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When Anne came up to London, riding along the muddy tracks with Simonette beside her and a stout body of retainers before and behind, she had none of the exhilaration of the caged bird set free. She saw life as an anxious business, for the goods girls carry for marketing are in their nature frail and easily deteriorated. Mary stood as an awful warning that chastity is a commodity too valuable to be exchanged unless against gilt-edged securities, and that as religion and policy go hand in hand in estimating its value high a girl must be guided by the union of authority of this world and the next. It was much easier for her than for Mary to see the situation in its realities, because all the intellect which should have been fairly divided between the two of them had gone to Anne and had brought with it the inevitable coldness which is physical as well as mental. To Mary men were delightful warm-blooded human creatures, able to bestow enchantment in their worshippings and temptings, snares irresistible. To Anne—animals a little contemptible but eminently manageable; their appetites when matched against her intellect and graces setting a delightful game which, since Providence apparently took a hand in it now and then, must certainly be played with the skill of which all her coquetries were part and lot. Better than chess—at which she excelled strangely for a mere girl—better than any spheral harmony or ravishment of beauty, was that game to Anne, and every one of her accomplishments a move in it. Continuing her thoughts aloud she said to Simonette as they rode slowly along the winding river-bank of the Strand in London:

“I bless our Lady that Mary’s folly has set a beacon-light for me. I can well believe that the King’s fancy was a heavy draught for a fool like her to swallow. Indeed I think she has been a little drunk ever since. Now, supposing the case mine instead of hers, what should I have done?”

“Protested virtue and fled to Hever Castle!” said Simonette briefly. “The King’s Majesty cannot bear to be baulked and the price rises with every disappointment. Had Mademoiselle Mary done this she could have taken a peerage and what wealth she would. And then, a king’s love is no stain! Look at his natural son, Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond. Who blames the mother? But Mademoiselle Mary—a fille-de-chambre could not have been so foolish! No wonder she is ridiculed.”

Anne reined in her horse and stood looking westward for a few minutes at the late afternoon sun upon the wide river. A beautiful sight. Above the dazzle rose the noble town mansions of the nobility such as Durham House, Suffolk House, York House—Cardinal Wolsey’s new and splendid London palace,—and the like. Looking eastward, grim against the pale eastern sky rose the grim daughter-towers, of the Tower of London brooding over the darkening river—unalterably a fortress and a prison, showing no sign of the splendours of the royal residence hidden in its evil heart.

“I wonder the King and Queen can satisfy themselves to live there,” she said, pointing with her riding-whip. “Men say it is full of crawling ghosts. Ugh!—the torture chambers and the rat-eaten prisoners! How can she bear it!”

“What matter!” said Simonette contemptuously. “She is Queen of England. Why should she think of such miserables? For my part I think the Tower grander than any of these new-built Western houses. Only the royal people can live there, but Cardinal Wolsey—son of the butcher of Ipswich!—can stick up York House and take his low-born pleasure in it. The wallowing glutton!”

“Pretty well for a little Frenchwoman to turn up her nose at a great Prince of the Church like Cardinal Wolsey! They say he steers the King as I steer this horse with the reins. I solemnly believe, Simonette, that you fear neither God, man, nor devil!”

Simonette laughed also.

“Well, but the Cardinal! Look at his luxury, his gluttony for gold, his natural children—Holy Peter! how is any woman to respect him! But she may learn from him! That man by his wits has pulled himself up from the bloody mire of the slaughter-house, and some day he will be Pope and kings will kiss the cross on his slipper. Already he says ‘I and my King’ when he speaks of King Henry.”

Anne turned her horse’s head westward again and rode slowly on.

“And what lesson in that for a woman, Mademoiselle Wiseacre? I aspire to no Popedom.”

“The lesson that brains not only make kings and cardinals but use them and unmake them. O, go cautiously, Anne of my heart! My only fear is lest your own coquetries dazzle you. You do not know how conquering you are. You do not see how your spells fly like a noose about men’s necks—and believe me it is as cheap to noose a king as a ploughboy. If Mademoiselle Mary could——” She stopped. “I talk too fast,” she said.

