The Boleyn Bride Read online

  But she did not grant him the ultimate favor—that she continued to deny him. As a precaution against the King’s mad lust propelling him over the edge of sweet and tender lovemaking into rape, beneath her angelic white bed gown, Anne had girded her loins in white satin covered with delicate silver mesh, held in place by an exquisite little heart-shaped silver lock studded with diamonds.

  How she laughed at Henry’s dismay when he discovered it! When he pressed too far, pleading for the key to “heaven’s gate,” she pushed him from the slippery white satin sheets and, rocking on her knees, her wild laughter ringing hysterically, clapped her hands to imperiously summon a host of white-gowned, haloed, and angel-winged servants to toss white rose petals over his head and escort him out the door to the ethereal tune of harps, more certain than ever that he would make Anne Boleyn queen, and that she would be the mother of England’s next king.

  “Anne, you go too far,” I felt compelled to warn her, frowning down at my daughter as she lay, convulsed with laughter, wallowing in her white satin and long black hair.

  But Anne just smiled, stretched like a cat against her satin sheets, and laughed at me.

  “Nay, Mother, he shall move heaven and earth, if need be, to turn my no into a yes. He only needed a little reminding. ’Tis only a matter of time now, you shall see. . . .”

  12

  One cold mid-January morning, my husband, the newly created Earl of Wiltshire, shook his countess sharply awake and ordered me to dress in great haste. It was still dark outside. The fire had gone out, and he would not even let me summon my maid to light it. Such was the need for secrecy and haste that he fumblingly laced me into my stays and gown himself.

  “This is not a royal banquet or a ball, Elizabeth,” he said as he struggled with the manifold complexities of feminine garb with all their layers and lacings. “All that matters is that you be decently covered in such a way that does not attract undue attention, not that many are abroad to see you at this ungodly hour.”

  He refused me sufficient time to arrange my hair. “Just put a hood over it!” he barked. Seething with impatience, itching to be off, he hurriedly, sloppily, coiled up my long, sleep-fuzzy braid, shoved a few pins in to hold it, then crammed the jewel-bordered gable hood I had worn the night before onto my head. Then he flung a fur cloak over my shoulders, grabbed my hand, and dragged me out the door even as I wailed that he must wait; I had forgotten my slippers, and the stone floors would surely turn my feet to ice. But Thomas refused to tarry—“Hang your feet; they will not show!”—and dragged me determinedly down the quiet, dark-shadowed corridor, the torches casting our shadows, larger than life, onto the cold gray stone walls.

  We followed the steep, torchlit twists and turns of a stone staircase leading up into a dusty, cobweb-festooned attic turret in York Place where disused palace furnishings, rolled tapestries, trunks of outmoded finery, and unwanted portraits were stored.

  There we found Anne, standing before one of the diamond-paned windows, calmly watching the last stars fade from the sky, in pearl-encrusted black velvet. Only her fingers, toying with the great golden B dangling from the rope of pearls about her throat, betrayed her nervousness. The three large teardrop pearls dangling from it clacked between her anxious fingers.

  George, clad like her male twin in black and white, festooned with pearls and exquisite blackwork embroidery, stood behind her, his hands, calm and steadying, resting on her shoulders, as his bearded chin lightly grazed the row of pearls that edged her black velvet French hood.

  King Henry, magnificently arrayed in evergreen velvet and gold brocade dripping with diamonds, emeralds, and pearls, stood nearby, having some hushed and hurried words with his chaplain.

  And Henry Norris, Francis Weston, and William Brereton, yawning and sleepy-eyed, hair tousled, in rumpled garments clearly hurriedly donned after being tossed carelessly on the floor the night before, sat huddled in a corner over a game of dice.

  “To keep us awake, my lady,” Weston volunteered, bleary-eyed with a weary smile as he rattled the dice when my curious gaze lighted upon them.

