by Karen Harper
Madge Shelton and I shared a chariot driven by one of His Majesty’s squires. We were so proud of our new red and gold velvet coronation gowns, for which we’d been allotted the exact yardage of material. Best of all, just ahead, I could not only see the queen’s ornate litter but had a fine view of John Ashley’s broad back and bouncing buttocks on his prancing steed.
It was Anne Boleyn’s triumphant day, but I felt it was also mine. Without having to do Cromwell’s bidding lately, I was still among the queen’s ladies and privy to all the benefits that brought. I had escaped a life with a stepmother I could not abide and had—thanks to Cromwell—managed to obtain a good education, which I sought to further when I could. With the queen’s permission, I tutored women at court who did not write or read well. She was a champion of women’s educations, including religious ones. I read the Bible myself instead of having priests interpret it for me. Queen Anne was one of the first to promote Tyndale’s Bible in English, rather than reading in Latin. I was honored to discuss religion with the queen and even with Archbishop Cramner, Anne’s spiritual adviser. He was steeped in the new learning, which the Catholics who detested it called Lutheranism.
Though six months pregnant, today Anne Boleyn was gloriously arrayed in a cloth-of-gold gown and jewels that glittered in the sun. The cavalcade wound its way through the narrow streets, newly graveled for this day. All around and above us, Londoners hung from windows, cheering—or, I noted, jeering.
Occasionally we heard sporadic cries of “God Save Queen Catherine!” or the rumbling of muted boos. More than once, we stopped so that Anne could enjoy a street-side tableau or masque prepared for her. One was a costly pageant sponsored by the merchants of the steelyard, with a backdrop full of classical gods and goddesses designed by the German artist Hans Holbein, who was becoming a favorite for portraits of courtiers.
But over the music in her honor, I heard from deep within the crowd: “King’s wench! Concubine!” And once, so clearly, “Whore!” John Ashley and some others rode over to push such naysayers back from the queen’s hearing.
Then too, more than once along the way, I noted people laughing. At first, I thought they dared mock Anne herself. Though she was obviously pregnant, her garments were draped to obscure her growing belly. But I soon saw some folk in the crowd pointed at the painted, linked initials of Henry and Anne adorning her litter, pennants and even our chariot: HA, HA, HA.
At Anne’s banquet in old Westminster Hall in London, the king had given orders to elevate her above all others. The same had been done in the coronation ceremony itself in the Abbey earlier today. She had been crowned—unlike Queen Catherine—in St. Edward’s Chair, which heretofore had been used only for monarchs. Nor had King Henry’s first queen been crowned with St. Edward’s Crown, worn only by rulers but not their wives. At least that part of the grand events went better than the parade, for no one inside dared to make a peep against their queen. Now, at the banquet, special favors for her abounded again.
Nary a soul was permitted near Anne, unless to serve her food or drink. The king, everyone knew, was watching events from a side room, for this was Anne’s day, Anne’s banquet. She sat on her husband’s marble throne with her fringed and gilded cloth of estate on poles over her like a lofty second crown. Archbishop Cramner was at her table, but at a goodly distance. Two countesses stood beside her, and two gentlewomen—I was glad I had not been selected—crouched under her table in an old rite. She sent them on errands from time to time, or spit food she did not care for into the linen cloths they held. And all this was on a dais, twelve stairs elevated and railed off from us mere mortals.
That was fine with me. The food was plentiful and excellent, and imported wine—not diluted or sweetened for once—flowed like water with no small beer or ale in sight. Then too, without turning my head, at other tables I could see both Tom Seymour and John Ashley. That warmed me even more than the malmsey and Rhenish I alternated in my crystal Venetian goblet. Tom was sitting with Sir Francis and Lady Elizabeth Bryan; John was with William Coffin, Master of the Horse, at a more distant table. Tom’s elder brother Edward he did not trust or like—though in all his fussing he never quite said why—sat at a more forward table, probably because he served Archbishop Cramner in those days. Secretary Cromwell, who nodded briefly to me in passing, seemed to be everywhere, trailed by a train of secretaries or lackeys of some sort.
