The Concubine Read online

  Trying to make an imposition seem like a favor, Emma thought, laying the headdress away with delicate care. But her quick ear caught the note in her lady’s voice and she said, as a good servant should, exactly what was expected of her,

  “It was kind of you to think of that, my lady.”

  Her own inner voice said—Kind! Family and friends? It’s more than twenty years since I was in Norfolk; twenty-four since my father’s farm was turned into a sheep run and he died, empty-bellied and brokenhearted, and my mother, the best butter maker in five parishes, had to go to work at a wool merchant’s as a picker and baler, and was dead in a year of the cough.

  Gently she loosed and removed the lady’s gown, gently unlaced the iron-stiffened stays.

  “Of course, I began at the wrong end,” Lady Lucia said. “I should have explained why Mistress Anne is bound for Blickling.”

  Emma had heard already. News spread quickly in palaces which were, in effect, small towns. But she listened with the required politeness, and was rewarded by hearing one thing that had not been mentioned over the goffering irons.

  “The Cardinal’s intervention,” Lady Lucia said, “is regarded as being very strange. And so is the fact that no one, no one at all, has, until today, heard a whisper about the betrothal between young Percy and Lord Shrewsbury’s girl. One would have expected the father, not His Eminence, to have made the first protest. In fact, the whole thing appears to be a political move. A blow aimed at Sir Thomas Boleyn who, many people think, is getting beyond himself. So the poor wench must suffer, and you, Emma, must be kind. And patient. Remember, all her hopes are shattered.”

  Emma had been prepared to take charge of a tearful, perhaps hysterical girl, who in this moment of crisis would show her lack of breeding. The serving woman recognized two kinds of breeding, that of the truly great, that of her own peasant class. The outstanding example of the former kind was the Queen herself who had borne, without self-pity or bitterness, repeated disappointments in her effort to provide England with an heir. One living child, the Princess Mary; a son who had died while the celebrations of his birth were still in progress, stillborn children, miscarriages. And never a whimper. Catherine was the daughter of Isabella of Castile, the Warrior Queen, and she battled against ill fate with the same dogged courage as her mother had shown against the Moors. That kind of courage was admirable. And so was that of the hard, tough peasant stock from which Emma herself came, the courage of patience, of endurance, of a fundamental hopelessness. Between these two extremes lay the middling sort of people, which included those seemingly great ladies who showed a brave face to the world and then cried on the shoulders of their serving women.

  Emma had been prepared for tears and swoonings all the way from London to Blickling.

  On the first day she’d thought the girl was stunned, not yet aware of what she had lost—just as they said that in battle a man could receive a disabling, or even fatal wound and feel nothing for a while. Hatfield; Stevenage; Baldock; Royston; the weather bad, the inns poor, the two manservants surly; Exning; Thet-ford; Aylsham; and then the arrival at the almost-worse-than-deserted house. And still not a tear. Not even now, when she commented upon her homelessness in the past and the likelihood of being homeless forever.

  This behavior showed quality that Emma Arnett recognized; it spoke of something hard and strong; something with which she was akin.

  She rose from her knees.

  “That Rhys,” she said, “looked me as straight in the face as his eyes would let him, and said he had no key to the cellar. I told him that if that was so, he should take a hatchet to the door. If he hasn’t, I will.”

  Anne said, “He’ll have found the key.”

  “I’ll find out,” Emma said, and gave the fire a last look, you dare go out! and went from the room, the old, dirty rushes crackling under her feet.

  Left alone, Anne bent her thumb and put it between her teeth and bit upon it hard. Seven days now; a whole week, and never one moment in which to cry. Lady Cuddington had taken her aside, into the embrasure of the window, and broken the news; and she and the others had expected a storm of tears, a swoon, a fit. But they were all too small, too ordinary things. Women cried over toothache, swooned if they cut a finger, had a fit at the sight of a mouse. What she had wanted to do, when Lady Cuddington had kindly and hesitantly said what was to be said, was to wave her hand and destroy everybody, to call down the fire that had consumed Sodom and Gomorrah and watch them all burn. But she couldn’t do that and, raging against her impotence, she had done the only thing left to do; held her head high, kept her face masklike, compelled her voice to be steady.

