The Mer- Lion Page 23

  Suffolk's idea challenged the king's desire for diversion, especially since Henry'd immediately conceived an advantage for his side that would guarantee his winning. "We shall await you at the gatehouse," he agreed, "if you do not drown first while fording the Thames."

  "Fording the Thames? How so, sire?"

  "Twould not be fair to use the king's bridges to best the king, would it? We shall send ahead and see to it they refuse you passage."

  Suffolk chewed his lip a moment, then guffawed. "Agreed. At the gatehouse. If your barge does not swamp first, that is if it is ever launched."

  The two men shook on it, pursuivants trumpeted it, heralds announced it in voices as loud and clear as the very trumpets. The court, delighted and diverted, divided into two camps. Some to ride the tide, others their horses. The race was on.

  Henry's party, arriving at the landing, was off to a slow start Shortsighted, the king had not noticed that the tide was out, the usually strong, peaceful current replaced by a yellow muck spotted here and there with human dung and other filth. Henry could onrj fume and limp back and forth until the tide allowed landing of tin royal barge, which was stalled mid-channel where the water wa deep.

  His only consolation was that Suffolk would not fare better in hi fording of the treacherous Thames. Then, scores of servants in the livery of Suffolk and others, even Tudor white and green, emerged from the palace and descended to the river's edge. After removing their hose, they waded out shoulder to shoulder into the ooze. Several paces behind the liveried vanguard rode the courtiers, tin few ladies riding cross-saddle rather than pillion. Each-had her horse in hand, an equerry to either side. To the merriment of those ashore many a lackey floundered farcically, in unexpected sinkholes, especially midstream. The riders alerted, however, made their way rouiu without incident. Within the hour, Suffolk's contingent had. forded the Thames. With a salute to their king, who was still unable ti board his gilded barge, off they galloped, the few bright-colored velvet gowns among the tawny hunting costumes echoing the touch es of fall foliage in sharp but pleasing contrast to the ombre green of the woods.

  So engrossed had Henry been in the spectacle that he did no realize until too late that his sister, Suffolk's frail lady, would share the cabin of the royal barge while Mistress Anne rode horseback One quick query revealed that de Wynter too had taken the more demanding course. Then, the king's rage and jealousy knew a bounds. His sister had all she could do to prevent his sending after Anne; taking horse himself; or wading out, muck or no muck, to board his barge. Only the fact that the tide was reversing itself kep him shorebound.

  With the tide with them, the barge party had the advantage o nature as far as Teddington, where the influence of the tide on the Thames ceases. Thereafter they rowed against the current, but the royal barge had twelve burly oarsmen to a side. The offer of a piece of gold apiece made their adrenaline flow far stronger than the gentle Thames. The contestants using the river route had still another advantage over their horseback opposition: those who went on horse could win only by losing, and that closely. The fickle favor of their king was well known to all.

  However, it was a beautiful day for a ride, a typically English late summer day. The sun, burning the mist off the meadows, gradually ' revealed gentle verdant hills to either side of a river valley flat and fat with plentyt-A westerly wind promised continuation of this beautiful beginning throughout the day. It would be a hard ride, nonetheless, cross-country, rather than simply paralleling the river. All but daring women balked at this. To ride at more than a walk meant riding astride, as their Scottish sisters did to the North, instead of using the more usual, ladylike sideways seat. The sidesaddle had not yet been introduced into England.

  They rode out straight west, not turning southward until Isleworth. ' As they put the gray, forbidding, cloistered nunnery of St. Bridget's behind them, many a woman crossed herself, breathing silent thanks that she rode free that day instead of being sequestered behind convent walls. The riders' immediate goal was the parish of St. Margaret's, far inland from the river to their left. From there to Twickenham was less than two miles, most of it through broad meadows where all could ride abreast if the sheep grazing there would make way.

  But first, passing from meadow to meadow, they must traverse such thick cedar groves that the sun was shut out, the wood dankly quiet. Going single file, or at most two across, the two score courtiers and as many attendants lost time here that they would have to make up if the race were to be close, between St. Margaret's and Twickenham, or again in Strawberry Vale.