Anne looked into the west:

“So you would have me set my new green velvet cap at the King!” she answered. “But no, Simonette! I mock at Mary for a green gosling but am one myself. You laugh, but I tell you I go to school here in London, and I shall learn from one and all. From the dull heavy Queen of England, from every successful woman and every man that takes a second look at me. And when I have finished schooling I shall consider England and—what? Win the Cardinal’s heart and rule the King with him?”

“Or without him,” said Simonette dryly. “And look—here comes your father riding with his men to meet you.”

Sir Thomas, lean and grim, with nose and chin that promised a keen sense of money values, welcomed his daughter with sufficient warmth as they met by Durham House where he was staying at the time and whence they would embark next day for Greenwich Palace and the Court. He was seriously out of love with daughters and their affairs, owing to Mary’s eclipse and the discredit her folly had brought him, and he made it very plain to Anne in their first ten minutes alone in her chamber at Durham House that he had by no means gone to the expense of a Court wardrobe for her that she might find life more amusing than at Blickling Hall or Hever Castle.

“Indeed no!” he said crustily. “What lies before you is to marry yourself well and hold patronage in your hand for those of us that need a helping hand, which God knows George and Mary most sorely do, and I myself could do with. You are now most honourably placed. Your fellow maids of honour are noble and honourable young women. You are therefore in company beyond your deserts and——”

“Sir, are they beautiful?” Anne asked eagerly.

“Folly!—toys! Beautiful? Mostly fair-cheeked yellow-haired English girls, and a Spaniard or two. Girls men love to marry, kind and simple. Take example!”

“Sir, my sister Mary is kind and simple,” said Anne, adjusting her short cape of tawny velvet about her shoulders.

Sir Thomas looked at her sharply.

“She is a born fool and will meet her just reward. Do better! And now—there is a young man at Court to whom all the Boleyns should show courtesy, for he is one can give them a lift up the ladder, and we have not got so far but what we might go further. And that is my Lord Percy whom you saw at Hever, son and heir to the Earl of Northumberland. My Lord of Northumberland is a man proud of his birth and state but cringing enough to those higher than himself, of whom there are few, for the Percys go back to Father Noah, if not further. And he has put his son about the Cardinal to learn statecraft. Show him a sweet but not a seeking civility. The son is young and eager. Meet him with wisdom. Keep good terms with all the maids your companions—women’s tongues stab deep as steel. Make your court to my Lord Cardinal—he is the greatest man in England but has a kindness for a pretty face. And for two last precepts: Remember rich friends are as easy to make as poor hangers-on and do not waste your time on idle fellows like Thomas Wyatt. Also, trust none at Court. Each has his or her market to make and will trouble yours if they can.”

She listened dutifully, then asked a question very like herself:

“Sir, do you see anything in my looks to give me an advantage at Court? I do not ask from vanity but because in France I had reason to think they did. But England may be different.”

He looked at her for the first time in his life as on merchandise to be very carefully appraised before it comes to sale. She stood facing him with a beautiful glow rising in her cheeks, her head held gallantly, the yellow sparkle afire in her eyes. Her figure was not come to full maturity, but the delicate youth of the bosom and slender body was grace itself, culminating in the swan-like dignity of her throat. She wore a tawny velvet riding-dress laced and corded with dull gold that made a lustrous background for a brilliant picture, and Sir Thomas looked at her as one taken by surprise, for it seemed she had suddenly expanded from young maidenhood to womanhood in his absence.

He viewed her cautiously and replied with grudging dignity:

“I will not deny that you can challenge rivalry, but yet there are fair rivals at Court. Set more store therefore on your singing—for indeed you have a noble instrument in your voice and a choice hand for lute, virginals, and regals. Also you have a quick and pleasant wit, and the hussy Simonette has trained you well in French—and, I trust in heaven, nothing worse. If I mistake not she has a go-between’s eye. Do not trust her too far. And remember this, if you get into mischief, Mistress Anne, I will whip you with my own hand till the blood runs. And now go your way with my blessing and God’s.”

