Henry had the verdicts of the universities read out in Parliament and published. Inevitably there was an outcry.
“The most vocal in opposition seem to be women, who are more willful than wise or learned,” Cromwell reported. “They accuse your Grace of having corrupted the learned doctors. It would be wise to let the clamor settle down before proceeding further.”
“My book should still their tongues,” Henry declared. A Glass of the Truth was about to be published. “Or we might have to find better ways of doing it.”
The book was greeted largely with derision, and Anne had never been so unpopular. The rumors surrounding the Rouse affair had not been forgotten. People hissed “Murderess!” when she went out in public.
Anne’s misery deepened. She had thought that once the universities had spoken, Henry would instruct the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare his marriage invalid, and they would be wed. But Henry was still, even now, casting about for a more conventional means of bringing that to pass. At present, he was doing his best to provoke Katherine into giving him grounds for a divorce by deserting him. When the Princess Mary fell ill and Katherine was desperate to see her, he told her she might go to her if she wanted, and also stop there. But Katherine, no fool, decided to stay at court. She told him she would not leave him for her daughter or anyone else in the world. Oh, she was clever!
Henry tried a different strategy. When a letter from the Vatican informed him that his case could be tried only in Rome and nowhere else, he shouted that he would never consent. “And I care not a fig for Clement’s excommunications!” he stormed, stumping off to confront Katherine, determined to force her to withdraw her appeal to the Pope.
“I told you she would refuse,” Anne said wearily, when he returned in a foul temper.
“She will rue it,” Henry replied. “I am sending a deputation from the Privy Council to tell her to be sensible.”
But Katherine refused to be sensible. She insisted that she would abide by no decision save that of Rome. Anne wanted to shake the infuriating woman.
“This cannot go on!” she flared. “Always she defies you.”
“I agree,” Henry said. “But the Emperor is powerful. Chapuys watches all that I do. I must not provoke war.”
“The Emperor is busy with fighting the Turks in the east,” Anne pointed out. “He has little leisure to make war on England.”
“I know that, but be sure he takes a close interest in what happens here. And I do wonder what he would do if Katherine asked him to intervene. Remember, his domains are vast. Think of the armies he could raise. But you are right, darling—this situation cannot continue.”
—
That summer, they divided their time between Windsor and Hampton Court, riding out to the chase every day, fishing in the Thames, and enjoying the good weather. Katherine and Mary came with them to Windsor, but they kept to the Queen’s apartments, to Anne’s relief. After Katherine had called her a shameless creature in front of the whole court before they left Greenwich, she did not trust herself to be civil.
At the end of June, Henry turned forty. Something of the vigor of youth still clung to him, even if he was broader in person these days and his hair was receding under his bonnet. Maturity suited him. Tall, elegant, muscular, and graceful, he yet drew all eyes. Some considered him a perfect model of masculine beauty, but not Anne. She was not dazzled by his majesty—she had long been familiar with the man beneath.
Turning forty made Henry conscious of time flying by. At his age, a man should have a son old enough to wield a sword in battle. He often spoke of his desire to go on a new Crusade against the Turks, but dared not commit himself until the succession was assured. His desire for a male heir was a constant theme—so much depended on it that Anne began to fear it might be too late for her to bear children. She was thirty now, old to be contemplating motherhood for the first time. Another thing to fret about!
“I’ve had enough,” Henry murmured one evening in July, as he led Anne into the presence chamber at Windsor and saw Katherine already seated there. “I’m separating from her for good.”
As she went through the farce of curtseying to the Queen and moved to her place farther down the high table, Anne dismissed Henry’s words as more bluster, thinking there was no point in rejoicing. But he proved her wrong.
“Her obduracy is making a mockery of my scruples, and thanks to her my Great Matter is now talked about through all Christendom,” he grumbled later. “She has brought shame and dishonor on me. By God, I will not endure her defiance any longer. When we move to Woodstock two days hence, I’m leaving her behind.”
“You really are leaving her for good?” Anne could not quite believe it.
“Yes, darling. I should have done it long ago.”
At last! At last!
“You will tell her beforehand?”
Henry shook his head. “I can’t face another confrontation. When we’ve gone, I’ll send a messenger to say it is my pleasure that she vacate the castle within a month and go to a house of her own choosing. She will understand.”
Yes, she would—but Anne could not help thinking that this was a rather cowardly way of handling the matter. If she had been Henry, she’d have had a few choice words to say! But then he always had been frightened of Katherine and her mighty relations.
—
Early morning, on a beautiful summer’s day, and they were riding away from Windsor, leaving Katherine behind and unaware of the momentous step that Henry had taken.
Two days later, Henry’s messenger stood nervously before him and recounted how, informed that the King had left her, the Queen had bidden him to convey a message of farewell. The man cleared his throat. “Your Grace, she said, ‘Go where I may, I remain his wife, and for him I will pray.’?”
Henry was furious. “Go back. Tell the Queen I do not want any of her good-byes! She has caused me no end of trouble by her obstinacy. She depends, I know, upon the Emperor, but she will find God Almighty more powerful still. Let her stop it and mind her own business. I want no more of her messages.” The messenger departed, visibly quaking.
But the thing had been done, and in Anne optimism burgeoned. With Katherine out of the way—and a blessed relief that was—it was time to establish a queenly household. She asked Edward Foxe to be her almoner, and appointed other officers. Henry was still lavishing gifts on her—often the genial Sir William Brereton, a gentleman of his Privy Chamber, still handsome in his fifties, would be at her door with some new offering—and now visiting ambassadors always brought presents too. The world was aware that in three or four months she could be queen.
—
“You had best watch your step, niece,” Uncle Norfolk grumbled, sitting down next to Anne as she watched a game of tennis. “You grow too arrogant.”