Doomed Queen Anne Read online

  My father observed my behavior and immediately pulled me down. Later, I was birched for it—Lady Guildford administered a half dozen whacks to the backs of my legs—but I never forgot that moment when the king's eyes met mine in the midst of the crowd.

  "I SHALL NO DOUBT be betrothed before Michaelmas," Mary was saying now in a matter-of-fact way that caught me off guard. We spoke French, so as not to be understood by the English ladies all around us. She was still admiring her pretty new jewel. "The king has chosen a husband for me." She said this as though it were the most common of occurrences.

  "You are to be wed? To whom?" I asked, forgetting the need for haste.

  "Will Carey, one of the king's courtiers. I know him well. It should be a decent match. I have no complaints about it. One husband is just as good, or bad, as the next, in my opinion."

  "So that puts an end to your career as king's mistress," I said rather coldly, for I felt then that she did not deserve the special attention of "the greatest king England has ever known," as my father referred to him, adding, "or indeed shall ever know."

  "Not at all!" Mary replied with spirit. "I shall continue to be the king's pleasure, if he wishes it."

  "But what of your husband?" I asked, thinking, My sister is shameless! "Will he not object?"

  She laughed. "One does not object to the desires of one's king! Of course, if I beget a child, that will put an end to it."

  "Then the king will be in search of someone to take your place, will he not?" I couldn't help asking. We had arrived at the lists where the tournaments were held, and we prepared to hurry off to join our queens, hoping to slip unnoticed among their ladies.

  Mary shrugged. "No doubt. King Henry always finds his pleasure among the queen's ladies. It does put Her Majesty in a temper." My sister winked at me knowingly. "Come home to England when you tire of those overrefined Frenchmen," she said archly. "Perhaps, when you are grown up, King Henry's fancy will alight upon you. Would you not like to be the king's mistress?"

  "No, I would not," I said haughtily. "Anyone can be the king's mistress. I should much prefer to be his queen."

  Mary laughed, showing her perfect white teeth. "What an amusing child you have become!" she cried.

  "I am not a child, and I am quite serious," I declared firmly. "Wait and see—someday I shall be queen of England, and you will kneel at my feet!" And I flounced proudly away from my well-favored, detestable sister.

  CHAPTER 2

  Childhood 1507–1520

  I was always jealous of my sister. My mother had been a great beauty, and it was evident that Mary, who favored her, would be a beauty as well. I was a severe disappointment to my parents, for I was not a comely child. I had inherited the dark looks of my father, Thomas Bullen. My mother, Elizabeth, highborn daughter of the duke of Norfolk, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine. My father lacked both tide and wealth, but he was intelligent and ambitious. He meant to make himself important in the court of the brilliant young king Henry VIII. Mary and I became part of his scheme.

  Soon after that long-ago visit to court, at which I had failed to curtsy, my father decided that Mary would be sent to Paris to join the court of Louis XII, king of France. Because of the close alliance between Louis and King Henry, my father believed it would benefit him and his family to have a daughter fluent in the language and the ways of the French court.

  But he had not yet decided what to do with me.

  One night when we were thought to be asleep in our bed, the candles already snuffed, Mary decided that we must go to our mother for something, I forget just what. Obediently I stumbled out of bed and followed her. We crept past our governess and the serving maids, fast asleep on their pallets, pushed open the heavy oaken door carefully so the creaking iron hinges wouldn't give us away, and raced through the cold echoing hall to our mother's chambers. About to enter, we were stopped by our father's low rumbling voice within. We hushed each other and, shivering, crowded close to the keyhole to listen.

  "What of Nan?" I heard my mother ask plaintively. "I cannot imagine that we shall ever be able to find her a suitable husband. The poor child is so ill-favored! Dark as a gypsy, and that blemish upon her neck, the little bud of an extra finger..."

  "Ill-favored, true enough, but not dull-witted," my father replied. "I find Nan's intelligence far superior to Mary's."

  Ha! I could not resist administering a sharp pinch to my sister through the thin silk of her sleeping shift. She swatted my hand away, and, in the brief exchange of slaps and counterslaps that ensued, we nearly missed what was said next.