  As the procession strung itself out, de Wynter followed his natural preference: never to be in the crush of riders where his sword arm might be restricted. Instead, he and Fionn alongside, held back, letting others who were more familiar with the route, go before.

  He was not, however, destined to ride so much alone. Within the bounds of the second grove of cedars, he came upon a trio of riders: George Lord Rochford, Mistress Anne Boleyn, and her dismounted equerry struggling with her stirrup leathers. Losing patience with the equerry, Anne's brother, Rochford, gave an oath and began to dismount.

  Anne dissuaded him. "Nay brother, Jane will be spitting pins if you remain longer. The Scots earl here has no jealous wife. He will not refuse me his services while you ride on ahead."

  Rocfiford, plainly relieved to be freed, with a "by your leave" hurried off to forestall the harangue he expected from his shrewish, shallow-brained wife. De Wynter had no choice but to come to Anne's assistance.

  However, it took less than a minute or two to move the buckle up a notch. Anne, thoughtfully removing her foot from the stirrup and lifting her leg out of his way, raised her skirts unnecessarily high and gave de Wynter an unusually good look at her black-stockinged, shapely calf.

  "Thank you, milord," she said, smiling down upon him. "Somehow, I felt sure you would be more successful with that recalcitrant buckle."

  He arched an eyebrow questioningly before acknowledging her thanks with a slight bow, but he said nothing. Nothing need be said; with her cooperation and without pressure on the stirrup, the buckle had offered no resistance. As he gathered up her reins and handed them back to her, their fingers touched and lingered.

  Slowly, deliberately, she withdrew hers from his. But she did not urge her horse forward. Instead, she waited patiently while he remounted, then moved her horse close beside his, her equerry falling in behind with Fionn. De Wynter couldn't help but wonder why the subterfuge had been necessary. In the past, she had sought him out brazenly, especially when the king was at hand—a practice potentially hazardous to his future. The element of danger, rather than discouraging him, added a fillip to his enjoyment of her attention. Besides, in her he found a woman seemingly impervious to his charms—something new to him. He was more used to keeping women out of his bed than luring them into it. That Henry had had no more success than he, simply whetted his desire for her.

  As they rode silently along, he could appreciate her attraction for Henry. Not conventionally beautiful, in fact almost plain in repose, Anne's face was transformed when she smiled or talked. Then, one couldn't take one's eyes from her: Adding to her fascination was her vivid, almost exotic coloring: long black hair, enormous black eyes, and lips startlingly red against pale white skin.

  Beauty alone could not have enslaved Henry VUJ. There were many at court far prettier than she. Catherine Howard, her twelve-year-old cousin, for one. However, as de Wynter knew from having been skewered on it, Anne's wit was sharp, her mind even sharper. And she had that unique ability to concentrate totally on the person she was with, never looking elsewhere nor pretending to listen while thinking of other things. Thus, what one said to such an avid audience seemed wiser or wittier or more romantic or more humorous or more poetic than when said to anyone else.

  In this lay much of her fatal attraction for Henry. Only with Anne Boleyn did he forget his gout, his failing eyesight, his' corpulence. With her he felt young, whole, a great king, th
e prince among princes that he wanted to be. Part of his fascination with her, of course, was the fact that she refused her king what he wanted, while seeming to offer it to others. Not a man at court, de Wynter included, had she not flirted with; and not a one, de Wynter excluded, had resisted her coquetries. In this lay de Wynter's fascination for her. The two, each more used to being the hunted rather than the hunter, had at first been piqued by the other's reaction. Then annoyed. Then tantalized. Then as weeks went by, drawn irresistibly to each other.

  The grove thickened, the way narrowed, and they went single file, he giving her precedence. But as soon as there was room, she paused, waiting for him to draw up beside her.

  "Milord, may I say in all truth that that is the plainest, nay, ugliest mare I have ever seen?"

  "Shush, Mistress Anne, not so loud. She thinks she's a beauty."

  "Disillusion her," Anne commanded callously.

  "I? Never. I think she's a beauty."

