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

One day at the end of August it seemed to her that the girl whom she watched with such suspicion was looking more sly and a trifle arrogant. She saw Henry give her a look of smoldering desire.

“Shall I endure this before my very eyes?” Anne asked herself. “Am I not Queen?”

She waited until Henry was alone in the chamber with her; then she said, her eyes blazing: “If you must amuse yourself, I would prefer you did not do it under my eyes and with one of my own women!”

Henry’s eyes bulged with fury. He hated being caught; he had had this matter out with his conscience; it was nothing, this light little affair with a wench who had doubtless lost her virginity long ago; it was hardly worth confessing. It was a light and airy nothing, entered into after the drinking of too much wine, little more than a dream.

“Am I to be defied by one wife,” he asked himself, “dictated to by another?”

He had had enough of this; he was the King, he would have her know. It was not for her to keep up her arrogance to him now.

As he struggled for words to express his indignation, one of Anne’s attendants entered; that did not deter him. It should be known throughout the court that he was absolute King, and that the Queen enjoyed her power through him.

He shouted: “You close your eyes, as your betters did before you!”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet; she lifted herself in the bed; angry retorts rose to her lips, but something in the face of the King subdued her suddenly, so that her anger left her; she had no room for any other emotion than deadly fear. His face had lost its flushed appearance too; his eyes peered out from his quivering flesh, suddenly cold and very cruel.

Then he continued to speak, slowly and deliberately: “You ought to know that it is in my power in a single instant to lower you further than I raised you up.”

He went from the room; she sank back, almost fainting. The attendant came to her hastily, ministering to her anxiously, knowing the deep humiliation that must have wounded one so proud. Had Anne been alone she would have retorted hotly; she would have flayed him with her tongue; but they were not alone—yet he had not cared for that! In the court her enemies would hear of this; they would talk of the beginning of the end of Anne Boleyn.

Her hands were cold and wet; she overcame a desire to burst into passionate tears. Then the child began to move inside her, reassuring her. Her son. Once he was born, she was safe, for Henry would never displace the mother of his son whatever the provocation.

Henry did not go near her again for several days. He found a fresh and feverish excitement in the knowledge that to be in lust was satisfying and more congenial to his nature than to be in love. The girl was a saucy wench, God knew, but ready enough, over-ready, to obey her King. To love was to beg and plead; to lust was but to demand satisfaction.

He thought of Anne often, sometimes when he was with the girl. His thoughts were so mixed he could not define them. Sometimes he thought, When the confinement’s over, she’ll be herself again. Then he thought of a lithesome girl leaning over a pond at Hever, a lovely woman entertaining him at Suffolk House. Anne, Anne . . . there is none on Earth as delightful as Anne! This is naught, Anne; this is forgotten once you are with me again.

Then at mass or confession his thoughts would be tinged with fear. Suppose the Almighty should show his displeasure by a daughter or a still-born child! Marriage with Katharine had been a succession of still-born children, because his marriage with Katharine had been no marriage. He himself had said that. What if his marriage with Anne should be no marriage either?

But God would show him, for God would always be ready to guide one who followed His laws and praised Him, as did Henry the Eighth of England.

Throughout the city the news was awaited. People in the barges that floated down the Thames called one to the other.

“Is the prince come yet then?”

There was scarcely a whisper against the new Queen; those who had been her most violent enemies thought of her now, not as the Queen, but as a mother.

“I heard her pains had started, poor lady . . .”

“They say his name will be Henry or Edward . . .”

Mothers remembered occasions when they had suffered as the Queen suffered now, and even those who cared nothing for motherhood were fond of pageantry. They remembered the coronation, when wine had flowed free from fountains. Pageants, feasting, rejoicing would mark the birth of a son to a king who had waited twenty-four years for it; it would be a greater event than a coronation.

“God save the little prince!” cried the people.

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk scarcely slept at all, so eager was she for the event. She was full of pride and misgivings, assuring herself that Anne was a healthy girl, that the delivery must be effected efficiently, pushing to the back of her mind those fears which came from her knowledge of the King. Poor Katharine had had miscarriage after miscarriage; they said she was diseased, and whence did she come by such diseases? Might it not have been through close contact with His Majesty? One did not speak such thoughts, for it were treason to do so, but how could the most loyal subjects help their coming to mind! But Anne was a healthy girl; this was her first child. She had come safely through the nine months of pregnancy, and everything must be well.

In the orchard, sheltered by the trees whose fruit was beginning to ripen, Catherine Howard and Francis Derham lay in each other’s arms with scarcely a thought for the momentous events which would shape the course of history.

Francis said: “Why should they not consent to our marriage? It is true I am poor, but my birth is good.”