She bent her knee to receive it with the carelessness of custom and went off to rest and to whisper with Simonette.

At the same hour next day she stood in the presence of Queen Katharine, born a princess of Spain and of the noblest blood in Europe, wife to the eighth Henry of England, mother of a girl who was now the only and slowly slipping hold on the heart of her husband—a woman therefore who had great perils to face and knew it. Anne, knowing it also, and the more keenly as Mary’s sister, trembled a little as she was ushered into the stately room where Katharine of Aragon sat with a few of her ladies and stitched at a wide broidery frame holding a design from some Italian original of my Lady April advancing through a rainbow with her nymphs scattering flowers. Anne’s heart beat a little quickly as she saw this very great lady who held so much patronage and power in her hands, who had apparently met and dismissed Mary as serenely from her life as if she had been an intruding insect. But she knew too much of queens and courts not to guess that that royal heart might beat a little quicker as she sedately followed her guide and her name was given by Elizabeth Hammond—a favourite lady—as “Mistress Anne Boleyn—may it please your Grace.”

It could not be surprising. At first sight everyone must see the likeness between herself and Mary, though all disowned it later. For a horrid moment the near-sighted Queen thought she saw that unfortunate advancing. The impression fled instantly before Anne’s grace and composure, but it had been, and coloured with a little remoteness the gentle dignity with which Katharine extended her hand to be kissed while Anne went on her knees.

Her speech was very brief—a word of the pleasure with which she welcomed a young lady who had been dear to the good Queen Claude of France, and whose experience of the most elegant of foreign courts must make her a very welcome and distinguished companion to the ladies of the English Court.

“And also your beautiful French speaking of which report has reached us will be very acceptable often, and especially when you speak with my daughter the Princess Mary—who needs practice in that tongue.”

Enquiries easily answered followed as to the French queens and their customs, and then Anne, sliding into the background, was accommodated with a kind of joint-stool among the others. In France she had learnt to stand for uncomplaining hours, but Queen Katharine, in spite of the stiff servility required by the parvenu Tudors who had supplanted the royal Plantagenets, was more humane, and in her presence even the younger women were invited to sit unless on formal occasions. The talk, Anne decided, was dull and virtuous. She wondered how the King or any man endured it. Even a mass might be a covetable variation. She dared not begin any talk herself, however low-voiced, among the other ladies, and sat stiff as a ramrod, allowing to herself that the prizes at Court must be wealthy indeed if bought at the price of such boredom. She thought of the fine sparkle of the Louvre and the Tuileries—and the castles of the Loire and gay women and men responsive as the echo to the voice, and looked at Katharine’s serene face and gently moving lips and sighed. What chance had the Queen of holding her husband? Little enough if the green gosling Mary could disturb her peace!

Wyatt was right. Queen Katharine was massive but carried it with stateliness, so that many thought it comely and suited to her station. Her hair was still beautiful—rich polished auburn like a chestnut fresh from the pod and banded smoothly under a stiff architectural-looking five-pointed cap of black velvet edged with jewels. It vaguely reminded Anne of a Gothic cathedral door—and nothing could have been more unbecoming to Katharine’s high forehead and rather heavy features. Her dress was of splendid royal blue velvet, and about her neck and girdling her waist she wore magnificent clusters of rubies linked in a Moorish design by strings of pearls. Certainly a queenly figure, Anne decided in her quick incisive way, but with no light feet to run after any man’s wandering heart if fairer opportunities drew him to pursuit. Of course her position as queen was as secure as destiny could make it. So great a lady of unspotted fame and guarded with the respect of all the world could never be disturbed in her pride of place whoever might amuse the King for an idle hour. Besides, as Anne suddenly remembered, there was her nephew, the Emperor Charles—what need this Queen of England care for a husband’s infidelity? Well might she look as tranquil as if no disturbance could ripple her calm!

