Richmond Palace, Summer 1540 #2
I am satisfied with the words I have noted.
There’s nothing about witch-given impotence blighting the royal bed.
There is nothing to suggest the king is impotent now or was earlier – essential if everyone is to believe Prince Edward is his son, essential if he is to be credited with fathering any future son.
The king and his line must be free of any suspicion of lack of vigour.
He will tell everyone that God warned him not to bed his bride; all we have to do is to confirm that he did not.
The completely ridiculous dialogue, all in English, invading royal privacy, makes it clear that Anne of Cleves is a maid – even more virginal than her predecessor Anne Boleyn, who once told me that she was as virginal as the Virgin Mary.
The barge slows, and the oarsmen spin it round so that it will face upriver, ready to take us home on the flowing tide when our work is done.
Charles Brandon steps on board to help us down the gangplank and along the quay.
The other two lords fall in behind him. It is a guard of honour, although it feels for a moment unpleasantly like arrest. I suddenly think: is this a double-cross, and am I leading the way to my confession, and am I not the spider here but a stupidly buzzing fly?
Brandon leads the way through the maze of courts and gardens to the heart of the palace, to the room I know well: my spymaster’s room.
It is clean and bare – just as he always has it – his big chair one side of the table and two smaller ones set opposite, convenient for conversation or confession.
I can’t think how many times I have sat here and seen his slowly dawning smile or heard the quiet click of a letter falling through the slit behind me and known that the sluice gate of the Cromwell information mill is open, and it is grinding grist. But today it is my dark chamber; I am the spymaster.
IT TAKES US about an hour to finish, and the clocks are striking the half hour when Charles Brandon’s young wife Catherine knocks on the door and enters the room, followed by a clerk carrying a great wooden box.
‘My lord requires me to invite you ladies to breakfast,’ she says with studied indifference. I know she is sulky at having to obey him and meet with us. She is a reformer, a secret supporter of Lord Cromwell; she welcomed the Lutheran queen. ‘And here is my lord’s steward.’
Silently, the man opens the wooden box like a gaping jaw for me to drop our signed pages inside.
There are papers at the bottom of the box already.
I recognise the regular clerkish hand of Thomas Cromwell, the half-moon loop of the C of his signature like a smile.
He has signed his statement, and here it is in the box, sitting neat and orderly below mine.
I cannot see what he has written, but I trust him, as I always did.
I know it will be an accurate account of the coming of the queen to England and the king’s immediate rejection of her – inspired by God – and how her precontract means the marriage must be annulled with no blame to her but a handsome pension.
Beneath his statement are more papers – every courtier will have wanted to demonstrate his support for the king’s case.
They will repeat the cruel and disgusting lies the king told about her – that she is fat, that she smells, that her breasts are slack, that she is no maid.
Dr Butts will witness that the king is as lusty as a bull in the meadow, but God spoke to him and warned him the queen is the wife of another man.
I remember saying to Cromwell: You won’t get him through the gate, and for a moment, I could almost laugh at this box of scripts, this enormous theatrical production, this great masque – one of the greatest that the court has ever produced – and all to slide the king from the bed of one beautiful young woman worthy to be queen and into the bed of her maid.
This is the third time we have rid the king of a good woman for a lesser one.
But I am the first advisor to achieve this without bloodshed, and I give myself credit for that.
We eat a good breakfast with the sulky young duchess, and then take the barge on the flowing river back to Richmond.
As soon as we enter the queen’s pretty rooms, she asks us where we have been all morning?
The other two ladies leave it to me to curtsey while they whisk away to change their gowns.
I tell her we were called in by the convocation to say that we believe her marriage was not consummated.
She gives me one dark look, as if I have betrayed her to her enemies, and I lean close to her and whisper in her ear: ‘You know I had to do this. You know this is the only way, the best way, that you set him free so he does not fight for his freedom. I did it for your good.’
She says: ‘Yes, I know. I am not his wife but his subject, in his country. He has all the power.’
‘But think of this lovely palace being your own, and 8,000 nobles a year!’
She looks at me gravely and turns away and goes into her private closet.
NEXT DAY, SHE keeps to her chamber; she wants no company. When I tap on the door and go in, she says she is reading; but she’s staring out of the window with a closed book in her lap, and her cheeks are wet.
