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Even though our time at Beaulieu was almost unimaginably private, Henry and I knew that this was it: we’d gone public. And sure enough, Señor Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, wasted no time in reporting back on us. I doubt his letter arrived in Spain long after we arrived home at Greenwich in September. Suspiciously absent from Greenwich when we returned was Henry’s own sister, Mary. And, pointedly, she stayed absent. Well, she could talk!—what had she done, if not make an enormous fuss about marrying for love? Done her duty first time around, by marrying the old French king, but only on the understanding that she could marry Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, when it was all over. Wasn’t that what her brother was doing, marrying for love? True, he wasn’t widowed as she’d been, but otherwise it was exactly what she’d done. Secretly, it irked me that she wasn’t a supporter of mine. Like any girl, I’d been quite besotted with her when I was younger: all that flaming hair, and the fire in her eyes. But Charlie Brandon? Well, I know he was supposed to have been a heartthrob, in his day, but I just couldn’t see it, couldn’t imagine it. A wet fish, was my view. A close friend of my Uncle Norfolk’s, which, for me, just about says it all.
Henry’s attitude to some people being scandalized by us was that we should take advantage of our intentions now being known. He sent Sir William Knight to Rome for permission for him to marry again: an English girl, this time. Which, incidentally, he was granted, although he was required to be free of Catherine. En route to Rome, Sir William had dropped in to see Wolsey; and it was then that Wolsey finally, belatedly knew Henry’s plans. The wording on Sir William’s document didn’t name me but there couldn’t have been any mistaking who it meant. And Sir William would have told him that we’d been at Beaulieu. I bet it turned Wolsey cold, the thought of it: all of that lot, there; and me, a million miles away. When he arrived back—hurriedly, I bet—from France, we were at Greenwich. We were at dinner. He sent one of his staff to inform Henry of his arrival, expecting his usual private audience. Conceited bastard. I leaned across to the servant before Henry could say a word. ‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that he can come here like anyone else.’
Our cordiality was waning, mine and Wolsey’s, but Wolsey put on a brave face. Two-faced, you might say.
Well, I could play him at that game. I was as nice as pie. And in the letter he sent with his envoys to the Pope, the following February, he made me out to be a paragon. It must have pained him to sing the praises of the upstart he loathed. Just as it pained me to appear interested in, and grateful for, his various, useless schemes. But I needed him, for the while, because Henry wasn’t yet ready to listen to anyone else’s advice. And Wolsey needed me, now, because I was the centre of Henry’s world. He wasn’t invited to Windsor with us in March: another idyllic month for Henry and me, nowhere near Catherine, albeit with my mother again as chaperone. A month in springtime in the country, while our two trusted envoys, bearing a letter of extravagant praise, were granted an audience with the Pope: I think I can be forgiven for thinking that everything was going very well. And for a while longer, it did.
Our two envoys, Eddie Fox and Stephen Gardiner, came ashore at Sandwich one morning in May. Still sea-legged, they managed to ride through the afternoon to Greenwich, desperate to tell Henry their news. Having heard the gist, he immediately turned them around and sent them across the courtyard to my rooms. They arrived dusty and sweaty at my door, Eddie Fox’s eyes bloodshot. The news was that they’d got what they’d gone for: the Pope would do as Wolsey had requested and send a legate to try our case in England. I laughed, and they laughed: the three of us, half-delirious. Annie, my maid, was suddenly there, her hand on my shoulder, her own laughter a hum. My mother put down her sewing. My brother appeared from my bedroom, where he’d been teaching French to Franky Weston.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘I think it’s starting to go our way,’ I told him. ‘I think we’re winning. Some papal lackey is coming all the way to rainy England to rule Henry’s marriage over.’ I shooed the two men away: ‘Go and tell Wolsey, at York Place.’ To be honest, they were reeking, and I reckoned Wolsey should have to see to them.
That summer, I nearly died. What would have happened if I had? Would Henry have stayed with the ridiculous Spaniard? I do think he might have done, more fool him; I doubt he’d have seen the divorce through. I suspect he’d have seen my death as God’s judgement; he’d have been scared out of his wits, chastened. In his own way he’s a very God-fearing man—he has good reason, doesn’t he—but nothing terrifies him as much as illness. For a brave man, he’s easily scared. He’d have sacrificed me—the dream of me, the memory of me—to keep himself free from sickness, I suspect. He’d have been the model husband again and no one would have ever spoken of me. That’s what I think. But of course I’m cynical, these days.
