To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

FOURTEEN

Year of Our Lord 1532

Greenwich Palace

Richmond Castle

Woodstock

We were back at Greenwich for Christmas that year and in every way save name and body, Anne reigned over the celebrations as queen. Court etiquette demanded that courtiers give gifts to one another and, of course, to the sovereign. The boundaries of many relationships were narrowed or expanded by the value of the gifts given, the placement of the person understood by the significance of the gifts received.

That year Henry decided, as Katherine was no longer queen and also, because of her unwillingness to cooperate with his plans, no longer his friend, to give Katherine of Aragon nothing at all. Furthermore, he decreed that all were to follow suit and that no presents were to be sent to her at Enfield, where she moldered. The whispers grew strident among the ladies that Anne had been behind this indignity. I failed to understand how any person with more than a Whitsunday’s experience at court could imagine that Anne, or anyone, could steer Henry in a course not of his own plotting. His sailed by his own star alone.

I supposed the rumors were fueled by the fact that Katherine’s loss was clearly Anne’s gain. Not only was she the recipient of dozens of expensive gifts of plate, cloth, and jewelry from ambitious courtiers, she was the benefactress of Henry’s wealth. He’d apparently kept his jeweler, Master Hayes, busily employed with, among other gifts, a girdled belt of crown gold. The gift I found to be the most perplexing was Henry’s gift of a Katherine Wheel set with thirteen diamonds. It had a beautiful shape, of course, gold spokes enclosed in a delicate ring, much like a wedding ring. But all knew that the Katherine Wheel, also called a breaking wheel, was a device intended for execution of the condemned.

No one else seemed to note it, or if they did, they kept their peace.

My brother Thomas returned from Calais and was immediately appointed as commissioner of the peace in Essex, far from court. Mayhap the king had his hand in it. But the order was signed by Cromwell and initialed by Edmund Wyatt. We had barely time for dining together once or twice before he was whisked out of Anne’s sight again.

Once the forced conviviality of Christmas had passed, the court again drew tense. The factions were clearly marked, and though Katherine was no longer present at court, some of her supporters were. They spoke mostly in whispers and in corners. Anne told me that the king grew intolerant of them. He had proved his point, legally and scripturally, and they were waking a dangerous impatience by their prodding.

We arrived at chapel on Easter Sunday. Anne and the king sat in the royal chamber, out of sight of the rest of the gathered courtiers, though we all heard the same message. I normally sat with Lady and Lord Zouche, but this day I had helped Anne a bit longer than usual and approached the chapel by myself. Most pews were filled. As I stood there, a man about my own age caught my eye.

“My lady?” He indicated the pew he’d just vacated. “Please.”

I smiled at him. “Thank you, Sir….”

“Sir Anthony Litton,” he said. “At your service.” His smile was warm and, indeed, welcome. I saw him shove a friend over, as schoolboys do, to make way on the pew in front of me and I held back a giggle.

We had come, of course, expecting to hear of resurrection and new life and celebration after the bleak weeks of Lent. William Peto, one of Henry’s favorite friars, of the Observants, began the message. He took his text from the Old Testament. Strange, for Easter Sunday. And then the court grew palpably ill at ease as he began to preach, energetically, about King Ahab.

“Ahab was a wicked king who had been handed a good kingdom and misspent it,” he said. “He was selfishly willful. He was blessed and yet returned curses for blessing. And then he chose to marry Jezebel.”

Friar Peto went on to indict Jezebel as a Baal-worshipping pagan, a domineering woman who ordered her weak-kneed husband around and would lead his kingdom to ruin.

Rivulets tracked down Father Peto’s face though ’twere only the end of March. I dared not look up at the royal chamber, but in the stillness of the church we could hear Henry panting with anger. All knew Peto styled Henry as Ahab and Anne as Jezebel. Shortly after we sang the Te Deums and filed out.

Henry, to his credit, didn’t have Friar Peto strung to a Katherine Wheel. Instead, he reasonably sent one of his chaplains to preach a rebuke the next Sunday. When the king’s man arrived he was barracked and prevented from speaking. They followed that indignity up by hauling said chaplain before the ecclesiastical court for discipline.

