To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

TWENTY-THREE

Year of Our Lord 1536

Greenwich Palace

In early April, afore the Easter celebrations, Anne held a quiet dinner in His Majesty’s chambers with some intimate courtiers and noblemen. Subdued laughter and talk wound quietly through the dolorous Lenten evening as we mingled while waiting for the king to arrive; he had been called into a last-minute discussion with his chamberlain. Anne made sure all were comfortable with sugared plums and sweetmeats and wine before seating herself next to Cromwell. ’Twas clear to me that their once-warm friendship had suffered a draft of some sort and I sorrowed it because she needed his protection. I chatted with my brother Thomas, with one ear to Anne in case she needed assistance.

And she did. Though in this matter, I could not help.

“So, Master Cromwell, I understand that the dismantling of the monasteries is well under way. I’d heard that more than half have already been turned over to the crown,” she said, ensuring that he knew she was kept informed. Her voice was light and she kept a smile on her face, but all who knew Anne could tell the difference between her light court banter and her prose with a purpose. I admired the fact that she consistently upheld her causes but wondered if, in light of her not-yet-mended relationship with the king, it might not have been wiser to keep the conversation to lighter matters and win some allies.

“Yes, madam, ’tis true,” Cromwell replied. “And as we share a faith, for certes you are glad that good English money no longer flows to Italy to support His Majesty’s enemies.”

“I am very pleased of that indeed,” Anne said. “Of course the monasteries and other religious houses were intended to help the poor and educate the people. Am I to understand that will continue to be their purpose under the Church in England? I have of late appointed my chaplain, Matthew Parker, to oversee education at Stoke-by-Claire. I endeavor to see the monies from these houses, as they become available, do good to the people of His Grace’s realm.”

Cromwell shifted in his seat but he did not retreat from his position. I suspect he knew he had the king’s approval for the direction he was taking. “We all seek the best possible outcome for the king, madam. At present, I believe that will be found by shoring up His Majesty’s coffers and winning and retaining the goodwill and support of the noblemen—especially those in the north.”

“I agree those matters are of great import, but I sharply disagree with using religious houses to achieve them,” Anne said, “and I shall actively work to see that the Lord’s money is put to benevolent purposes.”

Cromwell dipped his head. It seemed as though Anne took that for a capitulation, but actually, it was an acknowledgment of the king, who had entered his chamber. From the look on his face he was in a foul mood.

“Lord Cromwell.” Henry clapped Cromwell on the back. “How goes my business?”

“It goes well, sire,” Cromwell said after we’d all righted ourselves from prostrate positions. The king took his seat next to Anne and greeted her properly. “I was sharing with your most beloved wife that we are using the monies gained from liquidating properties to enrich Your Majesty, where all good English money should have ended up all along. I shan’t let anyone stand in your way.”

“Yes, of course,” Henry said. “Good work, man.” He turned and signaled to one of his menservants. “And now, we are hungry.” The first of seventeen fish courses was brought out. I noticed that but for a small slice of carp and a tiny forkful of eel Anne ate nearly nothing. She’d looked particularly wan since the loss of the last baby. Henry did not, as were his usual custom, offer her the best bits from his plate first.

Master Cromwell never looked in her direction again that night. Anne had alienated a powerful man. Like Katherine before her, did she not realize that in a battle of wills with His Majesty the challenger would always lose? I suspected that she would not give up, though, as she, too, had a call and remained faithful to it. She pleaded with the king on behalf of the wealth of the abbeys for days afterward to little avail, except to irritate him further.

If she didn’t understand where things stood between them at the beginning of the month, for certes, she did at the end.

Late in Easter week my brother Thomas slipped into my room after quickly knocking. I was already in my dressing gown for the night and Edithe had left.

“Thomas!” It was unusual for him to appear at my chamber at nighttime.

“I have overheard something that you must pass on to Anne,” he said. He drank down an entire cup of ale and then told me. “Nicolas Carewe is planning to bring Anne down. He’s got Cromwell on his side now—told Cromwell that his plans for the abbey and monastery money would never be approved by Anne and that all knew when Anne was in favor things went the way she directed the king. That Cromwell couldn’t take a chance on Anne becoming pregnant again and winning His Majesty to her side.”

“And Cromwell believed him?” I pulled my robe around me.

