The Boleyn Bride Page 14

  I had seen her try to hide the hurt, to turn a dignified blind eye to the little dalliances her husband indulged in when she was with child, or recovering from the loss of one, and must of necessity bar him from her bed. No, I would not be numbered amongst his amours. I would not sacrifice the Queen’s friendship. Nor would I give up Remi for a royal lover who would demand my complete fidelity though he might stray as often as he pleased until he grew bored with and discarded me, as was bound to happen sooner or later; few royal mistresses held a king’s affection and amorous attention for a lifetime.

  But my motives were not entirely altruistic; I am too honest to let those who read this turn the page with that impression. I am no angel of goodness, but I am no she-devil either. Hatred and spite shared the stage alongside love and good intentions. I knew how happy it would make Thomas if I let the King have me. How he would preen and strut like a proud little rooster, king of the barnyard, crowing at the triumph, tallying up all the riches and glory this liaison would bring, praising me to the skies as the best bargain the Bullen shopkeepers had ever made.

  In the end, it wasn’t such a difficult decision after all to shove vanity aside and ice my lustily simmering blood. I hated Thomas, and I loved Queen Catherine and Remi. I didn’t need a lusty king to fulfill me; I already had everything I wanted. I was a reigning beauty of the court, greatly admired, sought after, and ardently wooed by many gentlemen as well as visiting foreigners. And, best of all, I had Remi, soft and sweet like a great, big, sugared dough-baby, far more comforting and pleasing to me than the King’s hard muscularity and the disturbing coldness lurking inside his beady blue eyes ever could be. In the end, it was a much easier decision to make than it at first seemed. I found I didn’t need, or even want, King Henry, and the triumph over thwarting Thomas Bullen’s greed and avid, salivating desire to climb the social ladder ever higher would be so much sweeter than a tumble in the royal bed ever could be. Now I didn’t want to change my life; I wanted it to go on exactly as it was. I was happy. I was content. I had made the best of it.

  But though I had made my decision, I still had the King’s lust to contend with, and that was no easy matter.

  One afternoon, shortly after our May Day dance, when I was about the palace on some errand for Queen Catherine, he caught me around the waist and pulled me into an alcove, stopping my protests with rough, hot kisses. Before things could go further, or I could ice my hot blood and regain wits enough to express my resolve, we heard voices and footsteps approaching. He put a finger to his smiling lips, winked, and swiftly ducked out of the alcove, leaving me alone trembling behind the heavy red velvet curtain.

  I waited, heart pounding, until the voices and footsteps had passed, then, swiftly, before he could come back, emerged, pretending that I had sought a discreet shelter to tighten a slipping garter in case anyone saw me, and went on about my business. But the encounter left me very shaken. I knew if I didn’t find a way to stop them they would continue until he obtained from me the ultimate favor.

  There would be other times when he connived and maneuvered to waylay me. There would be other kisses, cupped breasts and buttocks, playful pinches, and bold caresses; our bodies pressed tight together, and a strong hand forcing my own down to cradle his mammoth bulging codpiece. Yet I always found a way to escape or divert him before things went too far. I became adept at evading him; it was rather like a game, at times exhilarating, at times wearying, and I tried, whenever I could, to go about the palace in the company of another lady-in-waiting, or better yet a group of them, and, failing that, to have my maid, the wonderfully efficient and worldly wise Marie, accompany me.

  One night, as I sat at my dressing table brushing my hair, Thomas leaned over my shoulder, his fingers digging deep, nails biting hard through the blackwork embroidery edging the fine linen of my shift, and hissed in my ear, “Give in! If you do, our fortune will be made!”

  But I said nothing and kept on drawing the bristles of the heavy gold-backed brush through the abundant blackness of my hair, my eyes fixed on Remi’s pincushion Eve all the while, imagining that tiny temptress was I, and Thomas was that slick, ingratiating serpent, coiling around my limbs, hissing temptation into my ear. But I would be stronger; I would resist. I wouldn’t bite. I didn’t want the apple he was offering me. There was nothing but bitterness and ugly rot beneath the shining red.

