Dear Heart, How Like You This (11 page)

One early morning I went with them out riding—so early in the morning the frost lay heavy on the grass and mist rose in heavy grey swirls before us; so cold our breaths iced as we breathed.

Anne made my heart hurt painfully this day. Yea, more than just hurt when I saw her ride with Percy. Dressed as a boy, with her thick, black hair tumbling out from underneath a feathered cap, so like how she rode with me when we two were children. And I found myself wondering, while I sat astride my horse atop some hill watching Hal and Anna race along some rustic lane, why did I torture myself? Why did I choose to be here at all, unable to be anything else but an observer on their developing love? Then I saw clearly the answer. It was not only because they asked for my company, so to make their outings a trio and thus gain the camouflage of respectability. But also, in truth, I just wanted to see for myself how it could have been if Anna had chosen me.

What means this when I lie alone?

I toss, I turn, I sigh, I groan.

My bed to me seems as hard as stone.

What means this?

I sigh, I plain continually.

The clothes that on my bed do lie

Always methink they lie awry.

What means this?

In slumbers oft for fear I quake.

For heat and cold I burn and shake.

For lack of sleep my head doth ache.

What means this?

A morning then when I do rise

I turn unto wonted guise,

All day after muse and devise.

What means this?

And if perchance by me there pass

She unto whom I sue for grace,

The cold blood forsaketh my face.

What means this?

But if I sit near her by

With loud voice my heart doth cry

And yet my heart is dumb and dry.

What means this?

To ask for help no heart I have.

My tongue doth fail what I should crave.

Yet inwardly I rage and rave.

What means this?

Thus have I passed many a year

And many a day, though naught appear

But most of that most I fear.

What means this?

Aye! What means this indeed! I loved Anna from boyhood, and nothing, nothing in our lives, or the time before us, would ever release me from this love. Because of Anna, all my life’s joys have been brief and fleeting. But, if I had never loved Anna, aye, never loved my dark Lady, I would never have known, nor understood, why the poets and the singers spend so much of their art bemoaning about love. I would have never known what it was to truly love a woman. Love a woman so much it was simply enough to be near her, sitting at her feet—even while she sang her love songs to another.

It is hard to keep anything secret at court, and it was not long before people were talking about Anne and Hal. But it was mostly good-natured talk. All the world seems to take great pleasure in the love of young lovers—all the world that is except the King and Cardinal Wolsey.

Aye. King Henry had taken great notice of the girl who sang and played the lute to his Queen like an angel. Too much notice. For now our King wished to make her his latest quarry, having tired of Mary Boleyn and wanting to replace one sister with another. But Anne and Hal were so caught up in their innocent world of young love both of them were completely unaware of the lustful gleam in the King’s eye, and how the hunt was now on. Anna and Hal saw only each other, and were thus protected for the moment from realising that their brief bright day was to turn into darkest night.

Nothing disturbed or annoyed our King so much as to have his attentions not noticed. The King’s solution was to have a word in Wolsey’s ear. Wolsey’s solution was to completely demoralise Hal in front of his fellows for falling “head over heels” in love, and against the wishes of the King. And worst! For falling, stupidly, for a foolish upstart of a girl.

I was still a part of the Cardinal’s household at this time, thus, I heard firsthand from those who witnessed this interview between Lord Percy and the Cardinal. Hal, I was told, replied to the Cardinal’s abuse in this fashion: “Sir, I had no desire to cause the King displeasure. If I have done so, I sincerely entreat his forgiveness… But I consider myself old enough to be wise in regard to choosing myself a wife. I also have no doubt that the Earl, my father, could be persuaded to my choice. Even though, I will truly admit, Anne is but a simple maid, she comes from a noble lineage. I pray you, good Sir, to speak on my behalf to the King.”

The Cardinal, I was told, arose from his chair, utterly confounded by these brave words of Percy. He stood there, his face reddening with rage, and then gestured angrily to his fascinated attendants.

“Listen to this boy! The wisdom that comes sputtering out of his mouth!”

He then rounded on Percy, yelling: “You foolish, foolish youth! Did you not hear me before, when I told you that the King has other plans for Mistress Boleyn? You forget your place, young Percy! It is not for you to say this or that. It is not for you to say anything at all. Your duty is to submit yourself in obedience to your King and betters.”

Hal Percy was crying hard by this stage—braver men than he had quaked before the fury of the Cardinal. Nonetheless, he still attempted to battle hard against the fates.

“Sir, ordinarily I would do my duty,” Hal now said, through his tears, to Wolsey. “But this is no easy thing you ask. I have pledged myself to Mistress Boleyn, and have no desire to relieve myself of this pledge. On my oath, good Sir, I feel myself honour bound to serve best my conscience and my heart.”

Wolsey now fixed upon Percy such a look that those who watched quailed themselves before the red-tide wrath of the Cardinal. But still Henry Percy, though bowed and now silent, refused to speak those words that would have him submit utterly to the wishes of the King and Wolsey.

