Читать книгу Anne Boleyn - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 7

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Now, with Simonette always at her elbow sleeping in a little dog’s closet that opened from her own narrow room, Anne began life anew. George was in London living in the great rambling house of the Duke of Norfolk their uncle, neither welcome nor unwelcome, for what with the Duke’s hangers-on, retainers, and a goodly body of men-at-arms it was more like a great hostelry than anything more civilized, and it is likely my lord Duke would never have known George was boarding and bedding there if my lady Duchess, the Duke’s chattering godless old mother, had not brought it out one day at a venture.

The Duke digested it a moment—an acid shrewd black-headed man none too fond of his sister’s match and the Boleyns—and then said—“Let him stay so long as I do not tumble over him,” and so went his way. The old Duchess did not add, for she did not know, that Thomas Wyatt was as good as quartered on them too, though he nominally lived at the great Cardinal’s at York House. His very eminent Eminence also kept open house and his table was sumptuous. None of your mere beefs and muttons, except for the men-at-arms, but turkeys, pullets, swans, peacocks, game, and venison, and such fish for fast days that it made them a feast. George himself often dined at the lower end of the great board tables unknown to his Sanctity. He liked this because Percy was in constant attendance on the Cardinal and because his uncle’s housekeeping was rough and ready though plentiful, and George, like Anne, had a dainty palate and the best of everything was good enough for him. They both craved choice dishes stimulating to the appetite and washed down with the bottled wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy creaming in the silver cups. Choice in everything, they were youthful epicures and made it a part of their philosophy. Anne had reason for these tender regrets. At the English Court the Queen’s maids were rationed like soldiers. To each, for breakfast, a manchet of bread, a loaf, and a chine of beef, seethed or roast, and a gallon of hop-less ale. Plentiful certainly, though Simonette and her dog (if she had one) must live off it too. But horribly monotonous, and the fish on fast days anything but luxurious. She pined for the vegetables and salads and fruit of Hever and Blickling—for Lady Boleyn’s marmaletts of quince and plum, and wrote beseeching letters for boxes of these good things when the next serving man should be posting up to London. Out of sight, out of mind, and she would not have got them but that George, lounging by while she wrote, suggested she should ask for the luxuries on the ground that they could make their court to the Queen and Cardinal with such little gifts from the country.

“It will cost little and go far,” he said.

Boxes came riding pillion after that, and the pair ate plentifully and gave sparingly but yet to good advantage. It was a part of their campaign which they advanced with the utmost caution and modesty. As a man switches off the tallest dandelion-heads with his cane in passing, so also at Court—a head too soon exalted, too tender in the stem, bears the brunt.

Meanwhile Anne with Simonette’s help amassed details of the position of every person worth considering at Court, and George’s contributions were not negligible.

The King, supreme, ruddy, golden, exacting all honour due to the Queen and treating her loyally so far as kings’ codes go. Mistresses he had of the come-and-go sort, even more fleeting than poor Mary. But none that counted, none that could not be paid off with jewels and a purse. Such revels were conducted at Jericho—a house in the country devoted to his pleasures and with which the Queen need not and did not concern herself, for neither Jericho nor the ladies of Jericho ever came between the wind and her nobility. Could the odd name of his pleasure house have given rise to an English objurgation still surviving? At all events, to go to Jericho was the mark of an intimate, and George pined for an invitation. He made court himself to young Norris, a gentleman distinguished by the King’s liking, and his descriptions warmed his fancy. He was much with Anne and George then, and more later.

“As to the house itself—no very great thing!” he told them one evening when in Anne’s sitting-room they sat to wine and music in which he delighted. “Still, a good house where even a king may stretch his legs in comfort, and the gardens with a big wall about them to keep out peepers;—very pleasant!”

“Great merriment there, I swear!” said George taking his wine soberly. The chestnut-haired young Norris, with his cherry-cordial complexion more like a girl than a boy, considered that question.

“Why, yes—and no. Like this, his Grace will not have low-born musicians and singers there nor French dancers, and above all no women-servants for, reason good! he will not have tattling. So it is only his trusted few and such servants as the rack would not wring a word from that go there. Now, though I love music and could listen all ears, I have a voice like a sea gull except in a chorus, and his Grace heard me once and threw the lute at my head, laughing fit to burst. Carew pipes a bit and Seymour can turn a drinking song, and when it comes to a rousing chorus we can make ourselves heard, but, Lord, what is it? And the worst is the King loves good singing! Then, as for dancing—the women at Jericho are pretty enough—that’s their livelihood. But dancing with delicate leaps and swimming and wreathing—— No—no! I will not promise you, George, that you will find Jericho amusing. Nor does the King. He goes for a day here and there, but the wenches weary him, and he comes back to be faithful to the Queen and play with the little Princess Mary and govern Europe—or try to—with Wolsey. Sure the Court is dull enough! Eh, Mistress Anne?”

