The Boleyn Bride Read online

  Yet long before the seasons changed, I, that slim and beautiful, beguiling sylph of a girl, had become a matronly mother-to-be and efficient and proper housewife.

  After ensuring that I knew my place and would behave myself accordingly, my husband rode away to London again to rejoin the court. With a glad heart I waved him off. Happy beyond words to be rid of him, I privately toasted his departure by drinking alone in my chamber the better half of a bottle of cherry wine pilfered from my mother-in-law’s secret store she kept hidden beneath her bed just so I could hear her running about shrieking that the fairies had taken it and we must purify the house with salt and have the priest in to bless it.

  Four months later, word reached me that Prince Arthur was dead. Princess Catherine was a widow of uncertain future and means. There was quite a bit of ungentlemanly haggling about the unpaid portions of her dowry between her father, King Ferdinand of Spain, and her father-in-law, King Henry of England. But absent from the court, it all meant little to me. I felt so remote from it all, it might all have been happening in Turkey.

  By then, I was well into my first pregnancy and didn’t really care about the world and the fact that there were other people in it besides my fat and swollen miserable self.

  “You’re not the first woman to be pregnant.” Lady Margaret found cause to waggle a finger and scold me nigh every day with Prince Piddle Pants perched on her shoulder and aping her antics. But I went on acting as though I was, making extravagant, unreasonable, and irrational demands that kept the household in a frantic uproar as they rushed about to fulfill my every fancy for the sake of their master’s unborn heir. Lady Margaret had swung her sewing needle dangling from a length of thread over my stomach and was certain that I was carrying a boy. “And I,” she stoutly declared, “am never mistaken!”

  I had great fun thinking of ridiculous things to have an unbearable craving for, like roast duckling candied in marzipan, pickles rolled so thickly in cinnamon and sugar I could not catch even a glimpse of the green beneath, sugar-glazed piglet stuffed to bursting with candied figs, capon stuffed nigh to bursting with strawberries and cream, rare and bloody roast beef crowned and glazed with quinces, and sugar sculptures of myself in the guise of water nymphs and classical goddesses that I promptly shattered and burst into tears whenever I spied even the slightest imperfection. One day before the sun rose, I crept out and gathered all the eggs I could find and dyed them blue with woad and red with madder before I replaced them safely in the nests beneath the hens. What a fit Lady Margaret had crossing herself and running about screeching that the fairies had been at work during the night. And another day while my mother-in-law was napping, I gave Prince Piddle Pants a henna bath so that she awakened to find what she thought was a little red devil capering at the foot of her bed and pissed herself in terror even as she crossed herself and reached for her rosary. Then, just as suddenly, I grew bored with it all, ceased all my pranks and capricious cravings, and settled down to calmly await the birth of my baby.

  Nearly bursting at the seams with his increasing importance, and the growing reliance and trust that the Crown, and the Tudor men who wore or would one day wear it, bestowed upon him, Thomas came home long enough to have our portrait painted. When he was abroad representing English interests at the court of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, he had admired a portrait of a wealthy Bruges merchant and his green-gowned, swollen-stomached wife with her devoted little dog at her feet standing amidst the opulent trappings of luxury and status. With the rapidity of lightning, he decided that we should be painted in like manner.

  In somber-hued velvets and sable, Thomas stood rigidly at my side, stiff-backed with his own self-importance. I wore the same sapphire velvet gown banded in black with gold lovers’ knots and black velvet hood I had worn the day I witnessed Princess Catherine’s triumphant progress through London; it was still nearly new after all, and though the bodice fit a trifle too snugly, the skirt flowed smoothly as a placid blue waterfall over the round ball of my belly.

  Before we assumed our pose for the portrait painter, Thomas, like a man putting the collar on his newly acquired pedigreed bitch, fastened round my throat the heavy, wide golden collar with the Bullens’ ornate, raging ruby-eyed bull. I hated its constricting weight and the way it bit into my flesh, but the gracious, docile smile upon my face gave nothing away.

