Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard - Jean Plaidy

There was one other who watched her as she went about the court; Anne knew this, though others might not, for though he was by no means a subtle man, he had managed so far to keep this passion, which he felt for one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, very secret.

Anne did not care to think too much of this man. She did not care to feel those little eyes upon her. His manner was correct enough, yet now there were those who were beginning to notice something. She had seen people whispering together, smiling slyly. Now the King is done with the elder sister, is it to be the younger? What is it about these Boleyns? Thomas is advanced as rapidly as my lord Cardinal ever was; George has posts that should have gone to a grey-haired man; Mary...of course we understand how it was with Mary; and now, is it to be the same story with Anne?

No! Anne told herself fiercely. Never!

If Thomas Wyatt had not a wife already, she thought, how pleasant it would be to listen to his excellent verses, which were chiefly about herself. She could picture the great hall at Allington Castle decked out for the Christmas festivities, herself and Thomas taking chief parts in some entertainment they had written for the amusement of their friends. But that could not be.

Her position at court had become complicated. She was thinking of a conversation she had had with the King, when he, who doubtless had seen her walking in the palace grounds, had come down to her unattended and had said, his eyes burning in his heated face, that he would have speech with her.

He had asked her to walk with him to a little summer-house he knew of where they could be secret. She had felt limp with terror, had steeled herself, had realized full well that in the coming interview she would have need of all her wits; she must flatter him and refuse him; she must soothe him, pacify him, and pray that he might turn his desirous eyes upon someone more willing.

She had entered the summer-house, feeling the color in her cheeks, but her fear made her hold her head the higher; her very determination helped to calm her. He had stood looking at her as he leaned against the doors, a mighty man, his padded clothes, glittering and colorful, adding to his great stature. He would have her accept a costly gift of jewels; he told her that he had favored her from the moment he had seen her in her father’s garden, that never had he set eyes on one who pleased him more; in truth he loved her. He spoke with confidence, for at that time he had believed it was but necessary to explain his feelings towards her to effect her most willing surrender. Thus it had been on other occasions; why should this be different?

She had knelt before him, and he would have raised her, saying lightly and gallantly: No, she must not kneel; it was he who should kneel to her, for by God, he was never more sure of his feelings towards any in his life before.

She had replied: “I think, most noble and worthy King, that Your Majesty speaks these words in mirth to prove me, without intent of degrading your noble self. Therefore, to ease you of the labor of asking me any such question hereafter, I beseech Your Highness most earnestly to desist and take this my answer, which I speak from the depth of my soul, in good part. Most noble King! I will rather lose my life than my virtue, which will be the greatest and best part of the dowry I shall bring my husband.”

It was bold; it was clever; it was characteristic of Anne. She had known full well that something of this nature would happen, and she had therefore prepared herself with what she would say when it did. She was no Percy to be browbeaten, she was a subject and Henry was King, well she knew that; but this matter of love was not a matter for a king and subject—it was for a man and woman; and Anne was not one to forget her rights as a woman, tactful and cautious as the subject in her might feel it necessary to be.

The King was taken aback, but not seriously; she was so beautiful, kneeling before him, that he was ready to forgive her for putting off her surrender. She wanted to hold him off; very well, he was ever a hunter who liked a run before the kill. He bade her cease to kneel, and said, his eyes devouring her since already in his mind he was possessing her, that he would continue to hope.

But her head shot up at that, the color flaming in her cheeks.

“I understand not, most mighty King, how you should retain such hope,” she said. “Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of mine own unworthiness and also because you have a Queen already.” And then there came the most disturbing sentence of all: “Your mistress I will not be!”

Henry left her; he paced his room. He had desired her deeply when she had been a girl of sixteen, but his conscience had got between him and desire; he had made no protest when she had wrenched open the cage door and flown away. Now here she was back again, more desirable, a lovely woman where there had been a delightful girl. This time, he had thought, she shall not escape. He believed he had but to say so and it would be so. He had stifled the warnings of his conscience and now he had to face the refusal of the woman. It could not be; in a long and amorous life it had never been so. He was the King; she the humblest of his Queen’s ladies. No, no! This was coquetry; she wished to keep him waiting, that he might burn the fiercer. If he could believe that was all, how happy he would be!

