Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (9 page)

‘Never fear, White Boy,’ he says to our servant who hangs his head drowsily, for his potion is taking effect, ‘I will attend Mass each Sunday from this day on and of an afternoon go to the butts to practice my archery, as I am bidden by the Queen’s laws.’

*

I think of mother’s advice when Anne Boleyn became Queen and the old religious ways began to be destroyed: we must keep our beliefs to ourselves and to God and let the masters see what we want them to see.

There have been so many changes in the churches these twenty-five years; I don’t know what to believe any more. When I was a girl praying at my bedside, the Spirit of God was real. It was a warm cloak around me and a guiding voice within me. Sometimes I felt His presence so terrifyingly heavy upon my shoulders that I thought I would be struck down, like Saul on the road to Damascus. Each time I knelt at Mass to receive the host, something wonderful happened: the bread became Christ’s body and the wine became his blood. In Edward’s reign there was no transubstantiation: the miracle of the Mass was gone. I heard the priest recite the liturgy in English and was saddened that the sonorous beauty of the Latin language was gone.

Now Mary is our queen and the priest elevates the host to receive the body and the blood of Christ yet there is still for me an emptiness, as if something marvellous has departed never to return. Since my husband has taught me to read, it gives me such pride and pleasure to pick up my English New Testament and study awhile and it grieves me greatly that I must do this furtively.

‘I suppose I am a heretic, but I don’t feel wicked or sinful, just confused,’ I say.

‘When you were a child the old religion was simple. The priest told you what to believe and how to worship. It is men’s thinking that has brought about these troubled times. Aye, it is the fancy of kings and queens who presume to tell us what to believe when once the Pope in Rome instructed the whole of Christendom. The blame lies with Anne Boleyn.’

Always, my husband blames Anne Boleyn. Always. Every evil in London Town, in England, is the fault of King Henry’s concubine. Today, I do not argue with him.

‘She would have her crown,’ he says, ‘so King Henry had to have his divorce, and for this he must break with Rome. She would have her English New Testament and encourage the King to read the Bible in layman’s tongue.’

‘You have encouraged me to read God’s word for myself in English.’

‘I saw no harm when it was safe to do so. I will not forbid you now, despite the danger, to do in secret what pleases you and brings you peace when you are troubled in your mind.’

*

I awake in the dark to the smell of smoke and roasting meat.

‘There’s no fire in the bedchamber nor meat downstairs on the spit at this hour. You are dreaming again,’ my husband says.

Still, I taste burnt fat and feel mucus like lumps of pig grease drizzling down my throat so that I have to retch into a pot my husband holds. These dreams of fire keep happening. I fear they will hold sway upon our unborn child.

‘When will the burnings cease?’ my husband mutters.

It is all our neighbours talk of. We cannot bear it.

*

October 16th 1555

The day the bishops burned I taught my husband to bake bread.

While the bishops were chained to their stakes in Oxford, we mixed and kneaded. While our loaves rose, they scorched. After Mother had pushed the stop-gap dough around the oven door we knelt and prayed for their souls. By the time my husband had placed his last loaf on the trestle we thought that the bishops would be in heaven. I had kept a promise I made to my father on my wedding day. I had made a baker of my husband; for that was what my father had wished.

Master Lydgate came the following day, talking of the great profit he had made in fares between London and Oxford and proclaiming like a bellman of all that he had seen and heard at the stake.

Of how the two bishops burned alive while the third, Anne Boleyn’s old chaplain, Archbishop Cranmer, had looked on from his prison in the gatehouse knowing that in time his turn must come.

Of how ancient Master Latimer had quietly stripped from his bishop’s robes which he gave away to bystanders and stood upright in his shift.

Of words of comfort that were exchanged between the bishops but which, unfortunately, could not be heard where Master Lydgate stood.

Of how Master Ridley’s brother-in-law or brother, Master Lydgate knew not which it be, had hung gunpowder around their necks to hasten their deaths. How indeed, Master Latimer had burned quickly and was soon out of his agony yet the flames failed to reach Master Ridley standing proud in his bishop’s robes. So Master Ridley’s brother or brother in law, whichever it be, had thought fit to shorten his agony by way of piling green faggots about him yet had piled them too high so that the flames burned fiercely below, but slowly, and they could not reach him above, where the gunpowder hung about his neck to hasten his demise.

‘Be silent, Lydgate.’

My husband pointed to where I sat with my arms around mother. She was shaking so much her shoes were banging against the settle.

‘Cannot you see that they have no stomach for this.’

Master Lydgate’s proclamation was in full torrent, ‘Bishop Ridley cried out to God to let the flames come …’

‘Now he is dead and let us have an end to it.’