There was a sound of loud laughing in the ante-chamber. Queen Katharine dropped her needle. A man’s and a woman’s. The velvet curtain was dashed aside, and in rushed a young woman, breathless and half exhausted with laughing. She ran to the Queen and threw herself on her knees before her and gasped out, choking with merriment:

“Protect me, your Grace—whom should I run to but you? The King’s highness has hunted me from the Painted Chamber to black my face for the masquerade tonight, I may be an Ethiop Queen but I was once Queen of France and none—not even he—shall black me. I hid from him.”

There was a little flutter among the ladies, and Anne craned forward as far as she dared to see the King’s sister Mary (now Duchess of Suffolk), to whom she had once been maid of honour. Would she remember her? Dared she thrust herself into notice? The pretty, slim young girl was a little overblown now, ruddy where she had been pink and white, but still gamesome and young for her age, as she had always been. A big romp, in reality. Katharine, stooping laughing above her, looked old and faded against the plump floridity.

“Hide me! hide me! here he comes!” she cried and slipped in a moment behind the Queen’s chair to the tune of shouts and laughter outside. Again the curtain was dashed away, and in burst Henry with a painter’s brush in his hand dropping with black paint.

“The little vixen! Where is she? She near scratched my face!” he shouted. “Where is she? She dared me to it. Have her out!”

Every woman present including the Queen rose to her feet, though all were tittering demurely. That was a point of manners, for if the King loved practical jokes all must bear a hand. But while Anne’s lips were doing their duty her eyes were riveted on the man who did not see her, Sir Stephen Lloyd.

Why had she not thought him remarkable at Hever? Florid, too large and full his face might be,—his body certainly was—but heavens, what a resolute jaw and what a fine careless libertine of a man, for all his size and puffed eyes made him look older than his thirty-five years! The French King was fine and finikin beside him. Mary’s tears had watered the false King but not the false lover—yet even as a lover the man could not be despicable, especially if one propped the notion with the certitude of his royalty. She began to think Mary a little less contemptible than hitherto. No—it would not be easy to bargain with him! That geniality might grow hard, threatening, brutal, in a moment, those full lips and square white teeth might blurt out words very difficult for a woman to meet unshrinking. Could he be mastered? Was he faithless as his grandfather the fourth Edward, whose name was a byword with women?

Some lady pointed a sly little finger behind the Queen’s chair, and he darted at it and dragged out the Queen-Duchess screaming at the top of her voice. With the quick pat of a cat’s claw she snatched the brush from him and made a dab at his face, clotting a corner of his golden beard with black. He shook her like a rat, but merrily, and all her golden hair broke from her stiff coif and flowed about her—the pair of them as handsome and buxum as a Rubens version of Mars and Venus at their pranks on Olympus. He let her go and threw himself into a chair, roaring with laughter.

“I forgive you, minx, because you are growing too old to be blacked now you have minxes of your own. May they not grow up to be as saucy! Now sit yourself down and behave like a lady. I see a new face in my wife’s following. A shocked face too!”

The Queen-Duchess, Mary Tudor, bunching up her sheaves of tumbled hair, looked about her. Her eye fell on Anne doubtfully effacing herself, and she stepped straight forward with outstretched hand.

“Why, is it little Anne Boleyn whose prudery I am shocking? Not she! She is a minx herself! Anne, do you not remember our trip to Paris and you in red velvet and white fur and——Our Lady!—how you are grown!”

Anne kissed her hand, conscious that the friendly recognition might be important, and murmured that at fourteen she was not come to her full growth.

“No—nor I to my full flesh! I was a slip of a thing then, but children bring flesh, and there will be more of me than I want or my lord Duke either. If you come to the masquerade tonight you shall see me as a queen again but a black-faced one this time—though not with the painter’s brush.”

She turned from Anne laughing and apparently forgot her. That was the Tudor way—a genial little blaze of friendliness and then cold ash. It was characteristic that this was the first and last time the Queen-Duchess spoke to Anne during her novitiate as maid of honour. Later she spoke—for reasons—and very differently.

But the King’s eye had fixed on the stranger.