  I stood beside my husband and bore silent witness as my daughter married King Henry while he was still officially the exiled Queen Catherine’s husband. A mere technicality soon to be dissolved, my husband assured me, as Francis Weston sneezed behind us, red and watery-eyed amongst the cobwebs.

  After that swift, surreptitious ceremony, the King pressed a hasty kiss onto Anne’s lips, and then departed with his weary gentlemen, my husband amongst them, and the befuddled chaplain, to begin the business of the day, as though this were any other.

  I was left alone in strained and awkward silence with my daughter, who had just become the secret, uncrowned queen of England. We returned to her chamber and had one of our rare private conversations over an early breakfast where Anne, still nervous and fidgety, pushed her plate away and turned her back on me as I ate.

  I admit I often stood in awe of my youngest daughter, the one I had been so disappointed in and expected so little of, thus I knew her the least of all my living children. Anne kept her cards close to her chest and rarely confided in anyone except George. No real closeness ever developed between us, only a cool and formal cordiality, and to the end Anne Boleyn remained an enigma even to me, the one who had given bloody birth to her.

  I asked her why she had been married in such secrecy and haste, in this hole-in-a-corner affair. I had always imagined if Anne achieved her aim there would be a royal wedding such as England had never seen before.

  Standing at the window, with her back to me, silhouetted against a yellow and gray sky, Anne turned, showing me herself in profile, and drew her full skirts back, holding them taut against her stomach.

  “Does it show much?” she asked.

  Astonished, blinking and unable for a moment to believe what my eyes were seeing, I let my knife fall with a clatter and stared openmouthed at the soft, gentle swell of her burgeoning belly.

  “No!” I gasped. I could not believe it! She had surrendered? Laid down her virginity, sacrificing it to the King’s lust without a golden band on her hand first! Risking all, boldly throwing all her cards down onto the table, knowing all too well that after he was sated, Henry might easily find some way to weasel out of his promise and dance away to find another partner, a newer and easier lady, one who did not aspire to become Queen of England.

  “When?” I gasped.

  “Calais.” Anne shrugged, releasing her black skirts to bell full and gracefully around her, and once again conceal her infant secret.

  My mind hurtled back to a recent visit my daughter and King Henry had made across the Channel to connive with King Francois, to garner his support for their marriage. Nothing really had seemed to come of it. And, though George and my husband had gone, I had stayed away, feigning illness again, so I could retreat to the sweet haven of Hever for a much-needed respite with Remi. The disgraced Mary had taken my place and accompanied Anne as a nominal chaperone her sister for the most part disdained. The weather had been bone-bitingly cold; so cold it burned, those who had been of the royal traveling party claimed, with wild winds that had churned the Channel like a witch wildly stirring her brew and delayed their return to England. This—Anne’s unexpected pregnancy—was obviously the result. Which Anne, with her words, now confirmed.

  “The weather was bad, and we were bored and cold, and it seemed as good a time as any, an apt diversion to pass the time, and it kept us warm.” She shrugged it off as though her surrender—this thing which she had for so long denied King Henry—was nothing at all.

  I clapped a hand over my eyes and shook my head. I had been a blind fool! There had been rumors of course—there were always rumors—which I had ignored. There were so many outlandish tales about my daughter that I no longer believed anything about Anne unless I saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, or she, or George, confirmed it with their own lips.

  It had been bandied about the court that Anne had a
n insatiable, ravenous, craving for apples, which she had never especially liked, but now she simply could not get her fill of them. But I thought it merely a rumor. How could I have been so blind?

  I recalled the laughter in Anne’s eyes, the sly, mischievous smile that had graced her lips, when, shortly after her return from Calais, she had donned a flesh-hued gown, overlaid with lace sewn with pearls and diamond brilliants, that made me sit up and gasp as I instantly realized that she had brought my pincushion Eve to life. With Francis Weston slithering about the floor in an emerald-scaled costume and green hose as the wily serpent, and George costumed in the same fleshy satin and sparkling lace as Anne’s gown, with a large, splendid green satin fig leaf fastened prominently over his codpiece when that shameful need for modesty arose, she danced in a masque telling the story of the temptation of Eve.

