Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (3 page)

I turn back to my life and I watch.

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۞
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Like a shadow from the first, there was
Henry, spoken of frequently in our household, reverently, as much a
fixture in my life in the beginning as in the end. I heard
references to him and his father the King and his brother, the heir
to the throne, from my earliest days. Names that meant nothing to
me were to weave themselves inextricably into my life, first as a
backdrop and then as my life’s primary focus.

I see my home, the very home in which I first
heard Henry’s name. How odd it is, the manner in which perceptions
change from a distance. There were times when I found this place to
be insufferably dull, isolated and provincial. I chafed with
boredom and impatience, anxious to be rid of it and on my way to
more exciting places and events, rarely missing it, or not missing
it at all when I was away. Even thinking of it as “home” seems odd,
as I lived in a number of places during my life and spent
considerably more time away than I ever spent here. Yet home is
what this is, and I now equate the structure and the grounds with
the very word “beauty”.

This home—my home—was a tiny castle in Kent
called Hever, built within two concentric moats, surrounded by
rolling grassy fields and thick groves of trees. Ducks glided down
the outer moat, which appeared upon first glance to be a stream,
and sheep grazed on shallow slopes nearby. I endured pain and loss,
perhaps equal to that which I felt in other places, yet can only
envision the sky above Hever as blue, the clouds as white and
wispy, the air as sweet, and the flowers blooming in the meadow as
if it were springtime.

My father had inherited the little castle
which, while outwardly very pretty, was several hundred years old
and could not possibly serve us comfortably as a home without
significant improvements. So, within the castle walls and attached
to the tiny castle, he had built for us a large house with three
adjoining wings of three floors each. Within it, the hallways
joined one another at right angles forming a square that surrounded
a little inner courtyard with the castle at the forefront. On the
face of it, you approached a cold, walled-in fortress when you rode
up the drive, but as soon as you passed through the gates and
entered the courtyard, you were surrounded by charming,
vine-covered walls that displayed glinting, diamond-paned windows
and architecture in the modern Tudor style. On first sight, you
knew you were entering a world that was safe and warm and cheerful.
It was within this world that I grew.

The courtyard led to the kitchen, so its
walls were lined with barrels of kitchen goods. Within these walls
were hunting dogs, servant boys struggling with water buckets or
bushels of meal, scullery maids exchanging glances with horse
hands, several scratching, soon-to-be-killed-and-roasted chickens,
and the head housekeeper scolding all of them for being underfoot,
or slow, or inattentive.

The courtyard was a very jolly place. There
were whiffs of wood smoke, cooking smells of fish or game, and the
heady, delicious aroma of freshly harvested herbs. There were
laughs and shouts, grunts from men carrying heavy loads of goods,
and the sound of voices singing. I sometimes watched these scenes
from the diamond-paned windows in the hallway above, and sometimes
wandered down, as a child, to immerse myself in the bustle and the
company. I was not supposed to be there, mingling with the
underlings, in everybody’s way, but if I kept myself very quiet and
stayed small in a corner or behind a barrel, I was often unnoticed
and forgotten, and thus was allowed to remain. This rarely lasted
long. In a short time I would speak up in order to comment on or
question something I saw, or would join someone in song and betray
myself, then be scolded out of my hiding place, guilty and
uncovered, usually pulled back inside by my nurse.

The family did not enter by way of the
kitchen as the help did, but instead we made our way up a winding
stone staircase just inside the castle gate. Inside the house were
wood-paneled walls, elegant tapestries, and sumptuous furnishings
lovingly polished by servants. Most of the rooms were forbidden to
my siblings and me when we were small, and our early lives were
spent in the narrow confines of playrooms and nurseries on the
second floor.

