Читать книгу Anne Boleyn - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 8

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He found Anne alone with Mark Smeaton, she playing on the virginals and Mark leaning over her, threatening to tap the fair fingers with a little ivory stick he carried if she would persist in taking the tempo more quickly than his taste approved. Anne, head turned over her shoulder, was looking up at him daring him to anger. Her fingers flew, her eyes shot laughter at the goatish face above her. In a moment, and he knew not why, Percy was certain that he would not have the man making music at Alnwick. That pleasure should be reserved for Anne when they came up to show themselves at Court, and they would not do that too often. What with the factions and cross-currents and intrigues at Court and the despotic temper that all saw growing on the King, it seemed to him that a man might be happy enough in that stately Border castle of the Percys with his broad acres smiling about him and a lovely wife to fleet the hours with her lark’s voice and sweet ways. No—not Mark! Sir Francis Weston might come from Moresby Hall with his own pretty Anne and the good Pickerings and Threlkelds and Cliffords gather to great hospitalities, but he would have done with the hidden pitfalls of Court favour and with Mark.

Mark? Why did not the man go? Why did she not bid him go? She could see he was charged with a secret! But no,—they carried on their game, and Mark must sing a horrible French song written by some wretch they called Villon, about men hanged on a tree,—a horrid macabre thing that made the flesh creep—he sang it so well—in a whine at first like the wind creaking the gallows, and then with the devil’s recklessness. The man was a born actor. Percy listened and shuddered and could not be indifferent, though he tried his best. But if Anne Boleyn liked such nightmares Lady Percy must not. Then she must get Mark to dance a pavon with her—called after a peacock—and as proud and stately. Mark hummed the music, and they turned and glided and passed under arches of their own arms, turning and swaying like grace incarnate. He could not see that she was teasing him, working upon his impatience, almost drawing blood from his heart with tiny feline scratches. A Percy, yes. But he must not be too sure of her. A cat can be choked with cream, and she knew he must have sharp wine to prick his taste and temper to the point she needed.

She wreathed her lovely long throat with the hiding pearls about it and let her eyes dwell on Mark, but half closed—only an ambushed sparkle through darkest lashes.

“You dance better with me than with anybody,” says she, “our steps suit. Yours are more pat to mine than the echo. I think you to do what I need. Now—go!”

They swung round, slowly pivoting in opposing circles, and she looked at him again under their arched arms. The man’s eyes glowed on her.

“O, I forget!” she said. “You dance better with Madge Skelton! She says so. Go, Mark. I am not friends with you.”

She threw his hand aside and would have no protestations. She saw Percy had had enough, and it was the other man’s turn now. She dismissed him coldly, disregarding the angry look he lanced at Percy, and sank into her chair. They were alone, and the very thought of reproach melted in him at her careless cruelty to Smeaton. A girl’s fancy, and the man had genius for certain. Her true lover could not wish her insensible to that.

She called him to her caressingly.

“I am so tired, dear my lord. Mark is a hard master. I try to please him but it is music he loves, not me. He would stick a knife in my fingers as I play if I deserved it, and once he threatened it. George shall fetch him a clout on the ears if he is no milder.”

“Not George—me!” says Percy pulling a velvet stool and almost wrapping himself in the large folds of her green satin dress. It was cut square at the bosom and had a square border of goldsmith’s work set with emeralds, and the green fire gleaming from the gold responded to the lights and shadows of the rich satin billowing about her. What could he know of Simonette’s cousin the jeweller who worked in an obscure rat-hole in the street of the Little Waggon not far from the Parvis of Notre Dame and made glass jewels for lovely ladies who had pledged their own and who had not money to go fine? And if Percy had known would he have cared? She wore also, dropping from the pearls, a pendant curiously wrought of gold and the same emeralds, and was at her best and knew it.

He had meant to tell her the success of their plot first and so make interest with her, but her dear nearness prevailed, and the warm scent of orris-root that clung to all her garments. English women did not use it. It was an Italian trick picked up from some Italian women about the French Court, one used to the luxuries of Venice—but she loved it and so also did her lovers. It made their hearts beat. His beat cruelly now. He caught her right hand as it lay slender-fingered on her satin knee. He spoke as simply as a boy at his prayers.

“Anne, I love you. I loved you at Hever. When you lifted your eyes as I followed your father they shone yellow as topaz and they cast a net of light about me and I could not sleep that night.”

She bent above him and whispered:

“I, too! I watched the moon. O, my heart! Is it true?”

“God’s truth. I, yours; you, mine. But, Anne,—you are a wonder-maid. How can you be for me?”