  As the artist posed me, with one hand clasping the flowing folds of my skirt demurely over the small round mound of my stomach, to show the petticoat of pomegranate satin I wore beneath, which was richly embroidered with roses of gold and silver, I caught a glimpse of myself in my silver mirror—a highborn sixteen-year-old bride, an emblem of success, a trophy of sorts my husband preened and prided himself over winning, a bitch wearing her master’s collar replete with his golden insignia, her belly and breasts swelling with certain proof of her fertility, the first of many pups he planned she would whelp, so that his name would be sure to endure another generation.

  Behind us, my sapphire and silver bed shimmered and the grotesquely carven figures of the Seven Deadly Sins grimaced and leered over my shoulder, and light poured in through the diamond-latticed panes of the window to illuminate a pair of gleaming golden bowls piled high with oranges, rising like pyramids, studded with cloves, snowy blossoms, and glossy green leaves.

  My husband adored oranges as a symbol of wealth and opulence. He liked people to know he could afford them and to share his bounty with those he deemed important enough to deserve a seat at his well-appointed table. Never mind that eating them made his chest ache with a deplorable burn that kept him awake all night guzzling tonics his old witch-bitch lunatic of a mother brewed in a cauldron, incomprehensible gobbledygook spewing from her mouth like some foul incantation as she threw in handfuls of pulverized elm bark, licorice, chamomile, dandelions, peppermint, rosemary, juniper, whole cups of red wine and honey, and a baby lizard for good measure, while Prince Piddle Pants gibbered and danced on her shoulder like one of Satan’s imps. But to Thomas Bullen—or Boleyn as he was by then styling himself—image was everything; discomfort be damned.

  Ferdinand, a handsome and most sensual gardener with bronze skin, sleek black hair, a devilish mustache, and dark dagger of a beard, was specially imported from Seville to do nothing but nurture my husband’s precious oranges in a specially built hothouse. Each tree was planted in its own silver tub emblazoned with the fierce Bullen—I mean Boleyn!—bull crest, cooed over, and pampered like a royal infant, even serenaded with Spanish love songs and lullabies. The precious fruit they bore was kept in locked boxes in the larder to which only I, as lady of the house, had the key lest the servants pilfer themselves a rare and costly treat.

  Thomas delighted in displaying the fruit elegantly arranged in gilt bowls, piled in pyramids punctuated with black cloves and orange blossoms, and serving our guests orange slices and orange water to wash their fingers or cleanse their palates between courses. Our cook was famous for preparing a bitter orange sauce for our meat, fowl, and fish. Marmalade made from the best bitter oranges of Seville always graced our table, and curls of orange peel crowned our otherwise bland custards, imbuing them with a lively touch of color and a hint of zesty citrus flavor, which our guests always pronounced “a heavenly delight!” Whenever he hosted hunting parties, Thomas would order our cook to fry orange slices to garnish the fresh kill or spear them raw and juicy to the roasting meat as it spun on a spit.

  Every year the two of us, clad in orange from head to toe with accents of black and gold and embroidered or silken petaled snowy orange blossoms, presided over a ball to celebrate the precious yield from my husband’s orange trees and dazzled our guests with a menu of sumptuous dishes sauced, spiced, garnished, or flavored with oranges, with a massive orange cake rising out of the midst of it all, decked with candy orange blossoms and candied orange slices.

  Around our feet as we posed, a fluffy little white dog, with a tail like a jaunty plume curling over the brim of a gentleman’s roun
d velvet cap, yapped and pranced. It was all I could do not to kick it across the room and scream for the servants to take it away. Thomas had brought it home from Austria as a gift for me, not out of any genuine husbandly affection, mind you, but for outward show, to impress those who beheld me with my new pet, the breed being then quite uncommon to our English shores. It yapped and broke wind constantly, and whenever Thomas was about I could not wait for him to depart so I could banish that yapping, stinking snowball to the kennels.