My own room, located in a far corner, was
only large enough to contain my bed. Mary’s room, of course, was
larger, she being the eldest, and George’s room the largest of all
(even though he was the youngest) since he was the male heir. As a
female, and a middle child of very limited worth, I was provided
with only the tiniest of drafty, leftover spaces, and a window too
high to look out until I was grown. However, my room had the
advantage of providing me with a spiral stone staircase in one
corner that allowed me convenient access and ready escape to the
floor below if I heard someone unwelcome approaching from the hall.
For this last reason, I considered myself a very fortunate little
girl indeed, and my position an enviable one.

In later years, I would be required to move
myself to another room, as it would be too difficult for the
household to keep me locked inside a room with a second entrance.
This action became necessary in order to prevent me from trying to
run away to Hal, whom Henry would one day decide I should not wed.
The move was, from my parents’ perspective, a success. From mine,
the larger prison with the pleasant view and just one entrance was
very cold comfort indeed.

But I leap forward too quickly. Patience has
never been one of my strengths.

Within this house, I see my family, first my
mother, stern, distant, coldly well bred and proper. Then I see my
sharp-tongued, quick-witted and shrewd brother George, and my
sister Mary, pretty and sensuous, personable yet self-serving,
always matter-of-fact—except when her heart was involved.

I see Father, only rarely there, the
changeable one, jovial and harsh by turns. He was a man who
dominated any room and all its occupants with his commanding voice
and his presence, and who answered only to his wife, and to the
King. Father was driven by, and hence drove his family with his
forceful ambitions, his greed and his vanity, pushing us ever
onward to seek out and to achieve position even higher than he
himself had been able to grasp. And so, I obediently did. I focused
on ambition and personal gain, just as I was expected to, to please
him.

I see, of course, myself interspersed with
the rest, viewed now as I have never seen myself before. I am
worse, and better than I had known myself to be.

My upbringing fostered petulance and
superiority. My tendency toward self-absorption, natural to all
infants, was nurtured and encouraged, and my “needs”, so called,
were heeded by servants who sprang to action at the sound of my
tiny voice. I learned I had a right to this, and believed that I
did. I knew myself to be superior, and knew that I should never
want—even for one moment’s time—for anything I could obtain through
someone else’s efforts, and by my own command.

My superiority stopped with the Tudor family,
of course, and with various levels of nobility that were higher
than my family’s. There were those with whom I was forced to be
humble. Innate superiority was also of no use in impressing my
parents. Compared to them, I was inferior, and (they sometimes
reminded me) barely worthy, for I had been born with a deformity
that shamed them, and caused me endless embarrassment.

I had what was called a “sixth finger” on my
hand. It was merely a growth more than a true finger, but was
difficult for me to accept with equanimity, as one should accept
such things. This was particularly true since I had dark hair and
skin, unlike my prettier sister. I was physically not what my
parents would have wished, and temperamentally not inclined to the
quiet meekness they demanded of their female offspring. I
continually fought against being a disappointment to them.

I developed a habit of carefully crossing two
of my fingers to disguise the deformity. I camouflaged the hand
with over-long sleeves and graceful gestures, but was still to be
reminded of it. It was one of the first things mentioned when I was
described to anyone and, I find, always shall be. “The mark of the
devil,” some said, although my parents scoffed and laughed at such
unenlightened attitudes and told me not to heed them. I sometimes
thought of it, though. It is hard to be a child and hear one is
marked by the devil when one wants only to be good, but finds it
difficult to be good sometimes. My willful moments made me fearful
of Hell, once they had passed and I was set upon to examine
them.

I never quite lost the anxiety that all I did
and all that happened to me was a manifestation of being marked. It
was from my disfigurement that my ambition to be a nun first took
root to prove, perhaps, that if I strove, I could transcend the
devil and be as worthy of God as others. Later, I felt driven to
read my Bible and pray for hours each day, never feeling quite
certain I had prayed enough, always feeling that I had a bigger
obstacle than others to overcome.

