The Boleyn Wife Read online

  “Thank you!” I whispered fervently. “Oh, Father, thank you!” I flung my arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses.

  While the threat of losing my heart’s desire was but narrowly averted, Anne would not be so fortunate.

  Robert, a distant cousin of mine, was a gentleman of Cardinal Wolsey’s household, and from him I had the whole story.

  Wolsey summoned Harry Percy into his presence chamber and, before his entire household, soundly berated him, lashing poor Percy with his tongue as if it were a whip. How dare he dally with that Boleyn girl? Nearly foaming at the mouth, jowls quivering, eyes flashing, Wolsey declared himself astounded by the sheer gall, the presumptuousness and audacity Percy had displayed by allowing himself to become entangled with a common little nobody, the granddaughter of a merchant no less! Even if the man had risen to the rank of Lord Mayor of London and had prospered to such an extent that he was able to leave £1,000 to the poor upon his death, that dark-eyed minx with her long legs and swinging gypsy-black hair was no match for the Earl of Northumberland’s heir. Furthermore, Percy’s thoughtless behavior had grievously offended the King, and his father would arrive forthwith to deal with him personally.

  Never a very brave man under the best of circumstances, Percy stammered that he had not meant to offend anyone, but he was a grown man and thought himself capable of choosing his own wife.

  “I…I l-l-love Anne!” He fell to his knees at Wolsey’s feet, blubbering and shuddering, like a man made of jelly.

  “Love? Bah!” scoffed Wolsey. “Do you think that the King and I do not know our business? Do you think your father is a mutton-headed dolt like you are? Whom you marry is no concern of yours; it is for us—the King, myself, and your father—to tell you who to marry and when to marry, and it is for you to obey without quarrel or question!”

  Clutching like a drowning man at the Cardinal’s scarlet robes, Percy begged him to intercede, to plead his case before the King, asserting again that he loved Anne wholeheartedly.

  But Wolsey would have none of it. He ordered Percy from his sight, to be locked in his room until his father arrived.

  And oh, what a sight that was! His long red beard swinging, green eyes blazing, he swept down from the North, where it was his duty to safeguard the border from marauding Scots. Without waiting for Percy’s door to be unlocked, the Earl kicked it down, seized his son by the hair, and slapped him until his nose poured blood and two teeth wobbled in their sockets; then he dragged Percy out to the barge by his collar, flung him in, and bore him away, bawling like a baby, to marry Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s only daughter, and a loathsome shrew if ever there was one.

  It was Anne’s turn next, and I was there to witness it, having chosen that moment as just the right time to bring my future mother-in-law a gift of embroidered gloves.

  Anne stood straight and defiant while her father paced before the hearth, raging and roaring at her. And I, seated out of the way on a window seat, my presence quite forgotten, could not help but tremble.

  I was glad that Thomas Boleyn was not my father. I swear ice water instead of blood coursed within his veins, and his heart was harder than marble. Gaunt and unsmiling, his dark hair speckled with gray, he spoke in crisp, curt syllables and was liberal with his blows, which he dealt swiftly and without remorse.

  “Did you not know that we had other plans for you? The Earl of Ormonde…”

  There had been some talk of marrying Anne to her cousin in Ireland to resolve a longstanding family dispute about the rights to an earldom.

  “James Butler,” Anne announced, “is a drunken fool with a voice like bagpipes, he stinks like a stable, and I will not have him!”

  “You will not?” Thomas Boleyn repeated incredulously.

  “I will not.” Anne repeated each word slowly, enunciating clearly as if she were addressing a deaf man. “It is Harry Percy I love and I mean to marry him!”

  Thomas Boleyn raised his right hand and dealt Anne the first of three ringing slaps.

  “That is for your impertinence!” he explained after the first. “That is for risking this family’s standing with the King. We would be nothing without his favor!” he said after the second. His hand rose again and delivered the hardest and most stinging slap of all. “And that is because you failed! You have sullied your good name; your reputation has been compromised. Go now; you are banished to Hever until it is the King’s pleasure to recall you. Go! I cannot stand the sight of you; I never could suffer a fool!”

