Читать книгу Anne Boleyn - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 5

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Wyatt thrust his hands in his pockets and stood frowning, then walked slowly up by the herb-garden—one of the most enchanting spots of an enchanting garden. Bushes of grey-green juniper, hedges of grey-blue lavender filling the air with their clean perfume. Bushes of small sweet-scented roses for washes, beds of rosemary and balsam, sprigged thyme and mint, sharp southern-wood for lads to wear on Sundays, with bitter rue to follow if need be; indeed a garden of country delights. The air was heavy with the murmurous music of bees. It came and went like waves as the busy brown-velvet plunderers swung heavily laden through the air to their hives or clung intoxicated to tiny blossoms.

And in the midst, herself a flower, though a hanging-headed one, was Mary in a dress of pink stuff with a basket on her arm, filling it with mint and marjoram for the still-room and all the myriad recipes and decoctions of Lady Boleyn. She looked up, seeing Wyatt, and made to go away. He was Anne’s man—lost in Anne, body and soul, and had never spared herself any but careless kindness like a big, somewhat contemptuous brother’s. Now, as he stood in the grass-path, there was a different look—true pity, anxious to repair past oversights.

“Stay, Mary!” he said. “I have not seen you since you came back from London and——”

“And you did not want to!” said the poor pink rose with a display of her harmless thorns. “Please let me pass, Mr. Wyatt. I am nobody’s child now!”

“You are my friend and ever will be. I made too little of you before, Mary, but I know better now.”

Something drew him to the kind simple thing despised by all because she had not put her price higher.—She looked at him in great amaze and then her tears gathered and rolled down her cheeks, clinging to the black lashes like a heavy dew.

“Don’t be kind to me. That I cannot bear!” she said. “They call me a bad girl now and say no man but a fool will ever look at me. Thomas, is it true? I heard Simonette say that if I had filled my lap with gold, suitors would come thick as these bees. But never now. Is it true?”

“Not true!” he asserted. “You will have suitors, Mary. But do you think of them so soon? Had you no love for the King’s Grace?”

She stared at him bewildered.

“I never knew! O Thomas, understand, for you have known me from a child. How could I refuse the King? He is so great and golden and splendid and speaks always as if it must be. But indeed I pitied the Queen.—Poor good lady! She wept, and I with her. Indeed, if Anne and Simonette could let me alone I believe I am a modest girl still. At least I feel no different. The world is the same. Does it make any difference? But, thank our Blessed Lady, Anne is going soon and Simonette with her, and then we shall have peace. I have brought recipes from the Queen’s own confectioner and so my stepmother will forgive me—sweet things that would melt in your mouth, and these herbs are for washes that will make a girl’s skin lily and rose and dissolve the brownest freckle that ever spotted her cheek. Anne has asked for a boxful. And who can refuse Anne? You think you hate her and then she saddens and you love her. O, she will not trip like me! She will marry a great lord—I know who she has her eye on!”

To that Wyatt knew he must not listen. He stayed to cheer Mary and to pile her basket and then went with her to the Castle where good-hearted Lady Boleyn bestowed a rosy welcome on him and would as soon have kissed him as look at him. And George Boleyn strolled in, dark and careless, but his eyes softer and kinder than his sister’s, and clapped Wyatt on the back and made much of him. And they went to dinner in the great dining-hall where departed Boleyns looked stiffly down on outrageous youth, and Anne came gliding in with the demure Simonette at her heels, and afterwards the young ones got out their lutes, and the two men with Anne sang heavenly madrigals until even Mary picked up her lute and joined in, linnet-voiced. Simonette went off demurely, and good Lady Boleyn slept in her big chair, and still the four sang with voices harmonized to each other by long use, and even the westward sloping shadows stayed to hear, and the birds were silent in the trees. A nest of singing-birds indeed at Hever—to out-sing the blackbirds and thrushes.

The afternoon shadows of the great beeches lay eastward when Anne laid down her lute and Wyatt his. George Boleyn continued idly plucking a few chords and humming in an undertone—a beautiful young man in his tawny cloth coat and a collar opened at the neck and flung back loose to show the fine throat which gave dignity to his head. Mary had gone off with Lady Boleyn, complaining of a furious headache, and no wonder—after her tears.

