“What did Campeggio say?” she asked, her voice like stone.
“He said he would give no hasty judgment until he had discussed the case with the Pope. He said the truth is difficult to find.” Henry spat the words out. He would not look at her. “My case is sound, I know it and he knows it. But it has now been adjourned indefinitely. I tell you, Anne, this is a political decision. No matter what theological arguments I marshal, they will not be heard.”
Suffolk, who had followed Henry into the room, was just as furious. “Mistress Anne, I shouted at those legates. I said, ‘England was never merry while we had cardinals among us!’?” His handsome, dissolute face—so like the King’s—was set in a snarl. Anne knew him to be hot for reform; he would have enjoyed venting his contempt on Wolsey and Campeggio. But his wife, Henry’s sister, who loved the Queen, would no doubt be delighted at the adjournment. This decision would not make for marital harmony.
Henry sat down, looking defeated. His voice was hoarse. “It’s the summer recess now. The Papal Curia won’t sit again till October, and I know of old that it moves slower than a snail, so it could be months, if not years, before the Pope reaches a decision—and even then, the wait might be in vain, for with Clement hand-in-glove with the Emperor, judgment will probably be given in the Queen’s favor anyway.” He cradled his head in his hands, weeping in despair.
Anne felt chilled to the marrow. She was looking ahead, seeing her youth disappearing as year after frustrating year passed. No! She would not endure it. There must be a better way than this. Her anger burned against Wolsey. He had played along with Campeggio and the Pope, while giving Henry fair words and false promises.
“We have the Cardinal to thank for this!” she burst out.
Even now, she feared, Henry would not see the truth. But she was wrong.
“Yes, and he will answer for it,” he snarled, raising his head. “Before I left the Black Friars, I told him to inform my ambassadors at the Vatican that my royal dignity would not permit my being summoned to appear at the Papal court, nor would my nobles and subjects allow it. I said they were to tell his Holiness that if I went to Rome, it would be at the head of an army, not as a supplicant for justice.”
He got up and began pacing. “I will not be bested, Anne! I’ll have my divorce if I have to break with Rome to do it!”
It was their only hope. He meant what he said, she was sure of it.
—
She would have her revenge on Wolsey, she swore it! And on obstinate, infuriating Katherine, who was stubbornly clinging to what she had already lost, and making life impossible for everyone. But it was Wolsey, base, ungrateful Wolsey, who was the greater culprit. He was a traitor to his King.
She had to vent her fury or she would burst. Wolsey must be told how deeply he had wronged her. As soon as Henry had gone to consult with his Council, she called for writing materials and took up her pen, scribbling furiously.
My lord, although you are a man of great understanding, you cannot avoid being censured by everybody for having brought on yourself the hatred of the King, who has raised you to the highest degree to which an ambitious man can aspire. I cannot comprehend, and the King still less, how your reverend lordship, after having misled us by so many fine promises about divorce, can have reneged on them, and how you could have done what you have in order to hinder the achieving of our wishes. What, then, is your mode of proceeding? Having given me the strongest marks of your affection, your lordship abandons my interests to embrace those of the Queen. I have put my confidence in your promises, in which I find myself deceived, but for the future I shall rely on nothing but the protection of Heaven and the love of my dear King, which alone will be able to set right again those plans which you have broken and spoiled, and place me in that happy situation which God wills and the King so much wishes, which will be entirely to the advantage of the kingdom. The wrong which you have done me has caused me so much sorrow, but I feel infinitely more in seeing myself betrayed by a man who only pretended to further my interests. Believing you sincere, I have been too precipitate in my confidence. It is this which has induced, and still induces, me to be more moderate in avenging myself, not being able to forget that I have been your servant, Anne Boleyn.
Let that strike dread into his heart! Let Wolsey quake in his shoes! He knew that her will was law to the King. There would be no more hypocrisy. She had declared her enmity openly, and felt better after dispatching the letter. But she still felt brittle and bruised, and when she was by herself, lying in the dark that night, she gave way to a storm of weeping.
—
As Anne moved about the court, she heard the buzz of speculation everywhere. The great Cardinal, who had all but ruled England for the past twenty years, was out of favor and had prudently retired to his manor of the More in Hertfordshire, plainly acknowledging that he had been to blame for the court’s failure to deliver a favorable verdict.
Henry let him go. “I do not want to set eyes on him,” he fumed. “He has betrayed me.”
To make matters worse, the Emperor and the King of France, those two great enemies, had just made peace.
“It leaves me isolated and devoid of support abroad,” Henry told Anne, crestfallen, looking like a man who had been winded. There was no talk of marching on Rome with an army now, so when the Pope’s brief citing the King to appear there was served on him, all he could do was erupt in impotent fury and order Katherine to leave court for one of her dower houses, freeing him to take Anne with him on his summer hunting progress.
Leaving London helped to lift Anne’s depression. It was good to ride in the warm August sun along the pretty, leafy lanes and heat-baked roads of England, and see the verdant countryside rolling away to either side as they made their leisurely ways to Waltham, Tittenhanger, and Windsor. The air was purer away from the city, and it rejuvenated her. Henry was calmer now, determined to find a way forward. He was even speaking of bringing about the divorce by declaring his own absolute power. With this in mind, he had summoned Parliament for November. The seeds Anne had planted were finally flowering.