That summer’s awful bout of ‘the sweat’ started with Wolsey’s report of a couple of deaths one day in his household. Immediately, Henry was on the move from Greenwich, with both Catherine and me, in pursuit of fresh air. We took few staff, for speed; the most important member of our little travelling household being Henry’s apothecary, Mr Blackden. Our first stop, Waltham Abbey, was no refuge: there was a death on the evening we arrived. The next morning, Henry revised his plans and sent me home to Hever. Hever’s a good place, he insisted: you’re lucky. He—and Catherine—moved on to Hunsdon, that day; and kept moving, every day, chased by the disease—a death here, three deaths there—until they arrived at Wolsey’s vacant manor in the back of beyond at Tittenhanger. There, Franky Weston later informed me, Henry had the walls and floors washed with vinegar, and fires burned in every room to burn up any bad air. For fresher air, he wanted his bedroom window enlarged. So, local workmen arrived, and made a lot of mess and dust. Henry’s mind had turned to higher matters, though: he was busy trying to appease his disgruntled God by saying confession daily and hearing Mass—with Catherine—more than he usually would.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently to Franky, ‘but did they…?’
‘Did they…?’
‘Him and the queen: you know.’
‘Oh. No.’
‘You sure?’
Franky assured me that he’d had the job, nightly, of sleeping in Henry’s room, on hand in case of an emergency. ‘And he smelt vile,’ he added, ‘from Mr Blackden’s potions.’
Hever, in contrast, was entirely as normal—until Dad and I became ill. People say of sweating sickness, Fine at lunch, dead by supper. On the day concerned, Dad and I were fine at lunch, but by mid-afternoon it was clear that we wouldn’t be showing up for supper. Not that I knew anything about Dad; I knew nothing but the ball in my throat and the fire in my joints. I now know that Mum sent one of our servants at speed to Henry, but all I knew at the time was the momentary relief of water-soaked linen strips to my forehead. She’d sent Annie from my room and was nursing me—and Dad. She’d learned from her stepmother, who had a reputation for being able to beat ‘the sweat’ (and indeed everything and everyone else that didn’t meet with her approval; not for nothing was she the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk). Bed, my grandmother reckoned, for a day and a night; no food for a day, a night and a day; no visitors for a week; and as many spoonfuls of some herbal, treacly concoction of hers that a delirious person could be tricked into taking.
By the time that Henry’s trusted Dr Butts arrived on our drawbridge, both Dad and I had survived into the ‘no visitors’ stage. An exception was made for one of the king’s doctors, of course, and I made the most of it. He and I ended up talking about the new ideas, the changes in what we believed and how we believed. No morbid priest-lover, Dr Butts; instead, a gently sensible man with a sense of humour. It’s not that I was starved of like-minded company when I was home. Quite the opposite. Nor back at court, where my brother’s radical friends had become mine and I was no longer in Catherine’s service. But after those few days of wild sickness and my mother’s ministrations, I felt stunningly isolated. Dr Butts did me the favour of staying for I don’t know how long on a stool by my bed, talking about the future while the June rain sloshed into the moat and the day’s light thinned.
As it happened, Uncle Norfolk, at Kenning Hall, had also had the illness, and had also survived. Did it surprise us, our survival? Nothing much surprises a Boleyn or Norfolk; least of all, survival. None of us was surprised, though, when my sister’s husband William succumbed. Except her. None of us was surprised that he’d made no provisions and, worse, had run up some nasty debts. Except her. She wrote to Dad from Richmond, desperate and destitute with her two small children. But he was in no mood for Mary. ‘I said she shouldn’t have married him,’ was his view.
‘But she did, dear,’ Mum reasoned.
He’d always despised Mary; she embarrassed him, unmistakably Boleyn in her looks but easy-going, easily pleased. He refused to help her. Wouldn’t even allow her home. She should be at Leeds Castle, he said, asking Wolsey for her due. William had been employed in the Privy Chamber by the king; so, according to my father, it was up to Wolsey to make suitable arrangements for ‘the widow’, as he called her. We’d had word that Wolsey was besieged by people demanding debts be repaid from the estates of deceased, and vying for their now-vacant jobs (cousin Francis getting William’s).
