La Petite Boulain

by G Lawrence

  Whilst the King had some help from his advisors Thomas More, and Richard Pace, in proofing the book, the sentiments and thoughts enclosed therein were entirely the work of the King, and it was violent in its language and expression. Luther was to respond to the King’s book with a work of his own, which insulted the King, calling him a “strumpet in a tantrum” without knowledge or understanding of his subject, and accused the King of having had other men write the book for him; and so the battle lines were drawn. Henry could not bear to hear the name of Luther at his court, and sought to destroy all Luther’s works that had crept into his lands. Luther’s works were publicly burned, and the Pope gave Henry the title of Fidei Defensor, or Defender of the Faith, for writing his book against Luther. Although Henry came to alter some of his views later in life, he never truly lost his hatred for Luther, who had dared to insult him so, and he never gave up the title gifted to him for his defence of the Pope.

  This was a time when there was much change in thought and action about us, and oftentimes I thanked my own fortune to be within the Court of France, where the protection of Marguerite meant that I could read both banned and authorised works by the great thinkers of our age, and not have to close my mind to any of them for fear of the Church.

  But as change comes, it seems to spread and grow. There was change coming in my life too, which was to bring me much unhappiness.

  In early December of the year 1521, I received a letter from my father, ordering me back to England, back to a homeland that I had not seen for years. It did not come wholly as a surprise. France and England were entering difficult times politically, and it seemed that there may well be war between them. The treaty of The Field of the Cloth of Gold was long since forgotten, it seemed, and now England looked to Spain for an ally. It was not a good idea for an English woman such as I to be at the court of the enemy of my country; I might be arrested or imprisoned as a spy, or held for ransom. My father wrote to urge me back home, before any problems with the English alliance with Spain occurred.

  Although it was not wholly unexpected, I stared at the letter in horror. I did not want to leave the Court of France. It was my home. England was a country that I barely knew and had no wish to go to. I loved my life in France, so much of my life I had lived here. My friends were here, and I felt as though my future, too, was here… I felt I would not know or like England, not as I loved France.

  And there was another message on this paper, another reason that I was being recalled from my position in France; my family had found me a husband. This was to be the official reason I was to give for leaving the French Court, as my father did not want to damage his personal relations with François. But it was also true; there was a match being seriously proposed for me in England. I did not know to whom I was being offered. My father did not embellish that letter with details; he obviously did not believe that the identity of my future husband was of huge significance to me.

  I was simply commanded, as a daughter and a Boleyn, to get myself back to England as soon as possible.

  I was going home… whether I liked it or not. I had no choice in the matter.

  Claude was sad to see me leave, as I was full of sorrow to leave her. She had been a kind and generous mistress who had cultured my creative and artistic mind and helped me to hone it. She gave me strings of pearls and a dress of her own to take with me, and asked to keep the little miniature that I had had painted of myself when first I entered her service. I cried to leave Claude, but it was to Marguerite that I went with a truly heavy heart; it broke my soul to leave such a princess and such benevolence of company. She pressed her hands to mine and gave me a copy of her recent draft of La Miroir l’ame Perechesse. I was honoured, for Marguerite had not yet finished the work in entirety; this gift was a true mark of her favour and friendship.

  “Remember well the lessons that God gives us,” she said to me. “God only gives us as much as we can manage; the wise learn from those lessons and the foolish never do. You are no fool, Mistress Anne; I shall watch for you in court papers. You are not one to fade against the tapestries of the walls. I shall expect to read of your accomplishments often, and I would that you would write to me personally, when you are allowed to.”

  She smiled at me, as the beauty of her eyes made my throat clench and my heart sink. Would I see my great friend and mistress again? I knew not.

  I nodded, and tears sprang into my eyes as I bowed to Marguerite for the last time. As I walked from the presence of that great princess, I felt my heart had drifted from my body and in its place was but an empty void. I clutched the volume she had given me to my breast, and swore that it should not be parted from me.

  Later on, when I had long been living in England, Marguerite gave a finished copy of this work to my brother George to give to me. The little book had a plain black leather cover which masked the import of the weighty thoughts within. I had a gold chain made for the book and an outward cover to protect it from the English weather, bound in leather and jewels. I kept it with me as one of my most treasured possessions. I gave it to my daughter to hold, one sunlit afternoon many years later when we sat together in the gardens of Greenwich Palace. Elizabeth was too young to know what wonders it contained then; it was the sparkling jewels that she desired to touch with fat baby hands. I left the book in my chambers, on the day I was arrested. I know not where that book is now, but I hope somehow, some way, it has made its way back to the hands of my daughter. Perhaps it is in her possession now. Perhaps it will serve as a memory of me in the years left to come without me. Perhaps these are but desperate hopes and dreams, and yet somehow, I know that book I loved so well will find its way to my daughter.

