The Queen of Subtleties Page 6

  Our two envoys, Eddie Fox and Stephen Gardiner, came ashore at Sandwich one morning in May. Still sea-legged, they managed to ride through the afternoon to Greenwich, desperate to tell Henry their news. Having heard the gist, he immediately turned them around and sent them across the courtyard to my rooms. They arrived dusty and sweaty at my door, Eddie Fox’s eyes bloodshot. The news was that they’d got what they’d gone for: the Pope would do as Wolsey had requested and send a legate to try our case in England. I laughed, and they laughed: the three of us, half-delirious. Annie, my maid, was suddenly there, her hand on my shoulder, her own laughter a hum. My mother put down her sewing. My brother appeared from my bedroom, where he’d been teaching French to Franky Weston.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘I think it’s starting to go our way,’ I told him. ‘I think we’re winning. Some papal lackey is coming all the way to rainy England to rule Henry’s marriage over.’ I shooed the two men away: ‘Go and tell Wolsey, at York Place.’ To be honest, they were reeking, and I reckoned Wolsey should have to see to them.

  That summer, I nearly died. What would have happened if I had? Would Henry have stayed with the ridiculous Spaniard? I do think he might have done, more fool him; I doubt he’d have seen the divorce through. I suspect he’d have seen my death as God’s judgement; he’d have been scared out of his wits, chastened. In his own way he’s a very God-fearing man—he has good reason, doesn’t he—but nothing terrifies him as much as illness. For a brave man, he’s easily scared. He’d have sacrificed me—the dream of me, the memory of me—to keep himself free from sickness, I suspect. He’d have been the model husband again and no one would have ever spoken of me. That’s what I think. But of course I’m cynical, these days.

  That summer’s awful bout of ‘the sweat’ started with Wolsey’s report of a couple of deaths one day in his household. Immediately, Henry was on the move from Greenwich, with both Catherine and me, in pursuit of fresh air. We took few staff, for speed; the most important member of our little travelling household being Henry’s apothecary, Mr Blackden. Our first stop, Waltham Abbey, was no refuge: there was a death on the evening we arrived. The next morning, Henry revised his plans and sent me home to Hever. Hever’s a good place, he insisted: you’re lucky. He—and Catherine—moved on to Hunsdon, that day; and kept moving, every day, chased by the disease—a death here, three deaths there—until they arrived at Wolsey’s vacant manor in the back of beyond at Tittenhanger. There, Franky Weston later informed me, Henry had the walls and floors washed with vinegar, and fires burned in every room to burn up any bad air. For fresher air, he wanted his bedroom window enlarged. So, local workmen arrived, and made a lot of mess and dust. Henry’s mind had turned to higher matters, though: he was busy trying to appease his disgruntled God by saying confession daily and hearing Mass—with Catherine—more than he usually would.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently to Franky, ‘but did they…?’

  ‘Did they…?’

  ‘Him and the queen: you know.’

  ‘Oh. No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Franky assured me that he’d had the job, nightly, of sleeping in Henry’s room, on hand in case of an emergency. ‘And he smelt vile,’ he added, ‘from Mr Blackden’s potions.’

  Hever, in contrast, was entirely as normal—until Dad and I became ill. People say of sweating sickness, Fine at lunch, dead by supper. On the day concerned, Dad and I were fine at lunch, but by mid-afternoon it was clear that we wouldn’t be showing up for supper. Not that I knew anything about Dad; I knew nothing but the ball in my throat and the fire in my joints. I now know that Mum sent one of our servants at speed to Henry, but all I knew at the time was the momentary relief of water-soaked linen strips to my forehead. She’d sent Annie from my room and was nursing me—and Dad. She’d learned from her stepmother, who had a reputation for being able to beat ‘the sweat’ (and indeed everything and everyone else that didn’t meet with her approval; not for nothing was she the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk). Bed, my grandmother reckoned, for a day and a night; no food for a day, a night and a day; no visitors for a week; and as many spoonfuls of some herbal, treacly concoction of hers that a delirious person could be tricked into taking.