“I have seen gayer!” she said demurely,—“but to live under the shadow of such a King and Queen is great joy. Does not the King’s sister—the Duchess of Suffolk—head the revels? She was gay enough when I went as her maid of honour to France when she married her old French King on condition she might wed where she pleased when he died.”

Norris shook his cherubic head solemnly.

“Why, yes—if she came often to Court; but she does not come often. The King mislikes her choice of Suffolk, and though he pulls her about sometimes he does not trust her. And Queen Katharine is no reveller, and though the Cardinal gives the King fine lewd entertainments when he visits him, a priest cannot catch the French note of gaiety that the King loves. The truth is—I speak it among friends—his Grace, ever since he knew the French King Francis, wants a court like his, all pleasure and grace and pretty mockery and wit, and I ask you—how can he get it with two such mountains as the Queen and the Cardinal in his way? Mind you, both, his Grace is no frivoller. His great game is Europe, and that is why the Cardinal leads him by the nose,—Ahem!—I mean to say—is valued for his counsel—but he wants pretty ladies and gay men and music and dancing to unbend with.”

“There was never a truer word spoken!” said a new voice entering, and the three in conclave started and turned round. It was Percy, more eager and lantern-jawed than ever. If loss of flesh be the mark of a lover he certainly wore Anne’s collar. He had haunted her like a bee a balsam-bed since she was at Court, and though he had made no formal revelation, yet she knew him hers. Now he frequented her room and slipped as naturally into their consultations as Norris or Sir Francis Weston—whom he announced as well on his way. He dropped into a velvet armchair by Anne and went on, playing with the bullion fringe with nervous fingers.

“The King wants a new world—like all the gorgeous luxury of Rome, the delicate gaieties of France! He would leave Jericho to the rats and owls tomorrow if he could get it at Court. But that is impossible.”

“And why?” asked Anne, leaning her cheek thoughtfully on her hand. “Sure it is our duty to amuse the King between his works for all our good! When George came to see me in France we had two masques;—George, you remember?—One was the Harvest Masque, wheat and grape gathering. First the wheat. I invented the dances. I taught the lords and ladies, and I was Ceres—a very rustic Ceres who danced and made love. Now, the Queen would sell her richest pearls—anything but her daughter and her soul—to keep his Grace amused and happy. I have sat as demure as a mouse seeing him yawn and yawn and her face sadden, and at last he falls asleep heavy with wine and the water stands in her eyes and she says her prayers to herself until we are released to bed! It is not for me to praise myself, but if all of you would help me, with a whisk of my wand—and that reminds me—Oberon and Titania too!—O, there is no end——”

She was lovely with smiles and sparkles as she spoke, leaning forward. Under the fall of the velvet cloth Percy caught and held her hand, and she did not release it.

“But who will speak for me to the Queen? Who will tell her I managed the revels in France? Who? Who?” she cried.

“I,” said Percy manfully. “She loves my mother and doesn’t hate me. The Queen shall entertain his Grace to a masque if that is the will of her Majesty Queen Anne—Queen Ceres—Queen Titania!”

There was a great hand-clapping. Norris ran off for Wyatt, Sir Francis Weston, and Mark Smeaton. Women were the difficulty. As Anne objected, they were such loutish dancers. But she thought her cousin Madge Skelton, a cousin of her own and one of the Queen’s girls, might serve if well drilled. And what did George and Percy think of Anne Weston? She was a pretty fair-haired thing, and he must consider her because of the great Moresby acres in Cumberland and she was so madly in love with her husband that she might make trouble with her tears if she were left out and he shepherding lovely garlanded shepherdesses! Could they have a few real sheep, washed and curled and perfumed? They had done this at the Louvre.

In trooped Norris and the others. If Anne was the Venus of the Court, though not yet so acknowledged, Sir Francis was certainly the Adonis. A more beautiful young man never stepped—a brown man, blue-eyed, gallant, and fine as a sword sheathed in gold and steel, too proud of his beauty to hide it, too proud of his amours with women to doubt or account them, the very glass of such fashion as the English Court provided, but owning his teachers in George and Anne with their French elegance. Wyatt came because Anne must have him, but doubtfully. He was not yet on sure feet at Court, and his verses had made no way for him. At their heels came Mark Smeaton—a low-browed full-lipped sensual fellow with the eyes that light and blaze when music strikes fire from them, ugly to look at so far as face goes, a goatish masque enough, but the finest figure of them all and a most finished dancer, narrow-eyed and humorous.

