The Boleyn Bride Read online

  “Time enough to worry about that later,” Thomas said and let it be known that he expected me to give him another son as soon as I was able. Then he departed, abroad, on yet more business for the Crown, and I would not have to endure his company again for many weeks to come. I was left alone, contentedly if not blissfully, with my beautiful golden girl and my moody dark-haired boy, who was like smiling, happy sunbeams one moment and thunderbolts and torrents the next, and my grotesque black changeling child, who, even after the passage of many months, failed to improve and remained as ugly as a squashed toad.

  Once when Anne lay crying in her cradle and I sat beside her, contemplating her ugliness, it occurred to me that it really would be better, for all our sakes, if she were to die, as so many children did, in infancy. I just could not believe that something so ugly could have come out of someone so beautiful. I was embarrassed to have her near me and left her to the nursemaids’ care whenever possible, to spare myself the pain of having others see the monstrosity I had given birth to and compare her with my other two beautiful children. I was ashamed to be Anne’s mother.

  Her crying grated so upon my nerves; I couldn’t stand it. Sometimes she cried for hours, for no reason anyone could discern. Syrups and sweet words, lullabies and rocking in her cradle failed to soothe her. Yet the doctor and midwife and wise women I consulted said there was nothing wrong with her. Clearly they were all fools!

  That dreary, wet afternoon my nerves were raw as freshly slaughtered meat. Anne would not stop crying. I just couldn’t bear it another moment. Before I knew what I was doing, I had taken the embroidered cushion from behind my still-aching back and pressed it over her ugly little screeching dark monkey face. But I couldn’t do it.

  God stayed my hand by sending George to be Anne’s champion, a role he would never relinquish unto death. I heard a movement behind me and turned to see his tiny figure standing in the doorway clutching his wooden play sword, staring at me with silent accusation, eyes burning with a scorching reproach that made me, a grown woman, tremble.

  I stood rapidly, tossed the cushion aside, and walked out without meeting his eyes, calling for a nurse to attend the children, and went out into the gloomy garden, to walk beneath the gray sky in the gently misting rain.

  When I returned, Anne was gone. Though in my heart I was glad, I half hoped the changeling had been spirited away, back where it belonged, but I knew my duty; appearances must be observed, and the servants and I sought frantically for her. They found her in George’s room, sleeping peacefully—silently!—upon his bed, in a cocoon of crimson velvet he had fashioned from the bedcovers, to make a safe little nest for her, while he stood sentry beside her, wooden sword in hand as though he had taken a solemn oath to protect her and would slay any who dared try to harm her.

  “My baby!” he protested when the nursemaid tried to take her, rapping her upon the wrist with the edge of his little sword hard enough to raise a bloody little welt.

  “You don’t love her!” He turned accusing eyes upon me, challenging me to disagree as he brandished his little sword at me.

  Though he was but a child, I shrank from him, speechless, cringing guiltily beneath that honest, unwavering gaze. His words were true, and I could not deny them. I loved Mary and George in my fickle, capricious way that behaved as though motherhood were a cloak I could doff and don at will, but I did not love Anne. For not one moment since she had been born had I ever felt a smidgen of love for Anne.

  In all the years that followed, we never spoke of that day again, but for the rest of all our lives, it would hover, an unspoken, undeniable truth between us—George, Anne, and I—something we all knew, but pretended not to.

  That was the beginning of the unshakable, unbreakable bond between them, a devotion that would never slack or waver, only grow stronger with time. From that day forward, Anne and George stood together, even when the whole world seemed to be united against them.

  Thomas came back when the midwife sent word that my body had recovered sufficiently to again receive a husband’s intimate attentions. But something was wrong inside. Though I conceived regularly—too regularly to suit me!—and nearly every time my husband visited, I was soon sending a letter after him to convey the “joyous” news that I was again with child, my womb always disgorged its contents, in blood and pain, before life could truly take root and fight for its right to live. The rare occasions when I carried a child to term, it came into this world still and blue or else gasped once, maybe twice, then died. Twelve names—Thomas, Henry, Geoffrey, Margaret, Amata, Alice, John, Edward, James, Eleanor, William, and Catherine, the children who lasted long enough to be born recognizable as human—came to mark the crosses in the churchyard before my womb grew stubborn and refused to accept my husband’s seed at all. My womb it seemed had finally followed my heart’s lead and locked and bolted its door against Thomas Bullen.

