The Boleyn Bride Read online

  The bright yellow button blossoms of tansy bloom alongside orangey gold marigolds and rosemary for remembrance in a tub of tarnished gilt to honor my own tarnished golden girl. These cheery flowers, so out of place in this vile patch I have created, remind me of her dimples and golden curls, and conjure up memories of the tansy cakes and tasty tansy puddings we shared when we went a-Maying together, the two of us skipping along barefoot, gowned all in green, as the legends said Queen Guinevere had been when she went a-Maying, gathering May flowers, singing, dancing around the beribboned Maypole, and granting kisses to admiring gallants. Even when she was just a little girl, Mary was always free with her kisses and would give them to anyone who asked or whom she deemed deserving. Now I know I should have been more vigilant. I should have been stern and reprimanded her. I should have warned her to have a greater care for her virtue and reputation. But back then, when she was just a little girl, I thought it harmless, sweet and charming, so natural and unfettered; yet I see now I should have cared more about corseting my daughter’s uninhibited nature than I did about her waist. I should have taught her to govern herself better, even when I didn’t govern myself, only hid behind a thick veil of discretion.

  I would like to make my peace with Mary before I die, but I fear I’ve left it too long. I tell myself I don’t have the strength to try, but that is a lie; ’tis courage I lack, not strength—my will would sustain me if I would but try. But I know I won’t. I fear failure, humiliation, and rebuff too much to even try it. My husband was always right about one thing—if you doubt you can succeed, why even bother to try? Never invite failure into your life if you can possibly help it. Yet another of the life lessons he drummed into our children’s heads.

  Next, from out of a little mound, a false grave for one who is condemned to lie elsewhere, rises a speckled spire of bold pink and white foxglove, each flower like a little upside-down wine cup, for George, who never left a wine cup without draining it to the dregs. Some aptly call this poisonous beauty dead man’s bells. When the breeze gently blows them, they toll for my lost boy, my “Dark George,” always so moody and melancholy, always seeking something he could never hope to find and searching for solace in wine cups, reckless nights of gambling, and a rapid succession of lovers of both genders, no sooner embraced than they were discarded. Around it, like a frilly border of frothy lace, hemlock flourishes, its stems eternally spotted with red splotches known as Socrates’s blood in memory of the ancient sage who was forced to drain that bitter cup. There is also a blue-veined marble cross and affixed to it a scroll of brass on which I had engraved a verse my daughter wrote while she was awaiting “the Sword of Calais,” as they called the headsman who had been chosen, on account of his great skill, and as testament of the great love King Henry had once borne my daughter, to take the head of an anointed queen. I didn’t think Anne would mind if I gave those words to George.

  Defiled is my name, full sore

  Through cruel spite and false report,

  That I may say forevermore

  Farewell to joy, adieu comfort,

  For wrongfully you judge of me;

  Unto my fame a mortal wound,

  Say what ye list, it may not be,

  You seek for what shall not be found.

  Aye, he loved her, more than any, as his venomous wife would rightly say, but it was for his loyalty that he died, not any sin or carnal lust, for there never was anything of that kind betwixt the self-styled Gemini. George would have fought for Anne to his very last breath; he would have spoken out against the injustice, recklessly and wildly revealing the truth to one and all, as indeed he did at his own trial when he revealed something that was meant to be kept secret. It would not have been safe to let him live. Even in prison, George would say the truth would set him free. Even if they had cut out his tongue, they could never have silenced him; such was his love for Anne that George would have found a way. He was her one true champion. Sir Loyal Heart, as Anne affectionately called him, from a character he once played in a masque in which they danced together. And she was his Lady Perseverance, indomitable and proud.

  And for my daughter, the ugly dark brunette duckling I could never bring myself to love until she surprised me by becoming an elegant and fascinating black swan, there is a bush of roses, so deep a red they appear almost black, rising like the night from another false grave, along with a black marble cross and a brass scroll inscribed with the last poem her ardent admirer, Sir Thomas Wyatt, wrote for her.

  So freely wooed, so dearly bought,

  So soon a queen, so soon low brought,

  Hath not been seen, could not be thought.