‘She should be there in the middle of it all,’ Dad said, ‘making a case, telling a few lies if needs be; whatever it takes to get whatever she can. Instead of acting the baby and wailing for me to do it. She didn’t want my advice, before, when I offered it.’
‘That’s because she was in love,’ my mother said. ‘She has two small children, she can’t be gadding to Leeds Castle. We don’t even know that she has any way of getting there. She has no money, Thomas; just the coins in her purse.’
But he wouldn’t budge, and I suspected that he was still far from normal after his fever. Because otherwise, I couldn’t fathom it. He’s a hard man, yes, a cold man, but he’s a pragmatist; and his rejection of Mary seemed self-defeating, to me. I could understand that he might be more than usually sensitive to how people saw us, now that we Boleyns were so much in the public eye, but this was entirely the wrong tactic. Mary’s a fact, I told him; she isn’t going away because you won’t see her.
‘Everyone else will see her,’ I assured him, ‘rattling around the country, threadbare. Is that how you want them to see a Boleyn?’ He knew I was right, but he wouldn’t hear it from me. I knew someone whom he would take it from, though. I wrote to Henry; he’d written me the most wonderful long letter as soon as he knew that I’d survived. You do know, don’t you, that I’ll do anything, anything, anything for you.
Well, this one’s easy enough, I wrote back. Tell my father to stop being so stupid about Mary.
Sure enough, a letter came, and my father’s attitude seemed to change. Mary’d better come home, he told my mother, although she’d better keep out of my way.
I hadn’t long been back at court with Henry before word came that the Pope’s cardinal—Campeggio—was at last in Calais. He’d certainly taken his time. Gout, apparently, was his bug-bear, had slowed him up. The future of England had hung in the balance while some fat old Italian had vacationed in various European cities. Worse: now that he was well and truly on his way to us, I had to go back home to Hever. This was so that Henry could look respectable, again, and properly conscience-racked. I accepted it for a few days, until I came to my senses, and then I returned to London. If they were to decide my future, I wasn’t going to sit demurely in Kent while they did it.
Henry kept me at a discreet distance, offering me the use of Durham House on the Strand. A move there would give the wrong signals, I told him. It was a nice enough London house, but hardly the abode of a queen-in-waiting; and home not long ago to Betsy and Fitz, whereas I was no mistress and I’d be having no bastard. So he moved me to the Suffolk’s house in Southwark—one of wet-fish Brandon’s places. ‘Have you seen it?’ I complained. No doubt grand, once, it hadn’t been decorated for decades and was particularly unappealing in a dark, damp October. Henry agreed to renovations. So, for months I had to live with the thumps and whistling of workmen as rooms were re-panelled, ceilings re-painted, windows re-glazed, tapestries hung, a gallery built and the kitchen enlarged. I had distractions enough, though, because all the boys came, most days, to keep me company. They loved it that we had a place of our own and could do as we pleased. I kept odd hours and bad company: my definition of a good time. I knew what the people of London were saying; they were saying what people love to say in such a situation: how dare he leave his dear old wife for a little tart. It rankled that I couldn’t put the record straight—he’d left her long ago, she was a wily old bird, and I wasn’t little nor a tart—but you can’t live your life by what people think.
There was one person whose thoughts did matter. One visitor I did need. The cardinal himself. Let him come and meet me, I said to Henry; give me enough notice and he’ll find someone gracious, practical, educated and well-informed.
‘I’m sure he will,’ Henry laughed. ‘But for now he’s laid up with gout.’
Again?
Again.
And when he was back on his less-gouty feet, it was Fat Cath he went to see. ‘He has to,’ Henry said. ‘He has some options to put to her, to try to sort this out before it gets to trial.’
‘Options? Such as?’
‘Such as, why not do what she does best? Take up the religious life, full-time, by going into a nunnery.’
I liked it; and, better still, surely so would she. ‘But that’s only one,’ I said; ‘one option. What are the others?’
Henry looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, they were for me.’