“Sure I saw you at Hever, mistress,” he said. “And afterwards Thomas Wyatt told me you sang handsomely. Well, you are welcome to our poor house of Greenwich!”

He spoke with a kind of carelessness that would not advance her consequence, and a little angry flame lit in her heart. But it was not wonderful. Again that unlucky Mary’s phantom might intrude, and she had at least the satisfaction to know that his eye was on her, and though he hid it well for a man, trust a woman to know it! He was guessing, she thought, as men will, how far the likeness to an old love might go. The Queen was watching him too with the same thought—a wife’s. Anne made herself very demure and silent. Modesty fell about her like a veil, and she was mute at the reference to her singing. About as much grace as Mary, he thought, in spite of her Court training,—and that was saying little. Well—enough is as good as a feast, and this young woman would not interest him. Let the Queen have her! But he wondered how much she knew—what details were given to or kept from a young woman of family by judicious or injudicious parents. What would Mary herself tell her sister? Hitherto, in spite of Hever, he had scarcely realized her existence. Now she was on the map—a dark-eyed thing, shy, and perhaps disliking him because of Mary. It really was his duty to look up some husband for Mary!

The Queen-Duchess, having remembered and forgotten her, tossed her corn-gold locks, went off with Elizabeth Hammond, and Queen Katharine broke up the little assembly. The King stayed with her, and as Anne meekly followed the rest she saw him lounging from his chair close to the Queen’s, his big arm thrust about her with easy good-nature.

“Letters from Spain, good Kate!” she heard him say, and then the curtain fell on this sweet domesticity.

So these were the manners of the English Court! Never in her experience had she seen a French king or nobleman put his arm about his wife or any other woman in public—never a kiss or a scuffle. She thought this intimacy boorish. She would have to drill her manners to a new tune and show no surprise if wooing took the form of snatching and romping. She decided that these islanders from the King down needed a lesson in manners. They would not find them less wicked but certainly more amusing. The animal allure of sex can be heightened with a hundred pretty tricks on both sides of which this court apparently knew nothing. How often had she heard them mocked in France for English swine, and her own greatest blossom of compliment had been:

“But you, mademoiselle—you are French. No—do not tell me! Was the excellent Lady Elizabeth de Boleyn—was your lovely mother never in France?”

She said all this to George when he came up for a day to bring some belongings of hers left at Hever and to take a little pleasure of his own on the way.

“Shall I be able to eat this half-baked dough after the French pastry? I long for Paris. O—if I had wings like a dove it is there, there, I would fly! This dull dirty smoky London—these heavy over-jewelled women and rollicking men, smelling of taverns. And mass, mass, eternal masses with the Queen! If heaven is like the English Court give me the other! You came to see me in Paris. You know.”

George Boleyn knew and owned it. He too liked the fine flavour of life in Paris. Speaking French as well as Anne—and Simonette—always good-natured—could have given a part of the reason—Frenchwomen were much to his taste. Even more so than the black-eyed Italians he had met in Rome. But he had considerations to urge.

“Most true, my poor Anne. But yet—though you shone like a star in Paris—it was not a star that glittered gold. Frenchmen will have a dowry to match their breeding, while an Englishman runs mad in love like a bull in season and seldom asks to count the coins in his love’s pocket. You will do better here in spite of Brantôme.”

But Anne sat sad—remembering the past. Still is to be read what Brantôme, the young French poet, wrote of the lovely Englishwoman. A poet, you will say, but a French poet is not often caught by a foreigner’s graces.

She had a great talent for poetry and when she sang, like a second Orpheus she would have made bears and wolves attentive.

(“But not Englishmen!” had Anne said mournfully in reading her tribute.)

She also danced the English dances, springing and gliding with infinite grace and agility. And she invented many new figures and steps which yet are called by her name or those of the gallant partners with whom she danced them. She was brilliant in all games fashionable at courts. Besides singing like a siren accompanying herself on the lute, she harped better than King David.

(“But not to the same tune!” had George put in.)

