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

The King’s Pleasure

IN THE SEWING-ROOM at Hever, Simonette bent over her work and, as she sat there, her back to the mullioned window through which streamed the hot afternoon sunshine—for it was the month of August and the sewing-room was in the front of the castle, overlooking the moat—a little girl of some seven years peeped round the door, smiled and advanced towards her. This was a very lovely little girl, tall for her age, beautifully proportioned and slender; her hair was dark, long and silky smooth, her skin warm and olive, her most arresting feature her large, long-lashed eyes. She was a precocious little girl, the most brilliant little girl it had ever been Simonette’s good fortune to teach; she spoke Simonette’s language almost as well as Simonette herself; she sang prettily and played most excellently those magical instruments which her father would have her taught.

Perhaps, Simonette had often thought, on first consideration it might appear that there was something altogether too perfect about this child. But no, no! There was never one less perfect than little Anne. See her stamp her foot when she wanted something really badly and was determined at all costs to get it; see her playing shuttlecock with the little Wyatt girl! She would play to win; she would have her will. Quick to anger, she was ever ready to speak her mind, reckless of punishment; she was strong-willed as a boy, adventurous as a boy, as ready to explore those dark dungeons that lay below the castle as her brother George or young Tom Wyatt. No, no one could say she was perfect; she was just herself, and of all the Boleyn children Simonette loved her best.

From whom, Simonette wondered, do these little Boleyns acquire their charm? From Sir Thomas, their father, who with the inheritance from his merchant ancestors had bought Blickling in Norfolk and Hever in Kent, as well as an aristocratic wife to go with them? But no! One could not say it came from Sir Thomas; for he was a mean man, a grasping man, a man who was determined to make a place for himself no matter at what cost to others. There was no warmth in his heart, and these young Boleyns were what Simonette would call warm little people. Reckless they might be; ambitious one could well believe they would be; but every one of them—Mary, George and Anne—were loving people; one could touch their hearts easily; they gave love, and so received it. And that, thought Simonette, is perhaps the secret of charm. Perhaps then from their lady mother? Well...perhaps a little. Though her ladyship had been a very pretty woman her charm was a fragile thing compared with that of her three children. Mary, the eldest, was very pretty, but one as French as Simonette must tremble more for Mary than for George and Anne. Mary at eleven was a woman already; vivacious and shallow as a pleasant little brook that babbled incessantly because it liked people to pause and say: “How pretty!” Unwise and lightsome, that was Mary. One trembled to think of the little baggage already installed in a foreign court where the morals—if one could believe all one heard—left much to be desired by a prim French governess. And handsome George, who had always a clever retort on his lips, and wrote amusing poetry about himself and his sisters—and doubtless rude poetry about Simonette—he had his share of the Boleyn charm. Brilliant were the two youngest; they recognized each other’s brilliance and loved each other well. How often had Simonette seen them, both here at Hever and at Blickling, heads close together, whispering, sharing a secret! And their cousins, the Wyatt children, were often with them, for the Wyatts were neighbors here in Kent as they were in Norfolk. Thomas, George and Anne; they were the three friends. Margaret and Mary Wyatt with Mary Boleyn were outside that friendship; not that they cared greatly, Mary Boleyn at any rate, for she could always amuse herself planning what she would do when she was old enough to go to court.

Anne came forward now and stood before her governess, her demure pose—hands behind her back—belying the sparkle in her lovely eyes. The pose was graceful as well as demure, for grace was as natural to Anne as breathing. She was unconsciously graceful, and this habit of standing thus had grown out of a desire to hide her hands, for on the little finger of her left one there grew the beginning of a sixth nail. It was not unsightly; it would scarcely be noticed if the glance were cursory; but she was a dainty child, and this difference in her—it could hardly be called a deformity—was most distasteful to her. Being herself, she had infused into this habit a charm which was apparent when she stood with others of her age; one thought then how awkwardly they stood, their hands hanging at their sides.

“Simonette,” she said in Simonette’s native French, “I have wonderful news! It is a letter from my father. I am to go to France.”

The sewing-room seemed suddenly unbearably quiet to Simonette; outside she heard the breeze stir the willows that dripped into the moat; the tapestry slipped from her fingers. Anne picked it up and put it on the governess’s lap. Sensitive and imaginative, she knew that she had broken the news too rashly; she was at once contrite, and flung her arms round Simonette’s brown neck.

“Simonette! Simonette! To leave you will be the one thing to spoil this news for me.”

There were real tears in her eyes, but they were for the hurt she had given Simonette, not for the inevitable parting; for she could not hide the excitement shining through her tears. Hever was dull without George and Thomas, who were both away continuing their education. Simonette was a darling; Mother was a darling; but it is possible for people to be darlings and at the same time be very, very dull; and Anne could not endure dullness.

“Simonette!” she said. “Perhaps it will be for a very short time.” She added, as though this should prove some consolation to the stricken Simonette, “I am to go with the King’s sister!”

Seven is so young! Even a precocious seven. This little one at the court of France! Sir Thomas was indeed an ambitious man. What did he care for these tender young things who, because they were of an unusual brilliance, needed special care! This is the end, thought Simonette. Ah, well! And who am I to undertake the education of Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter for more than the very early years of her life!

“My father has written, Simonette....He said I must prepare at once...”

How her eyes sparkled! She who had always loved the stories of kings and queens was now to take part in one herself; a very small part, it was true, for surely the youngest attendant of the princess must be a very small part; Simonette did not doubt that she would play it with zest. No longer would she come to Simonette with her eager questions, no longer listen to the story of the King’s romance with the Spanish princess. Simonette had told that story often enough. “She came over to England, the poor little princess, and she married Prince Arthur and he died, and she married his brother, Prince Henry...King Henry.” “Simonette, have you ever seen the King?” “I saw him at the time of his marriage. Ah, there was a time! Big and handsome, and fair of skin, rosy like a girl, red of hair and red of beard; the handsomest prince you could find if you searched the whole world.” “And the Spanish princess, Simonette?” Simonette would wrinkle her brows; as a good Frenchwoman she did not love the Spaniards. “She was well enough. She sat in a litter of cloth of gold, borne by two white horses. Her hair fell almost to her feet.” Simonette added grudgingly: “It was beautiful hair. But he was a boy prince; she was six years older.” Simonette’s mouth would come close to Anne’s ear: “There are those who say it is not well that a man should marry the wife of his brother.” “But this is not a man, Simonette. This is a king!”

Two years ago George and Thomas would sit in the window seats and talk like men about the war with France. Simonette did not speak of it; greatly she had feared that she, for the sins of her country, might be turned from the castle. And the following year there had been more war, this time with the treacherous Scots; of this Anne loved to talk, for at the battle of Flodden Field it was her grandfather the Duke of Norfolk and her two uncles, Thomas and Edmund, who had saved England for the King. The two wars were now satisfactorily concluded, but wars have reverberating consequences; they shake even the lives of those who believe themselves remote. The echoes extended from Paris and Greenwich to the quiet of a Kentish castle.

“I am to go in the train of the King’s sister who is to marry the King of France, Simonette. They say he is very, very old and...” Anne shivered. “I should not care to marry a very old man.”

“Nonsense!” said Simonette, rising and throwing aside her tapestry. “If he is an old man, he is also a king. Think of that!”

Anne thought of it, her eyes glistening, her hands clasped behind her back. What a mistake it is, thought Simonette, if one is a governess, to love too well those who come within one’s care.

“Come now,” she said. “We must write a letter to your father. We must express our pleasure in this great honor.”

Anne was running towards the door in her eagerness to speed up events, to bring about more quickly the exciting journey. Then she thought sadly once more of Simonette...dear, good, kind, but so dull Simonette. So she halted and went back and slipped one hand into that of her governess.

In their apartments at Dover Castle the maids of honor giggled and whispered together. The youngest of them, whom they patronized shamefully—more because of her youth than because she lacked their noble lineage—listened eagerly to everything that was said.

How gorgeous they were, these young ladies, and how different in their own apartments from the sedate creatures they became when they attended state functions! Anne had thought them too lovely to be real, when she had stood with them at the formal solemnization of the royal marriage at Greenwich, where the Duke of Longueville had acted as proxy for the King of France. Then her feet had grown weary with so much standing, and her eyes had ached with the dazzle, and in spite of all the excitement she had thought longingly of Simonette’s strong arms picking her up and carrying her to bed. Here in the apartment the ladies threw aside their brilliant clothes and walked about without any, discussing each other and the lords and esquires with a frankness astonishing—but at the same time very interesting—to a little girl of seven.

The King was at Dover, for he had accompanied his favorite sister to the coast; and here in the castle they had tarried a whole month, for outside the waves rose high against the cliffs, and the wind shrieked about the castle walls, rattling its windows and doors and bellowing down the great chimneys as if it mocked the plans of kings. Challengingly the wind and the waves tossed up the broken parts of ships along that coast, to show what happened to those who would ignore the sea’s angry mood. There was nothing to be done but wait; and in the castle the time was whiled away with masques, balls and banquets, for the King must be amused.

Anne had had several glimpses of him—a mountain of a man with fair, glowing skin and bright hair; when he spoke, his voice, which matched his frame, bellowed forth, and his laughter shook him; his jewel-trimmed clothes were part of his dazzling personality; men went in fear of him, for his anger came sudden as his laughter; and his little mouth, ready enough to smile at a jest which pleased him, could as readily become the most cruel in the world.

Here in the apartment the ladies talked constantly of the King, of his Queen, and—to them all just now the most fascinating of the royal family group—of Mary Tudor, whom they were accompanying across the Channel to Louis of France.

“Would it not be strange,” said Lady Anne Grey, “if my lady ran off with Suffolk!”

“Strange indeed!” answered her sister Elizabeth. “I would not care to be in her shoes, nor in my Lord Suffolk’s, if she were to do that. Imagine the King’s anger!”

Little Anne shivered, imagining it. She might be young, but she was old enough to sense the uneasy atmosphere that filled the castle. The waiting had been too long, and Mary Tudor—the loveliest creature, thought Anne, she had ever set eyes on—was wild as the storm that raged outside, and about as dependable as the English climate. Eighteen she was, and greatly loved by the King; she possessed the same auburn-colored hair, fair skin, blue eyes; the same zest for living. The resemblance between them was remarkable, and the King, it was said, was moved to great tenderness by her. Willful and passionate, there were two ingredients in her nature which mixed together to make an inflammable brew; one was her ambition, which made her eager to share the throne of France; the other was her passionate love for handsome Charles Brandon; and as her moods were as inconstant as April weather, there was danger in the air. To be queen to a senile king, or duchess to a handsome duke? Mary could not make up her mind which she wanted, and with her maids she discussed her feelings with passion, fretful uncertainty and Tudor frankness.

“It is well,” she had said to little Anne, for the child’s grace and precocity amused her, “that I do not have to make up my mind myself, for I trow I should not know which way to turn.” And she would deck herself with a gift of jewels from the King of France and demand that Anne should admire her radiant beauty. “Shall I not make a beautiful Queen of France, little Boleyn?” Then she would wipe her eyes. “You cannot know...how could you, how handsome he is, my Charles! You are but a child; you know nothing of the love of men. Oh, that I had him here beside me! I swear I would force him to take me here and now, and then perhaps the old King of France would not be so eager for me, eh, Anne?” She wept and laughed alternately; a difficult mistress.

How different the castle of Dover from that of Hever! How one realized, listening to this talk, of which one understood but half, that one was a child in worldly matters. What matter if one did speak French as well as the Ladies Anne and Elizabeth Grey! What was a knowledge of French when one was in almost complete ignorance of the ways of the world? One must learn by listening.

“The King, my dear, was mightily affected by the lady in scarlet. Did you not see?”

“And who was she?”

Lady Elizabeth put her fingers to her lips and laughed cunningly.

“What of the Queen?” asked little Anne Boleyn; which set the ladies laughing.

“The Queen, my child, is an old woman. She is twenty-nine years old.”

“Twenty-nine!” cried Anne, and tried to picture herself at that great age, but she found this impossible. “She is indeed an old woman.”

“And looks older than she is.”

“The King—he too is old,” said Anne.

“You are very young, Anne Boleyn, and you know nothing...nothing at all. The King is twenty-three years old, and that is a very good age for a man to be.”

“It seems a very great age,” said little Anne, and set them mocking her. She hated to be mocked, and reproved herself for not holding her tongue; she must be silent and listen; that was the way to learn. The ladies twittered together, whispering secrets which Anne must not hear. “Hush! She is but a child! She knows nothing...” But after awhile they grew tired of whispering.

“They say he has long since grown tired of her...”

“No son yet...no child of the marriage!”

“I have heard it whispered that she, having been the wife of his brother...”

“Hush! Do you want your head off your shoulders?”

It was interesting, every minute of it. The little girl was silent, missing nothing.

As she lay in her bed, sleeping quietly, a figure bent over her, shaking her roughly. She opened startled eyes to find Lady Elizabeth Grey bending over her.

“Wake up, Anne Boleyn! Wake up!”

