My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves Read Online Free Page A

had managed to marry Sybilla, the beauty of the family, to the Duke of Saxony. And what with her own recent widowhood and her son’s ineptitude for affairs, Anne was too useful to be spared. She was capable of running the royal household, and had been so much in her father’s company that she understood a good deal about estate management as well. It was she who had calmed the flustered servants and improvised a suitable banquet, leaving her mother free to concentrate on saying the right thing. Mary had come to depend on Anne. So she sent for Amelia, who was always complaining that Cleves was dull and whose pleasure-loving mind worked with the tinkling briskness of a musical box.
    “The gentlemen from England whom you met at supper last night tell me that Henry Tudor is looking for another wife,” she said, watchful for her youngest daughter’s reactions.
    Amelia’s hard, bright eyes almost stuck out of her head with suppressed excitement. “I wondered if that was it, when Dr. Wotton asked us so many personal questions, and Anne was so dumb. But why— here, Madam?”
    The Duchess had not nurtured her family on false pride. In loyalty to her husband’s religious principles she had even castigated her maternal satisfaction in their well-set up young bodies by dressing them more unbecomingly than she need. She felt it wiser to let her daughters know that they were only a last hope.
    “They went to Milan first,” she admitted. “But I suppose that after the way he divorced his Spanish wife and the—regrettable incident of Anne Boleyn—” She left the sentence unfinished and began looking over a pile of mended bed hangings which a sewing maid had left for her inspection.
    Amelia readily grasped both inference and warning. Henry would be no romantic lover and Anne Boleyn’s fate indicated clearly that it would be a risky business encouraging any others.
    But, as her mother had anticipated, she was prepared to sacrifice a good deal for the sake of a crown. “Well, at any rate, his last queen died a natural death!” she recalled optimistically. One couldn’t think seriously about blocks and executions in the peaceful security of her mother’s room in the old Swan Tower. She stood, watching the Duchess’s busy hands until their familiar, methodical movements had soothed away her momentary trepidation. “Are the two gentlemen going to stay long?” she asked, helping to refold the hangings.
    “Long enough for Master Holbein to paint you both.” In spite of her campaign against vanity, Mary of Cleves couldn’t prevent a certain amount of complacency from creeping into her voice as she surveyed Amelia’s slender neck rising from the heavy metal embroidery of her collar and the neatness of her feet visible beneath a full round skirt. “Besides the full-length portraits he will do two of his famous miniatures to send immediately to King Henry. So naturally I want you to look your best.”
    It would mean sitting still for hours. Amelia wished it could be with Dr. Wotton. The suave doctor of divinity had plied her with questions which had made her feel important, whereas the self-effacing artist—apart from acting as interpreter—had said nothing at all. He had only watched her and Anne in an appraising way which she found confusing.
    “And I must arrange for you to have some English les sons,” continued the preoccupied Duchess.
    Amelia looked up quickly. “Anne as well?”
    Mary met her glance with complete understanding. She was comfortably sure that Amelia was the right one to go. “Anne always seems to have so much to occupy her,” she said, preparing to start on her daily inspection of the kitchens with a comfortable leisureliness that disguised the astuteness of her mind. “But, of course, she can learn English if she likes.”
    Later in the day, in the seclusion of their bedroom, Amelia passed on to her sister some of the information she had gleaned.
    Anne had come in from one of her frequent visits