Doomed Queen Anne Page 6

  Princess Mary, brought from far-off Ludlow Castle to Bridewell, may not have understood at first the importance of the occasion, but her mother wasted no time in telling her. "You are being left behind for the bastard Fitzroy!" Queen Catherine spat out the words within the hearing of the entire retinue.

  TTHE DAY OF THE CEREMONY was hot and dusty. In my heavy gown I suffered silently through the tedious proceedings as little Fitzroy was made first an earl and then a duke. Each step in his elevation involved a separate array of robes and another set of rituals. I was in a position to watch the expressions of anger and grief that flitted across the face of the queen.

  Of most importance to my family that day, though, was the ceremony that created my father Viscount Rochford. Thomas Boleyn had finally taken his place among the nobility, higher even than a baron; closer than ever to the king, his influence approached that of the vile Wolsey.

  To the banquet that followed a day of seemingly endless ceremony, I wore a splendid new gown made of black satin embroidered with pearls and lace of gold. It set me dramatically apart from the English court ladies in their usual fusty, overly ornamented gowns. My hair rippled loose around my shoulders.

  I was fortunate to have a place assigned at a table where the king, splendidly garbed and seated beneath his cloth of estate, could not fail to observe me. My companions included Tom Wyatt, whose witty banter always drew from me full-throated laughter—laughter that Lady Honor criticized as vulgar. ("She not only looks like a crow, but she sounds like one," I overheard her say to her cousin, Constance. "Caw! Caw!")

  King Henry sat with Queen Catherine on one side of him, looking aggrieved, and the new Prince of Wales on the other, but he paid little attention to either. Time and again the king's roving glance halted and lingered upon me. What can he be thinking? I wondered, pretending not to notice. But I did take care to arrange myself so that the next time his glance strayed my way, my eyes met his and held them for a heartbeat. Then I modestly lowered mine.

  SOON AFTER FITZROY'S ceremony, I was invited to accompany the king and queen on their summer progress. Naturally, I was delighted.

  The royal progress, I learned, was an enormous undertaking. In addition to the pages, trumpeters, standard-bearers, archers, henchmen, priests, and so forth, each invited member of the court took along his family and as many servants as were needed for their comfort (Nell was to travel with me), as well as trunks containing equipage for hunting and finery for banqueting, all loaded upon wooden carts. Among the crowd were hostlers to care for the horses, cooks to provide viands for the great column of travelers, musicians to entertain us all.

  It was an equally enormous proposition for the nobleman who was to be honored with a royal visit. He was expected to house and feed the entourage of several hundred people for as long as a fortnight—even longer if the king found the hunting in the private deer parks to his satisfaction and chose to tarry.

  I found it all thrilling—the noisy procession of snorting horses and rattling carts and barking dogs; knights dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white; flapping pennants displaying Queen Catherine's emblem, the pomegranate, and King Henry's rose; and, of course, the jeweled garb of the king and queen. Warned of our approach by trumpet fanfares, crowds of yeomen and townspeople lined the roadway to stare and to cheer their monarchs.

  After three weeks, though, I had begun to tire of the plodding gait and the wearisome sameness of the days. One morning I challenged Tom Wyatt to a fast ride across the heath.

  Tom grinned. "So long as you let me lead the way, my lady."

  "There is no sport in that, Tom. I mean for you to try to keep up with me."

  "What you are suggesting is dangerous," Tom warned.

  "Of what dangers do you speak?" I asked with a flirtatious smile.

  "I know these fields and streams as you do not," Tom told me earnestly as we allowed our horses to fall back to the rear of the procession, intending to catch up later. "I was born quite near here, in Maid-stone. It is safer for me to go ahead of you."

  "I shall learn them as well!" I cried, and urged my mount into a gallop. She was a piebald mare with an unfortunate will of her own, and soon we were flying across the heath. Since daybreak the skies had been lowering, and now a fine mist began to fall. I loved the feel of it against my skin, but, as the mist thickened, I could no longer see clearly. Suddenly a tall hedge loomed directly in my path. I tried to rein in the mare and turn her aside, but she had other ideas and headed straight for the hedge. I heard Tom's urgent shouts behind me, but it was too late. I clung to the mare's long neck as her hoofs lifted off the ground.