Anne fought away sleep which was reluctant to leave her.

“The weather has changed,” said Lady Elizabeth, her teeth chattering with cold and excitement. “The weather has changed; we are leaving for France at once.”

It had been comforting to know her father was with her. Her grandfather was there also—her mother’s father, that was, the Duke of Norfolk—and with them sailed too her uncle, Surrey.

It was just getting light when they set off, being not quite four o’clock in the morning. The sea was calmer than Anne had seen it since her arrival at Dover. Mary was gay, fresh from the fond farewell kiss of her brother.

“I will have the little Boleyn to sit near me,” she had said. “Her quaintness amuses me.”

The boat rocked, and Anne shivered and thought, my father is sailing with us...and my uncle and my grandfather. But she was glad she was with Mary Tudor and not with any of these men, for she knew them little, and what time would such important people have to bestow on a seven-year-old girl, the least important in the entire retinue!

“How would you feel, Anne,” asked Mary, “if you were setting out to a husband you had never seen in the flesh?”

“I think I should be very frightened,” said Anne, “but I should like to be a queen.”

“Marry and you would! You are a bright little girl, are you not? You would like to be a queen! Do you think the old man will dote on me?”

“I think he will not be able to help himself.”

Mary kissed her.

“They say the French ladies are very beautiful. We shall see. Oh, Charles, Charles, if you were only King of France! But what am I, little Anne? Nothing but a clause in a treaty, a pawn in the game which His Grace, my brother, and the French King, my husband, play together....How the boat rocks!”

“The wind is rising again,” said Anne.

“My faith! You are right, and I like it not.”

Anne was frightened. Never had she known the like of this. The ship rocked and rolled as though it was out of control; the waves broke over it and crashed down on it. Anne lay below, wrapped in a cloak, fearing death and longing for it.

But when the sickness passed a little, and the sea still roared and it seemed that this inadequate craft would be overturned and all its crew and passengers sucked down to the bottom of the ocean, Anne began to cry because she now no longer wished to die. It is sad to die when one is but seven and the world is proving to be a colourful pageant in which one is destined to play a part, however insignificant. She thought longingly of the quiet of Hever, of the great avenues at Blickling, murmuring: “I shall never see them again. My poor mother will be filled with sorrow...George too; my father perhaps...if he survives, and Mary will hear of this and cry for me. Poor Simonette will weep for me and be even more unhappy than she was when she said goodbye.” Then Anne was afraid for her wickedness. “I lied to Simonette about the piece of tapestry. It did not hurt anyone that I should lie? But it was a lie, and I did not confess it. It was wrong to pull up the trap-door in the ballroom and show Margaret the dungeons, for Margaret was frightened; it was wrong to take her there and pretend to leave her....Oh, dear, if I need not die now, I will be so good. I fear I have been very wicked and shall burn in hell.”

Death was certain; she heard voices whispering that they had lost the rest of the convoy. Oh, to be so young, to be so full of sin, and to die!

But later, when the sickness had passed completely, her spirits revived, for she was by nature adventurous. It was something to have lived through this; even when the boat was run aground in Boulogne harbor, and Anne and the ladies were taken off into small waiting boats, her exhilaration persisted. The wind caught at her long black hair and flung it round her face, as though it were angry that the sea had not taken her and kept her forever; the salt spray dashed against her cheeks. She was exhausted and weary.

But a few days later, dressed in crimson velvet, she rode in the procession, on a white palfrey, towards Abbeville.

“How crimson becomes the little Boleyn!” whispered the ladies one to another; and were faintly jealous even though she were but a child.

When Anne came to the French court, it had not yet become the most scintillating and the gayest court in Europe; which reputation it was to acquire under Francois. Louis, the reigning king, was noted for his meanness; he would rather be called mean, he had said, than burden his people with taxes. He indulged in few excesses; he drank in moderation; he ate in moderation; he had a quiet and unimaginative mind; there was nothing brilliant about Louis; he was the essence of mediocrity. His motto was France first and France above all. His court still retained a good deal of that austerity, so alien to the temperament of its people, which had been forced on it during the life of his late queen; and his daughters, the little crippled Claude and young Renee were like their mother. It was small wonder that the court was all eagerness to fall under the spell of gorgeous Francois, the heir apparent. Francois traced his descent to the Duke of Orleans as did Louis, and though Francois was in the direct line of succession, he would only attain the throne if Louis had no son to follow him; and with his mother and sister, Francois impatiently and with exasperation awaited the death of the King who, in their opinion, had lived too long. Imagine their consternation at this marriage with a young girl! Their impatience turned to anger, their exasperation to fear.

Louise of Savoy, the mother of Francois, was a dark, swarthy woman, energetic in her ambition for her son—her Caesar, as she called him—passionate in her devotion to his interests. They were a strange family, this mother and her son and daughter; their devotion to each other had something of a frenzy in it; they stood together, a trinity of passionate devotion. Louise consulted the stars, seeking good omens for her son; Marguerite, Duchess of Alencon, one of the most intellectual women of her day, trembled at the threat to her brother’s accession to the throne; Francois himself, the youngest of the trio, twenty years old, swarthy of skin with his hooked nose and sensuous mouth, already a rake, taking, as it was said, his sex as he took his meals, was as devoted a member of the trinity as the other two. At fifteen years of age he had begun his amorous adventures; he was lavishly generous, of ready wit, a poet of some ability, an intellectual, and never a hypocrite. With him one love affair followed another, and he liked to see those around him indulging in similar pleasures. “Toujours l’amour!” cried Francois. “Hands off love!” Only fools were not happy, and what happiness was there to compare with the delight of satisfied love? Only the foolish did not use this gift which the kindliest gods had bestowed on mankind. Only blockheads prided themselves on their virtue. Another name for virginity was stupidity!

Louise looked on with admiration at her Caesar; Marguerite of Alencon said of her stupid husband: “Oh, why is he not like my brother!” And the court of France, tired of the niggardly Louis and the influence of the Queen whom they had called “the vestal,” awaited eagerly that day when Francois should ascend the throne.

And now the old King had married a young wife who looked as if she could bear many children; Louise of Savoy raged against the Kings of France and England. Marguerite grew pale, fearing that her beloved brother would be cheated of his inheritance. Francois said: “Oh, but how she is charming, this little Mary Tudor!” and he looked with distaste on his affianced bride, the little limping Claude.

Anne Boleyn was very sorry for Claude. How sad it was to be ill-favored, to look on while he who was to be your husband flitted from one beautiful lady to another like a gorgeous dragonfly in a garden of flowers! How important it was to be beautiful! She went on learning, by listening, her eyes wide to miss nothing.

Mary, the new French Queen, was wild as a young colt, and much more beautiful. Indiscreetly she talked to her attendants, mostly French now, for almost her entire retinue of English ladies had been sent home. The King had dismissed them; they made a fence about her, he said, and if she wanted advice, to whom should she go but to her husband? She had kept little Anne Boleyn, though. The King had turned his sallow face, on which death was already beginning to set its cold fingers, towards the little girl and shrugged his shoulders. A little girl of such tender years could not worry him. So Anne had stayed.

“He is old,” Mary murmured, “and he is all impatience for me. Oh, it can be amusing...he can scarcely wait...” And she went off into peals of laughter, reconstructing with actions her own coy reluctance and the King’s impatience.

“Look at the little Boleyn! What long ears she has! Wait till you are grown up, my child...then you will not have to learn by listening when you think you are not observed. I trow those beautiful black eyes will gain for you an opportunity to experience the strange ways of men for yourself.”

And Anne asked herself: “Will it happen so? Shall I be affianced and married?” And she was a little afraid, and then glad to be only seven, for when you are seven marriage is a long way off.

“Monsieur mon beau-fils, he is very handsome, is he not?” demanded Mary. And she laughed, with secrets in her eyes.

Yes, indeed, thought Anne, Francois was handsome. He was elegant and charming, and he quoted poetry to the ladies as he walked in the gardens of the palace. Once he met Anne herself in the gardens, and he stopped her and she was afraid; and he, besides being elegant and charming, was very clever, so that he understood her fear which, she was wise enough to see, amused him vastly. He picked her up and held her close to him, so that she could see the dark, coarse hair on his face and the bags already visible beneath his dark, flashing eyes; and she trembled for fear he should do to her that which it was whispered he would do to any who pleased him for a passing moment.

He laughed his deep and tender laugh, and as he laughed the young Queen came along the path, and Francois put Anne down that he might bow to the Queen.

“Monsieur mon beau-fils...” she said, laughing.

“Madame...la reine...”

Their eyes flashed sparks of merriment one to the other; and little Anne Boleyn, having no part in this sport that amused them so deeply, could slip away.

I am indeed fortunate to learn so much, thought Anne. She had grown a long way from that child who had played at Hever and stitched at a piece of tapestry with Simonette. She knew much; she learned to interpret the smiles of people, to understand what they meant, not so much from the words they used as from their inflection. She knew that Mary was trying to force Francois into a love affair with her, and that Francois, realizing the folly of this, was yet unable to resist it. Mary was a particularly enticing flower full of golden pollen, but around her was a great spider’s web, and he hovered, longing for her, yet fearing to be caught. Louise and her daughter watched Mary for the dreaded signs of pregnancy, which for them would mean the death of hope for Caesar.

“Ah, little Boleyn,” said Mary, “if I could but have a child! If I could come to you and say ‘I am enceinte,’ I would dance for joy; I would snap my fingers at that grim old Louise, I would laugh in the face of that clever Marguerite. But what is the good! That old man, what can he do for me! He tries though...he tries very hard...and so do I!”

She laughed at the thought of their efforts. There was always laughter round Mary Tudor. All around the court those words were whispered—“Enceinte! Is the Queen enceinte? If only...the Queen is enceinte!”

Louise questioned the ladies around the Queen; she even questioned little Anne. The angry, frustrated woman buried her head in her hands and raged; she visited her astrologer; she studied her charts. “The stars have said my son will sit on the throne of France. That old man...he is too old, and too cold...”

“He behaves like a young and hot one,” said Marguerite.

“He is a dying fire...”

“A dying fire has its last flicker of warmth, my mother!”

Mary loved to tease them, feigning sickness. “I declare I cannot get up this morning. I do not know what it can be, except that I may have eaten too heartily last evening...” Her wicked eyes sparkling; her sensuous lips pouting.

“The Queen is sick this morning...she looked blooming last night. Can it be...?”

Mary threw off her clothes and pranced before her mirror.

“Anne, tell me, am I not fattening? Here...and here. Anne, I shall slap you unless you say I am!” And she would laugh hysterically and then cry a little. “Anne Boleyn, did you never see my Lord of Suffolk? How my body yearns for that man!” Ambition was strong in Mary. “I would be mother to a king of France, Anne. Ah, if only my beautiful beau-fils were King of France! Do you doubt, little Boleyn, that he would have had me with child ere this? What do I want from life? I do not know, Anne....Now, if I had never known Charles...” And she grew soft, thinking of Charles Brandon, and the King would come and see her softness, and it would amuse her maliciously to pretend the softness was for him. The poor old King was completely infatuated by the giddy creature; he would give her presents, beautiful jewels one at a time, so that she could express her gratitude for each one. The court tittered, laughing at the old man. “That one will have his money’s worth!” It was a situation to set a French court, coming faster and faster under the influence of Francois, rocking with laughter.

Wildly, Mary coquetted with the willing Francois. If she cannot get a child from the King, whispered the court, why not from Francois? She would not lose from such a bargain; only poor Francois would do that. What satisfaction could there be in seeing yourself robbed of a throne by your own offspring? Very little, for the child could not be acknowledged as his. Oh, it was very amusing, and the French were fond of those who amused them. And that it should be Mary Tudor from that gloomy island across the Channel, made it more amusing still. Ah, these English, they were unaccountable. Imagine it! An English princess to give them the best farce in history! Francois was cautious; Francois was reckless. His ardor cooled; his passion flared. There was none, he was sure, whom he could enjoy as heartily as the saucy, hot-blooded little Tudor. There were those who felt it their duty to warn him. “Do you not see the web stretched out to catch you?” Francois saw, and reluctantly gave up the chase.

On the first day of January, as Anne was coming from the Queen’s apartment, she met Louise—a distraught Louise, her black hair disordered, her eyes wild.

Anne hesitated, and was roughly thrust aside.

“Out of my way, child! Have you not heard the news? The King is dead.”

Now the excitement of the court was tuned to a lower key, though it had increased rather than abated. Louise and her daughter were overjoyed at the death of the King, but their happiness in the event was overshadowed by their fear. What of the Queen’s condition? They could scarcely wait to know; they trembled; they were suspicious. What did this one know? What had that one overheard? Intrigue...and, at the heart of it, mischievous Mary Tudor.

