“Think of what it is like for me,” she pleaded. “I am the butt of continual gossip. Some think I am your whore! My position here is anomalous, and until the future is clearer, it is better for me to stay away.” And if I am at Hever, I won’t have to see the man I love daily. And you will spur Wolsey more forcibly into getting you what you want.
Henry groaned and clasped her to him. “I don’t think I can bear being without you.” He was almost sobbing.
“You can visit me, as you did before,” she said.
“It is not enough. It is never enough!”
“Please grant me leave to go. It grieves me to leave you, but it is for the best. The gossip will die down and my reputation will be saved.”
“Very well,” Henry sighed. “But this time you must write to me, often. No tardiness like before.”
“I will, I promise,” Anne said, and kissed him. He responded almost violently, every sinew expressing his longing, and she had all to do to fend him off.
—
Absence did indeed make a man grow fonder—if that were possible. Henry’s letters betrayed a new depth of passion. When Anne perceived the increasing intensity of his feelings, she knew she had done the right thing in leaving court.
He was desperate for her. He wrote often of his need for her. In her replies, she never referred to any intimacies, for fear of further inflaming his ardor. She tried instead to express the devotion she could not feel, and pretended a great desire to see an end to their separation.
Henry wrote that he had sounded out his beloved friend Sir Thomas More on his Great Matter. More, Anne knew, was a lawyer of integrity and a renowned scholar, and his opinion would carry great weight throughout Christendom—but he had said he believed the King’s marriage to be good and valid.
“I will not press him, for the sake of our friendship,” Henry wrote. “But I wish he had felt he could support me in my just cause.”
Anne wondered how strong opposition to the Great Matter really was. When the time came, would people like More feel the need to speak out? And what damage might that do to the King’s case?
—
The worst thing about being at Hever was the frosty atmosphere. Mary was there with her children for a holiday in the country, and still she could not forgive Anne for snaring the King who had abandoned her. Henry’s name hung between the sisters, not to be mentioned without rancor. It did not matter that he had finished with Mary long before he began pursuing Anne: Anne was made to feel as if she had stolen him.
It was Mary who shot the worst barb.
“The King says he is troubled in his conscience because he took to wife his brother’s widow,” she said out of the blue one evening, after Mother had retired and as she and Anne sat sewing in chilly silence in the parlor.
“Yes, that is the basis of his case,” Anne said, forcing herself to patience, because surely Mary knew that? The whole world did!
Mary appeared to be considering something, and it occurred to Anne that she was enjoying this.
“What’s your point?” she challenged.
“I was wondering if he felt the same scruple about marrying his mistress’s sister?” Mary gave her a nasty little smile.
Anne was about to utter a pithy retort when, to her horror, it dawned on her that Mary was right. There must indeed be as absolute a barrier to her marriage to Henry as there was to Henry’s union with Katherine. They were equally incestuous.
It was as well that she had never given way to Henry’s desires.
This was truly terrible, for such a barrier might prove insurmountable. And if the truth about Henry’s relations with Mary, and the child she had borne him, was revealed, he would stand exposed as a hypocrite, and no one would believe that his Great Matter had sprung from a scruple of conscience. They would say it had been driven by lust.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mary provoked her.
Anne was desperate to refute the argument, whatever the truth of the matter. “I’m sure a bar applies only if the parties are married,” she said. “You were not married to the King.”
Mary shrugged. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. It’s more than my life’s worth to have Will finding out about the King and me.”
Anne was near to tears. “Aren’t things difficult enough without you making them worse?”
“It’s better to know now than later. Maybe the King can get a dispensation that’s sounder than the last one.”
Anne swallowed. Asking the Pope for another dispensation—aside from all the other complications—would be tantamount to conceding that the first one was tenable.
Oh, God, was there no end to the obstacles that were being placed in her way?
“You don’t love him, do you?” Mary challenged. “You just want to be queen.”
“My being queen will benefit us all, even you!” Anne flared.
“Yes, but you want all the glory,” Mary riposted. “You want to see us all making obeisance to you.”
“In your case, I shall look forward to it!” Anne retorted.
—
She wrote urgently to Henry, and was relieved to receive a speedy response. Yes, he agreed there was cause for concern, but a Papal dispensation allowing their union would put matters to rights. He was sending his secretary, Dr. Knight, on a secret mission to Rome to ask for one that allowed him to wed the sister of a woman with whom he had bedded. Dr. Knight was also going to ask the Pope for a general commission that would give Wolsey, as Papal legate, the authority to rule on the Great Matter. “I am absolutely resolved to satisfy my conscience,” Henry wrote.
Thank God that this new dispensation was to be kept a secret. Henry had immediately grasped the implications. He had even promised that, if Pope Clement granted him an annulment, he would declare war on the Emperor to secure the freedom of the Holy Father. And to make things easier for Clement, and bring the whole business to a speedy resolution, Wolsey had helpfully sent two draft dispensations, one annulling the first marriage, the other authorizing a second, to which the Pope need only affix his signature and seal. It all sounded hopeful.
1528
In the depths of a snowy January, a letter arrived from the King. Anne read it as she strode out, wrapped in furs, across the white-carpeted meadows. He would have come himself, he wrote, but the bad weather precluded it. So far, he had paid her five visits, the last before Christmas, and it had been clear that time and distance had only given a spur to his ardor. She had taken care that her mother was never out of earshot, much to Henry’s frustration.