Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard Page 8

  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!” sob
bed 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.

  The King’s Secret Matter

  THE HOUSE AT LAMBETH was wrapped in deepest gloom. In the great bed which Jocosa had shared with Lord Edmund Howard since the night of her marriage, she now lay dying. She was very tired, poor lady, for her married life had been a wearying business. It seemed that no sooner had one small Howard left her womb than another was growing there; and poverty, in such circumstances, had been humiliating.

  Death softened bitter feelings. What did it matter now, that her distinguished husband had been so neglected! Why, she wondered vaguely, were people afraid of death? It was so easy to die, so difficult to live.

  “Hush! Hush!” said a voice. “You must not disturb your mother now. Do you not see she is sleeping peacefully?”

  Then came to Jocosa’s ears the sound of a little girl’s sobbing. Jocosa tried to move the coverlet to attract attention. That was little Catherine crying, because, young as she was, she was old enough to understand the meaning of hushed voices, the air of gloom, old enough to smell the odor of death.

  Jocosa knew suddenly why people were afraid of death. The fear was for those they left behind.

  “My children...” she murmured, and tried to start up from her bed.

  “Hush, my lady,” said a voice. “You must rest, my dear.”

  “My children,” she breathed, but her lips were parched, too stiff for the words to come through.

  She thought of Catherine, the prettiest of her daughters, yet somehow the most helpless. Gentle, loving little Catherine, so eager to please that she let others override her. Some extra sense told the mother that her daughter Catherine would sorely miss a mother’s care.

  With a mighty effort she spoke. “Catherine....Daughter...”

  “She said my name!” cried Catherine. “She is asking for me.”

  “C...Catherine...”

  “I am here,” said Catherine.

  Jocosa lifted the baby fingers to her parched lips. Perhaps, she thought, she will acquire a stepmother. Stepmothers are not always kind; they have their own children whom they would advance beyond those of the woman they have replaced, and a living wife has power a dead one lacks. Perhaps her Aunt Norfolk would take this little Catherine; perhaps her Grandmother Norfolk. No, not the Norfolks, a hard race! Catherine, who was soft and young and tender, should not go to them. Jocosa thought of her own childhood at Hollingbourne, in the lovely old house of her father, Sir Richard Culpepper. Now her brother John was installed there; he had a son of his own who would be playing in her nursery. She remembered happy days spent there, and in her death-drugged thoughts it was Catherine who seemed to be there, not herself. It was soothing to the dying mother to see her daughter Catherine in her own nursery, but the pleasure passed and she was again conscious of the big, bare room at Lambeth:

  “Edmund...” she said.

  Catherine turned her tearful eyes to the nurse.

  “She speaks my father’s name.”

  “Yes, my lady?” asked the nurse, bending over the bed.

  “Edmund...”

  “Go to your father and tell him your mother would speak to him.”

  He stood by the bedside—poor, kind, bitter Edmund, whose life with her had been blighted by that pest, poverty. Now he was sorry for the sharp words he had spoken to her, for poverty had ever haunted him, waylaid him, leered at him, goaded him, warping his natural kindness, wrecking that peace he longed to share with his family.

  “Jocosa...” There was such tenderness in his voice when he said her name that she thought momentarily that this was their wedding night, and he her lover; but she heard then the rattle in her throat and was conscious of her body’s burning heat, and thus remembered that this was not the prologue but the epilogue to her life with Edmund, and that Catherine—gentlest of her children—was in some danger, which she sensed but did not comprehend.

  “Edmund...Catherine...”

  He lifted the child in his arms and held her nearer the bed.

  “Jocosa, here is Catherine.”

  “My lord...let her go...let Catherine go...”

  His head bent closer, and with a great effort the words came out.

  “My brother John...at Hollingbourne...in Kent. Let Catherine...go to my brother John.”

  Lord Edmund said: “Rest peacefully, Jocosa. It shall be as you wish.”

  She sank back, smiling, for it was to be, since none dared disregard a promise made to a dying woman.

  The effort had tired her; she knew not where she lay, but she believed it must be at Hollingbourne in Kent, so peaceful was she. The weary beating of her heart was slowing down. “Catherine is safe,” it said. “Catherine is...safe.”

  At Hollingbourne, whither Catherine had been brought at her father’s command, life was different from that lived in the house at Lambeth. The first thing that struck Catherine was the plenteous supply of good plain country fare. There was a simplicity at Hollingbourne which had been entirely lacking at Lambeth; and Sir John, in his country retreat, was lord of the neighborhood, whereas Lord Edmund, living his impecunious life among those of equally noble birth, had seemed of little importance. Catherine looked upon her big Uncle John as something like a god.

  The nurseries were composed of several airy rooms at the top of the house, and from these it was possible to look over the pleasant Kentish country undisturbed by the somber grandeur of the
great city on whose outskirts the Lambeth house had sat. Catherine had often looked at the forts of the great Tower of London, and there was that in them to frighten the little girl. Servants were not over-careful; and though there were some who had nothing but adulation to give to Lord Edmund and his wife, poverty proved to be a leveler, and there were others who had but little respect for one who feared to be arrested at any moment for debt, even though he be a noble lord; and these servants were careless of what was said before the little Howards. There was a certain Doll Tappit who had for lover one who was a warder at the Tower, and fine stories he could tell her of the bloodcurdling shrieks which came from the torture chambers, of the noble gentlemen who had displeased the King and who were left to starve in the rat-infested dungeons. Therefore Catherine was glad to see green and pleasant hills against the skyline, and leafy woods in place of the great stone towers.

  There was comfort at Hollingbourne, such as there had never been at Lambeth.

  She was taken to the nurseries, and there put into the charge of an old nurse who had known her mother; and there she was introduced to her cousin Thomas and his tutor.

  Shyly she studied Thomas. He, with his charming face in which his bold and lively eyes flashed and danced with merriment, was her senior by a year or so, and she was much in awe of him; but, finding the cousin who was to share his nursery to be but a girl—and such a little girl—he was inclined to be contemptuous.

  She was lonely that first day. It was true she was given food; and the nurse went through her scanty wardrobe, clicking her tongue over this worn garment and that one, which should have been handed to a servant long ago.

  “Tut-tut!” exclaimed the nurse. “And how have you been brought up, I should wonder!” Blaming little Catherine Howard for her father’s poverty; wondering what the world was coming to, when such beggars must be received in the noble house of Culpepper.

  Catherine was by nature easygoing, gay and optimistic; never saying—This is bad; always—This might be worse. She had lost her mother whom she had loved beyond all else in the world, and she was heartbroken; but she could not but enjoy the milk that was given her to drink; she could not but be glad that she was removed from Lambeth. Her sisters and brothers she missed, but being one of the younger ones, in games always the unimportant and unpleasant roles were given to her; and if there were not enough parts to go round, it was Catherine who was left out. The afternoon of her first day at Hollingbourne was spent with the nurse who, tutting and clicking her tongue, cut up garments discarded by my lady, to make clothes for Catherine Howard. She stood still and was fitted; was pushed and made to turn about; and she thought the clothes that would soon be hers were splendid indeed.