To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

NINETEEN

Years of Our Lord 1533 and 1534

Hampton Court Palace

Greenwich Palace

Whitehall Palace

We spent the summer at Hampton Court, cool and refreshed in Wolsey’s well-designed gardens of knots and herbs whilst mother ducks escorted their ducklings to the muddy Thames and the great wide-open. Anne was nigh on ready to deliver the babe and though she never indicated to anyone, not even to me, that she was concerned lest the baby not be a prince, I knew it was heavy upon her because I knew her mind.

One evening after dinner Anne retired to her rooms to rest and when she returned to the king’s chambers, where we’d all gathered of an evening to play cards, she found the king laughing and flirting with a pretty lady-in-waiting, the one he had partnered at dance immediately after me at Anne’s coronation banquet. I believe she was the niece of Lady Daughtry, who had fairly pushed her into the king’s view. The young woman didn’t seem to mind and didn’t seem to be as innocent as her laughter.

“What goes on here?” Anne said loudly enough for all present to hear. “I take my leave for a moment, to rest with your child, and when I return I find this strumpet”—she pointed at the young woman in question—“having taken my rightful place?”

Oh, Anne. No. No, dearest. Having grown up with a reasonable father she’d not had to learn to temper her tongue. I’d heard her argue with His Majesty in times past, but ever with an ear to her tone, to win him as a partner or spar with him as a friend. And in private. Henry was not a man to lightly brook being rebuked in public by his wife.

“Madam, you will contain yourself. And if I choose to dally of an hour with a young maiden, you shall shut your eyes and endure as your betters have done.” His face was mottled like an ale drinker’s nose and as red. “You ought to know that it is in my power to humble you again in a moment more than I have exalted you.”

Anne stood, mouth open and seemingly stunned. Then she wisely closed her mouth and said nothing further. She was not a woman to run from the room in a tantrum. Instead, by her manner, she dismissed the young woman, curtseyed to the king, and took her leave to sulk. In spite of my pleading, she refused to talk to him for a day, for two days. After the third, I’d convinced her to approach him soothingly, and she, finally seeing the wisdom in this, approached him to repent. He took her in his open arms. I hoped that she had learnt that lesson once and well. But I knew her better.

We moved to Greenwich, where the king and his beloved lady mother, Queen Elizabeth, had both been born, at the end of August. Henry set about making preparations for celebrations for the arrival of the prince, including jousts to observe the arrival of a new member to royal manhood. He had banners printed proclaiming the arrival of the prince. Edward was in favor for the prince’s name, and the date, of course, was unknown till the night of September 6, when Anne felt the first pains. We were cloistered with women, of course, as Anne had withdrawn for her lying and thus from male company till well after the birth. She was holding a reading, arguing spiritedly with dear Lady Zouche and me, and then of a sudden she grew quiet.

“’Tis time,” she said. “’Tis time.”

We hastily cleared the tables and helped her to her chamber, which was well prepared and waiting. After undoing her stays I helped her into the gown we’d chosen for the birthing and brought round thick stacks of linens needed for the birth. The midwife was there with her knives. By midnight we’d stoked the fire higher to bring the room to a fever, which would forestall one in the queen. Anne moaned lightly in pain as the contractions came and went.

Lady Boleyn took her daughter by the arm to attempt to comfort her and ease the pain. At dawn Anne’s waters streamed forth and I helped her walk about the room whilst the linens were changed, then helped her back to bed. By midday Anne was panting, sweating, calling out in long, drawn-out moans that clearly indicated her anguish but remained, nevertheless, in her control.

“Lord, Lord,” she cried out. “Assist me. And the prince!”

At three o’clock in the afternoon the midwife urged her, “Push, madam. Push again. There ya go, ’e’s coming now, ’e is. Push!” I prayed and willed the baby into the rank, stuffy room diffused with blood and tears and sweat.

As the baby’s head crowned I felt profoundly happy for Anne, and deeply sad for myself. A visceral ache heated my own legs and womanhood; I yearned with the desire to birth a child myself, something even the lowest-born woman could do but that seemed to have been denied me. I was drawn back to the moment, though, by a sharp cry. The baby’s cry. I looked as the midwife scooped the baby into linens and then handed him to me whilst she helped Anne expel the afterbirth and Lady Boleyn dabbed Anne’s brow. I wiped the blood from the baby’s face and limbs. I peeled the linen back long enough to look.

’Twas a girl.

Lord Jesus, no. Lord Jesus, please do not do this to Anne. She has been your champion.