  In this manner, the years passed with him growing increasingly frustrated and angry with our futile couplings that failed to bear ripe and beautiful fruit, only bitterness and rot.

  Like any good and obedient Christian wife, I silently suffered the vagaries of my womb, the blood and cramps that disgorged an unrecognizable lump of flesh or malformed child, and the fruitless, frustrating pregnancies that endured for a few weeks or months and took such an unwelcome toll on my beautiful body. I fought it all the way, with diets of plain broth, rigorous walks, and binding my breasts to stop the heaviness of the milk that made them sag; I applied lotions and creams to my skin, to keep it soft and fight the blemishes that came hand in hand with breeding, bewailing the telltale lines that remained as an unpleasant reminder of how each child, no matter how long it stayed inside, stretched my belly; and I acquired a deft touch with cosmetics, painting my face so skillfully and discreetly that it often went unremarked.

  When I took my daughter, Mary, a-Maying, both of us barefoot and gowned in green like Queen Guinevere in the tales of old, with our unbound hair garlanded with spring flowers, I felt young and gay, as light and airy as dandelion fluff, and amorous male eyes followed every step I took. I sashayed my hips and smiled and let my dark eyes flash, Come hither! I left my daughter to watch the puppet shows and morris dancers and admire the rosary of compressed rose petals the village priest had given her because she was such “a pretty and devout little girl,” while I skipped and pranced and danced with handsome gallants heedless of their low degree, their rough hands and peasant blood, around the great beribboned phallus of the Maypole. I was surprised and flattered by how many young men were so eager to dance with me. Without a backward glance, I left my daughter, trusting in the kindness of strangers to keep her safe, and let them lead me into the greenwood to kiss me and lift my green skirt as, together, we gave ourselves up to the heady pleasures of wanton, lusty May.

  In matching gowns and hair ribbons of cherry red with pink petticoats and fringed pink shawls knitted with a pattern of cherry blossoms, we attended every midsummer cherry fair.

  How we delighted in those boisterous, happy affairs, seeing the trees all decorated with ribbons, and, to try to inject a note of piety, pictures of Our Lord Jesus Christ as a child reaching for a bough heavily laden with dangling ruby red cherries, to symbolize temptation, and also, the bloody and violent death to come, and to remind everyone just how brief life is.

  “Life is but a cherry fair,” was a proverb Mary and I both took to heart and tried to live our lives by.

  While I was busy under the cherry trees with my swains, letting them steal kisses or giving them freely—ah, there is nothing like tasting that luscious red fruit upon a lover’s lips!—my golden girl would buy one of these pictures with her pocket money to hang in her bedchamber as a souvenir of those happy cherry fair days, to remind her in winter’s gloom of the joys and sweet fruits to look forward to.

  One cold and boring winter I even stitched those words—Life is but a cherry fair—in elegant, deep, red silken script encircled by a border of embroidered cherries and
delicate pink cherry blossoms. I kept it on my dressing table, beside the pincushion doll Remi Jouet had given me, as a constant reminder, lest I ever for even one moment forget just how brief life is. I would sit and hug the pincushion Eve to my breast and contemplate those embroidered words and dream of kissing Remi Jouet beneath the fall of cherry blossoms and sinking as one to the ground to make love amidst the fragrant, fallen flowers and of tasting the luscious red fruit upon his sweet lips.

  I seized greedily at every chance to enjoy myself, never depending on tomorrow to come and bring me fresh pleasures. People said I was selfish, self-centered, and greedy. Some said I was hot and wanton, whilst others deemed me cold and heartless. But I didn’t care and never stopped to consider how much was genuine truth or words just spoken in the heat of anger or spite by a spurned lover or jealous rival. I was still young, in my early twenties, and I wanted to live and love lustily while I had the chance, before my own body, and its age and infirmities, became my enemies.