George said presently:

“Have you heard, Thomas, from this self-conceited little ass how she intends to set the Court dancing to her tune? Her years in France as the pet jackanapes of all the giddiest humourists there has turned her head. But though I know nothing of Court life here I think it will not be so easy. We English are heavier stuff—lumpish—good bread against the light French pastry. No, Mrs. Anne, I cannot see you and Wyatt and me changing the English taste for heavy eating and drinking and perpetual masses and slaughter of beasts into wit and laughter and gay acting and singing. Eh, Wyatt?”

It could be noted how unceremonious his tone was. Even among friends there was a certain formality of address—which could spring in a moment to brutal coarseness if needful. But that was not the Boleyn manner. Partly by nature, partly by choice, they were cool, light, ironic to all the world and even to each other. Mary was ill placed with Anne and George in this respect. She had not the Boleyn manner nor could she acquire it, but she felt its immense assertion of superiority and was ill at ease. Wyatt could not wholly fall into it, but he too worshipped the brother and sister as a peerless pair—Apollo and Diana shooting golden arrows of superiority at lesser folk—stupidities who were apt to be wounded and dislike their wounds and the archers.

“It is very easy to make enemies at Court,” he observed, “and I own I hope you will both tap before you to sound the way like a blind man with a stick. The Queen is excellently good, but I confess she has reached the point where she is apt to think pleasant things partake of the nature of sin—unless she happens to have her reasons. She is still a stickler for what pleases the King.”

“I note,” said Anne carelessly, “that such people object to pleasures not because they are wrong but because other people like them.”

“And yet that is not the Queen,” Wyatt said thoughtfully. “How shall I say?—She thinks chastity and modest behaviour necessary for men and women alike because God has so commanded and the national good requires. But she likes goodly reading and pastimes—all but hunting, which she never attends.—Better if she did! The King loves it.”

“And why not? Animals, being soulless brutes, are made for our amusement,” thrust in Anne.

“She pities them. She likes shooting at the butts, and cards, and the masquerades the King devises. Or seems to like them, to please him.”

George Boleyn aimed a pebble at a bird, missed it, and said carelessly:

“Yes—and he knows her for a dull old frump who pretends youth and gaiety to please him. But I believe Anne is right. I believe the way to succeed at Court is to find new pleasures for the King. He must have been hard driven when he took to Mary for amusement.”

Nothing astonished Wyatt more than the indifferent contempt with which the two spoke of Mary. Anger, hatred—many other qualities he could have understood, but their indifference puzzled and saddened him. He changed the subject.

“And do you and Anne conquer the world alone, and what are your weapons? I allow beauty and wit. But what else?”

“Impudence!” George answered, yawning. “Effrontery. And Anne’s French tricks. She has enough pleasures up that big sleeve of hers to amuse the Court for a month of Sundays. And I have the rest. You should see Anne and me dance the Harvest Courtship Dance that made the King of France laugh till he swore there was never such a maid in the world. Besides, we do not trust altogether to ourselves. Sir Francis Weston has come to Court. He married a Moresby of Cumberland—a great young lady of family and estates—and he spends her money royally. She too is an Anne, but a very different guess-sort to this” (he touched Anne’s cheek with a caressing finger) “—fair and eager and madly in love with him. And we shall have Mark Smeaton to play our music.”

Wyatt made a gesture of disgust.

“Mark Smeaton? A low-born romantic foul-minded ass. I would not have him near a clean maid.”

“But I would use him as I wanted him!” said Anne pertly. “And I would say thus far and no further, Master Mark! For there is no such dancer under heaven, and he has a delicious tenor voice, and his touch on the lute and regals—— He learnt in France. George and I are good and very good, but Mark is one of God’s choristers.”

“The devil’s. O, he too has his music!” said Wyatt disgustedly. He knew things of Smeaton which he would reveal to George but never to Anne—Anne, who knew every one of them and more, from Simonette’s quick tongue. Indeed, she had once suspected a tendresse between Mark and Simonette which she had not confided even to George. Wyatt tried to look at her dispassionately. “You are a very fashionable young maid, Mistress Anne. You will set every girl at Court wild with envy of your French fripperies and what not.—But I have this to say—Do not make enemies of the women. They have tongues like asps, and you have not all the art in the world. They also have a little, and they will tell their tales against you with such pious lips and truthful eyes as would deceive even the elect. Therefore walk circumspectly.”

