Anne Boleyn by Evelyn Anthony

Author:Evelyn Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

9

The French visit was concluded without incident.

Back at court new rumours were circulating. It seemed the King was spending more time with his gentlemen; that he no longer spent every night in Anne’s room … Eyes watched them everywhere, and tongues wagged, hoping for disaster; but no one watched more closely than Thomas Cromwell. The relationship was stabilizing, that was all, and the King’s orders were unchanged. To get Cranmer elected Archbishop he was ready to pay the cost of the Papal Bulls out of his own pocket. And when it was done and Clement had fallen into the trap, the Act of Supremacy was to be applied to the laity under penalty of death.

As Cromwell saw it, nothing was changed.

Anne was alone in her bedroom; she and Norreys and Meg Shelton had spent the afternoon playing cards, but the time had come for her women to dress her, and she had sent them away. She was dressed and ready for the evening meal with the King. She wore white, with a long robe of crimson velvet over her dress to keep out the January cold, and a little crimson headdress, studded with rubies. One of Catherine’s immense ruby pendants was pinned to her breast. It was already dark, and the curtains were drawn, shutting out the cold moonlight and the bare trees and the black stretch of the river dappled with light.

She moved to the mirror and looked at herself; she looked tired and her cheeks were thin. Instinctively, Anne picked up the little golden pot of rouge, and then put it down. Rouge wouldn’t help her now. Neither would scent, or the tight fit of her dress under the crimson robe. She knew it, and the rouge pot rolled across the edge of the chest to the floor. Nothing like that was any use. She sat down wearily and closed her eyes. There was a little time before she had to go to him, a little time to face it and think, to face everything that was happening to her all at once.

He was falling out of love with her, after only seven months.

One of the logs crackled fiercely in the grate as the fire ate into it, and she opened her eyes and met her own reflection, staring as if it were a stranger.

He was tired of her.

Now.

It was done; said aloud, admitted. They were all right; all her friends and enemies, right from the beginning when they said that he would tire of her once she gave way. And he had, though it was still difficult to believe; it made her heart heave and loaded a great weight of fear and helplessness into her breast, so that she wanted to run to him and throw herself into his arms and beg him to deny it …

When had it begun, she wondered, asking the woman in the mirror? When was the first night he rolled over and slept and something told her he was disappointed? … The night they quarrelled, after he had seen his daughter Mary? … No, not that night.

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