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Gently, he lifted the plain white coif from her head and plucked the pins from her hair until it fell like an ebony cloak about her shoulders, and he drew her close for a lingering kiss. When their lips parted their eyes met in a long and silent stare. Anne was the first to look away. Eyes downcast, she nodded in a manner that seemed more resigned than anything else.
Slowly, she lay back against the bed of leaves.
His lips were upon hers, then trailing slowly down to her throat and breasts, while his hand gathered up her full gray skirt and petticoats.
All the time Anne lay passive, her arms draped loosely about his back. While he moaned and sighed, she stayed still and silent. Only once did she cry out, when he lay full upon her and with his fleshly lance shattered the shield of her hymen.
Suddenly he drew back, bolting up onto his knees, to let his seed spew onto the leaves.
Anne just lay there, rigid, staring up at the sky through the lattice of naked branches and dead leaves while he put right his garments.
With a tender smile, Wyatt extended his hand and drew her up for another kiss. Softly, they spoke, too low for me to hear, and then he left her and rode home to Allington Castle, and his wife.
Anne sat for a long time, hugging her knees, upon that bed of leaves. Then from out of her bodice she drew a slim gold chain—a locket. She parted the gleaming halves of the golden oval and gazed down with such sorrow that I felt the tightness that portends tears well up within my own throat.
‘I wanted it to be you!’ she cried, and I knew that it was upon Harry Percy’s likeness that she was gazing.
With a wrenching sob, she flung herself facedown into the leaves and wept until the sun set.
Witnessing her despair, I almost felt ashamed for telling her what had befallen poor Percy since his ill-fated marriage.
Between Harry Percy and Mary Talbot it was hate as black and thick as treacle at first sight. Their marriage was never even consummated, and after the wedding his wife went home to her doting father. Percy was left alone in his drafty, cavernous castle. There he tried to drown his sorrows, scrutinizing the bottom of each tankard and goblet he drained, hoping to find consolation written there. Stomach pains became the bane of his existence. And though still a young man in the midst of his twenties, he looked twice that; already sorrow was steadily bleaching his ginger hair white. He often gave way to tears of self-pity, berating himself for his cowardice, denouncing himself as ‘a jelly, a spineless jelly!’ And every night, when he slumped facedown across the table in a drunken stupor, he would cry her name—‘Anne!’
In the third year of Anne’s exile, George and I were married in the royal chapel at Greenwich. I wore white damask and deep green velvet with my late mother’s pearls and a special brooch Father had given me pinned to my bodice. A curious, ornate piece of exquisite craftsmanship, it was heavy burnished gold set with a large green agate topped by a head in the antique style depicting some ancient goddess, Persephone perhaps, with long, flowing hair strewn with enameled flowers. A wreath of gilded rosemary with trailing green and white silk ribbons crowned my unbound hair. It was the last time I would ever appear in public with my hair unbound; henceforth, my tresses would be covered with a coif and headdress and reserved as a sight for my husband’s eyes alone in the privacy of our bedchamber. As I knelt at the altar beside him, I remembered George combing Anne’s hair and smiled at the thought of him soon doing the same for me. Perhaps it would even become a nightly ritual, something we did before retiring to bed.
I was radiant with delight and my face ached from smiling. As I held George’s hand tightly in mine, I swore I would never let go. He was mine now, all mine, bound to me with Church rites and golden rings!
I was restless throughout the banquet that followed, aching for the moment when I would be left alone with him behind the velvet curtains of our marriage bed. And then that moment came, and I learned a valuable lesson—anticipation only makes the disappointment keener.
He was kind, very kind, but maddeningly aloof. Indifference stared back at me from behind his luminous, wine-glazed brown eyes. How could he be so close to me and yet so far away? We were like two people facing each other across a great chasm where the bridge had collapsed. But only I wanted to cross over; George was content to stay on his side.