The answer was on her lips when a horseman came riding up the drive, bowing to the saddlebow as he came. They all recognized him as Spenlow, an old Boleyn retainer, and Anne waved her hand while the young men went off to meet him. Presently, without a word to her they turned back with him—he walking and leading his horse—and disappeared round the bend of the great drive veiled with shadowy beech boughs, on their way to the stables. Yawning, she gathered up her lute and went in and upstairs and so along the great corridor to Mary’s room.

“Don’t come in. My head is tearing me. I must sleep,” said a muffled voice from the bed, and Anne went on still carelessly to her own room with its beautiful oriel window looking out toward the front.

It was hardly worth while for Wyatt, yet one would not lose a captive, and she took a comb and swept her brown-black hair into curves and coils upon the little head which could bear its black-bronze massiveness proudly. The height made her face peaked and mischievous as a flower fairy’s, so rich the golden damask of her velvet cheeks and long brown eyes.

“Fruit-face!” she said to the glass. “I used to think my lips were too dark a damask rose. A little more and they would be purple—fruit-purple. But it suits me. How many men have kissed them! But kisses leave no mark, and if a maid keeps her maidenhood no more need be asked of her. I can tell my husband I am pure as I came from my mother and he will ask no more.”

Looking steadily at her reflection she took out a paste of French rouge and deepened the colour on her cheeks.

“Simonette!” she called. A door within opened and shut and Simonette came hurrying—a dress of russet brown damask heaped in her arms.

“Anne!” she cried. “Denton has run up through the garden to say your father is returning and gentlemen with him. Some courtiers. Master Wyatt and your brother have gone to meet him. I know not who it is, but he thinks my Lord Percy is one—my lord the Earl of Northumberland’s heir. I have brought one of your new gowns, and I bid you set the French frontlet on your hair. No—you have made your cheeks too red. Vile! Wash it off. No sign-painting!”

Simonette was the Court of Appeal in such matters. She touched Anne’s cheeks with a scented cream made in the castle still-room and sweet with Hever herbs and blossoms. She put her into the red-russet damask that made her own colour noble against a noble background. She set upon her head a curious head-dress designed by herself and Anne (it may still be seen in her portraits)—a stiff band of russet velvet raying outward like the Russian kashnovik, the outer edge rimmed with large garnets of glowing crimson. For little money it made a beautiful show, and the shape diminished Anne’s face to a marvellous delicacy—accentuating the freakish chin and whimsical mouth and greatening the long eyes in black lashes.

“Put on your distant air!” she commanded, and Anne turned on her a look of proud composure—a questionmark to any intruder. “Now smile!”—and with a flash as when the sun leaps from a cloud the face bloomed and brightened—all mobility and response.

“You had made a fine actor were women allowed on the stage,” said Simonette laconically. “And what then?—for surely all the world is a stage and every woman her own heroine if no one else’s. And look!—past the fourth great beech they come! That will be Percy next your father on the right. The man on the left I do not know, but—Holy Queen of Heaven!—he sits his horse well!”

Anne looked out of the side of the oriel. It was a group of six gentlemen—a bunch of retainers riding apart. At this distance features were not too plain, but she saw that her father stooped a little after his manner and rode cap in hand as if to cool his forehead with the scented air from the garden with its great beds of gilliflowers (wallflowers) and coronations. But indeed all the men were bar-headed. The one on Sir Thomas Boleyn’s left caught a sunbeam through the leaves and it turned his head golden like a saint’s in a missal. A big man with thighs well braced to his horse and the reins held lightly but warily, he deserved Simonette’s commendations. A great florid handsome cavalier riding a horse heavy almost as a dray horse—no less would stand his weight.

“That is the make of man that women can fire to madness,” she said.—“A dark lean man like Percy or like your brother kindles like brushwood—a big flare and it outs. But this kind smoulders a long time. Of both a woman may make her market. Go down, Anne, and sit in the small western room. I have done my work so that even your father shall be proud of his girl.”

She was right.—Glow and bloom and a splendour of dark wealthy red-brown to set off her own rich tints. The swaying young beauty turned to go down the long way to the stair—but first her eyes caught Simonette’s.