  By the time that Henry’s trusted Dr Butts arrived on our drawbridge, both Dad and I had survived into the ‘no visitors’ stage. An exception was made for one of the king’s doctors, of course, and I made the most of it. He and I ended up talking about the new ideas, the changes in what we believed and how we believed. No morbid priest-lover, Dr Butts; instead, a gently sensible man with a sense of humour. It’s not that I was starved of like-minded company when I was home. Quite the opposite. Nor back at court, where my brother’s radical friends had become mine and I was no longer in Catherine’s service. But after those few days of wild sickness and my mother’s ministrations, I felt stunningly isolated. Dr Butts did me the favour of staying for I don’t know how long on a stool by my bed, talking about the future while the June rain sloshed into the moat and the day’s light thinned.

  As it happened, Uncle Norfolk, at Kenning Hall, had also had the illness, and had also survived. Did it surprise us, our survival? Nothing much surprises a Boleyn or Norfolk; least of all, survival. None of us was surprised, though, when my sister’s husband William succumbed. Except her. None of us was surprised that he’d made no provisions and, worse, had run up some nasty debts. Except her. She wrote to Dad from Richmond, desperate and destitute with her two small children. But he was in no mood for Mary. ‘I said she shouldn’t have married him,’ was his view.

  ‘But she did, dear,’ Mum reasoned.

  He’d always despised Mary; she embarrassed him, unmistakably Boleyn in her looks but easy-going, easily pleased. He refused to help her. Wouldn’t even allow her home. She should be at Leeds Castle, he said, asking Wolsey for her due. William had been employed in the Privy Chamber by the king; so, according to my father, it was up to Wolsey to make suitable arrangements for ‘the widow’, as he called her. We’d had word that Wolsey was besieged by people demanding debts be repaid from the estates of deceased, and vying for their now-vacant jobs (cousin Francis getting William’s).

  ‘She should be there in the middle of it all,’ Dad said, ‘making a case, telling a few lies if needs be; whatever it takes to get whatever she can. Instead of acting the baby and wailing for me to do it. She didn’t want my advice, before, when I offered it.’

  ‘That’s because she was in love,’ my mother said. ‘She has two small children, she can’t be gadding to Leeds Castle. We don’t even know that she has any way of getting there. She has no money, Thomas; just the coins in her purse.’

  But he wouldn’t budge, and I suspected that he was still far from normal after his fever. Because otherwise, I couldn’t fathom it. He’s a hard man, yes, a cold man, but he’s a pragmatist; and his rejection of Mary seemed self-defeating, to me. I could understand that he might be more than usually sensitive to how people saw us, now that we Boleyns were so much in the public eye, but this was entirely the wrong tactic. Mary’s a fact, I told him; she isn’t going away because you won’t see her.

  ‘Everyone else will see her,’ I assured him, ‘rattling around the country, threadbare. Is that how you want them to see a Boleyn?’ He knew I was right, but he wouldn’t hear it from me. I knew someone whom he would take it from, though. I wrote to Henry; he’d written me the most wonderful long letter as soon as he knew that I’d survived. You do know, don’t you, that I’ll do anything, anything, anything for you.

  Well, this one’s easy enough, I wrote back. Tell my father to stop being so stupid about Mary.

  Sure enough, a letter came, and my father’s attitude seemed to change. Mary’d better come home, he told my mother, although she’d better keep out of my way.

  I hadn’t long been back at court with Henry before word came that the Pope’s cardinal—Campeggio—was at last in Calais. He’d certainly taken his time. Gout, apparently
, was his bug-bear, had slowed him up. The future of England had hung in the balance while some fat old Italian had vacationed in various European cities. Worse: now that he was well and truly on his way to us, I had to go back home to Hever. This was so that Henry could look respectable, again, and properly conscience-racked. I accepted it for a few days, until I came to my senses, and then I returned to London. If they were to decide my future, I wasn’t going to sit demurely in Kent while they did it.