‘And?’
‘And I’ve already said no.’
‘But they were…?’
They were that the Pope could give a fresh, unambiguous dispensation, in retrospect, for Henry’s existing ‘marriage’ to his dead brother’s wife—in other words, excuse it—or that the problem of his having no heir could be solved by the marriage of his weasel-faced daughter to his bastard son.
‘They’re suggesting that?’ Naturally, I was aghast. ‘They’re suggesting that half-sister and half-brother could marry?’
Henry nodded, clearly as baffled as I was.
‘Those people are sick.’
Henry said, ‘I didn’t put it quite as bluntly as that—I avoided the word ‘sick’—but I think I made myself clear.’
More than ever I needed that cardinal to meet me. Then he’d realize that I was far from such a bad proposition and didn’t need to be thwarted by such drastic measures—or indeed thwarted at all. I can charm anyone, if necessary; even a foot-sore, pious old Italian. I asked Henry to keep inviting him on my behalf, and to bring some confectionery for me to store at the ready in my kitchens. He brought the confectionery but remained evasive on the subject of the cardinal’s visit. I believed him that he was trying; it was the cardinal, I felt, who was saying no. Instead, I was told, he was visiting Catherine, with Wolsey, where they all spoke in the one language that they had in common: French. My language. She was having the audience that I should have been having, speaking in the language that was mine. As ever, she was insisting that she had been a virgin when she married Henry, that she’d never been a true wife to his brother. For a year now she’d been regaling anyone who would listen—and plenty who weren’t so keen to—with this tale. Had she no shame? Didn’t she understand that this wasn’t really what it was about? Henry wanted rid of her: it was as simple as that. It was obvious. How could she still want him? But she did. She refused the nunnery, time and time again, even when it was put to her in earnest by those she trusted. Even the Pope was keen on the nunnery option; it would solve everyone’s problems. Except Catherine’s, in Catherine’s opinion. She remained insistent that she was Henry’s wife and England’s queen, and would bear those responsibilities until the day she died.
Roll on, that day, I urged.
My Uncle Norfolk said to me. ‘Whatever you think of her, you can’t help admire her.’
‘You can’t,’ I corrected.
It seemed to me from all the visits to Catherine and snubs to me, and the talk of nunneries and incest, that our plans now weren’t going well. And God knows what Wolsey was doing about it. Nothing, as far as I could see.
I raised it with Henry: ‘This isn’t going well, is it.’
He said nothing, but looked guilty.
I waited; I knew he had something to say.
Sure enough: ‘I don’t think it’s going at all,’ he admitted.
I still said nothing; there was more.
Now he looked miserable. ‘I wonder, Anne, whether we shouldn’t just accept it, and find a way around it.’
That intrigued me. ‘Around it?’
‘Just…be together.’ His eyes full of pleading.
That again! ‘We can’t just “be together”, Henry! We don’t have that luxury. You’re a king. Your duty is to make sure that it’s your son who’s king after you.’ I dropped the hectoring. ‘And I’m your chance,’ I urged, ‘And I’m here, I’m ready. Are you really going to let a few scurrying Italians and Spaniards stand in our way?’
His head was bowed, his lip bitten. ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘Of course not.’
A week later, at Bridewell, he summoned everyone who was at court and read them a long statement. The gist, relayed to me by George, was that he was sick of gossip and wished to make clear that Catherine was a truly marvellous woman, had been an adoring wife, and theirs had been a supremely happy marriage. And impossible though he knew it was, there was nothing he’d like more than for Cardinal Campeggio to find in Catherine’s favour. And, indeed, if he did so, Henry would marry her all over again.
He was doing well, George said, up to this point. The problem came as he folded up the piece of paper and could no longer avoid facing the polite, restrained but wide-eyed incredulity of his audience. ‘And I’m telling you,’ he suddenly yelled, ‘if I don’t get full cooperation on all this, there’s none of you so grand your head won’t fly.’
Strange to think, now, how I laughed when I heard that. But George, bless him, did a good impression, all puffed-up petulance; and I was thinking, too, I suppose, of the grandees in the audience, the suddenly rigid, po-faced Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. I didn’t know, then, of course, how many heads would fly and how many of them would be of people I liked and loved. Nor that mine would, in the end, be joining them.