“They will assuredly consent,” murmured Catherine. “They must consent!”

“And why should it not be soon? When the Duchess is recovered from this excitement, she will surely listen to me, Catherine. Do you think that I might approach her?”

“Yes,” said Catherine happily.

“Then we are betrothed!”

“Yes.”

“Then call me husband.”

“Husband,” said Catherine, and he kissed her.

“I would we were away from here, wife, that at we were in our own house. I get so little opportunity for seeing you.”

“So little,” she sighed.

“And I hear that the Duchess’s ladies are unprincipled in some ways, that they are over-bold with men. I like it not that you should be among them.”

“I am safe,” she said, “loving thee.”

They kissed again, Catherine drew him closer, feeling that excessive excitement which physical contact with one who attracted her must always give her.

Derham kissed her fervently, enchanted by her as Manox had been; but he was genuinely in love with her, and his feelings were governed by affection as well as the need to gratify his senses. She was very young, but she was ready for passion. He was a reckless young man, courageous and virile; and Catherine’s obvious longing to complete their intimacy was so alluring that he—while tenderly thinking of her age—must seek to arrange it.

He insisted they would marry. He could think of nothing more delightful. They were really married, he told her, because according to the law of the Church it was only necessary for two free people to agree to a contract and it was made. It soothed his fears that she was too young, when he called her wife; when she called him husband, he was transported with joy.

He meant to be tactful and kind. He knew nothing of her experience with Manox. Catherine did not tell him, not because she wished to hide it, but because Manox no longer interested her. She had asked her grandmother if she might have a new music teacher, and the old lady, too full of court matters to care what her granddaughter did, had nodded, and when Catherine had named an ascetic, middle-aged man, her grandmother had nodded again. In any case the Duchess no longer sat as chaperon during the music lessons. Manox had almost passed from Catherine’s thoughts, except on those unpleasant occasions when he would try to see her—for he was furious that she had ended the affair so abruptly, blaming Mary Lassells for this and making no secret of his hatred and contempt for the girl. Catherine wished of course that she had never known Manox, but she was too blissful to think of much else but the completion of her love with Francis Derham.

“I have a plan,” said Derham.

“Tell me of it.”

“What if I were to ask Her Grace to take me into her house?”

“Dost think she would?” Catherine was trembling at the thought.

“I think she might.” He smiled complacently, remembering how on one occasion Her Grace had singled him out—as a most personable young man—for her special attention. “I can but try. Then we shall be under the same roof; then I may speak for you. Oh, Catherine, Catherine, how I long for that day!”

Catherine longed for it with equal intensity.

He almost whispered to her that they need not wait; why should they, when they were husband and wife? Catherine was waiting for him to say that; but he did not . . . yet. They lay on the grass, looking up at the ripening fruit.

“I shall never forget the day you first called me husband,” he said. “I shall remember it when I die!”

Catherine laughed, for death seemed far away and a most absurd topic for two young people in love.

“I shall never forget it either,” she told him, and turned her face to his. They kissed; they trembled; they yearned for each other.

“Soon,” he said, “I shall be in the Duchess’s house. Then I shall see you often . . . often.”

Catherine nodded.

On the gorgeous bed, which had been part of a French Prince’s ransom. Anne lay racked with the agony of childbirth. The King paced up and down in an adjoining room. He could hear her groans. How he loved her! For her groaning set his heart beating with fear that she would die. He was that same lover to whom news of her illness had been brought during the pestilence. “I would willingly endure half of what you suffer to cure you.” Memories of her came and went in his mind; her laughter, her gaiety; Anne, the center of attraction at the jousts and masques; sitting beside him watching the jousts in the tiltyard, so beautiful, so apart from all others that he found it difficult to turn his attention from her to the jousting; he thought of her in his arms, his love and his Queen.

He was filled with remorse for that lapse, for the quarrel which had upset her, and—this made him break out into a clammy sweat—might have had some effect on the birth of his son.

He paced up and down, suffering with her. How long? How long? The veins stood out on his forehead. “By God! If anything happens to her, blood will flow—that I swear!”

The girl with whom he had dallied recently looked in at the door, smiling; she had been sent to soothe him. He looked at her without recognizing her.

Up and down he went, straining his ears and then putting his hands over them to shut out the sound of Anne’s pain, His fear was suddenly swept away, for distinctly he heard the cry of a child, and in a second he was at the bedside, trembling with eagerness. In the chamber there was a hushed silence. The attendants were afraid to look at him. Anne lay white and exhausted, aware neither of him, nor her room, nor perhaps herself.

“What is it?” he shouted.

They hesitated, one looking at another, hoping that some other would take on the delicate task of breaking unpleasant news.

His face was purple; his eyes blazing. He roared in his anguish.