The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  ‘Married,’ I said.

  He wanted to know, do I have nieces and nephews?

  Do I have nieces and nephews! It was nice to have an opportunity to say their names: John, Matthew, Christopher, Ed, Lizzie, Izzie, Cecily, Mary, little Mary, and a Lucy. I didn’t mention Ralph, Henry, and Maudie: it felt wrong not to have mentioned them, but to have mentioned them would have felt more wrong. They’re still there, though, and more permanently so than their siblings: their little greenstick bones settling into the earth. Beside my brother’s; Eddie’s. I told Mark about my brothers: twins, George and Eddie, born when I was eleven.

  What I didn’t tell him about the boys—it’s nothing, and, anyway, I’ve only just remembered—was how, once, when they were sitting in my stepmother’s lap, I noticed something about them. ‘Look,’ I said to Ellie, and raised my hands in front of them, putting them palm to palm as if praying and then opening them like a book ‘See? They’re two halves.’ The mole beside Eddie’s left eye was there on George, but beside the right eye. ‘Isn’t that something?’ I said, but Ellie merely looked at me.

  I told Mark that I did visit, had visited.

  He said, ‘It’s not easy, is it: being a visitor.’

  No. My sisters tried. For which, of course, I was very grateful. And the boys—well, they were young; they were as they always were. For which I was also very grateful. But I don’t know which was worse: my sisters, actuely aware of me, or the boys, barely.

  Mark asked me if I’d like to go back, one day.

  ‘To live, you mean?’

  He nodded: to live.

  I shrugged. Go back. I can’t. No one’s there, to go back to; or not as they were. The children are no longer children, my sisters no longer the girls they were, the girls with whom I walked to the sea. Perhaps none of them are there at all, now: would I know otherwise? For a long time, I didn’t even know that Maudie had even been expected, let alone that she’d died: she’d come and gone before I knew. They were stunning children, the children of my sisters: sleek and sure-footed, a fierce clarity to everything they did and said. It was us, the adults, who were gawky, awkward. Of course the landscape remains, unchanged; the landscape of my childhood. What I remember of it isn’t what I expect to remember: not the details; not the click and give of the latch on our gate, nor the bites of the bridleway stones to my soles. Perhaps it isn’t a landscape for details: what was striking, to me, even then, was its flatness. As if it were rolling over, stretching out and giving itself up to the sun, the sea. My memory of it claims me like a dream, pulls on me like a dream; unfinished.

  ‘You?’ I asked Mark.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘Just me.’

  To cheer him up, I used that expression: ‘He broke the mould when He made you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said; and he did seem rather comforted by that. ‘Yes, I suppose He did.’

  Of my planned sugar rose, it’s no longer the shape that’s concerning me. I can manage, mould-less, I’m sure. What’s preoccupying me, now, is the colour. Red isn’t easy. Or not rose-red, anyway. Or not the kind of rose-red I’m aiming to make. Other colours—yellow, green, blue, brown, orange, pink, violet—are easy. Or if not, if they’re not quite right, there are ways of making them better, as long as the sugar isn’t then for eating. In the Neville kitchens, I learned to conjure a kind of gold from arsenic, ground quartz and saffron.

  But red. Sandalwood is too brown for this rose of mine. Brazil wood, too pink. I need a blood-red rose. Blood? Dries too dark and too dull. The confectioner’s mainstay for red is rose-petals; but as we work with them, mixing them into gum, they weep some of their colour away. Even the reddest lose themselves a little to become, in our hands, something else. Pink. No longer red rose-petals. Which is what I need them to be.

  Anne Boleyn

  That year, 1528, it was Greenwich as usual for Christmas; but this time, I was there. Suitably separate, though, from Henry and Catherine. I had my own gorgeous rooms, rich with river-view. Any light in that late-December sky was drawn down to the fat Thames then turned on my windows. The green-and-ochre ceilings glowed, the blood-black walls of panelling gleamed. Everyone liked it, my apartment; it was definitely the place to be, that Christmas. I was tired of playing the retiring maiden, and now the privacy of my own rooms and the season provided the means and excuse for some fun. Dinners and cabaret. On the other side of my door and down a corridor or two, Catherine—still queen, if in name only—put on a brave face and presided over the official celebrations with a gout-disgruntled cardinal for company, and no one much else: the Suffolks and Norfolks, the Poles and Nevilles, all of them exchanging season’s greetings and clapping stiffly at the various appalling ‘entertainments’. Well, if that was their idea of a good time, they were welcome to it. Poor Henry flitted between the two worlds, doing his best. He’d come to us late in the evenings and we’d have to thaw him through, remind him how to laugh.

