Chapter 9 #2
A little ripple of sighing went through the ladies as they all, collectively, released the breath they had been holding.
Mistress Carew slipped away from the edge of the group.
No doubt she had a report to send to her spymaster, Marris thought sourly, relaying how the former Queen had taken the news of her successor.
The other ladies picked up their sewing and, after a moment, conversation restarted, though very pointedly not about either the King or his bride.
Marris caught the eye of Dorothea Bray, one of Anna’s closest and most favoured friends.
‘Your Highness, the sun becomes quite dazzling,’ Dorothea said, placing a hand gently on Anna’s arm. The Queen was looking as white as a sheet with the effort of holding her composure. ‘Would you care to retire indoors for a little until the heat recedes?’
‘Perhaps I shall.’ Anna got to her feet. ‘Dorothea, Marris, please attend me. The rest of you are free to enjoy the afternoon as you please.’
There was a flurry of thanks and curtseys from the other ladies.
Anna had a way of endearing herself to her women, Marris thought.
It would surely stand her in good stead if there was more adversity in her future.
For now, though, it seemed she had taken the news of the King’s latest marriage well and, with good fortune, the summer might be a quiet one.
The corridors of Richmond Palace also seemed hushed and quiet, yet Marris was aware of a feeling of trepidation as she followed Anna and Lady Bray along the corridor to the state chambers.
Her mind was still turning over the news that Will had apparently returned to court yet had not seen fit to tell her, nor indeed to visit her.
It might merely be Bridget stirring up trouble, but how was she to know?
Perhaps once Anna was settled, she might beg leave to take the afternoon to travel to Hampton Court to see for herself, though her stomach churned over what she might discover…
Once in the privacy of her bedchamber, Anna subsided onto the covers in a flurry of silks and relief.
‘Oof, I pray you, help me shed this gown. It feels like armour in this heat!’ Her pallor had gone and she was now flushed and her skin hot to touch. Lady Bray touched her forehead gently and her lips formed the word ‘Fever?’ to Marris, who nodded and hurried away to fetch some fresh water.
When she returned, Dorothea had helped Anna to undress and the former Queen was standing by the window in nothing but her chemise, relishing the cool afternoon air.
The breeze flattened the thin material against her body and Anna shivered pleasurably with relief, half-turning to face them as she gestured to the pile of silk and satin discarded on the bed.
‘Oh, if only we could wear gowns like this rather than all that trussing!’
Marris almost dropped the ewer of water, for in that moment she could see quite clearly the rounding of Anna’s belly which could on no account be attributed to over-eating but was quite evidently a woman beyond the third month of pregnancy.
She looked at Dorothea Bray, whom she knew was closest to the Queen, dealing with her monthly linens and other intimate matters.
Lady Bray looked at once stricken and guilty.
And then Anna saw Marris’s face and straightened, meeting her eyes defiantly. One hand rested on her stomach.
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘I am with child.’
* * *
Under other circumstances, Marris might have found it amusing that she was the one sitting down sipping the fresh water as she recovered from the shock, whilst Queen Anna and Dorothea hovered over her.
‘You are better now?’ Anna said solicitously after a moment. ‘I thought you might swoon.’
‘I am very well,’ Marris said truthfully, ‘though feeling somewhat confused.’
‘We should talk,’ Anna said, hopping up onto the bed like a small child and tucking her feet beneath the covers. ‘Lady Bray will explain it all to you.’
‘Can she?’ Marris wondered aloud. Dorothea Bray’s hands were trembling as she tried to gather up the tumbled silken gown and Anna, for all her apparent composure, looked pale and strained once more.
‘How long have you known?’ Marris asked Dorothea Bray quietly.
‘Only a couple of days for certain,’ Lady Bray said. ‘I thought – we all did – that Her Majesty had a disordered stomach.’
‘But surely her courses had stopped…’ Marris suddenly felt inadequate, inexperienced as she was in pregnancy and childbirth. Having witnessed it in others was very different from understanding anything about it herself.
‘Only two months ago,’ Anna put in helpfully. ‘But I think it must be at least four months because the last time the King visited my bed was in March.’
‘Her Majesty had been much upset by the discussion of the annulment,’ Lady Bray put in quickly. ‘It was no surprise that her courses were affected. I thought nothing of it until the second month passed with no bleeding.’
‘I see.’ Marris felt as though she was sinking into a quagmire. The truth, she suspected, was that Lady Bray had been worried but had decided not to ask any awkward questions and Queen Anna… Well, she was not certain what Anna had been thinking. She would come to that in a moment.
‘Is anyone else aware that the Queen’s courses have ceased?’ she asked.
‘Mistress Rattray,’ Dorothea Bray said doubtfully, referring to the laundry mistress. ‘I believe she would be the only one who might know, though we have not spoken of it.’
Of course they would not, Marris thought, both of them not wishing to confront the bigger problem. Yet Jane Rattray might well have told someone else, her husband, for example, or a friend… It might already be too late to keep this a secret.
One problem at a time, Marris reminded herself.
‘Majesty,’ she said to Anna, ‘if I had understood that your marriage to the King had been consummated, there would have been no question of agreeing to an annulment on those grounds.’ She tried to keep both her rising panic and any hint of censure from her voice. ‘Why did you not mention this to me?’
‘I did not realise,’ Anna said simply. ‘I did not know that there was to be a child.’ She pleated the bedclothes with quick, nervous gestures.
‘I told Lady Rutland and Lady Rochford what had happened in the bedchamber and they assured me that more than that would be needed to produce a Duke of York.’ She patted her stomach again. ‘Yet it seems not.’
