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

Now the secret was out; now she understood the sly glances of servants, her father’s looks of approbation as his eyes rested on his elder daughter. There was no one to whom Anne could speak of her perturbation until George came home.

He was eighteen years old, a delight to the eye, very like Anne in appearance, full of exuberant animal spirits; a poet and coming diplomat, and he already had the air of both. His eyes burned with his enthusiasm for life; and Anne was happy when he took her hands, for she had been afraid that the years of separation might divide them and that she would lose forever the beloved brother of her childhood. But in a few short hours those fears were set aside; he was the same George, she the same Anne. Their friendship, she knew, could not lose from the years, only gain from them. Their minds were of similar caliber; alert, intellectual, they were quick to be amused, quick to anger, reckless of themselves. They had therefore a perfect understanding of each other, and, being troubled, it was natural that she should go to him.

She said as they walked together through the Kentish lanes, for she had felt the need to leave the castle so that she might have no fear of being overheard: “I have learned of Mary and the King.”

“That does not surprise me,” said George. “It is common knowledge.”

“It shocked me deeply, George.”

He smiled at her. “It should not.”

“But our sister! It is degrading.”

“She would degrade herself sooner or later, so why should it not be in that quarter from which the greatest advantages may accrue?”

“Our father delights in this situation, George, and our mother is complaisant.”

“My sweet sister, you are but sixteen. Ah, you look wonderfully worldly wise, but you are not yet grown up. You are very like the little girl who sat in the window seats at Blickling, and dreamed of knightly deeds. Life is not romantic, Anne, and men are not frequently honorable knights. Life is a battle or a game which each of us fights or plays with all the skill at his command. Do not condemn Mary because her way would not be yours.”

“The King will tire of her.”

“Assuredly.”

“And cast her off!”

“It is Mary’s nature to be happy, Anne. Do not fear. She will find other lovers when she is ejected from the royal bed. She has poor Will Carey, and she has been in favor for the best part of three years and her family have not suffered for it yet. Know, my sweet sister, that to be mistress of the King is an honor; it is only the mistress of a poor man who degrades herself.”

His handsome face was momentarily set in melancholy lines, but almost immediately he was laughing merrily.

“George,” she said, “I cannot like it.”

“What! Not like to see your father become a power in the land! Not like to see your brother make his way at court!”

“I would rather they had done these things by their own considerable abilities.”

“Bless you!” said George. “There are more favors won this way than by the sweat of the brow. Dismiss the matter from your mind. The Boleyns’ fortunes are in the ascendant. Who knows whither the King’s favor may lead—and all due to our own plump little Mary! Who would have believed it possible!”

“I like it not,” she repeated.

Then he took her hands and kissed them lightly, wishing to soothe her troubled mind.

“Fear not, little sister.”

Now he had her smiling with him—laughing at the incongruity of this situation. Mary—the one who was not as bright as the rest—was leading the Boleyns to fame and fortune.

It seemed almost unbearably quiet after Mary and George had gone. Anne could not speak of Mary’s relationship with the King to her mother, and it irked her frank nature perpetually to have to steer the conversation away from a delicate topic. She was glad when her father returned to the court, for his obvious delight in his good fortune angered Anne. Her father thought her a sullen girl, for she was not one, feeling displeased, to care about hiding her displeasure. Mary was his favorite daughter; Mary was a sensible girl; and Anne could not help feeling that he would be relieved when the arrangements for the Butler marriage were completed. She spent the days with her mother, or wandered often alone in the lanes and gardens.

Sir Thomas returned to Hever in a frenzy of excitement. The King would be passing through Kent, and it was probable that he would spend a night at Hever. Sir Thomas very quickly roused the household to his pitch of excitement. He went to the kitchen and gave orders himself; he had flowers set in the ballroom and replaced by fresh ones twice a day; he grumbled incessantly about the inconvenience of an old castle like Hever, and wished fervently that he had a modern house in which to entertain the King.

“The house is surely of little importance,” said Anne caustically, “as long as Mary remains attractive to the King!”

“Be silent, girl!” thundered Sir Thomas. “Do you realize that this is the greatest of honors?”

“Surely not the greatest!” murmured Anne, and was silenced by a pleading look from her mother, who greatly feared discord; and, loving her mother while deploring her attitude in the case of Mary and the King, Anne desisted.

The King’s having given no date for his visit, Sir Thomas fumed and fretted for several days, scarcely leaving the castle for fear he should not be on the spot to welcome his royal master.

