The Boleyn Bride Page 5

  A stray lock of unruly dark hair fell like an upside-down question mark over his brow as his intense, warm brown eyes pierced me like Cupid’s arrow. It was the most peculiar sensation! His eyes seemed to strip me bare, layer by layer, down past my flesh and bones straight to my naked soul, making me feel even more naked than naked; I hated and loved it at the same time. In one hand, he held what appeared to be a small, light scrap of pale wood, whilst the other clutched a stick of charcoal. He was drawing me.

  Though I was rather flattered, I thrust my chin high, gathered up my skirts, and, regal as a queen, made my way across the street to stand before him.

  “Let me see that!” I imperiously thrust out my hand.

  When he stood up full straight, he towered high above me, but I wasn’t afraid.

  “How dare you draw me without my permission?” I demanded. “I did not give you leave to sketch me! Do you know who I am?”

  With a lift of his brows and a slight little smile that suggested he found this absurd, he turned the drawing around so that I might see, keeping, I noted, a possessive hold upon it rather than relinquishing it to me.

  The brows I labored with my silver tweezers to keep plucked into fine, thin, graceful, perfect black arches shot up in surprise.

  It was only my face! The way his gaze had made me feel, so hot and penetrating, like I imagined a phallus would be, I had expected to see my whole form, perhaps even unclothed in some lewd pose. But it was only my face as perfect as I saw it in my mirror each day. He had captured every line, every nuance, flawlessly. He had actually done justice to my beauty!

  “It is rather good,” I coolly admitted without abandoning my haughty stance.

  I fumbled for my little velvet purse, but he shook his head and hid the sketch behind his back, silently adamant that he would not part with it.

  “Now don’t be absurd!” I cried. “What artist does not want to sell his work?”

  He shook his head again. “I need it . . . for my work.”

  He spoke softly, in a shy voice with just a whisper of a French accent.

  “For your work?” I repeated, my brows arching high in disbelief. “And what pray tell is that? You are obviously not the average artisan since you shun payment for your humble scribblings.”

  “I am a doll maker,” he said, turning and pointing proudly to the modest wooden shingle that hung above a door set like a jewel into the wall he had been leaning against. Remi Jouet, Doll & Toy Maker, it read, carved in elegant Italianate letters painted with weather-faded gilt.

  “This is your shop?” I asked incredulously. It had never occurred to me that such a young man of clearly modest means might be the proprietor of his own shop, an apprentice boy, yes; indeed I had taken it for granted that that was what he was, but not a craftsman in his own right.

  “Would my lady care to see inside?” he asked with a certain shy pride imbuing his voice that at the same time betrayed a fear of rebuff.

  He was clearly not a man accustomed to conversing with ladies as beautiful as I, so I took pity on him. I nodded, and without waiting for him to open the door, grandly swept inside with a pleasing swish of sapphire velvet.

  The large front room was a fine, orderly place, well lit and clean, and not too cluttered, the tables and shelves all neatly arranged, like a well-ordered jewel box, so each toy could be seen and admired in its own right instead of in a careless, tangled heap that must first be sorted and straightened out like the beaded necklaces I often threw at Matilda, screaming for her to unknot them so I could wear whichever one I pleased; though more often than not, I would end by capriciously flinging them right back into the box, to become tangled again, and slamming the lid. It never really bothered me if such rough handling broke them. My father would always buy me more; I had only to ask him.

  There were toys for both humble and highborn children, boys and girls. There were gaudy rag poppets, floppy-limbed with embroidered eyes and smiles, and mops of bright yellow or red yarn hair; stump dolls carved out of a single block of solid wood, hard and unmoving, but good enough for a poor little girl to cherish and love; and more expensive, ornate models with wax, painted plaster, molded clay, or carved alabaster faces, dainty white hands and feet, with bodies of stuffed linen or leather, some even with jointed wooden limbs, with full heads of beautifully curled or braided human hair, and garments of silk, satin, damask, brocade, sarcenet, and velvet so fine that, had they been life-sized, would have been fit for the court. Some even had jewels; the more humble had a string of colorful clay beads, polished pebbles, or a wolf’s tooth on a leather cord to ward off illness—“a nice touch for a sickly child,” Remi shyly explained—and the more elaborate, and expensive, had glass or even carnelian, jet, or coral beads. Some even had pearls artfully woven through their hair and around their throats or stitched onto their dresses, and gold or silver pendants, crucifixes, or brooches studded with real gemstone brilliants. Perched on the highest shelf safely behind the counter I even saw one with high-piled golden curls, held up by pearl- and diamond-tipped pins, resplendent in a court gown of black velvet replete with a long train sewn all over with tiny twinkling diamonds.

