Chapter 7 #2
Once Rose had curtsied to the King and Queen, which she did most elegantly, Bishop Bonner, newly consecrated in his post, stepped forward to begin the marriage ceremony.
The hall was decorated with hundreds of roses as a compliment to the bride.
Their scent filled the air, mingling with the less fragrant smell of 200 people jostling to witness the nuptials.
Marris, who had been up in the early hours attending first on the Queen and then on her sister, started to feel a little light-headed.
She missed William dreadfully, especially at times like this.
His last letter had related that he was in the Low Countries and might be gone the best part of the year.
Marris glanced back at Henry, at his pinched mouth and spiteful eyes. Although she knew it was the role of a king’s servant to go where his master bade him, it felt as though Henry’s misery with his own marriage had turned him even more sour to others. He could not bear to see anyone else happy.
Geoffrey and Rose made their vows, and the ring was placed on the Bible and blessed and then placed on Rose’s hand. Marris tried to smile but her mouth felt stiff. It did not matter that she did not care for Sir Geoffrey; it was a good match for Rose and that was all that counted.
‘Now we must find a husband for your other sister, Mistress Bridget,’ Queen Anna said later, after the wedding feast was over and she had withdrawn to one of the retiring rooms set aside for her private use.
She slid her feet out of the jewelled slippers that were evidently pinching her toes and sat back with a sigh of relief.
‘Ach, that’s better.’ She smiled at Marris, taking a handful of candied rose petals from the pot on the table and crunching on them.
‘I will ask His Majesty to arrange a match as a special favour to me,’ she continued, mouth full of sweets.
‘Then you will know that both your sisters are well settled in life, Lady Sharington. It is time, after all, for you to be setting up your own nursery and thinking of the next generation.’
‘You are most generous, Your Majesty,’ Marris murmured.
Anna’s heart was kind even if she sometimes expressed herself somewhat bluntly.
Marris thought it unlikely, though, that the King would do anything to oblige his wife.
They had sat stiffly side by side during the ceremony like two richly dressed dolls, seldom glancing at each other, barely speaking.
She also suspected it was equally unlikely that she and Will would have a family.
She was old at thirty-three to be contemplating a first baby and at present there was no chance of it since Will was far away and unlikely to return any time soon.
Marris poured the Queen a glass of wine, which Anna took with a murmured word of thanks.
She had come to know the Queen well over the past five months, particularly now that most of Anna’s German ladies in waiting had been dismissed and sent home.
As a way for the King to isolate his bride even more, it was both cruel and effective, but Anna had as a result drawn closer to Marris and a couple of her other English ladies.
Meanwhile, the grand aristocratic ladies of the court were in control of Anna’s household and reported back to Henry on everything.
The Countess of Rutland ruled the roost and her husband was Anna’s Lord Chamberlain.
‘The Queen tells me that her marriage is unconsummated,’ Lady Rutland had confided in Marris a few months before.
‘He says that the King holds her hand and kisses her cheek and calls her sweetheart, but that is all.’ She had looked suspiciously at Marris.
‘Can this be true, Lady Sharington? Do you know?’
‘I do not,’ Marris had said. ‘I do not pry into the Queen’s intimate matters, madam.’
That had been sufficient to send Lady Rutland off with a flea in her ear, but Marris did not care. Anna needed someone on her side.
‘Mistress Bridget,’ Anna said now, looking at Marris with her sleepy but shrewd gaze, ‘she is a companion of the Howard girl, is she not, the one they call Catherine?’
Marris felt a prickle of alarm. Had Anna also noticed the King’s interest in Catherine Howard? She would have to be stupid not to have done.
‘They are cousins and are close in age,’ Marris said. ‘I believe they have formed a friendship.’
Anna nodded. ‘Mistress Howard is very pretty and full of life,’ she observed. ‘It seems everyone wants to be her friend.’
‘She plays and dances quite beautifully,’ Marris said carefully, ‘and she has an open and generous nature. I can see why people would be attracted to her company.’
‘The King admires her,’ Anna said. She sighed. ‘They tell me that he often admires a pretty girl and that I should not regard it, for it means nothing.’
‘Who told you that?’ Marris asked.
‘Lady Rutland and Lady Arundell,’ Anna said. ‘They spy on me,’ she added. ‘I think they hate me.’