Both Lady Boleyn and Anne glanced at me and I shook my head, just a little, to indicate that it was not the hoped-for prince after all. Anne fell back into her bedding; her black eyes sank deeper yet into their sockets. I handed the baby over to Lady Boleyn to be cleaned and went to comfort my friend. The look on Anne’s mother’s face was one of dread.

His Majesty came in later, presumably to fawn over his daughter and encourage his wife. He did neither. Although both king and queen put a good show on for observers, all knew that it had not been for another daughter that Henry had challenged the world. Although he commented politely on the babe’s coloring—his coloring—the celebratory jousts were canceled.

Three days hence the baby was christened Elizabeth after both Anne’s and Henry’s mothers. Every noble in the realm save Anne, who was recovering, was present. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk bore the baby into the hall, in the center of which stood the great silver baptismal font which had been specially brought from Canterbury and filled with warm water. The church blazed with light: five hundred torches carried by the king’s guards were lit as it was proclaimed, “God, of His infinite goodness, send prosperous life and long to the high and mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth.”

I was vexed. This was not the son Anne needed. What would God offer through this tiny pink princess with Anne’s slender fingers and Henry’s red hair?

And yet, I loved her deeply from first sight.

Most of the courtiers kept their heads down and their comments pleasing. But I saw the glance that coursed from Sir Carewe to Suffolk and back again. It was one of delight, and mayhap victory.

In December the princess Elizabeth was moved to her own household at nearby Hatfield, to protect her health and demonstrate her status. I encouraged Anne, who missed the princess’s daily visits, to cheer herself for the Christmas court.

“Why?” she asked, her voice laced with melancholy.

Recalling our vow to honesty, I replied, “The king already has a daughter, lady. Your well-being depends upon your ability to bring forth life again, and quickly, dearest. A son.”

In February we went to visit Princess Elizabeth, who was sharing a household with Henry’s older daughter, Mary. Our royal entourage, large and befitting of the newborn princess, arrived at the redbrick residence, which was tall and stout in the middle and yet had wings flung on either side like open arms. Henry had permanently separated Mary from her mother, Katherine of Aragon. After having a daughter of her own Anne said to me, “’Tis a sorrowful thing for a mother to be separated from her daughter. I shall try to make a peace between us so Mary has a place at court, which may, at least, soften things a little.”

Lady Bryan, who was Anne’s cousin, had been Mary’s governess and was in charge of the princess Elizabeth’s household now. As she cared for both girls she could, mayhap, see a way to bring peace.

“If Mary will only acknowledge me as queen and Elizabeth as princess,” Anne told Lady Bryan, “I shall see to it that all goes well for her. That she is well married, well provided for; I shall bridge a peace between Mary and His Majesty. ’Tis so little to ask.” We had only rare contact with Mary and did not know what to expect. The look on Lady Bryan’s face told us what we could expect, though: we would not be warmly received. She came back shortly thereafter. Her face looked as though she now regarded this royal appointment with regret.

“Mary refuses to leave her chambers but has sent a message.” She looked directly at Anne. “She shall not call Elizabeth ‘princess,’ as she claims there is only one princess, herself. But out of courtesy, she calls the Duke of Richmond, her father’s bastard son, ‘brother,’ and as her father acknowledges Elizabeth as his own she is prepared to address her as ‘sister.’”

Anne said nothing but sat down in the nicest of the nearby chairs. “And me?” Anne asked in a tight but quiet voice.

“She will not see you. She knows no queen in England save her mother. She refers to you as ‘my lady Pembroke,’” Lady Bryan said.

The next day after a bracing, refreshing ride out in the forest park around Hatfield, Anne tried again. “I understand that Mary may reserve some ill will for me, but mayhap we shall find peace if we each yield some to one another.”

Lady Bryan returned. “She will not see you, madam.”

“Then I shall not seek her goodwill again, nor offer mine!” Anne shouted, her voice shrilly bouncing off the stone walls, as of yet unhung with royal tapestry. “Rather I shall work to bring down the pride of this unbridled Spanish blood!”

We remained for another day or two, Anne holding and rocking Elizabeth and leaving instructions for her wardrobe, her household, and her diet. I mainly swaddled the baby close to me and breathed deeply of her tiny, perfect head and little mouth, puckered like a purse. My sorrow over my childlessness was provoked anew at least twice a day; a tide of grief flowed forward, then resignation pulled it back.

Sir Nicolas Carewe did not participate in the dining celebrations Anne had planned for Elizabeth. Notably, he took his meal in Mary’s chambers.