  Then came a night when King Henry’s ardor reached the point where there was no dodging or naysaying him. He was alert and watchful, and so was I, but a moment finally came when I had to leave the Great Hall, to attend to a pressing matter of nature. I had tried to wait, to choose a time when he was distracted, so he would not see me go, but I could delay it no longer and discreetly left the banquet table.

  He came after me and pulled me roughly into an alcove. He kissed me hard, yanked down my black velvet bodice to bare my breasts, and thrust his mighty, meaty hands beneath my skirts before I could tell him my monthly courses were heavy upon me. The need to change the linen that staunched this copious flow was the urgent reason that had compelled me to quit the table.

  I saw his hand emerge, the grimace of distaste as he regarded my blood, glistening ruby dark by candlelight, staining his fingertips.

  “Madame, I will trouble you no more,” he said in cold, contemptuous, clipped words, his voice and eyes blue marble hard. It was a tone meant to wither me, but I stood my ground, uttering not a word as he reached out and gathered a handful of my skirts to wipe his fingers on. And then, a grimace of distaste still marring his dark tempered face, he was gone.

  He never laid hands on me again. I knew from serving in Queen Catherine’s chamber that he was rather a fastidious and finicky man when it came to women’s matters. He would never partake of pleasure with the Queen when it became evident that she was with child nor after a birthing or miscarriage until she had been fully cleansed and restored; thus it was only natural that he should be repelled by my monthly blood.

  Had I not been so content with my life as it was at that time, I confess, I might have been angry that he should abandon me over such a trifling matter. Something that need never have happened at all if he had only given me a chance to discreetly explain before thrusting his hands beneath my petticoats. Ah, the pleasure we might have had! But I chose, I preferred, to be kind to Queen Catherine, and cruel to Thomas, and to preserve my cherished and blissful happiness with Remi.

  Whenever such thoughts dared rear their ugly heads, or I found myself wondering, and imagining, what might have been, I dealt my vanity a savage kick and sought respite in the arms of my ravishingly rotund lover. I would sit cross-legged and naked on his bed, suddenly ravenous after our lovemaking, and share his humble repast of oat cakes and stew, roast chicken, or meat- and cheese-filled pasties with a sweet treat after of honeyed buns with raisins or cherry or apple tarts, and only half-tease him about how “ferociously jealous” I was of all the highborn ladies who came to his shop to buy pretty dolls for their daughters until Remi took me in his arms and kissed all my fears away and assured me that he wanted no one but me.

  7

  When May Day next came around, King Henry again staged a Robin Hood masque, with himself, as usual, in the starring role. This time the scene was set outdoors, in the greenwood at Greenwich Palace. A beautiful blond-haired girl, her complexion all roses and cream—she was very young; I would say she was not more than fourteen—played Maid Marian. Her name was Bessie Blount. She was gowned in Lincoln green, and as she partnered the King, he playfully caught hold of her long, heavy, flaxen braids threaded with green ribbon and, tugging gently at them, playfully coiling them around his fists, began leading her away, to the dark and shady privacy of a leafy bower.

  I sat in the shade beside Queen Catherine, who was still recovering from her womb’s latest loss, and watched in silence as, at a hasty gesture from the departing King, green garbed dancers sprang from the trees and converged in the clearing, leaping and cavorting, hoping to divert, with their vigo
rous dancing, all eyes and minds from the absence of Robin Hood and his Maid Marian and what naughty things they were doing in the greenwood. But no one was deceived.

  Queen Catherine tried to hide the pain in her eyes by covering them with her hand and pleading a sudden headache. And my husband, standing behind my chair, leaned over and gave my arm a cruel, twisting pinch and hissed into my ear, “That could have been you! Our fortune would have been made!”

  But I merely smiled and stared straight ahead, pretending I hadn’t heard him, and giving my full attention to the dancers’ fast and frenzied cavorting and the musicians who played ever louder, hoping to drown out the ecstatic exclamations and guttural grunts of passion issuing from the greenwood behind them. I was so glad it wasn’t I. I would not have been in Bessie Blount’s green velvet slippers for the whole kingdom; for all the riches it might have brought me, none could surpass the exquisite pleasure of spiting Thomas and denying him all the rewards, the pride and prestige, of seeing his wife become the King’s mistress. He wanted it so much! Denying him gave me far more pleasure than complying ever could have.

