The Boleyn Bride Read online

  And yes, oh yes, honesty behooves me to confess, I gloried in cuckolding my parvenu spouse, that shopkeeper’s grandson, so eager to shed his mercantile origins, with an actual shopkeeper, an artisan whose large, powerful hands were work-roughened and coarse from making play pretties for little children, yet capable of the most infinite tenderness when they caressed me—unless I was in a mood for roughness, to be bruised by his kisses and the grasp of those powerful hands around my slender wrists, or on my limbs as he raised them to his shoulders just before plunging into me, doubling me up, until I didn’t know if it was breathlessness or pleasure that made me feel so gloriously giddy and faint, as though my head might fall off the edge of the bed and roll away like a child’s toy ball. What fun we had! It was the best bed sport ever (and I have had experience enough to make that claim with some authority).

  Our affair began shortly after I took up residence at court, when, while spending an idle afternoon shopping in London, I suddenly turned onto the street where his shop had been. It was still there! How my heart raced. But was he still there? Shops are bought and sold, or inherited, and change hands all the time. There was only one way to find out.

  Boldly, I squared my shoulders, thrust my chin haughty high, and barged brazenly through the door. And there he was! All dressed in rusty, rumpled black, just as I remembered him, leaning on the counter, brow puckered in concentration beneath a wing of dark hair, intent on some bit of carving, a face taking shape beneath the blade of his knife. Was it possible? He seemed not to have changed at all! Time is so much kinder to men! I silently pouted, cursing the marks childbearing had left upon my beautiful body. He was just as I remembered him. Exactly like the picture I had carried in my heart all these years.

  I walked right up to him, my head held high and proud, confident as a queen, my blue velvet skirts swishing over the rough wooden floor.

  “Whatever became of the doll you promised me?” I demanded as though mere weeks instead of several years had passed since I had last been inside his shop. “Do you always take this many years to fulfill your commissions? If so, it is a wonder that you are still in business, Master Jouet!”

  “A moment, my lady,” he said softly with a shy smile and bowed and withdrew into the back room.

  He emerged cradling a bundle of celestial blue silk that he sat carefully upon the counter. Slowly, he unwrapped it, revealing the most elegant and exquisite doll I had ever seen—it was me! It was an exact likeness of myself at sixteen, with a face of patrician perfection and beautiful hands of carved and painted alabaster, a weighty cascade of night-black hair crowned with a chaplet of sapphire blue glass beads, gold lovers’ knots, and white pearls, and a gown of sumptuous sapphire blue velvet bordered with black velvet upon which rows of gold braid lovers’ knots were stitched. The full skirt fell gracefully over layered silk petticoats, and this miniature me was daintily shod in black velvet slippers with gold braid lovers’ knots on the toes and deep blue stockings with a gold lovers’ knot embroidered over each ankle. She even wore a strand of pearls with a sapphire shaped like a vivid blue tear dangling in the hollow between her alabaster breasts and a gold lovers’ knot brooch set with pearls.

  He would have placed her in my arms, like a midwife proudly presenting a newborn to her mother, but I moved faster. I grasped the soft, well-worn collar of his black doublet and kissed him with a furious hunger as I pulled him after me into the back room and we toppled together onto the disarrayed motley-colored quilt that covered his humble bed. We shed our clothes, I with wild abandon, and he shyly and maddeningly slowly at first until I threatened to rip the buttons and ties and tear the cloth that kept his flesh from me away with my teeth if he didn’t strip himself bare for me and quickly. I was ravenous for him! I pushed him onto his back, ignoring and kissing away the self-deprecating jest he made about his soft, fish-belly white body looking like a beached whale.

  “You look delicious!” I said. “Your body is as warm, soft, and comforting as fresh baked bread.” I straddled him like a wishbone, my thighs straining, feeling poised to snap but gloriously glad of it, because my wish was already coming true. He loved me hard and fast, rough and then exquisitely, achingly tender, and when he paused uncertainly and asked me if he should withdraw without spending his seed, I grabbed his hair in two hard handfuls and yanked him back down to me and held him tight until he cried out my name—Elizabeth!—in a passion-choked whisper.

