To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

TEN

Year of Our Lord 1529

Richmond Palace

Hampton Court Palace

One late spring night a few months after I’d returned to court, Henry threw a masque. On the off chance that anyone at court had not realized the state of his heart and mind, he chose a Greek mythology theme to make that point clear, in particular, to Cardinal Campeggio and others of the delegation now here to decide his “great matter.” Henry was cast as Eros.

There was a rare moment when Anne and I could talk alone. Normally a swarm of courtiers enveloped her in their cloud. The closer you were to the king, of course, the easier to imbibe of the royal nectar, and some used the excuse to intoxicate themselves. Not Anne, though he exalted her of his own accord. “Why does Henry insist that we pretend not to know who he is, thusly disguised?” I asked. It was ludicrous, really. There were few men as tall as he, nearly none with his mane, and his presence was unmistakably regal.

“I think he desires to be liked for himself and not his position,” Anne said. “In masque, he’s allowed that.”

It was a rare glimpse into the heart of one whom we rarely acknowledged as having the needs any man may have, and perhaps one reason why he loved Anne remarkably. Some said he controlled his ardor because, as a master huntsman, he desired to close the chase. And whilst I suppose that was true, Anne was also the only woman who treated Henry as mere man, chiding him one moment then building him up the next, offering him new books and new thoughts, displaying her love for him in unadorned offerings as a simple country wife would to her husband.

Of course, he wasn’t her husband yet.

The hearings to determine the validity of Henry’s marriage were under way; the pope had determined that Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio, from Rome, should judge the matter. It was understandable that the pope did not want to rule on it himself. The queen’s nephew, Charles the Fifth, had made his will plainly known by sacking Rome two years before and holding the pope hostage in part so he could not rule on the validity of his aunt’s marriage. Hence, the pope had not ruled. We all knew what Wolsey, the king’s lapdog through and through, would decree and he assured the king that Campeggio would find the marriage void as well. Back and forth the arguments went, with nearly all men, courtiers and priests, siding with the king, with a few notable exceptions. Women were not allowed at the Blackfriars hearings save one, on one fateful day.

The queen.

After each day’s trial proceeding George rushed into Anne’s apartments to give us the day’s events. I told Jessica to help herself to a date afore she and her mother took their leave. Afterward, she curtseyed to me and backed away. “You’re shameless with that girl,” Anne said. “Encouraging her to come with her mother and then feeding her sweets. She will not know her place.”

“She knows it well enough,” I said, allowing my voice to show my irritation at Anne’s rising imperiousness. So soon, already, she had forgotten what it was like to be a curious girl. “’Tis not hard to give the child a few reprieves in a hard life.”

George grabbed a goblet of wine and drew near to us. He was splendidly attired in blue silk sleeves slashed to show white linen beneath, silken hose like an aristocratic voice, and boots blacker than an ironsmith’s forearms. I had watched many a woman at court, married and other, young and other, try to beguile him, and though he flirted, as we all did, he had not yielded.

“Where is your wife?” I asked him.

“I know not, nor care,” he said. “She was kind-tongued to me for a fortnight after I was knighted, crowing about her title, and now she’s back to chewing my ear whenever our paths cross. But I have news.”

George’s voice grew excited. “The queen was at court today to answer the charge that she was Arthur’s true bride. She denied it, loudly, from the courtroom for all to hear. She declared herself a maid then and true now as she knelt at his feet. And, after doing so, she turned her back on Henry before he could answer her and departed from the court with her retinue.”

“What did Henry do after she boldly lied to his face?” Anne asked, aghast as all would be that she would call the king a fraud, publicly, and then turn her back on him.

“His mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. Henry has his faults but his honor would not allow him to call the queen a liar in an open court full of men. But the look he gave Bishop Fisher, her defender….” George took another drink of his wine before continuing. “I should not care to sleep in his bed this night.”

As for myself, I had never suspected the queen could lie. But Anne was no fool and Henry had made his assurances to her. If a queen could not lie, could God’s anointed king? Surely one of them must have. I, like Fisher, slept uneasily that night.

