by G Lawrence
I think of the past as this night draws on, I cannot sleep; these are precious few hours I have left. My friends, those men who courted me as the Queen of their realm and hearts lie cold in the ground. My brother is dead. My daughter is kept from me. My Boleyn family is lost to me. I know not whether those left yet living are safe or not. My husband wishes my death and the platform for my execution is ready. The dust from its construction scatters gently in the night’s wind. The fire burns in the grate and the winds whisper around the Tower. The skies are ominous, but there will be some sun to light the skies tomorrow.
The maids are all asleep around me on their pallets on the floor. They are not my women, but are sent as agents by my enemies to watch me. I will not wake them, for it will make their masters angry that they did not watch me all night, and there is enough humour left in my breast to find that thought amusing. My wakeful mind does not rouse them from their slumber.
I will not die as my enemies wish me to; my life has been carefully planned and played out in all I have ever done and now, at the end, I will not let all that is Anne Boleyn slip away from me. I will not walk out with my head hanging or scream and struggle in fear at the face of Death. I will die well and gracefully, just as I have lived. And this night, I will make my peace with God and the ghosts of my past.
I will not let my mind linger in this prison. There are other paths I wish to wander, this night.
Chapter One
1505
Hever Castle, Kent
The first memory I have is of my mother. It is the memory of a child, but I know not how old I was when it happened. There are feelings that lock hands with it in my heart; strong and sharp, of love and longing, of comfort and safety, which sing to my soul.
My mother stands in the rose gardens at Hever Castle; she is surrounded by the beautiful, sweet-smelling roses which she loves so much. She is the one who grows them, tends them, watches over them, as diligently and as lovingly as she watches over her children. Her fair hair is swept up in a hood, of the old gable fashion, but wisps of it have come loose and they tease lightly at her beautiful face in the sunlight, fluttering like the soft wings of butterflies. It is high summer; the crackling grasses in the meadows are almost ready to be cut for hay and straw, and the birds sing as they gather foods and show their young how to fly. The air smells of dusky, sweet spices from the kitchens, of the heat and sweat of the land, and of crisp, dry apples, pears, quince and medlar being made into pies, sauces and vinegars. There is singing and laughter far off in the fields where men and women work and toil on the land, our lands; these are the lands of the Boleyns. It is almost harvest time; a time of plenty, always a season for merriment.
My mother’s sparkling eyes are blue and bright; they mirror the skies. Her pale cheeks are flushed with the pleasure of the day; she is young and she is beautiful. I remember looking up at her, suddenly struck still with admiration for her beauty, but then I am roused from my daydream as I hear her laugh at my wondering face. Suddenly, she runs from me, fast and wild, her scarlet gown billowing behind her like the great sail of a ship. She turns at the end of the grassy path, lined on either side with her rose bushes, and she beckons to me, her blue eyes sparkling with a naughty shine. I run to her, laughing, for I know this is but a jest. My legs are little and fat, and I trot after her as fast as I can, but with a swift and graceful curtsey at the edge of the path, she is gone, and I am alone in those gardens. The roses tower over me, red and white and beaming in the sun.
I stand alone in the gardens. I listen breathlessly for a sound of her. I am not afraid. I was ever bold and brave even on my tiny legs; ready to fight and roar like a lion cub. I will find her, I think silently. She will not escape me.
I see a flash of crimson cloth through the green stems of the roses and I run, as fast as I am able, after her. My eyes search through the gardens; I peek through bushes of lush green leaves and red-brown thorns, jumping to try to see through the web of flowers. I can hear her laughing softly, somewhere nearby, hidden by the flowers. Suddenly she is upon me, grasping my small body in her arms, lifting me into the air and laughing merrily as she hears my squeak of surprise. Then my cry of laughter mixes with hers. There are kisses in the warm sunshine for me, her youngest daughter, and perhaps, her favourite child.
It is a good memory… a good place for my story to begin. For at Hever was where all our stories started.
My mother would tell us stories, my sister Mary and me, before bed and when we wandered in the gardens. I learned later that she was a most attentive mother to us. Many noble ladies were not as interested in spending time with their children as our mother was. Many simply visited them from time to time to check on their progress in the schoolroom, but our mother was often with us, teaching us, guiding us. We were fortunate indeed to be her children.
As we passed through the generous herb gardens, our mother would pause in her stories of knights and kings and ask us to identify the sweet smelling tansy, borage and lavender for remedies and unguents; the parsley, sage and rosemary, the rue and juniper. We would tell her what each plant or berry or leaf could be used for, and she would tell us yet more uses, for every woman must know these things for the time she became a wife. Every wife should be a physician to her family as our mother was to us, for even if doctors could be afforded, it did not do to waste money for lack of knowledge ourselves. We must learn all we could, she told us, so that we might be of good use to our families and husbands, to our own children when we had them. And when she was satisfied in our knowledge, she would continue to tell us her tales of kings and queens, of saints and sinners, of knights and quests… of the court. Our mother told us of the world we lived in; its history, and its present, through stories.