One afternoon Anne took a basket to the rose garden that she might cut some of the best blooms for her mother. It was a hot afternoon, and she was informally dressed in her favorite scarlet; as the day was so warm she had taken off the caul from her head and shaken out her long, silky ringlets. She had sat on a seat in the rose garden for an hour or more, half dozing, when she decided it was time she gathered the flowers and returned to the house; and as she stood by a tree of red roses she was aware of a footfall close by, and turning saw what she immediately thought of as “a Personage” coming through the gap in the conifers which was the entrance to this garden. She felt the blood rush to her face, for she knew him at once. The jewels in his clothes were caught and held by the sun, so that it seemed as if he were on fire; his face was ruddy, his beard seemed golden, and his presence seemed to fill the garden. She could not but think of Mary’s meeting with him in the palace of Guisnes, and her resentment towards him flared up within her, even as she realized it would be sheer folly to show him that resentment. She sought therefore to compose her features and, with admirable calm—for she had decided now that her safest plan was to feign ignorance of his identity—she went on snipping the roses.

Henry was close. She turned as though in surprise to find herself not alone, gave him the conventional bow of acknowledgment which she would have given to one of her father’s ordinary acquaintances, and said boldly: “Good day, sir.”

The King was taken aback. Then inwardly he chuckled, thinking—She has no notion who I am! He studied her with the utmost appreciation. Her informal dress was more becoming, he thought, than those elaborate creations worn by some ladies at a court function. Her beautiful hair was like a black silk cloak about her shoulders. He took in each detail of her appearance and thought that he had never seen one whose beauty delighted him more.

She turned her head and snipped off a rose.

“My father is expecting the King to ride this way. I presume you to be one of his gentlemen!”

Masquerade had ever greatly appealed to Henry. There was nothing he enjoyed as much as to appear disguised at some ball or banquet, and after much badinage with his subjects and at exactly the appropriate moment, to make the dramatic announcement—“I am your King!” And how could this game be more delightfully played out than in a rose garden on a summer’s afternoon with, surely, the loveliest maiden in his kingdom!

He took a step closer to her.

“Had I known,” he said, “that I should come face to face with such beauty, depend upon it, I should have whipped up my horse.”

“Would you not have had to await the King’s pleasure?”

“Aye!” He slapped his gorgeous thigh. “That I should!”

She, who knew so well how to play the coquette, now did so with a will, for in this role she could appease that resentment in herself which threatened to make her very angry as she contemplated this lover of her sister Mary. Let him come close, and she—in assumed ignorance of his rank—would freeze him with a look. She snipped off a rose and gave it to him.

“You may have it if you care to.”

He said: “I do care. I shall keep it forever.”

“Bah!” she answered him contemptuously. “Mere court gallantry!”

“You like not our court gallants?”

Her mocking eyes swept his padded, jeweled figure.

“They are somewhat clumsy when compared with those of the French court.”

“You are lately come from France?”

“I am. A match has been arranged for me with my cousin.”

“Would to God I were the cousin! Tell me...” He came yet closer, noting the smooth skin, the silky lashes, the proud tilt of the head and its graceful carriage on the tiny neck. “Was that less clumsy?”

“Nay!” she said, showing white teeth. “Not so! It was completely without subtlety; I saw it coming.”

Henry found that, somewhat disconcerting as this was, he was enjoying it. The girl had a merry wit, and he liked it; she was stimulating as a glass of champagne. And I swear I never clapped eyes on a lovelier wench! he told himself. The airs she gives herself! It would seem I were the subject—she the Queen!

She said: “The garden is pretty, is it not? To me this is one of the most pleasant spots at Hever.”

They walked around it; she showed him the flowers, picked a branch of lavender and held it to her nose; then she rolled it in her hands and smelled its pleasant fragrance there.

Henry said: “You tell me you have recently come from the court of France. How did you like it there?”

“It was indeed pleasant.”

“And you are sorry to return?”

“I think that may be, for so long have I been there that it seems as home to me.”

“I like not to hear that.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “They say I am as French as I am English.”

“The French,” he said, the red of his face suddenly tinged with purple that matched his coat, “are a perfidious set of rascals.”

“Sir!” she said reproachfully and, drawing her skirts about her, she walked from him and sat on the wooden seat near the pond. She looked at him coldly as he hurried towards her.

“How now!” he said, thinking he had had enough of the game.

He sat down beside her, pressing his thigh against hers, which caused her immediate withdrawal from him. “Perfidious!” she said slowly. “Rascals! And when I have said I am half French!”

“Ah!” he said. “I should not use such words to you. You have the face of an angel!”

She was off the seat, as though distrusting his proximity. She threw herself onto the grass near the pond and looked into still waters at her own reflection, a graceful feminine Narcissus, her hair touching the water.

“No!” she said imperiously, as he would have risen: “You stay there, and mayhap I will tarry awhile and talk to you.”

He did not understand himself. The joke should have been done with ere this. It was time to explain, to have her on her knees craving forgiveness for her forwardness. He would raise her and say: “We cannot forgive such disrespectful treatment of your sovereign. We demand a kiss in payment for your sins!” But he was unsure; there was that in her which he had never before discovered in a woman. She looked haughty enough to refuse a kiss to a king. No, no! he thought. Play this little game awhile.