  Françoise and I shed tears together when an entourage of riders, sent by my father, came to escort me to the coast. She gave me a measure of fine silk to bring back to England and I gave her one of my favourite pearl-rimmed hoods, to remind her of me.

  Through the tears she laughed suddenly. “François is most annoyed that you should be leaving his court!” There was a slight note, I thought, of recrimination in her voice, and I realised that although I was leaving and she should miss me as a friend, perhaps she would not miss me as a potential rival for the affections of her King. She had never seemed jealous of her lover’s admiration for me before… something had changed.

  “Bah!” I said wiping my eyes and my streaming nose. “His admiration for me was like his admiration for the Italian dresses he gave us, do you remember? We were jewels for the King to bedeck himself in. That is all I am to the King of France. There is but one lady with whom he chose to share his heart, and that was you. You have his heart, Françoise, of this I am sure.”

  She nodded and laughed, but saying goodbye to her then, I could see doubt in her eyes. Perhaps it was that François was waning in his affections to her? I did not believe it, not then at least.

  I cried for a long time to leave these great women, these great friends in the country I loved so; it was torture to me. And now, I must go back to England.

  What did I know of England? I was more French than a French-born woman! I was resentful and unhappy. I had to do my duty to my father and my family, but I did it with a heavy and aggrieved heart.

  Every moment of the long journey to the English port of Calais, I longed to turn my horse and gallop as fast as I could to return to my own home, the Court of France. When I stood on the deck of the great ship that took me from France, my eyes were fixed on the disappearing shore, as I fought an urge to jump from the sides of the ship, and swim back to the court I loved so well. I was leaving all that I knew; my friends, the court… for a new life in England. For a husband whom I knew nothing of… not even his name! I wanted none of it. I wanted to go home, to France, to Claude, to Françoise, to Marguerite. I stood on the deck of the ship holding back tears and holding in fury. I felt I should never forgive my father for bringing me back to the land of my birth, and I knew that I would never be as happy in England as I had been in France.
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  I was returning to England; a stranger in a strange land.

  Epilogue

  17th May, 1536

  The Tower of London

  The wind whips past the window, startling me from memories of the past. I jump a little from my stool, causing a single knock from its wooden leg to sound heavily about the chamber. I look to the maids on the floor about me, but they do not wake. I have become calm, thinking on the past rather than on the present. But the past has disappeared from me with the shriek of the winds, and now I am in the present once again. And now, now I think on this day just passed within the Tower, the day my brother left this world.

  They led me from these chambers to a cold room; to the Devilin Tower overlooking Tower Hill. I watched them lead out the prisoners, those men accused with me of crimes they know we did not commit. My brother stood with them, brought out from the Beauchamp Tower. They walked out slowly, with eyes blinking in the harsh, bright sun, after days in the gloom of their prisons. Guards surrounded them; their presence almost laughable, as if there were anywhere to which these prisoners could flee now.

  I pressed my hand to the window as I saw my brother walk out from his prison. He looked around him, at the final sights his warm brown eyes would see. His clothing was his best, he was freshly shaved; even in death my brother was the picture of a gentleman.

  My warm hand imprinted its sweat onto the window as I cried out to him silently; my eyes awash with tears of grief. As though he heard my silent cry to him, George looked up, and our eyes locked in one last goodbye in this world. He inclined his head to me and then bowed; the guards did not move to hold him. The others, standing near him, saw his actions and bowed to me also; Weston, Norris, Brereton…. all but Smeaton, who stood snivelling, wiping his nose on his sleeve, with his face turned from mine. He knew that his coward words have condemned us; that is the punishment he has taken to his maker. He has brought death to us all with his lies.

  I watched them walk through the crowds. Thousands had gathered to watch them die; a national pastime, an entertainment… Such is our grief, such are our deaths… an hour’s diversion for the low of this land, and the high.

  There were swarms of people on that hill, come to watch the high brought lower than they and rejoice in the spectacle of death. My hand still at the window I felt panic rise in me as it must have risen in the men walking up the platform on Tower Hill, trying to keep their dignity as they walked towards Death himself.

  I watched George, my little brother, my greatest friend as he climbed the steps to the platform amidst the roaring of the crowds. He stepped forward, and started to speak. I was too far away to hear him, but the crowds listened closely to him and there was a dull hush in the air as he spoke. Tears rolled down my face and a noise, not quite a scream and not quite a whisper, escaped my throat as I watched his distant figure kneel before the executioner and bow his head in prayer. He lowered his head, and held out his hands.

  Then there was the flash of the axe in the day’s light, and then there was blood. George’s body fell sideways from the platform. The roar of the crowd signalled that my brother’s life had been extinguished from this world.

  My throat cried out again, the hollow, raw dark noise of sorrow.

  They pulled his body, heavy with death, rudely from the platform and another figure stood where George had so lately been. Norris, my sweet friend, stood to make his speech now. I watched him die, too.

