Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (24 page)

Chapter 27

September 1558

White Boy has been sick of a bad tooth for five days. Already we have burned five candles to Saint Apollonia and White Boy’s pain worsens. She is beautiful, St Apollonia, leaning against the stem of Mother’s pewter candlestick with her flowing hair and her strong martyr’s face, waiting bravely for the fire. She cannot smile; she was tortured by the pulling of her teeth. She holds a pair of pincers that grip a tooth far too large for her tight little mouth.

From the apothecary I have purchased ground hart’s horn to make a poultice for the bad tooth and mandrake root which I soak in sweet wine to make a potion for his pain. Today, White Boy is feverish and shivering. His breath stinks worse than a crow-pecked carcass in a sheep fold, and his jaw is badly swollen. Yellow puss leaks from the rotten tooth. My husband tells me that prayers and potions are worse than useless and I must fetch the barber-surgeon or he will pull the tooth himself with a piece of twine tied to the door latch.

They are in the street, watching me pass; my neighbours; Goodwife Trinder, Goodwife Napier and Goodwife Smedley, she whose children died of the summer sickness. These three who eat my bread yet will not come into my house nor invite me into theirs until I have a living child for fear the evil spirit that makes me barren will touch their lives. My husband has bid me ask them directly whether they will assist me when my time comes.

‘It is the usual way of things to have your neighbours around you at the birth of a child,’ he says.

I have told my husband that these women have never asked for my help in their labours. They have each other. Aunt Bess will come to me. He says she is too old. She is forgetful and, anyway, how can she practise midwifery with those shaky hands. He insists that I speak to my neighbours who are close at hand.

They greet me politely, ask after White Boy’s health and dress their faces with frowns of concern. I tell them I am going for the surgeon and they shake their heads, tell me my servant is proving to be costly indeed but then if folks have servants it is their bounden duty to take good care of them. They ask after my own health. Not long now, they say, six weeks perhaps. I tell them eight. I wait, unwilling to ask them about my lying-in, hoping they will offer to help. They know I have no family except my ancient aunt. I may not find a better moment to ask but I say nothing. Four women in a cluster upon a street and nothing to say. Eventually, I give them good day and as I leave, Goodwife Trinder speaks words to the others which are intended for my retreating back.

‘Tis a dull-witted woman who sees her husband rowing across the river to Southwark three nights weekly and supposes him to be earning money.’

‘Aye indeed,’ Goodwife Napier concurs.

‘Throwing money away in the stews, more like,’ says Goodwife Trinder.

I hurry away, hearing Goodwife Smedley tut tutting. I tell myself that these are spiteful women, that they are not worth my disdain. I allow that Mistress Smedley is a grief-stricken, bitter woman who needs my sympathy. Still, I feel hurt and angry for have not these women spoken of matters that I have never dared to raise with my husband. His journeys in the night have ever been privy. It has been a silent understanding between us. Three nights a week, Goodwife Trinder said. She has kept a tally. Yes, his nightly outings have become more frequent during my pregnancy, during these enforced months of abstinence from being a proper wife in his bed, according to the teachings of the church.

London’s noise retreats until my ears fill only with my neighbours’ accusations; waves pummelling the shore … ‘Tis a dull-witted woman, a dull witted woman; throwing money away in the stews, the stews, the stews; three nights weekly, three nights weekly, three nights weekly.

I am overcome by a heaviness, a great loss.

I walk through the streets of London Town towards the barber-surgeon’s house. A woman grabs my skirts. There is a rank stink about her, as if she lives her life in the filthy streets, even sleeps there. I am surprised how easily I yank her greasy hand away. Then I notice the crutch under her arm and looking down see just one shoe beneath her kirtle. She lifts her skirt to show me the stump that was once her knee, bound in what looks like an ox bladder and tied with a filthy rag.

‘A shilling for your kindness to help a poor mother feed her child.’

Do I look wealthy enough to so readily throw away a shilling to a beggar? Mother would have called her a ‘clapper-dudgeon’ and dragged me away. But Mother is not here: the wasting sickness has seen to that.

‘Where is your child?’ I ask.

She shrugs and tries to touch me again. I flinch and step away. She has her hand cupped ready when I pull a shilling from my purse. My husband will want to know how I have lost a shilling. I will tell him the truth and he will say she is lying and has no child. I know that, of course, I will say, but how else is this woman to live?

After I have visited the barber-surgeon and he has promised to ride immediately to our house I make my way towards the river. Surely, the sounds of London are all around although I hear nothing. Do not the street sellers call their wares, the bargemen barter and curse, the stevedores sing their ballads? The river has its own watery sounds. Surely waves gush, oars pull, prows cut. The silent swans beat their wetted wings to fan the still summer air. I do not hear their powerful, gentle music. I stand at the riverbank staring at London town reflected dimly in the brackish Thames: the little brick and wood houses, our ancient church tower, the bright barges with their ochre-dyed, reddish-brown sails, the white, immaculate mute swans. All London ripples, upturned beneath the water.