As we rode home to Greenwich in the fine chariot King Francis had sent in advance to celebrate the birth of Henry’s prince, I asked her, “My lady, I understand that Mary is right vexing and I commend you for not demanding her presence. But you were of a temper that is mayhap not becoming of a queen. Is it because you are ill?” I’d noticed that she’d eaten little and lightly and was often at the close stool.

She sighed. “I know. I am ill but ’tis for a good cause. I am with child.”

I reached to pull her near. “’Tis marvelous news! Mary will come round,” I said, hoping to keep her calm till the child was born, which would be a sizable task indeed.

“No,” Anne said. “No, she won’t. She’s her mother’s daughter.”

In spite of her ill health and weariness in carrying the child and her distress over the spat with Mary, Anne entertained her ladies that night. The courses were delivered to her apartments and we spent the evening passing time with court chatter and games of dice. Anne took an especial interest in the new Duchess of Suffolk, the naive fourteen-year-old bride of the Duke of Suffolk, who had, indeed, right quickly married his son’s betrothed afore his old wife, the king’s sister Mary Rose, was in her grave a week.

Mary Rose, once the celebrated Queen of France, once married to her dashing lover, Suffolk, was now gone. Her bed was warmed by the girl her husband had lusted after afore his wife was even dead. How much this world offered, how little it surrendered. I prayed fervently and often for my lady to be delivered of a son.

Late May was a delightful time for a picnic and Anne sought to bring some merriment to the court and to Henry. Henry, always at his happiest with his friends about him and good times pressing in on him, was delighted with the picnic Anne had planned in the park near St. James Palace, home of the future Prince of Wales.

“Come, Majesty, let us walk,” she said as she tucked her arm into Henry’s, and they strolled the grounds, which had been carefully groomed to look natural and untouched. I busied myself with her other ladies and then took part in a tournament of rook with several of Anne’s ladies and some of the gentlemen of the privy chamber.

“Do you have a partner, lady?” one of them charmingly asked me, the double entendre causing a spray of laughter among the listeners. It had been a bit tense at court, awaiting the birth of the babe, and I welcomed the change and courtly flirtation.

“Not presently, Sir Thomas,” I responded. “I find myself quite unpartnered at the moment. And you?”

“Alas, I remain happily unmatched,” he said, blinking his deep blue eyes in my direction. Thomas Seymour was a few years younger and just approaching the power and charm of a man come into his own. “Though as I should not care to see a woman as beautiful as you without a rook partner, mayhap I could advise your moves.”

I laughed aloud. “I have done quite well at rook without your advice, sir, but your company would be most welcome.”

He pulled up a chair beside me and kept pleasant company whilst I beat Lord Lisle handily. I turned around—Madge Shelton, the queen’s cousin, was to be the next partner in the game, but she was not to be seen. Earlier I had watched as she cornered Sir Henry Norris, a handsome, titled man in want of a wife. He had respectfully disengaged himself from her. Mayhap she was looking for him again?

“Looking for Mistress Shelton?” Jane Rochford’s voice was in my ear ere I even saw her approach.

“Indeed I am,” I said. “We were to be partnered at rook next. Have you seen her?”

Jane nodded in the direction of the king, who sat beneath the spreading canopy of a contorted oak tree. On his lap—his lap!—sat Madge Shelton.

“Where is the queen?” I hissed to Jane.

“She went for a walk with her father, but look, she approaches now.” Jane pointed toward the wooded area on the outskirts of the park, where the queen had suddenly appeared.

I watched her as she watched them. I held my breath, expecting an angry outburst or a slap to Madge. Neither happened. Anne smiled serenely and nodded to Madge. “Cousin?”

Madge bowed her head. “My queen.”

“Yes, she is your cousin, sweetheart, I’d near forgotten,” Henry said in what seemed to be an effort to make light conversation. “She does resemble your sister, Mary.”

Anne smiled. “The resemblance is in all ways remarkable.” And then she joined Henry Norris and the others at the rook tables.

She had learnt. I watched the king, and whilst he made as though he were happy to toy with Mistress Shelton, his eyes were upon Norris and Anne, laughing with the others at play.

Later that night as I helped her undress she told me, “He’s bedded her.”

She said naught else, and her tone warned me not to ask.

By late June Madge was an irritant to all in Anne’s chambers. She wore the king’s favor like a gaudy set of paste pearls and lorded her position over all.