‘They are ambitious and self-serving,’ Marris agreed, ‘but in this they do speak the truth. His Majesty…’ She paused, picking her words.
‘He is a man who enjoys falling in love,’ she said.
‘But he falls out of it just as quickly.’ She thought of the way in which Henry had apparently been enamoured of Anna’s portrait, only to be repelled when the reality had not lived up to his imaginings.
‘Fickle’ would have been a good word to teach the new Queen, although not perhaps a tactful one in case she applied it openly to Henry himself.
Anna was not to be comforted. She picked a thread of gold from one of the embroidered daisies on her gown before looking up again to meet Marris’s gaze very directly.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Yet I think this important, for when the King met Mistress Anne Boleyn, he put aside his wife to marry her, did he not?’ The golden thread was unravelling swiftly between her fidgeting fingers.
‘And then when he wished to wed Mistress Seymour, he chopped off the head of Queen Anne.’
‘Majesty,’ Marris said, seeking to stem this flood of anxieties, ‘The King would never treat you in such a way. You are the sister of the Duke of Cleves.’
‘Queen Katherine of Aragon was the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor,’ Anna said with the sort of stubborn logic Marris was coming to know. ‘And she was discarded like an old shoe.’
There was a silence in the room. Outside the chamber door, Marris could hear the sounds of the wedding feast becoming ever rowdier. Soon the guests would call for the bedding and unlike Anna’s wedding night, it was likely to be an energetic one.
‘I wonder if you might tell me whatever news your sister passes on to you,’ Anna said, her clear grey eyes fixed on Marris’s face. ‘Concerning Mistress Howard – and the King.’
‘Majesty…’ Marris struggled to find the right words to convey to the Queen that she should not deign to pay any attention to her husband’s extra-marital amours.
She and Will had discussed it before he had gone away; they had had one of their rare disagreements when Will had said that most men were not faithful to their marriage vows and it meant nothing.
Marris had been hurt, even though she believed Will was different.
He had then pointed out that if the royal marriage had indeed not been consummated, the King could scarcely be blamed for taking his pleasure elsewhere, which had made Marris even more annoyed.
‘Can you not coach Her Majesty in making herself more attractive to him?’ Will had asked, with the irritation of a man who knew how much hung on the success of the match. But Marris had snapped: ‘I am a former nun, not a whorehouse madam!’
The quarrel had led to a very satisfactory making up for the two of them but was of no help to the Queen.
Now Marris cleared her throat delicately.
The idea of betraying Bridget by passing any snippets of any conversation they had to the Queen sat badly with her.
Yet how could she refuse to help Anna, who was so scared for her future?
She rubbed her eyes. Her head was aching.
Not for the first time, she deplored a court where such malice was rife, and men and women so openly ambitious.
‘Your Majesty,’ she said. ‘If I can help you at all—’
The door to the private parlour crashed open. Rose ran in, her headdress awry, her face streaked with tears. Even then, Marris thought, she managed to look dishevelled and winsome rather than unattractive. Rose was so distraught that she did not even notice that the Queen was present.
‘He means to send me to the country!’ she announced dramatically, throwing herself to her knees by Marris’s chair.
‘Sir Geoffrey! Now we are wed, he tells me I am to live in Surrey and produce his heirs whilst he, and you and Bridget—’ her voice cracked with resentment ‘—stay here at the court with all its entertainments and excitement and…’ Her words dissolved into a wail.
‘It is not fair! Marriage was supposed to raise me up in the world but now I am already dismissed as a brood mare and nothing more!’
Marris’s eyes met those of Queen Anna, who reached imperturbably for another candied rose petal and popped it in her mouth.
‘That was a very brief moment of marital bliss,’ she observed. ‘Shorter even than mine. Ach, what brutes these husbands can be!’
* * *
Midsummer’s Day
Marris was sitting by the window of the Queen’s apartments, holding a letter up to the waning light.
It had been an inclement day for midsummer, full of sharp gusts of wind and rain thrown against the glass panes.
Although it was only early evening, the clouds were so low that darkness was already creeping in.
I fear for you now that Cromwell has fallen.
The strong black strokes of Will’s writing conveyed his concern.
I beg you to retire the Queen’s service and go to Winterhill. I need to know that you are safe.
Then, on a more practical note he had added: