“Alas, ’twas not to be, through no fault of your own for certes, My Lady,” he said. “Indeed, I am his heir and he left ample accounts. No, I was thinking on bounty of another sort. Mayhap that is conversation left for another time. I shall be back to court after I make the rounds of the properties. As soon as a…. suitable time has passed.”
I nodded and held his sleeve and kept a deceptively gentle smile on my face. “Thank you. It’s been difficult to come to understand all of these changes, as you can well imagine. Why, I have not even been able to sleep well these past days since Edmund brought me the news.” I mocked dull feminine wiles.
He smiled down at me. “Have not another care. I shall have Meredith bring a draught to your lady maid which will aid you. I find it at a physic in London.”
I put my head down demurely to conceal my response. The Duke of Suffolk is not the only member of court able to coax an unwilling thought from an unguarded mind. I watched Edmund, who appeared as near happy as I’d ever seen him, dance with the Ogilvys’ young ward. His warning about how the court would change me rang in my ears.
Yes, Edmund, you were right. But here we must be wily as the serpent as well as gentle as the dove.
Serpents were not far from my mind throughout the remainder of the year. In October the king learned that the archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, so recently demoted, had been in secret negotiations with Charles the Fifth on behalf of the banished queen. There was no word for it other than treason, which Henry never brooked. The king summoned Wolsey to appear before him. Wolsey died, apparently in justifiable fright, en route. No mourning took place. When the king was told that the man who had served him selflessly for decades had died, he declined to interrupt his archery lessons to comment. I wondered if Anne felt vindicated in any way—over the Percy affair—but she, wisely, said nothing.
Rather than be buried in the fine black marble tomb Wolsey had prepared for himself, the king had him interred, without monument, in obscure Leicester Abbey.
One day I was with Anne and a gaggle of other ladies when the king strode into the Long Hall. He approached Anne and drew her near him as he went to the head of the room to take his throne in advance of a diplomatic meeting. She indicated I should come along with her; I suspected Henry had told her he wanted to share a word with me.
The king looked upon me. “We are sorry for your loss, Baroness.”
I curtseyed and looked down for a moment before meeting his gaze. “Thank you, Your Majesty. The baron was a good man.”
The king nodded. “That we know well. He fought with our father, and indeed, with yours, at Bosworth.”
I said nothing, knowing that conversation was not required nor perhaps even welcome.
“Your father shall find you another husband anon,” he said. “Or your brother. ’Tis not good to remain unmarried too long.” At that he turned to Anne and grinned, his teeth wolflike behind his fair beard, and yet the sexuality and power of the man were almost unbearable. Anne smiled back but there was some strain that, having known her so long, was clear to me. I took my leave but not before watching as the king’s eyes searched for and found a pretty young maid of honor. She smiled modestly, yet flirtatiously, and held his gaze.
I looked up at Anne. She’d seen it too. The look on her face told me that it had not been an unfamiliar sight.
TWELVE
Year of Our Lord 1531
York Place
Windsor Castle
We began the year at York Place for the simple reason that there were no separate lodgings for the queen. That made it unlikely that she would come, even if she had been invited, and made things less uncomfortable for Anne and her mother, who shared prime accommodations underneath what had been the archbishop’s library. I did not believe in ghosts, of course, but of a sudden I could come around a corner and feel a cold, queer presence of Thomas Wolsey, whose house it had been. Henry set about refashioning it into his own image, as he did everything he touched. At a masque that year he styled himself as Midas and Anne was dressed in a magnificent gown of cloth of gold. Perhaps there would be a reverse Midas touch at play, later, wherein everything he turned to gold later disintegrated into ashes. But not York Place, or as it was to be known, Whitehall Palace. Henry spent a great deal of time there supervising the transformation and cavorting with Anne.
She, in her cloth of gold, was the sun, and all were drawn toward her. Anyone wanting to seek the king’s favor—or a grant, or a property, or an office—sent gifts to Anne. She received jewels and cloth and hairpieces and sweets and rare fruits of all kinds. She did not have a taste for sweets or fruits, save dates, but accepted them graciously and noted the benefactors who sent them her way. Sir Nicolas Carewe, a lifelong friend of the king and Anne’s cousin, brought her a monkey as a gift. Mayhap he did not realize that Anne hated monkeys above all other animals, finding them noisy and vulgar. I rather suspected that Sir Nicolas did know that Anne hated monkeys but that Katherine of Aragon loved them well. It was his way of drawing a comparison between Anne, whom he loved not, and Katherine, whom he did.
Often Anne passed along a good tiding to the king on the gift giver’s behalf, but most often her favors were granted to reformer priests or simple gentry families, countless of whom had nothing with which to earn her pleasure. In spite of this, many of the king’s men grumbled that she was too politic for a woman. I suspect they nursed injured egos after a bout with her tongue. But she used her skills well, to the advantage of those whom she loved, and one could hardly fault her for this. ’Twas the way of all at court.
We ladies were caring for her gowns, observing the throng in her apartments seeking to curry her favor. As we did, Lady Zouche noted with pride, “Those who thought Anne Boleyn would be a passing fancy were woefully wrong.” As I tended one of Anne’s hundred or so dresses I had to agree, but my spirit was nervously discomfited.
One day in March, as the rain wept down the high leaded windows, Thomas Cromwell escorted a small assembly of men toward the king, enthroned in his presence chamber, wearied by one request after another from obsequious courtiers. Except for Anne, who remained near the king, we ladies mingled toward the edge of the room with our chatter and our spaniels. When the king spied Cromwell, who had been a lawyer under Wolsey till the latter’s death, he motioned him forward.
“Come forward, my good man,” the king called out. “Have you a report for me?”
The court grew quiet then. Many loiterers looked about them for a quick escape route should the king unloose the stays that contained his temper if the report should ill serve him. I looked at Cromwell, who broke into a smile, and Cranmer’s happy countenance, and knew all was well. The king summoned them forward. As we had not been dismissed to take our leave we stood fast and pretended to go about our business though every ear tilted forward.
“We’ve completed the final copy of the Collectanea satis copiosa, sire,” Cromwell stated. His voice, usually calm and hard to hear, fairly boomed through the chamber. My mind translated the Latin as the “sufficiently abundant collections.”
“Your findings?” Henry said. I watched his face, and Anne’s. Neither showed surprise. I looked about the chamber. Nearly every courtier of import was present as the king planned a dinner that evening to which everyone of consequence had been invited—nay, commanded.
I glanced at Lady Zouche and saw that she had drawn the same conclusion. This announcement was not a surprise. It was staged, as one of Henry’s great masques, for dramatic effect.
“Our findings, Your Majesty, have been reached after several years of studies by the finest minds here in England and also on the Continent. Learned men, dedicated to the truth and to Your Highness and to our Lord. We studied religious texts, primarily Holy Writ, and Latin texts, and Anglo-Saxon documents from the time of the establishment of our great land.”