*

When I return the surgeon is long gone. My husband is sitting at the board supping small ale and eating oysters. St Apollonia has returned to her place on the cupboard. White Boy lies slumped on the settle holding a bloody cloth to his jaw. In the palm of his other hand he clutches the pulled tooth. Its slimy, yellow roots are jagged and sharp.

‘Master, I crave pardon for my boldness but ...’

‘Then be not so bold,’ my husband interrupts.

‘Prithee, master, take your turn to tell a story for our entertainment this eventide.’

‘What manner of tale will you have a weary waterman tell? Shall I make a lullaby of wherries, tides and bridges to hasten your slumber?’

‘The mistress has almost reached the ending of her story. Your story should bind with hers. They must need end together.’

‘Wherefore should this be so?’

‘The blind need order or else all is chaos in their dark world,’ I say.

White Boy nods. My husband takes his knife to lift an oyster from its shell.

‘I was born in Ipswich, at least so I have been told, I cannot myself remember.’ He gives me a wink. I turn away too sick in my heart to want his good humour. He sighs and shakes his head. ‘Now I work upon the Thames,’ he tells White Boy ‘‘What more is there to tell?’

I sit apart by the fireside. The goodwives’ taunts will not leave me be. My husband is all concern. He tells me I am pale and mute. He asks what ails me. I shake my head and refuse the refreshment he offers; refuse to look into his eyes although I read concern upon his face. He comes to me.

‘You know that I cannot tell you everything that I do,’ he whispers, so that White Boy cannot hear. ‘We have our secrets, both of us, and let it be thus until the time comes when we may tell.’

This is true. He has never asked about my rag package. The one he hid when the searchers came.

‘Maybe a little storytelling will lift your mistress’s spirits,’ he tells White Boy.

The house is strangely quiet; only the crackling of the fire mingles with our voices.

‘We will have no stories without the accompaniment of the harp,’ I say. ‘When you are well, White Boy, I will tell you a sad tale of two queens.’

Chapter 28

Winter and Early Spring 1535 - 1536

Queen Anne was miserable. Behind their sleeves her ladies whispered that the King had a new lady to serve and no one dared to tell the Queen who she was.

‘There is no need to tell her,’ Mistress Madge said. ‘Surely the King will tire of this wilting flower while there are younger, more beautiful ladies at court. It is no secret why at twenty-seven she is yet unwed. She is not pretty enough. It is only surprising that the King has noticed her at all.’

Now that she was not feeling so sick, the Queen busied herself with the reform of the religious houses. She had long meetings with Master Secretary Cromwell. The King and Cromwell sent the Bishop of London and many other agents to Syon, a nunnery near Richmond. Before they made a full report to King Henry, Queen Anne herself paid the nuns a visit and gave them a good scolding.

‘She should be sitting in her chamber, sewing baby bonnets and resting,’ Mistress Madge said. ‘Why does she always have to poke her nose into the King’s business? Katherine didn’t. If the religious houses are corrupt let the King and the bishops deal with them There is more to this bitterness between the King and Queen than a little flirting on the King’s part. Everyone at court knows that Anne has Cromwell’s ear and the King has begun to resent this.’

Throughout Christmastide of 1535 King Henry and Queen Anne barely spoke together. If the Queen left her chamber, the ladies-in-waiting would put away their playing cards or their sewing, move their stools closer together and gossip. They whispered about the King’s new mistress and about Queen Anne’s health, how thin and sick she was during this latest pregnancy, and they shook their heads and sighed. They spoke in even quieter whispers of the serious illness of that other queen, the divorced Katherine; of cancerous, painful growths, of the King’s refusal to allow Lady Mary to go to her mother’s bedside, of the visit of the emperor’s envoy, Chapuys, to Katherine at Kimbolton Castle, which King Henry did allow.

At the end of December, Chapuys visited the court at Greenwich and told King Henry that Katherine was dying. And still the King would not allow the Lady Mary to go to her mother.

‘How can he be so cruel?’ I asked Mother.

‘The whore has bewitched him,’ she said and stabbed her meat knife into her mutton as if she were putting a pin in an effigy of Queen Anne.

On January the eighth the court knew that Katherine was dead. She had died just before 2pm on the previous day. I remembered how Aunt Bess had spoken with sorrow of the former queen’s dead babes and how she had been cast aside by the King like a worn out clout.

Norris told Mistress Madge that the King wept when he read Chapuy’s letter telling him of Katherine’s death. He cheered up very quickly. I watched King Henry and Queen Anne parade to Mass at the Chapel Royal dressed all in yellow. The King sported a white feather in his bonnet. They both smiled a lot and looked happy and the King seemed so very proud of his young daughter and his pregnant wife.