I soon lost count of the kinds of delicacies that came in great waves and seemed to go so well with the delicious wine. Why, before tonight, had I never noticed that wine tasted better in glass goblets than pewter cups? As at all royal meals, we had three courses: first, cold food; second course, hot; and third, sweets, though we had never seen such selections or abundance as this day. The parade of food brought in silver tureens or on platters almost made me dizzy.
The cold course consisted of artichokes, cabbage and cowcumbers, perch in jelly, cream of almonds, Colchester oysters, lovely cheese tarts and much more. The hot dishes included swan, capon, baked venison, porpoise in mustard sauce, larded pheasants and peacocks with lighted tapers in their beaks. Finally, the dulcets, or sweet dishes, arrived, and how beautifully they went down with sips of wine. Though I had been careful not to stuff myself should there be dancing back at Whitehall later—how I hoped John Ashley knew how to dance—I did taste one or two of these selections: almond tarts, jelly fritters, cinnamon custard, bread puddings, currant cake, quince pie and suckets, those delicious oranges hollowed out, chopped and put back in their rinds with wine and sugar. And my favorite, which I concentrated on, wardens, that is, imported pears served with cinnamon and mace and colored blue with mulberries.
Of course, everyone had their best manners on display. Holding one’s little finger up, we used only our left hands to touch common dishes and our right hands to handle our personal knives and spoons. Servants called sewers passed along the twelve-foot tables covered by white linen with clean napkins and bowls of rosewater to wash one’s hands between each course or to remove empty dishes. Salt from huge, gilt cellars had to be lifted with the point of a clean knife and laid upon one’s trencher. I was cleaning my knife with a slice of manchet bread to put it back in a pocket up my sleeve when John Ashley suddenly appeared over my shoulder. I jumped so, I almost cut myself.
Hoping my lips were not blue from the mulberries, I tipped my head back to smile up at him. He helped me stand and step out over the long bench. It was a good thing his hands held me, for on my feet I still felt rocky—whether from too much wine or his presence, I knew not.
“Quite a day,” he said. His breath smelled deliciously of cloves. “And more to come when we all get back to Whitehall.”
“I hope I don’t sink the barge, for I have eaten far too much.”
“I like a lass with a bit of flesh on her bones,” he said with a slightly crooked smile that made my insides flip-flop.
John was the first man I could recall who looked deeply into my eyes without blatantly ogling the rest of me. Somehow that made me warmer than those who leered at my breasts or hips. Though I’d been a courtier long enough to know how to dissemble or hide my feelings, I blushed hot and giggled like a milkmaid.
“Well,” he said, his hands still steadying me, one on my elbow and one on my shoulder before he pulled back, “I should talk. I put away a yeoman’s dinner tonight, including about a barrel of bread pudding. My mother used to make such, and I haven’t had the like for years.”
“My mother made dishes I miss,” I told him. “It was so different when my stepmother Maud came to live with us.” He nodded. I blinked back tears. In faith, was I going to cry? Why did this man make me so emotional with memories tumbling back?
Whenever I was near him, I also felt a delicious uncoiling of something taut in the pit of my belly. It took Tom’s skilled touch to make me tingle, but this man could send me into shivers without a touch. I could almost sway right into him in the middle of this busy, noisy crowd.
“I won’t be go
ing back by barge,” he told me, taking what appeared to be a reluctant step farther away. “Sir William and I are overseeing the return of horses from here to Whitehall, but if there is dancing or gaming tonight, and you are not busy with others . . .” I thought for a moment he might ask me to meet him in the maze as Tom had or to save a dance for him, but he went on, “... perhaps we can speak again. This is a day we will all remember, Mistress Champernowne—”
“Kat. My name is really Katherine but my friends call me Kat.”
“A day I will remember, Kat, for being able to watch you for all hours of this banquet. So close and yet so far.”
He was not jesting or teasing but looked utterly serious. He bowed to me, though he had no need since my rank was equal to his. As I watched him walk away, I realized that I had my legs pressed tight together, mayhap to stem my desire for him but especially because I realized I needed the jakes and fast. I’d had far too much wine.