There were not chairs enough to go round, and Percy perched on the table at Anne’s right hand, and Sir Francis on the great arm of her chair. The rest where they could and Mark Smeaton on the ground with his knees to his chin and his arms about them, his eyes full-fixed on Anne. George was Apollo, undoubtedly, shining, quick, adroit, the arrow on the bowstring always, but Diana, Queen and Huntress—huntress indeed!—was mistress of the night—and no master.

She sketched the Harvest Masque swiftly. They would have real shocks of wheat in the great hall at Greenwich Palace and a few sheep, because, though sheep do not occur in harvest fields—her country breeding taught her that!—it would give occasion for lovely shepherds and shepherdesses hidden in pairs behind the corn-shocks. There must be a Queen of the Revels—and that must not be herself. No—no, she replied to the storm of protests. It would be arrogant, unseemly, it would be taking too much upon herself. Then what would she do? all questioned.

George and she would dance the Harvest Courtship dance.

“I invented it and I would not dance it with any but my brother—it is so amorous,” she said with a brown sidelong glance at Percy and a succeeding twinkle at Sir Francis. “And he and I will sing our duo, ‘Sweet Colinette, give way to love!’ and Mark accompany it on a harpsichord hid behind a wheat-shock. And Mark shall dance a pas seul as the Merry Shepherd full of wine and then catch one of the women and make her dance against her will. And—O, well!—places for all of you to shine! Norris shall be young Corydon—his cherub face suits it. But it is the women bewilder me. Every one of them must be pretty and have shapely legs and pretty feet, and—what is far harder to come by—brains and voices. We want eight couples. Sir Francis, what of your wife?”

He made the faintest possible flicker of grimace, then said gravely:

“For the legs I can vouch, and all know her pretty face. For neither brains nor voice will I be answerable. But I can promise she shall take her part. What of Madge Skelton?”

Anne looked sharply at him. She suspected a tendresse there. But what then? Every Jack had his Jill at Court, and if it were not one it would be another.

“Madge would do,” she said amiably: “a fine saucy brunette with the eyes that tell and lips and bust that asks a tight corsage, and a waist you can circle with your thumbs and fingers. That is the French style, and the French is the world’s fashion and not stuffy old England lumbering a century behind. But, listen, gentlemen,—who is to be our chief woman? I will not be. I say the Duchess of Suffolk—the King’s sister. For her legs I can answer, and like his Grace she has a true taste in music. Her golden hair wreathed first with wheat—then with grapes. And we will end with a masque of the Four Seasons. O my heart!—I shall think I am in la France chérie again!”

Loud applause. They all drew together, settling details—a band of intimate friends. Not one but called the others familiarly by their names. Anne and George were George and Anne to all. Even low-born Smeaton was Mark among these new-fashioned gentry. He would have brushed their fathers’ coats. With them he laughed and jested.

“Art makes all equal!” said Anne magnificently, and George added:

“It is the true Republic.”

They drank much wine on it and ate the delicate little cakes and comfits which were fashionably served in the evenings, and then Mark went to Anne’s virginals and sang a song of moonlight and warm loves and dawns that come too soon—too soon, and his voice was manliest music, and she drooped aside in her chair and palpitated to the words and melody—a mere vehicle of delight. O would, would that Percy could thus move her! And all sat spellbound, for indeed the man’s voice was a glory that irradiated the heart, and his goatish masque took on such ancient wisdom of love and nature and the rushing sap of spring in man and beast that it became a grotesque beauty interpreting every man’s nature to himself even as the winds of Spring whisper it and the warmth of the beloved in close encircling arms. The cold intellectualism of Anne and George melted like ice in summer seas under that music, and they swayed in it, flowers that have no will but the wind’s, listening, dreaming, responsive.

“No!” cried Percy, breaking the spell. “It is lovely—but lascivious music, Mark. You stir the dregs of a man’s nature. Give us something cool and fresh before we separate, lest we toss and love all night.”

He rippled the keys under most skilful fingers, saying:

“The lute for love! I could have moved you indeed with that. But this keyed thing serves well for an aubade—a song of dawn. Hark—the lark! Come sing, come sing, Anne! Not I! Come sing!”

She ran to the virginals and standing beside him with a slim hand on his shoulder, waited until the ripples reached high-water mark, then threw her voice in among them, weaving and interweaving, mounting celestially to heaven’s gate to bring the news that earth had gladdened with the sun. Mark bent to it. His hands wove silver threads to make ladders for the silver climbing voice. O lovely—lovelier! She ended on a sweet cry of victory, and Mark’s hands dropped, and they stood a second, and she turned, flushed and laughing. A pause, and the men hurt their hands with clapping.