It is a dangerous thing to disrespect the dead, I thought, for I had been brought up to fear unhappy spirits from the grave.

Everyone at court appeared to me to be very much merrier than they had been during the twelve days of Christmas. There was a banquet with tables full of sweet delights that Mother and the pudding wife had made, followed by dancing and jousting.

I peeped between the arras and saw Queen Anne watching her husband dancing with Mistress Seymour. She placed her hands protectively around her belly, turned away and talked with Brereton and Weston. She smiled at Mistress Madge and Norris amongst the dancers and pointed them out to Weston, who had to watch and smile. He seemed to do so with great ease. He neither blushed nor frowned nor appeared confused, as I thought a lover should.

‘I think there will be a wedding before the summer comes,’ Constantine said while we watched Norris lifting Mistress Madge and twirling her around.

‘Maybe, or maybe not. My mistress is in no great hurry.’

‘I’ll wager my master and your mistress will marry before the month of May is out.’

‘I’ll wager they will not be wed before Michaelmas.’

‘This is the wager, and you must take it seriously,’ Constantine said. ‘If they marry before the end of May, I will dance with you at their wedding.’

‘If they marry after Michaelmas what shall I give to you?’

‘You will dance with me, of course, and should they marry between May and Michaelmas we will dance together.’

‘That is no wager.’

‘It is the best of wagers. One of us will surely win and we will each lose nothing.’

I thanked him for his kindness. I hoped that he knew I meant everything he had done to cheer me since my bereavement. He had sought me out many times to amuse me: he had taught me to play backgammon, told me again of the King and the great gun that had ruined the roof of Norris’s house so that the story seemed even funnier than before. At Christmas he had sent tasty morsels to my place at table. I knew he did all this as much for my father as myself and it comforted me to know that Father’s friend remembered him with kind deeds, especially so, knowing that they did not share the same religious beliefs.

I tried to visit Mother and the pudding wife for a few minutes each day. Mother was always busy but her shoulders drooped while she beat a sheet of gold leaf and her eyes were dull when Mistress Pudding talked of a magnificent jelly she planned for the King. I had thought that the death of Queen Katherine would add to mother’s grief and told her of it gently but it touched her not at all. I suppose there is only so much grief a soul can take.

Mistress Pudding always asked after Queen Anne’s health.

‘I fear Queen Anne has few childbearing years left, she is well into her thirties,’ she said. ‘Maybe this time the King will get his boy. Now that Katherine is dead no one can doubt that Anne Boleyn is King Henry’s true wife and the boy’s legitimacy will not be questioned in England or abroad.’

‘If she miscarries again the King will know for sure that he has been bewitched by the whore and will seek himself another wife whom God will bless with a son,’ Mother said. ‘There’s nothing to stop the King from getting rid of her as he did Katherine of Aragon. He couldn’t rid himself of her while Katherine lived. He couldn’t have two divorced wives and expect a third to marry him.’

Mistress Pudding shook her head and sighed. ‘You must not say these things, Joan, not here in my confectionary.’

‘Everyone says that the King has plans to name Henry Fitzroy as his heir if he has no legitimate son,’ I told them.

‘Princess Mary is King Henry’s true heir,’ Mother said defiantly.

Mistress Pudding sighed again and turned the conversation to talk of ladies’ fashions at court.

‘Do the ladies wear taffeta sleeves of a single colour or the warp and the weft of divers colours as I have heard is the latest fashion?’ she asked.

‘Both,’ I replied, ‘and they are stiff as parchment and the gentlemen’s doublets also. Sir Henry Norris sports a little slash in his sleeves to show off his best linen shirt and at his wrist there is a ruffle of lawn so fine you can see his hand through it, even through the embroidery.’

‘I would like to see these gentlemen in the candlelight with their taffeta shining,’ said Mistress Pudding as she tucked her curl into her cap and asked me to hold a mould steady while she poured a bucket of jelly into it. ‘This is to be one of His Majesty’s warships. It will sail upon a sea of blue and white waves all fashioned from marchpane. The sails will be of gold leaf and if King Henry or Queen Anne blow upon them just a little they will billow and glister in the candlelight.’

Mother put down her mallet to rest her arm. ‘I hear her favourite is dressed like everyone else these days,’ she said. ‘How a common musician has found the means to keep a horse and servants can only be surmised.’

‘Now, now, Joan, everyone knows that King Henry takes great pleasure in music and is very generous to those who please him, as I myself, have found.’ The stray curl found its way out of Mistress Pudding’s cap and around her finger again.

‘They say it is Anne Boleyn who pays for Smeaton’s doublet, hose and horse meat and that at night she hides him in a cupboard with her sweetmeats,’ Mother said. ‘And when she cannot sleep, she calls for him.’