  It wasn’t all fun, though, that Christmas. Court was still reverberating from More’s publication of his Dialogue Concerning Heresies. He seemed to feel that we in England had our eyes closed to certain dangers at home and in northern Europe. Actually, some of us had our eyes wide open but were glad at what we saw. And it wasn’t that I was a heretic; nor were my friends. Far from it: we held the Church’s best interests at heart. That’s what galled me: More’s assumption that it was heresy to question the Church’s problems. As far as I was concerned, there were good priests and bad ones, and there had been good Popes and bad ones. It was only the bad ones that bothered me.

  Not long after Christmas, I got hold of a copy of Simon Fish’s Supplication for the Beggars. Fish was interesting on corruption in the clergy, and I lent the book to Henry when I’d finished with it. Lo and behold, within days More was taking Fish to task in The Supplication of Souls. He wasn’t going to let it go, couldn’t let it rest; he was determined to slam down any debate. To enter debate, I imagine he’d have said, but I wasn’t fooled. People venerated More—especially Henry, who, I suspect, would have preferred him to his own narrow-minded, mean-spirited father—but I had my suspicions. Witty, sarcastic More prided himself on his cool-headedness, and could just as well have prided himself on his warm-heartedness: I had no argument with any of that. He was, I suppose, a likeable man. But it was his denial of his passionate nature—his fury—that worried me. The hypocrisy of that denial. If you loathe Lutherans, come out and say it. Don’t pretend you’re merely interested in refuting their claims. My own loathing is reserved for hypocrites. Useful, then, isn’t it, that I have a talent for smelling them out.

  There was something else, something more basic: I didn’t like the way More looked at me, either, to tell you the truth. The glint of superiority in his eyes. I’d stare him down, thinking, You don’t know what you’re dealing with. And what was that—not knowing what you’re dealing with—if not a kind of stupidity? You can read all the books you like but if you can’t read people, you’re heading for trouble. Old Mrs Queenie, though, he’d always seemed to have a way with. She lightened up with him. They’d chat like old friends. Which is, I suppose, what they were.

  When Henry handed me back the Fish book, he said, ‘You know, Angel, I think we might need to be more careful about what we’re seen reading.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re king, aren’t you? Can’t you read what you like?’

  He managed a smile. ‘Probably not in front of the Pope’s representative, if I want him to look favourably on me.’

  I shrugged. Personally, I felt it might do the cardinal some good to get a glimpse of what was happening in the real world.

  The cardinal finally troubled himself to call for the tribunal to start on the last day of May at Blackfriars. Eight months, it had taken him; and for no other reasons, it seemed, than the comings and goings of his ridiculous gout, and a series of ineffective meetings with Her Monstrousness. Another eight months of my young li
fe, gone. Henry and Catherine were informed that they would both be required to appear in person on 18 June. And so began a tense two and a half weeks. Some days, Henry was ablaze with optimism and confidence, his talk all of the future—our wedding, renovations to some of the palaces, a trip to France. But on other days, nothing was right—the weather, my dress, the musicians’ efforts—and he couldn’t stop sniping at and complaining about various officials and relatives. Worse, I couldn’t predict when he’d be with me. Sometimes he didn’t turn up when he’d said he would, presumably going hunting instead or bashing a tennis ball about with Harry Norris. Other times, he arrived unexpectedly and wanted supper served when I’d already eaten mine, wanted to play cards when—waiting for him—I’d done nothing else all day.

