored.

  Anne had mastered the art of suggesting things to Henry. So now, concealing her true feelings, she said in a musing, almost dreamy way,

  “Yes, Wolsey betrayed you; but Catherine also served you ill, I think. She took her stand upon something impossible to prove or disprove, instead of upon law. All things considered I think your magnanimity toward her does you great credit.”

  “Sometimes I wonder at myself,” Henry said, smoothed and flattered. “The truth is, sweetheart, that I find it difficult to be harsh to a woman. And much as I deplore her attitude, I understand it. She for twenty years regarded herself as my wife and Queen of England. She finds it hard to let go.”

  It might seem crazy, but it flashed upon Anne that the truth was that deep down he took Catherine’s behavior as a compliment to himself. It was as though she had tired of Urian’s surliness and incontinence and had tried to give him away and he refused to settle in any other place, kept coming back, shoving his head into her hand and saying wordlessly, “But I belong to you!” Henry honestly wished to be free of Catherine, but her refusal to let him go made an appeal to his vanity.

  She said, “There are people who find it hard to cross a stream by way of stepping stones. If it is a stream that must be crossed, it is sometimes necessary to give them a little push to start them going.”

  “And what little push, sweetheart, could I give Catherine? I’ve argued, pleaded. All to no purpose.”

  “You could begin by separating her from the Princess Mary. They are of like mind, they hearten one another. And if that failed of its purpose you could…” But why should she suggest every detail? “You know how to show displeasure. If the Queen could be brought to see reason, the Emperor would no longer feel he must support her, nor Clement feel fear of the Emperor.”

  “Why do you insist upon calling her the Queen? I’ve remarked it before.”

  She said, sweetly reasonable, “Most people do still so call her. And surely it would ill become me to be the first to deny her the title.”

  Henry laughed. “You have an answer for everything. And you are right about her. I’ve been too indulgent. But things will be different from here on, I promise you. With Wolsey out of the way, and Catherine brought to her senses—separation from Mary, even for a month, will do that, and I wonder I never thought of it before—and with Cranmer at work, it shouldn’t be long…”

  He looked at her, and the lust which he had learned to control in his speech, his hands and lips, shone in his eyes. He was so blindly in love that he saw no difference between this woman and the girl who had caught his fancy six years ago, the girl he had thought too good for young Percy. For him she represented the not easily attainable and he meant to have her at all costs. The long waiting, the forced celibacy, the scandal, and today the loss of his oldest and best friend, what did they matter?

  As on all but the one occasion, he left her strengthened and heartened and in a better mood than that in which he had arrived.

  Anne had no support; nothing but her own pride and ambition, both in such thwarted moments prickly props indeed. And today, to disappointment and the appalling prospect of another period of waiting, there was added a curious little fear. Not superstitious exactly, but tending that way. She had cursed Wolsey; today he was ruined and no one could deny that she had been instrumental in bringing about his ruin. Suppose that were all? The end of the story. Suppose that life was like a masquerade where some people had major parts and others minor, contributory ones, of no importance in themselves, only as they affected those who mattered. She could imagine the summing-up of the chroniclers—The King, falling in love with one, Anne Boleyn, desired the annulment of his marriage, which the Cardinal failing to obtain for him, he fell from favor.

  That was a thought truly unbearable; it made her nothing. It denied the very existence of the girl who had been young, capable of happiness, whom the Cardinal had smashed, as one might smash a glass beaker, and whom circumstance had put together again, not quite in the same shape, but alive and sentient. No longer young, or gay, or capable of loving any man as she had loved Harry Percy, but a creature with a boundless ambition, a future Queen of England, mother of the next King. Wasn’t she important? Wasn’t hers the central story?

  She knew that if she remained alone, thinking these roundabout thoughts, she could drive herself distracted. She could go and fling herself on her bed and be fussed over and ministered to by Emma Arnett, who secretly despised her. Or she could call in Mark Smeaton.

  Smeaton was a country boy who had joined her household in a menial capacity but had proved himself to be a most skillful musician. Fond of music, and able performers themselves, she and Henry had gathered about them some gifted singers and players; but Smeaton, out of the kitchen, surpassed them all. The lark, the nightingale, as opposed to the thrush and the blackbird.

  Often, when he played for her, Anne thought of the story of King Saul and the shepherd boy, David, in the book of stories known as the Old Testament, which had now been translated and smuggled into England, following upon the New Testament. Emma Arnett had introduced a copy into Anne’s apartments, saying, in an offhand way, “My lady, I found it entertaining, and I wish someone with more learning could tell me why it is forbidden reading.” Anne had found it entertaining, too, though some of the stories were horrible. The King Saul whom she remembered every time Mark Smeaton played for her, had suffered from possession by an evil, melancholy spirit and David, by playing the harp, had been able to exorcise it.