  O! What is Fortune?

  As slippery as ice, as fleeting as snow,

  Like unto dice that a man doth throw,

  Until it arises he shall not know

  What shall be his fortune!

  They did her conduct to a tower of stone,

  Wherein she would wail and lament alone,

  And condemned be, for help there was none.

  Lo! Such was her fortune.

  How amazingly apt those words are! And what visions they conjure! My daughter, a gambler at heart, being wooed by a man, a king, she could never like or much less love, but choosing, all the same, to take the ultimate gamble and become a queen, to make the world bow down to her, a queen who reigned for a thousand days, then ended her life a prisoner in a tower of stone.

  These are the only tributes I can render them when all the world would erase Anne and George, and those loyal and loving friends who died with them, from human memory. Their portraits have been taken down and burned or else hidden away, the names removed so that time will rob them of their identities when a day finally comes when there is no one left alive to remember and put a name with the face. The court, filled with self-seeking survivors, likes to pretend that these men never lived or loved, laughed or cried, danced or dined or died at all; all that matters now is the future, fawning on the King and his new Queen—Jane Seymour, the wholesome and pure yet boring white milk that replaced the spicy-sweet, intoxicating and exciting dark wine that was my daughter Anne.

  I festooned my husband’s precious fruit trees with mistletoe, laughing when I recalled what one of Anne and George’s witty friends—I think it was Francis Weston or perhaps William Brereton—once told me about quinces, saying of the glowing yellow globes of its fruit called Pommes de Paradis, or Paradise Apples, as he tossed one up and down in his palm: “They have the perfume of a loved woman and the same hardness of heart.”

  I draped the mistletoe over those trees with all the joy of a lady decking her house for the Twelve Days of Christmas, willing it to thrive, to hug their branches like the most tenacious cobwebs, like a spider ravenous for a new caught fly. “Hold them tight and never let go!” I whispered, caressing the tiny leaves with the featherlight touch I once used to coyly stroke my lovers’ cocks. I know how to provoke a man to ecstasy with just a brush of my fingertip. And then I trained creeping ivy and strangling vines over their trunks and limbs to twine and tangle and squeeze the life out of any fruits that dared try to ripen there. “These trees shall be barren,” I regally decreed.

  Panting, my jagged, broken nails caked with black dirt and lichen, I leaned my flushed and sweaty brow against the bark of an apple tree and remembered Henry Norris.

  Many years ago he had been a tallow-haired youth newly come to court. I found him sitting by the fire at Greenwich one winter’s day, trying hard not to cry. He had just been scorned by his first love, a haughty, flippant auburn-haired coquette, who mocked and deplored his clumsiness and inexperience in the art of love. I took him to my bed and, over a series of delightful afternoons, taught him well.

  I always did fancy younger men; I relished the role of instructress. Or perhaps I just liked being the first, the one they would always remember no matter how many others came after. Young girls often harbor amorous fantasies about their tutors, so I reversed the roles and made the dreams real.
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  But that was long ago. That winter ran its course, and though remembered fondly, was never repeated. He was amongst those who died with my son and daughter, declaring from the scaffold, “I know the Queen to be innocent of the charges laid against her, and I would rather die a thousand deaths than speak false and ruin an innocent person.” For those brave and true words I will always honor his memory. When everyone expects a groveling scaffold speech, flattering and glorifying the monarch, to keep his ire from turning on the relatives one leaves behind, it takes great courage to speak the truth, plain and unvarnished, and in simple words that all, even the humblest and unschooled, can understand. I’m sorry, John Skelton and Thomas Wyatt—the two poets who loved black-haired Boleyn women—but Henry Norris’s frankness puts all your poetry to shame.

  As I wove blackberry brambles over the graves, to honor the old superstition that they would keep any unquiet spirits within—though I do not fear the dead, especially not those innocents who lie here—I recalled the traitorous Master Smeaton, Mark, whom I would rather forget.