I tried to walk quickly but carefully—it seemed my feet floated—between the long tables toward the door to the side corridor. Surely, the jakes or a room with extra close stools was down this way.
The buzz of voices grew more distant. ’S blood, I knew I’d had a good deal of wine, but I’d thought the amount of food would cover it. Yet, except for my beautiful blue dessert, I had to admit I had only tasted various dishes but had really drunk the wine.
The corridor was lit by sconces, but all the doors were closed. Should I have gone out another door into another corridor? This old palace was a web of halls and rooms, and I had lived here so seldom that I did not know my way.
Then I saw Madge come out a door and head toward me. “Oh, good,” I told her. “The jakes—down this way?”
“Just around the corner, then one turn,” she cried, and flew past me back toward the banquet.
I found it to my great relief. Surprisingly, it was deserted, so I had evidently come to the wrong one. There must be a place for the lords and ladies even closer. Like Madge, I started back at a good clip, but the entire corridor seemed to tilt, to turn into a tunnel. The buzz of distant voices made me think of a swarm of bees like my father tended. Wishing John were here to rescue me again, I put my hand to the wainscoted wall to steady myself. How glad I was to see Tom coming toward me—until I caught the expression on his face.
“I didn’t know to go another way,” I began, “so—”
“I actually expected to find you here with him in a hot embrace!” he told me, and grabbed my arms to give me a hard shake. My teeth almost rattled. “Or lying flat on the floor with your skirts up. Do you think I’m such a country dolt that I don’t know the trick of he goes one way, you the other, for an assignation? I know who he is, Kat.”
“He is a new friend, an acquaintance. L-let me go.”
“I saw how dazzled you were by him, and so did anyone else in the hall who cared to see you draped over him! So, how oft have you done that privily before—mayhap when I was writing you stupid poems or spending good coin for pretty presents?”
“You’re demented. I did no such th—”
“Ashley’s no more than a glorified stable hand, working in mud and mire. He stinks of horse droppings!”
“He does not. You’ve no right to—”
“Like a lackbrain, I’ve been waiting patiently, wooing you, dancing to your tune, and you—”
He was furious, livid. His spittle speckled my face. Perhaps he was in his cups too. I was so shaken, I wasn’t certain whether I actually said to him that John had once pulled me from the mud and mire, but it finally dawned on me that Tom was dragging me down the hall away from the banquet.
I was dizzy with drink and furious but frightened, too. He was hurting me, almost pulling me off my feet. “You owe me!” he muttered as he tried first one locked door and then another down a side hall, yanking me behind him. “You’ll not give that ripe body to another and think you have me on a leash. His Majesty waited much too long to tame the Boleyn tease, and I’ll not have it!”
“Loose me! I’m going to be sick from the wine and from your touch!”
I opened my mouth to scream for help but his lips crushed mine in a brutal kiss, grinding the inside of my mouth against my teeth, pressing me so hard to the wall I could not breathe. He finally found a door that was open and pulled me in behind him, slamming it behind us. It was ill-lit by a single, closed window. The place smelled musty and dusty. Thank God, it had no bed, but that did not matter to him. He bent me backward over the table, hitting my head on it so hard I saw stars. He threw my skirts up nearly to my chin. I prayed I would be sick all over him, but the wine only seemed to make me dizzy, not nauseous.
“Leave off!” I cried, trying to kick him away as he seized and separated my ankles. “Let me go, or I’ll tell—”
“You’ll tell no one, or I’ll ruin you!” he shouted, bending over me, right in my face, as I heard him fumble with his points and shove his codpiece aside. He dragged me closer to him with my legs spread. “You have nowhere to go, do you, Kat?” he goaded, his face a grotesque mask. “The new queen is concerned only with herself, her damned, greedy family and her growing belly. Create a problem or scandal for our free-thinking little queen, and she’ll drop you like a burning faggot.”
“Stop it! Get off me!”
“Afraid I’ll find out you are not a virgin?”
