My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes

Author:Margaret Campbell Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2014-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Dry-eyed, Anne had watched her women go. By them she sent loving letters to her family. She had written of the affection shown her by her step-daughters, of the amusing pageant given in her honor, of the spaciousness of Richmond Palace; but she made no mention of her husband’s neglect. She didn’t want them to worry about her and she had her pride. Yet she had barely settled into her new apartments, and the May garlands were scarcely withered in the city streets before the final blow fell which would make her private humiliation succulent meat for gossip all over Europe.

The King’s ministers came to her early one July morning. Not as visitors, but with grave faces and disturbing formality. Cranmer and Suffolk, surfeited with experience in clearing up the Augean stables of their royal master’s matrimonial muddles—and Wriothesley, full of new self-importance. And such was Henry’s impatience to be rid of her and free to pluck his fresh English rose that they came early enough to catch Anne still abed. Her flurried new English ladies had to confess that the Queen, who so seldom slept late, had not yet breakfasted. But when shy little Katherine Basset, diligent in the duties she had begged for, waked her royal mistress with the news that they insisted upon seeing her, Anne obligingly called for a wrap and received them in her bedroom. This queer custom of talking to people of importance in one’s bedroom had at first shocked her sense of propriety, but she was growing accustomed to it.

When they were shown in, Charles Brandon’s cheerful “Good-morning, Sister” was a shade too jaunty to be convincing and the Archbishop’s eyes were shifty with compassion. Clearly they hated their errand. And the fact that they liked Anne made them both so nervous that even the suave prelate bungled it.

“We are come from the King,” he began portentously.

Dorothea had set a chair for her mistress, but Anne, sensing the ominous importance of their coming, preferred to stand defensively with one hand grasping the back of it.

“I had thought to have the pleasure of his Grace’s company by now,” she observed politely.

They all knew that he had promised to join her in a day or two and Charles murmured something about urgent affairs of state. But Anne’s reactions were always so disconcertingly practical.

“What a pity then that we didn’t lodge at Westminster!” she observed blandly. “It would have been so convenient with Parliament lying—”

Her brother-in-law hastily suppressed an explosion of nervous laughter. “‘Sitting’ is the word,” he corrected. “But no matter, my priceless Anne. They were probably doing both. And then, of course, there is the plague—”

“Don’t you think your presence there might have kept up the spirits of the people?” she asked imperturbably. If there were any truth at all in this ever-recurring excuse there was nothing she would have liked better than to stay and help the poor Londoners who had welcomed her so warmly.

Charles was reduced to shamed silence. He had been no unwilling instrument in bringing about the Boleyn’s downfall.

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