Doomed Queen Anne (7 page)

“The perfect pearl of the world!” he bellowed. “The jewel of all England!” What was not spoken of was Princess Mary’s own betrothal. Her intended, Emperor Charles V, had broken it off and pledged himself instead to marry a Portuguese princess.

I was about to steal out of the banqueting hall to meet Tom Wyatt at an agreed-upon place when I became aware of King Henry’s eyes lingering upon me. I had been at court for three years (save for the months of my banishment) and in the king’s presence many times over. Although I’d spent hours gazing at his splendid person, this was the first I had felt his gaze come to rest upon me and no other. As I rose from my place at the lower table where the maids supped, I glanced at the king, seated on the dais beneath the cloth of estate. For a moment our eyes met, and the king smiled. I caught my breath, feeling the blood rush to my face, and I dropped into a low curtsy. When I looked up again, the king’s attention had shifted away. I collected myself and hurried off to find Tom Wyatt.

“Lady Anne!” the poet called softly, stepping out from behind a tapestry. “I have a new verse for you,” he said, and fell to one knee to recite it:

She from myself now hath me in her grace:

She hath in hand my wit, my will, and all.

“It is imperfect,” he apologized, rising and taking my hand. “Unlike you, my lady.” And then he kissed me. This was followed by another kiss, and another. But it was not of Tom Wyatt that I was thinking as our lips met; it was of King Henry.

Secrets were hard to keep. Someone was always watching, leaping to conclusions (some false, others not), and then passing the news to someone else. Thus word began to circulate that I was Tom Wyatt’s mistress. Although I did entertain the notion—the hope?—that my future might lie with Tom, I soon learned from Honor Finch of a serious impediment.

“I see that you have made the acquaintance of the poet, Tom Wyatt,” observed Lady Honor, her thin lips pursed.

“Only slight,” I responded, and then I hurried on, “I am told that the king thinks highly of Wyatt’s verses.”

“More highly,
I am told
, than Wyatt thinks of his wife,” Honor sniffed. “You know of Elizabeth Wyatt, surely? That they have a child, a boy not yet four years old?”

“Of course, I know all that!” I snapped impatiently, but in truth I knew nothing of it. “He loves her not,” I added, a guess that turned out to be accurate. I felt betrayed, even if that hadn’t been his intention.

I wasted no time yearning for what I could not have—that much I’d learned from my unhappy experience with Hal Percy. Instead, I decided, I would turn the poet’s love for me into something useful; the attentions of a charming man would surely enhance my own value among other gentlemen. With this in mind, I continued to encourage Tom in his desire to please me with his pretty verses and little tokens.

I also paid closer attention than ever before to court gossip about King Henry. The king’s interest darted restlessly of late, his fancy lighting on first this lady of his wife’s retinue, then that one. It was rumored that my sister had remained the king’s mistress even after she’d married Will Carey. Now Mary had a child, and I assumed that her affair with the king had ended. Perhaps he was in the mood for a new mistress. Or perhaps he merely wished to engage in the pastime of courtly love.

And so I decided to attempt to engage King Henry in a flirtation. As I learned at the French court, men often desired most what they could not too easily get. The trick was to tempt him into pursuit but not allow him to capture me. I wanted the king’s attention. Beyond that, I had no goal but to best the king at the one game I believed I could play as well as he: the game of love. Winning the king’s heart would surely prove to my father that I was no longer the ill-favored daughter.

Tom was plainly in love with me. Now I would make certain that King Henry noticed the extravagant attention his favorite was paying me. I would use the poet to lure the king.

Honor Finch could scarcely bear it. “You are without modesty or shame!” Honor seethed. “You wear your hair loose and uncovered, as though your black hair were something to be proud of! You do not resemble the rest of us. You do not even look like an English lady! Sometimes,” she continued heatedly, “I think you must be a changeling abandoned by a gypsy!”

“I assure you. Lady Honor,” I replied calmly to her viperish tongue, “I am the trueborn daughter of my father and my mother, as you are of yours. Unless, of course..?” I let the question hang.

My duties required that I accompany the queen about her courtly routine, to Mass several times each day (Catherine was even more pious than Queen Claude, who, I learned, had died the previous year) and to the Great Hall for banquets. As I did so, I was now often aware of the king’s eyes upon me. This thrilled me, but also made me wary. Many others surely observed this as well. Gossip flew unchecked, and I had to be mindful not to excite the jealousy of the queen.

Still, the attentions of Tom Wyatt remained unwavering. I was certain that the king took note of that, too. Now I had only to wait and see what would happen next.

THE MOOD IN the queen’s chambers was dark. Queen Catherine had received a message from the king, by way of Cardinal Wolsey, that we were to prepare for another ceremony. In July, Henry Fitzroy, the king’s bastard son by Bessie Blount, was to be honored at Bridewell Palace at a ceremony awarding him a string of titles: Duke of Richmond, Duke of Somerset, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Warden of the Marches.

Henry Fitzroy was six years old, and hardly anyone had ever seen the boy He was kept in the shadows, far from court, although it was said that he had the best of tutors and was treated with all the deference due the king’s son. Now he would have more important titles than any given by the king to Princess Mary.

One of Queen Catherine’s virtues was her abiding patience, almost unimaginable in its endurance. King Henry could fume and rant all he wished, and his wife would continue to smile at him with great forbearance. King Henry could make love to as many women as he wished, and Catherine always forgave him. But this time the queen was furious: Giving his illegitimate son all those titles was a blow to her daughter’s future and an insult to her, the queen.

“This is too much to bear!” Queen Catherine cried in her heavy Spanish accent, loud enough for us all to hear. “I will not have my daughter passed over for the crown by the king’s bastard!” But we all knew that there was nothing the queen could do. Her wishes, like her anger, counted for nothing.

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.

THE 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 Maidstone. 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.