  Afterward, we lay together and slept, our lust spent. The stars were poised to come out when at last I stood, letting him lace me back into my corset and gown. I was never less eager to say the word farewell or to return to the court I had spent years yearning to be at, when he kissed me tenderly and stepped out of his shop to hail a coach to take me back to my husband and my life as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. That day brought new meaning to those three words—lady-in-waiting—for this lady would be most impatiently awaiting the next time we could be together, I told him, squeezing his hand as he helped me into the carriage.

  One day shortly after that first delicious afternoon, I took my children to visit his shop during one of their rare and infrequent visits to London. I hadn’t planned to; it was one of those sudden impulses I was prey to. “The only thing certain about Elizabeth Boleyn is uncertain,” those who knew me often said.

  Mary was then about seven, if I remember rightly—dates and figures have never been my strong point—and George and Anne were six and five.

  My golden girl, with her pink cheeks, rosebud mouth, amber eyes, and vibrant, bouncy, spun gold curls, was so beautiful in her new gown of rose brocade that the moment the nurse brought her prancing in to me, skipping and spinning to show off her new array, with green-gowned Anne and dark, moody George following hand in hand sullenly in her wake, I knew I wanted to ask Remi to make a doll of my sunshine girl, so that even when she was an old woman, crookbacked and haggard, with her gold all turned to silver, her pearly teeth lost or turned to ugly, blackened stumps, cruel lines marring the face that had formerly been porcelain smooth, and her breasts and belly sagging from a life spent in childbearing, her beauty would never be entirely lost; she could look at that doll, cherish it, hold it in her arms, and remember just how beautiful she had been in her glorious youth. I wanted to give her that gift just as Remi had given it to me. I wanted her beauty to become something she could, in this unique way, keep forever and pass on to her children.

  As my little brood flitted about his shop, eyes wide with wonder, forgetting their good manners as all children in the presence of toys are wont to do, Remi’s hand moved, swift and sure, sketching them from various angles. He gave equal attention to all three. To my surprise, he didn’t seem as enamored with my golden girl as I had expected him to be. I was so accustomed to people gushing and making a fuss over her beauty, I was astonished that my lover, a true artist with an eye for beauty, didn’t put her on a pedestal and sing her praises.

  “Your children are beautiful,” he said softly.

  “Well, two of them.” I shrugged and sighed, shaking my head yet again over my ugly dark duckling Anne.

  “Three,” Remi corrected me firmly. “Give her time; she will surprise you. A moment will come when you expect the ugly duckling and will see instead a beautiful, graceful swan, but not just any swan—a black swan!” I blinked and stepped back, incredulous at his enthusiasm. “Beauty is not always at first apparent,” he continued, “and, when it blossoms too early so too it often withers; it rarely lasts a lifetime, but elegance and grace, such as yours, Elizabeth, endure forever.”

  It always amazed me that Remi could see such promise in Anne when no one else did; it was as though everyone else was blind or none of us were looking at the same little girl.

  “I will believe it when I see it,” I said and went on to tell him that I suspected my youngest daughter was destined for the nunnery, to be a bride of Christ since no other man, certainly not one of wealth, breeding, and discerning taste, was likely to want her.

&n
bsp; At these words, Remi laughed and said he would wager his shop that the bleak future I predicted for Anne would never come to pass.

  “Just you wait”—he nodded knowingly—“she will astonish you all! That ebony hair will never be shorn beneath a wimple; I would stake my shop upon it!”