‘Aye, the bishops be both charred to ashes and either in heaven or hell as it pleases God.’

Then he rebuked my husband that he had missed a fine opportunity to make good money in his wherry and should take his chance when Archbishop Cranmer’s burning comes around, as it must in due course.

‘I could not come, Lydgate.’ My husband spoke quietly, yet with firmness. ‘Not after what happened to my wife’s father. You were there, you saw ...’

‘Forgive me, I had forgot.’ Master Lydgate’s crier’s voice was reduced to a deathly muffled tone. ‘I am an old man. I had forgot.’

*

Queen Mary is a little woman who wears russet gowns dripping with jewels like drops of sunlit dew upon an autumn leaf. We have seen her once or twice on procession through London town. A barren, melancholy woman whose foetus vanished inside her belly; melted away in the warm womb waters like a sugar confection. Now her husband has abandoned her. Returned to Spain. They say he has a mistress there.

‘I knew the Queen when she was young and Anne Boleyn was her stepmother,’ I tell White Boy.

‘How young mistress?’

‘Not yet eighteen years of age.’

‘Seventeen is not so young, mistress, You were yourself married around this age and the master established as a waterman.’

Seventeen years is a tender age enough for a princess to be told she is merely ‘my lady’ now and must give up her position as lady princess, King Henry’s heir, and pay homage to her bastard half-sister, and her father’s concubine. A tender age, indeed, to make a changeling of a pretty, pious princess into a papist, Protestant-burning Queen.

Chapter 13

Winter 1533

Shortly before Christmas in 1533, a separate household was set up for Princess Elizabeth befitting her status as King Henry VIII’s sole, legitimate heir. The princess and her nursery staff were to remove to Hatfield Palace in the Hertfordshire countryside where the Queen’s aunt, Lady Anne Shelton, and her husband, Sir John, would take charge of the joint household, for Princess Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, was to join her as maid-of-honour. Lady Bryan, who used to be lady mistress when Princess Mary was a child, was to take charge of the royal nursery again.

‘Pack the caps, swaddling clothes and tail-clouts inside the little chest to keep by me,’ Nurse ordered. ‘The rest of the princess’s clothing must be carefully folded inside the satin cases before going into her chests. Mind you roll the bedclothes tightly, and when the chests are full, cover the whole with more linen against dirt and dust. After I’ve checked that your packing isn’t sloppy you may see to your own chest.’

I was so excited. I had never travelled beyond London and Greenwich Palace. Nurse told me Hatfield was twenty or more miles north of London and forbade me to ask any more questions because I was giving her a headache, even before the journey began.

‘Go, take leave of your parents and give me some peace,’ she said, and went to lie down on her bed with a cold compress on her head.

‘It is ever thus,’ Mistress Pudding consoled mother. ‘Parents weep when their children leave them. Children, seeking their independence, wonder what all the fuss is about. Take comfort, Joan, Princess Elizabeth and her household will be brought to court betimes, perhaps for Easter, and wherever the court stays, there will we be with our confections, whether it be Hampton Court, Whitehall or here at Greenwich.’

There was no farewell hug from Father, only a peck on the cheek. He wouldn’t touch me with his sticky, doughy hands and his floury apron for fear of spoiling my spotless nursery attire.

‘How many litters, wagons, carts, sumpter horses, grooms, barrels, boxes, chests and servants does a baby princess need?’ I stretched out my arms as if to enclose the courtyard and the lanes beyond the palace which were overflowing with the princess’s traffic.

‘As many as it takes to persuade the common people that she is a real princess, the legitimate daughter of the King,’ Father said. ‘As for the Lady Mary, these days she is no princess at all, so she won’t need many carts. It’ll be a sorry household for Anne Boleyn’s aunt to take charge of. My Lady Mary will not be maid-in-waiting to her bastard baby sister with good grace.’

*

Our procession trundled through London streets lined with cheering crowds. The great dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and their retainers escorted the princess and harbingers rode before and guards alongside. The three month old princess lay in her gilded cradle inside her beautiful painted litter accompanied by Nurse and Lady Bryan, her new lady mistress. I travelled in a covered wagon with the rocking girls and other maidservants. We huddled together for warmth, wrapped in woollen mantles.

I thought Hatfield a very pretty palace with its red brick facade and many windows, yet much smaller than I had expected; certainly not as grand a palace as Greenwich.

‘I think I am going to miss the Thames,’ I told the other girls.

They laughed. ‘You’re supposed to say you’ll miss your mother.’

‘I fancy that I shall have to take your mother’s place,’ Mistress Blanche said, and she put her arm around me and hurried me to the warm fires of the nursery apartments.