She dressed with exquisite taste and invented new fashions which were followed by the fairest ladies of the French Court. But none wore them with her grace, in which she rivalled Venus.

This praise was a family jest with the Boleyns, who mostly hid their pride with laughter, and if George quoted a sentence of it now it was to point the moral that in spite of all this—in spite even of the admiration of King Francis, which she evaded with more skill than Mary with her own sovereign, Anne Boleyn had remained Anne Boleyn still.

“But cheer up. Sadness never suits your looks,” he added. “And here is Wyatt under the window with a gentleman well worth your consideration and whom you did not find amiss at Hever. My Lord Percy. That man is such a lover of music that if you tickle his ears you can lead him by the nose.”

She pressed up to the casement to see. Yes, she remembered that dark face—lean though so young—and the nervous quick glances he cast at Wyatt. Wyatt walked slowly. The Percys were Percys, and he had no mind to please Anne’s aristocratic tastes where men were concerned. He had noted—what did he not note where she was concerned?—how Percy had watched her. He could have counted the heartbeats in that last kiss pressed on her cheek. Customs are customs, but Wyatt thought that kissing custom too free.

So in they came, and even as they came verses of reproach to Anne were shaping in his head. Not yet—for it might start the notion in hers,—but later, he would pour them out before her. Did he believe in her at all? Did he trust her or did he not? That question he dared not even put to himself. He had certainly never answered it.

A man who had seen Anne in the royal chamber could not have known her. The jewel released from the darkness sparkled, and Percy stared open-mouthed. At Hever she had been desirable. Here she was adorable—a witch, a sorceress scattering charms as a rose scatters petals. George sat and smiled content.

She sang a quick French song with a tremble of laughter in it and a girl escaping from a kiss. Percy’s slowly expanding smile followed the little jest. She would not sing more—let men leave off with an appetite! Then they talked of the King.

“An excellent musician, a great horseman. Truly a most accomplished prince. Devout also. On days when he goes to the chase he hears mass three times, but a hunting-mass, as you will understand, Mistress Anne—somewhat jumbled and run into one. I have known him hear five masses in one day.”

And much more to the same strain.

Anne listened and reflected and believed she knew better. That burly figure, those blue eyes and moist lips did not bespeak the devotee! And what amusement had the poor man now the flaming days of the Field of the Cloth of Gold were over and middle age coming on with a gouty shoe? George had said and Wyatt sworn and Percy corroborated that except for drinking and gambling the Court was dull as ditch water. The King had certain “musicianers” but the Queen turned them chiefly to pious uses and their voices ascended in heavenly carols and psalms. She sifted Percy with practised skill and when he left, asking humbly for leave to come again, she knew much more of the Court than when he entered. After George and she discussed it she retailed it all to Simonette, who listened silently. She would not yet tell all her thoughts or knowledge to Anne. Train a young dog to the chase, break in a young horse by easy steps. She knew something rash to recklessness in Anne which needed caution in the trainer. Therefore she spoke of Percy.

There it was safe to urge. As for the King—Simonette smiled in thinking of her knowledge. A born pagan—like Anne herself—a follower of Pan and the satyrs, a lover of red wine in golden cups and plenteous high-flavoured meats in huge silver dishes. That he had a vein of superstition in him which courtiers called religion she did not deny, but it would give way at any moment to lust or policy or ambition—and Simonette knew—what did she not know?—that the Queen strummed on that string to breaking—a foolish woman who did not know her day was done and bestir herself to find new pleasures for her master.

“A wise woman,” said Simonette, stitching at Anne’s new frontlet of silver rimmed with pearls of her mother’s lent but not given by her father, “chooses amusements for her husband and so makes him her debtor. But this the Queen does not do. I hear she turns pale and clutches her heart if he looks twice at a girl. Now a woman who wished to make her way at Court and gain the help of both King and Queen in a handsome marriage would help the Queen to amuse the King in all honour. And let me tell you, Anne, that what you did in France you can do here and earn great thanks and more praise than ever Brantôme gave you, my lady! He was a fool to let you see it!”

Anne sat in thoughtful silence.