“What I never understand is why one woman should be so proud of another woman’s looks, Simonette. You are not beautiful as I am, you say, and it is true. Then why do you not hate me? I think I might hate you if you shone me down.”

“But I am older than you and, you have said, wiser, Anne. To each her own gift. And my wisdom tells me that love and hate are only part of the world’s stagecraft. If I hated you I should still set off your beauty because Beauty is the star of the play. Gold runs to her and men’s wills, and power ties her velvet shoes. But why should I not love you also? I have taught you from a child. Had not Mademoiselle Mary turned her back on me——”

Anne shrugged her shoulders with a quick French gesture of disdain and went light-footed to the stairs. Simonette still hugged the oriel window lozenged above with the arms in gules and argent and glorious hues of the great families with whom the Boleyns claimed kinship. Her gaze fixed and searched as the men came riding slowly up, chatting and laughing boisterously, to the great castle-door, iron-studded and barred and capable of stout defense. Presently she put her hand in the hanging pocket that dangled by her side, slung from the waist. She drew out a few coins, and searching among them took one and looked at it steadily—then at the men below her, now dismounting. She tossed the money back into the purse and ran like a hare downstairs.

To Anne, seated in the beautiful panelled room with its carved dark old oak enshrining her as a casket holds its jewel, entered her father leading the men, yet drawing aside a hair to let Percy and the other precede him as guests should. She laid aside the book of Breton romances of the Fairy Melusine, the Lady of Lusignan, she was reading and rose and gliding to him dropped on one knee to take his blessing. Reverence to a father came first in those days, and men liked it, for daughters, though far behind sons, were good commodity in marriage-making and brought excellent grist to the family mill—if such as men desire and will pay down fat prices for. He imparted his blessing sanctimoniously and with hidden but hopeful pride. The Boleyns might not be rich in money, but when a man can bring his guests to such a castle as Hever set in acres of waving forest and meadow where they may see the tall deer glimpse through the thickets and hear the rocketing clatter of pheasants and see the burnished peacocks strut the lawns—and above all may stare at such a daughter of the Boleyns aglow in a room that spoke of family pride, he may bless the Lord for a goodly heritage and not unreasonably hope for additions.

And first, as she rose, with many hand-wavings and the space between his meeting nose and chin narrowing with his smiles he said:

“Daughter Anne, I present to you a most worthy and hopeful young gentleman, my Lord Percy, heir to my lord the Earl of Northumberland and in attendance on his Grace the Lord Cardinal Wolsey. You shall know that this young gentleman adds all the graces of courts to the daring of the field. My lord, this is my unworthy daughter, Mistress Anne, late maid of honour to her Majesty’s Grace Queen Claude of France.”

Bows, reverences. The young lord took her hand like a rose-petal on the back of his own and after the English custom kissed her cheek devoutly. She felt the thrill of his lips. His eyes were ardent; his face, dark and manly, had a weakish jaw, sloped too abruptly from the chin to the ear. By an unkind stretch you might call the noble Percy a little lantern-jawed. She was certain Wyatt would do so. But there was no time to consider.

Again her father’s voice, two sizes too big and deep for his lean body, boomed in her ear.

“And, daughter Anne, I present you to a very worthy good knight and stout man of his hands, Sir Stephen Lloyd, a right good servant of the King in his Scots and French wars.—Salute him, and now with your stepmother make good cheer to these gentlemen, for they ride on in an hour to meet with my Lord Cardinal Wolsey at Amsden as he comes down from the North. Sirs, I am told my second daughter lies tormented of the headache, but what the house can it will.”

Sir Stephen kissed the Boleyn rose also, with lips not unused to the like exercise. The Percy’s were hurried and shy. The other’s moist and lingering.