  "...to a nunnery," I heard my mother say. "As other parents have done with daughters with unfortunate defects. She would avoid the miseries of childbearing. Perhaps Nan would not mind a life of prayer and stitchery," my mother continued in her placid voice.

  I gasped. Defects! A nunnery! Mary giggled and gave me a painful blow with her elbow, but I was too horrified by what I was hearing to pay her any attention. Tears gathered in my eyes as my mother in a few words sentenced me to a life of wretched piety.

  "I have a better plan, one that I have already set in motion," my father announced. "I have petitioned the king, who has agreed that Nan be sent to join the court of Archduchess Margaret in the Spanish Netherlands. Her court is said to be brilliant. Nan can learn the necessary courtly skills there, and with luck we might contract a good marriage for her with some Spanish or Italian nobleman."

  Mary stared at me with her great blue eyes. Suddenly our father's footsteps approached the closed door. Fearing that we might be discovered and forgetting whatever it was we'd wanted of our mother, we raced recklessly back to our own bedchamber, shut the bed-curtains, and burrowed under the coverlet. My heart was pounding, and I felt like weeping.

  "So," Mary whispered in the darkness, "you need not go into a convent after all. Father thinks it possible to make a lady of you, even if you are ill-favored."

  Of course I hated my sister, the cherished beauty of the family, but I took some comfort in my father's words: She is not dull-witted. Perhaps he would one day take pride in me after all.

  I HAD NO IDEA who the Archduchess Margaret might be or where the Spanish Netherlands were. I understood only that I was to be sent far away from Hever, where I had spent my childhood. I could speak of my fears to no one—certainly not my parents, for that would have meant admitting that I had eavesdropped. Nor could I confide in my disdainful sister, who was already preparing to leave for the French court and missed no chance to lord it over me. So I kept my peace, attended to my lessons with Lady Guildford, and awaited my fate with a sinking heart.

  Finally, in the autumn of 1513 when I was six, my father decided the time had come for me to leave England. Mary had sailed for France months earlier, an expensive array of new gowns and petticoats packed in her wooden trunks. Her outgrown wardrobe had been altered to fit me.

  I bade my mother farewell at Hever, both of us choking back tears. I clung for a long moment to my younger brother, George, who was too young to understand that years might pass before we saw one another again. It was very hard for me to leave them.

  My father had arranged for me to travel in the company of Lady Guildford, whom I neither liked nor disliked but who was at least familiar to me. Father accompanied us as far as Dover, to the small sailing ship that was to take us across the English Channel. I knelt to receive his blessing and promised that I would be a dutiful and obedient child. As soon as I was free, I hurried aboard to inspect the masts and ropes and other nautical things. I was excited, for I had never been at sea.

  As the shore slipped away, billowing clouds darkened and piled one upon another; waves slapped hard at the sides of the wooden craft. No sooner were we out of sight of land than the furious storm broke from an angry sky. Hour after hour we were tossed about by cruel seas and lashed with torrential rain.

  Belowdecks, bilious passengers lay strewn about; I stayed above, clinging to the mast as the ship climbed to the crest of each toweri
ng wave and then plunged into a deep trough. With the wind tearing at my sodden clothes and my streaming hair plastered to my body, I was frightened, but also exhilarated. It did not occur to me that I might die.

  At last the storm subsided. As we went ashore at Calais, the captain patted me on the head and said what a brave child I was.

  "Brave and foolish," Lady Guildford retorted. "It will be the death of her."

  But I was not feeling at all brave as we neared the end of the three-day journey from Calais to Mechelen, capital of the Netherlands. What would the archduchess be like? Would she treat me with kindness or cruelty?

  The Archduchess Margaret herself greeted us warmly at the gates of the magnificent palace, addressing me as Mademoiselle Anne. A tall woman dressed in black with shrewd eyes, she was known as Margaret of Austria or Marguerite d'Autriche, but everyone called her simply "Madame." I liked her at once.

  I was still too young to become officially une fille d'honneur, a maid of honor. "But, Mademoiselle Anne," said Madame, "you are not too young to begin learning those things that will one day win you a favored place at any court in the world." Slowly she set my heart at ease.