The period of mourning set in, and the Queen’s young body was seen to broaden with the passing of the days. Louise endured agonies; Francois lost his gaiety. Only the Queen, demure and seductive, enjoyed herself. In her apartments Louise pored over charts; more and more men, learned in the study of the stars, came to her. Is the Queen enceinte? She begged, she implored to be told this was not so, for how could she bear it if it were! During those days of suspense she brooded on the past; her brief married life, her widowhood; the birth of her clever Marguerite, and then that day at Cognac nearly twenty-one years ago when she had come straight from the agony of childbirth to find her Caesar in her arms. She thought of her husband, the profligate philanderer who had died when Francois was not quite two years old, and whom she had mourned wholeheartedly and then had given over her life to her children, superintending the education of both of them herself, delighting in their capacity for learning, their intellectual powers which surely set them apart from all others; they were both of them so worthy of greatness—a brilliant pair, her world, or at least Caesar was; and where that king of men was concerned, was not Marguerite in complete accord with her mother? He should be King of France, for he was meant to be King of France since there was never one who deserved the honor more than he, the most handsome, the most courteous, the most virile, the most learned Francois. And now this fear! This cheating of her beautiful son by a baggage from England! A Tudor! Who were the Tudors? They did not care to look far back into their history, one supposed!

“My Caesar shall be King!” determined Louise. And, unable to bear the suspense any longer, she went along to the Queen’s apartments and, making many artful enquiries as to her health, she perceived that Her Majesty was not quite as large about the middle as she had been yesterday. So she—for, after all, she was Louise of Savoy, a power in France even in the days of her old enemy and rival, Anne of Brittany—shook the naughty Queen until the padding fell from the creature’s clothes. And...oh, joy! Oh, blessed astrologers who had assured her that her son would have the throne! There was the wicked girl as straight and slender as a virgin.

So Mary left the court of France, and in Paris, secretly and in great haste, she married her Charles Brandon; and the court of France tittered indulgently until it began to laugh immoderately, for it was whispered that Brandon, not daring to tell his King of his unsanctioned marriage with the Queen of France and the sister of the King of England, had written his apologia to Wolsey, begging the great Cardinal to break the news gently to the King.

Francois triumphantly mounted the throne and married Claude, while Louise basked in the exquisite pleasure of ambition fulfilled; she was now Madame of the French court.

Little Anne stayed on to serve with Claude. The Duchesse d’Alencon had taken quite a fancy to the child, for her beauty and grace and for her intelligence; she was not yet eight years old, but she had much worldly wisdom; she knew that crippled Claude was submissive, ignored by her husband, and that it was the King’s sister who was virtually Queen of France. Anne would see brother and sister wandering in the palace grounds, their arms about each other, talking of affairs of state; for Marguerite was outstanding in a court where intellect was given the respect it deserved, and she could advise and help her brother; or Marguerite would read her latest writing to the King, and the King would show a poem he had written; he called her his pet, his darling, ma mignonne. She wanted nothing but to be his slave; she had declared she would be willing to follow her brother as his washer-woman, and for him she would cast to the wind her ashes and her bones.

The shadow of Anne of Brittany was banished from the court, and the King amused himself, and the court grew truly Gallic, and gayer than any in Europe. It was elegant; it was distinctive; its gallantry was of the highest order; its wit flowed readily. It was the most scintillating of courts, the most intellectual of courts, and Marguerite of Alencon, the passionately devoted slave and sister to the King, was queen of it.

It was in this court that Anne Boleyn cast off her childishness and came to premature womanhood, and with the passing of the years and the nourishing of that friendship which she enjoyed with the strange and fascinating Marguerite, she herself became one of the brightest of its brilliant lights.

Between the towns of Guisnes and Ardres was laid a brilliant pageant. A warm June sun showed the palace of Guisnes in all its glittering glory. A fairy-tale castle this, though a temporary one; and one on which many men had worked since February, to the great expense of the English people. It was meant to symbolize the power and riches of Henry of England. At its gates and windows had been set up sham men-at-arms, their faces made formidable enough to terrify those who looked too close; they represented the armed might of the little island across the Channel, not perhaps particularly significant in the eyes of Europe until the crafty statesman, that wily Wolsey, had got his hands on the helm of its ship of state. The hangings of cloth of gold, the gold images, the chairs decorated with pommels of gold, all the furnishings and hangings ornamented wherever possible with the crimson Tudor rose—these represented the wealth of England. The great fountain in the courtyard, from which flowed wine—claret, white wine, red wine—and over which presided the great stone Bacchus round whose head was written in Tudor gold, “Faietes bonne chere qui vouldra”—this was to signify Tudor hospitality.

The people of England, who would never see this lavish display and who had contributed quite a large amount of money towards it, might murmur; those lords who had been commanded by their King to set out on this most opulent and most expensive expedition in history might think uneasily of return to their estates, impoverished by the need to pay for their participation in it; but the King thought of none of these things. He was going to meet his rival, Francis; he was going to prove to Francis that he was the better king, which was a matter of opinion; he was going to show himself to be a better man, which some might think doubtful; he was going to show he was a richer king, which, thanks to his cautious father, was a fact; and that he was a power in Europe, of which there could no longer be a doubt. He could smile expansively at this glittering palace which he had erected as fitting to be the temporary resting place of his august self; he could smile complacently because in spite of its size it could not accommodate his entire retinue, so that all around the palace were the brightly colored tents of his less noble followers. He could congratulate himself that Francis’s lodging at Ardres was less magnificent than his; and these matters filled the King of England with a satisfaction which was immense.

In the pavilion which was the French King’s lodging, Queen Claude prepared herself for her meeting with Queen Katharine. Her ladies, too, prepared themselves; and among these was one whose beauty set her aside from all others. She was now in her fourteenth year, a lovely, slender girl who wore her dark hair in silken ringlets, and on whose head was an aureole made of plaited gauze, the color of gold. The blue of her garments was wonderfully becoming to her dark beauty; her vest was of blue velvet spattered with silver stars; her surcoat of watered silk was lined with miniver and the sleeves of the surcoat were of her own designing; they were wide and long, and hung below her hands, hiding them, for she was more sensitive about her hands than she had been at Blickling and Hever. Over this costume she wore a blue velvet cape trimmed with points, and from the end of each of these points hung little golden bells; her shoes were covered in the same blue velvet as her vest, and diamond stars twinkled on her insteps. She was one of the very fashionable ladies in the smart court of France, and even now the ladies of the court were striving to copy those long hanging sleeves, so that what had been a ruse to hide a deformity was becoming a fashion. She was the gayest of the young ladies. Who would not be gay, sought after as she was? She was quick of speech, ready of wit; in the dance she excelled all others; her voice was a delight; she played the virginals competently; she composed a little. She was worldly wise, and yet there was about her a certain youthful innocence.

Francois himself had cast covetous eyes upon her, but Anne was no fool. She laughed scornfully at those women who were content to hold the King’s attention for a day. Marguerite was her friend, and Marguerite had imbued her with a new, advanced way of thinking, the kernel of which was equality of the sexes. “We are equal with men,” Marguerite had said, “when we allow ourselves to be.” And Anne determined to allow herself to be. So cleverly and with astonishing diplomacy she held off Francois, and he, amused and without a trace of malice, gracefully accepted defeat.

Now Anne was in her element; there was nothing she enjoyed more than a round of gaiety, and here was gaiety such as even she had never encountered before. She was proud of her English birth, and eagerly she drank in the news of English splendor. “My lord Cardinal seemed as a king,” she heard, and there followed an account of his retinue, the gorgeousness of his apparel, the display of his wealth. “And he is but the servant of his master! The splendor of the King of England it would be difficult to describe.” Anne saw him now and then—the great red King; he had changed a good deal since she had last seen him, at Dover. He was more corpulent, coarser; perhaps without his dazzling garments he would not be such a handsome man. His face was ruddier, his cheeks more pouchy; his voice, though, bellowed as before. What a contrast he presented with the dark and subtle Francois! And Anne was not the only one who guessed that these two had little love for each other in spite of the gushing outward displays of affection.

During the days that followed the meeting of the Kings, Anne danced and ate and flirted with the rest. Today the French court were guests of the English; pageants, sports, jousting, a masked ball and a banquet. Tomorrow the French court would entertain the English. Everything must be lavish; the French court must outshine the English, and then again the English must be grander still. Never mind the cost to nations groaning under taxations; never mind if the two Kings, beneath the show of jovial good fellowship, are sworn enemies! Never mind! This is the most brilliant and lavish display in history; and if it is also the most vulgar, the most recklessly stupid, what of that! The Kings must amuse themselves.

Mary Boleyn had come to attend Queen Katharine at Guisnes. She was eighteen then—a pretty, plumpish voluptuous creature. It was years since she had seen her young sister, and it was therefore interesting to meet her in the pavilion at Ardres. Mary had returned to England from the Continent with her reputation in shreds; and her face, her manner, her eager little body suggested that rumour had not been without some foundation. She looked what she was—a lightly loving little animal, full of desire, sensuous, ready for adventure, helpless to avert it, saying with her eyes, “This is good; why fret about tomorrow?”

Anne read these things in her sister’s face, and was disturbed by them, for it hurt Anne’s dignity to have to acknowledge this wanton as her sister. The Boleyns were no noble family; they were not a particularly wealthy family. Anne was half French in outlook; impulsive, by nature she was also practical. The sisters were as unlike as two sisters could be. Anne set a high price upon herself; Mary, no price at all. The French court opened one’s eyes to worldly matters when one was very young; the French shrugged philosophical shoulders; l’amour was charming—indeed what was there more charming? But the French court taught one elegance and dignity too. And here was Mary, Anne’s sister, with her dress cut too low and her bosom pressed upwards provocatively; and in her open mouth and her soft doe’s eyes there was the plea of the female animal, begging to be taken. Mary was pretty; Anne was beautiful. Anne was clever, and Mary was a fool.

How she fluttered about the ladies’ apartments, examining her sister’s belongings, her little blue velvet brodiquins, her clothes! Those wonderful sleeves! Trust Anne to turn a disadvantage into an asset! I will have those sleeves on my new gown, thought Mary; they give an added grace to the figure—but is that because grace comes naturally to her? Mary could not but admire her. Simple Anne Boleyn looked elegant as a duchess, proud as a queen.

“I should not have known you!” cried Mary.

“Nor I you.”

Anne was avid for news of England.

“Tell me of the court of England.”

Mary grimaced. “The Queen...oh, the Queen is very dull. You are indeed fortunate not to be with Queen Katharine. We must sit and stitch, and there is mass eight times a day. We kneel so much, I declare my knees are worn out with it!”

“Is the King so devoted to virtue?”

“Not as the Queen, the saints be praised! He is devoted to other matters. But for the King, I would rather be home at Hever than be at court; but where the King is there is always good sport. He is heartily sick of her, and deeply enamoured of Elizabeth Blount; there was a son born to them some little while since. The King is delighted...and furious.”

“Delighted with the son and furious with the Queen because it is not hers?” inquired Anne.

“That is surely the case. One daughter has the Queen to show for all those years of marriage; and when he gets a son, it is from Elizabeth Blount. The Queen is disappointed; she turns more and more to her devotions. Pity us...who are not so devoted and must pray with her and listen to the most mournful music that was ever made. The King is such a beautiful prince, and she such a plain princess.”

Anne thought of Claude then—submissive and uncomplaining—not a young woman enjoying being alive, but just a machine for turning out children. I would not be Claude, she thought, even for the throne of France. I would not be Katharine, ugly and unwanted Katharine of the many miscarriages. No! I would be as myself...or Marguerite.

“What news of our family?” asked Anne.

“Little but what you must surely know. Life is not unpleasant for us. I heard a sorry story, though, of our uncle, Edmund Howard, who is very, very poor and is having a family very rapidly; all he has is his house at Lambeth, and in that he breeds children to go hungry with him and his lady.”

“His reward for helping to save England at Flodden!” said Anne.

“There is talk that he would wish to go on a voyage of discovery, and so doing earn a little money for his family.”

“Is it not depressing to hear such news of members of our family!”

Mary looked askance at her sister; the haughtiness had given place to compassion; anger filled the dark eyes because of the ingratitude of a king and a country towards a hero of Flodden Field.

“You hold your head like a queen,” said Mary. “Grand ideas have been put into your head since you have been living at the French court.”

“I would rather carry it like a queen than a harlot!” flashed Anne.

“Marry and you would! But who said you should carry it like a harlot?”

“No one says it. It is I who say I would prefer not to.”

“The Queen,” said Mary, “is against this pageantry. She does not love the French. She remonstrated with the King; I wonder she dared, knowing his temper.”

Mary prattled lightly; she took to examining the apartment still further, testing the material of her sister’s gown; she asked questions about the French court, but did not listen to the answers. It was late when she left her sister. She would be reprimanded perhaps; it would not be the first time Mary had been reprimanded for staying out late.

But for a sister! thought Mary, amused by her recollections.

In a corridor of the gorgeous palace at Guisnes, Mary came suddenly upon a most brilliantly clad personage, and hurrying as she was, she had almost run full tilt into him before she could pull herself up. She saw the coat of russet velvet trimmed with triangles of pearls; the buttons of the coat were diamonds. Mary’s eyes opened wide in dismay as confusedly she dropped onto her knee.