  There were lady dolls and baby dolls, the princesses every little girl dreams of being. And, for the boys, soldiers and knights replete with full metal armor and weaponry, some mounted on horses; gentlemen in hunting leathers accompanied by hounds or with hawks on their arms; and that beloved rogue Robin Hood armed with his bow and head to toe in Lincoln green, from the simple stump dolls to elaborate wooden jointed figures. Some of these even came equipped with strings so that the lucky boys who owned them might enact their own jousts or battles. There was something for everyone and every purse; Remi, I would later learn, insisted upon it.

  On a table before the front window, there was an array of edible dolls, gingerbread figures adorned with edible gilt, sugared dough that when picked up gave a tantalizing rattle to reveal that there was a prize hidden inside, and bread dolls made in the likeness of various saints, the kind mothers liked to give their children in the hope that by eating them they would be blessed with the same virtues as that particular saint.

  There was even a small table artfully draped with silver-embroidered rose-colored silk arrayed with a variety of pincushion dolls and exquisite tiny dolls—I hesitate to call them rag dolls as that usually suggests a homemade plaything made of scraps, simple and cheap, and these were crafted only of the finest materials, and they also had slender wire skeletons secreted inside to stiffen them—that decorated beautiful needle cases, sewing baskets, and trinket boxes.

  Standing tentatively beside me, Remi silently picked up a red apple–shaped velvet pincushion atop which stood an exquisite little lady gowned in pearl-studded, gold-blossomed, flesh-colored brocade, her long, sleek black hair braided with gold and crowned with a coronet of exquisite tiny seed pearl flowers. There was a knowing, sensual look in her dark eyes as she held out a tiny ruby red–enameled apple in her outstretched hand while a serpent woven of gilt threads and emerald glass beads twined around her, embracing her limbs through her skirt. I saw the hesitation, the uncertainty and fear of rebuke or refusal in his dark eyes, but the battle he was fighting within himself passed quickly, and he conquered his fear and pressed the pretty bauble into my hands.

  “I . . . I would like you to have this,” he said haltingly as a blush set his cheeks aflame.

  I let my haughtiness fall away from me, like a gown of silk pooling around my feet, and simply said, “Thank you,” and held the beautiful trifle tenderly clasped against my breast, and, to give him time to recover himself, I continued browsing his shop.

  Besides the dolls, there were rattles, tops, sets of toy soldiers, a wooden Noah’s Ark filled with carved and brightly painted pairs of animals, similar sets of barnyard beasts, board games like Fox and Geese, hobby horses, gaily painted shields, wooden swords, and sets of ninepins. Some made plain for poorer children, and others with great detail and embellishment fashioned fro
m more costly materials for his wealthier patrons.

  I paused beside the shelf that contained the finest dolls, mounted higher than the rest, beyond the reach of most eager little hands and meager purses.

  “Shall you make a doll of me, I wonder?” I said as my fingers idly caressed a skirt of vermilion silk with a pattern of golden poppies worn by a little lady with a mass of golden curls crowned by a wreath of red silk poppies.

  “The most beautiful doll I have ever made,” Remi promised, his eyes shining with sincerity and ardor. “With her face, hands, and feet carved of the purest white alabaster, and hair like the finest ebony silk. I will dress her in deep blue velvet trimmed with golden lovers’ knots just like you are wearing today so you will always remember.”