  None of this was helped by the fact that we were seeing summer weather the like of which we hadn’t seen for years. Sometimes I imagined the Thames was steaming. Servants were listless and argumentative amongst themselves all day long—and the days were exhaustingly long—then, relieved, were noisy at night. No defeatist, I nevertheless felt a sense of doom. If the tribunal failed to deliver, what then? Hot and tired, I couldn’t think. Couldn’t think beyond Henry being king and, whatever happened, staying king. For all his carry-on, his situation, compared to mine, didn’t seem so bad. Mine was that I wasn’t yet his queen and now might never be. And I’d meant what I’d said about not being his mistress. I’d have to give up and marry someone else. My heart wilted at the prospect either of some goodnatured man or someone strutting and full of himself.

  Perhaps that was why, when, late one night during that wearying two and a half weeks, Henry said to me, ‘Please let me stay; just stay,’ I did finally acquiesce.

  ‘Just stay,’ he’d said, hands up to stop my protest, to surrender. ‘Please don’t send me away,’ he said; ‘please don’t, Anne.’ His eyes were faintly bloodshot, his hair sticking to his sweat-dampened forehead. My every bone ached; I’d had more than enough of a long, pitiless day. It was then that the feeling came over me: for all the people involved in our situation—cardinals, lawyers, nobles, the hundreds of spectators at Blackfriars—we were so very alone.

  ‘Just stay,’ I allowed. I borrowed a nightshirt from my brother, and Henry did wear it all night.

  At the end of the difficult two and a half weeks, when Catherine appeared as requested at the tribunal, it was simply to announce that she regarded the tribunal as having no jurisdiction over her and to ask yet again that her case be referred to Rome. She was told to come back in another three days, when they’d have had time to debate her claim and her request. Those three days were the worst, for us. Henry paced my rooms, our gardens, the riverbank. He wouldn’t stay with me at night. He probably didn’t go to bed at all. ‘Why is she doing this to me?’ he’d roar, or whine; rage, or anguish, or pique, but always with genuine disbelief, amazement. For once, I chose not to enlighten him; chose to spare him the unpalatable truth that he was married to a stubborn and vindictive old cow. I wasn’t going to waste my breath on her. We needed to stay calm. We were simply being asked by the tribunal to wait. Three days, that was all. Patience is no virtue of mine, but I’m realistic. And at that stage—three years into our muddle—I was still quite resilient. I despised her but I don’t think I quite yet hated her; didn’t want her dead. She was merely some desperate old dear, and I had the fierce, unquenchable love of her husband.

  When she took her place at the tribunal it was, George told me, on a gold-brocade-canopied chair slightly lower than but otherwise identical to Henry’s. A queen’s chair. A king and queen of England had for the first time ever been called into a court. They faced each other across a sea of agog spectators. Henry went first, said his piece. It was the usual, the citing of the verse in Leviticus and the expressions of regret that he couldn’t stay married to the wonderful, kind Catherine. Blah blah. Then it was Catherine’s turn. She rose but, on the arm of her usher, began to make her way through the crowds towards Henry. I can well imagine his face. He hates trouble—he pays or bullies others to deal with it—but there he was, all eyes upon him, as trouble waddled his way.

  When she reached him, the usher stepped back and she knelt at Henry’s feet. Embarrassed, he got up from his chair and raised her. But she dropped to her knees again. Again, mortified, he raised her. Then she made her case, but not to the tribunal as she was supposed to do. She spoke calmly to him. Imagine those cool grey eyes and that molasses-dark accent. She said, I’ve never lied to you. You know that. Never. Not about anything. This is the truth about your brother and I: we never slept together. Tell me, Henry, what it is that I’ve done to turn you against me. Tell me, please. I have no one but you; I am a foreigner alone here in this country of yours. I have loved you all our married life, and I will love you—devotedly—until I die. We have had children together, Henry, and lost all but one of them. Don’t do this to me. Don’t throw me away. Then she curtseyed low to him, and signalled to her usher, who stepped forward, took her arm, and together they retreated as they had come.

  The Court Crier, belatedly coming to his senses, called to her to return: Catherine, Queen of England, come back into court! He called three times, but slowly they progressed, that odd pair, the podgy lady and the nimble boy, to the doors and into the crowd outside. It was a crowd of women, George told me, and they were cheering her.