For his desire for Anne Boleyn astonished him. Desire he knew well; how speedily it came, how quickly it could be gratified. One’s passion flamed for one particular person; there was a sweet interlude when passion was slaked and still asked to be slaked; then...the end. It was the inevitable pattern. And here was one who said with a ring of determination in her voice: “Your mistress I will not be!” He was angry with her; had she forgotten he was the King? She had spoken to him as though he were a gentleman of the court...any gentleman. Thus had she spoken to him in her father’s garden at Hever. The King grew purple with fury against her; then he softened, for it was useless to rail against that which enslaved him; it was her pride, it was her dignity which would make the surrender more sweet.

The King saw himself in his mirror. A fine figure of a man...if the size of him was considered. The suit he was wearing had cost three thousand pounds, and that not counting all the jewels that adorned it. But she was not the one to say yes to a suit of clothes; it would be the man inside it. He would smile at himself; he could slap his thigh; he was sure enough of eventual success with her.

He too had changed since those days when he allowed his conscience to come between him and this Anne Boleyn. The change was subtle, but definite enough. The conscience was still the dominating feature in his life. There it was, more than life size. The change was this: The conscience no longer ruled him; he ruled the conscience. He soothed it and placated it, and put his own construction on events before he let the conscience get at them. There was Mary Boleyn; he had done with Mary; he had decided that when Anne returned. He would cease to think of Mary. Oh, yes, yes, he knew there were those who might say there was an affinity between him and Anne, but in the course of many years of amorous adventures had this never happened before? Was there no man at court who had loved two sisters, perhaps unwittingly? Mayhap he himself had! For—and on this point Henry could be very stern—court morals being as they were, who could be sure who was closely related to whom? Suppose these sisters had had a different father! There! Was not the affinity reduced by one half? One could never know the secret of families. What if even the one mother did not give birth to the two daughters! One could never be sure; there had been strange stories of changeling children. This matter was not really worth wasting another moment’s thought on. What if he were to eschew Anne on account of this edict, and make a match for her, only to discover then that she was not Mary’s sister after all! Would it not be more sinful to take another man’s wife? And this desire of his for this unusual girl could but be slaked one way, well he knew. Better to take her on chance that she might be Mary Boleyn’s sister. He would forget such folly!

There was another matter too, about which his conscience perturbed him deeply and had done so for some time, in effect ever since he had heard that Katharine could bear no more children. Very deeply was he perturbed on this matter; so deeply that he had spoken of it to his most trusted friends. For all the years he had been married to Katharine there was but one daughter of the union. What could this mean? Why was it that Katharine’s sons died one after the other? Why was it that only one of their offspring—and this a girl—had been allowed to live? There was some deep meaning in this, and Henry thought he had found it. There was assuredly some blight upon his union with Katharine, and what had he done, in the eyes of a righteous God, to deserve this? He knew not...except it be by marrying his brother’s wife. Was it not written in the book of Leviticus that should a man marry his brother’s wife their union should be childless? He had broken off all marital relations with Katharine when the doctors had told him she would never have any more children. Ah! Well he remembered that day; pacing up and down his room in a cold fury. No son for Henry Tudor! A daughter! And why? Why? Then his mind had worked fast and furiously on this matter of a divorce. Exciting possibility it had seemed. Divorces—forbidden by Holy Church on principle—could be obtained for political reasons from the Pope, who was ever ready to please those in high places. I must have an heir! Henry told his conscience. What would happen, should I die and not leave an heir? There is mine and Katharine’s daughter, Mary; but a woman on the throne of England! No! I must have a male heir! Women are not made to rule great countries; posterity will reproach me, an I leave not an heir.

There in his mirror looked back the great man. He saw the huge head, the powerful, glittering shoulders; and this man could not produce a son for England! A short while ago he had had his son by Elizabeth Blount brought to him, and had created him Duke of Richmond, a title which he himself had carried in his youth; that he had done in order to discomfort Katharine. I could have a son, he implied. See! Here is my son. It is you who have failed! And all the tears she shed in secret, and all her prayers, availed her little. She had nothing to give him but a daughter, for—and when he thought of this, the purple veins stood out on Henry’s forehead—she had lied; she had sworn that her marriage with Arthur had never been consummated; she had tricked him, deceived him; this pale, passionless Spanish woman had tricked him into marriage, had placed in jeopardy the Tudor dynasty. Henry was filled with self-righteous anger, for he wanted a divorce and he wanted it for the noblest of reasons...not for himself, but for the house of Tudor; not to establish his manhood and virility in the eyes of his people, not to banish an aging, unattractive wife...not for these things, but because he, who had previously not hesitated to plunge his people into useless war, feared civil war for them; because he lived in sin with one who had never been his wife, having already lived with his brother. This, his conscience—now so beautifully controlled—told Henry. And all these noble thoughts were tinged rose-color by a beautiful girl who was obstinately haughty, whose cruel lips, said, “I will never be your mistress!” But it was not necessary for his conscience to dwell upon that matter as yet, for a king does not raise a humble lady-in-waiting to be his queen, however desirable she may be. No, no! No thought of that had entered his head...not seriously, of course. The girl was there, and it pleased him to think of her in his arms, for such reflections were but natural and manly; and how she was to be got into that position was of small consequence, being a purely personal matter, whereas this great question of divorce was surely an affair of state.