  I took a step toward him, just as he stepped toward me. His strong fingers closed around my delicate wrist. My pulses pounded, and my heart leapt inside my breast like an eager, nervous frog. I relished the knowledge that he could have snapped it if he had wanted to, but I knew he didn’t. This shy, gentle, soft-spoken, and soft-bodied man who made dolls would never wantonly destroy any object of great beauty. I would always be safe with him! Then I was in his arms, and he was kissing me with such a furious hunger I didn’t know whether he was angry at himself for desiring me or at me, a beautiful, proud, highborn, well-bred young lady who should have known better, for submitting to a common artisan’s ardor.

  But there was no time for questions. As we broke apart, staring at each other, speechless, in blushing and bewildered silence, the door opened and there stood that breathless and gawping idiot Matilda sobbing out an apology for losing me in the crowd.

  “It’s about time!” I snapped. “I’ve been waiting for you for what seems like hours! I merely stepped inside this shop as I did not think it meet that I, a duke’s daughter, linger in the street like a common trollop looking for trade! My father would never approve, and he will be sure to flay the hide off you if I decide to tell him that you left me to fend for myself alone in the merciless streets of London. I might have been molested by a fishmonger or groped by a grocer! Or abducted and sold into a brothel to spend the rest of my days satisfying the base lusts of low men, or even had my purse snatched!”

  As Matilda continued to weep and blubber words I did not even bother trying to decipher, I turned to the doll maker and graciously gave him my hand.

  “Make me a doll, Master Jouet,” I said. “When it is finished, and you are certain that it is worthy of me, send it to me, and—this time I insist—I will pay you, and well.” I spoke these words, husky and soft, with a bold gaze and sensually parted lips that I hoped would convey that I meant to give him so much more than cold hard coins.

  Without waiting for his answer, I thrust my chin up high and turned, letting the train of my gown slap Matilda’s ankles like a velvet whip, and headed for the door.

  “But how will I find you again?” Remi called after me. “I don’t even know your name!”

  On the threshold I paused and looked back at him. “Look for the grandest and most beautiful lady at court; by the time you have finished your doll, that is who I will be!”

  And with that lofty boast, I left him, confident that a day would come when I would see him again. Life just couldn’t be so cruel as to deny me!

  We reached Baynard’s Castle just in time to join the lords and ladies hurrying into the Great Hall. I paused for just a moment to catch my breath and straightened my gable hood as Matilda knelt to smooth my skirts and swipe the dust from my hems and velvet slippers even as I kicked at her for no better reason than I wanted to. When I married, I vowed, and this became my everyday world, not just a wonderful place I came to briefly visit when the occasion warranted it, I would send Matilda to work in the laundry and have another, and better, maid to serve me, a Frenchwoman perhaps, someone with enough wit and sophistication to be worthy of serving me, who could help me enhance my beauty even more. Just then a young man, a low common clerk in the midst of his twenties, or some dull, dreary bookkeeper, by the look of him—his cold, muddy gray eyes and mirthless mouth; his boring, blunt-cut, mud brown hair framing a gaunt and grim face; and the plain charcoal doublet, hat, and hose he wore—dared to most familiarly touch my arm, as though he presumed the right to such an intimacy, and asked if he might have the honor of escorting me in to dine.

  “You may not!” I cried, snatching my arm away and glaring at him as though he were a scab I wanted to rip off just to make the wound bleed. “How dare you touch me? Do you know who I am?”

  Without waiting for him to answer, I thrust my chin high and flounced, alone, into the Great Hall.

  As for that impertinent clerk, I didn’t deign to favor him with another infinitesimal thought. I had put that insignificant toady in his place, and that was an end to that. It never occurred to me that I would ever see him again, not even standing in a crowd; he really wasn’t worth the attention of the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.

  Later that afternoon, after Princess Catherine had been prevailed upon to show us how the ladies at the court of Spain danced, with slow, graceful steps, and castanets clicking in her plump little white hands, I discreetly stole away. As much as I liked being at court, there were moments when I found it all rather tedious, especially when I knew more pleasing pastimes were readily at hand if I went in pursuit of them.