“He did,” Thomas said. “He has risen a long way from the smithy and seems, in his own eyes, anyway, invincible. He likes that noblemen such as Carewe play to his ego. Carewe has promised that if Lady Jane Seymour is made queen she will be pliable to the will of Carewe, who will remain pliable to Cromwell’s. Carewe also reminded Cromwell of the fate that Anne had wrought on Wolsey, who had, as you know, been in Cromwell’s position for many years.”

“Henry wrought that on Wolsey, not Anne.” I sat down in my chair. “Exactly how do they expect to get Anne out of the way so Mistress Seymour can poach her stag?”

Thomas looked at me. “I know not for sure, because as they approached this juncture in the conversation they noticed I was about them, and all know, of course, my feelings for Anne. I do know that Carewe whispered ‘adultery’ to Cromwell.”

“And adultery against the king, under the new acts, is treason.”

“A capital offense,” Thomas agreed.

Capitalis. My Latin rushed back to me. Of the head.

“I must keep a low profile myself now, and, sickeningly, ingratiate myself with Cromwell so I myself am not suspect. But warn Anne to have a care where other men are concerned.”

He slipped out as quietly as he arrived. I could not go to Anne that night without drawing undue attention, but I did ensure an early arrival at her apartments the next day. The news didn’t seem to surprise her but did further aggravate her uneven nerves.

A week or more hence a young musician, Mark Smeaton, was mooning about Anne’s chambers, flirting with one woman or the next in between the songs that he played on his lute. He was a young lad, not yet twenty, and unschooled in the ways of the court though quick to pick up on courtly flirtation. When he tried it on Anne, however, she batted him down and he moped around playing melancholy songs. Finally, she could take it no more.

“Why are you so sad, Master Smeaton?” she asked.

He sighed, looked longingly in her direction, and replied, “Ah. ’Tis no matter.” He mooned after her in a distressingly familiar way and she needed to put it to rights.

“You may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman,” she said, “because you be an inferior person.”

Truly, a man with any manners at all would not have placed her in such a position.

“No, no, madam,” he replied. “A look sufficed me; and thus fare you well.” He took his lute, and his charms, to Mistress Shelton, who received him as coldly as Anne did or worse.

Where Sir Henry Norris was concerned, though, Madge Shelton was not so ready to forgive nor forget an offense. It seems she had not forgotten being snubbed at Wolf Hall, and rather than blame her own loose shift for a lack of suitors she had decided to blame Anne.

“Tell us, Sir Norris, why have you not yet taken a wife?” Madge asked in her pretty voice one evening over cards.

“I would tarry for a time,” Norris said.

Madge laughed loudly, as did some of her friends. “Sir, a time? By your age many a man would now have sons and daughters ready to be placed at court.”

I held back a tart retort that many women her age would, too, because of course it could be directed back at me.

“Mayhap you prefer a woman who is already taken?” Madge badgered, looking at Anne. “A queen, mayhap?” Norris and Anne had enjoyed one another’s company, but only as friends; she played cards or engaged in light banter with him, as she, and all of us, did with many courtiers.

There was an audible gasp in the room. I recalled to mind that Madge’s mother was the governess to Mary, Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, whom many hoped to restore to the succession. Was she pushing Anne?

“Then you look for dead men’s shoes!” Anne snapped. “For if aught were to come to the king but good you would look to have me? Foolishness!”

The room grew silent. Naught had been charged afore Anne spoke, but under the new laws, by thus speaking of the king as dead, trying to forestall an accusation, Anne had rather stepped into a previously nonexistent trap. Norris knew it.

“If he should have any such thought,” he said, “I wish my head were off.”

“Begone!” Anne said, clearly shaken by the direction of the conversation. Norris fled from the room and one by one the ladies and gentlemen dispersed as well, leaving only Nan Zouche; my sister, Alice; and me to serve Anne.

Madge Shelton was one of the first to leave, of course, arm in arm with Jane Rochford. It was not difficult to guess where they were going. Sir Nicolas Carewe.

On April 30, Master Smeaton was arrested. No one spoke of it, but rumor filtered back that he was being racked in order to force a confession of adultery with the queen. As the king prepared for a week of celebrations, including a May Day joust, he introduced Anne to some visiting ambassadors as “my entirely beloved wife.”