  “If so, ’twill be a very great surprise indeed. I’m far more inclined to suspect you need spectacles, my love.” I snorted my disbelief, leaning against the counter and watching Anne cradle a doll that was everything she wasn’t—blond and beautiful with a complexion like pink roses and cream—while George cantered about on a black velvet hobby horse with a mane and tail of flowing gilt tinsel, and Mary marveled, her mouth a perfect pink O framing the dainty pearls of her teeth, at the exquisite, tiny dolls that decorated sewing boxes, needle cases, trinket boxes, and pincushions, like the one on my dressing table that I cherished and had so many times slapped her hands away from.

  Soon I grew weary of watching the children play. After allowing them each to choose something for themselves, I sent them away with their nurse and spent the rest of that sweet afternoon with Remi in the back room of his shop. Such were the delicious delights of an afternoon in London!

  And so the years passed for me, condoling with the Queen, flirting and dancing with the King and his courtiers, provoking the jealousy and envy of the ladies, being the beautiful, gracious ornament my husband expected me to be, and loving Remi in secret.

  Then a moment came when it all seemed poised to change—for better or worse, I could not then of a surety say.

  On May Day, King Henry, accompanied by the gentlemen of his bedchamber and a troupe of musicians, all of them masked, crowned with sprightly feathered hats, and dressed from head to toe in Lincoln green, as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, came dancing into Queen Catherine’s chamber.

  In the center of the room, with his musicians and Merry Men behind him, King Henry stopped and sang.

  Pastime with good company

  I love and shall until I die.

  Grudge who likes, but none deny,

  So God be pleased, thus live will I.

  For my pastance:

  Hunt, sing, and dance.

  My heart is set!

  All goodly sport

  For my comfort.

  Who shall me let?

  Youth must have some dalliance,

  Of good or ill some pastance

  Company methinks then best,

  All thoughts and fantasies to digest.

  For idleness,

  Is chief mistress

  Of vices all.

  Then who can say,

  But mirth and play

  Is best of all?

  Company with honesty

  Is virtue, vices to flee.

  Company is good and ill,

  But every man has his free will.

  The best ensue.

  The worst eschew.

  My mind shall be,

  Virtue to use,

  Vice to refuse.

  Thus shall I use me!

  When he was done, we all applauded. What a talented man our sovereign was, we all most flatteringly marveled; not only could he sing, but he wrote lyrics and set them to music as well. He was, we averred, the finest singer and writer of songs at court, mayhap in all of England. “And France,” my husband, ever the favor-currying diplomat, added, knowing full well how much this compliment would please His Majesty.

  “Oh, sire!” one lady cooed as she sank into a curtsy before him, bending forward as much as she dared to display as much as she could of her milky bosom. “I daresay if you had not been born to the blood royal you could have made your fortune as a singer!” And we were all quick to raise our voices in agreement, lauding him with praise, feeding the monster of his vanity until its glutted belly threatened to burst.

  Queen Catherine was then great with child and her dancing days were already long behind her; she had given it up, fearing that even the gentle exertion of treading even the slowest measures might bring on a miscarriage or premature birth. She smiled like a tolerant mother at her husband’s boyish exuberance, but shook her head and gently put him from her when he embraced her and tried to coax her to her feet.

  “Rise and dance with me, my Queen!” he cried. “Robin Hood must have his Marian!”

  But she would not, laying a hand upon her belly and chiding gently, “Now is not the time for me to dance, my lord.”

  So he sought a more willing partner amongst her ladies instead.

  “Someone must want to dance with me!” he cried, puckering his little mouth into a petulant red rosebud pout.

  It was then that his eyes lighted upon me.

  As it was May Day, I was gowned in spring green satin embroidered from bodice to hem with white flowers, and on my head I wore a matching green gable hood bordered with pearl flowers with long lappets hanging down in front, past my shoulders, embroidered with yet more May flowers. It was the perfect gown for May Day, but I hadn’t reckoned on a royal flirtation. On the contrary, I was hoping an opportunity to steal away to be with Remi would present itself as the day progressed.