“The king tells me that he is, of a time, not inclined to play cards, having lost to the queen too many times,” she said one day.

“The king is exceptionally tired these days, having worked all day and night on matters of state,” she said another morning as she idled on a chair whilst Jane Rochford and I repleated Anne’s dresses. “You forgot a crease, Lady Rochford,” Madge pointed out.

“And you forget your manners, mistress,” Jane snapped. “Be glad the queen suffers your presence. You are a nothing and a nobody without a brain in her head nor a thought worth sharing. So please don’t spread them like the plague upon the sensibilities that they are. Mayhap you think being the king’s doxy raises you to a position of knowledge and authority.”

“It did for….” Madge let her voice trail off and she caught the sharp look that passed between myself and Lady Rochford. She said nothing more but took her leave. By that afternoon Anne walked into my chambers as I prepared myself for that evening’s dinner.

“What transpired between Mistress Shelton and Lady Rochford today?” she asked.

I told her everything that had transpired, including the fact that Jane Rochford had, uncharacteristically, subtly come to Anne’s defense when Madge had been about to slander her. “Why?”

“The king has summoned me to discuss it. Seems Mistress Shelton went to him in great distress and said that Lady Rochford, and I, had harassed her.”

“You were not even present!”

Anne nodded. “I shall, delicately, put an end to this, I hope.”

That night after dinner there was a pounding on my door. When Edithe opened it there stood Jane Rochford, blustering in fury. “I am exiled from court for a month. Because of you! And Anne!”

“What are you speaking of?” I asked, indicating a chair where she might be seated. She waved me away with a wild hand.

“Mistress Shelton complained that I had been badgering and teasing her for weeks and then finally told her today that she was worthless and was poxy.”

“You said no such thing,” I exclaimed. “You called her a doxy.”

“Her vocabulary, like her morals, is sadly lacking. But that’s not all. Seems that the queen allowed him to believe that while I defended her. You heard me!”

I nodded. “And I told her so.”

Jane snorted. “For naught. I understand what is happening here. Anne wants me banished—so she can have George for herself!”

“Hush, Lady Rochford, ’tis in no way true, you work yourself up,” I said. I tried to put my hand on her arm but she swirled it away from me.

“You remain loyal, but ’tis for naught. She’ll turn on you one day. And, like me, you shan’t forgive her either.”

She turned and slammed the door behind her. Edithe came back into the room, clearly shaken. “Good riddance, my lady,” she said to me. “Shall I help you with your gown?”

I nodded and then, after I was prepared for bed, went to my chamber and closed the door. I opened up my copy of Holy Writ and read for comfort and companionship, and afterward spoke with the Lord Jesus about the situation. I sought peace, but instead, He forewarned me. I knew somehow that this situation with Jane had lit a small pile of kindling that, I knew not how, would blaze into a conflagration that would burn down the house.

Also, against my will, Jane had sown a seed of doubt in my heart about Anne’s loyalty toward me.

I recalled to mind one of King Solomon’s proverbs that Master Fulham had insisted that Anne, Rose Ogilvy, and I memorize as girls. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

’Twas Jane Rochford, clearer than any Holbein portrait could want to be.

In early July, I went to Anne’s chambers one morn to help her dress for an audience with the Venetian ambassador, but she was still in bed, her beautiful hair matted like a tangle of dark thread on the underside of a tapestry, her skin sickly and taut.

Jane Rochford, just returned from exile, was already there. “She has pains,” she announced in a voice tinted with triumph. “Mayhap I should send for her mother.”

I nodded. “Indeed.”

“And our sister, Mary Stafford?” she insisted.

“Be gone!” I hissed loudly enough for her to hear but not, I hoped, for Anne. Jane laughed quietly and went to find Lady Boleyn. After her banishment she no longer even pretended to false affection for Anne.

Mary Boleyn Carey had married a lowborn soldier from Calais named William Stafford a few months before and, because she hadn’t asked either Anne’s or the king’s permission, she had been exiled from court for months. I knew the real reason that Anne could not tolerate Mary’s presence, though, and it had nothing at all to do with her lowborn husband nor her maddening manner. Rather, it had everything to do with the fact that unlike Anne, Mary had both a daughter and a son by the king. Baseborn, but healthy and alive. Anne, superior in nearly every way to Mary, was inferior in this one critical matter.

“She’s not going to call Mary to court,” Anne said. “I shan’t allow it.”

“She has no intention of recalling Mary,” I said. “Now, just lie back and we shall pray together that these pains will subside and all will be well.”