He kissed me. I clung to him, fiercely, like a drowning woman wild to survive. I giggled, squirmed, and sighed at the delicious new sensations of his fingers gliding over my breasts and down to my cunny. I cried out my love as he entered me, heedless of the pain, and clawed at his back until his blood was caked beneath my nails. For a moment I thought I spied something akin to irritation in his eyes, but otherwise he was unmoved by my passion. His seed spewed into me, then it was over. He rolled off me, bid me good night, and turned his face to the wall. I wrapped my arms around his waist, nestled against his back, and cooed over the scratches my nails had made, kissing them and lapping at them kittenishly with my tongue, but he just lay there, silent and still as a marble tomb effigy.
How many ways can a husband tell his wife that she means nothing to him without actually saying the words?
We divided our time between court and Grimston Manor in Norfolk, which the King had given us as a wedding present. And yes, it was grim and made of gray stone as cold and hard as George’s heart was to me.
After our wedding night, he never passed an entire night with me. On the rare occasions when he came to my bed at all, after he had spent his seed he would shake off my clinging hands and curtly dismiss my pleas. ‘Leave off, Madame; my duty is done for tonight at least!’ he would snap peevishly as he headed for the door, even as I clung to him and begged him to stay and sleep the night with me. He would flee into his own bedchamber, which adjoined mine, pressing his shoulder firmly against the door and bolting it even as I flung myself against it. And I would slump there against the door, in tears and agony, while his seed snaked down my bare legs. And at each sound that filtered through the thick wood to my ears I wept all the more. The splash of water into a basin told me that he was washing himself, washing away all traces of me, the evidence of our coupling. This was invariably followed by wine sloshing into a goblet, twice or thrice at least, but sometimes more. Sometimes then would come the scratching of a pen upon parchment or the poignant pluck of lute strings, but, more often than not, I would hear the rustle of clothing, the clothespress banging open and shut as he dressed himself. Then the outer door would open and I would hear his footsteps heading for the stairs.
I knew where he was going. Sometimes I even followed. I listened, I saw—the carousing, the drinking, the gambling, the whoring, all the obliging court ladies and harlots in taverns who raised their skirts and opened their arms and legs to him. There were rumors that he sometimes dallied with men, reveling in the forbidden sin of Sodom and, if caught, risking a fiery death at the stake. I suppose it was, for him, the ultimate gamble.
Francis Weston’s was the name linked most often with his—a hot-tempered rascal, with a wild, unruly head of hair of the brightest red I had ever seen. His right eye was a shade of gold-flecked brown that reminded me of amber. He had a hundred tales to explain how he had lost his left eye, each more amusing than the last. A generous offer to let a friend shoot an apple off the top of his head during archery practice had gone tragically awry. A quarrel in a tavern over the last sausage on a platter. ‘The lesson here is not to quarrel at meals and to be wary of forks; in the wrong hands they can be a dangerous weapon!’ Other times he cautioned his audience not to pick their teeth while riding in a litter, or to try to pin a brooch onto their hat brim while on horseback, or to tease their ladylove’s pet monkey or parrot. ‘And never, never tell a temperamental tailor that you will be delinquent in settling your account while he has a pair of newly sharpened shears in his hand!’ But whatever the truth, by his loss he seemed undaunted.
4 (#ulink_b38d8cf7-6309-513d-8280-d2bde272e293)
The storm that had flashed, then fallen dormant, finally began to show its strength in the summer of 1526.
I was at Hever, sitting in Anne’s chamber, embroidering and talking idly with Anne and her mother, when we heard the distant trill of hunting horns.
Hoofbeats came clattering urgently across the wooden drawbridge, and Sir Thomas Boleyn flung himself from the saddle and rushed inside as if the hounds of Hell were nipping at his heels. Within moments he stood before us, panting and dripping with sweat. Ignoring us, he went straight to the clothespress and commenced flinging dresses and kirtles, bodices and sleeves about until the floor was lost beneath a welter of satin, silk, velvet, damask, and brocade. Suddenly he stopped, a spring green silk gown exquisitely embroidered with white roses, with just a shimmer of silver glimmering amidst the pearly threads, clasped between his hands.
‘Tudor colors…green and white…roses…the royal emblem…’ I heard him murmur intently as he scrutinized the gown. ‘It’s perfect! Here! Wear this!’ He tossed it onto Anne’s lap.