George dined with Anne and me weeks later, the night after Henry responded to all of this with stunning force. “He brought himself to his full height, was dressed in his richest robes, and had a wondrous fury on his face,” George said. “He reminded all present that they had agreed, in principle, that a king has jurisdiction in his own realm. He recalled that he had proved his case for sovereignty, as well as against the legitimacy of his first marriage, legally and scripturally. And that they had agreed, in kind.”

“Who spoke against him?” Anne refilled George’s ale herself, though we knew as many maids as could stood just outside the chamber, listening.

“The Church in Rome elected the bishop of Winchester, Gardiner, to speak on its behalf. Before the assembled churchmen, courtiers, and government officials he told Henry, ‘We, your most humble subjects, may not subject the execution of our charges and duty, certainly prescribed by God, to Your Highness’s assent.’”

“In other words,” Anne said, “the pope, who has never been to England, and who is under the sway of Charles the Fifth, shall be the ultimate law in our land.”

George raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure they would see it that way but…. yes.”

“Henry will not stand for it,” I said. “Will he?”

They both shook their heads. “Indeed, Henry unmanned Gardiner in front of all assembled, raging that he, too, had a God-given appointment as anointed king and that he would defend it afore all comers. Few looked ready to pick up a lance and meet him in the tiltyard.” He looked at Anne. “They blame you, you know.”

She nodded. “It’s not about me. It’s about sovereignty. But they find me to be an easy scapegoat. A sacrificial lamb. However,” she said, biting into a date, “I am safe. Henry’s promised me.”

It had come to a head. Within the month all had declared sides. Sir Thomas More, Henry’s friend and the writer of the hopeful Utopia, but also the author of half a million sharp words against Tyndale and church reform, threw his weight against the king and tendered his resignation as chancellor. Henry accepted his resignation with cool civility.

By the end of April Henry had decided that since the Church in Rome would not do things by halves, neither would he. He had a bill presented to Parliament that would strip the Church in Rome of all its powers in England.

By June, King Francis of France had allied himself with Henry. Now not even Charles would agree to come against England lest he fight France as well. All seemed settled.

Till July.

We ladies had gathered in the court gardens of a sticky summer evening to play cards. The woody freshness of rosemary mingled with the nectar of the roses and the slight salt of feminine sweat—hot months did not excuse us from the cumbersome number of layers required for us to be properly dressed. I reposed with the Duchess of Norfolk and her daughter Mary, who had caught the eye of the king’s baseborn son, at a table a few feet away from Anne. She sat with Lady Lisle and Lady Zouche. “Here comes the duke’s manservant,” Lady Norfolk’s daughter teased her mother. “Mayhap he is come to bring funds with which to pay your debt.”

The duchess, never known for a quick smile, puckered at her daughter, drawing her wrinkled skin round her mouth as purse strings. I grinned at Mary Howard and admired her wit. The duke’s manservant did not stop next to the duchess, however; he went directly to Anne and handed her a note. She read it, folded it, and made her excuses to leave. As soon as I could reasonably do so I followed her. Once in her chambers I saw that she had dismissed all of her ladies save Jane Rochford, who was not so easily put out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Henry Percy,” she said.

“Henry Percy? Whatever can he want?”

“It’s not what he wants. It’s what his wife, Mary Talbot, wants. She claims that her marriage to Percy has been one sore grievance after the next and that the reason for that is that it is illegal and ill conceived. She claims that Percy and I were precontracted and therefore her own marriage is null and void.”

I opened my mouth to speak and just before I did, Jane Rochford’s utter stillness caught my attention. I gathered my thoughts and then responded, “What will you do?”

“I shall take this to the king,” she said, “and demand that he investigate it.”

The breathtaking audacity of the action caught us all unaware. What would Percy say? He, as Anne knew, was not a man of strong will, and he’d been further broken since their ephemeral romance by a wife as icy and depressive as the north lands he ruled over.