‘Joan, be silent. You must not repeat these rumours in my confectionary,’ Mistress Pudding said, most severely.

‘The Queen does not eat sweetmeats,’ I told Mother crossly. ‘When she is pregnant all she asks for is quails.’

*

I never did get used to the bitter smell of sea coal that burned in the privy chambers of Henry VIII’s palaces. I love the musty smell of wood smoke. It is homely with an outdoor hue about it. The Queen and her ladies were so delighted each year when the Christmastide yule log was brought into the hearth that I wondered why they didn’t choose to have a log fire in every season.

‘Ungrateful wench,’ Mistress Madge chided, ‘to protest that the king’s sea coal is rank and chokes you. Never forget, Avis, what a privileged position it is for a maid like yourself to tarry within the Queen’s chambers. The Queen would give you a set of bells and take you for her fool if she knew you would exchange her costly coal for twigs any beggar could garner in the forest.’

The Queen’s chambers reeked of smoke and burning. I could not bear it. A few days earlier a fire had started in an inner chamber. The Queen and her ladies escaped unharmed although she was badly shaken and weeping. A chain of boys with buckets had swiftly scotched the fire. New hangings and carpets were brought and within days the Queen was sitting again in her apartments playing cards with the Little Duchess while the King jousted with his friends.

‘The smell of fire will not leave my nose,’ I complained to Mistress Madge.

‘I cannot smell burning. Either leave the chamber or cease to complain,’ she scolded.

I would have left the chamber but for the Duke of Norfolk’s page who stood at the door announcing his coming.

‘I bring terrible news,’ Norfolk said while he made his obeisance to the Queen. His expression was even graver than usual and his hands were shaking. ‘The King has been unhorsed in the lists and is feared … is feared ... to be dead.’

Mistress Madge and the other ladies rushed to the Queen. They gave her wine and water and held her hands.

‘My lord, you know she is with child and should have spoken more gently to Her Grace,’ little Duchess Richmond told the duke.

‘I have come with haste to convey what has happened. It is my duty to do so to my niece, the Queen. I cannot speak more kindly unless I lie.’

He stumbled to a nearby coffer and sat with his head in his hands.

‘Pray, bring my lord some wine,’ the Little Duchess cried and ran to her father’s side.

‘You say it is feared that the King is dead, my lord. Can you say for certain that this is so?’ Lady Rochford asked in a surprisingly calm tone.

‘The King fell heavily. His great armoured steed collapsed on top of him.’

Norfolk waved away his daughter’s maid. His hands were shaking too much to hold the goblet.

‘Which rash knight charged at the King and thus unseated him?’

Norfolk waggled his hand at Lady Rochford as if she were a servant. ‘There is no need for you to set yourself up as judge and jury, madam. The King was running at a quintain and the sand bag swung and unhorsed him.’

‘Does the King breathe, uncle?’ the Queen asked weakly.

‘How can it be known whether he breathes or no beneath his armour and his padded surcoat? There is no movement, nothing, not even his eyes.’

‘You should not have come to the Queen in haste with such dreadful news unless the outcome be certain, her unborn child might be harmed from such a shock,’ Lady Rochford said harshly. ‘Madge, take Anne to rest upon her bed while we await further news,’

‘Come Anne, take heart, the King is a strong man and his armour may well have saved him from serious injury,’ Mistress Madge said gently to the Queen who had shrunk into her chair with her arms around her belly.

‘Pray, return to the lists, if you please, my lord; see how the King fares and what his physicians say,’ Lady Rochford told the duke in a tone that made it very clear that she was taking charge of the situation whether he liked it or not.

‘If it be the worst, let Norris tell the Queen,’ the Little Duchess whispered to her father.

‘Let us all pray that God has spared the King’s life,’ the Queen moaned as her ladies helped her to her bed.

For what seemed like hours we watched the elaborate, golden clock that King Henry had given to Anne Boleyn when he courted her. The hands moved so slowly we thought the clock had stopped. The Queen lay weeping and shaking surrounded by her ladies who knelt in prayer by her bedside until Norris’s kindly, smiling face reassured her that the King lived even before he made his obeisance or spoke of the King’s miraculous escape from death.

‘His armour has saved him from serious injury but I doubt he will ever joust again,’ he said.

*

Five days later, Katherine of Aragon was buried in Peterborough Abbey. At Greenwich, the King wore black and went to the chapel for a Requiem Mass to show respect for his first wife. Later in the day, he discovered Mistress Seymour sitting alone, weeping for Katherine. She sobbed that she had been Katherine’s maid when first she came to court and had loved her dearly. King Henry, so Norris told Mistress Madge, was moved to tears himself and sat her upon his knee to comfort her. When the Queen happened upon them sitting thus together, so cosily, she knew for certain that her husband loved Mistress Seymour and that it was no mere game of chivalry.