  Thomas tarried only long enough to approve the artist’s sketches, then left me to pose alone and rode back to London as the King had need of him. But I didn’t care; I was glad to see him go, and even gladder to know that the artist had a penchant for pregnant women, and we were of one mind about that beastly little dog. He dallied at Hever with me as long as he dared, creeping down the corridor to warm my bed at night and enlivening dull afternoons when I grew weary of posing and he of mixing his pigments and wielding his brushes. But he had other commissions awaiting him in London, and, all too soon, he had to go, and I was left alone with my mother-in-law and the servants again, screaming inside and sitting on my hands to keep from tearing the hair out of my scalp when Lady Margaret taught Prince Piddle Pants to ride “like a gallant knight” upon the back of that endlessly barking and farting ball of white fluff, and my ears were brutally assaulted for hours with the shrill cacophony of the chattering monkey, the yapping dog, and the witchy cackle and gleeful encouragement of my mad mother-in-law.

  As the spring flowers bloomed so did the baby inside me, making me miserable with swollen feet and ankles, aching legs marred by sore protruding veins, and ugly blemishes and unsightly blotches upon the porcelain pale perfection of my complexion. My hair lost its luster. And every day I watched and wept as my formerly trim waist grew thick and stout and my formerly flat stomach even more grossly protuberant. I felt so ungainly and ugly; for the first time in my life, I wished I were invisible. How could God do this to me? He had taken my beauty away when it was all I had!

  In unlaced stomachers and skirts with extra panels sewn in, I waddled around in a pair of plum velvet house slippers—the only shoes my swollen feet could abide—graceless as a duck. I didn’t go a-Maying that year; I was too fat to fit into my green gown, and I couldn’t bear to disfigure it by sewing in panels when I could not find fabric to match that exact same shade of green. No, far better that I keep to my chamber; I was too unsightly even for me to look upon, and I could not bear to see the gloating triumph in the other women’s eyes. So I stayed at home and watched all the pretty peasant girls traipsing off to the fair, to gather May flowers and dance around the Maypole with amorous gallants with whom they would retreat into the greenwood afterward. How I envied them and wished I could be one of them! What I wouldn’t have given for just one hour with a lusty gallant clutched tight between my thighs! But then I thought of his eyes looking down upon the disgusting sight of my aching milk-filled breasts, swollen full-moon stomach, and mottled, pimpled thighs and veiny limbs, and I barely reached my chamber pot before I vomited.

  My daughter was born in deep summer’s hottest days, in the bed of the Seven Deadly Sins, with their carved faces leering and jeering at me through the hazy waves of pain. I cursed Eve and the child for causing me such agony. Oh what torture! The way it stretched and burned, I was certain my pretty pink cunny would never delight a man again. After this ordeal, I was sore afraid it might not be such a pretty and pleasing sight anymore and I would have to keep it hidden. But when it was all over and I held Mary in my arms for the very first time, I instantly dried my tears and forgave her everything—she was so beautiful! “This must be just like Helen of Troy’s mother felt!” I exclaimed with a radiant smile as I admired my perfect little girl.

  She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen and seemed to grow more so every day. Curls like spun gold, soft as silk, covered her scalp; I could not stop twirling them around my fingers, longing for the day when they were long enough to wear silk ribbons. Her mouth was like a tiny perfect pink rosebud, so exquisite, and equally enamored with giving kisses as well as receiving them. I think to kiss was the first thing she ever learned how to do. Her cheeks were plump and rosy, and her eyes a lively amber, as exciting and enticing as jewels, and God had blessed her with the most delightful dimples. When they came, her teeth were exquisite little pearls, and she seemed to always be smiling. I don’t believe I ever saw my little girl frown. She hardly ever cried; instead she uttered the most delightful little gurgles and soon learned to laugh. I would put on one of my prettiest dresses now that they fit again and have her brought to me, and would sit with her cradled in my lap and croon over her, caressing her curls and calling her “my sweet cherub” and “my little doll,” telling her over and over again how beautiful she was. And I promised my “precious little pearl” that I would not “suffer her to be thrown down before a swine” as I had been; as long as there was breath within my body I would never allow it. God had blessed my daughter with the most important gift He can give a woman—beauty—and I vowed that she would have a husband worthy of her—handsome, lusty, and rich. As I would not have a valuable diamond set in tin, nor would I see my daughter’s golden beauty matched with base ugliness and a boorish, boring personality like the man who had sired her.