Anne clutched my hand and eased back. She rolled on her side like a tiny rowboat listing on the Thames and I prayed aloud.

“Lord, if it be your pleasure, please spare this child, for his sake and for my lady’s sake and for His Grace’s sake. Please stop the pains and soothe her womb and have a care to assist the child within.” All knew the pains were too early; a child born now could not survive.

Lady Boleyn arrived and we sat on either side of Anne, and, for a time, she seemed comforted. I sent word by Anne’s secretary to tell the Venetian ambassador that the queen was unwell. By noon, the chamber had grown as quiet as the Kentish fields in the dead of a summer day. Anne rolled from her side and looked at me.

“’Tis no use. I bleed.” We called the midwife and Anne travailed to deliver the babe, present in body and yet in spirit already with our Lord. It was just possible to see that the child had been a boy. I folded him in a small linen and prayed over the body as the midwife took care of the queen.

“Was it a boy?” Anne asked.

I nodded. She remained quiet for many minutes and then, as we eased her into a clean dressing gown, she said, “Mayhap the God I thought I knew I know not at all.”

I had the bloodstained sheets burnt.

His Majesty did not visit. He sent word that he was overoccupied with Master Cromwell but would keep her in his prayers and hoped for a swift return to health. It sounded like the fond but disinterested sentiments one would send to a worthy courtier, not to a wife.

She sent him a sweet letter apologizing that her ill health inconvenienced him and finished it by saying, “I look forward to the day when we, together, celebrate the birth of our son. I shall hasten to recover in order to hasten that day.”

Her atypical gentle manner had won a reprieve. A day later the king visited my lady’s chamber, bringing dates, a bracelet of diamonds, and sweet kisses and gentle words which I had not heard from him in some time. They gladdened her heart and gave her hope. “I believe he repents of his lack of attention,” she said to me as she called for Lady Zouche to bring her washbasin. “Meg, please find a suitable gown for tomorrow night’s dinner. The king is eager for my attendance.”

While Anne had not been able to deliver to His Grace what he wanted, Master Cromwell had.

That autumn, in the king’s mighty presence chamber, Master Cromwell announced in front of all gathered courtiers, politicians, gentry, and visiting notables that Parliament had passed the Act of Succession, which made Mary a bastard and the male issue of Anne and Henry, followed by Princess Elizabeth, the only legal successors to the crown.

Though she’d not authored the act, it seemed that Anne had indeed triumphed over Mary’s unbridled Spanish blood.

Cromwell then read out the Act of Supremacy, also passed by Parliament. “Parliament herein reaffirms the king of England as the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England. The English crown shall enjoy all honors, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity. This is a recognized and inalienable right.”

The room grew warm with the sweat and fast breathing of hundreds of anxious listeners. The traditionalists, lead by Nicolas Carewe, appeared unseated. Sir Thomas More quietly left the room: Henry saw him leave, yet still appeared pleased, under the canopy of state crowning his great throne. Anne looked pleased for him, and indeed, for the reformist cause. Parliament had firmly declared that the pope had no jurisdiction in England, in fact, never had.

Finally, Cromwell read the last parliamentary act, the Treasons Act. All knew that treason was the worst charge to be laid against man or maid, with the exception of excommunication, which was, thankfully, no longer a valid threat. Cromwell, splendidly attired in his mighty robes of black, power draped about him like legal ermine, called out in a voice loud enough for all to hear.

“This very act prohibits all who maliciously wish, will, or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practice, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king’s most royal person…. or to deprive him of any of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown….”

Cromwell read on for another five minutes, but none save the king and Anne were listening any longer. What this meant was that all were legally prohibited from speaking against anything the king had done or might do. Parliament, or rather Cromwell, had just given Henry unbridled power, and nothing and no one could stop him.

Later, at a reform meeting in Lady Carlyle’s sumptuous apartments, there was a glow of happiness that the Church in England was now autonomous. I knew by furtive look and discomfortable manners that several realized that giving absolute power to anyone save God was dangerous, foolish, and shortsighted. None of us dared say anything, of course; there were spies all round and today’s speech made it plain what dissenters earned for their honesty.

’Twas troubling, though. Had the brilliant Cromwell not seen the Achilles heel he’d firmly embedded in his own document, believing it to advance England and reform but placing them both in bloody hands? Or had he drunk deeply of power’s nectar and could not now see soberly the effects this document might have?

I suspected it was the latter, and Cromwell had unwittingly placed a very large bundle of sticks on the smoldering embers of destruction.