*

‘The Lady Mary will run Sir John and Lady Shelton ragged with her contrary ways,’ Nurse grumbled, while I unpacked the travelling chests. ‘She refuses to be presented to Princess Elizabeth and will continue to punished. Goodness knows what will happen when Queen Anne visits, for I cannot believe that the Lady Mary will curtsey to her. First, she refuses to come to Hatfield and my Lord Norfolk, the foremost peer of the realm, and uncle to the Queen, is obliged to threaten to have her lifted bodily into the litter by his servants. And he would have done so too, if she had not complied. Everyone knows how he has threatened to use force against his wife when she disobeys him. Now that my Lady Mary is here, she refuses to leave her chamber or to eat the victuals my Lady Shelton provides.’

*

She came quietly one evening, to the nursery apartments. Alone. No page announced her coming. She came to the fireside where lady mistress rested upon a settle against blue velvet cushions sipping hot spiced wine.

‘So, my Lady Bryan, you find yourself again bringing up a child for my father, even now, when you have passed three score years and might look for a little ease in your old age.’ Such a gruff, croaky voice for so small and young a gentlewoman. It wasn’t a question, nor a statement, more an accusation.

Lady Bryan rose stiffly, bobbed a small curtsey and having plumped up the cushions took Lady Mary’s hand and invited her to sit beside her.

‘I trust you are comfortable in your chambers, my lady?’

‘When you were my lady mistress I was your lady princess.’

‘Times change, my lady.’

‘It does not have to be so.’

‘We must all abide by the King’s laws.’

Lady Bryan summoned me from where I waited by the nursery door. ‘Avis, find a boy to fetch a goblet and more hippocras for my Lady Mary.’

‘There is no need. Return to your work wench.’ Lady Mary sulkily waved me away. ‘You have forgotten, Lady Bryan, spiced wine makes me nauseous.’

‘I had not forgot, my lady, I thought you would have outgrown it by now. I trust I find you well.’

She didn’t look very well at all to me. Either she had a cold or she’d spent hours weeping and bawling so that her eyes were red and swollen and her throat hoarse.

‘I have a headache.’

‘Avis, fetch a cold compress, and with haste girl.’

Again, Lady Mary waved me away. She would manage with her own two ladies who tended to her needs. It had pleased her father, the King, to give her a much reduced household to that which she enjoyed at Beaulieu Palace. This was her lot and she would cope.

Lady Bryan patted her hand. ‘That’s the spirit, my lady and you will be all the happier for it. Sir John and Lady Shelton will be the more agreeable if you obey the King in all matters.’

‘What do I care for Lady Shelton. She is aunt to the great whore, Anne Boleyn.’

‘Hush, hush, my lady, you must not speak so of the Queen.’

‘I know of no queen but Katherine, my mother.’

‘I did not hear your last remark, Lady Mary. I did not hear it. Such talk is dangerous.’

The little deposed princess straightened her back and tightened her lips.

‘This stubbornness cannot continue, my lady. It will gain you nothing excepting heartache. I had thought that you came to me in gratitude, to pay your respects to your erstwhile lady mistress remembering all my little kindnesses to you when you were a child.’ Lady Bryan squeezed her hand and smiled. Lady Mary’s shoulders drooped and her chin quivered as if she were about to weep but she bit her lips into a thin line and pulled herself erect against the deep blue cushions. ‘I am pleased to see you well, Lady Bryan, but my purpose is to see my sister.’

‘To see your sister?’

Earlier that day Lady Mary had refused to attend Princess Elizabeth who lay upon her big bed with its gold and silver fringes, waiting for her elder sister to be presented to her as maid-of-honour.

‘After all that stamping of feet and causing a rumpus this morning, now you decide to come to see Princess Elizabeth. How so?’

‘I will not curtsey to the whore’s bastard in her great bed of state. I will see my baby sister in her little cradle, swaddled and sleeping.’

I couldn’t decide whether she looked younger than her seventeen years or very much older. She was not much taller than a child. Was her complexion the pale newness of youth or the sickliness of age? Her small, piercing eyes bespoke both anger and sorrow. Those thin, tight lips, did they ever smile? Isn’t this something the young always do, smile, while it is the old who grumble?

Lady Bryan sent me to the nursery to give notice to Nurse to make Princess Elizabeth ready to receive her sister.

‘I’ve only just settled her and got her off to sleep. I’ll brook no more tantrums in this nursery from elder sisters who ought to know better.’

‘We are calm, Nurse, this evening.’ Lady Bryan whispered.

Lady Mary strode towards the cradle where Princess Elizabeth lay sleeping while Mistress Blanche rocked.