Lady Boleyn meek and flurried in black velvet, George Boleyn perfect-mannered in his country clothes, handing the rich wines and humbler but delicious cordials—cherry and grape and what not made by Lady Boleyn’s and Mary’s hands,—Wyatt seconding him with hospitable elegance acquired in Italy. Sir Stephen Lloyd drinking deep with a keen blue eye on Anne gliding here and there and opposing cool maidenliness to Percy’s eager questioning glances—these were the vignettes that came like beads threaded on a chain of interest and conjecture. Not that guests were rare at Hever. In those days of foul and evil-smelling inns gentlemen like the Boleyns kept almost open house for other gentlemen riding North, South, East, and West on the King’s business and their own. But yet this was an unusual occasion. Sir Stephen Lloyd was a new name to her—and a fine figure of a man—big and burly and large-cheeked with narrow laughing blue eyes a little choked in flesh, above a close reddish beard and the golden hair that had caught her eye from the window. But Percy was more her business. He came up, silver cup in hand, and drank her especial health, and his eyes said so very much more than his mouth that Simonette’s image of a fire of brushwood crackled in her mind. He pleaded for a song and appealed to his fellow-guest Sir Stephen as to whether it would not sweeten the wine, but the occasion passed because her father was pressing Sir Stephen himself for a song, and he caught up a lute of George’s and in a manly pleasant baritone trolled out a song of “pastime and good merriment,” and after huge applause the talk ranged further afield and music was forgotten.

And now the shadows lengthened in good earnest, and Sir Thomas must ride with his guests to his bounds where the Lord of the Castle would bring them to where they must lie for the night to meet the mighty Lord Cardinal who ruled King and kingdom—and he a butcher’s son of Ipswich!—one of Simonette’s favourite examples of how brains rule brawn.

The men rose, and the commotion of farewells and stirrup-cups began. Sir Stephen kissed Anne’s cheek in farewell—a custom, no more. But he came as near her mouth as he could, and she felt the heat of his lips through the red-gold hair that clothed them.

“Farewell, fair lady. And if, as your father tells me, you ride soon to London, may I be there to lift you from the saddle and put my riding-cloak under your feet.”

She smiled a little distantly in thanking him. She expected more than an unknown knight’s mantle for floor-cloth. Then came Percy, while the others laughed and swore in a storm of good-fellowship and wine.

“Fairest lady, you ride to London. I will be there—trust me—to see a world’s wonder. Your sweet eyes have——No, I talk madness. Forgive me. I have tasted little wine yet I am drunk.”

He pressed his lips on her cheek—hard—which was not in the custom, before he released her hand. His lips burnt her—she felt the clenched teeth through them in the eagerness of his kiss. She did not smile but loosed one dark arrow from her eyes before she dropped them. And so satisfied him. He went, looking back and stumbling.

The men rode off commending her looks, not delicately. Another custom. And the servants cleared away cups and goblets and wine left disorderly about the room and in the hall where Sir Stephen had set his silver-gilt cup on the hall table—a huge acreage laid on trestles, it had overset and the dregs of bright red wine like blood trickled over the edge and made a little pool on the stone floor.

She went and stood outside the door in the cooling air and was tired and cloyed after the excitement—a little sickened by their noise and drink and lusty manhood—hunters of women as of deer. Her taste was fastidious even to fantasy, though she could bend it to what she would to serve her occasion. But at the moment, with twilight dropping soft veils about her, she pictured a world where women might dictate the laws and soften these bulls and boars of men to something more knightly—more like the pattern she and George had invented together—men passionately loving with the intellect as the flesh, yet cool and dispassionate in manner and surface, masking flame with ice—except for the beloved, and even for her holding treasures in reserve that she must not count too quickly. She had seen the type in France in men of one or two of the families so great that they had difficulty in condescending to royalty, and when the King called them “mon cousin” it was easy to see where they thought the honour lay. But even these one or two were not perfect—no—too gaillard—too faithless. She wanted the English doggedness of passion shot through with the jewel-like French fire and a dancing star of gaiety. She—— George came spurring back across the grass to cut a corner.

“Anne, hurry—look for the King’s riding gloves. He believes he left them here.”

Enough to startle a maid from a dream. Sir Stephen—Mary—the King—Percy!—a jumble of ideas stormed her brain. For a second she stared at him as he flung himself from his horse.

“The King?”

“Surely you knew. His craze is to go masquerading, and I suppose Mary—— But he knows my father or any other man in England would lick his boots to clean them. We must take this as a token of great favour. We are forgiven for Mary!”