By the end of May the court disbanded with no clear answer for Henry. Campeggio went back to Rome, stalling, as no doubt the pope had instructed him to do. Wolsey was undone and he knew it. Henry had run out of patience. Another solution to the great matter needed to be found.

Wolsey, in damage control, had new quarters fashioned for Anne at Hampton Court Palace, his magnificent Thames-side residence, and we stayed there first, on progress. The gardens were heady with tulips, lazily nodding like children tempted to a nap on a hot afternoon. The hedges had been cut in neat rows of lover’s knots, and Anne and I strolled through them.

“Why was Henry apoplectic this morning?” I asked. All had seen his blood-infused face as he strode through the long hall.

“Thomas More,” she answered, winding her way down through the roses.

“Truly?” Thomas More had been like a surrogate father to Henry; Henry admired him greatly and though More differed with the king on the great matter, he had mostly kept his peace and thus retained their friendship and his head.

“Sir Thomas has issued another book and in it he stridently defends the pope and comes out against all who question him.” Anne looked at me over her shoulder. “Which would include Luther and Tyndale, mainly. But though it remains unspoken, all know he means Henry as well.”

“What has he said?” I asked.

“Oh, everything. That Tyndale’s a heretic. More ridicules them at every turn, including his marriage. You knew that Luther had married and yet still claims to remain a priest.”

My heart was ensnared. “Mayhap…. mayhap with reform that will be the case for priests here, as well,” I said.

Anne reached out and twisted a lock of my hair in the sisterly fashion. “No, dearest. Henry himself has told me that there will be no married priests in England whilst he is the king. In most manners, Henry is a prim man with a desire to follow, not change, rules. His rules, of course, but he views his rules, rightly, I believe, as God’s rules. He’s the anointed king. Any priest in his realm will always remain unmarried. His idea for reform is to bring that which concerns the king into line with Holy Writ—as rendered in Latin.”

Which would not include priests who could marry. I gently slid away from her and turned my face toward the river, ostensibly to look out over the gliding swans but also to hide my anger. It worked well enough for Henry to overthrow those canons that suited him but perhaps not those that might rightly benefit others. Do not his subjects both great and low deserve to have reform in keeping with Holy Writ? I surprised myself with my strong feelings on the matter. I turned back to her. “And, as we speak of marriage, Anne, does Henry still speak of marriage to you? Or only of bedding?”

Anne sat down on a stone bench under an arbor of curled roses, climbing for all they were worth like any ambitious gentry. She patted the seat beside her and indicated that I should sit down. I did.

“He does seek to bed me still, but I have persuaded him that we must wait. Not only for my own honor, but also for the sake of the legitimacy of our son. Another Fitzroy would do him no good.”

“Nor you,” I said, my voice not unkind. But I was aware that a shell of pretense now surrounded Anne at court and if she were ever to hear the truth it would only come from myself or George.

“Nor I,” she admitted. “But do not fret. I will not chase a man I cannot have. I’ll let the one I can have chase me.”

“I’m no longer certain this is such a good idea,” I said, foreboding rising up within me like bile. “There has been no annulment and a divorce does not look likely, either.”

“I’ve not been polished by years in the French court to be sent to a backwater after a short time as Henry’s bedmate. God did not create me to be any man’s plaything. My father, for all his worldliness, has never taken a mistress, nor had he bedded my mother before marriage.”

Anne stopped and faced me afore taking my hands in her own. “God has given clear instructions on how a man is to treat his wife. I require—and desire—that kind of treatment. I will not back down.”

I had never been more aware that my own life and fortunes were so closely buttoned to those of Anne, especially as my husband was disabled by illness and shortly would no longer offer me any legal protection, though my finances would be well situated.

“Henry’s ability to resolve his own marriage situation is his right, as it is any man’s who claims that his bride was not a maid. As well, it’s to vindicate his rule—his right to determine what happens in his own realm. He must be sovereign over his entire kingdom. Hence, his title: king.”

This last one, of the king’s superiority over even the pope, was a new thought, and I wondered where she’d come upon it.