  With her head held high, showing the red print of her father’s hand blossoming against the pallor of her cheek, Anne left the room.

  I followed her, but she ignored me. The sight of her thus drew many alarmed and inquiring glances, and as she passed many fell to whispering, but Anne was oblivious to all.

  George, in his dust-covered riding clothes, his white shirt open at the throat and sweat-sodden, caught up with her in the garden.

  “Nan, oh, Nan, I came as soon as I heard….”

  Gently, he led her along the graveled path, to a quiet, leafy bower. Not once did he glance at me. I might as well have been a ghost; to him I was already invisible. His gloves fell unnoticed to the ground. I picked them up, pressed them to my nose, and inhaled their scent of spice, sweat, and leather.

  “Nan!” he breathed as his fingers lightly traced the bruise flourishing on her cheek. His other hand tightened around his riding crop. “By Heaven, I should like to give him a taste of what he metes out so freely!”

  “It is all Wolsey’s doing,” Anne said numbly. “Wolsey!” she hissed, with all the venom of a serpent. “Heaven upon earth was within my grasp and he snatched it away, because he—that butcher’s boy!—deemed me unworthy. George, before you and God, I swear that if ever it is within my power I shall work the Cardinal as much displeasure as he has done me!” And with these words she fell weeping into his arms, burrowing her face into his strong shoulder as I so longed to do.

  Neither of them seemed to realize what I knew from the start—Wolsey was only following orders.

  The next morning, Anne, dressed for travel, knelt at Queen Catherine’s feet to formally take leave of her.

  “I trust Your Majesty will know the cause,” she said softly, her bitterness and anger ill-concealed.

  Queen Catherine leaned forward in her chair and gently took Anne’s bruised and tearstained face between her hands.

  “I am sorry, Mistress Anne. He is a sweet boy and I know your love for one another was sincere. Go with God”—she pressed a dainty gold filigree cross set with seed pearls into Anne’s hand—“and know that you are in my prayers.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Anne whispered, her voice shaking with the tears she was struggling not to shed.

  Impulsively, Queen Catherine gathered her close in a motherly embrace.

  “Do not be afraid to weep when you are alone,” she counseled. “Tears cleanse the soul and will give your heart blessed release.”

  3

  And so back to Hever Anne went, to mourn her lost love, dream of revenge, and nurse her wounded pride.

  A year passed, followed by a second, and a third, with Anne stubbornly refusing to return to court. Whenever her father broached the subject, she spoke so wildly that he dared not force her lest she behave in such a manner that the King’s goodwill and the Boleyns’ fortunes would be lost forever. So he let her be. Bleating sheep, taking inventory of the larder, and supervising the cheese and candle making, he reasoned, must soon pale beside the remembered pleasures of the court. But Anne was nothing if not stubborn.

  She changed dramatically during those three years. Gone were the elegant French gowns, packed away with sachets of lavender, and with them her jewels, locked in their velvet-lined casket. And the volatile, vivacious nature that had captivated an entire court seemed also to have been snuffed out. Like a ghost, she drifted about Hever, in somber-hued gowns of gray, black, white, and brown. And her hair too had become a prisoner of
her pain, denied its freedom, confined and pinned beneath a modest coif, white and nunlike.

  She went for long, solitary walks and would sit for hours immersed in a book of scripture. She wore her Book of Hours, beautifully illuminated, bejeweled, and gilded, dangling at the end of a golden chain around her waist. Except for Queen Catherine’s cross, it was the only adornment she allowed herself.

  She was fascinated by the “New Learning” that was sweeping Europe, heralded by Martin Luther’s heated demands for Church reform—to curb the avaricious excesses of the Catholic Church, for the lucrative trade in Indulgences to cease, for people to accept that prayer alone was no guarantee of salvation, and that God and man could commune freely without priestly intervention, and everyone should be allowed to read and hear the word of God preached in their own language instead of Latin only. And though it was dangerous, and by the law deemed heresy, to possess such texts, Anne owned several, prizing greatly a book of scriptures written in French and William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament. It was a passion George also shared, and they made use of merchants importing goods from France and like-minded friends in the diplomatic service to procure these banned volumes, which they discussed fervently, albeit in hushed tones, and kept carefully hidden. Both hoped someday to see the Bible fully translated into English and legally sanctioned. For how else could the word of God reach the people, most of whom understood not one word of Latin, it being the tongue of priests, lawyers, and scholars and not the common man?