His cool sarcastic tone roused her. She looked about and spied the leather riding gloves under the hall table. The fingers of one dripped red wine. She shook it hurriedly, noting how plain and workmanlike it was, nothing but a small H.R. on each gauntlet. She dried it on her handkerchief and threw the stained rag away. That handkerchief stained with blood-red wine was to recur to her mind on another and distant day. George snatched the gloves and was off—his great roan horse leaping the low fences and sending the sod flying like spray from his iron-shod hoofs.—So kings’ errands are run.

But Anne went slowly up to take off her bravery. Simonette awaited her.

“Anne, did you know—did you know? I scribbled it on a leaf I tore from my lady’s recipe book, and I hung round the door, but then I dared not send it. Men are such fools. And yet not one of them spit out the truth—as close as oysters—but I knew him from the money in my bag. He loves to mask and take people in, and they play on it when he thinks he is not known. Did he notice you?”

“How can I tell? They were drinking like—like men. All but Percy. He noticed me. Fire of brushwood, Simonette! Will anything come of it? We shall see in London.”

But Simonette’s mind was on the King. A handsome man if a little gross and fleshy. A roving eye. Madness of the Queen to think she could hold a bull of a man like that! A herd of wives like the Sultan’s would be more to the purpose and each a full share of favour. And yet, they said, religious. But was it not strange to think of Mademoiselle Mary? Suppose she had come down all bewept and imploring! Heavens, the courage of kings! How had he risked it? But what need a king care? Indeed he had done her a very great honour if she had the sense of a chicken!

Anne laughed and recounted events and agreed. Simonette influenced her like a chemical combination that made a kind of effervescent coarse lightness she never had alone. Those rapacious little French paws and eyes dug and ferreted and saw and pursued, and life became a hunt in which success was the dodging prey. It interested her profoundly, and the more so because she knew that she also influenced Simonette, who dragged and wearied without her unless indeed she was off on Anne’s business which was her own. They were like the separate and yet unified halves of one woman each prompting and sustaining the other—not friends but something more intimate, thought and action, word and deed. Who can find words for those strange interactions and reactions of human relationship?

Sir Thomas and George came back—Sir Thomas full of stories of the King’s graciousness. He had asked after Mary coolly and had mentioned her as young and unripe. “You should find her a good husband, friend; the Queen has a gift for her when she weds.” And he had put his arm genially about Sir Thomas’s neck, a handsome mark of royal favour. He had commended Hever for an agreeable seat for a rising man. What could that mean? And he had said of Anne that she had the French air to perfection and that Sir Thomas should take thought before bestowing her. Sir Thomas felt that good might yet come of Mary’s mischance. Naturally the King could say nothing, but it had picked the family out in his mind, and he might feel he owed them something. He had talked very pleasantly with George and laughed at his cool sallies.

“You are like your sister Mademoiselle Anne,” he said.

George himself had little to tell, but when he and she parted in the long corridor for the night he said with carelessness:

“The King likes the French touch. He is sick of roast beef and beer, and sour Spanish dignity like whey gone sour, and being ruled by a churchman as lewd and servile as any baron. There is a new age coming in Europe. Gaiety, beauty, splendour, romance. I wonder——”

He went off. Anne could not sleep. The day had been disturbing, look at it how you will. She flung open the great casements and dared the night air, mother-naked for her bed.

An enchanted night, balmy with the breath of roses and honeysuckle. A great full moon drenched the world with moonlight, and below her the gardens lay in cold black and white magnificence of light and dark—the roses blanched, the grass bleached against black shadows, colour only a memory. The trees were pillars of ancient darkness lifting towers of glittering white leaves to the glimmering sky. Stars paled in the brimmed glory, and all the world stared upward awake and spellbound. No sleep. Bright eyes watched in the thickets, stirred, whispered. A bird chirped and was silent. And something that slept in Anne—that Simonette could never waken—looked, waited—enchanted also into breathless suspense. The meaning? Ah, who could tell? So fair dead women had watched before her.—Dust has closed Helen’s eyes. But they had had their day. She also must have hers; that other women leaning—leaning out into the fathomless ocean of beauty might say—“Anne also—that Anne,—she lived!”

She drew in from the immeasurable tranquillity and tried to sleep but could not. She lit her candle and read of the lures of Melusine until the dawn put out the night’s glory.

But it was of Percy she thought. Not of Henry the King.