  Now, with her own evil, melancholy spirit set ravening by the outcome of the Blackfriars trial and the prospect of further waiting, she sent for Mark.

  He was a shy, awkward young man, with a peasant’s blunt features, slow speech, big hands and feet. Nobody who had not heard him perform could have believed that those hands could be so delicate, so nimble, so expert. In other ways, too, his bucolic appearance was deceptive; he was excitable, easily moved to tears or laughter, and very vulnerable to pain. He would cry like a child if a tooth ached.

  What she said to him that morning was said partly from kindness, but in far greater measure from a need to assert herself.

  She said, “Mark, I should lik
e you to play for me. And before you begin, I want you to know that in future you are to be my own, personal musician. What other tasks you have hitherto performed are ended. You may get yourself fitted for a black velvet suit and rank as one of the gentlemen of my household.”

  It was his wildest, most impossible-seeming ambition come true. He broke down and cried, protesting his undying gratitude, his loyalty and service forever. He used the words, “When you are Queen…” which none of those who knew her mind ever did; and he said it would give him joy to die for her. She made allowance for his delight and surprise, and for the over-enthusiasm that so often went with great talent, but even so it was tedious. She said, coolly,

  “I trust that will not be necessary, Mark. And now, please play.”

  He then looked at her with the baffled, hurt expression of a dog that has been chided and wonders why.

  XV

  Then the King took my lord up by both arms…and led him by the hand to a great window, where he talked with him.

  Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey

  GRAFTON. SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1529

  DR. BUTTS HAD BEEN SUFFICIENTLY sensitive to the atmosphere prevailing in London not to have bothered about any suggestions for the relief of Cardinal Campeggio’s gout. Something, it seemed, had gone wrong with the first interview between the King and the Italian, who thereafter had been treated with the exact amount of respect to which his rank and commission entitled him, but with no sign of favor. So, when Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio rode out on a bright September morning to go to Grafton where the King and the Lady were staying, Campeggio’s swollen hands still shrank from the touch of the reins, his feet from the pressure of the stirrups.

  Horseriding was indeed so painful to him that he had tried using a litter, but the jolting had put his whole body in misery. There was only one comfortable means of transport for him, and that was by water. As he rode along, he reflected, without rancor, that had he given Henry the verdict he desired, the King would have taken pity on his wretched state and ridden back to London so that the formal leave-taking could have been performed at Greenwich or Westminster or Windsor, places all accessible by barge. In a covert kind of way Campeggio was being punished, and knew it, and conscious that he had merely carried out his orders, bore the misery with fortitude.

  Wolsey, jogging alongside, envied Campeggio, who was going back to his master to report a job well done; who knew where he was going, and what kind of reception he would get; where, in fact, he stood. Wolsey knew none of these things. The last seventy days had been wretched beyond his fears; not on account of what had happened but because so little had.

  Hour by hour, since leaving the hall in Blackfriars, Wolsey had expected to be summoned into the presence and denounced, scolded, raved at, punished. But once face-to-face with Henry he would, sooner or later, have been given an opportunity to state his case and to explain his reasons for siding, at the critical moment, with Campeggio. He had a good case, and his reasons were valid.

  The King had sent no word. Wolsey’s messages, written and verbal, had been ignored. It was as though, for Henry, Wolsey had ceased to exist on that hot July day.

  And not for Henry alone. Wolsey had made one attendance, in the usual manner, to his Court of Star Chamber and found it deserted save for officials and ushers. The empty space cried aloud that men no longer came to him for justice, no longer looked upon him as arbiter. Yet he was still in office, still held the Great Seal of England in its velvet bag. His ancient enemies, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, had made one attempt to take it from him; they had arrived, late at night when he was abed, and demanded that he yield it up. He asked, as a matter of routine, to be shown the authority, direct from the King, which was the only thing which legally could oblige him to relinquish the Seal and was greatly surprised—because this was the kind of development which he had hourly expected—to find that they had none. He had then said, with that calm so often decried as insolence, that he had received the Seal from the King’s own hand, and could only deliver it to someone who brought an order for him to do so, signed by the King. They had gone, furious, away; and they had not come back. And so, on this September morning, though the King had ignored him for seventy days, he was still Chancellor of England and the Keeper of the Seal.

  And he was on his way to see the King; on a necessary errand, the escorting of a visiting dignitary to his formal leave-taking.