  Henry kept me at a discreet distance, offering me the use of Durham House on the Strand. A move there would give the wrong signals, I told him. It was a nice enough London house, but hardly the abode of a queen-in-waiting; and home not long ago to Betsy and Fitz, whereas I was no mistress and I’d be having no bastard. So he moved me to the Suffolk’s house in Southwark—one of wet-fish Brandon’s places. ‘Have you seen it?’ I complained. No doubt grand, once, it hadn’t been decorated for decades and was particularly unappealing in a dark, damp October. Henry agreed to renovations. So, for months I had to live with the thumps and whistling of workmen as rooms were re-panelled, ceilings re-painted, windows re-glazed, tapestries hung, a gallery built and the kitchen enlarged. I had distractions enough, though, because all the boys came, most days, to keep me company. They loved it that we had a place of our own and could do as we pleased. I kept odd hours and bad company: my definition of a good time. I knew what the people of London were saying; they were saying what people love to say in such a situation: how dare he leave his dear old wife for a little tart. It rankled that I couldn’t put the record straight—he’d left her long ago, she was a wily old bird, and I wasn’t little nor a tart—but you can’t live your life by what people think.

  There was one person whose thoughts did matter. One visitor I did need. The cardinal himself. Let him come and meet me, I said to Henry; give me enough notice and he’ll find someone gracious, practical, educated and well-informed.

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Henry laughed. ‘But for now he’s laid up with gout.’

  Again?

  Again.

  And when he was back on his less-gouty feet, it was Fat Cath he went to see. ‘He has to,’ Henry said. ‘He has some options to put to her, to try to sort this out before it gets to trial.’

  ‘Options? Such as?’

  ‘Such as, why not do what she does best? Take up the religious life, full-time, by going into a nunnery.’

  I liked it; and, better still, surely so would she. ‘But that’s only one,’ I said; ‘one option. What are the others?’

  Henry looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, they were for me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’ve already said no.’

  ‘But they were…?’

  They were that the Pope could give a fresh, unambiguous dispensation, in retrospect, for Henry’s existing ‘marriage’ to his dead brother’s wife—in other words, excuse it—or that the problem of his having no heir could be solved by the marriage of his weasel-faced daughter to his bastard son.

  ‘They’re suggesting that?’ Naturally, I was aghast. ‘They’re suggesting that half-sister and half-brother could marry?’

  Henry nodded, clearly as baffled as I was.

  ‘Those people are sick.’

  Henry said, ‘I didn’t put it quite as bluntly as that—I avoided the word ‘sick’—but I think I made myself clear.’

  More than ever I needed that cardinal to meet me. Then he’d realize that I was far from such a bad proposition and didn’t need to be thwarted by such drastic measures—or indeed thwarted at all. I can charm anyone, if necessary; even a foot-sore, pious old Italian. I asked Henry to keep inviting him on my behalf, and to bring some confectionery for me to store at the ready in my kitchens. He brought the confectionery but remained evasive on the subject of the cardinal’s visit. I believed him that he was trying; it was the cardinal, I felt, who was saying no. Instead, I was told, he was visiting Catherine, with Wolsey, where they all spoke in the one language that they had in common: French. My language. She was having the audience that I should have been having, speaking in the language that was mine. As ever, she was insisting that she had been a virgin when she married Henry, that she’d never been a true wife to his brother. For a year now she’d been regaling anyone who would listen—and plenty who weren’t so keen to—with this tale. Had she no shame? Didn’t she understand that this wasn’t really what it was about? Henry wanted rid of her: it was as simple as that. It was obvious. How could she still want him? But she did. She refused the nunnery, time and time again, even when it was put to her in earnest by those she trusted. Even the Pope was keen on the nunnery option; it would solve everyone’s problems. Except Catherine’s, in Catherine’s opinion. She remained insistent that she was Henry’s wife and England’s queen, and would bear those responsibilities until the day she died.

  Roll on, that day, I urged.

  My Uncle Norfolk said to me. ‘Whatever you think of her, you can’t help admire her.’

  ‘You can’t,’ I corrected.

  It seemed to me from all the visits to Catherine and snubs to me, and the talk of nunneries and incest, that our plans now weren’t going well. And God knows what Wolsey was doing about it. Nothing, as far as I could see.

  I raised it with Henry: ‘This isn’t going well, is it.’

  He said nothing, but looked guilty.

  I waited; I knew he had something to say.