  It was a lonely life Anne led at Hever. Her parents and Mary were almost always at court. But George did not forsake her. Whenever he could obtain leave from his duties at court, straight to Hever he would ride. If she wanted to talk they would talk; if she wished to sit in silence he would speak not a word and instead give her the comfort of his presence. He was the only one who could draw her out of her cloistered shell and make her smile. As they debated the tenets of Lutheranism, the new ideas espoused in their forbidden books, or made music together, the shell would crack to reveal a glimmer of the old Anne. Her spirit was not dead, only sleeping.

  Another frequent visitor was Sir Thomas Wyatt. Most unhappily wed to a wife who shamelessly cuckolded him, he would tarry long with Anne at Hever.

  He laid siege to her, bombarding her with sonnets.

  “Persistence is my only virtue,” I heard him once declare as he lay sprawled upon the grass at her feet, “and with my heart entire I hope that it may be rewarded.”

  “Oh?” Anne arched her brows. “Are loyalty, friendship, and kindness masks you don only to woo me?”

  “Nay, dear Anne, but I do not want to claim too many; it would ruin my reputation if I were to appear overly virtuous. It is more exciting to be a sinner than a saint!”

  I sometimes visited her too. I thought it would please George if I affected a sisterly interest in Anne. And—honesty compels me to admit—I was curious and fascinated. Thus, I was in a position to observe her, and though Anne adopted drab and modest garb like a nun, I discovered she was a far cry from being one.

  One dreary autumn afternoon I claimed a headache and excused myself, but instead of retiring to my room I stealthily followed Anne out into the forest.

  The lilting strains of Wyatt’s lute provided a trail for us to follow. Anne stepped into a clearing, while I hung back, hiding behind the trunk of a large tree, congratulating myself on my fortuitous choice of attire, a brown gown, which allowed me to blend in with the scenery.

  Smiling and still strumming his lute, Wyatt came to greet her. He gestured downward and I saw that he had fashioned a bed of leaves, a dry and crackling festive array of brown, orange, yellow, and red. From a basket he offered her wine and dainty cakes. Then he reached for her.

  Gently, he lifted the plain white coif from her head and plucked the pins from her hair until it fell like an ebony cloak about her shoulders, and he drew her close for a lingering kiss. When their lips parted their eyes met in a long and silent stare. Anne was the first to look away. Eyes downcast, she nodded in a manner that seemed more resigned than anything else.

  Slowly, she lay back against the bed of leaves.

  His lips were upon hers, then trailing slowly down to her throat and breasts, while his hand gathered up her full gray skirt and petticoats.

  All the time Anne lay passive, her arms draped loosely about his back. While he moaned and sighed, she stayed still and silent. Only once did she cry out, when he lay full upon her and with his fleshly lance shattered the shield of her hymen.

  Suddenly he drew back, bolting up onto his knees, to let his seed spew onto the leaves.

  Anne just lay there, rigid, staring up at the sky through the lattice of naked branches and dead leaves while he put right his garments.

  With a tender smile, Wyatt extended his hand and drew her up for another kiss. Softly, they spoke, too low for me to hear, and then he left her and rode home to Allington Castle, and his wife.

  Anne sat for a long time, hugging her knees, upon that bed of leaves. Then from out of her bodice she drew a slim gold chain—a locket. She parted the gleaming halves of the golden oval and gazed down with such sorrow that I felt the tightness that portends tears well up within my own throat.

  “I wanted it to be you!” she cried, and I knew that it was upon Harry Percy’s likeness that she was gazing.

  With a wrenching sob, she flung herself facedown into the leaves and wept until the sun set.

  Witnessing her despair, I almost felt ashamed for telling her what had befallen poor Percy since his ill-fated marriage.