“The King must hear. Must. Shall!” cried Weston. “We will be his minstrels. I go tomorrow to the Duchess. Success! Success!”

They had had enough wine, but they had more and sat talking late into the night. Then Anne betook herself to Simonette and the wisdom of her counsels.

So these young people made music and masques and did not know that they were making history. The Pope on the Rock of St. Peter might have trembled in far-off Rome; the Emperor have sat with knitted brows and stormy frown thinking of Anne’s Colin and Colinette. Even the headsman in the cold Tower of London might have looked at his axe and smiled in thinking of those sheep at play among the wheat-shocks. But the gay present out-laughs the veiled future, and next day Percy having besought an audience went to the Queen.

She sat in a small cabinet under a window of painted glass, and a very young girl with her seated—the other lady standing behind her chair. Percy knew them both. The seated child was the Princess Mary of England, nine years of age, and heiress to the Crown, betrothed to Charles—the high and mighty Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and her first cousin. A very great young lady therefore, and had her beauty been as great as her position might have set the world aflame. This was not so, however. Her childish complexion was lovely, milk-white and rose—an inheritance from her beautiful grandmother Elizabeth of York who had wedded the White Rose to her grandfather’s Red Rose of Lancaster. Her brow was pure and fair also, and her dark grey eyes reflective and calm but somewhat wide apart for beauty, and her nose drew up an over-long upper lip, though the mouth was mobile and sensitive. She was commended for beauty—but royalty might play its part in the commendation, though certainly her very slim little figure deserved praise. But what all thinking men would have agreed upon was the open honesty of the face and the air of kindness and sincerity that breathed in every uncertain movement and glance—uncertain because she was so terribly short-sighted that to her men moved like trees (as the Bible says) and she peered rather than looked at things and persons. Like her mother her hair was auburn—there one recognized the noble Visigoth blood of Spain; and like her mother she had, even though a child, the manner and look of birth so high that they had no need to assert themselves and cannot imagine that such a need can ever occur. Set the Princess Mary in a crowd of richly dressed ladies, beautiful and imposing, let her move forward with her short-sighted step, her face a little questioning, as it must be with those who see the world dimly, and any man of the world must say “The King’s daughter.” It was the perfect simplicity of highest breeding.

The lady standing behind the Queen’s seat was a dark handsome Spaniard who having come to England with the Queen had made herself so far at home as to marry the English Mountjoy. Percy bowed to his knees; the Queen, worn and patient with her long dyspeptic agonies, tendered a gracious hand which he kissed and, still on his knees, kissed also the hand of the young Princess. He remained kneeling until the Queen, having asked affectionately after his mother, bid him sit. He compromised on standing; the little joint-stool offered having little to recommend it but its exclusiveness. Percy was liked by mother and daughter—so true to one another that where one liked the other must give her allegiance, and there was an appearance of contented calm and friendliness in the little party of four which took as much from its formality as was possible.

The Queen, plucking a thread from the skein of silk about her neck, went on with her embroidery—a rich design of her own device—pomegranates of Spain on a purple ground, saying mildly:

“And what news of the world do you bring us today, my lord?”

The Princess peered at him with a kind childlike smile. She had observed a silk-wrapped parcel in his hand and thought she guessed its contents. He produced it now and began to unknot with unskilful fingers the ribbons that bound it.

“Why indeed, your Grace,” said he, “it is the humblest offering, but I know the Lady Mary’s grace has a sweet tooth and my mother has discovered a new way to conserve our plums and gages at Alnwick, which are good to begin with. See, madam! she dips them in rich syrup and then in fine Spanish sugar and they sparkle as in a frost. I have not seen the like elsewhere.”

But he was struggling with the knots, and the Queen said laughing:

“Scissors shall not cut love, and I love your mother. Help him, Mary, my daughter.”

The Princess’s little fingers met his and released the knots deftly. She did it with the perfect friendliness of a child entirely devoid of any sex-consciousness and indeed was always free of that taint or virtue as any nun. Anne would have made a pretty play of it at the least, but Mary was pure of any self-thought. Her nature was running water. Together they unwrapped a hamper of woven rushes gilded, and raising the lid and disclosing row after row of golden plums and green luscious gages all sparkling through the veil of frosty crystal she clapped her hands for pleasure. Plates of the new “porsellan” brought through Turkey from heaven knows what Eastern country were sent for, and the three ladies ate while Percy stood to order with a basin of scented water and a fringed napkin over his arm for royal fingers sticky with sugar.