He paused to look at her. His small bright eyes peered out from the puffy red flesh around them.

“How now! How now!” he said, and then “Get up!” His voice was coarse and deep, and it was that perhaps and his brusque manner of speech which had earned him the adjective “bluff.”

The little eyes traveled hastily all over Mary Boleyn, then rested on the provocative bosom, exposed rather more than fashion demanded, on the parted lips and the soft, sweet eyes.

“I have seen you at Greenwich...Boleyn’s girl! Is that so?”

“Yes...if it please Your Grace.”

“It pleases me,” he said. The girl was trembling. He liked his subjects to tremble, and if her lips were a little dumb, her eyes paid him the homage he liked best to receive from pretty subjects in quiet corridors where, for once in a while, he found himself unattended.

“You’re a pretty wench,” he said.

“Your Majesty is gracious...”

“Ah!” he said, laughing and rumbling beneath the russet velvet. “And ready to be more gracious still when it’s a pretty wench like yourself.”

There was no delicacy about Henry; if anything he was less elegant, more coarse, during this stay in France. Was he going to ape these prancing French gallants! He thought not. He liked a girl, and a girl liked him; no finesse necessary. He put a fat hand, sparkling with rings, on her shoulder. Any reluctance Mary might have felt—but, being Mary, she would of course have felt little—melted at his touch. Her admiration for him was in her eyes; her face had the strained set look of a desire that is rising and will overwhelm all else. To her he was the perfect man, because, being the King, he possessed the strongest ingredient of sexual domination—power. He was the most powerful man in England, perhaps the most powerful in France as well. He was the most handsome prince in Christendom, or perhaps his clothes were more handsome than those worn by any others, and Mary’s lust for him, as his for her, was too potent and too obvious to be veiled.

Henry said, “Why, girl...” And his voice slurred and faded out as he kissed her, and his hands touched the soft bosom which so clearly asked to be touched. Mary’s lips clung to his flesh, and her hands clung to his russet velvet. Henry kissed her neck and her breasts, and his hands felt her thighs beneath the velvet of her gown. This attraction, instantaneous and mutual, was honey-sweet to them both. A king such as he was could take when and where he would in the ordinary course of events; but this coarse, crude man was a complex man, a man who did not fully know himself; a deeply sentimental man. He had great power, but because of this power of his which he loved to wield, he wanted constant reassurance. When a man’s head can be taken off his shoulders for a whim, and when a woman’s life can hang on one’s word, one has to accept the uncertainty that goes with this power; one is surrounded by sycophants and those who feign love because they dare show nothing else. And in the life of a king such as Henry there could only be rare moments when he might feel himself a man first, a king second; he treasured such moments. There was that in Mary Boleyn which told him she desired him—Henry the man, divested of his diamond-spattered clothes; and that man she wanted urgently. He had seen her often enough sitting with his pious Queen, her eyes downcast, stitching away at some woman’s work. He had liked her mildly; she was a pretty piece enough; he had let his eyes dwell lightly on her and thought of her, naked in bed, as he thought of them all; nothing more than that. He liked her family; Thomas was a good servant; George a bright boy; and Mary...well, Mary was just what he needed at this moment.

Yesterday the King of France had thrown him in a wrestling match, being more skilled than he in a game which demanded quickness of action rather than bullock strength such as his. He had smarted from the indignity. And again, while he had breakfasted, the King of France had walked unheralded into his apartment and sat awhile informally; they had laughed and joked together, and Francis had called him Brother, and something else besides. Even now while the sex call sounded insistently in his ears, it rankled sorely, for Francis had called him “My prisoner!” It was meant to be a term of friendship, a little joke between two good friends. And so taken aback had Henry been that he had no answer ready; the more he thought of it, the more ominous it sounded; it was no remark for one king to make to another, when they both knew that under their displays of friendship they were enemies. He needed homage after that; he always got it when he wanted it; but this which Mary Boleyn offered him was different; homage to himself, not to his crown. Francis disconcerted him and he wanted to assure himself that he was as good a man as the French King. Francis shocked him; Francis had no shame; he glorified love, worshipped it shamelessly. Henry’s affairs were never entirely blatant; he regarded them as sins to be confessed and forgiven; he was a pious man. He shied away from the thought of confession; one did not think of it before the act. And here was little Mary Boleyn ready to tell him that he was the perfect man as well as the perfect king. She was as pretty a girl as he would find in the two courts. French women! Prancing, tittering, elegant ladies! Not for him! Give him a good English bedfellow! And here was one ready enough. She was weak at the knees for him; her little hands fluttering for him, pretending to hold him off, while what they meant really was “Please...now...no waiting.”

He bit her ear, and whispered into it: “You like me then, sweetheart?”

She was pale with desire now. She was what he wanted. In an excess of pleasure, the King slapped her buttocks jovially and drew her towards his privy chamber.

This was the way, the way to wash the taste of this scented French gallantry out of his mouth! There was a couch in this chamber. Here! Now! No matter the hour, no matter the place.

She opened her eyes, stared at the couch in feigned surprise, tried to simulate fear; which made him slap his thigh with mirth. They all wanted to be forced...every one of them. Well, let them; it was a feminine trait that didn’t displease him. She murmured: “If it please Your Grace, I am late and...”

“It does please Our Grace. It pleases us mightily. Come hither to me, little Mary. I would know if the rest of you tastes as sweet as your lips.”

She was laughing and eager, no longer feigning feminine modesty when she could not be anything but natural. The King was amused and delighted; not since he had set foot on this hated soil had he been so delighted.

He laughed and was refreshed and eased of his humiliation. He’d take this girl the English way—no French fripperies for him! He would say what he meant, and she could too.

He said: “Why, Mary, you’re sweet all over. And where did you hide yourself, Mary? I’m not sure you have not earned a punishment, Mary, for keeping this from your King so long; we might say it was treason, that we might!”

He laughed, mightily pleased, as he always was, with his own pleasantries; and she was overawed and passive, then responsive and pretending to be afraid she had been over-presumptuous to have so enjoyed the King. This was what he wanted, and he was grateful enough to those of his subjects who pleased him. In an exuberance of good spirits he slapped her buttocks—no velvet to cover them now—and she laughed, and her saucy eyes promised much for other times to come.

“You please me, Mary,” he said, and in a rush of crude tenderness added: “You shall not suffer for this day.”

When he left her and when she was scrambling into her clothes, she still trembled from the violence of the experience.

In the Queen’s apartment she was scolded for her lateness; demurely, with eyes cast down, she accepted the reprimand.

Coming from Mary Boleyn, the King met the Cardinal.

Ah, thought the Cardinal, noting the flushed face of his royal master, and guessing something of what had happened, who now?

The King laid his hand on the Cardinal’s shoulder, and they walked together along the corridor, talking of the entertainment they would give the French tonight, for matters of state could not be discussed in the palace of Guisnes; these affairs must wait for Greenwich or York House; impossible to talk of important matters, surrounded by enemies.

This exuberance, thought the Cardinal, means one thing—success in sport. And as sport the Cardinal would include the gratification of the royal senses. Good! said the Cardinal to himself; this has put that disastrous matter of the wrestling from his thoughts.

The Cardinal was on the whole a contented man—as contented, that is, as a man of ambition can ever be. He was proud of his sumptuous houses, his rich possessions; it was a good deal to be, next to the King, the richest man in England. But that which he loved more than riches, he also had; and to those who have known obscurity, power is a more intoxicating draught than riches. Men might secretly call him “Butcher’s cur,” but they trembled before his might, for he was greater than the King. He led the King, and if he managed this only because the King did not know he was led, that was of little account. Very pleasant it was to reflect that his genius for statecraft, his diplomacy, had put the kingdom into the exalted position it held today. This King was a good king, because the goodness of a king depends upon his choice of ministers. There could be no doubt that Henry was a good king, for he had chosen Thomas Wolsey.

It pleased the statesman therefore to see the King happy with a woman, doubtless about to launch himself on yet another absorbing love affair, for then the fat, bejeweled hands, occupied in caressing a woman’s body, could be kept from seeking a place on the helm of the ship of state. The King must be amused; the King must be humored; when he would organize this most ridiculous pageant, this greatest farce in history, there was none that dare deny him his pleasures. Buckingham, the fool, had tried; and Buckingham should tread carefully, for, being so closely related to the King, his head was scarcely safe on his shoulders, be he the most docile of subjects. Francis was not to be trusted. He would make treaties one week, and discard them the next. But how could one snatch the helm from those podgy hands, once the King had decided they must have a place on it? How indeed! Diplomacy forever! thought the Cardinal. Keep the King amused. It was good to see the King finding pleasure in a woman, for well the Cardinal knew that Elizabeth Blount, who had served her purpose most excellently, was beginning to tire His Majesty.

They parted affectionately at the King’s apartments, both smiling, well pleased with life and with each other.

The Queen was retiring. She had dismissed her women when the King came in. Her still beautiful auburn hair hung about her shoulders; her face was pale, thin and much lined, and there were deep shadows under her eyes.

The King looked at her distastefully. With Mary Boleyn still in his thoughts, he recalled the cold submissiveness to duty of this Spanish woman through the years of their marriage. She had been a good wife, people would say; but she would have been as good a wife to his brother Arthur had he lived. Being a good wife was just another of the virtues that irritated him. And what had his marriage with her been but years of hope that never brought him his desires? The Queen is with child; prepare to sing a Te Deum. Prepare to let the bells of London ring. And then...miscarriage after miscarriage; five of them in four years. A stillborn daughter, a son who lived but two months, a stillborn son, one who died at birth and another prematurely born. And then...a daughter!

He had begun to be afraid. Rumors spread quickly through a country, and it is not always possible to prevent their reaching the kingly ear. Why cannot the King have a son? murmured his people. The King grew fearful. I am a very religious man, he thought. The fault cannot be mine. Six times I hear mass each day, and in times of pestilence or war or bad harvest, eight times a day. I confess my sins with regularity; the fault cannot be mine.

But he was superstitious. He had married his brother’s widow. It had been sworn that the marriage had never been consummated. Had it though? The fault could not be his. How could God deny the dearest wish of such a religious man as Henry VIII of England! The King looked round for a scapegoat, and because her body was shapeless with much fruitless child-bearing, and because he never had liked her pious Spanish ways for more than a week or two, because he was beginning to dislike her heartily, he blamed the Queen. Resentfully he thought of those nights when he had lain with her. When he prayed for male issue he reminded his God of this. There were women in his court who had beckoned him with their charms, who had aroused his ready desire; and for duty’s sake he had lain with the Queen, and only during her pregnancies had he gone where he would. What virtue...to go unrewarded! God was just; therefore there was some reason why he had been denied a son. There it was...in that woman on whom he had squandered his manhood without reward.

He knew, when Elizabeth Blount bore his son, that the fault could not lie with him. He had been in an ecstacy of delight when that boy had been born. His virility vindicated, the guilt of Katharine assured, his dislike had become tinged with hatred on that day.

But on this evening his dislike for the Queen was mellowed by the pleasure he had had in Mary Boleyn; he smiled that remote smile which long experience had taught the Queen was born of satisfied lust. His gorgeous clothing was just a little disarranged; the veins stood out more than usual on the great forehead.

He had thrown himself into a chair, and was sitting, his knees wide apart, the glazed smile on his face, making plans which included Mary Boleyn.

The Queen would say a special prayer for him tonight. Meanwhile she asked herself that question which had been in the Cardinal’s mind—“Who now?”

“Venus etait blonde, l’on m’a dit.

L’on voit bien qu’elle est brunette.”

So sang Francois to the lady who excited him most in his wife’s retinue of ladies. Unfortunately for Francois, she was the cleverest as well as the most desirable.

“Ah!” said Francois. “You are the wise one, Mademoiselle Bouillain. You have learned that the fruit which hangs just out of reach is the most desired.”

“Your Majesty well knows my mind,” explained Anne. “What should I be? A king’s mistress. The days of glory for such are very short; we have evidence of that all around us.”

“Might it not depend on the mistress, Mademoiselle Bouillain?”

She shrugged her shoulders in the way which was so much more charming than the gesture of the French ladies, because it was only half French.

“I do not care to take the risk,” she said.

Then he laughed and sang to her, and asked that she should sing to him. This she did gladly, for her voice was good and she was susceptible to admiration and eager to draw it to herself at every opportunity. Contact with the Duchesse d’Alencon had made her value herself highly, and though she was as fond of amorous adventures as any, she knew exactly at what moment to retire. She was enjoying every moment of her life at the court of France. There was so much to amuse her that life could never be dull. Lighthearted flirtations, listening to the scandal of the court, reading with Marguerite, and getting a glimmer of the new religion that had begun to spring up in Europe, since a German monk named Martin Luther had nailed a set of theses on a church door at Wittenberg. Yes, life was colorful and amusing, stimulating mind and body. Though the news that came from England was not so good; disaster had set in after the return from the palace of Guisnes. Poverty had swept over the country; the harvest was bad, and people were dying of the plague in the streets of London. The King was less popular than he had been before his love of vulgar show and pageantry had led him to that folly which men in England now called “The Field of the Cloth of Gold.”