  "Your knowledge of physiognomy does you not proud."

  "Mistress, I protest. Knowing not that she is plain, she acts like a beauty, deceiving others into agreeing. A clever woman might do the same, don't you think?"

  She changed the subject. "I was waiting for you. You have a tendency to linger behind. I feared, your being new to our country, we might mislay you."

  "Mislay, Mistress Anne? That would be impossible to do. Besides, might it not be better if you should ride ahead and leave me behind?''

  "Better for whom?" She tossed her head, surrounding herself in a cloud of hair.

  "For the both of us. Think you the king won't hear of this?" "Oh, but I mean he should. If no one tells him, I shall do so myself," she said, and she was serious. "For God's sake, why?"

  She laughed, not merrily. "I control him through jealousy. Canrerme of Aragon never looked at another man, I never look anywhere else unless I am alone with him."

  "My God, Anne, you live dangerously."

  "How so?" She was genuinely curious.

  "Such conduct could be named adulterous."

  "But only after marriage, and I, in case it escaped your notice, I am still unwed."

  "Is marriage what you want?"

  "More than anything in this world."

  "Then, Anne, wed me."

  "You jest, sir!"

  Neither knew who was the more surprised—she who thought him immune to her fascination or he who had thought himself so. But once he had blurted out his offer, he did not regret the impulse. He wanted her! Not since Jamie's mother had he so yearned for a woman. If this were love, then what he'd felt before had been merely young, puppy love in comparison.

  "I mean what I say. Marry me, Anne, and come back to Scotland with me."

  "No, do not say that," she whispered, her face growing pale. "Please God, do not love me. You must not love me. Only so long as you feel nothing for me nor I for you, are we safe!" The words came out, tumbling over one another in a rush of emotion, tears welling up in her eyes.

  She would have urged her horse on to a faster pace, but he forestalled her, seizing the bridle and holding the horse back. "No, Anne, I must know. Are we, as you say, safe?"

  "Yes, no, I mean, I don't know." She was confused, unsure of herself, totally unlike her usual, supremely confident self.

  "You do know. Swear to me that you feel nought for me. Swear it if you can."

  "I swear!" She bit her lip and fought her tears, but her chin was raised, her voice defiant.

  He let go her bridle. "You have played me the fool."

  Now it was his turn to put heels to his horse, but she called after. "No, wait! De Wynter! James! I beg you! It is not what you think."

  He stopped and wheeled his horse about and waited for her to come up with him. As they rode on, side by side, the silence was tense. She broke it.

  "If I explain, will you promise me never to bring up the subject again?"

  "No, I cannot do that. I love you." "Try."

  He made no answer, but she took his silence for acquiescence. For long moments the only sounds disturbing the woods were the jingle of harness and hollow clop of hooves on lichened grounds.

  "He gives me no choice. I dare not care for you."

  "Why not? He cannot marry you. Will you go through life always as a mistress Anne, without home, husband, or children?"

  "No. I shall have all that," she replied, her face set, her voice Determined. "Eventually."

  "Why not now?"

  "Although he cannot have me to wife, he will allow no other to. One by one all the men I have cared for have been sent away or worse. Poor Percy. He dared ask permission to marry. He meant he wanted to marry me and the king knew it, but pretended to misunderstand. So Percy was married off to a simpering child, one mentally weak. She drools uncontrollably, especially when she eats. I hear he has lost much weight. Not she, she is with child again."

  "Anne, no! I care not what happened to others."

  "Sweet, gentle Ormond—to whom I had been promised in marriage by the king himself—had the temerity to show real love for me. So Henry raised him high, then rived him low. He was invited—an honor not to be refused—to cross lances with the king.

  Not until he was handed a Sharp Lance Running did he discover this was to be a Joust a l'Outrance."

  De Wynter whistled silently under his breath. He would not have liked to face the massive king, full-armored, in a joust to the death.

