Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn Read Online Free Page A

at assurance. But just inside the door she paused, the book pressed to her bosom and the gaily be-ribboned lute dangling against her skirt.
    Mary Tudor sat alone in the dusk. She had laid aside her heavy, gold beaded cap. Her chair was set before the window as if she had been watching the sunset, and the last streak of its stormy glory seemed caught in the curly bronze mass of her hair.
    “Will your Grace have the candles lit?” asked Anne timidly.
    Mary did not move. “No, child,” she said listlessly. It was her last night in England.
    Anne advanced uncertainly and laid the leather-bound book on a table. Deftly, the slender fingers of her right hand found the place. “Will your Grace have me finish the ‘Roman de la Rose’?” she suggested.
    “Not tonight, after all, I think.”
    It was then that Anne saw the tears on her mistress’ cheek. She stood very still, trying to assimilate a depth of grief she had never experienced. Humbly, she recalled how it had felt, parting from Jocunda; but this was something more. And her young heart hurt with sudden generosity beneath the tightness of her bodice.
    “You had better have someone to pack your trunks, Anne Boleyn. The wind abates, though it still looks very rough.” Mary turned her head and smiled bleakly, without trying to hide her tears. “Shall you be sick, do you think?”
    “I have never had occasion to know, Madame,” stammered Anne. Queen Katherine of Aragon would never have asked one of her younger women so homely a question. Nor let them see her weep.
    Anne closed the French book. She had ceased to be the clever new maid-of-honour, dramatizing herself. By thinking of someone else, she was bringing the background of her life into reality. “May I play to you, Madame?” she ventured presently. Above everything, music was the thing these half-Welsh Tudors loved, and it was the one kind of consolation which she, in her insignificance, could offer.
    “Play that thing the King composed about ‘Adieu, mine own lady’,” Mary bade her.
    Anne was glad that Thomas Wyatt had taught her the song at Hever. She needed neither lights nor score. Indeed, she was happier thus, because of her deformed finger. She took the lute into sensitive hands and played, sometimes softly singing the words. In the informality of the hour self-consciousness fell from her, so that a new tenderness informed her tutored skill. She realized that her mistress was bidding a wordless farewell not only to a beloved brother and to England, but to all her dreams. For her there could be no splendid lover, only a grotesque travesty. She went on playing softly until approaching footsteps intruded on their shared mood. Footsteps, voices, the tail-end of one of George’s audacious jests, and then a deep, boisterous laugh. The King’s laugh.
    Mary roused herself instantly and stood up, dabbing at her eyes with a gay silk handkerchief, and motioning to her inexperienced maid-of-honour to withdraw a little.
    Anne laid aside her lute and went to stand dutifully in attendance near the door, as she supposed Jane Dacre or even the Greys would have done. She saw the Princess reach for her headdress and wondered if she should have helped her put it on. But before anything could be done about it, the door swung open and the room was stabbed with a pathway of light, warm, golden light from upheld torches, momentarily illuminating a group of courtiers waiting outside. And through the pathway of light came Henry Tudor.
    “What, all in the dark!” he exclaimed, in his hearty way.
    Charles Brandon of Suffolk followed him, and a brace of servants sidled hurriedly past them to light some of the candles on the table and poke the fire to a blaze. They did not stop to set tapers to the wall sconces, and when they were gone and the door was shut again the centre of the room was lighted like a stage.
    Henry moved with a quick, light tread surprising in one so powerfully built. His hugely puffed sleeve brushed