  “Life is dull,” I always said with a languid sigh I imagined made me appear fashionably world-weary. “And one should grasp every diversion that presents itself.” And I was never one to let a precious opportunity pass me by; that was one of the few things I would have in common with the man who was to become my husband.

  As the sun sank like a ball of fire, I lay, clad in only my sheer white lawn shift, upon my lover’s bed, reveling in his passionate and skillful touch that made me feel as though my soul had been set aflame.

  John Skelton, so aptly named, as he had a very gaunt, cadaverous frame—I often teased him that I could count every rib—was the poet laureate of England (I had crowned him so myself) and tutor to Prince Henry. He was a man alternately passionate and pious; one moment he lived and breathed all for love, boldly proclaiming he would lay down his life for just one kiss; the next he was mired deep in melancholy and claiming he wanted nothing more than to renounce the world, retreat to some austere monastery, become a monk, and live out his days as a hermit and a recluse. He had penned many poems he said were inspired by my beauty, as well as many popular jests at the expense of the court worthies that even the common people loved to recite, especially when they saw the subjects passing by in gilded barges on the river or being carried in elegant litters through the filth-strewn streets of London.

  Our affair had begun two years ago, when I was a slight, pert-bosomed maid of fourteen, the very night of a masque in his honor, when I, in a gown of gold brocade woven with a pattern of silver acanthus leaves, stepped forward to proudly crown him England’s poet laureate. How I preened at having been chosen to play such a role! As I solemnly placed the wreath of gilded laurels upon his brow, he glanced down my bodice and smiled. When he bent and kissed my cheek, to thank me for this honor, he whispered poetic compliments about my bosom and stuck his tongue in my ear, making me lose my composure for a moment and giggle like a common milkmaid.

  Later, when the wine was flowing freely at the banquet tables, he doffed his crown of laurels and donned a coronet his own nimble fingers had fashioned from humble garden vegetables, playing the clown and poking fun at his own reputation. He asked me to dance. I readily agreed. I was flattered to have caught the attention of a poet, and dreams of becoming his muse fluttered and whirled like giddy dancers through my girlish mind. When he begged me for one look at my unclad body, to inspire his verse to greater glories, I instantly agreed. Why ever should I not? His verses would make my beauty famous and immortal! Even when my bones had crumbled into dust, I would live on eternally, immortally beautiful in his words. He was giving me the gift of immortal life! Only a fool would refuse th
at!

  He hurriedly whispered directions to his chamber. I made my excuses, whispering some vague and hasty words hinting at the onset of my courses in my stepmother’s ear, and left the Great Hall, and a little time later, he followed.

  As I stood naked, the first time in all my stark-fleshed glory before any man, he knelt worshipfully at my feet, reciting impetuous verses to me, until I grew bored, and lay down on his bed with my legs splayed wantonly wide to show the secret pink heart of me and beckoned for him to join me and “See what inspiration awaits you here, Sir Poet.”

  I never would share his passion for poetry. Though it was flattering at first being his muse, the novelty soon paled. I already knew I was beautiful—my mirror and men’s admiring eyes and women’s jealous ones told me so every day—and those looks told me more than all the poetry in the world ever could. And I think, upon reflection, it was my nature to prefer things more straightforward and simpler. Plain speech and perfect understanding were, to my mind, always better than a whole bouquet of flowery words with the meanings all hidden beneath pretty petals and ribbons.

  I was often bored and greatly annoyed when, suddenly inspired by our lovemaking—such as it was with my frustratingly intact maidenhead being avoided like a leper despite my urgent pleas that he relieve my agony and pierce it—he sat up, snatched a quill, and rolled me onto my belly to use my back as a makeshift desk for his impulsive scribbling, ignoring the annoyed little shrieks I uttered whenever the point pricked me through the paper and left black ink spots on my snowy skin. These writing sessions frequently lasted longer than our pleasure, and while John’s pen scratched across page after infernal page, often for hours, I consoled myself with the plate of raisin-studded saffron buns or gilt-iced marzipan cakes he always left on the bedside table as a treat for me, “his beautiful muse.”