  “If I am to travel tomorrow I should ask leave to retire and make ready.”

  She crossed the room, every eye upon her, to the other window where Catherine and two ladies noted for their nimble needles were busy embroidering an altar cloth. She made her perfect, French-style curtsy and begged permission to withdraw, “Your Grace will know upon what cause.”

  The Queen said quietly, “Yes, I know.” She would have liked to have added, “And I am sorry for it,” but she did not add those words. Not because she dared not; upon any matter of principle, any matter of right and wrong, Catherine’s courage was boundless. But to express, openly, at this moment, her sympathy with Anne, whom she regarded as a silly young girl, misled by a boy almost as young and even sillier, would have implied criticism of the Cardinal, and might easily be misinterpreted. The Cardinal’s spies were everywhere; Lady Lucia Bryant, Lady Cuddington even, might be the one to run and tattle, saying that the Queen had questioned the rightness of his decision with regard to Mistress Anne Boleyn. And just now, when the great Cardinal seemed to have changed sides and to be against France and for the Emperor, who was Catherine’s nephew, she was anxious to be upon good terms with him, outwardly at least. So she contented herself by saying,

  “I hope you have a safe and pleasant journey.” And then had done her best to ensure the girl’s comfort by making certain that on the journey she should be well served. A Queen’s life was largely made up of such compromises.

  Anne had gone, consumed with rage and misery which must be concealed, to the large room that she shared with three other maids of honor. Two of them, with their women, were there, half naked, trying on the clothes that they were to wear at the masque in two days’ time. No place to cry.

  They’d have believed that she was crying from thwarted ambition, for the title and the wealth and the position which would now never be hers. “Love” was a word much used in the poems and songs and masques, but in real everyday life about the Court it means nothing. There wasn’t one person who would have believed her had she cried, “My heart is broken; I love him.” But it was true. Harry Percy, big, handsome, a little stupid, had arrived in her life just at the moment when she passed the line between childhood and womanhood and she had given him all the stored up, hitherto untapped love that was in her, love which girls who had grown up at home had dispensed unthinking to their fathers, brothers, cousins, friends. His name, his wealth, his status meant nothing to her; she would have felt the same about him had he been a groom, a forester, a farmer. Merely to look at him across a crowded room made her feel dizzy, boneless, breathless; a glance from him, a chance touching of hands sent all her pulses leaping. She was in love with him before he noticed her, and in her inexperience thought that it would be impossible that anything could ever increase that love; but when he began to single her out for attention, always choosing her as his partner in any dance or game, contriving excuses to get her alone, gratitude and wonder, even a kind of awe were added to her love. In her mind he assumed almost godlike proportions; in choosing her he had elevated and honored her. The jealousy of the other ladies, openly displayed or masked by congratulatory phrases, was like incense.

  He was older, infinitely more worldly-wise, much more prey to urgent physical desires. He would gladly enough have made her his mistress—at least not that exactly, since he intend
ed to make her his wife—but there were evenings, in that summer of 1523, when he would willingly have anticipated the marriage ceremony. Two things prevented it. One the simple but bothersome business of lack of privacy; he was attached to the Cardinal’s household, she to the Queen’s, which meant that neither had a room where the door could be locked or bolted; neither was free to disappear for any length of time without explanation. But such handicaps had been overcome in the past and would be again in the future; it could have been contrived but for the other preventive, Anne’s surprising prudery; surprising because she was so gay, so frivolous, so French, so eager to attract, and having attracted, up to a point so responsive. Harry Percy, like almost everyone else, had preconceived notions about the French, and the French King’s lechery was a byword. Hardly anyone knew, or being told would have believed, that Queen Claude was almost fanatically chaste and had imposed upon her ladies a standard of conduct more suitable to a nunnery than a court. Years of such training, experienced in pliable youth, were not without effect. Also, of course, there was always Mary to remember. Mary hadn’t suffered; when the King had tired of her he had found her a husband, and her behavior had, in general, benefited her family, but Anne was liable at any critical moment to find herself thinking—Just because Mary was easy, don’t imagine that I…