Lucy Cornwallis SUMMER 1535 (#ulink_3bf6de10-1623-542f-95d9-8b49a129c481)
‘Mark! Haven’t seen you for a while.’ Not since Nonsuch, three or four weeks ago. One step across the threshold and he takes two backwards, aghast at the heat. ‘Oh, the heat: I know,’ and I’m laughing despite being aware of how awful I must look, red- and shiny-faced. But it’s too late to do anything about that, and I’m just glad he’s here. ‘Come in.’
He glances around the preserving pans, the baskets of fruits, rows of jars. Moulds are laid to dry, and subtleties—marchepane baskets, sugar bowls, marchepane and sugar fruits—are in various states of assembly and decoration. ‘You’re busy,’ he says, and now it’s him who’s laughing: ‘You are so busy.’
‘Summer needs bottling.’ Hence the jars. ‘And then there’s midsummer.’ The Feast of St John the Baptist: hence the subtleties.
He enthuses, ‘You’re so organized.’
No, ‘I’m just used to it.’ Which isn’t to say that I don’t think back fondly to when I was a child and the feast day meant none of this, no work, just the bonfire in the fields and the cartwheel set alight and rolled through the village. That village bonfire seemed enormous, to me, then, but I don’t suppose it’s a patch on the one that’s built here, every year.
Inhaling deeply, Mark wants to know, ‘What’s cooking?’
‘That’ll be the cherries,’ a nod towards one of the steaming cauldrons, ‘with cloves and cinnamon.’
He widens his eyes, beguiled. ‘I’d best leave you to it.’
‘No, really: all the more need for a distraction.’ But distraction didn’t sound quite right; nor to him, to judge from his flutter of hesitation. ‘Really,’ I repeat quickly, striking my fruit-sticky hands down my apron.
So, he obliges. Acknowledges Richard: ‘Mr Cornwallis,’ with a twitch of a smile that Richard is clearly intended to see and appreciate.
Which—miraculously—he does: ‘Mr Smeaton,’ he says, quite jollily, although he’s straight back to work. It’s close work that he’s doing: casting tiny details—twigs, in brown sugar paste (cinnamon, ginger), leaves in green (spinach juice), pips in both—and sticking them to various fruits. He is quite jolly, today; there’s been a carnival atmosphere, in here, today. One way to survive, with this much to do.
Mark says, ‘You two have a lot of fun in here, don’t you.’
Actually, I don’t know whether that’s close to the truth or couldn’t be further from it, and my own bafflement makes me laugh. Richard gives me what I think is called a long look; I’m aware of it even though I’ve turned away. I did see, though, that he wasn’t entirely unamused.
Mark sidles in but stays close to the door, leans back against the wall; hoping, I imagine, to be inconspicuous. Summertime has barely touched him, he’s as pale as ever, but the heat in here is bringing a glow to his face. ‘Well,’ he says to me, ‘I’ve caught up with you.’
Does he mean that one of us has been remiss? Which of us, though? It can’t have been me: I can’t rove around inside the various palaces, looking for him. I find myself stating the obvious: ‘We’ve been on progress.’ But has he? Has he been on progress, for the whole time? Has he been in all the places I’ve been, these past three or four weeks? Nonsuch, yes: we did meet up at Nonsuch. But the others? Does the king always take all his musicians with him? If not all, does he take his favourites?
‘I’ve been lucky enough to have a couple of quick breaks,’ he says.
‘For us, it’s been relentless. Poor Joseph—our pack-man: all this to pack up, every few days.’ I’m babbling, but it’s also true: I do feel for Joseph. It’s bad enough for him in the winters, moving us between the major palaces every few weeks, but at least those kitchens are basically equipped. These moves to the smaller houses, the hunting lodges, require us to take everything, every last pan and spoon. ‘And lately, he’s had to deal with all these subtleties, in pieces; packing them so carefully into chests.’
I don’t understand it: every previous summer, there’ve been occasions when we’ve been paid our retainers and told to stay behind in whichever palace we’re in while it’s being cleaned. Time off is welcome, of course, but I can never help thinking of the hard work going on around us: Mr Wilkinson, in his trademark red coat, cleaning the kitchen drains. Worse, beneath us: Poor Mr Long and his poor boys, the gong scourers, digging down alongside the latrine pits, removing bricks and climbing in to take away the mess and scrub the shafts and walls and floors.
