Elizabeth I (120 page)

Across the table and a bit farther down, Lettice was wearing her
B
necklace, as was I. Jeromina, Charles’s wife, commented on them, saying that she felt the Boleyns were with us tonight.

“My wife sees ghosts,” said Sir Charles. “She is prone to a fiery imagination. Pay her no mind. But I often feel their presence.”

“Tomorrow, good Sir Charles, you must show us some of these remainders.”

“You are surrounded by them now,” he said. He pointed to the walls, festooned with antlers and hunting trophies. They cast long shadows in the candlelight, reaching toward the ceiling like winter branches.

Lost hunts, forgotten triumphs. My father had loved hunting. But it was not game he had hunted here at Hever. He had pursued my mother, sending passionate letters—secret, he presumed. My mother had kept them; someone had stolen them and sold them to the Vatican.

After supper we returned to our rooms, escorted down the dark corridors by lanterns.

93

W
hen I awoke, I was surprised to see Catherine already sitting and sewing in the early-morning light. She paused several times to rub her forehead, as if she were feeling for something under the skin. As soon as she saw me looking, she rose and came to my bedside.

“Did you not sleep well, Catherine?” I asked. “Did the ghosts disturb you?”

She smiled. “No.” She rubbed her forehead again. “Just a pain here, behind my eyes.”

“Then you are foolish to try sewing,” I said. “Such close work is known to give headaches.”

“I’ll set it aside, then,” she said. “I’ve never liked embroidery, mainly because I am not good at it.”

“It has nothing to do with your character,” I assured her. “After all, the Scots queen was a superb needlewoman.”

In the room next door, we could hear Lettice stirring.

After breakfast, leading us like children, with his youngest in tow as well, Sir Charles showed us the older portions of the castle.

“Not as pretty,” he said. “But the Boleyn children and grandchildren loved to play in the old rooms, so I was told. The old kitchen, next to the dining hall, had a deep well. The cooks had to order a stout, thick cover for it because Anne, Mary, and George liked to hang over the edge and let down toy buckets, and they were afraid one of them would fall in.”

He led us out through the courtyard and toward the great gate with its portcullis. “Now, this was their favorite,” he said. “This old keep has three floors, and up top there’s two chambers. Come!” He led us up a spiral stone staircase, onto a landing, and then up some narrow steps to the battlements. As we emerged, we could see far across the fields and hills. Indeed, to be here atop the keep was to feel invincible.

Now I could discern the layout of the gardens and orchard below. Thick hedges, wooden palisades, and brick walls enclosed grounds of varying sizes. They spread much farther out than I had realized.

Outside again, Sir Charles told us about the grounds, mentioning that there was a walled and neglected garden on the far side of the orchard. “I do have to tell you, although this makes it sound more exciting than it probably is, that for the longest time we could not find the key to that door. Princess Anne of Cleves had never gone into it, and one of her servants told my father that a stipulation of the King’s royal bequest of the castle was that she not visit or meddle with the garden. She was happy enough to obey. Eventually we located the key, in a crevice beneath the windowsill in Anne’s room. The stricture forbidding entrance to the garden had long expired, along with the King and with Anne, so we felt free to go into it. There was not much there after forty years. All overgrown. We closed it up and left it. Jeromina had ambitions to replant it, but—” He shrugged.

“Eleven children diverted her attention,” said Lettice.

“You might say that,” he said.

“Get the key, Sir Charles, if you will. We would like to see it,” I said. I felt strongly there was something inside that I should see.

“If you wish,” he said, sighing.
Foolish old woman,
he was doubtless thinking. Perhaps so, but a determined one.

We trudged down the paved paths and past the neatly laid-out geometric gardens open to the sun. The four orchards—of pear, apple, plum, and medlar—empty of their fruit now, rustled as we passed, as if they wondered what we sought. Down where they ended, an ivy-grown wall came into view. It was high enough that we could not see over it but low enough that trees inside were visible.

“Oh dear. The ivy has covered the door.” Sir Charles plunged his hands in and felt under the leaves. “Ah ...” He groped along the bricks underneath until he felt wood. “Here it is.” He tugged at the tendrils, tearing them off the door where they clung fast. Eventually a faded and warped door revealed itself. It was quite low.

“I think the garden may initially have been built for children, with everything scaled to their size,” he said. He fumbled with the key, straining to get it to turn. Finally it did, with a groan and a shower of rust falling from the keyhole. He pushed; the door shuddered but refused to move. He put his shoulder against it and shoved. It creaked open a few inches, an oyster reluctant to open.

“Harder!” I said, putting my hands on the door with him and pushing with all my strength. Slowly it gave ground, its angle of opening growing wider as it cleared a flagstone at its threshold.

Finally it stood open, revealing a tangle of bushes and trees inside, a carpet of fallen leaves, and old pink brick walls, their tops moss-covered, surrounding it all. Shafts of yellow sunlight fell like filmy curtains through the twining tree branches overhead. It was a hushed and sacred place.

“I almost believe I see the Ceryneian hind of Artemis here,” whispered Catherine. “Behind that thicket.”

“It is a trick of the golden sunlight,” said Lettice. “It gilds our imaginations as well as the branches.”

“I will leave you,” Sir Charles said. “Perhaps you would like privacy here. Oh, let me point out that there is a stone bench over against that wall—hidden now behind creepers. The plot is even more overgrown than when I first saw it.”

He left quickly.

“Do you sense that he wanted to get away from this place?” asked Catherine.

“Or from us,” said Lettice.