So was his mind active in these matters, and so did he view the reluctance of her whom he desired above all others with a kindly tolerance, like a good hunter contented to stalk awhile, and though the stalking might be arduous, that would be of little account when the great achievement would be his.

Thus was there some truth in the remarks of the Duchess of Norfolk when she had said to her granddaughter, Catherine Howard, that Anne Boleyn was leading the King a merry dance.

In their apartments at the palace Jane Boleyn was quarreling with her husband. He sat there in the window seat, handsome enough to plague her, indifferent enough to infuriate her. He was writing on a scrap of paper, and he was smiling as he composed the lyrics that doubtless his clever sister would set to music, that they might be sung before the King.

“Be silent, Jane,” he said lightly, and it was his very lightness that maddened her, for well she knew that he did not care sufficiently for her even to lose his temper. He was tapping with his foot, smiling, well pleased with his work.

“What matters it,” she demanded bitterly, “whether I speak or am silent? You do not heed which I do.”

“As ever,” said George, “you speak without thought. Were that so, why should I beg you for silence?”

She shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

“Words! Words! You would always have them at your disposal. I hate you. I wish I had never married you!”

“Sentiments, my dear Jane, which it may interest you to know are reciprocated by your most unwilling husband.”

She went over to him, and sat on the window seat.

“George...” she began tearfully.

He sighed. “Since your feelings towards me are so violent, my dear, would it not be wiser if you removed yourself from this seat, or better still from this room? Should you prefer it, of course, I will be the one to go. But you know full well that you followed me hither.”

As he spoke his voice became weary; the pen in his hand moved as though it were bidding him stop this stupid bickering and get on with what was of real moment to him. His foot began to tap.

Angrily she took the quill from him and threw it to the floor.

He sat very still, looking at it, not at her. If she could have roused him to anger, she would have been less angry with him; it was his indifference—it always had been—that galled her.

“I hate you!” she said again.

“Repetition detracts from, rather than adds to vehemence,” he said in his most lightsome tone. “Venom is best expressed briefly; over-statement was ever suspect, dear Jane.”

“Dear Jane!” she panted. “When have I ever been dear to you?”

“There you ask a question which gallantry might bid me answer one way, truth another.”

He was cruel, and he meant to be cruel; he knew how to hurt her most; he had discovered her to be jealous, possessive and vindictive, and having no love for her he cared nothing for the jealousy, while the possessiveness irked him, and her vindictiveness left him cold; he was careless of himself and reckless as to what harm might come to him.

Her parents had thought it advantageous to link their daughter’s fortunes with those of the Boleyns, which were rising rapidly under the warming rays of royal favor; so she had married, and once married had fallen victim to the Boleyn charm, to that ease of manner, to that dignity, to that cleverness. But what hope had Jane of gaining George’s love? What did she know of the things for which he cared so deeply? He thought her stupid, colorless, illiterate. Why, she wondered, could he not be content to make merry, to laugh at the frivolous matters which pleased her; why could he not enjoy a happy married life with her, have children? But he did not want her, and foolishly she thought that by quarreling, by forcing him to notice her, she might attract him; instead of which she alienated him, wearied him, bored him. They were strange people, thought Jane, these two younger Boleyns; amazingly alike, both possessing in a large degree the power of attracting not only those who were of the same genre as themselves, but those who were completely opposite. Jane believed them both to be cold people; she hated Anne; indeed she had never been so wretched in her life until the return of her sister-in-law; she hated her, not because Anne had been unpleasant to her, for indeed Jane must admit that Anne had in the first instance made efforts to be most sisterly; but she hated Anne because of the influence she had over her brother, because he could give her who was merely his young sister much affection and admiration, while for Jane, his wife who adored him, he had nothing but contempt.