CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST CARD

HE knew well why Henry had omitted those words from her patent of title. She knew what he was more and more demanding of her and she, and she alone, knew how increasingly difficult denial was becoming.

Every time the wretched battle was fought out between them she surrendered something something of pride, something of resolution. Sometimes she half promised, under the strength of his insistence, sometimes she half named a day, but on the morrow stopping her ears with her pretty fingers- she would protest that he had dreamed, that he was in his cups, that she had ne'er breathed such a scandalous word! La, la, had he no notion of her virtue after all these years? But such subterfuges ceased to avail her and her continual refusals irritated the king to dangerous estrangement. His wild roisterings in disguise through the town grew more and more frequent and though his masquerades were cloaked and hidden from the girl, the report of them found their way to her and terrified her with keen forebodings.

His reproaches increased. And there came one day when he flamed to passionate anger and flung out of her presence, hurling back words of rage and fury. Never had he so turned upon her.

There was strange fear in the heart of the Marchioness of Pembroke as she leaned back against the cushions of

the casement.

She had come, she thought, trembling,

to the crossroads. . . . Her resources were almost at an

end.

"You

"Love me?" he had scoffed, his face livid. would not risk for my love what other women lavish on a groom of the chambers

you love?"

is it my crown alone

His anger, she knew, had been the anger of a thwarted will; it marked the stress of his desire for her, but it marked, too, the end of his patience with her cajoleries. His words had swept round her like a blustering wind; she had been shaken, not at his reproaches, but at the menace of the attitude they betrayed. He was infuriated, desperate . . . he was going to console himself. Well, to-morrow would see him back, repentant, but what of the morrow after that when it was all to do over again? . . . This was not the way she could afford to quarrel with him; Henry's pride and self-love were engaged as well as his passion and he was not a man who brooked denial long. For six years now he had taken it from her, but he was souring . . . if he grew indifferent . . . if she lost him! The girl shivered - then she threw the thought away as too absurd. Henry indifferent! . . . But they could not go on like this forever.

As she sat there alone in the room, her chin in her hand, her dark eyes heavy with anxieties, the thought that had slipped some time ago, shamefaced and sly, into the back of her mind edged more and more into the open. She had mockingly faced Wyatt with the hint of it at the ball last September - but that was a vastly different matter from acting upon it. But now what if she did? What if she played her last card - her precious card herself!

It was strangely, sadly significant of the callousness

of the life she knew, that the desperate concern of this woman now on the brink of self betrayal was with the political expediency of her course. Would it wreck or make her ambition? Feverishly she revolved the aspect of her affairs.

Cranmer was to be Archbishop of Canterbury in Warham's place - Warham who had turned so against them in his last days and had checked them so long. Cranmer was a devoted adherent of hers, yet should his loyalty to the royal wishes ever flag, there was a way, as she had hinted to Wyatt, to spur it. For Cranmer had contracted a secret marriage, as so many of the English parochial clergy did, and should he now, after accepting this high position, where the Romish rule of celibacy could be severely enforced, oppose the king, Henry could pretend to discover the marriage and pack him off to the Tower. So on all counts Cranmer could be depended upon.

And then there was Cromwell, that Cromwell who had flashed so comet-like above the other satellites at court. Cardinal Wolsey had first made the man who had been, until he entered the cardinal's service, a small London attorney and money lender, and upon the cardinal's disgrace, Cromwell had managed to make himself. He had interceded for his former master and made many friends for himself by the distribution of the cardinal's pensions; he had hastened to secure the patronage of the Duke of Norfolk and by shrewd and indefatigable efforts he had come into the royal notice. From Wolsey, Cromwell had learned the lesson of service well, and he applied every wit in his hard, bullet head to furthering the king's desires. And since Anne was the chief of these desires he concentrated upon serving her. Anne felt she might rely upon his intrepid support. "I'll unmake him an he hang back," she breathed to herself. So with these

men to aid her and Warham's opposition gone, the way was clearer in England than she had seen it in long years. If only Henry, smarting from the pope's defections, could be made to give the decision over to England! "He will," she pondered, "an I dare-"

Her face grew sharp and defiant. Her mouth fixed and seemed to tighten, her eyes stared out belligerently on the empty room. "I dare not," she whispered to herself, and then in a strangled voice, “I dare!"

She grew aware at last that her clasped hands were clutching each other so tightly that the rings were cutting into the flesh. She drew off the ring from the sharpest cut. It was one of Henry's earliest gifts to her, a plain gold band with, " Thy virtue is thy honor," graved within it. What a man for pious sentiments, she thought mockingly, her lips curling in disdain. Her virtue - God alone knew how she had hugged that comfort to her smarting pride against the secret sneers she divined about her. Yet now. . . . The ring slipped from her fingers and rolled out across the floor. A bit of rush blocked it and it toppled and dropped through an open knot hole. The augury seemed to her complete. She laughed — and then something, like a hand upon her throat, seemed to strangle the laughter at its source and she quivered back among the cushions, her hands hiding her face like some poor shamed thing.

That year the Christmas revels were gayer than ever and King Henry was scarce an instant to be parted from his marchioness.

The dark dawn of the twenty-fifth of January saw a little group of people slipping into an unfrequented attic in the west turret of Whitehall. They were the

king's most confidential attendants, two ladies from the suite of the Marchioness of Pembroke, and an excited old dowager duchess trembling with cold and elation. An Augustinian friar stood by the altar and before him knelt the king of England and a slender girl whose dark hair fell in an obscuring shower about her. Against its ebony her face was the pallor of snow, but her eyes were glowing with hot ecstasy. The hand that Henry clasped was cold but it did not tremble, and she repeated the vows with silvery distinctness. . . . The friar pronounced them man and wife.

As Anne rose the blood rushed into her face; it glowed rosier and rosier like the dawn and her eyes were luminous as she flung a look about that hushed and awestruck gathering as glancing as the light. "At last!" her soul was whispering within her.

With many urgent whispers and reiterated cautions the company stole out as secretly as it had entered to meet again at breakfast with as excellent an air of unconsciousness as could be assumed.

"Let but a breath of this out," warned the Earl of Wiltshire to his reckless son, now the Viscount Rochford," and we'll have the devil on us! All depends upon Cranmer being made archbishop and the pope hath not yet ratified that. And let him but suspect that Cranmer is a king's man and that Henry stands in urgent need of his archbishop's aid and there will be no ratifying."

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Meanwhile," replied the young Viscount Rochford with a grin," the nuncio from the pope is here endeavoring to have Henry arrange to submit to the authority of the Holy See! He hath not an inkling of the matter. Oh, for once England hath pulled the wool over papal eyes. We have scored in truth.”