  There had been such a mirthful, knowing look in Anne’s black diamond eyes when she sank her teeth into that ruby-fleshed apple. And George! The way his expression mirrored hers, especially when she cajoled him to share, to take a bite of that forbidden fruit with her; it was as though they shared a secret and were laughing at the rest of the world, because they were the only ones who knew it, and the rest of us were consigned to dark, blind, and deaf ignorance.

  Of course he knew her secret! He was her confidante; she would have told George before she even told the King. Though the others might suspect and speculate, guess and surmise, and Anne herself might even drop hints, no one really knew, and wouldn’t until Anne decided to bestow the gift of knowledge and enlighten us. As Anne often said when confronted with criticism and complaints, “That’s the way it is, and ever will be; grumble if you like, it will change nothing.”

  I sat there, staring stunned into my breakfast ale, my mind whirling, remembering the way George had taken a cloak of green velvet fig leaves cleverly stitched together and draped it around Anne’s shoulders, embracing her, the two of them swaying together, sharing a secret, mischievous glance, laughing at the world together.

  They were such beautiful, graceful dancers, the best I had ever seen, like a pair of black swans mated in perfect harmony.

  Then George saucily clapped a cap of black velvet upon his head, as Anne donned a broad-brimmed black hat, each crowned with a single jaunty, curling white ostrich plume, and, arm-in-arm, they had sauntered out of Eden, with the superb serpent Weston slithering, belly flat upon the floor, following them like a pet, causing the court to rock in their seats with laughter.

  All except George’s wife. Jane dug a fork into the palm of her hand beside me and stifled a silent scream until the applause was finished. Then she rose and, blood dripping from her hand, heatedly denounced such eroticism in an enactment of a biblical subject.

  “It should edify souls and educate, not titillate! It is no laughing matter!” she howled, as tears raced down her face, before she fled the Great Hall, leaving nods and knowing whispers behind, some cruel, some kind.

  Though we deplored her lack of self-restraint, this public venting of private emotions, not a one of us, I suspect, did not feel some sympathy, or even pity, for that plain, pathetic creature, so much in love with George she hated everyone he gave his attention or affection to. Everyone knew it was green-eyed jealousy, not piety that had roused Jane’s ire.

  On the rare occasions when George and Jane danced together, out of duty, as husband and wife should, the performance was leaden and lackluster, and always ended with Jane fleeing in tears because there was no magic; that only happened when George danced with Anne.

  On Easter Sunday, I was one of the favored women who followed in new, pastel-hued gowns behind Anne, dazzling in shimmering white tinsel cloth and diamonds, carrying the flowing hem of her surcoat of bloodred velvet and ermine as she walked majestically into the royal chapel and made her first public appearance as Queen of England.

  No one in the chapel uttered a word. They just sat in silence—some glum, some stupefied—and stared. All over England, when the people were enjoined to pray for Queen Anne, they walked out on the Easter service rather than pray for any queen other than Catherine. “We’ll have none of Nan Bullen!” they muttered darkly, reviling the woman they called “The Concubine.” Though I was never the superstitious sort, I thought it an ill omen.

  “Where will it all end, I wonder?” I sighed later when I lay draped languidly across Remi’s bed, dreading the hour, coming all too soon, when I must rise and return to court. I wished I could stay there forever, my body wrapped in his humble, faded, and well-worn quilt as though it were the finest, softest ermine or a divine coat of many colors, reveling in its feel against my naked skin, how years of use had worn it soft, loving it just because it was his and covered him, and touched him, every night as I never could.

  “Only time will tell,” he softly answered, running a gentle hand down the length of my spine. “As for myself, I pray for both of them, and I have so all along; I did not wait to be ordered or asked. There is no one on this earth, I think, whether the highest or the lowest born, who does not need, or deserve, our prayers.”