‘A language difficulty,’ Lady Bray said, even more quickly. ‘A misunderstanding.’
‘Misunderstanding!’ Marris could not help herself.
Her voice rose. ‘How could such a matter be misunderstood?’ She thought of how she had been at sixteen, innocent and virginal, shooed into a widower’s bed.
Her mother had explained to her – warned her, in fact – of what might occur and there had certainly been no misunderstanding it.
She looked dubiously at Queen Anna. She was older and there was a presumption that she would therefore be more knowledgeable of the world and its ways.
Yet the court of Cleves had by all accounts been a highly sheltered place for a young woman.
Had Anna been prepared? Had anyone explained to her?
Had she misunderstood? Had the King, who had visited her bed for a considerable number of nights, somehow managed to consummate his marriage through that undignified groping and fumbling that he had described to Cromwell afterwards?
‘The King claimed the marriage had not been consummated,’ Marris said.
‘He wanted an annulment,’ Anna said, with a little shrug. ‘He would say that.’
Their eyes met. Marris saw doubt and defiance in the Queen’s expression. She had known, she thought. There had not been any misunderstanding. She had known that the King was lying.
‘Oh, Your Majesty,’ she said. ‘Why did you agree with him? Why did you not tell me the truth?’
Anna’s face crumpled. ‘I was afraid,’ she confessed.
‘I did not know about the child then. I wanted only to avoid having my head cut off.’ She mimed the gesture, like a child playing charades.
‘There had been Queen Katherine of Aragon immured in this very palace before she was sent away and locked up, and Queen Anne, whose life ended on the block. Both of them opposed him.’ She wiped away a tear.
‘And then you showed me there was a way to be free,’ Anna continued, ‘and I thought it would be a marvellous thing to have my own household and to please myself…’ She raised her hands in a gesture of despair. ‘So, I thought that the best thing to do was to agree with the King.’
Marris felt a wave of despair followed by a much stronger rush of fury for the King and his bullying tactics.
It was unfair to blame Anna for the situation when she had been under intolerable pressure and in fear for her life.
But what were they to do now? All of their negotiations, all their attempts to carve out some security for the discarded Queen, all had been brought to nothing through Henry’s lies and Anna’s terror…
She wanted to put her head in her hands and weep.
Lady Bray had regained some of her composure. She walked over the bed and stood beside Anna, a united front, facing Marris.
‘His Majesty will, I am sure, be overjoyed to hear of Queen Anna’s condition,’ she said, sounding anything but certain. ‘For so long he has prayed for another healthy child. Now he will have one.’
‘Her Majesty and King Henry are no longer married!’ Marris was too tired and exasperated to be tactful. ‘He is wed to Catherine Howard!’
‘But it will be overturned, will it not?’ Anna said. Her brow was furrowed with confusion. ‘When he knows? He will concede that that the child is his and we will be remarried.’
Marris could tell from her tone that she was desperate to be reassured.
Lady Bray, she knew, would give that Queen the hope she craved, because she was kind and cared for her mistress, and could not bear to think of the alternative.
But it would be a false hope and no real reassurance at all.
She thought of all the forces drawn up against Anna, all those who had engineered the fall of Thomas Cromwell, who had supported the annulment, who had a vested interest in Catherine Howard being Queen.
She thought of Henry, who had perjured himself to gain the freedom he had wanted.
How long would it be before vicious rumours branded Anna an adulteress whose child had most certainly been fathered by someone else?
To go to the King expecting reconciliation and celebration was na?ve and dangerous, risking all on the belief that he wanted another son more than anything else.
And suppose the child was a girl?
Marris looked at the two women in front of her, wearing identical expressions of hope masking terror.
She had worked so hard to secure Anna’s future and suddenly she realised that she had not done it solely through kindness or sympathy for the young woman who had been thrust from the security of her home into a cruel, foreign court.
She had seen herself in Anna, she thought – herself and Bridget and Rose, torn from their home and forced to make a different life for themselves.
And by supporting Anna in getting a rich and just settlement from the King, she had taken some satisfying revenge against the men who had so carelessly and casually stolen the priory from her.
She had married William, tacitly forgiving him his part in the sale of Winterhill because she had to.
Yet she had never really forgotten nor forgiven.
And now her plan for Anna lay in tatters, all because of a King’s lies and an ill-timed pregnancy.
She took a deep breath. ‘I fear that it is by no means certain, Your Majesty, that the King will see matters the way that we do,’ she said. ‘We need to be very careful to ensure your safety and that of your child—’
There was a flurry of knocks at the chamber door and Lady Bray jumped visibly before hurrying over to answer, but already the door was swinging open and Lady Carew ran in, heedless of decorum. ‘It is the King! Majesty – Lady Anna – the King is here!’
Marris could hear the cacophony out in the courtyard now, the unnecessary but inevitable fuss that always accompanied Henry whenever he moved.
He would not wish to be kept waiting by his former wife; she had about ten minutes to make Anna presentable and, more importantly, persuade her to keep quiet about the baby, at least for now.
Marris walked over to the window where Anna had been standing a few minutes before and looked down to the milling crowd below.
She could see the King’s golden feathered cap as he moved amongst his men – at least twenty of them who had accompanied him from Hampton Court to Richmond.
Then her heart jumped, for there was Sir William Sharington, swinging down from his horse with the easy grace she remembered, the sun shining on the chestnut of his hair as he glanced up and met her eyes, smiling, raising a hand in greeting, quite as though she should be pleased to see him.
Bridget had been right; her husband had returned.