“Or both,” I said. “No matter. Now that he has brought us here, it is better to be alone.” I walked around, being careful of the uneven ground. A few paving stones peeked out of the fallen leaves, but they were tilted and upended from years of frosts and thaws. Soon I could make out the outlines of old flower beds, bordered by bricks. Strangled by vines, a few old roses drooped, straggly and pale, a scattering of late petals on the ground around them.

“Oh, look!” Catherine was standing at the rim of what had been a pond. It had evaporated, and dried; cracked mud covered the bottom. “Once it must have held water lilies,” she said.

“There are still some land lilies,” said Lettice. “I see some here, close to the wall.”

Gradually the image of the old garden began to reveal itself. In the center, the pond, its surface covered by wide lily pads and flowers. Against the walls, roses and lilies. A stone bench under a pavilion at one end. Peeking through the brambles I could see the listing stump of a sundial pedestal.

“A statue!” said Lettice. “Here, covered by vines and brambles.” She tore them away, cutting her hands on the hidden thorns.

“Oh, my dear, we should have worn gloves,” said Catherine. “Let me help.”

But Lettice said, “No, no, no need.” She yanked the last of the vines off, revealing a crumbling stone statue of a young girl gathering flowers but looking over her shoulder in distress. One or two of the flowers were falling, dropped from her hands. She stood on tiptoe.

The girl’s face was exquisite but very young. She was somewhere between girl and woman.

“Is there anything else there?” I asked.

“Nothing, but—” She stepped back and looked behind the statue. “There’s the base of another one here.”

Catherine and I joined her, using branches to beat the weeds and creepers down. Soon a fallen sculpture revealed itself. It was broken in three parts, but the lower part had wheels, and the top fragment depicted a man’s head.

“It’s Persephone.” I suddenly knew. “She was gathering spring flowers, and then Pluto in his chariot grabbed her. This must be Pluto, broken into three parts behind her.”

“Serves him right,” said Lettice with a laugh.

“Look, you can see the fierce implacability on his face,” Catherine said. “He was determined to have her.” The lean, square-jawed face, marooned on the ground, stared resolutely at dirt and pebbles in front of him.

“Perhaps the flower beds are planted with Persephone flowers,” I said. “Hesiod says she was picking crocuses, hyacinths, violets, roses, narcissus, and lilies. If we cleared the beds and waited until spring, that’s probably what would bloom. If any of them survived. But we see that the roses and lilies have.”

Catherine caught her throat as if she could not breathe. I saw her face go white, and then she said, “I remember.... I understand it now. My father told me, once, that there was a place, a place where each of the sisters had met the King secretly and dallied with him, and that his mother had been there first and then given it over to her sister ... and that it was a cruel reminder to the parents and so they ordered it destroyed, but it was locked up instead. And how he and his sister sneaked in there once and got a terrible beating. He said, ‘It was a garden from Hades, that’s what it was.’ I didn’t understand. He didn’t mean me to. It was like he was talking to himself.”

“Hades. A garden of Hades, where Pluto swooped down and took them, first Mary Boleyn and then Anne,” said Lettice. Her face had gone almost as white as Catherine’s. “They could not protest openly, so they spoke through these statues. The King was too besotted, or too oblivious, to notice anything that subtle.”

Yes, the King could be frightening. I had experienced that as a child, when he was old and ill and fighting off demons. But I had never thought of his being frightening as a young man; I had seen too many portraits and read too much about the glories of his youth. And, as a queen, perhaps I had forgotten, or willed myself to forget, the terror a ruler’s power can induce. I had never considered that to the Boleyn sisters he might have seemed like Pluto, sweeping down on his chariot, carrying them off, trampling them underfoot.

They had converted their children’s garden into a place to meet him, walled off, away from everyday life. But whether to receive him or not they had no choice. Their only choice lay in where.

And it was here, then, that the very heart and center of their courtship with him was rooted. “Perhaps he did,” I said, feeling the need to defend him, “but was as helpless in his need for them as they were helpless to protest.”

“That is a flattering interpretation,” said Lettice. She looked sharply at me. “Perhaps you say that because he made your mother Queen.”

“Perhaps you should be more forgiving of him because your mother died in her bed,” I shot back.

“Cousins!” said Catherine. “The dead are gone and do not feel. We need not be angry on their behalf. It is done. We know the gods—and love—can induce madness. Come, let’s find this bench Sir Charles told us about before it gets dark.”

The weeds were especially thick in that part of the garden; the wall absorbed sunlight and warmed the area. There seemed to be a trellis or pergola set up against it, enveloped by thick vines, their ends trailing down like a brittle curtain.

“It must be under there,” I said, pointing to it.

“All I see is a mound of dead vines,” said Lettice. Her hair hung in disarray from her efforts at clearing the statue, and sweat shone on her face.

“I will clear it,” I said. “You have done your part.”

Gingerly I picked my way over to it, being careful not to catch my hem on brambles. I heard the scurrying of small creatures that made their home in the underbrush. I hoped there were no snakes.

Something waited under the dead vegetation; I felt stone beneath the stems. Carefully I pulled the covering away, revealing a finely carved bench with feet like lion’s paws. A curved back, with an inscription, beckoned us.

“Here they sat,” I said. I was, unexpectedly, quite overwhelmed at this private withdrawing place, which did not figure in palace inventories or gossip. It was as if they had outwitted history, kept something back from all the chroniclers and ballad makers. This was
theirs
, no one else’s.

“Can you read it? What does it say?” asked Catherine.

I brushed my fingers across the lettering, filled in with dirt. “No. It is obscured. We need to clean it out.” We took twigs and began scraping the matter out, carving the letters afresh. Gradually it revealed itself.

“The Bower of Love,” I read.

I expected Lettice to laugh or deride it. Instead she was silent.