  The following year brought me a handsome son, fey and moody from the cradle. Black-haired and dark-eyed, I called him my “Dark George” for both his coloring and disposition.

  Now that I had given him an heir, I fervently hoped my husband’s ardor to keep me constantly pregnant would slack and he would allow my body a much-needed rest and me time to enjoy myself. I hoped he would relent and bring me to live with him at court. I didn’t like being pregnant; it was such a brutal assault upon my vanity. It made my body an ugly stranger to me, and each time took a toll upon my beauty, stretching and diluting it until I feared one day I would look in my mirror and there would be nothing left, and I would be old and ugly before my time, worn out from breeding children I never even wanted.

  But Thomas wanted a large family—at least a dozen children, and it was his desires that counted in this unfortunate, hateful marriage. He informed me that he expected me to give him a child every year until I reached the age when women’s wombs no longer quickened.

  I was scarcely recovered from George’s birth before I found myself vomiting not just in the mornings but throughout the entire day and insatiably craving figs in red wine syrup, thick and sugary, and red as blood, so that I dubbed them “my bloody figs,” even though I knew I would only sick them right back up again. I would vomit them up, then with my next breath scream for more. I was ravenous for them in a way I had never been for anything before; I wanted “my bloody figs,” morning, noon, and night, and at all hours in between. I would wake in the night to use the chamber pot and not be able to fall back asleep until a servant had fetched me “my bloody figs.” I wondered if this was God’s vengeance for all the strange cravings I had feigned during my first pregnancy.

  My daughter Anne’s birth was violent and bloody; she tore through me like a lightning bolt as a storm raged outside, rattling and pelting the diamond-paned windows and lighting up the midnight sky nigh bright as day. She came into this world screaming, her face scrunched, red, and furious. I never heard a child scream so. I feared her incessant crying would drive me mad; the first year of her life she never seemed to stop.

  I lost so much blood I very nearly died. The midwife had to stitch my torn flesh and poultice my cunny with cobwebs to staunch the bleeding and put me on a strict diet of rare meat, beef broth, and compotes and juices of red berries, to help restore my blood and vigor. Mercifully, she forbade my husband the intimate use of my body for six months if he ever hoped to get more babes from me. For that, at least, I was grateful.

  Anne was the ugliest baby I had ever seen in my life. Shuddering, I thrust her from me in revulsion, slapping at the hideous wailing thing and the hands that tried to foist her onto
me. “Take that hideous thing away!” I screamed. She was as ugly as my mother-in-law’s monkey! I would not hold her; the thought of cradling her against my breast made me want to vomit. If I were the superstitious sort like Lady Margaret, I would think a troll had somehow snuck in and stolen my beautiful baby, a dark-haired daughter God had created in my likeness, and left an ugly changeling in her stead.

  Instead of golden, fluffy, silky soft curls, her scalp was thickly covered with coarse black hair, her limbs were long, scrawny, and thin as sticks that—God forgive me—could so easily snap, I thought. She had none of the plump pink and white prettiness of her sister. Her neck reminded me of a goose’s and, heaven help me, I wished to wring it for the trouble and pain she had caused me. And for what? Another daughter, and such an ugly and useless one too! Yet it was so much worse than mere ugliness; she was disfigured, deformed—a nascent nub of a sixth finger protruded from the littlest finger of her left hand and a growth like an ugly brown strawberry erupted from the base of her throat, right in front where her hair or a headdress with lappets or a veil could not hide it.

  “This one, if she lives to grow up, shall be a bride of Christ,” I remarked to my husband on one of his mercifully brief visits while I was still in bed, sitting up against a mound of silken pillows in a magnificent midnight blue silk bed gown with sapphires flashing against the alabaster of my throat, drawing an ivory comb through my ebony hair, taunting him with how beautiful I was, yet he could not have me lest he do further damage to my womb and thus imperil the future of his line—the Bullen—I mean Boleyn!—dynasty. “We must resign ourselves, Thomas; there’s no help for it. Look at her! He’s the only husband who would ever have her, unless you know of a blind and wealthy idiot—the sort of man who chases rainbows with a spade in hand to dig for gold.”