The Tudor Wife. Emily Purdy

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       7

      Anne immediately resumed her old ways, going back and forth to Hever, ignoring the enamored King’s increasingly ardent love letters, and dismissing the messenger with ‘No answer.’

      Anne had played her card. Now it was time for Henry to make his move.

      A secret court was convened, presided over by Cardinal Wolsey, with a panel of bishops to weigh the evidence and render a verdict.

      Henry presented himself, slump-shouldered and morose, as a man whose conscience was sorely troubled by the nagging thought that he, by taking his dead brother’s wife, had unwittingly sinned against God. Queen Catherine, he solemnly avowed, was a fine woman and he would like nothing better than to hear that all was well and that she could remain at his side as his wife always, but the qualms that assailed his conscience were just too great to be ignored. Thus, he looked to them, the cardinals and bishops of England, to free him from this torment. It was a grand performance. Only those in Anne’s inner circle knew that she was the cause of it all, this intricate, tangled web of theological and legal quibbling that would soon rise from a whisper to a scream. Even Wolsey never suspected that it was Anne Boleyn Henry aimed to wed; he was led to believe it was a French princess Henry coveted so that he might have legitimate male heirs and a dynastic alliance all in one stroke. Queen Catherine was also kept unawares until the wily Spanish Ambassador whispered the truth in her ear. But by then Henry had lost his round.

      After three days of heated debate, the court concluded that the marriage was sound, since a papal dispensation had been issued beforehand. Henry was assured that his conscience could rest in peace.

      But Henry refused to accept the verdict, and Wolsey bore the brunt of his displeasure. Wolsey, that upstart son of an Ipswich butcher, who used the Church as a stepping stone to power and cared more for worldly goods than the word of God, had promised Henry the verdict he desired.

      But then failed to deliver.

      To make matters worse, now Queen Catherine had been dealt into the game, and she had a very powerful card to play. Her nephew Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, would never sit passively by and let his aunt be humiliated and cast aside.

      Never for a moment would Catherine’s convictions waver. She was Henry’s lawful wife and Queen of this realm, and such she would remain until her dying day. Nor would she oblige the King by slinking away to a nunnery. Though her faith was strong, and she was without a doubt devout, she had no vocation; she would not, like some she could name, use the Church as a means to achieve an end. She loved her husband dearly and was sorry to court his displeasure by disobeying him, but God and her conscience must come first.

      At that time the situation in Rome was dire. The Holy City had been sacked; mercenary soldiers in the Emperor’s service ran amok, raping and pillaging; the streets ran red with the blood of the slain; and the air was filled with smoke, flies, and the cries of the dying. Pope Clement himself was a prisoner, and he was not about to risk the Emperor’s further wrath by siding with Henry.

      It should all have ended there, but Henry was not about to let his desires be thwarted. Come what may, he would have Anne Boleyn.

      Around this time Tom Wyatt, dallying with Anne and their friends in the palace gardens, playfully snatched a little bejeweled tablet that dangled from a delicate gold chain Anne wore about her waist, claiming it was high time she gave him a love token. He pressed it to his lips, then, laughing, held it high, beyond her reach, as she leapt and grasped for it, once even daring to duck his head and swiftly steal a kiss.

      ‘Keep it if you like.’ Anne shrugged. ‘It is but a little thing, and of no great consequence. And while that bauble may be beyond my reach, greater jewels than that are within my grasp.’ And upon her right hand she proudly displayed an enormous emerald. ‘The stone of constancy, His Majesty says, and thereby a most fitting symbol of his love for me.’

      She did not confide that in exchange for this great, gaudy, glittering green ring, King Henry had snatched from her finger a dainty ruby heart set in lacy gold filigree. ‘I shall take this heart until you vouchsafe me your own,’ he said as he forced it onto his little finger, the only one it would fit upon.

      A few days СКАЧАТЬ