  And yet . . . in hindsight a part of me must forever wonder, if I hadn’t let that peculiar combination of kindness and spite determine my actions, if I had done what I deemed cruel, wouldn’t it in the end have been kinder? If I had become the King’s mistress I might have prevented that which would shatter so many lives and end in death and disgrace for two of my own children. But I had no way of knowing that then; even if a gypsy witch had gazed into her crystal ball and told me, I would have laughed in her face—those events would have seemed so impossible, too incredible ever to happen. It was preposterous to think that my ugly duckling daughter Anne could change the world as we all knew it!

  Later that afternoon when I threw on my green velvet cloak and went discreetly to Remi’s shop, I completely baffled my beloved when I fell into a fit of convulsive laughter upon beholding a pair of beautiful dolls costumed as Robin Hood and Maid Marian. As tears rolled down my cheeks, through gasps and the sputtering remnants of laughter, I cried out that I would not be Maid Marian for a kingdom and flung myself into his arms and found heaven on earth there, held close against his cloud-soft body. Shamelessly, I dragged him to the floor rather than let him take me to his bed as a tonsured, brown-robed Friar Tuck doll clutched his wooden crucifix and frowned down upon us.

  When Queen Catherine, after so many miscarriages and stillbirths, at last gave birth to a daughter she named Mary in honor of the Holy Virgin, I stood with the other ladies clustered around her bed and smiled, watching as she cradled the infant princess against her milk-leaking breasts and stroked her sparse carroty curls. When the wet nurse reached out to take the child, I saw her shrink back against the pillows with fear in her eyes. I knew she was afraid to let her go, lest her daughter’s life slip away like all the other little souls who had come before to so briefly fill her arms. But Queen Catherine knew her duty. Her spine stiffened, and she pressed a kiss onto her daughter’s brow and whispered a tender blessing, then relinquished her.

  I watched as, with bated breath, Queen Catherine counted the days and prayed as she had never prayed before. Even after a month had passed, still she did not relax her vigilance or let the fear fall from her. Her little lost prince, England’s great hope, had lived a month before he left us. But then another month passed, and then another, and another, and slowly, she began to believe that this time, perhaps, her child was here to stay.

  Princess Mary became Queen Catherine’s greatest treasure, her consolation and chief delight as the gulf between her and King Henry continued to widen. Even the news of her father’s death, which we had, at the order of King Henry, kept from her until all the dangers accompanying childbed were well past, could not diminish her joy. She had a living daughter!

  Although he was pleased and rejoiced at his daughter’s birth, King Henry wasn’t able to completely hide his dismay. Everyone could tell when he looked down at his little daughter lying swaddled in fine linen and lace beneath a blanket of ermine in her silver cradle how disappointed he was that she was not a boy.

  “A daughter this time, but, by the grace of God, sons will follow. We are both still young enough,” he said. As soon as Queen Catherine was able, he came back to her bed, hope renewed by his daughter’s survival, and his ardor fueled by the furious determination to get a son.

  As before, Queen Catherine’s womb soon quickened, then, in the all too familiar pattern—it hadn’t been broken after all!—emptied again in blood and pain a few weeks later. Another pregnancy soon followed, but it ended with another girl child, born too soon, who never drew a single breath.

  Flaxen-haired, flirty-eyed Bessie Blount seized the opportunity I had spurned. She had a competitive spirit and soon did Queen Catherine one better and gave King Henry the son he hungered for. The boy was christened Henry Fitzroy and given the title Duke of Richmond.

  Every time Queen Catherine saw plump, golden-haired Bessie bouncing her baby boy on her hip, her raw, red wound reopened anew and stung as if rubbed hard with coarse, burning salt. Henry had proven himself capable of siring a living, healthy son, thus the finger of fault was pointed straight at Queen Catherine. She alone would bear all the blame.