  “You really are too good.” I smiled and drew him down to me, glorying in the warm weight of his body upon mine and wishing I could banish all the clocks from the world.

  13

  By the time my daughter was crowned, storm clouds were already gathering over the supposedly happily married couple’s heads.

  That humid May day I rode in a gilded coach through streets lined with silent, sour, and surly people who refused to take off their caps, bow their heads, or bend a knee to Queen Anne as she was carried past, resplendent in her golden litter, her six months’ belly round as the golden orb that would soon be placed in her hand at Westminster Abbey. I sat crushed and sweating in ermine-bordered scarlet velvet between my daughter Mary and my daughter-in-law Jane, listening worriedly as the first with sweet-natured sisterly concern and the other with relish and mean-spirited glee discussed the signs and scenes of matrimonial discord they had seen themselves or heard tale of.

  Only Anne’s pregnancy—the precious son she and King Henry believed she carried within her belly—kept a fragile peace between them . . . but only just barely.

  True to form, as pregnancy transfigured my daughter’s sleek and slender body, and raised her already hot temper, King Henry turned away from her in disgust. I knew he would. Everyone knew, except my bold and confident daughter; Anne thought she could succeed where all other women had failed and hold him even when the changes Mother Nature wrought dampened his desire. For once, she overestimated her powers. But she could not concede defeat gracefully and just sit and wait and hope for the best once she regained her figure.

  Anne was not one to feign ignorance and turn a blind eye. She would not suffer in dignified silence as Queen Catherine had done. She would not pretend and make excuses. She confronted him boldly, flinging his infidelities right in his face. When King Henry told her to shut her eyes and endure as her betters had done before her, and reminded her that it was within his power to lower her as much as he had raised her, Anne flew at him, claws bared, and only fear that she would harm the child inside her kept his rage from boiling over into violence. Rather than strike her down, King Henry subdued his wrath and tried to smother it under sweet and soothing words that rang false to both their ears. “Liar!” Anne spat and stalked away from him.

  The love affair was over. It had survived seven years of wooing but hadn’t even withstood a single year of wedlock.

  Henry expected my mercurial and fascinating black swan daughter to transform as soon as the ring was on her finger, to cease her frank and outspoken ways, to curb her brashness, bridle her tongue, doff her bold, brazen acts, and put them away like a wedding gown tucked in a chest with lavender sachets, and become instead a meek, mild, little hen with no spice or pepper, no pluck or verve.

  “Well, more fool, Henry!” Anne declared. “I am not about to sit at his feet like a dog; his little pet!” She sneered and tossed her head contemptuousl
y, though she knew better than any that she had already fallen from the pedestal upon which the King had placed her. She didn’t need her father to tell her, as he was ever wont to do, “It is easier to fall than to rise.” She already knew.

  In truth, such words didn’t matter. They were only rubbing salt into wounds; this marriage was already doomed, and I think it had been from the start. It was a colossal mistake born of ambition and thwarted lust, and once both were sated, they found there was nothing else to hold them together, except for the child, the expected prince, in Anne’s womb.

  Henry wanted a submissive, demure, docile, and sweet-tempered little wife who never contradicted or challenged him. Suddenly, he had had enough of spice and wanted blandness.

  But the kind of woman he now wanted simply was not who Anne Boleyn was. She didn’t have it within her to douse her fiery spirit and become that humble creature or even make the attempt. There was no pretense or artifice about her; she was simply, from the cradle to the grave, Anne Boleyn and no other. The only roles she ever played were in masques, and even these, she infused with her own unique and indomitable personality. “I cannot be other than myself,” she always said when others counseled her to tread a safer path. Her spirit was too proud to be broken or bow beneath the yoke or the angry lash of the whip.

  Why, I could never understand, did Henry suddenly expect her to become someone else? After all, it was that special, mercurial, and fascinating self that he had fallen in love with. Yet, perhaps, it was as simple as this—what men want in a mistress, they despise in a wife.