  So when the blow fell there was just a little extra sting to it; it was unjust to be so punished when she had behaved so blamelessly. And under that there was the deeper hurt of privation, of a loss that could never now be made good. She had loved him, she had saved the ultimate expression of that love as something to be enjoyed on her wedding night. Now she was never to have it. Lady Mary Talbot would. It was a childish comparison—but childhood was, after all, only just behind her; it was as though, served with cherry pie, she had saved the cherries until last, mumbled the crust, and then seen the fruit snatched away and given to another.

  Never now, never never, in the whole of life, would she and Harry Percy lie together, naked in a bed. And it was that, not the wide acres, or the wealth, or being called Countess of Northumberland, that had mattered to her.

  Upon that thought she pressed her arms to her waist and bent over against the pain that slashed her, as real and savage as though it derived not from a thought, but from a physical cause. This empty, gnawing emptiness, how long can it last? Until I die? I’m only sixteen, and women sometimes live to be old.

  She straightened herself as Emma Arnett re-entered, but she looked so ghastly that the serving woman recalled a few instances of particularly stubborn people who had died, literally, on their feet. Suppose she died, Emma thought, remembering how little the girl had eaten in these six days, or slept. They’d blame me. They’d blame me for pushing on, for not seeing the state she was in, for not stopping at Hatfield and sending for a doctor. I was given full charge.

  “Are you well, mistress?” she asked, setting down the tray she carried. It bore a tarnished silver candlestick, a lidded jug and a tall cup.

  “Well enough,” Anne said.

  “Come to the fire; there’s heat in it now. Let me take your cloak. There! The wine will hearten you. That Rhys found the key when I mentioned the hatchet, and they’ve heated it right, warm enough to be a comfort and not hot enough to lose goodness.” She poured some into the cup and handed it to Anne who took it and cradled it in both hands.

  “They’re making the supper,” Emma said. “It’s a poor one, I’m afraid.”

  As she spoke Emma Arnett who lived in the same skin rebuked her. A poor supper? A duck taken straight from the pond, plucked, dressed, and spitted; followed by marigold eggs, a rich confection of custard and apples. Poor? When to thousands of people two such dishes in conjunction would constitute a feast, suitable only to a wedding or a christening. When there were thousands more who had never in their lives tasted either, people who lived on bread and porridge, with two or three times a year a taste of salt pork or stockfish. When there were other thousands, beggars, who on many days ate nothing at all; who counted themselves lucky to be thrown a crust, or to be allowed to delve into a bucket of pig swill in the hope of dredging up some eatable morsel. There were at this moment more beggars in England than there had ever been, and not idle rogues, far from it; decent laboring men, thrown out of work because the acres they’d plowed and seeded and scythed had been turned into sheep runs. One man, they said, could tend the sheep that grazed an area which, properly farmed, had employed twenty; and what happened to the other nineteen Emma Arnett knew only too well. So she felt it wrong to decry the meal now being prepared, though her common sense told her that for a young lady straight from Court, where between twenty and thirty dishes were commonplace, it was a poor meal.

  Anne said, “Whatever it is, I’m not hungry.”

  “But you must eat, sometime.” Emma spoke earnestly, but without the coaxing manner most women in her position would have employed. “Every meal so far, you’ve just pecked and pushed away—I grant with good reason most times—but you can’t go on this way.”

  “No, because I might die. And what a pity that would be!”

  “There’re easier ways,” Emma said drily. “Besides, mistress, you’re young. It was a bad knock, and painful, but time will ease it, as it does most things. One day you may look back and laugh—I hope you will. But to do that you must keep alive.”