  When he thought of meeting Henry he had the old bother with his bumping heart and his breathing. It was a thing which few people in this cynical world would either believe or be able to understand, but he was, in reality, devoted to Henry in a way which had nothing to do with ambition or policy. He was twenty years older than his King, he had trained him in statecraft and taken great pride in his budding ability; to a large degree his feeling toward Henry was paternal, but their relationship was almost infinitely complicated, Henry being his King, his patron, his master, and his friend, as well as being, physically, the man Wolsey, or any other sensible man, would wish to be, and mentally an equal. They shared, too, a sense of style, a liking for ostentation, for the grand, generous gesture, and their love of England.

  Their attitudes upon the latter point, were, Wolsey admitted to himself, subtly differentiated. What he himself had done at Blackfriars, un-English upon the face of it, was in the long run, and would be seen to be eventually, for England’s good. To have proceeded with the business and defied the Pope, would have been to divorce Henry from Catherine, certainly, but also to divorce England from Christendom and reduce her to the level of those wretched little German states which had gone over to Lutheranism.

  And, Wolsey said to himself, he had saved Henry from a disastrous marriage.

  He was shrewd enough to have seen, long ago, that Mistress Anne Boleyn—Lady Anne Rochfort as they now called her—was different from any other woman in one thing only—her ability to say “no” and to go on saying it. And what did that prove? Merely that she had no true feeling for Henry and was as ambitious and self-seeking as her father and brother. And her uncle, Norfolk. Wolsey could see, in a way, what had happened to Henry; he’d accepted the challenge; for to a man who could command anything, a single repulse, such as any other man would dismiss with a shrug and the reflection that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, must be a challenge. And fish was a very apt word. She was cold as a fish. No normal woman, with warm human blood in her veins, could possibly have held out against such a wooing as the King had made to her all these years. She’d said “no” once and got a diamond bracelet or some other trinket, and with true Boleyn cunning she’d decided that by saying the same thing enough times she’d get the Crown.

  And Wolsey did not blame Henry. He remembered his own youth, his hot pursuit of Joan Larke, his noncanonical marriage. It was something that got into men and rendered them not fully responsible; there’d been times when, had Joan Larke stipulated any fantastic conditions before admitting him to her bed, he would have moved heaven and earth to comply with them. He remembered, and remembering understood.

  Maybe the exercise in the open air just at this briskening season had something to do with it, but whatever the reason, the optimism without which self-confidence is impossible began to rise in him anew. He reflected that had Henry intended to disgrace him publicly, he would hardly have waited seventy days, he’d have done it in the full flush of anger. It was just possible that the silence and the withdrawal had another cause. Henry might be having trouble with the Lady, who must have seen, by the result of the Blackfriars trial, that the road to the Crown was not as easy as maybe she had supposed. There’d been no public outcry, for one thing. The sycophants and the self-seekers had followed the King’s example in shunning Wolsey—that was only to be expected, but the ordinary common man of the London streets had accepted the advoking of the case to Rome without protest. He didn’t want Anne Boleyn for his Queen, and she would have to be very stupid not to realize it. She wasn’t
stupid, Wolsey granted her that. She had indeed a very pretty wit which he acknowledged, even though it had occasionally been exercised at his expense. He had not forgotten his return from France, in the summer of 1527. During his absence she had returned to Court and been established in her anomalous position, neither wife nor mistress: and he, returning from a mission to a foreign country, had sent the formal message to the King, announcing his arrival and asking where he and the King should meet, so that he might make his report. The Lady had replied to the messenger, before the King should speak, “Where else should he come but where the King is?” And that was, of course, the actual true answer, though not couched in diplomatic words. Everybody had found it vastly amusing…

  Wolsey pursued his own train of thought for some time, and then looked sideways at Campeggio. He didn’t like the man, and considered that his action at Blackfriars had been unfriendly, though proper enough, but they were still upon good, if not intimate terms. He might risk some plain speech now. So he edged his horse a little closer to Campeggio’s slow-paced mount, and said,

  “When I come into the King’s presence it will be for the first time since the Court rose, as you know. I displeased him and he may be short with me. It would ease matters if I knew the answer to one question. You have the answer, or should do. Would His Holiness be more disposed to grant the annulment, when the case comes up in Rome, if His Grace were minded to take for his next wife some lady other than the Lady Anne?”

  Campeggio said, after a small pause for thought,

  “The case will be tried upon its merits. I am not a seer, nor am I conversant with His Holiness’s intentions; but I think it would be safe to say that he will take into consideration the ultimate good of all concerned and such consideration must include the future of this country as part of Christendom.”