The day drags by with no amusement, and nobody visits. The weather is sunny, and the birds are singing and singing, but she does not want to walk in the garden, nor take a boat out on the river. We are waiting for something to happen, but nobody comes to Richmond Palace all day.
We undress her and put her to bed like a lonely child, and we have all gone to our own beds when there is a hammering on the door, and it is Ambassador Harst, who has rushed to us with the decision from the convocation.
We tumble out to wake her, but she is wide awake already, with her beautifully embroidered night robe over her gown, a white-worked nightcap on her fair head.
He tells her in German that the convocation has agreed unanimously that the marriage was illegal and shall be annulled.
While he is speaking, messengers from the convocation are announced, with papers to be signed.
They must have jumped in a barge and rowed as fast as the bargemen could go, to catch up with Herr Harst; they are only minutes behind him.
It is not enough for them to tell her the decision all over again, they want her to acknowledge that she will abide by it.
She has to sign a letter of acceptance. As they watch eagerly, she signs herself the king’s sister and servant and five of the ladies-in-waiting sign as witnesses after me.
We all want our names on this document that will give the king so much pleasure.
He will see my name is first. The brief marriage and short reign of Queen Anne is over.
AT ONCE, RICHMOND is no longer a royal palace – now, it is the private home of Anne of Cleves, a German duchess – no longer the Queen of England.
She is to be known as the king’s sister – and take precedence over all the ladies but the next queen – though with ponderous tact, they don’t say who this might be.
She has a handsome income, of course, but not enough for her current household of one-hundred-and-thirty servants.
As a private single lady, she will need a lady companion or two – not dozens of us.
The master of the royal wardrobe comes to collect furs and gowns; the master of the jewel house boxes up precious diamonds and rubies and the pearls that suited her so well.
I sit with her in her closet and listen to the men and the ladies outside in her bedroom, packing up the queen’s treasures so neatly and prettily that they will be a pleasure for the new queen to open.
Her other ladies are packing their own things and preparing to leave on the barges that are taking tapestries and carpets from the palace.
‘You stay with me?’ Anne of Cleves asks me in English, so calmly that it does not sound like a plea.
Of course, I could live with her as a private lady, withdraw from royal service and become a nobody.
But I couldn’t do it – not now, while I have achieved something no one has done before – ended a royal marriage without a death.
Nobody, not Wolsey, not Cromwell – no one has been able to do this before.
If I were a man, I would be lord chancellor for this.
I have invented a new sort of woman: neither wife nor maid nor widow, I am a femme sole of court life.
I am only thirty-five years old, I would be mad to retire with a discarded wife to a quiet house on the riverbank when my cousin is to be next Queen of England and only I have the skills to make her marriage possible.
‘I am commanded to return to Westminster with your jewels, Your Grace. I’m in the king’s service; I’m not free to choose where I live.’
‘You go now?’ She is startled. ‘No one stays with me?’
‘Your German ladies will stay with you,’ I say gently.
‘And your lord chamberlain will find new English ladies to keep you company. Many of your servants will stay.’ I smile.
‘You must keep your cook, now that you have taught him to make birnentorte: pear tart! And you will keep your horses and your own barge. You’ve got a country house, too – Bletchingley Place.
I believe it is very beautiful – quite near here, in Surrey. ’
Bletchingley was Nicholas Carew’s house – seized by the crown after his execution for treason, now given to Anne of Cleves.
‘And they’re offering you Hever Castle as well! That was my family home in Kent – a proper little castle, very pretty. The king is generous to you. People will visit you, and you will visit court. The king has promised to be your friend and to treat you as his sister. You will be happy.’
‘I shall be an English lady,’ she says uncertainly.
‘An English noblewoman,’ I correct her. ‘A rich English noblewoman!’
‘You go back to the court at London?’ She twists the ring off her finger.
‘Take this,’ she says. ‘My wedding ring. It should go with all the other things.’ She drops it into my hand: a gold ring engraved with the motto: God send me well to keep.
She is quite expressionless; her enemies would say she is too stupid to feel grief at being abandoned and despised.
But then she says: ‘Tell the king that I said he might break it up and melt it down for the value of the gold. Tell him it has no other value, God knows.’