My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves Read Online Free

Henry. “The two parties on at me all the time. And the brides only ciphers for the men’s separate ambitions. Religious faction wrapped up in romance!”
    “Like the carvings I’m designing for Hampton, of the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown,” laughed Holbein.
    Henry stretched himself, looking down appreciatively at the great muscles that still swelled on either forearm. “Ah, well, now we can get out,” he yawned, relaxing from a public character to a private individual. “Have they brought round the horses, Tom?”
    “They’re in the courtyard, Sir.”
    “Then we’ll get going. I wonder now if Mary would like to come with us? If she’s finished her everlasting devotions!” He was all brimming over with kindness now, and it pleased him to know how his proud elder daughter, now a grown woman, adored her half-brother. He stepped back to the window to see if there was any sign of her, but the terrace was deserted save for the slim, auburn-haired girl who had laughed so deliciously. Having nothing in particular to do, she was putting the shuttle cocks back in their box.
    “Who is that girl?” he asked idly, noting the untamed grace of her most ordinary movements.
    Culpepper, helping him into his riding coat, craned over the royal shoulder to get a glimpse of her. “The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk has only just brought her to court,” he answered evasively.
    “A poor relation of sorts, so probably her name is Howard,” vouchsafed the departing Chancellor, gathering up his papers and his unbecoming little hat. “An undisciplined wench, anyhow,” he added, remembering how she had distracted the King in the middle of a solemn council meeting.
    “I should like to paint her as Persephone,” murmured Holbein.
    The Archbishop joined them at the window. “Scarcely out of the schoolroom, I should imagine,” he remarked indulgently. With an apprehensive side glance at the sensual Tudor whose whims he had cause to know so well, he did his best to defend the girl by placing her definitely in the category of the very young and unimportant.
    “Young Tom here should be able to tell us her Christian name. I saw them dancing together last night.”
    This time the good-looking gentleman-in-waiting could not very well withhold the information.
    “It is Katherine, milord—and she’s a cousin of mine,” he mumbled, reddening. And he, too, glanced at the King.
    But Henry had turned from the window, cheerfully humming one of his own songs.
    “Katherine Howard,” he repeated absently, gathering up gloves and whip from a page. “A charming name!”
    2
    WHEN DR. WOTTON AND Hans Holbein arrived from Milan a flurry of wild conjecture stirred the quiet duchy of Cleves. Within the walled town itself people gathered in excited groups about the Rathaus square or stood gazing up at the castle with as much curiosity as though they had never seen its famous Swan Tower and comfortable pepper-pot turrets before.
    Each house, with a pulley sticking out like a sharp beak from the granary in its high-peaked gable, was sure to hold someone who worked in the ducal household or stables and could bring home first-hand news of the bustle that was going on up there. There were important foreign guests, they said. And Cleves could scarcely credit her own importance when the Burgomaster himself was sent for and told to hang out all the civic banners because two envoys had come from Henry the Eighth of England.
    As soon as the dowager Duchess was sure that their interest in her impecunious family was really matrimonial she coached her son in diplomacy and told her two unmarried daughters to put on their best clothes. She realized, of course, that even their best clothes would probably seem dowdy to the messengers of a monarch who had out shone the French on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. But Amelia could be depended on to look sprightly in anything, and Anne was no raving beauty, anyhow. Although her daughters were dowerless she