My sister Mary was the obedient one, at least
in the presence of parents or nurses. She knew how to smile meekly,
and to agree, and to make pretty promises. She knew how to lie
sweetly, and to weep piteously. Whippings were rare for her, and
rewards were common, but I was not jealous of this. I wished only
to be as loved and as lovable as she. She was one more reminder
that I was wanting, and I could not blame her for that. The fault
lay with me for I was flawed at birth, and felt this must be a
reflection of my soul.

Unlike Mary, I was too honest, and too
forthright to deceive those who had authority over me. It was
against my nature to withhold secrets, and it was within my nature
to vocalize my observations, so I took most of the whippings while
Mary watched, exasperated by my “Stupidity. ‘Tis pure stupidity to
tell them that, Nan. Just smile and nod, then hold thy tongue and
they will never know nor care, so long as thou dost
appear
to be compliant and obedient.” I could not do that, even smarting
from the latest punishment. I would obey as much as a child is
able, but I could not stop myself from babbling about some thing or
another that I should have known would make tempers flare. I could
not restrain myself from bursting with descriptions of the garden
in the rain, when I clearly should not have ventured out and could
only have done so by stealth, or from commenting on the sweets I
had stolen from the kitchen, forgetting how I had come by them.

My indiscretions also cost servants and my
siblings some peace of mind, for I prattled on about everything I
saw. Their displeasure and anger and, on occasion, their
punishments, cost me moments of the sincerest, most devastating
shame, yet still my tongue wagged, for I had not the power to stop
it in spite of the cost to myself or to them.

Despite my physical and temperamental
failings, my parents dearly loved me. I learn this with amazement
for, while my father’s affection was preoccupied and dismissive, I
see it was strong, and my mother, the mother with the heart of ice,
appears to have felt toward me a love of surprising depth. It is
amazing because I never knew they felt love at all. I cannot even
formulate a question, yet I am in need of reassurance that what I
see is truth, for I am inclined to disbelieve.

Where in the heart of the mother who pursed
her lips at me, or inside the father who used me and abandoned me
at my death was there love? It was not visible. I am certain of
that.

I am reassured the love was there, or they
would never have tolerated my temperament and nature to such a
degree in that time and place. Had they loved me less, they would
have cruelly beaten me into submission, as they had been taught to
do. Instead, my parents even allowed me some say in decisions that
concerned me. They were, by comparison to others in our time and
against their better judgment, remarkably lenient and indulgent
toward me.

One has to step back sometimes, and having
done so, I marvel that I missed what I could not see at the
time.

I made my parents laugh, and amused them with
stories and songs, and assaulted them with endless effusive
displays of affection even in the face of their own detachment. My
tongue was never still, and my eyes were always darting about and
crinkling over some small joy. I could not help loving them with
boundless energy, and that kind of love is a flattering thing. They
first pitied me, and then I made them laugh, which is the surest
way for a child to carve room for herself in a parent’s heart. I
now find I gave them more pleasure than they ever allowed me to
see. I wished with all my heart that they could love me as much as
the others, and in truth, they did. Yet I was never certain of
their love, and never felt worthy of it.

Would I have been different had I known?

I would think of my parents when I accepted
Henry’s hand, and feel I had finally succeeded in making them proud
of me. That belief gave me joy almost equal to the joy I felt in
being loved by Henry. It is a moment I would freeze in time, for it
was by far my happiest, and a moment for which I paid most
dearly.

It was a moment my mother and father did not
wish for me or for themselves, knowing Henry. They did not fully
share my joy, yet still, I thought they must. I thought I was
giving them a gift.

•
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۞
~•

When we were children, our cuddles came from
nurses and servants, as did the swats that landed on our bottoms.
Our parents were careful not to spoil us with kisses and affection,
as it was commonly thought that such parental weakness brought harm
to a child’s character. They maintained in the spirit and popular
wisdom of the times that children must be brought up sternly,
distanced from their parents whom they revered and respected,
rather than openly loved. They wanted what was best for each of us,
and the widely held belief was that cold harshness and parental
distance were best. They settled for criticism, parsimonious praise
and material gifts as a means of expressing themselves and their
love for us.