His eyes, though, were dead. For the first time I felt that mayhap all was truly lost.

That night, Anne and I were in her rooms. “What shall I do?” she asked me. Her long, tapered fingers were clenched into fists. She was too thin, and there were ash smudges under her eyes.

“Can you go to him quietly, speak of your love?” I asked.

“He will not see me privately. In public, he acts as though all is well but he knows, and I know, that there is a wall between us. A wall he has placed.”

“Does he see Elizabeth?” I asked. We had previously judged the king’s affections for Katherine by his willingness to see and act kindly toward Princess Mary.

Anne’s face came to life. “Yes! Go fetch Elizabeth.” She was already in her quarters, having been brought from Hatfield for the celebration. I went to the princess’s chambers and brought her back to her mother, singing little songs to her along the way. Anne clung to the toddler when she arrived and Elizabeth entwined her little fingers in her mother’s hair. Anne kissed Elizabeth’s pretty pink cheeks a dozen times or more and cooed to her in French, and her daughter responded with uninhibited joy and love. Shortly thereafter, Anne sent for Elizabeth’s finest outfit, her carefully fitted hat, silk hose, and shoes.

“Where we go, maman?” Elizabeth asked prettily.

“To see Papa,” Anne replied. I tried to lighten the mood by teasing Anne that she was making Elizabeth a slave to fashion as she was herself, but she was now in no mood for joking. Already, I suspect, she knew what the stakes were and that she must use every tool at her disposal to save her life.

She scooped Elizabeth up and brought her outside of Greenwich proper, expecting the king to ride in from a hunt. When he did, he drew his horse near to them but did not dismount. I watched from the window as Anne pleaded with him, held their daughter to him, curtseyed to him, and cried. It seemed for naught. He slapped his horse’s flank with his gloves and headed back to the stable. Sir Nicolas Carewe, Anne’s traitorous cousin, had just been given the Order of the Garter promised to the now-overlooked George Boleyn. There were no surer sign for the courtiers who watched, unseen, from every window, that the king’s affections for Anne and her daughter had passed.

In my chambers, I cried for both of them, forsaken and forlorn on the castle green.

The next day, May Day, found the king in an unusually jovial mood. He had all of his favorites around him, both men and women. Anne’s brother was there, of course, as was Sir Henry Norris, who had well served the king for nigh on two decades. Afore that they had been brought up together. When Sir Norris’s charger stumbled, Henry graciously offered him the use of his own. Nicolas Carewe was there, and he’d brought along Jane Seymour.

Anne was regal in the queen’s box but she was thinner than ever and her dresses, though I’d had a care to have them taken in, still hung a bit about her. Her eyes, lovely jewels of black like the deep obsidian brought back from the Holy Land, still shone.

Lord, have a care for my friend through this treacherous passage.

After the match, Henry uncharacteristically asked six men to join him on a ride back to Whitehall. He had no intention of returning to Greenwich Palace, where we would. Henry Norris and George Boleyn were two of the six. The king slipped away without a word to Anne.

By midnight word had raced back to Greenwich. Lord Zouche had told his wife, Nan, what had transpired, and she ran to the queen’s chambers to wake and to tell us. Jane Rochford and Madge Shelton had been notably absent from the ladies since the afternoon.

“You have been accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton, Your Grace,” Nan told Anne. Anne sat on her bed.

“Smeaton? That whelp of a lute player? Surely Henry cannot believe—”

Nan held up her hand and then took Anne in her arms. “Not only Smeaton, lady, but Henry Norris. It seems that your cousin Madge Shelton had run to Carewe with the details of your disagreement of a few weeks back, claiming that it had been a lover’s spat centered about a hope for the king’s death.”

“And Henry believed her,” Anne said, her voice dull. “Where is Norris?”

“To be conducted to the Tower upon the morning tide, madam.” Lady Zouche indicated that I should sit on the other side of Anne. “The worst, my lady, is that they have accused you of adultery and incest with your brother.”

“George?” Anne stood up. “They have accused me of carnal knowledge of my brother, George? What evil fool brings this charge that it may even be considered?”

“His wife, Jane Rochford,” Nan whispered. Anne stood, turned her back to us, and then vomited on the floor.