was no wife, and that she, Mary, was a bastard. Mary knew the meaning of that; she would no longer be the Princess Mary; she would no longer receive the homage of her father’s subjects; she would never be Queen of England.
Mary prayed each night that her father would tire of Anne, that he would banish her from the court, that he would grow to hate her, commit her to the Tower where she would be put in a dark dungeon to be starved and eaten by rats, that she might be put in chains, that her body might be grievously racked for every tear she had caused to fall from the eyes of Mary’s saintly mother.
Mary had something of her father in her as well as of her mother; her mother’s fanaticism perhaps, but her father’s cruelty and determination.
Once her mother had said: “Mary, what if your father should make her his Queen?”
Mary had answered proudly: “There could be but one Queen of England, Mother.”
Katharine’s heart had rejoiced, for deeply, tenderly, she loved her daughter. While they were together there could not be complete despair. But all their wishes, all their prayers, were without effect.
When the news came to Henry that Anne had recovered, he embraced the messenger, called for wine to refresh him, fell on his knees and thanked God.
“Ha!” said he to Wolsey. “This is a sign! I am right to marry the lady; she will give me many lusty sons.”
Poor Katharine! She could but weep silently; and then her bitterness was lost in fear, for her daughter had taken the sickness.
Anne convalesced at Hever. At court she was spoken of continually. Du Bellay, the witty French ambassador, joked in his light way. He wagered the sickness of the lady had spoiled her beauty in some measure; he was certain that during her absence some other one would find a way to the King’s susceptible heart. Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, laughed with him, and gleefully wrote to his master of the “concubine’s” sickness. Blithely he prophesied an end of this—in Spain’s eyes—monstrous matter of the divorce.
But Henry did not wait for her convalescence to end. How could he wait much longer! He had waited enough already. Privately he would ride from Greenwich or from Eltham to Hever Castle, and Anne, from the castle grounds, hearing his bugle call on a nearby hill, would go out to meet him. They would walk the gallery together, or sit in the oak-paneled chamber while he told her how the matter of the divorce progressed; he would talk of his love, would demand in fierce anger—or meek supplication—why now she could not make him the happiest of men.
And when the pestilence had passed over and she returned to court, Du Bellay reported to his government: “I believe the King to be so infatuated with her that God alone can abate his madness.”
Thomas Wolsey, knowing sickness of heart, feigned sickness of body. He knew his master; sentimental as a girl, and soft as wax in the fiery hands of Anne Boleyn.
Wolsey saw his decline, now, as clearly as he had so often seen the sun set; for him, though, there would be no rising again after the coming of night.
He did not complain; he was too wise for that. Well he knew that he had made his mistake, and where. He had humiliated her who had now the King’s ear. And she was no soft, weak woman; she was strong and fierce, a good friend and a bad enemy. Oh! he thought, there is a night crow that possesses the royal ear and misrepresents all my actions.
He must not complain. He remembered the days of his own youth. He could look back to the humble life when he was tutor to the sons of Lord Marquess Dorset. Then there had been a certain knight, one Sir Amyas Pawlet, who had dared to humiliate young Wolsey; and had young Wolsey forgotten? He had not! Sir Amyas Pawlet grew to wish he had considered awhile before heaping indignities upon a humble tutor. So it was with Mistress Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wolsey. He could go to her; he could say: “I would explain to you. It was not I who wished to hurt you. It was not I who would have prevented your marriage with Percy. It was my lord King. I was but his servant in this matter.” It might well be that she, who was noted for her generous impulses, would forgive him; it might be that she would not continue to plan against him. It might be...but she was not his only enemy. Her uncle, Norfolk, was with her in this matter; the Duke of Suffolk, also; and that Percy of Northumberland who had loved her and still brooded on his loss. These powerful men had had enough of Wolsey’s rule.
He was very weary; defeated by this divorce, feigning sickness that he might appeal to the sentiment of the King, that he might make him sorry for his old friend; hiding himself away until Campeggio whom the Pope was sending from Rome was due to arrive. This was Wolsey in decline.
Foolishly he had acted over this matter of Eleanor Carey. He was in disgrace with the King over that matter, and he had received such a rebuke as he had never had before, and one which told him clearly that the King was no longer his to command. The night crow and her band of vultures watched him, waiting for his death. Yet stupidly and proudly he had acted over the Eleanor Carey affair; she was the sister-in-law of Anne, and with characteristic generosity, when the woman had asked Anne to make her Abbess of Wilton—which place had fallen vacant—Anne had promised she should have her wish. And he, Wolsey, had arrogantly refused Eleanor Carey and given the place to another. Thus was Mistress Anne’s anger once more raised against him; how bitterly had she complained of his action to the King! Wolsey had explained that Eleanor was unfit for the post, having had two illegitimate children by a priest. Knowing that, Henry, whose attitude towards others was rigorously moral, must see the point of this refusal. Gently and with many apologies for the humiliation she had suffered in the matter, the King explained this to Anne. “I would not,” wrote Henry to his sweetheart, “for all the gold in the world clog your conscience and mine to make her a ruler of a house...”
Anne, who was by nature honest, had no great respect for her lover’s conscience; she was impatient, and showed it; she insisted that Wolsey’s arrogance should not be allowed to pass. And Henry, fearing to lose her, ready to give her anything she wished, wrote sternly to Wolsey; and that letter showed Wolsey more clearly than anything that had gone before that he was slipping dangerously, and he knew no way of gaining a more steady foothold on the road of royal favor.
Now at last he understood that she who had the King’s ear was indeed a rival to be feared. And he was caught between Rome and Henry; he had no plans; he could see only disaster coming out of this affair. So he feigned sickness to give himself time to prepare a plan, and sick at heart, he felt defeat closing in on him.
The legate had arrived from Rome, and old gouty Campeggio was ready to try the case of the King and Queen. Crowds collected in the streets; when Queen Katharine rode out, she was loudly cheered, and so likewise was her daughter Mary. Katharine, pale and wan from worry, Mary, pale from her illness, were martyrs in the eyes of the people of London; and the King begged Anne not to go abroad for fear the mob might do her some injury.
Anne was wretched, longing now to turn from this thorny road of ambition; not a moment’s real peace had she known since she had started to tread it. The King was continually trying to force her surrender, and she was weary with the fight she must put up against him. And when Henry told her she must once more go back to Hever, as the