  After her last failed confinement, Queen Catherine began to suffer a most distressing, and embarrassing, feminine ailment; her womb began to leak a stinking white fluid, sometimes tinted pink by a persistent trickle of blood. The King, wrinkling up his nose and grimacing with distaste, dubbed this disgusting discharge “milk of fishes” and declared that he would lie with her no more even though her physicians assured him she was still capable of conception and there was still hope, as Princess Mary continued daily to prove, that Her Majesty could produce healthy, viable children. If they continued to try, the doctors insisted, a prince was certain to follow. But King Henry was adamant. He was done and putting his Spanish broodmare out to pasture. His patience was exhausted, and his desire long dead; he would come no more to her bed.

  Queen Catherine was inconsolable. How she wept! Day after day she prayed for a miracle. She was tormented by the knowledge that while she had failed, Bessie Blount, “the King’s Whore,” had triumphed. And there was some speculation particularly galling to Queen Catherine being bruited about that her son, despite being illegitimate, might someday become King of England. If it came down to a choice between Princess Mary, a girl, and Henry Fitzroy, a male, the cock was certain to prevail.

  But Bessie herself didn’t last long. Poor dear, she hadn’t the strength to hold the reins of such a powerful mount as the man his adoring people called “Bluff King Hal.” She was one of those pallid blond women whose time in the sun is brief. Her beauty faded quickly; that beguiling ripe and round, juicy as a peach plumpness settled quickly into matronly lines, and a sad, sagging face peered out of tired green eyes from beneath hair no longer golden but dull, dark, and dingy as dishwater. Darkened tresses were one of the perils fair-haired women faced during pregnancy. How I feared for my golden girl Mary when she married and her own breeding years began! Lemon juice and chamomile can only do so much, and many of the recipes for bleaching hair are ruinous to the scalp and can turn hair to straw so that it grows brittle and prone to break. I have always been very glad that I was not born a blonde; the struggle to retain my beauty would have been so much the greater.

  Henry soon married his Bessie off to an obliging country gentleman and sent her to lead a dull and placid existence as lady of a pastoral manor where she could trouble him no more. Her son he took away, to be reared like royalty by tutors and servants, a prince in all but name, so that whenever he saw the woman who had given life to him during her rare visits to London, it was always like meeting a stranger. And soon poor Bessie ceased coming at all and resigned herself to a rustic oblivion.

  My husband never let a chance go by to remind me of my failure and how grievously I had disappointed him. Bessie was a naive young girl, with no higher ambition than having plenty o
f pretty dresses to wear, but I was a wise and seasoned woman, worldly and sophisticated, the daughter of the highest peer of the realm; I would—with my husband to guide me, Thomas insisted—have made the most of such a grand and golden opportunity. I would have looked past the latest fashions to the future. Deeds, sinecures, licenses, lands, manors, and wardships would have taken precedence over frills and furbelows and pretty trinkets. I would have garnered cold, hard coins instead of cloth-of-gold.

  I let my husband talk; I nodded and smiled and said, “Yes, Thomas,” while I pretended to listen and agree with everything he said like every good and obedient Christian wife should. But in those days my mind was on other matters. My children were growing up and soon would leave me, though in truth it was I who had been largely absent from their lives for years.

  Whilst on a mission abroad, Thomas had arranged what he called “a golden opportunity” for our daughters, to serve as filles d’honneur at the court of Margaret of Austria in Brussels, to give a continental polish to their education, an elegant veneer to their manners, and perfect their French. I feared they were too young. Mary was but twelve, and Anne, though nearing ten, still only nine. But Thomas scoffed and said they were exactly the right age.

  “You’ve never played the mother hen, Elizabeth,” he said, fixing me with a stern, unyielding gaze. “So, please, for all our sakes, spare us the embarrassment and don’t start now. The role ill becomes you, and you’ll never do it justice. If you know you can’t succeed, why bother to even try? Never invite failure into your life if you can possibly help it,” my sage husband counseled. And I knew, as much as I loathed to admit it, that he was right.