She told us of our King, Henry VII, who had united our torn land. She told us of battles that had rent our country asunder before we were born… of how the King had won against the usurper, Richard III, and married the beautiful Princess Elizabeth of York. She told us of how she had once served the Queen Elizabeth, before that great Queen of the House of York had been taken from this world. Our mother mourned the death of her beloved Queen Elizabeth long after the official mourning period had passed, for she had admired and loved the Queen for her strength and her loyalty, for her love for her children and her husband. Elizabeth of York had died in 1503, of childbed fever, trying to offer another male heir to her husband, King Henry VII, upon the death of their heir, Arthur, Prince of Wales. But that last act of loyalty to her line had cost the Queen her life, and her babe had died too; no further heirs of the royal house of Tudor were born, as the King did not replace his beloved wife with another after her death.
But we had yet princes and princesses still living of the line of Queen Elizabeth and King Henry, our mother told us. Fine, strong and handsome Prince Henry, the second son of the house of Tudor and now heir to the throne, and the beautiful princesses, Margaret and Mary, who looked so like their good mother. Our mother’s stories taught us of the greatness of the country in which we lived. She taught us our history in those beautiful gardens of the handsome house of Hever and the flowers themselves danced with the vibrancy of her tales.
My mother’s eyes would shine when she described the Court of England, the games of courtly love; of poets who had written lines for her and the other beauties of the court. She talked of dangers, of men who stalked the corridors; their aims were not always as honourable as they might profess to a maiden, and women did well to be careful for their honour. She spoke to Mary and me of dances and pageants, of games and hunts; she was animated and happy when she spoke of the court. It made me long to go to court before I was aware of what and where it really was. To me, as a child, it was a fantasy world of heroes, of ladies, of princes and of gods.
I think Mary felt the same as I. When our mother spoke of the gallants and of the admiration that they could bestow on a lady through poetry or by wearing her colours at a joust, Mary’s eyes would sparkle. Mary longed for such admiratio
n as I did.
My sister looked like our mother; the same fair hair with a just a touch of the red fire of the sun. Her wide-set gold-brown eyes and full dusky-pink lips were pretty even when she was very young. Not much later, when we two had bled and flowered, her figure would grow full and buxom, and she would fill out her dresses with a more womanly figure than I ever had. Mary matured early and knew the effect she could have on men early, too. Later in life, she could stop a man speaking with but one bold glance from behind her long lashes. But for all her earthy wiles, she was sweetness itself, my beautiful elder sister; there was nothing in her that was mean.
When we were young, Mary was always the popular one with the servants and the guests to our house. She was pretty, and, at least outwardly modest and well-behaved, but there was always a sparkle of mischief about Mary. There was always a game and a laugh to be had when my sister was near. There was a twinkle in her eye that I could catch and I would feel my heart skip to know that Mary was planning something, and that I, her little sister, might be allowed to join in.
Sometimes her game was to steal sweetmeats or marchpane scraps from the kitchens, other times she would have us dancing in the newly built and stylish long gallery at Hever. We danced with imaginary courtiers and princes admiring us. Mary would take pretty things from our mother’s room and would share with me pins and ribbons she had ‘borrowed’. We tied the ribbons through our hair; hers a blonde-red shining waterfall and mine a mane, a mass of midnight black. When the sun shone on it, my hair would show hidden colours of reds and even blues… like the wing of a raven.
Our days were filled with lessons and with learning; this, Mary did not take to so easily as I. Although I was younger than her, it was soon clear to our parents and tutors that it was my mind that was the quicker, at least for the lessons they wanted to have us learn. Mary was easily distracted, and her lack of attention to detail angered our tutors. She was often beaten, but it did no good. She would howl and cry, but once the beating was over and the cuts had healed so that she squirmed no more upon her seat, she would return to her daydreams and our tutors would sigh and reach for the stick again. I was beaten too, but less often than Mary. Our tutors believed that a certain amount of pain was required to instil any learning in a child. But I loved to read, and learning was never a chore to me. It came as easily as breathing. I just seemed to remember all I was told.
Books were not all we learned, for there was dancing and music, riding, hunting and dinner graces. We attended Mass daily, either in the church at Hever or in the private chapel in the castle. We learned French, as it was the language of the court and sophisticated society, but we had some tutoring in Latin and Spanish too. Our father was a formidable master of fluency in many languages, and since we both admired and feared him in equal measure, all of us sought to learn our languages well. We learned to eat with grace, to curtsey with fluid elegance and to converse with temperate, learned tongues. We were told that we must be beacons of loveliness, paragons of beauty and charm; an honour to our house and our name.