  In those years I reigned as the Queen of Hever Castle. I watched my children grow up and suffered my meddlesome mother-in-law and her increasingly addled wits and eccentric ways as best I could. Our wills clashed many times over the children. ’Tis a marvel she did not kill them with her curatives! Every time they squirmed, she wanted to dose them for worms; any upset of any kind she saw as a “sure and certain sign” of a distressed liver and had a vile tasting potion at the ready to pour down their throats. She chased them down with the dreaded enema syringe and purged their insides until they were squeaky clean. She peered into their chamber pots and scrutinized their urine and stool like a fortune-teller who could see their fates written there, tucked them into bed with their little ears clogged with cloves of garlic to keep the ear pains from visiting them during the night, hung charms around their necks, and dosed them daily with St. John’s Wort to keep evil spirits and demon lovers away. She gave my poor George so many spoonfuls of rose honey trying to chase away his melancholy that he grew to hate the taste of it, and she had to chase him down every day with the spoon. It was quite a sight to see them—my black-haired boy sprinting across the gardens with his grandmother lumbering and tottering after him, blue hair flying, waving a spoon as though it were the King’s banner.

  When I could stand no more of it, I threw up my hands and walked away from it all. I took refuge in my red rose bower. There latticed wooden trellises thickly covered with climbing red roses shielded my private garden and a small reflecting pool where silver and gold fish swam and a statue of Cupid stood on a sunken pedestal amidst pink and white water lilies. Whenever I was within, I let it be known that no one was allowed to disturb me, that this was my private time for contemplation and prayer.

  It was here that I discreetly received my lovers on afternoons when the weather was fair. It doesn’t matter who they were, and in truth, I don’t remember most of their names, and Time has blurred their faces. When I wanted a lover I took one; it was as simple as that. Sometimes I chose them with care, like a lady leisurely scrutinizing the jeweler’s wares, intent on making the perfect selection, but most of the time I didn’t care and took whatever was within ready reach. They were meaningless diversions designed to relieve my boredom, the frustration and tedium of being Thomas Bullen’s wife, forced to endure a bucolic exile from the lively life at court. They were just handsome men who knew how to be discreet. Fine, fun fellows who passed through my life briefly as butterflies—traveling tinkers, strolling players and minstrels, journeyman laborers, peddlers and artisans, swift couriers and liveried envoys, and the occasional gentleman. The only thing they had in common was that they all lingered long enough to catch my eye and fulfill a need before they took their leave.

  None of them made a dent upon my heart. After the pleasure was past, they were fast forgotten. And if they remembered me, well . . . that was their mind, not mine. The few who came my way again whom I deigned to favor, I welcomed as though we were strangers meeting for the first time and forgot them when they took to the road again.

  I didn’t want to remember, or to be remembered; I wanted to be admired, pleasured, and then for them to forget me the same way I forgot them. It wasn’t about making memories to cherish; it was about relieving boredom and cuckolding Thomas, giving his precious pedigreed pearl to rough swines with coarse, work-roughened hands and dirt-caked nails, men lower than himself, with whom this pearl rolled in the mud and rutted like pigs, nothing more.

  During those years I thought often of the doll maker, Remi Jouet, dreaming of his shy, sweet, round baby face, the fall of dark hair over his brow, his dark eyes, and deliciously voluptuous form. Every time I sat down at my dressing table, the pincushion doll, the miniature enchantress Eve, he had given me that long-ago day, was always there to remind me.

  So many times I wondered, Was his shop still there in London? Was that delicious dumpling of a man still there, plying his trade, creating and selling his beautiful dolls? Had he ever made the doll I had so imperiously requested? And if so, what had become of it? Did it languish still upon a shelf cocooned in velvet to protect it from the dust? Or had he long since sold it to delight some little girl, a courtier’s or an ambassador’s daughter perhaps?