And yet, mayhap Mary Talbot had reason for her coldness.

Expectedly, within the month Henry Percy was to be questioned under oath. Unexpectedly, the few of us who knew Anne during that time were also to be deposed. Her family spoke freely, of course, knowing little, and after the Sweat there was only myself remaining of those who had served her during that time.

I was called before one of the king’s chaplains, a priest of the age one expects to be tending to abbey physic gardens rather than deposing young widows. He sat me down in his office.

“My lady, I’ve heard that you are a woman of honor and valor.”

“Thank you, Father,” I said. “I strive to be.”

“I understand that you were a friend at court with Lady Anne during the time in question.”

“Yes,” I said. “I was here to serve her.” I hoped to deemphasize that I’d been her friend and therefore a repository to her secret thoughts.

“Do you recall her relationship with Henry Percy?” Father Peter asked.

“I recall that they were affectionate toward one another,” I said.

“Do you recall the moment that they became engaged? Surely that would stick out in your memory. Those kinds of things do, with young women.”

Is he trying to entrap me? “I was not privy to any of their private conversations.”

“So to the best of your knowledge, with all of your understanding, they were not precontracted. Nor had they pledged themselves to one another.”

My conversation in the litter with Anne that year was crystal-clear. She’d promised never again to pledge herself to a weak man. Was there a difference between a pledge and a precontract? I had thought not. But I was not sufficiently sure and I could see a way round this.

“No. They were not precontracted.”

“Nor pledged?”

I considered myself a poor liar. I had, I’d thought, little practice. So it was hard to keep my face from betraying me as I answered, “No.”

I was almost certain he knew that I was lying but he pressed no more and dismissed me.

I scurried to my room, burdened with shame. I recalled Edmund’s taunt about the court bending me to its will and my certainty that it would not happen. After the ladies’ gathering that evening I drew aside my sister, Alice.

“I have something I need to confess. A sin.”

She raised her eyebrows in question. “To me?”

I shook my head. “No. In fact, ’tis something I cannot confess to anyone. Not even a priest. And yet—my spirit within me needs relief.”

She drew me near her and kissed my temple. “Dear Meg. Only our Lord can forgive your sins, so ’tis to Him you should bring your transgressions. As Master Tyndale pointed out, Holy Writ teaches that there is forgiveness for all that repent and believe therein. See now. If you do some harm to me, you do not go to Margaret or John and ask them to ask me to forgive you. You come direct to me. There need not be intercession by anyone on your behalf except by Christ, the High Priest. ’Tis one great reason we push for church reform. So go and confess to Him who tells no secrets.”

“Just…. tell Him? And then what? How shall I know ’tis taken hold?”

She laughed. “’Twill take hold. But here’s how you’ll know. ’Twill be harder and harder to sin again likewise, of a willing spirit, and ’twill grow stronger and stronger in you to do right when tempted to wrong.”

After allowing Edithe to help me dress for the evening, I dismissed her but kept my candle burning and took Will’s New Testament out from the hiding place in the false bottom I’d fashioned in one of my drawers. I opened it up to read, looking for relief. I started at the beginning and kept reading through the Gospel of Saint Matthew. I admit to it: it was like hearing Him whisper in my ear, or shout in my chambers. I read till I reached the twenty-sixth chapter, wherein the Lord said, “For this is my blood of the new testament, that shall be shed for many, for the remission of sins.”

His blood and I met again.

I closed my eyes, confessed my wrongdoing, and asked forgiveness for my lie. I felt a gentle peace settle around me and as it did, I could breathe easily. As I went to slip the New Testament back into its hiding place, I noticed something strange. The wreath of daisies had been moved from the place I’d put it, near Romans 8. That was where I’d left it, for certes.

It more than unsettled me to know that someone had been in my chamber, searching through my things. I could do naught but ask Edithe if I had had visitors, though, because to ask if any had seen my Bible would be to train the eye upon myself. I could have moved it to a different hiding place, but I doubted that would have protected me. I could have disposed of the Holy Writ, but that I would not do.