Thanks and commendations. Then the Queen began:

“The King’s Grace is hunting today, my lord, by Watford. Why are you not with him?”

“Why, for two reasons, madam,” Percy said adroitly. “His Grace did not remember his poor servant, and furthermore I have a device for his royal pleasure which I would first lay before the royal lady from whom all his pleasure flows.”

Very pretty, but the Queen repressed a sigh, and the young Princess looked up anxiously as her mother said in a flat tired voice:

“And that I would be very glad to hear. The King’s Highness needs great relaxation from State matters at which indeed he works with the Cardinal so that I fear his health will break. But we have nothing new, and he does not himself care to masque and dance as he did. I could be very thankful to that man who could invent new pleasures.”

“Then I am that happy man!” Percy said eagerly. “I have a store of pleasures to offer, gracious madam. Your Grace knows that your new maid Mistress Anne Boleyn was maid to two Queens of France—not to mention her service during the brief reign of Princess Mary—now Duchess of Suffolk. She was commended by all these royal ladies for her noble and delicate skill and invention in masques and dances and a kind of acted words which the spectator must guess, and this causes great mirth and merriment. Also she sings like larks and linnets in spring and has an unrivalled touch on many musical instruments. But it is not so much this as a joyousness and command in which, without putting herself forward,—for she is devoid of pride—she brings men and ladies into concert for singing and dancing until indeed in a jest she was appointed mirthmaker to the French Court, and for innocent harmless pleasantry it was never surpassed nor equalled.”

The Queen looked up from her work interested. The first painful thrill with which she had heard the name of Boleyn had passed away with use, and to her Anne was now simply a handsome dark girl who dressed well and was gracefully quiet in her duties. But something in Percy’s tone made her suspicious with a suspicion which pleased her and would smooth Anne’s way to her end as nothing else could do, for Katharine had excellent reason to doubt radiant faces and charms radiantly displayed.

“My lord, you praise like a lover!” she said with the little smile of a kind middle-aged woman who has a heart to sympathize with young romance. And though Princess Mary could not see the flush that covered his thin face, she could hear the stumble in his voice and smiled too.

“Gracious madam—” he began and halted—“I did not mean so—I am a friend indeed——”

“A friend indeed!” said the Queen altering the accent. “Well, but why be ashamed? Young blood will have its course, and I have said to your mother it is time you brought your bride to Alnwick. Surely the young lady is not so hard to please that Alnwick and a Percy cannot content her! You speak among friends, my lord. I will swear these two to secrecy.”

Percy was on his knees again with eager protesting hands. Suddenly he had seen how this friendliness might smooth his way with his parents, with Anne—with everybody.

“Madam—your Grace overwhelms me. Indeed, I think no one like her for beauty and wit and maiden modesty that is more lovely than her face. I trust to your secrecy and her Highness’s and my kind Lady Mountjoy’s and I say I have not dared to ask her though her eyes are kind. Does your Grace think——”

“I? How can I think, lad?” said the Queen kindly. She was wishing this eager young man were her son, had that been possible. There lay her secret anguish, her bosom-fear. They had never had a Queen regnant in England. Elizabeth of York had been rightful Queen, but the throne needed a sword to prop it, and they had married her to Henry of Richmond that her right might set him there. How would it be when Henry the Eighth died if he left no boy to succeed him? Into what hand would England, lying in the Princess Mary’s lap, fall? For two pins the Queen would have seen her married to a great English nobleman like Percy himself, but if the King and the Cardinal preferred some continental alliance she was helpless. O, if Percy had but been the Prince of Wales telling her his love-tale! But the saints were steel to her prayers.

She banished dreams and resumed her kindliness.

“Well—I wish you good speed with my maid, my lord, and you shall have my good word with your parents, and with the Lord Cardinal—who can do more than all. The Boleyns are not of stock as high as your own. Her great-grandfather was a mercer in the city.—I know, for that was brought before me when she desired to be my maid. But her father is an oncoming man, and her mother was Lady Elizabeth Howard, and they call cousin with the Ormonds of Ireland, and that should be high enough even for a Percy. And now tell me of what you young revellers have devised, for I will see your pretty love play her part, and if you incite her to delight the King’s Highness, why I welcome it with a heart and a half. Can we make it a surprise to him?”

Percy poured out his triumphs. All was won. The Queen herself suggested a girl or two and promised her interest with the Duchess of Suffolk as to Queen Ceres. Nothing could have been better. Princess Mary should appear for a moment offering a cornucopia of wheat-ears and poppies to her beautiful aunt.

Let it be judged how he sped away to carry the glorious tidings to Anne.