‘Take off her cap, I want to see her hair.’ That harsh voice, too loud for a nursery. The wet-nurse raised her eyebrows to the lady mistress. Lady Bryan sighed.

‘Nurse, take off her cap, I say.’ Lady Mary spoke with the authority of a king’s daughter, bastard or no.

‘It’s taken an hour to get her off to sleep,’ the wet-nurse grumbled, gently lifting the babe’s head whilst untying the biggin bands and removing the damask sleeping cap.

‘She’s my father’s child,’ Lady Mary announced gruffly, as if there had been doubt. ‘She has the Tudor colouring and red hair. Was mine such a hue at this age, Lady Bryan?’

‘A little darker, as I remember, Lady Mary.’

‘Her skin is pale, like mine. I had thought it might be sallow, like her mother’s. Let me hold her.’

‘She will wake,’ Nurse complained.

It could have been so different for those two sisters. Mary rocked the sleeping Elizabeth in her arms. She watched her face and called her, ‘my little Tudor sister.’ It could have been so very different: if only Elizabeth had not inherited that one unmistakable Boleyn feature. She stirred. Her little tongue licked her tiny Tudor, rosebud lips. Her father’s lips. Then she opened her eyes, those dark inquisitive eyes.

‘Oh. She has the whore’s black eyes.’ Mary dropped Elizabeth into Lady Bryan’s arms and stalked away.

‘Let’s hope that’s the last we see of her,’ Nurse said. ‘That rasping voice is not fitting for a nursery.’

‘I think she has a cold,’ I ventured.

‘She always speaks thus,’ Lady Bryan told Nurse. ‘That gruff voice of hers is deeper than the King’s. Everyone remarks upon it.’

*

There was another red-haired girl in the palace. That made three of them. Three Tudor roses with pale skin and bright hair, just like the King: the Lady Mary, the Princess Elizabeth and this other girl. She was about nine or ten years old and was dressed like a lady. I saw her once or twice sitting by the cradle with Mistress Blanche.

‘We both love little Princess Elizabeth, don’t we Blanche,’ the girl said. ‘We want to stay with her for ever.’

I asked Nurse about her.

‘Her name is Katherine. That’s all you need to know about her. You ask too many questions for a lowly serving maid. Folks who ask no questions aren’t told lies.’

*

Lady Mary had a miserable Christmastide. She spent whole days in her chamber praying and weeping. She demanded that food be cooked especially for her and brought to her chamber, which, Lady Shelton told Nurse, added greatly to the costs of running the household. Still she refused to acknowledge Elizabeth as Princess and the King’s heir. For this she had to be punished. Lady Shelton made her eat in the hall with everyone else. Her father sent her no gift at New Year although she sent one to him. Then, in mid-January, he did something I thought very cruel. He visited Hatfield and refused to see her. My father would never have done that; I knew he wouldn’t, even if we had quarrelled, even if I had had a terrible temper and stamped my feet.

Lady Bryan dabbed her eyes with her kerchief as she sat by Nurse’s fireside sipping her wine that evening. ‘She asked leave to kiss his hand and even this was refused.’

Lady Shelton sat beside her wearing a new, rustling, deep-green taffeta gown with fur trimmed sleeves. I knew it was bad manners, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her new gable hood. It sparkled with emeralds and had long embroidered lappets that were wrapped around the back in a fancy pleat and pinned on top.

‘Do not look to place the blame upon me,’ Lady Shelton said. ‘It was not at my suggestion that His Majesty shunned her. Lady Mary is as stubborn a maid as any man could have for a daughter, but I would not have denied her a loving reunion with her father.’

The Hatfield servants gossiped freely about who was to blame. Sitting at dinner in the hall, the King’s guards had blabbed that shortly after King Henry had set off for Hatfield, Master Cromwell, the King’s chief minister, had ridden with haste to deliver an urgent message to the King. It was from Queen Anne. The message warned the King that the Lady Mary should be taught a firm lesson. Henry should refuse to see his daughter.

‘Almost every day since she came to Hatfield, Lady Mary has asked of me when the King will come,’ Lady Shelton said. ‘This morning, she waited upon a terrace and when she saw the King’s harbingers arriving in the courtyard she withdrew to her apartment and called for her ladies to put her into the best attire she could find. She was most charming and pleasant to me today when I visited her chambers and indeed, admired my new gown.’

As well she might, I thought, for there was no new gown or bright jewels for the deposed princess. How she must miss her beautiful clothes. If I were the Lady Mary, I knew I would have curtseyed to a baby sister if it meant that I could wear princess clothes and jewels again.