  I had my lessons from a tutor, Monsieur Symonnet, who spoke to me only in French, even when I wept piteously, "Oh please, monsieur, just tell me it in English!" To no avail. He merely smiled and repeated what he had just said, still in French. Gradually the sounds soaked into my mind, and my tongue learned to pronounce them.

  My dancing tutor, Monsieur Bosc, was tall and thin with a wispy yellowish beard and a crooked nose. Each afternoon he arrived with his long stick for tapping out the meter. We practiced the basse danse, consisting of small, gliding steps, with frequent bows, followed by the leaps of the galliard, and on to the stately but complicated pavane.

  "One learns to move tranquilly, without agitation," Monsieur Bosc had to remind me often, for I tended toward too much enthusiasm.

  Soon after I arrived, Madame ordered new gowns and petticoats for me to replace my sister's discarded wardrobe and assigned Madame Louise, a dame d'honneur, to teach me the secrets of dressing well. "You will permit me to make a suggestion?" inquired Madame Louise. "If you were to wear a jewel on a ribbon around your neck, like so, it would serve to disguise the small blemish there that causes you so much displeasure." My sister had tormented me about that mole for as long as I could remember, and I welcomed Madame Louise's suggestion. "Your hands are very graceful, Mademoiselle Anne," she continued. "Perhaps a sleeve with a frilled lace cuff would enhance them and draw attention away from your finger." This, too, I welcomed.

  "Men will look into your eyes and listen to your clever words," Madame Louise assured me. "You will enchant them with your whole being, and they will be blind to your little flaws. They may even come to admire them, to find them attractive."

  Slowly I came to believe her.

  Madame Louise herself was not a handsome woman; her nose was large and her skin pockmarked, and yet I could see for myself the powerful attraction she exercised over the gentlemen in Archduchess Margaret's court. They seemed to find her ravishing.

  I HAD BEEN WITH Archduchess Margaret for nearly a year when I received a summons from my father. I was to move to Paris with Lady Guildford. I burst into tears at the news. I did not want to leave the archduchess, whom I'd come to love, and this place where I had learned to be happy. Of course, I had no choice. I had to obey.

  The reason for the change was this: Princess Mary, the younger sister of King Henry VIII, was to be married to King Louis XII of France. My father had been chosen to accompany the princess and her large retinue to Paris. I was to join him and my sister there. With the blessings of the archduchess and many last instructions from Madame Louise, I made my tearful farewells and was on my way to a new life in the French court. Naturally, I worried about how I would get on with my sister.

  I was seven years old, but not at all the same child who'd left England more than a year earlier. I no longer wore clumsy English gowns or displayed clumsy English manners. I was becoming a demoiselle, which was obvious even to my sister.

  "You have changed, Nan," she said the first time we met, looking at me with narrowed eyes. My sister was twelve and now called Marie, but in some ways—ways that surely did not escape her notice—I seemed nearly as sophisticated as she.

  Marie linked her arm through mine as we strolled in the palace gardens. "Poor Princess Mary!" she whispered. "She despises King Louis. He is old and feeble, but Henry is forcing her to marry him. What is more, she is in love with someone else—King Henry's friend, Charles Brandon. That is a secret, of course."

  "Pity," I said, although frankly I did not care how the princess felt about her betrothed. We were all taught from an early age that marriage had nothing to do with the feelings of the bride or bridegroom. For royalty, marriage was about political alliances, just as, for those of us of lesser status, marriage was about wealth and property and rank. Of course, I knew nothing about love.

  Princess Mary was a lovely creature with red-gold hair and merry blue eyes, eighteen years old and full of life. King Louis had scarcely a tooth left in his mouth; a servingman hovered at his elbow to wipe the tears from his weeping eyes and spittle from his drooling lips. No wonder the princess doesn't want to marry him, I thought, and I did feel sorry for her.

  For the next few weeks, I was kept busy helping Marie, who was supposed to translate for the wedding guests who spoke English or French but rarely both. The difficulty was that my sister, however fluent she may have thought herself, spoke clumsy French. My French was now excellent, and often I was called upon to untangle her misinterpretations.

