“That I know! You could not have been here a day but that I should have found you.”
She said: “What would your master say an he found you lingering beneath this window?”
“I know not, nor care I!”
“Were you caught, might there not be those who would prevent you from coming again? Already you may have been missed.”
He was alarmed. To be prevented from enjoying the further bliss of such meetings was intolerable.
“I go now,” he said. “Tomorrow...you will be here at this hour?”
“You will find me here.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, and they smiled at each other.
Next day she saw him, and the next. There were many meetings, and for each of those two young lovers the day was good when they met, and bad when they did not. She learned of his exalted rank, and she could say with honesty that this mattered to her not at all, except of course that her ambitious father could raise no objection to a match with the house of Northumberland.
One day her lover came to her and pleasure was written large on his face.
“The Cardinal is to give a ball at this house at Hampton. All the ladies of the court will be invited!”
“You will be there?”
“You too!” he replied.
“We shall be masked.”
“I shall find you.”
“And then...?” she said.
His eyes held the answer to that question.
Anne had dreamed of such happiness, though of late her observation of those about her had led her to conclude that it was rarely known. But to her it had come; she would treasure it, preserve it, keep it forever. She could scarcely wait for that day when Thomas Wolsey would entertain the court at his great house at Hampton on the Thames.
The King was uneasy. The Cardinal had thought to help him when he had had Anne appointed a maid of honor to the Queen; but had he? Never, for the sake of a woman, had the King been so perplexed. He must see her every day, for how could he deny his eyes a sight of the most charming creature they had ever rested on! Yet he dared not speak with her. And why? For this reason; no sooner had the girl set foot in the Queen’s apartments than that old enemy, his conscience, must rear its ugly head to leer at him.
“Henry,” said the conscience, “this girl’s sister, Mary Boleyn, has shared your bed full many a night, and well you know the edict of the Pope. Well you know that association with one sister gives you an affinity with the other. Therein lies sin!”
“That I know well,” answered Henry the King. “But as there was no marriage....”
Such reasoning could not satisfy the conscience; it was the same—marriage ceremony or no marriage ceremony—and well he knew it.
“But there was never one like this girl; never was I so drawn to a woman; never before have I felt myself weak as I would be with her. Were she my mistress, I verily believe I should be willing to dispense with all others, and would not that be a good thing, for in the eyes of the Holy Church, is it not better for a man to have one mistress than many? Then, would not the Queen be happier? One mistress is forgivable; her distress comes from there being so many.”
He was a man of many superstitions, of deep religious convictions. The God of his belief was a king like himself, though a more powerful being since, in place of the axe, he was able to wield a more terrifying weapon whose blade was supernatural phenomena. Vindictive was the King’s god, susceptible to flattery, violent in love, more violent in hate—a jealous god, a god who spied, who recorded slights and insults, and whose mind worked in the same simple way as that of Henry of England. Before this god Henry trembled as men trembled before Henry. Hence the conscience, the uneasiness, his jealous watchfulness of Anne Boleyn, and his reluctance to make his preference known.
In vain he tried to soothe his senses. All women are much alike in darkness. Mary is very like her sister. Mary is sweet and willing; and there are others as willing.
He tried to placate his conscience. “I shall not look at the girl; I will remember there is an affinity between us.”
So those days, which were a blissful heaven to Anne and another Henry, were purgatory to Henry the King, racked alternately by conscience and desire.
She was clad in scarlet, and her vest was cloth of gold. She wore what had become known at court as the Boleyn sleeves, but they did not divulge her identity, for many wore the Boleyn sleeves since she had shown the charm of this particular fashion. Her hair was hidden by her gold cap, and only the beautiful eyes showing through her mask might proclaim her as Anne Boleyn.
He found her effortlessly, because she had described to him in detail the costume she would wear.
“I should have known you though you had not told me. I should always know you.”
“Then, sir,” she answered pertly, “I would I had put you to the test!”
“I heard the music on the barges as they came along the river,” he said, “and I do not think I have ever been so happy in my life.”
He was a slender figure in a coat of purple velvet embroidered in gold thread and pearls. Anne thought there was no one more handsome in this great ballroom, though the King, in his scarlet coat on which emeralds flashed, and in his bonnet dazzling rich with rubies and diamonds, was a truly magnificent sight.