  “I shall keep alive. Anger alone will do that for me.” She stared across the wine cup, into the fire. “It was such an unfair way to treat us,” she said, speaking more quickly and in an agitated manner. “Are we expected to believe that Harry had grown to this age and never been told that he was betrothed? When he came to London, wouldn’t his father have said, “Mark you, Harry, you’re not in the market for marriage, Mary Talbot has her brand on your flank?” Or even if he had overlooked so mild a precaution, wouldn’t he have found Harry and told him, himself, the moment he reached London? But oh no! First he must spend an hour, alone with that great bloated red spider, and then, out he comes with this tale all ready in his mouth. And why? God’s Wounds, I rack my brain trying to think why? Even if, to all Wolsey’s monopolies and all his duties had been added the arranging of marriages, why should this one so affront him that he must interfere?”

  Lady Lucia, Emma remembered, had said much the same thing. Probably no one knew the reason, nor ever would. The Cardinal’s methods were too subtle to be understood by anyone but himself.

  “He’s very sly,” Emma said. “If ever he fell out of favor he could earn a living at fairs, with three thimbles and a pea. Drink your wine while it’s warm, mistress.”

  “Put the jug on the hearth,” Anne said, “and fetch yourself a cup. You’ve had a long, cold ride, too.”

  During her spectacular career—upon which, although she did not know it, she had already started—she was to have virulent enemies, some devoted friends; arguments about her behavior, her motives, her personality were to go on and on down the years, but those who actually served her in a menial capacity never wavered in their good opinion of her, never had anything but kind things to say. “She was always considerate and just.” “To me she was a good mistress.” “She was easy to work for.”

  Fetching the second cup Emma said to herself—That was thoughtful, with all she has on her mind, too. And she remembered how often, in her own hard life, a furious resentment had been all that had kept her going. She understood, and therefore sympathized with Anne’s anger, far more than she would have done with any softer emotion.

  When she had poured wine into her cup she lifted it a little and said formally, “Good health, mistress; and better fortune.”

  “I wish you health and happiness,” Anne responded. The wind whined and threw rain against the windows, but the fire was hot, the candles bright, and the erstwhile dreary room was cosy, a safe, warm refuge.

  They had missed dinner in the effort to reach Blickling before twilight and upon empty stomachs the mulled wine, spiced with cloves and cinnamon and ginger, and sweetened
with honey, was a potent brew. Under its influence each woman lowered guard a little and when a sudden thought struck her, Anne spoke aloud.

  “Do you know, I believe, I truly believe that the Cardinal knew that my father had gone from here. That was another trick. My father has no great fondness for me, he is not a man given to fondness, but he is ambitious and my being cast off in this manner will displease him. Had he been here he would have heard my story and carried it to the King—he has his ear, at times, when the Cardinal is not whispering into it. He’d have asked for some proof of this former betrothal. And the Cardinal needed time. So I was sent here, because my father is at Hever. Oh, I was a fool to have left so meekly. I did everything wrong. Even the Queen…if I’d thought…if I’d had my wits about me, I shouldn’t have asked leave to retire, I should have flung myself at her feet and asked her to plead for me.”

  “With the King?”

  “Who else?”

  “It would have been to no purpose,” Emma said, flatly. “Whatever influence Her Grace ever had upon the King is outworn. That marriage, mistress, is fourteen years old and has not given His Grace what he wanted, a sturdy son. You may ease your mind there, nothing that you could have said to the Queen could have bettered your case. And to have pleaded, fruitlessly, that, later on, would have burned you to remember.”

  Anne looked at Emma and saw, for the first time, the woman within the servant.

  “Yes,” she said. “It would.” And her mind took a sideways skip and she thought—At least I have done nothing to be ashamed of. So few minutes before she had been regretting that on those warm, rose-scented evenings she had withstood the demand of Harry’s urgent lips and hands, and of her own newly wakened, clamorous senses. Now she was glad. It was humiliating enough to be cast off as she had been; to have been abandoned after…Yes, that too would have burned her to remember.