  I demurred, modestly hanging my head, but Queen Catherine urged me to dance in her stead, insisting that my gracefulness always gave her so much pleasure. So, most reluctantly, I gave in and let him take my hand.

  The musicians struck up a merry measure, and King Henry led me out into the center of the room as the ladies and gentlemen moved back to clear a space for us. As the music grew faster, and our audience began to clap their hands in time and call out their encouragement, we lost ourselves in the dance and competed shamelessly over spins, leaps, and kicks, trying to best each other with complex jigs, during which I shamelessly hoisted my skirts to show off my fast-moving feet, my limbs encased in green stockings and emerald-beaded slippers of white velvet. By the end of the dance, I was flushed and breathless, my stays pinching my sides, and my hair, modestly braided and coiled at the nape of my neck beneath my hood, had been shaken down from its pins.

  King Henry laughed and reached out to capture my long black braid, “like a rope of black silk,” he said, coiling it around his strong fist, to draw me to him for an affectionate embrace and only a chaste kiss since Queen Catherine was watching. As he held me, he declared that I was the best Maid Marian he had ever had.

  By the way he spoke these words, and the way his blue eyes bored into mine, I knew he meant to have me for far more than just a dancing partner.

  “Only after Her Majesty.” With a low curtsy, I demurred. “She is your perfect partner, sire.”

  I quickly returned to my seat beside Queen Catherine, while the King’s gentlemen gallantly gathered up my fallen and scattered hairpins so I could make my hair right again.

  I tried so hard to laugh it off, to dismiss it as nothing, a mere May Day flirtation, court gallantry, the sort of meaningless and idle flirtatious banter we all indulged in to pass the time, nothing more, yet I knew I was lying to myself. I knew he wanted me. It was unmistakable. When King Henry looked at me, it was as though his eyes burned my clothes away, leaving me bare and scorched pink by a fire that burned from outside as well as from within. Yet it froze me too. I feared his ardor even as it excited me. A part of me wanted to run to him, to lie down at his feet and lift my skirts, to invite, entice, and excite him, and use every erotic talent I had to hold him for as long as I could; my vanity wanted to wield the heady power of royal mistress, to rule as the uncrowned queen of the court. Yet another, and, surprisingly, I think a larger, part of me wanted to run away in icy dread and hide from his powerful lust, as well as the throbbing sizzle pulsing through my blood, knowing nothing good could ever come of this.

  What did I want? I searched my mind for the answer, yet found it finally in the serene gray eyes of Queen Catherine—a woman who understood the flaws and foibles of humanity yet still sought to see the good in everyone. I would not let vanity and hot-blooded lust, for passion or power, be the weapon to wound her. I would not be the one
to wield that sword as some of her ladies had already done and others would doubtlessly go on to do. Even though my husband would urge me to grasp that sword, as though it were the fabled Excalibur, I would not betray and injure that gracious lady who had been nothing but kind to me. Not even for a king’s ransom in jewels or the deeds to a dozen manors would I do it.

  Yea, he was a powerful, passionate man, and I cannot deny that he stirred me. So vibrant and virile a man was Henry Tudor he could have roused a woman from her deathbed with a caress. I remembered that long-ago day, when I stood amidst the crowd, as a girl of sixteen with her head full of dreams, watching him riding by as a boy of ten, smiling and waving to the crowd. I had dreamed then of having him for my lover someday, of kneeling before him and playing the repentant Magdalene to his Jesus Christ. But the boy had not become a churchman, but a king—a king who had married a saintly and devout woman who, in her goodness and loving kindness, reminded everyone of the Holy Virgin. And when such an opportunity was in my grasp I found—to my surprise—I did not want it. Every time I imagined us naked in bed, with the whole muscular-hard and virile length of him stretched atop me, I saw, looking over his shoulder, the pained and wounded face of Queen Catherine, gowned in white, draped in a flowing mantle of Our Lady’s blue, tears rolling down her sad face as she clasped a pearl rosary over her broken heart.