There was not very exhilarating news from her family. Uncle Edmund Howard had yet another child, and that a daughter. Catherine, they called her. Anne’s ready sympathy went out to poor little Catherine Howard, born into the poverty of that rambling old house at Lambeth. Then Mary had married—hardly brilliantly—a certain William Carey. Anne would have liked to hear of a better match for her sister; but both she and George, right from Hever days, had known Mary was a fool.

And now war clouds were looming up afresh, and this time there was fear of a conflict between France and England. At the same time there was talk of a marriage for Anne which was being arranged in England to settle some dispute one branch of her family was having with another.

So Anne left France most reluctantly, and sailed for England. At home they said she was most Frenchified; she was imperious, witty, lovely to look at, and her clothes caused comment from all who beheld them.

She was just sixteen years old.

Anne’s grandfather, the old Duke of Norfolk, was not at home when Anne, in the company of her mother, visited the Norfolk’s house at Lambeth. The Duchess was a somewhat lazy, empty-headed woman who enjoyed listening to the ambitious adventures of the younger members of her family, and she had learned that her granddaughter, Anne, had returned from France a charming creature. Nothing therefore would satisfy the Duchess but that this visit should be paid, and during it she found an especial delight in sitting in the grounds of her lovely home on the river’s edge, dozing and indulging in light conversation with the girl whom she herself would now be ready to admit was the most interesting member of the family. And, thought the vain old lady, the chit has a look of me about her; moreover, I declare at her age I looked very like her. What honors, she wondered, were in store for Anne Boleyn, for the marriage with the Butlers was not being brought at any great speed to a satisfactory conclusion; and how sad if this bright child must bury herself in the wilds of that dreary, troublesome, uncivilized Ireland! But—and the Duchess sighed deeply—what were women but petty counters to be bartered by men in the settlement of their problems? Thomas Boleyn was too ambitious. Marry! An the girl were mine, to court she should go, and a plague on the Butlers.

She watched Anne feeding the peacocks; a figure of grace in scarlet and grey, she was not one whit less gorgeous than those arrogant, elegant birds. She’s Howard, mused the Duchess with pride. All Howard! Not a trace of Boleyn there.

“Come and sit beside me, my dear,” she said. “I would talk to you.”

Anne came and sat on the wooden seat which overlooked the river; she gazed along its bank at the stately gabled houses whose beautiful gardens sloped down to the water, placing their owners within comfortable distance of the quickest and least dangerous means of transport. Her gaze went quickly towards those domes and spires that seemed to pierce the blue and smokeless sky. She could see the heavy arches of London Bridge and the ramparts of the Tower of London—that great, impressive fortress whose towers, strong and formidable, stood like sentinels guarding the city.

Agnes, Duchess of Norfolk, saw the girl’s eager expression, and guessed her thoughts. She tapped her arm.

“Tell me of the court of France, my child. I’ll warrant you found much to amuse you there.”

As Anne talked, the Duchess lay back, listening, now and then stifling a yawn, for she had eaten a big dinner and, interested as she was, she was overcome by drowsiness.

“Why, bless us!” she said. “When you went away, your father was of little import; now you return to find him a gentleman of much consequence—Treasurer of the Household now, if you please!”

“It does please,” laughed Anne.

“They tell me,” said Agnes, “that the office is worth a thousand pounds a year! And what else? Steward of Tonbridge....” She began enumerating the titles on her fingers. “Master of the Hunt. Constable of the Castle. Chamberlain of Tonbridge. Receiver and Bailiff of Bradsted, and the Keeper of the Manor of Penshurst. And now it is whispered that he is to be appointed Keeper of the Parks at Thundersley, to say nothing of Essex and Westwood. Never was so much honor done a man in so short a time!”

“My father,” said Anne, “is a man of much ability.”

“And good fortune,” said Agnes slyly, eyeing the girl mischievously, thinking—Can it be that she does not know why these honors are heaped on her father, and she fresh from the wicked court of France? “And your father is lucky in his children,” commented Agnes mischievously.

The girl turned puzzled eyes on her grandmother. The old lady chuckled, thinking—She makes a pretty pose of ignorance, I’ll swear!

Anne said, her expression changing: “I would it were as well with every member of our family.” And her eyes went towards a house less than half a mile away along the river’s bank.

“Ah!” sighed the Duchess. “There is a man who served his country well, and yet...” She shrugged her shoulders. “His children are too young to be of any use to him.”

“I hear there is a new baby,” said Anne. “Do they not visit you?”

“My dear, Lord Edmund is afraid to leave his house for fear he should be arrested. He has many debts, poor man, and he’s as proud as Lucifer. Ah, yes...a new baby. Why, little Catherine is but a baby yet.”

“Grandmother, I should like to see the baby.”

The Duchess yawned. It had ever been her habit to push unpleasant thoughts aside, and the branch of her family which they were now discussing distressed her. What she enjoyed hearing was of the success of Sir Thomas and the adventures of his flighty daughter. She could nod over them, simper over them, remember her own youth and relive it as she drowsed in her pleasant seat overlooking the river. Still, she would like the Edmund Howards to see this lovely girl in her pretty clothes. The Duchess had a mischievous turn of mind. The little Howards had a distinguished soldier for a father, and they might starve; the Boleyn children had a father who might be a clever enough diplomatist, but, having descended from merchants, was no proud Howard; still, he had a most attractive daughter. There were never two men less alike than Lord Edmund Howard and Sir Thomas Boleyn. And to His Majesty, thought the Duchess, smiling into a lace handkerchief, a sword grown rusty is of less use than a lovely, willing girl.

“Run to the house and get cloaks,” she said. “We will step along to see them. A walk will do me good and mayhap throw off this flatulence which, I declare, attacks me after every meal these days.”

“You eat too heartily, Grandmother.”

“Off with you, impudent child!”

Anne ran off. It does me good to look at her, thought her grandmother. And what when the King claps eyes on her, eh, Thomas Boleyn? Though it occurs to me that she might not be to his taste. I declare were I a man I’d want to spank the haughtiness out of her before I took her to bed. And the King would not be one to brook such ways. Ah, if you go to court, Anne Boleyn, you will have to lose your French dignity—if you hope to do as well as your saucy sister. Though you’ll not go to court; you’ll go to Ireland. The Ormond title and the Ormond wealth must be kept in the family to satisfy grasping Thomas, and he was ever a man to throw his family to the wolves.

The Duchess rose, and Anne, who had come running up, put a cloak about her shoulders; they walked slowly through the gardens and along the river’s edge.

The Lambeth house of the Edmund Howards was a roomy place, cold and drafty. Lady Edmund was a delicate creature on whom too frequent child-bearing and her husband’s poverty were having a dire effect. She and her husband received their visitors in the great panelled hall, and wine was brought for them to drink. Lord Edmund’s dignity was great, and it touched Anne deeply to see his efforts to hide his poverty.

“My dear Jocosa,” said the Duchess to her daughter-in-law, “I have brought my granddaughter along to see you. She has recently returned from France, as you know. Tell your aunt and uncle all about it, child.”

“Uncle Edmund would doubtless find my adventuring tame telling,” said Anne.

“Ah!” said Lord Edmund. “I remember you well, niece. Dover Castle, eh? And the crossing! Marry, I thought I should never see your face again when your ship was missed by the rest of us. I remember saying to Surrey: ‘Why, our niece is there, and she but a baby!’”

Anne sipped her wine, chatting awhile with Lord Edmund of the court of France, of old Louis, of gay Francois, and of Mary Tudor who had longed to be Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk, and had achieved both ambitions.

The old Duchess tapped her stick imperiously, not caring to be left to Jocosa and her domesticity. “Anne was interested in the children,” she said. “I trow she will be disappointed if she is not allowed to catch a glimpse of them.”

“You must come to the nursery,” said Jocosa. “Though I doubt that the older ones will be there at this hour. The babies love visitors.”

In the nursery at the top of the house, there was more evidence of the poverty of this branch of the Howard family. Little Catherine was shabbily dressed; Mary, the baby, was wrapped in a piece of darned flannel. There was an old nurse who, Anne guessed, doubtless worked without her wages for very love of the family. Her face shone with pride in the children, with affection for her mistress; but she was inclined to be resentful towards Anne and her grandmother. Had I known, thought Anne, I could have put on a simpler gown.

“Here is the new baby, Madam,” said the nurse, and put the flannel bundle into Anne’s arms. Its little face was puckered and red; a very ugly little baby, but it was amusing and affecting to see the nurse hovering over it as though it were very, very precious.

A little hand was stroking the silk of Anne’s surcoat. Anne looked down and saw a large-eyed, very pretty little girl who could not have been very much more than a year old.

“This is the next youngest,” said Jocosa.

“Little Catherine!” said the Duchess, and stooping picked her up. “Now, Catherine Howard, what have you to say to Anne Boleyn?”

Catherine could say nothing; she could only stare at the lovely lady in the gorgeous, bright clothes. The jewels at her throat and on her fingers dazzled Catherine. She wriggled in the Duchess’s arms in an effort to get closer to Anne, who, always susceptible to admiration, even from babies, handed the flannel bundle back to the nurse.

“Would you like me to hold you, cousin Catherine?” she asked, and Catherine smiled delightedly.

“She does not speak,” said the Duchess.

“I fear she is not as advanced as the others,” said Catherine’s mother.

“Indeed not!” said the Duchess severely. “I remember well this girl here as a baby. I never knew one so bright—except perhaps her brother George. Now, Mary...she was more like Catherine here.”

At the mention of Mary’s name Jocosa stiffened, but the old Duchess went on, her eyes sparkling: “Mary was a taking little creature, though she might be backward with her talk. She knew though how to ask for what she wanted, without words...and I’ll warrant she still does!”

Anne and Catherine smiled at each other.

“There!” said the Duchess. “She is wishing she had a child of her own. Confess it, Anne!”

“One such as this, yes!” laughed Anne.

Catherine tried to pluck out the beautiful eyes.

“She admires you vastly!” said Jocosa.

Anne went to a chair and sat down, holding Catherine on her lap, while her grandmother drew Jocosa into a corner and chatted with her of the proposed match for Anne, of the advancement of Sir Thomas and George Boleyn, of Mary and the King.

Catherine’s little hands explored the lovely dress, the glittering jewels; and the child laughed happily as she did so.

“They make a pretty picture,” said the Duchess. “I think I am proud of my granddaughters, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. They are such pretty creatures, both of them.”

Catherine’s fingers had curled about a jeweled tablet which hung by a silken cord from Anne’s waist; it was a valuable trinket.

“Would you like to have it for your own, little Catherine?” whispered Anne, and detached it. They can doubtless sell it, she thought. It is not much, but it is something. I can see it would be useless to offer help openly to Uncle Edmund.

When they said farewell, Catherine shed tears.

“Why, look what the child has!” cried the Duchess. “It is yours, is it not, Anne? Catherine Howard, Catherine Howard, are you a little thief then?”

“It is a gift,” said Anne hastily. “She liked it, and I have another.”

It was pleasant to be back at Hever after such a long absence. How quiet were the Kentish woods, how solitary the green meadows! She had hoped to see the Wyatts, but they were not in residence at Allington Castle just now; and it was a quiet life she led, reading, sewing, playing and singing with her mother. She was content to enjoy these lazy days, for she had little desire to marry the young man whom it had been ordained she should. She accepted the marriage as a matter of course, as she had known from childhood that when she reached a certain age a match would be made for her. This was it; but how pleasant to pass these days at quiet Hever, wandering through the grounds which she would always love because of those childhood memories they held for her.

Mary paid a visit to Hever; splendidly dressed—Anne considered her over-dressed—she was very gay and lively. Her laughter rang through the castle, shattering its peace. Mary admired her sister, and was too good-natured not to admit it wholeheartedly. “You should do well at court, sister Anne,” she told her. “You would create much excitement, I trow. And those clothes! I have never seen the like; and who but you could wear them with effect!”

They lay under the old apple trees in the orchard together; Mary, lazy and plump, carefully placing a kerchief over her bosom to prevent the sun from spoiling its whiteness.

“I think now and then,” said Mary, “of my visit to you...Do you remember Ardres?”

“Yes,” said Anne, “I remember perfectly.”

“And how you disapproved of me then? Did you not? Confess it.”

“Did I show it then?”

“Indeed you did, Madam! You looked down your haughty nose at me and disapproved right heartily. You cannot say you disapprove now, I trow.”

“I think you have changed very little,” said Anne.

Mary giggled. “You may have disapproved that night, Anne, but there was one who did not!”

“The tastes of all are naturally not alike.”

“There was one who approved most heartily—and he of no small import either!”

“I perceive,” said Anne, laughing, “that you yearn to tell me of your love affairs.”

“And you are not interested?”

“Not very. I am sure you have had many, and that they are all monotonously similar.”

“Indeed! And what if I were to tell His Majesty of that!”

“Do you then pour your girlish confidences into the royal ear?”

