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.""And for me, Master Otstargi? What does common sense suggest for me?" Common sense, occultvision, Wriothesley would take any straw of hope, it seemed.Pasgen smiled.His purpose had been accomplished.Sir Thomas Wriothesley was his creature again andwould grow more dependent when accusations were leveled against him as Pasgen would see that theywere.Yes, Wriothesley would do as he was bid, and through his hands would flow Elizabeth's doom.Itwould be easy to arrange.Sooner or later the secretary of the king was likely to visit the king's daughter.It would be normal for Sir Thomas to bring a gift to Lady Elizabeth a book, perhaps, in an elaboratebinding with inset semiprecious stones.Something no young woman could resist touching, handling."Common sense suggests that you take the advice you gave to Cromwell.While others bend their effortsto exposing and destroying Cromwell, do you visit and carefully sound out Queen Anne." This, of course,was so logical that it was doubtful anyone would think of it."Learn what will satisfy her, remembering thatthe king will not be willing for her to return to her brother where she might be free to say too much ormake another marriage."Wriothesley nodded eagerly."I am very willing to take your advice, but I am not sure that Queen Annewill speak openly to me.""If you need a woman's touch, let me recommend to you a friend of the Lady Mary, a MistressRosamund Scot." If Rhoslyn could not persuade the woman with sense, she could do so by magic, and itwould scarcely violate the High King's admonitions."I am sure, being partial to the Catholic way, thatMistress Scot will present your arguments convincingly."Although Wriothesley did have a meeting with Mistress Scot and she, through a note from Lady Mary,gained an audience and spoke to Queen Anne, she hardly needed to have bothered.Raised in the strictand penurious court of her brother of Cleves, Anne had blossomed at least in matters of dress andenjoyment of luxury at the lavish court of Henry VIII.Rhoslyn found that Aleneil, as Lady Alana, aconsummate authority on dress, was before her and already had Anne's close confidence.And what theLady Alana had advised was precisely what Pasgen wanted.Lady Alana had laid a good groundwork, confiding to Anne the king's interest in Catherine Howard.Restraining her shudders, Anne said, in her broken English, what amounted to "better she than I." ButLady Alana had passed a warning on along with the information a warning that Anne had not needed,as it turned out, for the moment she heard about the king's new paramour, her hands had flown to herneck in an unconscious gesture of fear.The fear, of course, that it would be her neck that would next feelthe edge of a blade.Thus, when the duke of Norfolk presented King Henry's case to her, Anne hardly resisted at all; indeed,she did little more than to chaffer for the best possible bargain she could extract from the king.She wasno fool, and understood when Cromwell fell that whatever political use she had had was over.As soonas Anne was certain that it was a divorce Henry wanted, not her head and the king assured her of thathimself she became very cooperative.She made no defense against Cromwell's assertion in a paper written from his prison that she had a previous contract to marry.On those grounds, the lords and commons of parliament addressed the kingon the subject of his marriage on 6 July.Henry agreed to issue a commission to convocation to try thematter.On 9 July the convocation pronounced the marriage invalid, on the grounds of a possibleprecontract and on a lack of inward consent for the bridegroom.Pasgen was hardly surprised.What the king wanted these days, the king got.And the Lady Anne wasnot doing badly out of the situation, either.She was shrewd, that German, from a long line of shrewdbargainers, and Pasgen had the odd feeling that of the two of them, it was Anne who would be thehappiest with what she got.Rhoslyn reported to Pasgen that though Anne went meekly off to Richmond, feigning distress over herhusband's repudiation, among her own household she was radiant with smiles.A dutiful sister, she hadobeyed her brother and would have endured the attentions of the gross and ageing monarch to whom shehad been married.However, she was delighted with the bargain she had been offered.She would have ahouse and lands, four thousand pounds a year to spend as she pleased, and precedence at court overevery lady except the wife and daughters of the king.And she did not have to return to her brother'sSpartan and cheese-paring court.She had enough and more than enough to be supported in all of theluxury and pleasure that she had become accustomed to.Henry was equally delighted with his former wife's cheerful complaisance, Rhoslyn told Pasgen, who wasnot terribly interested, but listened because he felt he had to be aware of what was going on in Henry'scourt.Anne's quick acceptance of the divorce, her quiet removal to a comfortable retirement, permittedHenry to marry Catherine Howard eighteen to his forty-nine on 28 July 1540, the same day thatCromwell was executed.Pasgen made a disgusted noise and Rhoslyn nodded.It was not the first time Henry had celebratedsomeone's death with a new wedding.Then she giggled and commented that although Henry seemed tobe in seventh heaven with his "rose without a thorn" the thorns would be pricking him soon enough.Thegirl was as light-minded as an air spirit, Rhoslyn said, and as promiscuous as a nymph.Rhoslyn hadapparently taken no thought to what that might mean later.At that comment, Pasgen sat up straighter, for the first thing that sprang into his mind was the fate ofAnne Boleyn.If Catherine Howard was that promiscuous if charges of adultery were real this time."Keep Mary away from her," he said."We don't want Lady Mary smeared with Catherine's dirt whenHenry is made aware of it, which I will make sure will not take long.Those favorable to the Reformreligion will want to be rid of a wife who favors the Catholic rite.""Simple enough." Rhoslyn shrugged."Mary is already unhappy
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