  They took note, these women, these spies set around me, watching and analysing my grief to use against me still. I knelt, weak with grief and sick with fear for my own death. I cared little for what they thought of me now. I watched this pageant of death continue.

  Weston, that handsome young man, came next; the platform was red, shining, sticky and slippery with blood that I could see even from this distance. All I could think of was the time when he and I had danced together in my apartments only a few weeks before. Weston was such an elegant dancer.

  His head took some time to chop from his body. Perhaps the handle of the axe had grown slippery with the blood of the others. I watched each rise and fall of the axe, feeling as though I might vomit, but I could not stop watching.

  Then there was Brereton, such an old rouge. His face was pale but his limbs stood true and still as he faced the crowds. He knelt in the blood of those who fell before him, and his head came off clean.

  Then Mark Smeaton, snivelling still like the worm he is, stood to die the death of a noble man. He was to die like the others, by the axe rather than strung from a rope, although he deserved no such grace. He sold his soul for an easier death than his station allowed. He should have been hanged, and yet he was to die the death of a noble man. He would dip his head in the blood of those better than he; his blood would finally mix with those he had envied. In his death, in his last moments, finally Smeaton was where he had always desired to be; in the company of great men.

  His lips muttered prayers as he died. I hope he prayed to God for forgiveness for all the death, for all the pain he has brought to this world.

  I slid to the floor, weak and overwhelmed; my friends… my supporters… my brother…all dead. Tears would not come to me now. I sat and stared at my hands, listening to the roaring of the crowds; their fine entertainment now over, they went back to their everyday lives, happy to have seen death. Happy to have watched those greater than them fall from grace. But of course the common people do not know that they have been told lies. They rejoice for the deaths of traitors, and for me, the evil Jezebel, who soon will taste death herself.

  One of the women, Cromwell’s beast, came over to me. For a moment I thought she sought to comfort me as her arm reached around the back of my slim shoulders, but instead she leaned in close. “Master Wyatt watched this also,” she whispered to me.

  I raised my eyes slowly to hers; I saw a gleam of excitement in her pale eyes. Suddenly I felt more tired than I had ever felt before. Here, at the point where so much grief met with so much destruction in my life, here, this woman sought to trap me. To trick me into expressing something that might harm Tom Wyatt, as though enough death had not already come with the light of this day.

  “Why do you say this to me?” I asked in a clear voice, anger flooding past the weary sorrow of my heart. “Do you seek some rich pickings of flesh to take to your master the wolf?”

  I stood up and faced her, my lip curled in derision. “I have watched friends and kin die innocent this day; great men, greater than you or your master should ever hope to know or understand. Soon I shall be held in the great and gentle hand of God with them, for He knows the truth that you all seek to ignore. Take those words to your master, leech, and seek not to spill the blood of more innocents than you are guilty of already.”

  I walked to the door, turned and pointed at her. Her crafty face stalled as my eyes, always my greatest weapons, glinted at her.

  “God watches all that you do,” I said pointing at her, “and he will reward or punish all you have done in this life.” I lowered my hand. “I will pray for you,” I said and turned to leave.

  “Pray for yourself, my lady,” she said.

  I looked at her and I smiled. “Although I am closer to death, you are more in need of prayer than I.” I turned to be taken back to my apartments.

  There I sat on a window seat and there I watched the bodies brought back and buried in the churchyard behind the Chapel of St Peter’s on the Tower green.

  As I watched their lifeless bodies, wrapped in cloth stained with blood, being immured in the ground, I began to laugh. Not from any humour within my heart, but from desperation, fear, from the terror of what awaited me.

  “Soon I shall be Queen sans-tete.... the Lady Anne lack-head,” I said, and the strange laughter that infected me during my first days in the Tower welled up inside me again. “I shall be the first Queen to rule without her head… perhaps that will serve me better, for trying to rule with a head did me no good”.

  I started to laugh wildly, my
fine eyes afire with desperation and fear, cheeks flushed with unusual colour. My laughter bounced and echoed around the rooms. They stared at me. They have all looked at me in that way since we came here; these women who are not my women, not my friends. Agents of my enemies, their loyalty bought, their compassion dead. I probably wronged all their families in many ways I remember not now, and they are glad to see the proud, shrill Queen fall.

  They stared at me, wondering if I had finally lost my senses, and I laughed louder still to see their fearful expressions, to watch them shrink back in fear from my glorious eyes, wicked and sparkling with hysteria and fear. My piercing laughter bounced from the walls and from the beautiful tapestries put here for my coronation. This laughter is the sound of the witch they have all been told that I am; the laughter of the whore, the temptress… the devil’s concubine. They watch me all the time, slyly, carefully, through the sides of their little eyes to see what I am doing. It is as though they think I shall turn into a hare and flee this place.