Within the week Henry Percy had been questioned under oath before two archbishops and then again in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk and the king’s lawyer. He swore on the Blessed Sacrament that there had been no precontract with Anne. They did not ask him about a pledge and Anne was never questioned.

Henry set about refitting St. James’s Palace, which he had bought the year before with the intent of preparing it to be the residence for the Prince of Wales he expected shortly to arrive.

Within days of the closing of the Percy hearings Anne came to share joyous news. She took my hands in her own. “I am to be married.”

“Anne!” I said. “When and where?”

“In October. In France.”

Of course. Where else would Anne be married but in France?

Henry immediately set about raising Anne to the highest levels so that she would be a fitting bride for him. As mistress of her wardrobe I had the responsibility to see that her clothing was well kept at all times and that Anne was stunningly prepared and presented for every occasion.

“Look!” She lifted the lid on a box that held an open-sleeved cloak of black satin. Next was a black satin nightgown, one I was certain Henry had intended to see in private sometime. My favorite was a French-cut gown in green damask, a dress suitable for a queen. I suspected that green damask would be slipping its way through the hands of most fashionable seamstresses for months after Anne debuted it.

The king came by her chambers, as he often did, that afternoon. He took her in his arms. They kissed for so long that the rest of us ladies in the room busied ourselves and pretended not to see or hear. I felt a small seed of jealousy shoot roots into my heart. My own body ached with the desire for someone to hold it, my lips for someone to require them. Instead, I busied myself with cloth and gowns.

“I bring good tidings, sweetheart,” Henry said. “I have sent a request to Katherine to retrieve your jewels. I expect them to arrive ere long and then we will have them quickly reset afore your marquess ceremony next month.”

All knew that a “request” from Henry was no request at all.

Anne leaned over and kissed his small mouth. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I want to do well by you.” It may have looked like pure gratefulness, or even greediness, to an onlooker, but to me, who knew her heart, I knew it was a response of love. Anne remained deeply in love with the king. And he, apparently, with her.

“You will, sweetheart.” He caressed her shoulder and, as we ladies were present, limited it to that.

A week later he stormed into his great presence chamber and shouted for his chamberlain. When the poor man arrived, the king threw a stack of papers at him. “Once again, the dowager princess has been ill advised and acted upon it.” His manservant reached down to pick up the scattered papers and quickly scanned them. By now, Henry had stomped his way up the dais and had settled on his throne beneath a scarlet canopy. “Katherine informs me that, since the new year, she is forbidden from giving me anything. Giving me! They are not hers to give. They belonged to my lady mother and shall soon adorn my lawful queen.”

“How would you like me to proceed, sire?” the steward asked.

Henry waved his stout hand as if dismissing an idiot. “Tell her I expect the queen’s jewels to be in my presence within days or I shall have charges pressed upon her for thievery.”

The queen’s jewels, soon to be Anne’s, quickly arrived. Anne and I went through them together, comparing them with her wardrobe in advance of making suggestions to Henry’s jeweler on how to reset some so as to show off her garments, and the woman who wore them, to best advantage.

“You heard that Katherine remarked that she could not allow the jewels to adorn me, the scandal of Christendom?” Anne tried on a ring, too big round for her slender fingers.

“I did,” I said.

“And yet, here they are.” Anne slipped on a bracelet. “I shall ask Henry to have this refit. And also one made with those rubies.” She pointed to an outdated necklace with stunning stones. “It will be good for me to wear them in Boulogne.”

She stood up and, a bit regally, swept her hand toward the treasure. “Would you take care of these, then? I’d best get some rest afore tonight’s fitting for my gown. ’Twill need to be attended to quickly in order to be ready by September.”

“Yes, my lady,” I said. I don’t think she heard the irony in my subservient voice. Mayhap it was a tone she was growing accustomed to and enjoyed.

I carefully gathered up the queen’s jewels and thought about the king’s expensive taste—not for rings and bracelets, but for stubborn women.

There were only days before the ceremony at Windsor to invest Anne as Marquess of Pembroke, and trouble to sort out afore it began.