  "So great was Ormond's fear, one could smell it. He could not hold his head high, much less his lance. He was unhorsed on the first pass but had been unmanned long before that. Again and again, Henry ordered him to his feet. Ormond tried, but his legs failed him. Eventually in disgust, Henry granted him the couvre-chef de mercy. I never saw my gentle Irishman again. He was exiled to Ireland and our marriage never again mentioned. Then, there was Wyatt—"

  "Thomas Wyatt, the poet?"

  "The same. He dared write a poem—"

  " 'Ye Olde Mule'?"

  She laughed without merriment. "No, that was his device to save his life. It succeeded; Henry merely exiled poor Thomas to Castle Allington in Maidstone. A not-too-dreadful fate for having forgotten what he himself wrote.

  "And what was that?"

  " 'There is written her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere; for Caesar's I am! And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

  "James, the words of his poem were well said. Do you not forget them," she cautioned. "Wyatt escaped worse because of past poems, but Henry did not leave the matter at that. He made Thomas forfeit his library, remanded him of the right to write his poetry, and, to make matters complete, set Thomas's wife as his jailer to enforce the king's commands. Ah, if there is a hell on earth, Thomas has found it at Allington."

  He simply smiled back at her and quoted in reply: " 'Be it evil, be it well, be I bound, be I free, I am as I am and so will I be.' I, too, know Wyatt's work and I know I am in love with you."

  "Then be warned, for 'I am as I am and so will I die.' And James Mackenzie, Scots Earl of Seaforth, I will be Queen of England. I stake my head and my heart upon it."

  "Can nothing change your mind?"

  "Nothing. I have waited too long. Six years too long. Sacrificed too much. No, I am set on this course wherever it takes me... and naught will dissuade me."

  He looked at her, her head held high, her chin set defiantly, and more than ever he knew this was the woman for him. m her determination, her stubborn ambition, he saw himself.. and his mother. The thought of Islean and Anne Boleyn meeting gave him pause.

  The women would clash of course, bom being strong-willed, but eventually would like and respect each other. Both were women of spirit, not content to accept what fortune allotted. Accept, no! Beg, bribe, buy, taunt, trick, scheme, seduce—yes! They were his kind of women, worthy of unselfish love, commanding admiration, evoking pride in a man.

  A halloo from ahead interrupted his thoughts for the time being. Their tardiness had been noticed; they had been missed. A shout to the men rid
ing behind, discreedy out of earshot, and the horses moved out briskly to catch up with Rochford. He, still smarting from the sting of his wife's sharp tongue, immediately took his sister to task, "Are you mad, Nan? The king will hear of this!"

  "I can guess who will be the happy bearer of such ill news," she replied, smiling viciously at the sister-in-law who tarried out of curiosity just up ahead. At the age of almost sixteen, Jane Lady Rochford's face was already set in grim, unhappy lines.

  During the next part of the ride, through the meadows and through the sheep to Twickenham, neither Anne nor de Wynter spoke much. They rode so close their calves would sometimes touch, neither of them seeking this nor avoiding it, but taking innocent delight in it. At other times as the terrain allowed, their mounts went at a gallop and side by exhilarating side cleared brook Or hedgerow or hay rick. Rochford, watching close, saw once again his Anne, that barely remembered, quick-to-laugh, rife-loving youthful sister, the hoyden of his past, riding, hunting, hawking, and willing to diddle his dandy though she remained chaste. Devoutly, he wished them gone from court and back at Hever. There, safe behind the moat, protected by crenellated battlements and machicolations, Anne could be just plain Nan again, Jane would regain her once pleasant mien, and old King Hal could be consigned to tell. Rochford laughed mirthlessly. If wishes were horses...

  Past Strawberry Hill the troop cantered; there some less hardy women found excuse with their escorts to drop out and search for berries long out of season. The rest rode on to and through Strawberry Vale at a hard gallop and on to Teddington, where they breamed their mounts. An enterprising innkeeper at the Clarence served the courtiers cool ale and watered wine. Suffolk, before be left, tossed a coin in his direction. The coin was caught but when examined was found lacking, as the keeper's sour expression revealed. Anne, noting this, turned to de Wynter. "Pay him more if you love me, so that when I am queen, he will love me," she half teased, half pleaded.