Free Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn by Margaret Campbell Barnes

encouraged me to be friends with him, both of you. And you said just now that he is—”
    “He is not the heir to an earldom,” concluded Sir Thomas quietly. “But I assure you I have always kept him in mind as a reserve , shall we say?”
    Anne watched him smooth out the sleeve of his best doublet which her despairing fingers had crumpled. For the first time she almost hated him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
    Because the King had invited her, and because her father wished it, Anne resumed her position in Queen Katherine’s household. Court life no longer dazzled or intimidated her. Experience abroad and careful cultivation of her talents made personal success almost too easy. The spur of ambition had gone. Why strive for advancement when life as a maid-of-honour was but a temporary state, and all the hours of every day led to the dull future of undesired matrimony?
    She began to spend her talents thriftlessly on present pleasures, seeking popularity among her equals, even neglecting her duties. Living for the moment, and making the most of the months that were left. The precious months while she was still Anne Boleyn, the attractive unmarried daughter of the Ambassador to France. Only her closest friends guessed at those spells of solitary depression hidden between her bursts of reckless gaiety.
    “If only they would have let you marry my brother, we could have gone on being together always—you and Thomas and George and I,” sighed Margaret Wyatt, whose presence at Court was Anne’s constant solace.
    Margaret took it for granted that her friend was as brokenhearted over Thomas as she herself was because George had been betrothed to Jane Rochford. But in her heart Anne knew that she had never really wanted to marry him. That she had only grasped belatedly at the comfort of his charm and loyalty in the hope that it might save her from the boorishness of James Butler.
    She knew that arrangements were being made for her forthcoming marriage, and that tedious litigation would probably insure the earldom to some unborn son of hers and James’. She tried to shut out the thought of him from her mind. Yet there were times when she was obliged to face it. Sitting at her embroidery, afraid to make a sound, while the ailing Queen dozed; and at night, lying awake after the rushlight had flickered out, she would imagine James’ harsh face, close up, making lusty inarticulate love to her, demanding his conjugal rights. She would have to live in an isolated Irish manor where nobody cared two pins whether she could dance or sing, so long as she could renew the family tapestries and breed. In an orgy of self-pity, Anne pictured herself down a vista of years. Always cumbersome with pregnancy, like Katherine. Growing rustic in mind and less lissom of limb, until all that strange sweet power she had over men was wiped out, unfulfilled.
    With a man one loved, she supposed, it would be different. The Duchess of Suffolk was delighted with her new baby daughter; and Margaret Wyatt would give her pretty eyes for a chance to produce a small replica of George. But Anne did not want children. The maternal urges of most women were not in her. She knew herself to be capable of lavish giving in some grande affaire ; but her nature was not made for the endless, self-effacing sacrifices of motherhood. She often wondered if this were a sin in her, but shrunk from confessing it.
    Willingly, out of gratitude, she would have given Wyatt children. But that employment of her better nature was denied her. And never had she appreciated him more than in his dignified acceptance of bitter disappointment. Although he saw her frequently in the performance of their several duties, he strove not to pester her with protestations which she was no longer free to accept, yet never ceased to make her feel precious with proofs of his constant regard.
    But it was George who understood her best. He knew she had not half the virtues with which Wyatt’s adoration endowed her. And