“He’s often recounted to me how he, as a boy, cried in the Tower as he and his mother took refuge there whilst his father defended his kingship. It could not have been defended by a woman. Henry cannot let that victory be nullified by his lack of a capable heir.

“His marriage is null and void before God,” she continued. “We speak openly of it. He knows how I prize a true marriage and he would not lead me astray if one were not possible.”

“That prize comes at a cost,” I said pointedly, not backing away.

“Everything comes at a cost,” she replied.

We often spent an evening in Anne’s rooms, which were large and many; they had become a center for social gatherings of both sexes, but often just for us women as the men were hunting or at bowls. Sometimes when our numbers were few and trusted, Anne brought out her reformist books and started a discussion. She was interested in reform for its own sake, of course—her faith was true and vibrant and I could see it grow within her—but also, I believed, she enjoyed such discussions because they engendered risk and that fit with her personality. I knew she agitated for Scripture in English and for priests who spoke of salvation by grace and not by works. I sat nearby and listened but did not participate. Though I attended Mass with all, in my personal life God and I remained alienated. I oft felt like a stubborn child with crossed arms but a justified one who crossed said arms over her heart to protect it from an untrustworthy Father.

Anne Gainsford, soon to be Lady Zouche, had no such alienation. “May I see?” She reached out and touched a book from Anne’s cache, William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man. It had been published in Antwerp the year before and smuggled to Anne through George.

“Of course,” Anne said. “I have marked a few passages to share with the king. Here, look.”

Mistress Gainsford leaned over and paraphrased some passages aloud for us. “All men should obey God’s law, not the law of the church, which is not the same.” She scanned some more. “All men are subject to the earthly authority of a king and the king is not subject to the separate authority of the church but instead is the final authority in his own land.” She looked up. “You know that More and Wolsey have burnt Tyndale’s books. And men themselves have similarly been set ablaze for like cause.”

“I know,” Anne said. “Take it. Have a care, and return it to me when you are done.”

A week later Mistress Gainsford raced into Anne’s chambers in the most indelicate manner. “A terrible mishap has befallen me!” She fell on her knees before Anne and rested her head in Anne’s lap. “And therefore you, mistress! Lord Zouche found Tyndale’s book in my possession and was reading it when the dean spied him. The dean snatched the book, asked who it belonged to, and when he replied that it was yours he swore to take it to Wolsey to be your undoing.”

Anne patted her head, and though I could spy a twist of concern between her eyes she kept her voice smooth and commanding. “Fear not. ’Twill be the dearest book that ever dean or cardinal took away.”

Later that evening she returned to us, triumphant. Mistress Gainsford had worn her hands and eyes red with anticipation but she needn’t have worried. “What did the king say, my lady?” she asked.

Anne grinned. “I showed him my marked passages, those declaring his supremacy in his own realm, and he said, ‘This is a book for me and all kings to read.’”

Weeks later Henry set a zealous young priest of a reformist bent to find biblical cause for the resolution of his great matter. The priest, Cranmer, was a friend of my nephew John Rogers, and therefore of Will. Cranmer boarded at Hever Castle whilst he began to marshal the evidence.

On October ninth of that year Cardinal Wolsey was charged with praemunire, appealing to a foreign power, in this case, the pope, over his own king. Henry did not take Wolsey’s life for treason but did demote him, allowing him only to keep the title and office of bishop of York. The cardinal had never been to York, but he commenced anon and he looked dressed for a long, cold journey.

As he and a small band of attendants pulled away from Hampton Court, I asked Anne, “Does it trouble you that Henry seems to show so little loyalty?” I was thinking of Wolsey, of course, but also Mary Boleyn and Henry’s own children by her, of Henry’s lawful daughter, Mary, and even the queen. She may have come to him under false pretense but she had served him well. Now she may as well have never existed.

“Perhaps Wolsey did not earn the king’s loyalty. Thomas always and ever served himself first.” Anne thought I spoke only of Wolsey. I did not disabuse her of the idea by bringing up the others, though perhaps I should have. Anne had her prize in sight. I had a care for the considerable cost she, and maybe I, might pay to achieve and keep it.