  He alone lied and confessed his guilt in the vain hope of saving his life. The fact that he was tortured does not absolve him in my eyes. My son, George, always loose-lipped and wont to confide his amorous escapades to any near and willing ear when he was in his cups—a practice that probably explains why so few of his lovers remained his friends afterward—recommended that I try his latest plaything. “A pretty bauble: It plays well, and it sings too,” he said. The lad was always generous with his toys. What can I say? A lie would serve no purpose at all. And if I cannot tell the truth now, why even bother telling the story at all? I was bored. I did as he suggested and sampled Master Smeaton’s wares. My blood has always been hot, sizzling in my veins, beneath the marble pallor of my skin and the haughty, patrician face many have described as cold, remote as the highest mountains, and expressionless as a chaste marble Diana. What more can I say? The truth is the truth; it is what it is.

  George was right. Smeaton was amusing—for a time, a very brief time. Then he became petulant and whining, wanting all my love, when I had no love to give him—that belonged to another; and what we did together was never about love—craving more time than I cared to squander upon a boy who was just a moment’s diversion to me and nothing more. His shrillness grated upon my nerves. He wanted to be the possessor, not the possessed. He wanted to call the tunes, not play them, and seemed to believe all the sentimental lyrics he had ever sung about love. I wanted to be rid of him. Poor lad, he wasn’t jaded and hard, cynical and blasé, like the rest of us; he really wasn’t equipped to play the game. He should have gotten out, married some sweet girl, and become a music teacher or returned to work in his father’s carpentry shop, before he got in over his head. It was inevitable—I soon got bored with him, just like George did.

  As for Anne, the one Smeaton really loved, even if she had cared a fig for that lovelorn lute player, she knew the stakes were too high for her to ever dally even if she had been inclined to. She had made her bed—a royal bed—and was well content to lie in it alone or with her wedded husband, bullish, insufferable boor though he was with a temper to match his Tudor red hair. His infidelities kindled her ire, but not recklessness and a desire to pay him back in kind.

  Whatever people may think and say of Anne, she was no fool. And she was never wanton or given to amorousness like me. Even though she spent her youth at the French court, and there is no more licentious place in the world, Anne held herself proud; she knew her worth, even when others didn’t. She had the wit and wisdom to govern herself even when other girls ran wild. Anne knew that, if she played her cards right, virtue would be its own reward. She knew when to hold her cards close and when to lay them down.

  Mayhap Smeaton’s confession was his revenge upon the Boleyns for scorning him? We each used him in our fashion—some might even go so far as to say that we misused him—and he never could understand why our “love” didn’t last. To George and me, he was a plaything, a toy we soon tired of; to Anne he was a lute player, a musician—granted, one of the most talented—hired to play as bidden for the court, nothing more. All I know is that he is the one dalliance amongst my many that I regret. Because of him, I will always wonder, did someone spy me, a slender, black-haired woman in the shadows indulging in some quick and indiscreet intimacy with Mark Smeaton, and mistake me for Anne because the light was dim or because there was already malice in their mind? Did I unwittingly, with my own indiscretions, help condemn my daughter? I will never know.

  Yews, “the cemetery tree,” hide this hideousness in cool and murky shadows. In the mighty Caesar’s time, suicide by drinking the juice of the yew tree was a favored means for tired old soldiers, those too weary to flee or stand and fight, to avoid the sad ignominy of defeat. It was a way to die nobly, by taking your life in your own hands.

  Deep purple-blue flowers of wolfsbane, also called monkshood, bloom in profusion. How deceptively beautiful they are! Anyone who did not know better would think them a harmless posy to pluck, tall spires of clustered flowers, to fill a vase or adorn a lady’s hair. But, take care—they will stop your heart and steal your breath away in less time than it takes to say a paternoster. I remember when I was a young girl, a neighbor’s cook mistook monkshood for horseradish. The sauce she made killed her master and his guests; she found them all slumped dead around the table, facedown in the sauce, brows pillowed on their portions of roasted mutton.