“I do now and then, Anne, when I think they may amuse His Grace.”

“What is this?” said Anne, raising herself to look more closely at her sister.

“I was about to tell you. Did I not say that though you might disapprove of me, there was one who does not? Listen, sister. The night I left you to return to the Guisnes Palace I met him; he spoke to me, and we found we liked each other.”

Anne’s face flushed, then paled; she was understanding many things—the chatter of her grandmother, the glances of her Aunt Jocosa, the nurse’s rather self-righteous indignation. One of the heroes of Flodden may starve, but the family of Boleyn shall flourish, for the King likes well one of its daughters.

“How long?” asked Anne shortly.

“From then to now. He is eager for me still. There never was such a man! Anne, I could tell you...”

“I beg that you will not.”

Mary shrugged her shoulders and rolled over on the grass like an amorous cat.

“And William, your husband?” said Anne

“Poor William! I am very fond of him.”

“I understand. The marriage was arranged, and he was given a place at court so that you might be always there awaiting the King’s pleasure, and to place a very flimsy cover of propriety over your immorality.”

Mary was almost choked with laughter.

“Your expressions amuse me, Anne. I declare, I shall tell the King; he will be vastly amused. And you fresh from the court of France!”

“I am beginning to wish I were still there. And our father...”

“Is mightily pleased with the arrangements. A fool he would be otherwise, and none could say our father is a fool.”

“So all these honors that have been heaped upon him...”

“. . . are due to the fact that your wicked sister has pleased the King!”

“It makes me sick.”

“You have a poor stomach, sister. But you are indeed young, for all your air of worldly wisdom and for all your elegance and grace. Why, bless you, Anne, life is not all the wearing of fine clothes.”

“No? Indeed it would seem that for you it is more a matter of putting them off!”

“You have a witty tongue, Anne. I cannot compete with it. You would do well at court, would you but put aside your prudery. Prudery the King cannot endure; he has enough of that from his Queen.”

“She knows of you and...”

“It is impossible to keep secrets at court, Anne.”

“Poor lady!”

“But were it not I, ’twould be another, the King being as he is.”

“The King being a lecher!” said Anne fiercely.

“That is treason!” cried Mary in mock horror. “Ah! It is easy for you to talk. As for me, I could never say no to such a man.”

“You could never say no to any man!”

“Despise me if you will. The King does not, and our father is mightily pleased with his daughter Mary.”

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.

She said: “The French are an interesting people. I was fortunate there. My friend was Madame la Duchesse D’Alencon, and I count myself indeed happy to have such a friend.”

“I have heard tales of her,” he said.

“Her fame travels. Tell me, have you read Boccaccio?”

The King leaned forward. Had he read Boccaccio! Indeed he had, and vastly had the fellow’s writing pleased him.

“And you?” he asked.

She nodded, and they smiled at each other in the understanding of a pleasure shared.

“We would read it together, the Duchess and I. Tell me, which of the stories did you prefer?”

Finding himself plunged deep into a discussion of the literature of his day, Henry forgot he was a king, and an amorous king at that. There was in this man, in addition to the coarse, crude, insatiable sensualist, a scholar of some attainment. Usually the sensualist was the stronger, ever ready to stifle the other, but there was about this girl sitting by the pond a purity that commanded his respect, and he found he could sit back in his seat and delight in her as he would in a beautiful picture or piece of statuary, while he could marvel at her unwomanly intellect. Literature, music and art could have held a strong position in his life, had he not in his youth been such a healthy animal. Had he but let his enthusiasm for them grow in proportion to that which he bestowed on tennis, on jousting, on the hunting of game and of women, his mind would assuredly have developed as nobly as his body. An elastic mind would have served him better than his strong muscles; but the jungle animal in him had been strong, and urgent desires tempered by a narrow religious outlook had done much to suppress the finer man, and from the mating of the animal and the zealot was born that monster of cruelty, his conscience. But that was to come; the monster was as yet in its infancy, and pleasant it was to talk of things of the mind with an enchanting companion. She was full of wit, and Marguerite of Alencon talked through her young lips. She had been allowed to peep into the Heptameron—that odd book which, under the influence of Boccaccio, Marguerite was writing.

From literature she passed to the pastimes of the French court. She told of the masques, less splendid perhaps than those he indulged in with such pleasure, but more subtle and amusing. Wit was to the French court what bright colors and sparkling jewels were to the English. She told of a play which she had helped Marguerite to write, quoting lines from it which set him laughing with appreciative merriment. He was moved to tell her of his own compositions, reciting some verses of his. She listened, her head on one side, critical.

She shook her head: “The last line is not so good. Now this would have been better...” And so would it! Momentarily he was angered, for those at court had declared there never were such verses written as those penned by his hand. From long practice he could pretend, even to himself, that his anger came from a different cause than that from which it really sprang. Now it grew—he assured himself—not from her slighting remarks on his poetry, but from the righteous indignation he must feel when he considered that this girl, though scarcely out of her childhood, had been exposed to the wickedness of the French court. Where he himself was concerned he had no sense of the ridiculous; he could, in all seriousness, put aside the knowledge that even at this moment he was planning her seduction, and burn with indignation that others—rakes and libertines with fancy French manners—might have had similar intentions. Such a girl, he told himself, smarting under the slights which she, reared in that foreign court, had been able to deliver so aptly, should never have been sent to France.

He said with dignity: “It grieves me to think of the dangers to which you have been exposed at that licentious court presided over by a monarch who...” His voice failed him, for he pictured a dark, clever face, a sly smile and lips which had referred to him as “My prisoner.”

She laughed lightly. “The King of France is truly of an amorous nature, but never would I be a king’s mistress!”

It seemed to him that this clever girl then answered a question which he had yet to ask. He felt worsted, and angry to be so.

He said severely: “There are some who would not think it an indignity to be a king’s mistress, but an honor.”

“Doubtless there are those who sell themselves cheaply.”

“Cheaply!” he all but roared. “Come! It is not kingly to be niggardly with those that please.”

“I do not mean in worldly goods. To sell one’s dignity and honor for momentary power and perhaps riches—that is to sell cheaply those things which are beyond price. Now I must go into the house.” She stood up, throwing back her hair. He stood too, feeling deflated and unkingly.

Silently he walked with her from the rose garden. Now was the time to disclose his identity, for it could not much longer be kept secret.

“You have not asked my name,” he said.

“Nor you mine.”

“You are the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, I have gathered.”

“Indeed, that was clever of you!” she mocked. “I am Anne Boleyn.”

“You still do not ask my name. Have you no curiosity to know it?”

“I shall doubtless learn in good time.”

“My name is Henry.”

“It is a good English name.”

“And have you noticed nothing yet?”

She turned innocent eyes upon him. “What is there that I should have noticed?”

“It is the same as the King’s.” He saw the mockery in her eyes now. He blurted out: “By God! You knew all the time!”

“Having once seen the King’s Grace, how could one of his subjects ever forget him?”

He was uncertain now whether to be amused or angry; in vain did he try to remember all she had said to him and he to her. “Methinks you are a saucy wench!” he said.

“I hope my sauciness has pleased my mighty King.”

He looked at her sternly, for though her words were respectful, her manner was not.

“Too much sauce,” he said, “is apt to spoil a dish.”

“And too little, to destroy it!” she said, casting down her eyes. “I had thought that Your Majesty, being a famous epicure, would have preferred a well-flavored one.”

He gave a snort of laughter and put out a hand which he would have laid on her shoulders, but without giving him a glance she moved daintily away, so that he could not know whether by accident or design.

He said: “We shall look to see you at court with your sister.”

He was unprepared for the effect of those words; her cheeks were scarlet as her dress, and her eyes lost all their merriment. Her father was coming across the lawn towards them; she bowed low and turning from him ran across the grass and into the castle.

“You have a beautiful daughter there, Thomas!” exclaimed the King. And Thomas, obsequious, smiling, humbly conducted Henry into Hever Castle.

The sight of the table in the great dining-hall brought a glister of pride into Sir Thomas’s eyes. On it were laid out in most lavish array great joints of beef, mutton and venison, hare and seasoned peacocks; there were vegetables and fruit, and great pies and pastries. Sir Thomas’s harrying of his cooks and scullions had been well worthwhile, and he felt that the great kitchens of Hever had done him justice. The King eyed this display with an approval which might have been more marked, had not his thoughts been inclined to dwell more upon Sir Thomas’s daughter than on his table.

They took their seats, the King in the place of honor at the right hand of his host, the small company he had brought with him ranged about the table. There was one face for which the King looked in vain; Sir Thomas, ever eager to anticipate the smallest wish of his sovereign, saw the King’s searching look and understood it; he called a serving-maid to him and whispered sharply to her to go at once to his daughter and bid her to the table without a second’s delay. The maid returned with the disconcerting message that Sir Thomas’s daughter suffered from a headache and would not come to the table that day. The King, watching this little by-play with the greatest interest, heard every word.

“Go back at once,” said Sir Thomas, “and tell the lady I command her presence here at once!”

“Stay!” interceded Henry, his voice startling Sir Thomas by its unusual softness. “Allow me to deal with the matter, good Thomas. Come hither, girl.”

The poor little serving-maid dropped a frightened curtsey and feared she would not be able to understand the King’s commands, so overawed was she by his notice.

“Tell the lady from us,” said Henry, “that we are indeed sorry for the headache. Tell her it doubtless comes from lingering too daringly in the rays of the sun. Tell her we excuse her and wish her good speed in her recovery.”

He did not see Anne again, for she kept to her room. Next morning he left Hever. He looked up at its windows, wondering which might be hers, telling himself that no girl, however haughty, however self-possessed, would be able to prevent herself from taking one glimpse at her King. But there was no sign of a face at any window. Disconsolate, bemused, the King rode away from Hever.

The great Cardinal, he who was Lord Chancellor of the realm, rode through the crowds. Before him and behind went his gentlemen attendants, for the great man never rode abroad but that he must impress the people with his greatness. He sat his mule with a dignity which would have become a king. What though his body were weak, his digestion poor, that he was very far from robust and suffered many ailments! His mind was the keenest, the most able, the most profound in the kingdom; and thus, first through the King’s father, and more effectively through his gracious son, had Thomas Wolsey come to his high office. His success, he knew well, lay with his understanding of the King—that fine robustious animal—and when he was but almoner to his gracious lord he had used that knowledge and so distinguished himself. There had been those counsellors who might urge the King to leave his pleasure and devote more time to affairs of state. Not so Thomas Wolsey! Let the King leave tiresome matters to his most dutiful servant. Let the King pursue his pleasures. Leave the wearisome matters to his most obedient—and what was all-important—to his most able Wolsey! How well the King loved those who did his will! This King, this immense man—in whom all emotions matched his huge body—hated fiercely and could love well. And he had loved Wolsey, in whose hands he could so safely place those matters that were important to his kingdom but so monotonously dull to his royal mind. And never was a man more content than Wolsey that this should be so. He, arrogant, imperious as his master, had had the indignity to be born the son of a poor man of Ipswich, and by his own fine brain had replaced indignity with honor. The Ipswich merchant’s son was the best loved friend of the English King, and how doubly dear were those luxuries and those extravagances with which he, who had once suffered from obscurity, now surrounded himself! If he were over-lavish, he forgave himself; he had to wash the taste of Ipswich from his mouth.

As he rode on his ceremonious way, the people watched him. To his nose he held what might appear to be an orange, and what was really a guard against disease; for all the natural matter had been taken from the orange and in its place was stuffed part of a sponge containing vinegar and such concoctions as would preserve a great man from the pestilence which floated in the London air. Perhaps the people murmured against him; there were those who gave him sullen looks. Is this a man of God? they asked each other. This Wolsey—no higher born than you or I—who surrounds himself with elegance and luxury at the expense of the hard-pressed people! This gourmet, who must get special dispensation from the Pope that he need not follow the Lenten observances! They say he never forgives a slight. They say his hands are as red as his robes. What of brave Buckingham! A marvel it is that the headless ghost of the Duke does not haunt his murderer!

If Wolsey could have spoken to them of Buckingham, he could have told them that a man, who will at any cost hold the King’s favor, must often steep his hands in blood. Buckingham had been a fool. Buckingham had insulted Wolsey, and Wolsey had brought a charge against him of treasonable sorcery. Buckingham went to the block, not for his treasonable sorcery; he died because he had committed the unforgivable sin of being too nearly related to the King. He stood too close to the throne, and the Tudors had not been in possession of it long enough to be able to regard such an offense lightly. Thus it was one kept the favor of kings; by learning their unuttered desires and anticipating their wishes; thus one remained the power behind the throne, one’s eyes alert, one’s ears trained to catch the faintest inflection of the royal voice, fearful lest the mighty puppet might become the master.

In the presence-chamber Wolsey awaited audience of the King. He came, fresh from his Kentish journey, flushed with health, his eyes beaming with pleasure as they rested on his best-loved statesman.

“I would speak with Your Majesty on one or two matters,” said the Chancellor-Cardinal when he had congratulated the King on his healthy appearance.