  At the time, I was appalled by the scene that my brother described to me. Yet more Spanish histrionics. As I said to George, the only surprise was that she hadn’t taken along that disgusting pet monkey of hers to do a star turn. Now, looking back, I admit that I’m impressed. It was an awesome performance, and although it didn’t save her in the end (but what could?), it gained her time and allies. And her gain, on both counts, was my loss.

  She never did go back into that court on any occasion, despite being summoned. If she had, she’d have had to sit through various witnesses’ memories of what that half-dead boy-husband of hers did or didn’t boast on the morning after their wedding night. But their evidence wouldn’t have been necessary, in the first place, would it, had she given in gracefully and accepted what everybody else knew: that her marriage to Henry was over.

  Anyway, it was all to no avail—the stories, the legalities, the long days in that stifling riverside room—because, at the end of July, in Henry’s presence, Campeggio referred the case to Rome; just, in fact, as the Pope recalled it. So, we were back to square one. Well, I say ‘we’…Wolsey, though, was worse off. Wolsey, in fact, was finished. Henry had trusted him to find a solution; and Wolsey had asked for yet more trust. He’d asked for more time and even more time, and Henry had granted it. And now, when a king and queen had been dragged through the courts, the king defied by the queen, the queen’s bedlinen—dirty or otherwise—discussed in public…now, nothing. Henry had trusted Wolsey to find a solution and now Wolsey seemed to be saying that there wasn’t one.

  Not good enough. What was the man paid—vastly—for? I told you, I said to Henry; I did tell you, didn’t I. He wouldn’t reply to that; he wouldn’t look at me when I said that. He’d look as if he had a headache: eyes half-closed, a fold between his eyebrows, and slow but shallow breaths. If I placed a hand on his forehead, the worry-line would deepen: a twitch, the smallest kind of flinch. He wasn’t quite ready to hear the worst of his old friend and confidant. Nearly ready, but not quite. I had to bide my time, bite my tongue. Something I’ve never found easy.

  Summer had well and truly arrived, so we left London for Waltham Abbey, Windsor, Reading, Langley, letting our various hosts look after us while we put the last few disastrous months behind us. Fat Cath stayed at Greenwich. Praying, probably. That, and sewing. Sewing was what she’d been doing when Wolsey had turned up to ask her, one last time, to appear at Blackfriars; she’d flourished a piece of linen and a threaded needle while he requested and she refused. I’ll say this for Catherine: she disliked Wolsey almost as much as I did, although of course for different reasons, hers being the view�
�not unreasonable, I suppose—that a man who has taken a vow of chastity shouldn’t have a mistress and children.

  Our summer progress finished at the end of September at Grafton, where the lodge is cutely tiny: room only for us and a select or otherwise vital few, everyone else staying in or camping around a manor house about three miles away. Did I say ‘select or otherwise vital’? Which, then, was Wolsey? Because suddenly there was Wolsey, turned up to stay with us. He came with Campeggio; Campeggio had come to say goodbye. There was nowhere for Wolsey to stay. Harry Norris gave up his own bed, and moved into my brother’s room. ‘What could I do?’ he pleaded with me. ‘Leave him standing there in the courtyard?’ I pointed out that everyone else had been quite happy to do so.

  Despite acting the perfect hostess—cream tea, even, in the garden—I made sure my displeasure was clear (when don’t I?) and, that very evening, Wolsey announced that he’d be leaving in the morning. (Oh dear, was it something I said?) His excuse was that he had to see to one of his nearby properties; he’d just heard that the roof was in need of attention, and whilst he was over this side of the country, and what with autumn nearly here…Henry said that we quite understood, but would be sorry to see him go (whereas I said, under my breath, Good riddance). ‘We’ll come and wave you off in the morning,’ he said. I had a feeling something was up; but although Henry had stopped that headachey look whenever I complained about Wolsey, he still refused to discuss him with me. I remember once wailing, ‘What is it with you and Wolsey? You never say a bad word about him,’ to which he snapped back. ‘You say enough for both of us.’ It’s clear to me now that I was forever implying that Henry had been a fool for befriending the butcher’s boy, and no one likes to be called a fool. Something I tend to forget in my rush to speak the truth.