At this offer Anne threw back her head and fairly screamed with laughter.
‘It is no jesting matter, girl!’ he snarled. ‘Look at those diamonds!’ He snatched up Henry’s neglected gift and shook the bracelets in her face. ‘Just look at their clarity, their sparkle; clearly these are diamonds of the first water!’
Mary, her mother, and I obligingly clustered round and oohed and ahhed in admiration at the King’s florid and heavy-jowled countenance ringed in twinkling diamonds.
‘Oh, Father.’ Anne sighed as, stretching languorously, she got to her feet. ‘It is a pity our good King Henry hasn’t the Second Edward’s tastes, since you are so much more appreciative of his favors than I am!’ And with those words she swept grandly from the room, leaving her father speechless and boiling with rage, and her mother wringing her hands and repeating endlessly, ‘Oh dear!’ I myself maintained an air of dignified silence, while my husband, it grieves me much to say, rolled on the floor in gleeful laughter, and a blank-faced and bewildered Mary besought an explanation regarding Anne’s reference to the tastes of King Edward the Second.
But the Boleyns needn’t have worried. Anne knew how and when to play her cards. Upon New Year’s Day 1527 she decided the time had come to answer all the King’s letters.
But she did not take up her pen to write to Henry, but to the goldsmith instead, for it was he who would fashion her answer. A brooch, but not just any brooch. Exquisitely wrought of gleaming gold, a little lady with long black enameled hair, dressed in a gown of scarlet enamel spangled with seed pearls and diamond chips, sat in a boat christened Love, being rocked upon a tempest-tossed sapphire sea, with her hands clasped and upraised as if to implore ‘Have mercy upon me!’
So there could be no doubt as to her meaning, when she knelt at the King’s feet to present her gift, at a private audience where no one but her family were present, Anne wore a pearl- and diamond-spangled scarlet gown with her long black hair unbound.
A smile of pure delight spread across King Henry’s face as he gazed first at Anne, then down at the brooch upon its bed of tufted black velvet, then back at Anne again. But when he reached for her, Anne swiftly stepped back.
‘If you make me Queen of England I shall brave the storm that is your love and give you sons!’ she announced; then, after bobbing the briefest of curtsies, she turned her back, in direct violation of royal etiquette, and walked out of the presence chamber.
Anne immediately resumed her old ways, going back and forth to Hever, ignoring the enamored King’s increasingly ardent love letters, and dismissing the messenger with ‘No answer.’
Anne had played her card. Now it was time for Henry to make his move.
A secret court was convened, presided over by Cardinal Wolsey, with a panel of bishops to weigh the evidence and render a verdict.
Henry presented himself, slump-shouldered and morose, as a man whose conscience was sorely troubled by the nagging thought that he, by taking his dead brother’s wife, had unwittingly sinned against God. Queen Catherine, he solemnly avowed, was a fine woman and he would like nothing better than to hear that all was well and that she could remain at his side as his wife always, but the qualms that assailed his conscience were just too great to be ignored. Thus, he looked to them, the cardinals and bishops of England, to free him from this torment. It was a grand performance. Only those in Anne’s inner circle knew that she was the cause of it all, this intricate, tangled web of theological and legal quibbling that would soon rise from a whisper to a scream. Even Wolsey never suspected that it was Anne Boleyn Henry aimed to wed; he was led to believe it was a French princess Henry coveted so that he might have legitimate male heirs and a dynastic alliance all in one stroke. Queen Catherine was also kept unawares until the wily Spanish Ambassador whispered the truth in her ear. But by then Henry had lost his round.
After three days of heated debate, the court concluded that the marriage was sound, since a papal dispensation had been issued beforehand. Henry was assured that his conscience could rest in peace.
But Henry refused to accept the verdict, and Wolsey bore the brunt of his displeasure. Wolsey, that upstart son of an Ipswich butcher, who used the Church as a stepping stone to power and cared more for worldly goods than the word of God, had promised Henry the verdict he desired.
But then failed to deliver.
To make matters worse, now Queen Catherine had been dealt into the game, and she had a very powerful card to play. Her nephew Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, would never sit passively by and let his aunt be humiliated and cast aside.
Never for a moment would Catherine’s convictions waver. She was Henry’s lawful wife and Queen of this realm, and such she would remain until her dying day. Nor would she oblige the King by slinking away to a nunnery. Though her faith was strong, and she was without a doubt devout, she had no vocation; she would not, like some she could name, use the Church as a means to achieve an end. She loved her husband dearly and was sorry to court his displeasure by disobeying him, but God and her conscience must come first.
At that time the situation in Rome was dire. The Holy City had been sacked; mercenary soldiers in the Emperor’s service ran amok, raping and pillaging; the streets ran red with the blood of the slain; and the air was filled with smoke, flies, and the cries of the dying. Pope Clement himself was a prisoner, and he was not about to risk the Emperor’s further wrath by siding with Henry.
It should all have ended there, but Henry was not about to let his desires be thwarted. Come what may, he would have Anne Boleyn.
Around this time Tom Wyatt, dallying with Anne and their friends in the palace gardens, playfully snatched a little bejeweled tablet that dangled from a delicate gold chain Anne wore about her waist, claiming it was high time she gave him a love token. He pressed it to his lips, then, laughing, held it high, beyond her reach, as she leapt and grasped for it, once even daring to duck his head and swiftly steal a kiss.
‘Keep it if you like.’ Anne shrugged. ‘It is but a little thing, and of no great consequence. And while that bauble may be beyond my reach, greater jewels than that are within my grasp.’ And upon her right hand she proudly displayed an enormous emerald. ‘The stone of constancy, His Majesty says, and thereby a most fitting symbol of his love for me.’
She did not confide that in exchange for this great, gaudy, glittering green ring, King Henry had snatched from her finger a dainty ruby heart set in lacy gold filigree. ‘I shall take this heart until you vouchsafe me your own,’ he said as he forced it onto his little finger, the only one it would fit upon.
A few days later the King and his gentlemen gathered for a match upon the bowling green while Anne and a bevy of ladies assembled to watch and cheer them on.
The King and Tom Wyatt were both expert players, and a moment arose when it was uncertain whose bowl had rolled nearest the jack; it was so close, sight alone could not settle the matter.
‘Wyatt, I tell you it is mine!’ Henry’s voice boomed as he pointed to the smooth, round wooden bowl lying in the grass, seemingly just a hand’s span from the upright white jack. As he pointed he waggled his little finger, making sure Anne’s ruby heart caught Wyatt’s eye.
With a cocky smile, Wyatt withdrew Anne’s jeweled tablet from inside his doublet.
‘If Your Majesty will give me leave,’ he said, extending the golden chain, ‘I shall measure it with this, and hope that it shall be mine.’ And boldly he kissed the jeweled tablet.
Already flushed from the heat of his heavy brocade and silken garments and a vigorous game on a warm day, Henry’s face flamed scarlet.