Doomed Queen Anne (3 page)

“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 m 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.

My training, if that is what it was, lasted for several years. Then, when Marie was fifteen, she returned to England, where my father had secured her a place in the court of Queen Catherine. I stayed on in Paris. At first I missed my sister and her often painful little gibes, but then I ceased to think about her. Princess Renée, the king’s cousin who was close to my age, became my friend and confidante.

Three years passed before I saw Marie again, at the Field of Cloth of Gold during King Henry’s visit to France. At the age of thirteen I was outwardly still thin, dark, and plain. Inwardly, though, I was changing. I was growing into an alluring woman, worldly-wise and witty. I had not much longer to wait until my body was also that of a woman.

CHAPTER 3: Jamie Butler, 1521—1522

Paris glittered under a blanket of snow as the court prepared to celebrate
la Fête de Noel
—the Feast of Christmas—and I received a visit from my father, who had journeyed to France on official business from the court of Henry VIII. As we warmed ourselves by the fire in one of the royal apartments, I noticed for the first time the streaks of silver that age had woven through my father’s dark beard.

“I have asked their French majesties to grant you leave to return to England with me,” he said, sipping a glass of cordial.

I was stunned. I was happy where I was and had no wish to leave France. “It is as you command,” I said submissively, feeling sick at heart at the thought of returning to my family. “But for what reason must I return?”

“I have arranged a betrothal for you.”

A betrothal! I had not expected this, at least not for some time. I was now fourteen, but I’d hoped that betrothal was still years away I was quite enjoying myself in the French court. I had learned to hold my own with the ladies’ ribald banter in their private chambers, and I found it amusing to flirt with the gentlemen of the court. I was not interested in marriage.

Yet I found myself curious. “To whom am I to be betrothed, dear Father?” I asked.

“James Butler,” he replied. “The king greatly favors the match, as does Cardinal Wolsey James is a member of the cardinal’s household.”

And so, in obedience to my father’s wishes, I packed up my French gowns and, soon after the beginning of the new year, bade farewell to Queen Claude, who squeezed my hand and said she was sorry to see me go; I murmured similar sentiments, as she had always been kind to me. Then I said my adieus to François, who begged to be remembered to my sister. My most heartfelt parting was from Princess Renée. We both wept many tears and exchanged tokens and promises to write.

My governess. Lady Guildford, was happy to leave France, but scarcely had we set sail from Calais than the poor lady again succumbed to seasickness, weeping and moaning. In due course we stepped ashore at Dover. I had been away from England and from my family for eight years and felt that all were strangers to me.

Members of my father’s household were on hand to accompany us to Hever, and I noticed at once that these servants were not so handsomely liveried as those in Paris. My childhood home was not at all as I remembered it; Hever seemed smaller and less grand, a poor place compared to the great palaces of the Continent. My mother’s once-beautiful face had aged, but she welcomed me with happy tears, remarking over and over upon what a fine lady I had become. My brother had grown tall and seemed determined to mimic my father’s habit of shouting when his wishes were not instantly obeyed. My sister and her new husband, Will Carey, were at court.

“There is nothing of interest here to distract me,” I wrote in the first of many complaining letters to my friend, Princess Renée. “No banquets or dancing, no witty conversation. I think I shall perish of boredom. And thus far not a word has been spoken of my betrothal to James Butler, whoever he may be.”

But then my father brought word that he had secured for me a position at Queen Catherine’s court. Thenceforth, my home would be with the queen, and since King Henry was fondest of his great palace at Greenwich, that is where Queen Catherine would likely spend much of her time. The news that I was going to court, even one as dull as I believed Queen Catherine’s likely to be, cheered me. I wrote again to Renée, excitedly this time: “I shall often be in the presence of our magnificent king!”

LADY ALICE WILLOUGHBY, the mother of the maids, took me in hand once I arrived at Greenwich. With a scowl that seemed permanently etched on her broad face, she stood with her arms folded over her ample bosom and looked me up and down. I felt myself growing smaller under her critical gaze.

Lady Alice beckoned me to follow her and led me to a chamber in the queen’s apartments. The maids of honor, who were chattering among themselves when I entered, suddenly fell silent, staring at me. “Lady Anne Boleyn,” announced Lady Alice loudly. “She is to share Lady Honor’s bed. Be so kind as to instruct her in her duties.” With that, the matron gathered up her wide skirts and disappeared.

“You are the sister of Lady Mary Boleyn? Now Lady Mary Carey?” asked the boldest of the lot, who turned out to be Lady Honor Finch, my bedmate.

“I am,” I said, and I thought I heard suppressed giggles.

“You look nothing like her,” ventured another.

“Why should I?” I responded.

The maids—I counted eleven of them—watched out of the corners of their pale blue eyes as I unpacked my trunks and hung my elegant French gowns on the wooden pegs assigned to me. I heard them whispering among themselves: “...dark,” one murmured; “...not at all beautiful like her sister.”