I recognized the material at once. George had brought it back with him from a brief pleasure jaunt to France. I had coveted it for myself at first glance, but no matter how I oohed and ahhed over its beauty, and hinted at the nearness of my birthday, George had ignored me and given it to Anne instead.
‘No more of these drab, colorless dresses!’ he continued. ‘If you want to dress like a nun I will send you to a convent! That is the traditional fate of spinsters who fail to make a proper marriage. Need I remind you, Anne, that you are now three years past twenty and woman’s youth is fleeting?’
He reached out and yanked the plain coif of pleated white linen from her head. ‘Take down your hair! You’ve half an hour to prepare yourself; when you are ready, wait in the rose garden. Take your lute and play, or stroll about and admire the flowers, whatever you will, as long as you appear pleasing to a man’s eye!’
And then he was gone, slamming the door behind him.
I knew something important was about to happen. While Anne, clutching her lute and arrayed in the spring green gown, sullenly descended the three stone steps into the sunken rose garden, I rushed to hide behind the tall, dense green shrubberies surrounding it.
She left her lute lying upon a bench and idly roamed the pebbled path, lost in thought, crushing the fallen petals of red, pink, yellow, and white beneath her satin slippers, while all around her roses in full, heady bloom swayed gently upon their thorny stems.
Then there he was—King Henry VIII himself in all his might and majestic glory. In his eagerness he had ridden ahead of the hunting party, thus no cavalcade of clattering hooves and blaring horns heralded his arrival. He stood there, a ruddy giant of a man, hands on hips, sweaty and flush-faced from heat and exertion, legs parted as if he meant to straddle the world and declare himself its master.
The crunch of his boots upon the gravel startled her, and Anne spun around and sank quickly into a curtsy. Any woman less graceful and nimble would have lost her balance and fallen flat.
‘Up! Up!’ he gestured brusquely. ‘No ceremony, Mistress Anne. You see I come before you not as Henry of England…’ At this, her brows arched skeptically. ‘Ardent Desire has come to call upon Perseverance. You persevere in staying away from court while I ardently desire your presence!’
‘Alas, Sire, I am done with all that!’ she answered. ‘The pleasures of the court have lost their allure, and my heart is yet too sore to contemplate…’
‘Three years is time aplenty for a broken heart to mend! You have been overlong at nursing your grief, Mistress Anne, and I command you now to cease!’
‘With all due respect, Sire,’ Anne retorted, ‘my heart is not yours to command.’
Undaunted, he answered, ‘It will be.’
‘I daresay anything is possible.’ Anne shrugged.
‘Aye, it is, Anne, it is!’ he vowed, nodding eagerly. ‘With us, anything is possible!’
‘As you say.’ She shrugged disinterestedly.
‘Come, take my arm, show me the garden.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Nay, dearest Anne’—Henry turned and lightly caressed her cheek—‘I’ve yet to be granted my wish.’
‘Then if Your Majesty will follow me along this path, I will be glad to show you the garden,’ Anne said coldly, turning away from his touch.
‘For you, Mistress Anne, I would follow the path to damnation itself!’ he declared as they proceeded along the petal-strewn path.
‘Ah! What fine roses flourish here at Hever!’ His meaty fingers caressed a lush crimson bloom while his eyes devoured Anne.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty. I shall give the gardener your compliments,’ said Anne, her voice crisp and cool as winter.
‘You are not your sister,’ he observed.
‘No, Your Majesty, I am not.’
‘What a rare blossom you are, Mistress Anne! An English rose who weathered the lusty storms of the French court and came home to us fresh and unplucked! The King of France, I am told, is an ardent gardener who likes nothing better than to gather a beautiful bouquet for his bedchamber. However did this English rose escape his attention?’
‘One can attract attention without bestowing one’s attentions, Sire. And, as you say, I am not my sister. I would never sell myself so cheaply.’
‘Cheaply?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Many would account it a great honor to be the mistress of a king!’
‘As Your Majesty rightfully observed, I am a rarity, the exception rather than the rule. Never would I sacrifice my honor for the brief, fleeting favor that can be found between the sheets of a royal bed.’
‘You are proud, Mistress Anne.’