Thus, this interview having had little of the desired effect, the Cardinal now called for Percy’s father to deal with the son. Deal with his son he did. Almost as soon as the Earl of Northumberland arrived at Hampton, the Earl dragged Harry Percy off to be wed in some hastily arranged marriage. They said it had been pre-contracted, but no one knew of it until Wolsey and Hal’s father had been closeted together for over an hour.

So ended Anne’s greatest love affair. Thus was sowed the seed to one day flourish into our lives’ greatest tragedy. But never did I then imagine the blood-soaked harvest that Anna’s heartbreak would lay before us…

’Tis not surprising Wolsey played such a large part in achieving the desires of his King. Many said at the English court the King trusted only two men with any great power in his Kingdom: two men who were known throughout the land as Cardinal Wolsey and the Duke of Suffolk.

The Cardinal first came to the notice of the King when the King was but a young prince, living in the shadow of an elder and much loved brother, Arthur, the boy expected to be King. Henry, the younger brother, was destined—so the father thought—not to sire a dynasty, but be a prince of the church. Thus, an aid and comfort to his elder brother’s reign. My father told me as a boy how Henry VII planned this because he had made a long and painful study of our recent bloody history. His own wife’s father, the fourth Edward, whose own personal motto
The Sun in Splendour
may have been more truthful if it had proclaimed him
The Setting Sun of the Plantagenets
, had put to death his own brother, George. Though rightly so: George, despite his elder brother’s care for his estate, had constantly attempted to rob Edward of his crown.

And then there was the Queen’s other uncle, Richard, also a King of England, but only after putting to death two tender boys, the Queen’s own brothers—two boys with greater right than he to bear the crown of St. Edward.

Henry Tudor, the first King of that name, was a wiser man than the son who bore his name. My own father rebelled against the tyrant Richard because he frankly saw the then Duke of Richmond as the better man. In sooth, he was greatly sickened by the abominable acts performed by King Richard.

Ah! My writings begin to wander, dwelling on things with little to do with what I describe.

I was speaking of how the great Cardinal first began his climb in the English court. My father told me that the Cardinal’s first appointment was not to the father of our present King, but to his Lord Chancellor, Henry Deane, in 1501—eight years before our present King began his reign as a near-eighteen-year-old youth. Wolsey, in those early years, was one of the tutors of the King’s second son. And as I revered my childhood tutor, so did Henry, King of England revere the Cardinal—for many long years of his reign.

And Charles, Duke of Suffolk—the other man trusted by the King. How do I explain the enormous influence this man had on our King? I suppose, in a sense and in many ways, you could say, with truth, the King wished to magnify the mirrored image of the Duke. Verily, the Duke was the elder of the King by at least seven whole years. When the King was only a youth and still but a Prince, it was well known that he greatly admired and looked up to Charles, who was raised close to the family of Henry VII.

Both men were of similar height and build, and enjoyed playing to the full at the role of a chivalrous knight. Even so, if the King saw himself as cutting an amorous figure with the ladies, it seemed to me the ladies themselves, in their heart of hearts, would rather have the extraordinarily handsome Duke instead of the King pay them his knightly attention. The Duke was a man who clearly had the best of his Irish ancestry, with his pitch-black hair, pale skin, deep blue eyes, and sensual mouth. Even when he was in his forties, the Duke was accustomed to having ladies all but swoon in his very presence.

By 1522, the Duke had been married to the Dowager Queen of France, Mary Rose, for about seven years. Like her brother, Mary had loved and admired the Duke (or Charles Brandon as he was then) from the time she was a very small girl. And this strong-willed and very beautiful woman achieved her lifelong desire to be his wife when he came to escort her, then the newly widowed Queen, back to England from the French court. Seducing him quick to her bed, the youngest sister of the King left his best friend with little option other than to wed her.

But in the year 1522, the Duke of Suffolk appeared to be restless. Forsooth, the Duke had begun in earnest, again, his serious pursuit of nubile girls (one of which had once been an innocent Tudor princess, but now was his maturing wife). And the older the Duke became, the younger also became the girls he chose to pursue.

But never in my wildest nightmares did I dream that one of these young girls would one day be Anne. Even so, barely two days after Wolsey had viciously destroyed the young hopes of Anna and Henry Percy, I walked along the corridors of Hampton to recognise Anne’s terrified voice. Her cry suddenly broke off, as if a hand quickly plugged its source. I instantly opened the door of a nearby chamber to find Anne struggling hard with a huge man; a man who had his hand placed over her mouth and his back towards me. As fortune would have it, due to Anne’s frantic scuffles, he remained unaware of my entry into the room. So, without any further thought, I rushed over and gave his shoulder an almighty shove, causing him to lose grip of Anne and tumble violently to the ground.

Freed, Anna ran to me. I tightly encircled her in the safety of my arms; her slight body shook violently in the aftermath of shock. But I could not long console her because I now stared at a naked sword, glinting with candlelight, in the hand of the now standing man. I lifted my eyes to his face, and saw with even greater shock that the man I so violently tossed to the ground was none other than the third most powerful person in the land: the Duke of Suffolk.