  Yet I never bothered to find out. I was afraid of what I might discover—a cookshop in its place perhaps, or a round-bodied buxom blond wife behind the counter. Though it was both ridiculous and naive of me to want to deny him a wife and children of his own when I was myself married and a mother, and, even if I were free, could never, as a duke’s daughter, stoop so low as to become a tradesman’s wife. Yet I never made inquiries. I preferred to keep the dream alive and avoid the disappointment of watching it die in the face of reality and the cold, hard truths I expected it to deliver like a slap in the face.

  Sometimes I would sit and hug that exquisite pincushion doll to my breast and dream of what might have been. His body soft as dough but as warm as fresh baked bread, that heady combination of softness and heat as passion enveloped and overwhelmed us. I would close my eyes and let delightfully erotic fantasies play out in the private chamber of my mind, doing all the things I wished we’d done. In my dreams I didn’t waste time. I was sixteen and back inside his shop again, but this time when he kissed me I never let go. Instead I dragged him into the back room where he slept, pushed him down onto the bed, fell on top of him, and covered his mouth with mine. It’s what I should have done, and mayhap would have done, if that blubbering idiot Matilda hadn’t come barging in. If she ever dared come upon me when I was in such a reverie, woe to Matilda, for I was sure to slap her face.

  My own little girls were fascinated by the small, temptation-eyed, pincushion Eve, a miniature study in seductiveness, with her extended apple and sly, embracing serpent of green glass and gold beads twined around her like a clinging vine.

  The only time I ever raised my hand or voice to Mary was to slap her hands away and sternly forbid her to touch it, promising the most dire punishment if she dared disobey me. No matter how much she wept and pleaded to hold it, just once, promising how careful she would be, I never gave in. It was mine, and I forbade her, or anyone else, to touch it, even my maid when she was dusting and tidying my dressing table. This was something that was mine alone that I would never share with anyone else.

  Anne was also fascinated by that dainty doll. But she never tried or begged to touch it, nor ever gave even a roundabout hint that she would like to. Not once did I ever have to reprimand or threaten her with punishment the way I did Mary. She would stand and stare at it like one entranced, hands clasped tightly behind her back, keeping her thoughts, whatever they were, all to herself. She had already learned the value of keeping her own counsel and to not invite mockery and laughter. And in those days, any childish dream she might have dared confess I would most assuredly have greeted with scorn and laughter, and Anne knew it; she had already learned that lesson.

  “Daughter,” I would have said bluntly, sage and haughty, as I sat preening at my dressing tabl
e, “dreams never come true for one such as you. It would be best to resign yourself to that now, rather than court disappointment later.”

  But, though this is said in hindsight, I have a feeling that if such a conversation had ever happened betwixt us, Anne’s dark eyes would have flashed a challenge, a wager, daring to prove me wrong.

  4

  The old King died, coughing up his lungs in bloody bits in a drafty room that, ever the miser, his penny-pinching ways prevented from being kept properly heated. He would rather have the money in his treasury than spend it on firewood for his own comfort. To him, my husband said, that was the same as burning money, and there was no greater sin in Henry VII’s eyes. The man kept his rooms so cold, a popular jest went, the kitchen staff used them for cold storage for things like butter and milk, secreting these out of sight behind the faded old moth-eaten tapestries.

  The King was dead! It was out with the old and in with the new! Few mourned the old King’s passing and rushed to fawn upon his successor, the boy everyone thought destined for the church until his elder brother, Prince Arthur, died. This Henry was nothing like his dull, stodgy, old, penny-pinching father, but young, vital, virile, merry, and eager to dance and have a good time and let coins drip through his fingers like water. No musty, dusty old velvet or ratty old fur for him—only the newest and finest! What good was money when you were in your grave and could not enjoy it? Better to spend and enjoy it while you were young and still had the chance! Aye, I thought, here is a king, a man, after my own heart!

  On St. George’s day in the year of Our Lord 1509, Prince Henry, “a youngling who cares for naught but hunting and girls,” as my husband somewhat contemptuously described that robust red gold stripling to me behind our bedcurtains one night, became King Henry VIII of England at the age of only seventeen.