His gestures were awkward like a raw boy’s—he was so new at the game. His words tripped over one another. She played it as sweetly as her lute, with delicious hesitations and pauses and flute-like murmurs. A wiser man would have guessed her no novice;—her kiss was a mingling of many sentiments and each with its edge tried on some victim. But when he spoke of marriage her cheek brightened, and bowing over him until her hair mingled with his and her flesh was warm velvet against his flesh she pledged herself to an eternal troth and knew herself victress. Her father, the weeping Mary, George, all coursed through her brain. It would crush Mary, but some underling husband could be found for her. Her father would exult. George—George would miss her more than any human being. If they had been twins their brains—and what they called their hearts—could not work more accurately together. Hearts—yes. If she understood what people meant when they spoke of love she loved George and he her. Percy she did not love. He stirred no fire in her, as their cheeks lay together and his arms went about her, but the fire of possession and rapacious success, and in her that could be as strong as the flame of love in many another.

“Mine—mine!” she said as his arms went about her and hers drew his head to her bosom. But beyond that dark head she saw the towers of Alnwick and the vast Border heritage of the Percys, and a countess’s coronet (with no false emeralds) to bind her black-brown hair, and power and courts, and—“Mine—mine!” she murmured at his ear, and he glowed and thrilled to her touch, and she was wondering whether my Lord Cardinal would help or hinder. But Percy was better off of the two. He touched heaven. She plodded earth.

When she told George he mused a moment and said with irony:

“Good shooting! Your arrow was always true to the bull’s-eye.” Then, with a more human touch—“I shall miss you, Anne, but having climbed you will help me, and we shall sit together at the top of the ladder. I have no Jericho, but I have my pleasures and my debts. Certainly I shall marry, but even if you hate her, as you will,—for you never endured any woman but Simonette,—it will not sever you and me. We come from the one matrix.”

“Shall I have difficulty with his father?—and the Lord Cardinal?” she asked later.

George considered:

“No. Not if you win the Cardinal. He rules the Earl as he does most men. A Jew at a bargain, but our father will raise some sort of dowry for you on the home farms. Northumberland is servile as a pandar to the Cardinal, but we can get the Cardinal on our side.”

“And the King,” she said joyously, “if we manage our affairs right. Percy has the Queen’s consent and wagers on her good word for our marriage. At first I did think if I am to be Countess of Northumberland what matters pleasing at Court—and always there is Mary’s shadow hanging about us. But now I think better! Old Northumberland will never resist the King if I win him to me. Why not a dowry to the Court Jester? I shall shine and glitter and make a new court and Percy shall live in London and I will outshine Jericho and all its doings.”

“Yet do not win Wolsey too far,” George said with a jest. “I warn you, Madame the Jester, that the Lord Cardinal brooks no rivals in his way. It has been the Tower and the block for more than one who played that game, and he has subtler ways still. O, he is not of the new birth of splendour and art and pride of life in Italy—not he! An old stick-in-the-mud and hanger-on of the Pope. He will be Pope himself one day. But, none the less, no Pope—no Venetian—could teach him anything of the art of gently effacing an enemy. Win him, Anne,—he is open to sweet looks though he yields no policy to them. And win the Queen. In this Court she is the one stable thing—the one unfaltering influence, though you are too gay and proud to think it. Swim with the stream and win those two.”

“But there is no love lost between them,” said Anne wide-eyed. “She thinks him a lewd worldling, and he thinks her——”

“What matter what he thinks her?—An old frump, and so she is. But, none the less, the King’s anchor and the aunt of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. That is why the Cardinal encourages Jericho. He will not have a gay young queen at the rudder, making new friends and policies. And now I am tired of policies. Give me wine—and sing—sing!”

They tuned their lutes and sang;—and a man passing with two priests behind him heard the ravishing harmony, and stopping said to the first:

“An angel’s voice, the woman’s, and no less the man’s. See who they be.”

The priest departed and returned, and the great Cardinal, stout and quick-eyed with prominent stomach jutting under his red robe and girdle and the red biretta surmounting his great pallid jowl, drew the curtain aside and looked in at the beautiful pair who did not hear him, their voices according in a long dying fall that dwindled and so ceased. Then they turned and saw him with his priests at his shoulder. George sprang to his feet and bowed as low as man could bow.

“Master George Boleyn?—Surely I have seen your face at Lambeth, and welcome, thrice welcome! Come often and lend a voice at our vespers. And this lovely lady with a voice of crystal—?”

Anne sank almost to the floor in a reverence. What woman in Europe would not have done the same?

Wolsey eyed her and imparted a gracious blessing. He was known for his kindness to young hopeful folk who might be turned to God knows what account later on. He made a pleasant remark or two—invited her to come eat the fruit in Hampton Court garden if the Court came that way, and passed on.

But to one of his priests,—a black-browed silent man, he said:

“A pretty bit of woman’s flesh and quick as a cat’s claw. Have her watched and tell me her lovers. The father is an old badger, but at my obedience.”

They went on with two new names on their list.

“I am no coward,” said George, “and all in all despise a shaveling, but I had sooner have that man with me than against me.”

Anne looked up in his eyes laughing, flushed with recent victory.

“A priest is a man first and a priest after, and therefore I would dare either priest or man. George, even now—even you—do not know how high I can spring!”

“To spring high may be to fall far. Well—I am off to see my bride-to-be. I think her insufferable, but that is neither here nor there.”