Chapter Three The Good Man of the Snow #2
When they’d finished, he pulled out the present.
Where had he been hiding it? For it had seemed, when they’d come into the room, that he’d had nothing in his hands.
Perhaps he’d had it tucked in the back of his hose, beneath his doublet?
He presented it to her as the two lay snuggling in bed.
“For my Anne,” he said, and she marveled at its splendor, this book of hours, printed in Paris—not a handwritten manuscript but exquisite nonetheless for the beauty of its printed font and its hand-painted illuminations, for its blue velvet cover, framed in silver gilt, studded with three glimmering jacinths.
“I shall treasure it always,” she told him, gushing over the gift as the two dressed themselves, so that nobody would know what they’d gotten up to, though surely everybody could guess what they’d done when they’d both disappeared from the afternoon games.
And yet, they hadn’t had sex. Anne was, and remained, a virgin.
It wasn’t until the evening, on her way to the feast in the great hall, that Anne realized Henry’s gift to her hadn’t been as special as she’d thought.
She was walking past Katherine and her ladies when she overheard the queen showing something off to the small circle of women.
“So beautiful!” one declared. And another, “The lovely silver gilt on the cover! And those gems!”
“ ’Tis true the king loves me dearly,” Katherine replied, making pointed eye contact with Anne as she passed. “He gave me this prayer book as a New Year’s gift this morning, when we shared a special moment with our daughter, the Princess Mary, after breakfast.”
Anne did remember Henry dipping out of the card games after breakfast, though because Katherine never stayed around for cards or games anymore, she didn’t think to observe where the queen had gone, or to put together that the two might be with their child, sharing a family moment.
Now it was all Anne could do not to imagine the threesome laughing happily and embracing before a warming fire, the king and queen showering their daughter with affections Anne would have preferred to have for herself.
Anne kept her head down as she walked past, to hide the tears that were rising.
George pulled her aside as she entered the great hall.
“My sister,” he said, “what troubles you?”
Anne shook her head, embarrassed to admit to the duplicate gifts, to the possibility that Henry was not as committed to ending his marriage as he professed, to the way his behaviors could at times seem thoughtless and cold, as though he were mimicking social expectations, like gift giving, without actually understanding the spirit of such activities.
From his pocket, George pulled out a sprig of winter holly and stuck it behind his ear. “ ’Tis I, the Green Man!” he declared, dancing playfully from foot to foot, in imitation of the May King. “Or perhaps the Winter Man, garlanded in icicles.” He waggled his fingers to imitate spears of ice.
“The French would say le bonhomme de neige,” Anne replied, smiling slyly and wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
“ ‘The good man of the snow’?” replied George, incredulously. “Well, I suppose I must be, for I am a good man, and it has started to snow.” Indeed, outside the windows of the great hall, large snowflakes fell, sticking to the glass and sliding in wet clumps to the bottom of each pane.
George squeezed her hand. “Take heart, sister,” he said. “For whatever she may say or boast”—he nodded to Katherine, gathered with her group of ladies—“the king only has affections for you, and soon she will be out of the palace, a dowager princess again, and you sitting on the throne.”
It was two days later when Anne observed Thomas Cromwell hurrying down a corridor to a meeting with the king with a third copy of the prayer book.
“God be with you,” he’d said to her, nodding, as he rushed past, holding his stack of papers and the silver-gilt, jacinth-studded prayer book to his chest. So, one for his wife, one for his mistress, one for his lackey, Anne thought, and just for a moment, she wondered if she might in fact be interchangeable with Katherine, her competition in the bedchamber, as well as with Cromwell, her competition in the council room.
Even so, Anne enjoyed the prayer book and read it faithfully, keeping it with her as the court moved from palace to palace.
She wondered where it might be now. She’d wanted Elizabeth to have it, but as with many other possessions she’d left directions for her daughter to receive, she doubted it would make it to the child’s hands.
—
As Anne walked down the street, dodging pilgrims and Southwarkers, she imagined herself strung like a marionette and George holding the strings with his icicle fingers, the bonhomme de neige, a sprig of holly behind each ear, dancing her into the king’s bed, into her marriage with the king, into the seat of influence—not just for herself but for her father, keen on advancing the family’s name and wealth, and for her Uncle Norfolk, patriarch of her mother’s family, a powerful man determined to acquire even more power, and, of course, for George.
No. She shook her head, gazing down the row of shops.
That wasn’t fair. George loved her. He hadn’t controlled her like a puppet master, hadn’t forced her to do anything she didn’t want to.
She’d walked into Henry’s embrace willingly, one foot in front of the other, convinced she’d always be treasured, that she could show the king a better way, convinced, most of all, that she’d come out alive.