There was much to be learnt if we were to be allowed to enter the glittering English Court that our mother spoke of, and enter it we must, to fulfil what we were born to do. We had a great task to undertake; this was made clear to us from the very start of our lives. We must be ornaments to our family in all ways; but yet we must shine out from the hordes of other women brought to the court and be admired as the most beautiful, most virtuous and most courtly. We must be able to attract great and powerful husbands not only through the name of Boleyn, but through our many personal charms and accomplishments. If we succeeded, we would then advance our family’s fortunes through our influence and station. When we were married, we would secure the future of our house by producing sons; brave lords of England, the power of the future, the security of our house and lands. We were to be the best of daughters, the best of wives, and the best of mothers… by becoming the best of ourselves that we could be.
These were the lessons we learned from our mother and father; our destiny was clear to us from the beginning.
There were three of us children left to my parents from the many my mother had borne. Our brother, George, was the youngest, born the year after me. He was the only male heir to survive childhood and therefore always the most important child, to our father at least. George would be the one to inherit the estates of the Boleyns and any titles that our father left upon his death, and it would be up to George to lead the family once our father was gone. It was a weighty responsibility for the youngest of the family to carry.
My mother had given birth to two other boys, but these brothers of mine I had never known for they died either when I was very young, or before I was born. No one told me which, and I never thought to ask. I had seen their graves in the churches on our estates; one brother rested at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, the seat of our grandfather until his death, and one brother lay near Hever. Since I was four years old, when my Boleyn grandfather had died, our family had lived at Hever Castle in Kent, and our Boleyn uncle, James, inherited Blickling Hall. My mother had taken us to see our brothers’ graves, and that too of another sister, also taken by the Lord. She was sad when she looked on their little graves; sorrowful and beautiful, looking at the last resting place of her dead children.
Once, when we stood at the graves of my dead siblings at Hever, I looked up at her and told her that we were still here with her, George, Mary and I, and we would make her proud of her children who lived. Neither she nor our father would regret the choices God had made, of who amongst us children was to live and who was to die. She smiled at me strangely when I said that, and touched my face with her soft hand, lifting my chin to make our eyes meet in the quiet graveyard.
“You are such an old soul, inside such a young body,” she said, smiling at me. “You speak the comfort of a woman grown, rather than the words of a child.”
She paused and we listened to the breeze drifting through the yew trees that hugged the edges of the graveyard; there was a faint whistle as the wind blew through their sharp green leaves. Their red berries bounced cheerfully in the little breeze, happy in the knowledge that none should pick them, lest they court Death.
“I am glad that God gave me all my children, and that he let me keep some with me in this world,” our mother said softly. “I love all my children, even those I never had time to know before they slipped from my breast, into the arms of God. But I doubt not that those still left to me in this life will make me proud.”
Then she took my hand and led me silently back to the winding earthen path to the castle of Hever. I thought then, with my tiny hand held in hers that above all things I should like to make my mother proud of me, so that she would not feel sad for her children who were lost to her in this life.
George had a different tutor to Mary and me; as a boy and the heir to the family fortunes he was treated differently to us mere girls. But our education was far superior to those of other girls of our station. That was due to our father, the ever-ambitious Sir Thomas Boleyn. My father was a distant figure to us as children. It was only later, when we were fast becoming adults and were of proper use to him, that we grew to know him well. Whilst we were children he was only concerned that we be prepared well for the life that awaited us. He was often at court, or sent on missions in foreign lands by the King, but in all things he did, he worked to advance the interests of our family and our status at court.
Our father oversaw our education, hiring the very best tutors he could afford, and calling us to him to perform our growing skills whenever he was at home. When we were brought before him, we knew that to perform badly would be very dangerous. We all earned beatings by failing to live up to his high expectations, but fear of him taught us to excel at our lessons.
Our parents worked in different ways; our mother taught through love and our father through fear. Each was as effective as the other, although I believe that the fear of our father was certainly a quicker teacher than the lov
e of our mother. Whether fear was a better tutor in the end, only time can ever tell.
Chapter Two
1507
Hever Castle, Kent
As I grew older, I often wondered why it was that Mary and George should look so like my mother and I should look so like my father. Surely, I reasoned, it would have been better for George to look like my father, for in men, dark colouring was fine and bold. In girls, the golden-red hair of my mother and sister was considered most comely and becoming. But I had none of that fortunate colouring. Being a girl, I felt I had lost out on the beauty in the family by taking after my dark haired, wiry father.
Like my father, my hair was black; but though his curled slightly, mine grew long and straight. It was thick and often unruly when I was small. The wind seemed to take hold of it no matter what I did, and twist it into knots which made my eyes water to have combed out at night. There was just the barest hint of red in it, perhaps a gift from my mother, whose red-gold hair had bred so true in George and Mary. Mary often compared my hair, unthinkingly and hurtfully, to a horse’s mane, which gave me much upset. I did not want to be the horse-haired girl in the family.
My skin was pale, although not as pale and pretty as Mary’s milk-like complexion. I caught the sun easily and my complexion darkened, too, with ease. I had to be careful to wear a veil when I rode in the lands of the Boleyns for I did not want to look like a peasant woman, with browned and ruddy skin.