Free The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell

rite on a sunny April day? ‘Tis my friend Henry there, in dreary council rooms who broods on grave and worldly matters now, and every day grows sadder still.”
    In truth I’d noticed the King’s listless mood, so different from his usual rough gaiety, but made little of it.
    “What ails him then?”
    “Do you really wish to know?” and looked at me peculiarly.
    “Yes, I do.”
    “It’s not the kind of gossip ladies care to hear.” By now the man was teasing me.
    “Do tell me, Thomas, or I’ll box your ears!”
    “Well then,” he said and settled back against the tree, “do you remember, or were you even born when Henry took the throne? How he shone then, like a star. The young King who, eager as a lion for war, invaded France in glittering armor, driving knights who fled from fields at the Battle of the Spurs. What glorious feats of soldiering! He captured towns, then treated enemies with such good grace he earned the name Great Harry. O, Anne, he was marvellous, and thought he would continue thus and one day conquer all of France. His Great Enterprise — so he called it — proceeded with, he hoped, the help of Queen Katherine’s nephew, Henry’s staunchest friend and ally.”
    “You mean the Emperor Charles of Spain,” I said. “The Queen is very fond of him.”
    “And he has used her in years past like an ambassador between the two. But now you see, Charles has armies larger than our Henry ever dreamed, and invaded France himself. King Francis is his prisoner.”
    “So I’ve heard. But what does it mean to Henry?”
    “The Emperor no longer wants a part of Henry’s Great Enterprise. He has plans to conquer all the world alone. And this after Henry’d given half a million crowns to Charles for his adventures.”
    “So he is betrayed.”
    “Yes, but there is more. Henry will not give up his dream of conquest, and therefore let Cardinal Wolsey set a tax on all his subjects. The Amicable Grant he calls it, but the people call it injustice, and rebel. Tax collectors in the country — your father’s one — are met with loud resistance, sometimes force. The rabble fall upon commissioners and will not pay for Henry’s war, but worse, heap scorn upon the King and Cardinal Wolsey. So coupled with a traitorous ally, Henry faces open rebellion amongst the folk who loved and cheered him most.”
    “I see why he is troubled, and Katherine also. She’s torn between beloved kin and husband now.”
    “But Anne, Katherine is the problem, too. In taverns and in garrisons rumors abound that King Henry’s marriage is accursed. He has no sons, Princess Mary is his only heir, and there are mutterings that incest is the cause.”
    “Incest?!” I spoke the word so loud that workmen stopped and stared at us. I moved closer to his ear. “Incest? How do you mean?”
    “Katherine — you must know this — was married first to Henry’s brother Arthur. But he was weak and died ere the marriage was consummated, so said the Queen, and she was believed by all. Since the match with Spain was so important, and because the Princess Katherine then was fair and sweet, Henry wed her happily. All was well for many years, but now with Katherine past the time for bearing babes and Henry sonless, talk’s begun. Is God punishing him with a marriage barren of sons because he’d taken his brother’s widow as a wife?”
    “’Tis a cruel thought,” said I, thinking of the great love Katherine bore the King.
    “You know, Anne, that Henry is conversant with the Scripture and he has found there in Leviticus a plain answer to his tragedy. It says that if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is impure, he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness and they shall be childless. Henry’s begun to feel this tainted union will come to be his own undoing.”
    I was breathless. All that Wyatt said was finding place inside my head like pegs in perfect holes. I thanked him, saying that no one ever had spoke so plain and clear to