  The horse landed solidly on the far side of the hedge, but I was no longer firm in my seat and continued my flight, sailing over her head. I tumbled to earth, landing abruptly in a shallow pool. There I lay in a heap, sodden and aching, until Tom appeared, white-faced with anxiety. He leaped from his horse and knelt beside me. "My lady Anne! Are you hurt?"

  I felt for breaks or signs of bleeding. There were none, but my petticoats were mud-stained and rent in several places.

  "My mare..." I murmured.

  "She will find her way back," Tom assured me, helping me to my feet.

  I allowed Tom to use his handkerchief to wipe the mud from my face, an activity that was interrupted several times by tender kisses administered to those places on my face and hands that had received some slight injury.

  "It seems, dear Lady Anne, that you are always fleeing from me. The way a deer flees from the hunter."

  "But you have wife and child," I reminded him. "Therefore I must always flee, and your pursuit must always be in vain."

  "Perhaps not. Surely you have heard the rumors? I have separated from my wife. She has been unfaithful to me."

  I had, indeed, heard them, but I pretended otherwise. Candor was not a virtue in the game of love. And he remained married.

  My mare had returned, showing no sign of repentance. Patiently she waited while Tom helped me to mount, and we set off again at a measured pace. The drizzle had become a steady rain. My hair plastered to my head and shoulders and my clothing ruined, we rejoined the company. I invented a tale of how my horse had run away with me and stumbled, tossing me into the mud. Later, as Nell dried my hair and laced me into a velvet-trimmed gown, I added further details of the mishap for the benefit of Lady Alice, Lady Honor and her cousin, and the other curious maids.

  The banquet that day was held in a pavilion erected by the host to accommodate the royal visitors and their court. The king seemed in fine fettle. When the last of the many dishes had been presented, tasted, and taken away, King Henry ordered servants to fetch his virginals, and for hours the king entertained us by playing and singing music of his own composition. I recognized the song my sister claimed he had written for her. Then he called for the dancing to commence.

  The host's wife was King Henry's first partner. And then, to my surprise, he chose me as his second. "Lady Anne," he said as he grasped my hand, "I am told that you suffered a mishap today. I hope that you were not injured?" It was the first time I had danced with the king, the first time we had touched. His hand was warm; mine was trembling.

  "Only bruises to my pride, Your Majesty," I replied as we moved easily through the rapid steps of a galliard.

  Four times that night the king returned to claim me as his partner—often enough to provoke whispers among the ladies, and, I hoped, the notice of my father. The dancing continued through the hours past midnight, until host and guests were in a state of exhaustion. Of the company, only two seemed tireless: I, exhilarated by the king's attentions, and the king himself.

  The next morning King Henry was up at dawn, eager to go hawking. And then an extraordinary thing happened, of which we learned later. While following his hawk, the king attempted to vault over a stream. The wooden pole broke under the king's weight, plunging him headfirst into mud so thick that he would have suffocated had it not been for the quick action of a friend. The friend wis Tom Wyat
t.

  Naturally, the king's narrow escape was the talk of the banquet that evening, where King Henry celebrated his rescue, proposing toast after toast to the embarrassed poet.

  When the dancing began and the king once again sought me as his partner, I dared to twit him, turning back on him his words to me: "I am told that Your Majesty suffered a serious mishap today. I hope that you were not injured?"

  "Only bruises to my pride, Lady Anne," King Henry replied. Then he added, quoting from Holy Scripture, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

  "Then certainly I am guilty of a haughty spirit," I said, laughing.

  "That haughty spirit is the source of your great charm," said the king, keeping hold of my hand far longer than the dance required.