“Matters of state! Matters of state, eh? Let us look into these matters, good Thomas.”

Wolsey spread papers on the table, and the royal signature was appended to them. The King listened, though his manner was a little absent.

“You are a good man, Thomas,” he said, “and we love you well.”

“Your Majesty’s regard is my most treasured possession.”

The King laughed heartily, but his voice was a trifle acid when he spoke. “Then the King is pleased, for to be the most treasured of all your possessions, my rich friend, is indeed to be of great price!”

Wolsey felt the faintest twinge of uneasiness, until he saw in his sovereign’s face a look he knew well. There was a glaze over the bright little eyes, the cruel mouth had softened, and when the King spoke, his voice was gentle.

“Wolsey, I have been discoursing with a young lady who has the wit of an angel, and is worthy to wear a crown.”

Wolsey, alert, suppressed his smile with the desire to rub his hands together in his glee.

“It is sufficient if Your Majesty finds her worthy of your love,” he whispered.

The King pulled at his beard.

“Nay, Thomas, I fear she would never condescend that way.”

“Sire, great princes, if they choose to play the lover, have that in their power to mollify a heart of steel.”

The King shook his great head in melancholy fashion, seeing her bending over the pond, seeing her proud young head on the small neck, hearing her sweet voice: “I would never be a king’s mistress!”

“Your Majesty has been saddened by this lady,” said Wolsey solicitously.

“I fear so, Wolsey.”

“This must not be!” Wolsey’s heart was merry. There was nothing he desired so much at this time as to see his master immersed in a passionate love affair. It was necessary at this moment to keep the fat, jeweled finger out of the French pie.

“Nay, my master, my dear lord, your chancellor forbids such sadness.” He put his head closer to the flushed face. “Could we not bring the lady to court, and find a place for her among the Queen’s ladies?”

The King placed an affectionate arm about Wolsey’s shoulders.

“If Your Majesty will but whisper the name of the lady...”

“It is Boleyn’s daughter...Anne.”

Now Wolsey had great difficulty in restraining his mirth. Boleyn’s daughter! Anne! Off with the elder daughter! On with the younger!

“My lord King, she shall come to the court. I shall give a banquet at Hampton Court—a masque it shall be! I shall ask my Gracious Liege to honor me with his mighty presence. The lady shall be there!”

The King smiled, well pleased. A prince, had said this wise man, has that power to mollify a heart of steel. Good Wolsey! Dear Thomas! Dear friend and most able statesman!

“Methinks, Thomas,” said the King with tears in his eyes, “that I love thee well.”

Wolsey fell on his knees and kissed the ruby on the forefinger of the fat hand. And I do love this man, thought the King; for he was one to whom it was not necessary to state crude facts. The lady would be brought to court, and it would appear that she came not through the King’s wish. That was what he wanted, and not a word had he said of it; yet Wolsey had known. And well knew the King that Wolsey would arrange this matter with expedience and tact.

Life at the English court offered amusement in plenty, and the coming of one as vivacious and striking as Anne Boleyn could not pass unnoticed. The ladies received her with some interest and much envy, the gentlemen with marked appreciation. There were two ways of life at court; on the one hand there was the gay merry-making of the King’s faction, on the other the piety of the Queen. As Queen’s attendant, Anne’s actions were restricted; but at the jousts and balls, where the Queen’s side must mingle with the King’s, she attracted a good deal of attention for none excelled her at the dance, and whether it was harpsichord, virginals or flute she played there were always those to crowd about her; when she sang, men grew sentimental, for there was that in her rich young voice to move men to tears.

The King was acutely aware of her while feigning not to notice her. He would have her believe that he had been not entirely pleased by her disrespectful manners at Hever, and that he still remembered the levity of her conversation with pained displeasure.

Anne laughed to herself, thinking—Well he likes a masquerade, when he arranges it; well he likes a joke against others! Is he angry at my appointment to attend the Queen? How I hope he does not banish me to Hever!

Life had become so interesting. As lady-in-waiting to the Queen, she was allowed a woman attendant and a spaniel of her own; she was pleased with the woman and delighted with the spaniel. The three of them shared a breakfast of beef and bread, which they washed down with a gallon of ale between them. Other meals were taken with the rest of the ladies in the great chamber, and at all these meals ale and wine were served in plenty; meat was usually the fare—beef, mutton, poultry, rabbits, peacocks, hares, pigeons—except on fast days when, in place of the meats, there would be a goodly supply of salmon or flounders, salted eels, whiting, or plaice and gurnet. But it was not the abundance of food that delighted Anne; it was the gaiety of the company. And if she had feared to be dismissed from the court in those first days, no sooner had she set eyes on Henry, Lord Percy, eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, than she was terrified of that happening.

These two young people met about the court, though not as often as they could have wished, for whilst Anne, as maid of honor to Queen Katharine, was attached to the court, Percy was a protg of the Cardinal. It pleased Wolsey to have in his retinue of attendants various high-born young men, and so great was his place in the kingdom that this honor was sought by the noblest families in the realm. Young Percy must therefore attend the Cardinal daily, accompany him to court, and consider himself greatly honored by the patronage of this low-born man.

Lord Percy was a handsome young man of delicate features and of courteous manners; and as soon as he saw the Queen’s newest lady-in-waiting he was captivated by her personal charms. And Anne, seeing this handsome boy, was filled with such a tenderness towards him, which she had experienced for none hitherto, that whenever she knew the Cardinal to be in audience with the King she would look for the young nobleman. Whenever he came to the palace he was alert for a glimpse of her. They were both young; he was very shy; and so, oddly enough, was she, where he was concerned.

One day she was sitting at a window overlooking a courtyard when into this courtyard there came my lord Cardinal and his attendants; and among these latter was Henry, Lord Percy. His eyes flew to the window, saw Anne, and emboldened by the distance which separated them, flashed her a message which she construed as “Wait there, and while the Cardinal is closeted with the King I will return. I have so long yearned to hold speech with you!”

She waited, her heart beating fast as she pretended to stitch a piece of tapestry; waiting, waiting, feeling a sick fear within her lest the King might not wish to see the Cardinal, and the young man might thus be unable to escape.

He came running across the courtyard, and she knew by his haste and his enraptured expression that his fear had been as hers.

“I feared to find you gone!” he said breathlessly.

“I feared you would not come,” she answered.

“I look for you always.”

“I for you.”

They smiled, beautiful both of them in the joyful discovery of loving and being loved.

Anne was thinking that were he to ask her, she, who had laughed at Mary for marrying Will Carey, would gladly marry him though he might be nothing more than the Cardinal’s Fool.

“I know not your name,” said Percy, “but your face is the fairest I ever saw.”

“It is Anne Boleyn.”

“You are daughter to Sir Thomas?”

She nodded, blushing, thinking Mary would be in his mind, and a fear came to her that her sister’s disgrace might discredit herself in his eyes. But he was too far gone in love to find her anything but perfect.

“I am recently come to court,” she said.

“That I know! You could not have been here a day but that I should have found you.”

She said: “What would your master say an he found you lingering beneath this window?”

“I know not, nor care I!”

“Were you caught, might there not be those who would prevent you from coming again? Already you may have been missed.”

He was alarmed. To be prevented from enjoying the further bliss of such meetings was intolerable.

“I go now,” he said. “Tomorrow...you will be here at this hour?”

“You will find me here.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, and they smiled at each other.

Next day she saw him, and the next. There were many meetings, and for each of those two young lovers the day was good when they met, and bad when they did not. She learned of his exalted rank, and she could say with honesty that this mattered to her not at all, except of course that her ambitious father could raise no objection to a match with the house of Northumberland.

One day her lover came to her and pleasure was written large on his face.

“The Cardinal is to give a ball at this house at Hampton. All the ladies of the court will be invited!”

“You will be there?”

“You too!” he replied.

“We shall be masked.”

“I shall find you.”

“And then...?” she said.

His eyes held the answer to that question.

Anne had dreamed of such happiness, though of late her observation of those about her had led her to conclude that it was rarely known. But to her it had come; she would treasure it, preserve it, keep it forever. She could scarcely wait for that day when Thomas Wolsey would entertain the court at his great house at Hampton on the Thames.

The King was uneasy. The Cardinal had thought to help him when he had had Anne appointed a maid of honor to the Queen; but had he? Never, for the sake of a woman, had the King been so perplexed. He must see her every day, for how could he deny his eyes a sight of the most charming creature they had ever rested on! Yet he dared not speak with her. And why? For this reason; no sooner had the girl set foot in the Queen’s apartments than that old enemy, his conscience, must rear its ugly head to leer at him.

“Henry,” said the conscience, “this girl’s sister, Mary Boleyn, has shared your bed full many a night, and well you know the edict of the Pope. Well you know that association with one sister gives you an affinity with the other. Therein lies sin!”

“That I know well,” answered Henry the King. “But as there was no marriage....”

Such reasoning could not satisfy the conscience; it was the same—marriage ceremony or no marriage ceremony—and well he knew it.

“But there was never one like this girl; never was I so drawn to a woman; never before have I felt myself weak as I would be with her. Were she my mistress, I verily believe I should be willing to dispense with all others, and would not that be a good thing, for in the eyes of the Holy Church, is it not better for a man to have one mistress than many? Then, would not the Queen be happier? One mistress is forgivable; her distress comes from there being so many.”

He was a man of many superstitions, of deep religious convictions. The God of his belief was a king like himself, though a more powerful being since, in place of the axe, he was able to wield a more terrifying weapon whose blade was supernatural phenomena. Vindictive was the King’s god, susceptible to flattery, violent in love, more violent in hate—a jealous god, a god who spied, who recorded slights and insults, and whose mind worked in the same simple way as that of Henry of England. Before this god Henry trembled as men trembled before Henry. Hence the conscience, the uneasiness, his jealous watchfulness of Anne Boleyn, and his reluctance to make his preference known.

In vain he tried to soothe his senses. All women are much alike in darkness. Mary is very like her sister. Mary is sweet and willing; and there are others as willing.

He tried to placate his conscience. “I shall not look at the girl; I will remember there is an affinity between us.”

So those days, which were a blissful heaven to Anne and another Henry, were purgatory to Henry the King, racked alternately by conscience and desire.

She was clad in scarlet, and her vest was cloth of gold. She wore what had become known at court as the Boleyn sleeves, but they did not divulge her identity, for many wore the Boleyn sleeves since she had shown the charm of this particular fashion. Her hair was hidden by her gold cap, and only the beautiful eyes showing through her mask might proclaim her as Anne Boleyn.

He found her effortlessly, because she had described to him in detail the costume she would wear.

“I should have known you though you had not told me. I should always know you.”

“Then, sir,” she answered pertly, “I would I had put you to the test!”

“I heard the music on the barges as they came along the river,” he said, “and I do not think I have ever been so happy in my life.”

He was a slender figure in a coat of purple velvet embroidered in gold thread and pearls. Anne thought there was no one more handsome in this great ballroom, though the King, in his scarlet coat on which emeralds flashed, and in his bonnet dazzling rich with rubies and diamonds, was a truly magnificent sight.

The lovers clasped hands, and from a recess watched the gay company.

“There goes the King!”

“Who thinks,” said Anne, laughing, “to disguise himself with a mask!”

“None dare disillusion him, or ’twould spoil the fun. It seems as though he searches for someone.”

“His latest sweetheart, doubtless!” said Anne scornfully.

Percy laid his hand on her lips.

“You speak too freely, Anne.”

“That was ever a fault of mine. But do you doubt that is the case?”

“I doubt it not—and you have no faults! Let us steal away from these crowds. I know a room where we can be alone. There is much I would say to you.”

“Take me there then. Though I should be most severely reprimanded if the Queen should hear that one of her ladies hides herself in lonely apartments in the house.”

“You can trust me. I would die rather than allow any hurt to come to you.”

“That I know well. I like not these crowds, and would hear what it is that you have to say to me.”

They went up a staircase and along a corridor. There were three small steps leading into a little antechamber; its one window showed the river glistening in moonlight.

Anne went to that window and looked across the gardens to the water.

“There was surely never such a perfect night!” she exclaimed.

He put his arms about her, and they looked at each other, marveling at what they saw.

“Anne! Make it the most perfect night there ever was, by promising to marry me.”

“If it takes that to make this night perfect,” she answered softly, “then now it is so.”

He took her hands and kissed them, too young and mild of nature to trust entirely the violence of his emotion.

“You are the most beautiful of all the court ladies, Anne.”

“You think that because you love me.”

“I think it because it is so.”

“Then I am happy to be so for you.”

“Did you ever dream of such happiness, Anne?”

“Yes, often...but scarce dared hope it would be mine.”

“Think of those people below us, Anne. How one pities them! For what can they know of happiness like this!”

She laughed suddenly, thinking of the King, pacing the floor, trying to disguise the fact that he was the King, looking about him for his newest sweetheart. Her thoughts went swiftly to Mary.

“My sister...” she began.

“What of your sister! Of what moment could she be to us!”

“None!” she cried, and taking his hand, kissed it. “None, do we but refuse to let her.”