  And there is beautiful belladonna, deadly nightshade, growing with a lush, dangerous beauty in the dampened shadows beneath the yew trees, mingling with monkshood and toadstools, like old friends meeting for a gossip on the church steps or witches consorting at a sabbat. Their berries remind me so much of Anne. They start out a cool, icy green, then ripen to a deep, luscious red, before they reach their polished, gleaming black perfection—watching them is just like watching my youngest daughter grow to dangerous and desirable womanhood all over again. They say that witches make a salve from the purple-veined yellow flowers that makes them feel like they are flying through the air to find ecstasy in the Devil’s arms. And ladies in Italy use it to make the pupils of their eyes becomingly large, risking their sight to tempt the men whose attentions they desire. Ah, we women risk so much for lust and love! Is it ever really worth it? Even without belladonna, I sometimes think we are doomed to blindness anyway.

  Then there is pennyroyal, with its pale purple blossoms and strong mint scent. For good or ill, depending on the circumstances, it can be brewed into a tea to prevent conception, bring on a woman’s laggardly courses, or end an inconvenient pregnancy. And hyssop for purges, and spurge for an even more potent one that brings a violent griping, burning heat, and even death if one imbibes too much of its milky juices, which can also, when applied externally, remove warts, even the hardest calluses, and cure fistulas and carbuncles.

  And I have planted bitter wormwood; white oleander; stinging nettles; thistles with prickly leaves and tufted purple-pink heads; that bold, smelly little weed herb robert, whose red-tinged flowers are said to play host to little red demons that make mischief in the surrounding countryside during the night; and mandrakes, whose roots buried underground take the shape of a man and are said to utter bloodcurdling screams that will drive any who hear them mad when they are wrested from the earth.

  And lords and ladies, evilly handsome, these sleek, sophisticated, floral, phallic spears are the subject of all manner of rude and titillating names—I myself like to call them the Devil’s Pintle. They harbor poisonous red berries within and reek of rotting corpses, attracting hoards of hungry flies. The stench grows worse as their waxy petals unfurl. Some men swear they are a heaven-sent aphrodisiac and, ground into potent red wine, they will make even the limpest man ardent, so hard he imagines he has become a marble statue of Adonis with the strength of Hercules and his cock is his mighty club. But there is always the Devil to pay afterward, and many a man has perished with his ecstatic smile transformed into a grimac
e of pain, and his berry red and grossly swollen, rock hard pintle pointing like an accusing finger straight up at heaven as he lies dead upon the floor or tangled in his lover’s sheets. Sometimes, if one acts in time, a poultice of sour milk will save his life and stave off his discomfort, and he will live to find a new kind of bliss in limpness; but only sometimes, if one acts quickly and there happens to be a pitcher of sour milk fast at hand.

  As I sit upon a thorn-embraced bench that snatches like a greedy child at my already tattered black skirt and trailing mourning veils, with clinging burrs taking the place of ornamental buttons and embroidery, serenely regarding my pernicious plants, sprawling in tangled, snarled, and matted masses across the graves and climbing the stone crosses and innocent fruit trees, I cannot help but marvel what a far cry it is from the neat and orderly beds of sage, fennel, mint, rosemary, thyme, basil, chamomile, dill, and rue in the walled garden behind the kitchen. If I have my way, by the time I die, it will be a wild, impenetrable jungle that none dare penetrate unless they desire death or like to gamble with their lives.

  I hope Thomas has the very devil of a time, and the Devil to pay, restoring it all to the order he desires. I hope it blunts every ax his men bring and forces him to part with more coins than he counts on. I laugh to think of him tangled in convolvulus, which some call hellweed, bindweed, and the Devil’s guts and garters. It strangles the life out of every plant it touches. Beneath the soil, it weaves itself into a nightmare of tangled roots so deeply entrenched it will never completely die; it will always come back. The white flowers it breeds are like church bells. They look so sweet and innocent, wholesome, pure, and virgin white; they close demurely as the day ends. Some daring souls use them as a purge to rid their bellies and bowels of unwelcome or uncomfortable contents, and to try to lose weight, but unless the dose is minute and liberally mixed with sugar or honey to sweeten it, or even a spice such as cinnamon strong enough to disguise the flavor, the gambler, fool, or desperate woman who dares take it may die squatting over their chamber pot.