  That night I was too excited to sleep. The game of love was in play.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Game of Love 1525–1526

  With the first cool days of autumn, the royal progress came to an end, the members of the court returned to their estates, and I went to Hever with my sister, who brought her little daughter, Catherine, to visit. When we were at court or on progress, I managed to keep my distance from Mary and her sly taunts, but at Hever there was no avoiding her. Mary and I passed the afternoon hours in the gardens, where little Catherine amused herself by creeping into the bushes and then toddling back, first to her mother and then to me, blossoms crushed in her fat little fists.

  As we rested in a sunny bower, sheltered from a chill breeze, sipping goblets of hippocras, our conversation found its way to King Henry, as it inevitably did.

  "The king seems somewhat downcast of late, have you noticed?" asked Mary.

  "I have not. He appeared both jovial and tireless on the royal progress, hunting all day and dancing half the night."

  And surely, I thought, you noticed that he was dancing with me.

  "Do not be deceived by appearances. Will tells me that King Henry has much to trouble him. He has increased taxes to support his vast expenditures, and the people are resentful. The king believes himself ill-treated by Emperor Charles, who broke his betrothal to the princess. But the most important thing is this," Mary continued, bending down to accept the latest offering from her daughter. "The king badly wants—nay, demands—an heir to succeed him as the next ruler of England."

  "What of Princess Mary?" I asked. "Or young Henry Fitzroy? We have attended ceremonies in which each received royal tides. Are they not his heirs?"

  Mary Carey toyed with her ring—a ring, I remembered, that King Henry had once given her. "The king needs a legitimate male heir. The royal children each satisfy but half—Mary is legitimate but a female; Fitzroy is male but a bastard."

  "Is there no chance that Queen Catherine will produce a suitable heir?" I asked, although I was certain I knew the answer.

  "None whatsoever," my sister said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "The queen has had numerous pregnancies, but only one surviving child to show for it. An infant son died within weeks of its birth. Now King Henry is becoming restive. The queen is too old to bear more children, and, besides, he long ago lost interest in her. Completely," my sister added, her brows arched knowingly.

  "King Henry is in the mood for a new mistress," Mary continued. "He demands little of a mistress but amusement, and he gives fine gifts. You could be next, you know. Why waste your time on that poet? He is already married and has no wealth."

  I was shocked by the boldness of her suggestion, but before I could utter a reply, a servant appeared to refill our goblets. I wished to hear more about the king and his mistresses, but Mary abruptly changed the subject when the servant had withdrawn.

  "I have good news," she said, smiling at me over the rim of her goblet. "I am expecting another child."

  "How wonderful!" I said, relieved at the new direction of our talk. "When is your confinement?"

  "March," she said, turning her attention again to little Catherine. "William is quite pleased."

  That explained why she appeared so willing to yield her place as the king's favorite. Are you carrying the king's child? I wondered, but of course I dared not ask.

  I RETURNED TO COURT at Yuletide, although the season was not so merry as one wished. London had seen many deaths from plague, and the king and queen decided to keep a quiet Christmas at Richmond Palace, upriver from the city.

  By February the crisis had passed, and the king ordered a Shrovetide joust. Bundled in furs against the cold, we gathered in the tiltyards to watch the competition. King Henry cut a splendid figure, mounted on his great white stallion and clad in armor that glinted in the winter sun.

  Many of King Henry's closest friends were in his company—Henry Norris; William Brereton; the king's brother-in-law, Charles Brandon—and all got the worst of it, as usual, unseated by the powerful thrusts of the king's lance. Tom Wyatt undertook to ride against the quintain, a revolving wooden figure that, if not struck accurately, swings around and strikes the unfortunate horseman a mighty blow on the back. I knew that he wanted to ride well for my sake, but poor Tom was thwacked painfully by the whirling quintain.