  "You have become impossible, Nan," she said spitefully. "Just because you think you know French!"

  "But I do know French, dear sister," I gloated. Aware that she was waiting for the first opportunity to pinch me, I managed to stay just beyond her reach.

  The wedding took place in October. Three weeks later Princess Mary was crowned Queen Mary of France; more pageantry, more feasting, more dancing. The young queen was always polite and attentive to the pitiable old king. At the great Yuletide feast, Queen Mary herself helped the wretched man totter to the banqueting table.

  By then, Marie was scarcely speaking to me. She realized that I had learned to dance better than she could, and she resented my attempts to teach her the steps. Our new relationship angered her. "Since you have come here, everyone watches you, and I have been forgotten!" she complained pettishly.

  "I am sure that you are mistaken," I said, but I knew that she was right. That pleased me a great deal.

  Once she slapped me, and I responded by pulling her hair. Marie screamed, and several maids of honor rushed to separate us. The mother of the maids punished us both, sending us to our chambers without bread or wine, where we sulked and blamed each other. But in the end I proved the stronger, or perhaps the more stubborn, of the two, and it was Marie who gave in.

  "Forgive me, Nan," she said. "Let us be friends, for in truth we have only each other."

  I pretended to consider that. "We shall be friends and sisters," I said at last, "but you must promise never to call me Nan. My name is now Anne."

  She did, and we kissed each other and made up.

  Then on New Year's Day the drooling old king fell dead. Our lovely queen Mary was now a widow. She had been married only eighty-two days, and it is my belief that she was still a virgin.

  "Now she is free to marry Brandon," my sister whispered to me as we prepared for the funeral. "Before she married Louis, she made King Henry agree that she could marry whomever she likes after Louis died."

  My sister was right. King Henry sent his courtier Charles Brandon to Paris to fetch the widow and as much of her dowry as could be reclaimed. Instead, Charles and Mary were wed in secret! When King Henry found out about it, he was furious.

  "Why is the king so angry?" I asked. "Had he not promised that she could wed whom she pleased? Is Brandon not his friend?"

 
; "Perhaps King Henry never intended to keep his word," said Marie. "But he is especially angry because Queen Mary married beneath her, and without his permission. He claims that Brandon betrayed him. Now they will have to apply to the king's chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, to secure forgiveness."

  How could she know all this? Only five years older than I, Marie seemed to understand exactly how the court operated, even if she could not remember the steps of the pavane and her French was an embarrassment.

  But none of this mattered very much, except to Queen Mary and Charles Brandon, because soon a new king of France was crowned. François le Premier (Francis I, in English) was married to the dead king's daughter, Claude, who was just fifteen. Instead of returning to the court of Archduchess Margaret or to England with Mary and Charles Brandon, I was invited to remain in Paris in the court of Queen Claude.

  And so was Marie. Thus began the next chapter of my education, with my sister as my tutor.

  THE NEW FRENCH KING was tall and well made and good-humored as well. François loved having beautiful ladies around him. Often I heard him say, "A court without women is a year without spring and a spring without roses." Queen Claude, on the other hand, was noted for her devoutness and purity; she made the sign of the cross whenever a profane word escaped someone's lips.

  It was a strange situation. Most of my time was spent in service to Queen Claude. But after the queen had retired to her bedchamber, I listened to the other maids of honor and dames d'honneurs as they bragged of the gentlemen who had paid court to them. I had little to say because I was so much younger than the others and no gentleman had yet paid me court. But I took in every word; I learned exactly what it took to charm a man and how to flatter, please, and entertain him.

  And I watched as Marie sat before her silvery mirror while a serving maid fastened up her hair with jeweled combs. As soon as Marie had gone out and I was alone, I took her place before that mirror and imitated her half smile, her coy manner of turning her head slightly to one side and glancing up through her lashes, even her way of tossing her pretty curls and using her hands to call attention to her graceful neck. I practiced and practiced. I understood that I would have to learn these little gestures if I were to gain favor in my father's eyes and, when I was older, with gentlemen of the court.