“I am, and my maidenhead is not for the likes of you!”
He heeded nothing I said or did, but ranted on, “You think Cromwell will take you in if Anne sends you away? Don’t go running to him! He’ll tell you to shut your mouth and get out of his busy way. You’re of no account to him now.”
No account? I tried to scratch his eyes, his face, but only raked my nails across his neck.
“My family is on the rise,” he went on, “even my flap-mouthed brother who has Archbishop Cramner’s ear. You have only your good reputation, little helper of those poor wenches who can’t read, trustworthy servant of the queen. And, unless you tat-tale about our tryst here, I won’t either to save your reputa—”
I screamed at the initial pain, but he muffled my cry with a sweating palm and thrust into me harder. What if I conceived a child from this—this brutal coupling I’d dreamed of so differently? He cared not a whit for me, for no one but himself. All my pretty plans, my long-tended love for him, twisted and died.
“So,” he muttered, “at least I had you before your stable boy!”
Though it seemed to go on forever, I warrant it was over quickly. Yet the pain and shame of what he had said and done—what he had ruined—had only begun.
I know not how I managed to take the barge back to Whitehall with the others chattering and laughing on board that night. Perhaps because they, too, had overindulged in food and drink, they paid no heed to my pained expression and faltering steps. As Anne’s women prepared for bed, I mumbled some excuse to them and took the narrow back servants’ stairs down and ran outside toward the river.
No, I would not drown myself, not face the horror of that, as my poor mother had. I wanted to live. I wanted revenge. But right now I had to wash away Tom Seymour’s brutality from my body, if not my mind. Perhaps the spouting fountain would do as well.
Then, blessedly, it began to rain. So common this time of year, but it seemed as if the Lord were comforting me with clean water from heaven. Heedless of who might pass by, I huddled against the wall of the deserted privy garden and stripped off my clothes, every stitch, though I had to twist and yank and tear the fine material without a maid to help me disrobe. If someone should come by, they would think me a lunatic, but I cared not. I sobbed myself breathless, cursing Tom, feeling not only ravaged and defiled by him but by some of the things I myself had done at court for Cromwell, things I had done to barter and bargain my way to where I was today. I was so out of breath and out of my mind that it took a nearby lightning bolt on one of the rooftop chimneys to jolt me to myself again.
Still, despite the storm, I stood with my bare back an
d bottom pressed against a rough brick wall I know not how long, in the driving rain, scrubbing myself all over with a sodden gold velvet sleeve from my precious gown, until it was quite ruined.
Ruined—my virginity, my hopes of a future with Tom, mayhap for any husband. Ruined. More than ever, my trust of men lay in tatters.
But, I told myself, hardening my heart, that could serve me well in terrible times yet to come in the Tudor court. Any woman, but especially a woman alone, was vulnerable in this world, and, God help me, I still wanted not only to survive but thrive.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
GREENWICH PALACE, NEAR LONDON
September 7, 1533
I stood in the back of Queen Anne’s birthing chamber and listened to her screams. Though I envied her a child, I was grateful I had not caught one from Tom’s brutal rape. But why, I agonized again, if I was grateful for such a blessing, was I not to be angry with the Lord for allowing Tom to attack me in the first place? Ah, my deep talks with Her Majesty made me question everything at times—including her pain and terror now.
She was suffering not from labor pains, for those were past, and everyone said it had been an easy birth. But not easy to accept the result. Thank God, not a miscarriage or dead child, as Queen Catherine had oft suffered, but a girl. Another princess. After tearing the royal family apart, after rending religion limb from limb in England with worse to come, after alienating Spain, the Vatican and the Holy Roman Emperor and becoming the scandal of all Europe, His Majesty had only another daughter.
While the child was passed off to others to be washed and swaddled, the queen’s mother tried to comfort Anne. Finally, when the baby wailed lustily, Anne’s hysterics quieted to gasping sobs.
“Give her to me,” she commanded, and took the babe in her arms.
“His Majesty is coming,” her mother said, passing on what Jane Rochford had just darted in to announce. “He must not see you like this.”