  The king excelled at tilting. Holding his heavy wooden lance pointed straight ahead, he rode at full gallop toward a series of small metal rings. He seldom failed to hook one of the rings on each pass. With more rings jingling on his lance than any of his friends had managed to collect, King Henry rode over to the royal box where I sat watching with Queen Catherine and the ladies of the court. With a great flourish, King Henry presented the rings—not to the queen, to whom the joust had been dedicated, but to me. Everyone stared, none more so than the queen; a few of the ladies gasped loud enough to be heard. I, too, was frankly stunned by his open show of attention to me.

  "His Majesty does me great honor," I murmured.

  Queen Catherine rose unsmiling from her seat and swept out of the tiltyard. Avoiding my eyes, her ladies hurried after her. Only Lady Honor gaped openly as I passed the collection of rings to the king's usher, retaining just one as a souvenir of this event.

  At the banquet I pretended not to notice that King Henry was observing me. When the dancing began, I expected the king to take me as his partner, but he did not. Why? I wondered. Has his attention already turned to someone else? Then why does he watch me so closely?

  Luckily, Tom Wyatt appeared, and I devoted myself to him. That my thoughts were elsewhere must have been apparent. "My lady seems distracted," Wyatt said, but I smilingly denied that I thought of any but him.

  Lent began, and several times each day for the next forty days I knelt in the chapel royal, pretending to pray but thinking only of King Henry and wondering if I occupied the king's thoughts as well. He gave me no sign. But when the banqueting and jousting and other enjoyments of court life resumed at Easter, King Henry again contrived chance encounters with me. Soon, I believed, the king would make his intentions known. My nerves were as finely tuned as the strings of my harp.

  Weeks passed. Then one midsummer evening as I supped in the maids' chambers, only half listening to their ceaseless chatter, a royal page appeared. The maids fell silent as the boy delivered to me a note. Written in French, it bade me come at once; it was signed Henricus Rex—Henry the King—and bore the king's seal.

  He wanted me now. I had no opportunity to change my gown, arrange my hair, or do any of those things which a lady might wish to do in preparation for such an interview, no time to become unnerved by this new course I sensed my life was about to take.

  I followed the young page, not to the king's privy chamber, as I had expected, but to an even more private chamber beyond it. King Henry sprawled at his ease behind an enormous table. It appeared that he had been playing draughts, for there was the black-and-red checkered board, but no sign of an opponent. The chamber was empty, save for the king and me. Beyond the open door to a bedchamber I glimpsed an immense bed with several thick mattresses and curtains of blue velvet trimmed with gold.

  I dropped to one knee, advanced, d
ropped a second and then a third time, reverencing the king as he required. "Your Majesty," I murmured, my eyes lowered modestly. This was the first time I had been alone with him. Slowly I raised my eyes and waited, my heart racing.

  King Henry leaned toward me, his elbows on the table, his blue eyes lively, his smile winning. "Lady Anne." He breathed my name as though it were a sigh.

  "Your Majesty," I said again, still kneeling. I allowed his gaze to wander over me from head to foot.

  "You do please me greatly," said King Henry, and raised me up.

  "It pleases me much to please you, Your Majesty," I replied.

  "Good," he said. "And would it please you just as much to be the king's mistress?" he asked, stroking his close-trimmed beard.

  There was no mistaking his meaning, and I had long prepared myself for just such an invitation. I well knew there were two kinds of "mistress." First was the courtly mistress, to whom romantic poems and tender looks were addressed, and with whom chaste kisses and tokens of love might be exchanged. Second was the other kind of mistress—a lover. I understood that King Henry spoke of the latter kind. I was to replace my sister, Mary.

  I also understood that, should I yield, I would immediately lose my advantage. I knew well what became of the king's former mistresses—my sister, for one; Bessie Blount, for another: When he tired of them, as he always did, they were discarded and then married off to a willing courtier. I was certain that many ladies had been approached in this manner by the king; I doubted that any had either the desire or the will to refuse what he asked of her. Who would have dared?

  I did.

  I dared because I wanted so much more from King Henry. I wanted the love of his heart and his soul, which I knew would be much harder to win. Once again I was a little girl on a storm-tossed ship, bound for an uncertain future—frightened, but also exhilarated.