‘Too proud to be plucked by a King and then discarded. A rose does not survive long once it has been plucked, and I will not, like some dried and wizened petals made into a potpourri, be parceled out as a gift to some obliging courtier, as my sister was to William Carey!’
King Henry just stared at her, pulses throbbing. There was a sharp snap as his fingers tightened round the stem of the crimson rose.
‘Roses are meant to be plucked, not to wither upon their stems, their petals by the winds and rains dispersed and trodden underfoot!’
‘That would depend, Sire, upon who does the plucking. I think it is not meet for someone to steal into a garden and take whatsoever he desires, like a thief in the night. Better that it be done lawfully, by one who has the right!’
‘It is not for roses to decide who plucks them! I look forward to seeing you at court, Mistress Anne.’
‘I thank Your Majesty for your kind invitation…’
‘It is not an invitation.’
‘It is a command?’
‘We understand each other perfectly. Good day, Mistress Anne.’ He extended the rose to her and, with a curt nod, left her.
With her left hand Anne tore the petals from the rose and flung them fiercely aside as her right hand did likewise with the stem; then, with a swirl of spring green skirts she turned and ran from the garden to lose herself in the maze where I dared not follow.
That night Anne kept to her chamber, ignoring her father’s repeated summons to come down to dine.
‘The King requests your presence,’ the first message said. Another followed shortly afterwards, saying, ‘Bring your lute; the King desires you to play for him.’
Anne sent her lute downstairs with her answer. ‘Play it for him yourself. My head aches and I am going to bed.’
Sir Thomas Boleyn did not dare send for her again and made her excuses instead to the much annoyed monarch.
The next morning we assembled in the courtyard to bid the King farewell. Only Anne, to her father’s supreme annoyance, was absent.
King Henry pursed his lips and a cloud of anger seemed to hover above the swaying white ostrich plumes on his round velvet cap.
‘We hope Mistress Anne will soon regain her health and grace our court again,’ he mumbled gruffly.
‘Indeed she will, Your Grace, I am certain of it!’ Sir Thomas assured him. ‘I am certain of it!’ he repeated as he knelt upon the dusty, sunbaked flagstones to hold the gilded stirrup for the royal foot.
It was then, as he started to swing himself up into the saddle, that King Henry looked up.
Framed like a painting by a master artist, Anne stood at her ivy-bordered window, still in her thin, clinging white nightshift, idly running an ivory comb through her long black hair. Her eyes were staring straight ahead, out into the distance, pointedly ignoring what was happening in the courtyard below. Then, abruptly, she turned away and disappeared from sight, even as King Henry breathed a long sigh and shuddered with desire.
‘Tell your daughter that Love is the physician who cures all ails,’ he commanded. Then he leapt into the saddle and spurred his horse onward and, with his retinue following, took to the road again.
5 (#ulink_da69263f-03a2-5903-8d90-ac7b57115715)
And so it began, the chase, the hunt, that would consume the better part of seven years, shattering and destroying lives, and shaking and tearing the world like a rat in a terrier’s mouth. Nothing would ever be the same again, all because of Ardent Desire and Perseverance.
At Sir Thomas Boleyn’s command, an army of dressmakers descended upon Hever, and the rustle of costly fabrics, the snip of scissors, the snap of thread, and the chatter of women soon filled the sewing room. Lace makers, furriers, clothiers, perfumers, jewelers, shoemakers, stay makers, all rode forth from London as reinforcements summoned by her anxious father, to outfit Anne for battle even though she herself stood haughty and recalcitrant in their midst, with no intention of fighting.
‘When Henry of England desires a woman there is never any other answer but “Yes,”’ Sir Thomas counseled, circling Anne appraisingly as she stood upon a stool while a seamstress knelt to adjust the hem of her new, sunset orange gown.
‘Then I shall teach him a new word—No!’ Anne announced, prompting George, lounging in a chair draped with swags of silk and lace, to burst into great, rollicking peals of laughter, thus earning himself a sharp cuff upon the ear courtesy of his father.
‘But he is the King!’ Elizabeth Boleyn protested, wringing her hands despairingly. ‘Please, Anne, do not provoke his anger! By refusing him you risk all that we possess, all that your father has worked so hard for, all these years!’