“Then we refuse, Anne.”

“How I love you!” she told him. “And to think I might have let them marry me to my cousin of Ormond!”

“They would marry me to Shrewsbury’s daughter!”

A faint fear stirred her then. She remembered that he was the heir of the Earl of Northumberland; it was meet that he should marry into the Shrewsbury family, not humble Anne Boleyn.

“Oh, Henry,” she said, “what if they should try to marry you to the Lady Mary?”

“They shall marry me to none but Anne Boleyn!”

It was not difficult, up here in the little moonlight chamber, to defy the world; but they dare not tarry too long. All the company must be present when the masks were removed, or absent themselves on pain of the King’s displeasure.

In the ballroom the festive air was tinged with melancholy. The Cardinal was perturbed, for the King clearly showed his annoyance. A masked ball was not such a good idea as it had at first seemed, for the King had been unable to find her whom he sought.

The masks were removed; the ball over, and the royal party lodged in the two hundred and forty gorgeous bedrooms which it was the Cardinal’s delight to keep ready for his guests.

The news might seem a rumor just at first, but before many days had passed the fact was established that Henry, Lord Percy, eldest son and heir to the noble Earl of Northumberland, was so far gone in love with sparkling Anne Boleyn that he had determined to marry her.

And so the news came to the ear of the King.

The King was purple with fury. He sent for him to whom he always turned in time of trouble. The Cardinal came hastily, knowing that to rely on the favor of a king is to build one’s hopes on a quiet but not extinct volcano. Over the Cardinal flowed the molten lava of Henry’s anger.

“By Christ!” cried the King. “Here is a merry state of affairs! I would take the fool and burn him at the stake, were he not such a young fool. How dare he think to contract himself without our consent!”

“Your Majesty, I fear I am in ignorance...”

“Young Percy!” roared His Majesty. “Fool! Dolt that he is! He has, an it please you, decided he will marry Anne Boleyn!”

Inwardly the Cardinal could smile. This was a mere outbreak of royal jealousy. I will deal with this, thought the Cardinal, and deplored that his wit, his diplomacy must be squandered to mend a lover’s troubles.

“Impertinent young fool!” soothed the Cardinal. “As he is one of my young men, Your Majesty must allow me to deal with him. I will castigate him. I will make him aware of his youthful...nay, criminal folly, since he has offended Your Majesty. He is indeed a dolt to think Northumberland can mate with the daughter of a knight!”

Through the King’s anger beamed his gratitude to Wolsey. Dear Thomas, who made the way easy! That was the reason, he told his conscience—Northumberland cannot mate with a mere knight’s daughter!

“’Twere an affront to us!” growled mollified Henry. “We gave our consent to the match with Shrewsbury’s girl.”

“And a fitting match indeed!” murmured the Cardinal.

“A deal more fitting than that he should marry Boleyn’s girl. My dear Wolsey, I should hold myself responsible to Shrewsbury and his poor child if anything went amiss....”

“Your Grace was ever full of conscience. You must not blame your royal self for the follies of your subjects.”

“I do, Thomas...I do! After all, ’twas I who brought the wench to court.”

Wolsey murmured: “Your Majesty...? Why, I thought ’twas I who talked to Boleyn of his younger daughter....”

“No matter!” said the King, his eyes beaming with affection. “I thought I mentioned the girl to you. No matter!”

“I spoke to Boleyn, Your Grace, I remember well.”

The King’s hand patted the red-clad shoulder.

“I know this matter can be trusted to you.”

“Your Majesty knows well that I shall settle it most expeditiously.”

“They shall both be banished from the court. I will not be flouted by these young people!”

Wolsey bowed.

“The Shrewsbury marriage can be hastened,” said the King.

Greatly daring, Wolsey asked: “And the girl, Your Majesty? There was talk of a marriage...the Ormond estates were the issue...Perhaps Your Majesty does not remember.”

The brows contracted; the little eyes seemed swallowed up in puffy flesh. The King’s voice cracked out impatiently: “That matter is not settled. I like not these Irish. Suffice it that we banish the girl.”

“Your Majesty may trust me to deal with the matter in accordance with your royal wishes.”

“And, Thomas...let the rebuke come from you. I would not have these young people know that I have their welfare so much at heart; methinks they already have too high a conceit of themselves.”

After Wolsey retired, the King continued to pace up and down. Let her return to Hever. She should be punished for daring to fall in love with that paltry boy. How was she in love? Tender? It was difficult to imagine that. Eager? Ah! Eager with a wretched boy! Haughty enough she had been with her lord the King! To test that eagerness he would have given the brightest jewel in his crown, but she would refuse her favors like a queen. And in a brief acquaintance, she had twice offended him; let her see that even she could not do that with impunity!

So she should be exiled to Hever, whither he would ride one day. She should be humble; he would be stern...just at first.

He threw himself into a chair, legs apart, hands on knees, thinking of a reconciliation in the rose garden at Hever.

His anger had passed away.

Immediately on his return to his house at Westminster, Wolsey sent for Lord Percy.

The young man came promptly, and there in the presence of several of his higher servants Wolsey began to upbraid him, marveling, he said, at his folly in thinking he might enter into an engagement with a foolish girl at the court. Did the young fool not realize that on his father’s death he would inherit and enjoy one of the noblest earldoms in the kingdom? How then could he marry without the consent of his father? Did Percy think, he thundered, that either his father or the King would consent to his matching himself with such a one? Moreover, continued the Cardinal, working himself up to a fine frenzy of indignation such as struck terror into the heart of the boy, he would have Percy know that the King had at great trouble prepared a suitable match for Anne Boleyn. Would he flout the King’s pleasure!

Lord Percy was no more timid than most, but he knew the ways of the court well enough to quail before the meaning he read into Wolsey’s words. Men had been committed to the Tower for refusing to obey the King’s command, and Wolsey clearly had the King behind him in this matter. Committed to the Tower! Though the dread Cardinal did not speak the words, Percy knew they were there ready to be pronounced at any moment. Men went to the Tower and were heard of no more. Dread happenings there were in the underground chambers of the Tower of London. Men were incarcerated, and never heard of again. And Percy had offended the King!

“Sir,” he said, trembling, “I knew not the King’s pleasure, and am sorry for it. I consider I am of good years, and thought myself able to provide me a convenient wife as my fancy should please me, not doubting that my lord and father would have been well content. Though she be but a simple maid and her father a knight, yet she is descended of noble parentage, for her mother is of high Norfolk blood and her father descended from the Earl of Ormond. I most humbly beseech Your Grace’s favor therein, and also to entreat the King’s Majesty on my behalf for his princely favor in this matter which I cannot forsake.”

The Cardinal turned to his servants, appealing to them to observe the willful folly of this boy. Sadly he reproached Percy for knowing the King’s pleasure and not readily submitting to it.

“I have gone too far in this matter,” said Percy.

“Dost think,” cried Wolsey, “that the King and I know not what we have to do in weighty matters such as this!”

He left the boy, remarking as he went that he should not seek out the girl, or he would have to face the wrath of the King.

The Earl arrived, coming in haste from the north since the command was the King’s, and hastened to Wolsey’s house. A cold man with an eye to his own advantage, the Earl listened gravely, touched his neck uneasily as though he felt the sharp blade of an axe there—for heads had been severed for less than this—hardened his face, and said that he would set the matter to rights.

He went to his son and railed at him, cursing his pride, his licentiousness, but chiefly the fact that he had incurred the King’s displeasure. So he would bring his father to the block and forfeit the family estate, would he! He was a waster, useless, idle....He would return to his home immediately and proceed with the marriage to the Lady Mary Talbot, to which he was committed.

Percy, threatened by his father, dreading the wrath of the King, greatly fearing the mighty Cardinal, and not being possessed of the same reckless courage as his partner in romance, was overpowered by this storm he and Anne had aroused. He could not stand out against them. Wretchedly, brokenheartedly he gave in, and left the court with his father.

He was, however, able to leave a message for Anne with a kinsman of hers, in which he begged that she would remember her promise from which none but God could loose her.

And the Cardinal, passing through the palace courtyard with his retinue, saw a dark-eyed girl with a pale, tragic face at one of the windows.

Ah! thought the Cardinal, turning his mind from matters of state. The cause of all the trouble!

The black eyes blazed into sudden hatred as they rested on him, for there had been those who had overheard Wolsey’s slighting remarks about herself and hastened to inform her. Wolsey she blamed, and Wolsey only, for the ruin of her life.

Insolently she stared at him, her lips moving as though she cursed him.

The Cardinal smiled. Does she think to frighten me? A foolish girl! And I the first man in the kingdom! I would reprove her, but for the indignity of noting one so lacking in significance!

The next time he passed through the courtyard, he did not see Anne Boleyn. She had been banished to Hever.

At home in Hever Castle, a fierce anger took possession of her. She had waited for a further message from her lover. There was no message. He will come, she had told herself. They would ride away together, mayhap disguised as country folk, and they would care nothing for the anger of the Cardinal.

She would awake in the night, thinking she heard a tap on her window; walking in the grounds, she would feel her heart hammering at the sound of crackling bracken. She longed for him, thinking constantly of that night in the little chamber at Hampton Court, which they had said should be a perfect night and which by promising each other marriage they had made so; she thought of how sorry they had been for those who were dancing below, knowing nothing of the enchantment they were experiencing.

She would be ready when he came for her. Where would they go? Anywhere! For what did place matter! Life should be a glorious adventure. Taking her own courage for granted, why should she doubt his?

He did not come, and she brooded. She grew bitter, wondering why he did not come. She thought angrily of the wicked Cardinal whose spite had ruined her chances of happiness. Fiercely she hated him. “This foolish girl...” he had said. “This Anne Boleyn, who is but the daughter of a knight, to wed with one of the noblest families in the kingdom!”

She would show my lord Cardinal whether she was a foolish girl or not! Oh, the hypocrite! The man of God! He who kept house as a king and was vindictive as a devil and hated by the people!

When she and Percy went off together, the Cardinal should see whether she was a foolish girl!

And still her lover did not come.

“I cannot bear this long separation!” cried the passionate girl. “Perhaps he thinks to wait awhile until his father is dead, for they say he is a sick man. But I do not wish to wait!”

She was melancholy, for the summer was passing and it was sad to see the leaves fluttering down.

The King rode out to Hever. In her room she heard the bustle his presence in the castle must inevitably cause. She locked her door and refused to go down. If Wolsey had ruined her happiness, the King—doubtless at the wicked man’s instigation—had humiliated her by banishing her from the court. Unhappy as she was, she cared for nothing—neither her father’s anger nor the King’s.

Her mother came and stood outside the door to plead with her.

“The King has asked for you, Anne. You must come...quickly.”

“I will not! I will not!” cried Anne. “I was banished, was I not? Had he wished to see me, he should not have sent me from the court.”

“I dare not go back and say you refuse to come.”

“I care not!” sobbed Anne, throwing herself on her bed and laughing and weeping simultaneously, for she was beside herself with a grief that she found herself unable to control.

Her father came to her door, but his threats were as vain as her mother’s pleas.

“Would you bring disgrace on us!” stormed Sir Thomas. “Have you not done enough!”

“Disgrace!” she cried furiously. “Yes, if it is a disgrace to love and wish to marry, I have disgraced you. It is an honor to be mistress of the King. Mary has brought you honor! An I would not come for my mother, assuredly I will not come for you!”

“The King commands your presence!”

“You may do what you will,” she said stubbornly. “He may do what he will. I care for nothing...now.” And she burst into fresh weeping.

Sir Thomas—diplomatic over a family crisis as on a foreign mission—explained that his daughter was sadly indisposed; and the King, marveling at his feelings for this willful girl, replied, “Disturb her not then.”

The King left Hever, and Anne returned to that life which had no meaning—waiting, longing, hoping, fearing.

One cold day, when the first touch of winter was in the air and a fresh wind was bringing down the last of the leaves from the trees in the park, Sir Thomas brought home the news.

He looked at Anne expressionlessly and said: “Lord Percy has married the Lady Mary Talbot. This is an end of your affair.”

She went to her room and stayed there all that day. She did not eat; she did not sleep; she spoke to none; and on the second day she fell into a fit of weeping, upbraiding the Cardinal, and with him her lover. “They could have done what they would with me,” she told herself bitterly. “I would never have given in!”

Drearily the days passed. She grew pale and listless, so that her mother feared for her life and communicated her fears to her husband.

Sir Thomas hinted that if she would return to court, such action would not be frowned on.

“That assuredly I will not do!” she said, and so ill was she that none dared reason with her.

She called to mind then the happiness of her life in France, and it seemed to her that her only hope of tearing her misery from her heart lay in getting away from England. She thought of one whom she would ever admire—the witty, sparkling, Duchess of Alencon; was there some hope, with that spritely lady, of renewing her interest in life?

Love she had experienced, and found it bitter; she wanted no more such experience.

“With Marguerite I could forget,” she said; and, fearing for her health, Sir Thomas decided to humor her wishes; so once more Anne left Hever for the court of France.