  Between Harry Percy and Mary Talbot it was hate as black and thick as treacle at first sight. Their marriage was never even consummated, and after the wedding his wife went home to her doting father. Percy was left alone in his drafty, cavernous castle. There he tried to drown his sorrows, scrutinizing the bottom of each tankard and goblet he drained, hoping to find consolation written there. Stomach pains became the bane of his existence. And though still a young man in the midst of his twenties, he looked twice that; already sorrow was steadily bleaching his ginger hair white. He often gave way to tears of self-pity, berating himself for his cowardice, denouncing himself as “a jelly, a spineless jelly!” And every night, when he slumped facedown across the table in a drunken stupor, he would cry her name—“Anne!”

  In the third year of Anne’s exile, George and I were married in the royal chapel at Greenwich. I wore white damask and deep green velvet with my late mother’s pearls and a special brooch Father had given me pinned to my bodice. A curious, ornate piece of exquisite craftsmanship, it was heavy burnished gold set with a large green agate topped by a head in the antique style depicting some ancient goddess, Persephone perhaps, with long, flowing hair strewn with enameled flowers. A wreath of gilded rosemary with trailing green and white silk ribbons crowned my unbound hair. It was the last time I would ever appear in public with my hair unbound; henceforth, my tresses would be covered with a coif and headdress and reserved as a sight for my husband’s eyes alone in the privacy of our bedchamber. As I knelt at the altar beside him, I remembered George combing Anne’s hair and smiled at the thought of him soon doing the same for me. Perhaps it would even become a nightly ritual, something we did before retiring to bed.

  I was radiant with delight and my face ached from smiling. As I held George’s hand tightly in mine, I swore I would never let go. He was mine now, all mine, bound to me with Church rites and golden rings!

  I was restless throughout the banquet that followed, aching for the moment when I would be left alone with him behind the velvet curtains of our marriage bed. And then that moment came, and I learned a valuable lesson—anticipation only makes the disappointment keener.

  He was kind, very kind, but maddeningly aloof. Indifference stared back at me from behind his luminous, wine-glazed brown eyes. How could he be so close to me and yet so far away? We were like two people facing each other across a great chasm where the bridge had collapsed. But on
ly I wanted to cross over; George was content to stay on his side.

  He kissed me. I clung to him, fiercely, like a drowning woman wild to survive. I giggled, squirmed, and sighed at the delicious new sensations of his fingers gliding over my breasts and down to my cunny. I cried out my love as he entered me, heedless of the pain, and clawed at his back until his blood was caked beneath my nails. For a moment I thought I spied something akin to irritation in his eyes, but otherwise he was unmoved by my passion. His seed spewed into me, then it was over. He rolled off me, bid me good night, and turned his face to the wall. I wrapped my arms around his waist, nestled against his back, and cooed over the scratches my nails had made, kissing them and lapping at them kittenishly with my tongue, but he just lay there, silent and still as a marble tomb effigy.

  How many ways can a husband tell his wife that she means nothing to him without actually saying the words?

  We divided our time between court and Grimston Manor in Norfolk, which the King had given us as a wedding present. And yes, it was grim and made of gray stone as cold and hard as George’s heart was to me.

  After our wedding night, he never passed an entire night with me. On the rare occasions when he came to my bed at all, after he had spent his seed he would shake off my clinging hands and curtly dismiss my pleas. “Leave off, Madame; my duty is done for tonight at least!” he would snap peevishly as he headed for the door, even as I clung to him and begged him to stay and sleep the night with me. He would flee into his own bedchamber, which adjoined mine, pressing his shoulder firmly against the door and bolting it even as I flung myself against it. And I would slump there against the door, in tears and agony, while his seed snaked down my bare legs. And at each sound that filtered through the thick wood to my ears I wept all the more. The splash of water into a basin told me that he was washing himself, washing away all traces of me, the evidence of our coupling. This was invariably followed by wine sloshing into a goblet, twice or thrice at least, but sometimes more. Sometimes then would come the scratching of a pen upon parchment or the poignant pluck of lute strings, but, more often than not, I would hear the rustle of clothing, the clothespress banging open and shut as he dressed himself. Then the outer door would open and I would hear his footsteps heading for the stairs.