‘Ah, the life of a court toady!’ Anne sneered. ‘Such backbreaking labor almost makes one envy a bricklayer!’
In his chair George sniggered helplessly, despite his father’s warning stare.
‘Enough!’ shouted Sir Thomas Boleyn. ‘You are a clever girl, Anne, so I know that you will understand what I am about to say to you. Your matrimonial prospects are nil; men may flirt with you, but there are no suitors banging at the door begging for your hand. So now you must choose: a life of gaiety at court, where you will do everything that you can to make yourself pleasing to His Majesty, or a bleak life of silence, contemplation, and prayer, locked inside a nunnery. The choice is yours. You should account yourself fortunate that the King casts even a glance at you! Mark me, you are no beauty. A tall, skinny stick topped with long black hair is what you are; your skin is sallow, your bosom small, your eyes too large, and your neck too long. Then there is that ugly wen upon your throat, and that nub of a sixth finger you hide so well with your oh-so-cunning sleeves. And yet…for some unaccountable reason, the King has noticed you; he wants you, and what Henry wants he shall have! I as your father command you, Anne, to make the most of this opportunity. Take it and make it turn to gold!’
‘You would serve me to him upon a platter if it would enrich your coffers and elevate your station,’ Anne said bitterly.
‘Indeed I would! You are a gambler, Anne, so play him, Anne, play him; and take Henry Tudor for all that he is worth! Just don’t lose like you did with Percy. I think it is safe to say that you will not have another chance. Now I will leave you to your thoughts, though I trust that you have already decided.’
And with those words he left her, with his wife trailing after him, admonishing Anne to listen to her father, for he was a wise man and surely knew best.
‘Sacrificed upon the altar of parental ambition!’ Anne sighed. ‘It is either the King’s bed or a convent cot!’
‘Nan, listen to me.’ George went to her and lifted her down from the dressmaker’s stool. His hands lingered on her waist as hers did upon his shoulders as they stood close together, leaning into each other’s embrace. ‘I have been at court long enough to know that it is the chase that delights him most, so lead him, Nan, and lead him long; resist and run until he wearies. His interest will wane, and he will turn his eyes towards a different, and easier quarry. He is not the most patient of men, and there are women aplenty who line his path ready to throw themselves at his feet.’
‘Aye, my sweet brother, have no fear.’ She reached up to kiss his cheek. ‘Perseverance will outpace Ardent Desire. I will give Henry Tudor the run of his life!’
‘I know you will, Nan.’ He smiled. ‘There’s none who can match you, Nan, none!’
Seeing them standing there, so close, so lost in one another, made my blood boil. By now I was well accustomed to these displays of tenderness and intimacy. I used to watch them, as vigilant as a hawk. The way they walked together, talked together, danced, sat with their heads together whispering confidences, composing songs and sonnets with their pens scratching over parchment, or bent over their lutes; the way they touched hands, embraced, and kissed; the way George’s hands would linger at her waist when he lifted Anne down from her horse; and the way sometimes of an evening or a rainy day by the hearthside he would lay his head in her lap and she would lean down with her hair forming an ebony curtain around him…they looked like lovers. It was as if they were made to be together and, as blasphemous as it sounds, God had made a mistake when He made them brother and sister so that full passionate love between them was forbidden. I never saw, either before or since, such a strong devotion between two people. It was as if they were bonded together, fused, with a chain of unbendable, unbreakable links; nothing could divide them. Together they were whole and complete, but apart something vital was lacking. Was everyone else blind? Why was I the only one who could see it?
‘If I did not know better, I would swear you two were lovers!’ I shouted at them. But even as the words were upon my lips I wondered, did I really know better? Did I? Then I ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me just as hard as I could.
George followed me and caught hold of my wrist. ‘What are you about?’ he demanded angrily.
‘You seem overeager to defy your father’s wishes, George. You dislike the thought of Anne in the King’s bed!’ I charged with eyes blazing.
‘She will find little happiness there,’ he answered.
‘And her happiness is very important to you.’ I nodded knowingly. ‘Or should I say that it is everything to you? Tell me, George, would that not be more apt?’