  Sure enough: ‘I don’t think it’s going at all,’ he admitted.

  I still said nothing; there was more.

  Now he looked miserable. ‘I wonder, Anne, whether we shouldn’t just accept it, and find a way around it.’

  That intrigued me. ‘Around it?’

  ‘Just…be together.’ His eyes full of pleading.

  That again! ‘We can’t just “be together”, Henry! We don’t have that luxury. You’re a king. Your duty is to make sure that it’s your son who’s king after you.’ I dropped the hectoring. ‘And I’m your chance,’ I urged, ‘And I’m here, I’m ready. Are you really going to let a few scurrying Italians and Spaniards stand in our way?’

  His head was bowed, his lip bitten. ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘Of course not.’

  A week later, at Bridewell, he summoned everyone who was at court and read them a long statement. The gist, relayed to me by George, was that he was sick of gossip and wished to make clear that Catherine was a truly marvellous woman, had been an adoring wife, and theirs had been a supremely happy marriage. And impossible though he knew it was, there was nothing he’d like more than for Cardinal Campeggio to find in Catherine’s favour. And, indeed, if he did so, Henry would marry her all over again.

  He was doing well, George said, up to this point. The problem came as he folded up the piece of paper and could no longer avoid facing the polite, restrained but wide-eyed incredulity of his audience. ‘And I’m telling you,’ he suddenly yelled, ‘if I don’t get full cooperation on all this, there’s none of you so grand your head won’t fly.’

  Strange to think, now, how I laughed when I heard that. But George, bless him, did a good impression, all puffed-up petulance; and I was thinking, too, I suppose, of the grandees in the audience, the suddenly rigid, po-faced Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. I didn’t know, then, of course, how many heads would fly and how many of them would be of people I liked and loved. Nor that mine would, in the end, be joining them.

  Lucy Cornwallis

  SUMMER 1535

  ‘Mark! Haven’t seen you for a while.’ Not since Nonsuch, three or four weeks ago. One step across the threshold and he takes two backwards, aghast at the heat. ‘Oh, the heat: I know,’ and I’m laughing despite being aware of how awful I must look, red- and shiny-faced. But it’s too late to do anything about that, and I’m just glad he’s here. ‘Come in.’

  He glances around the preserving pans, the baskets of fruits, rows of jars. Moulds are laid to dry, and subtleties—marchepane baskets, sugar bowls, marchepane and sugar fruits—are in various s
tates of assembly and decoration. ‘You’re busy,’ he says, and now it’s him who’s laughing: ‘You are so busy.’

  ‘Summer needs bottling.’ Hence the jars. ‘And then there’s midsummer.’ The Feast of St John the Baptist: hence the subtleties.

  He enthuses, ‘You’re so organized.’

  No, ‘I’m just used to it.’ Which isn’t to say that I don’t think back fondly to when I was a child and the feast day meant none of this, no work, just the bonfire in the fields and the cartwheel set alight and rolled through the village. That village bonfire seemed enormous, to me, then, but I don’t suppose it’s a patch on the one that’s built here, every year.

  Inhaling deeply, Mark wants to know, ‘What’s cooking?’

  ‘That’ll be the cherries,’ a nod towards one of the steaming cauldrons, ‘with cloves and cinnamon.’

  He widens his eyes, beguiled. ‘I’d best leave you to it.’

  ‘No, really: all the more need for a distraction.’ But distraction didn’t sound quite right; nor to him, to judge from his flutter of hesitation. ‘Really,’ I repeat quickly, striking my fruit-sticky hands down my apron.

  So, he obliges. Acknowledges Richard: ‘Mr Cornwallis,’ with a twitch of a smile that Richard is clearly intended to see and appreciate.

  Which—miraculously—he does: ‘Mr Smeaton,’ he says, quite jollily, although he’s straight back to work. It’s close work that he’s doing: casting tiny details—twigs, in brown sugar paste (cinnamon, ginger), leaves in green (spinach juice), pips in both—and sticking them to various fruits. He is quite jolly, today; there’s been a carnival atmosphere, in here, today. One way to survive, with this much to do.

  Mark says, ‘You two have a lot of fun in here, don’t you.’