Whether or not Richard and I go on progress depends, presumably, on the hospitality offered to the king. Perhaps, sometimes, it’d be a snub to take us. Perhaps sometimes a snub not to. I don’t know the niceties, but someone does. It’s the Knight Harbinger’s job to know if we’re going or not, to arrange accommodation for us if we need it. We simply follow the orders that filter down. But this summer has been different. No niceties. Everywhere the king has gone, we’ve gone, too. Our only orders have been to produce more, and bigger, and better.
I try to be positive. ‘Nonsuch, though: that was lovely, wasn’t it.’ Brand new Nonsuch.
‘Queen Anne’s, now, of course,’ he says. ‘Given to her by the king.’
I don’t care whose it is. ‘Not the house, particularly; but the orchards. I don’t suppose you went into the orchards? Then you’ll not have seen these.’ I take one from the basket and approach him, offering it up for inspection. He brushes a fingertip over the small fruit; it stirs on my palm.
‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘Some kind of baby peach? A funny, little…smooth, little…egg-yolk-coloured peach?’ He gives up with a half-laugh, but remains intrigued.
‘It’s an apricot. Mr Harris—the king’s fruiterer—brought a cutting back from abroad, a couple of years ago, and he’s been nursing it at Nonsuch. And here we are.’
Despite the note of triumph, I suddenly feel silly. Because it’s nothing, really, is it. It’s a fruit; it’s a bit like a peach. I’ve been carried away by all the excitement: Mr Harris’s, and then my own and Richard’s. Why on earth would Mark be interested? And yet. It also is something, isn’t it? It is something: it’s new, it’s alive, and we’ve never seen it before, and isn’t that something?
He’s asking, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ He’s watchful as I replace it with the others.
‘Same as I do with every other fruit. Same as I’m doing over there with the peaches. Cook them. Preserve them. Cook a very thick jam, cut it into pieces, stamp each piece and dust it with sugar.’
‘No one’ll eat them fresh?’
I’m back to the peaches; my knife-blade drops through slick flesh. ‘Fresh fruit’s indigestible, Mark.’ He should know that; should look after himself. ‘It stews in your stomach.’ No wonder he looks so pale.
‘Seems a shame, though. To cook them.’ I can barely hear him over the raps of my knife. ‘To mush them up. When they’re so beautiful.’
A glance, and there they are: nestled in the bowl, but each one also very itself. Staring me down. Looking either helpless, or supremely confident; I can’t decide which. ‘But they have to be eaten. That’s what they’re for.’
‘Well, I suppose you can model them in sugar. That way, you can keep them intact.’
On the shelves above me are box-loads of lemons and oranges that Richard and I have cast and coloured for the coming feast. Point taken: I know very well that fruits aren’t just for eating, but also for looking at. Of course I do. Much of my time is taken with preserving them or faking them in sugar and marchepane. I can’t have him thinking that I don’t find the apricots beautiful. The first one I ever saw was sunset-coloured; it was bowed by its cleft, and the skin was a blur however sharply I focused.
‘Simple pleasures,’ he says, ‘in these difficult times. These dark times.’
I could ignore that; I could let it pass in respectful silence. Could I? No. No, of course not. He’s right: if it isn’t acknowledged—what’s happened—then it waits to be acknowledged. My problem is with Richard: I really don’t wish to discuss it with or in front of Richard, who’s been so very keen to discuss it with me. Keen to subject me to gossip, to make me hear the details. I don’t even want to think about it. There’s no point; there’s nothing I can do. Except think about it. And I can’t bear to think about it. Mark and I didn’t talk about it at Nonsuch; we could’ve done—everyone else was—but we didn’t. By mutual consent, I presumed. Because what would we have said? If we weren’t going to talk about it like everyone else was—the gossip, the details—then what would we have said? We’d have ended up saying something pointless like, The Tyburn executions—what an awful business! But now something more has happened—it’s happened to Bishop Fisher—and something will have to be said. What, though?
I say, ‘She put him up to it.’ Well, it’s the truth.
