The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  We sat on the bank of the stream and kissed and talked and kissed again. He splashed me and I splashed back and we ran through the wood, laughing and chasing each other like children. He picked up a small pinkish stone from the stream bed and held it out to me.

  “A keepsake,” he said. I took it and kissed it and put it in the pocket of my damp gown.

  Watching him, I saw that in his reflective moments Tom appeared preoccupied, and I asked him what was on his mind.

  He looked at me for a long time. “I’m thinking of getting married,” he said at length. “It would benefit me a lot.”

  He knew that I was married already, for I wore my gold wedding band.

  “Do you like the woman?”

  “I barely know her.”

  Most men married for family reasons, or to gain money and standing. Everyone knew that. Tom was an artisan. Perhaps, I thought, he was pondering marrying a more prosperous artisan’s daughter.

  “Are you being urged to marry?”

  “No. It is entirely my choice.”

  I thought of my two marriages. I had married Ned because we liked each other—and grew to love each other very much. But I had married him in part to avoid having to marry his grandfather. And I had married John in order to avoid having to serve Mistress Anne Boleyn. How wonderful it must be, I thought, to be entirely free, to have the choice be one’s own.

  “How fortunate you are to be so free.”

  “Fortunate—and now, after meeting you, unfortunate. The choice will be much harder to make now.”

  I kissed him then, a strong, possessing kiss. If I was his, I wanted him to be mine. Only mine.

  We met the next day, and instead of going to the copse we went to the cottage Anne had been living in. When we got there Tom stopped me at the door.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, smiling. I obeyed. He lifted me into his arms, opened the door, and carried me across the threshold.

  He carried me into another world.

  A rich red silk coverlet was draped over a wide bed with embroidered hangings in red and gold. Gilded firedogs guarded the neatly swept hearth. A cupboard of carved oak was open, invitingly, waiting for our clothes to be deposited there. A bowl of red rose petals scented the entire room.

  On a low table spread with a fine white linen cloth, plates of fruit and sweet loaves and comfits were laid out, and alongside them was a jug of wine. All was for our ease and comfort. The dingy room had been swept and scrubbed, and there was a basin of water and soft cloths for our use in washing. The room was lit by dozens of ivory candles that shed a warm glow over everything.

  “Oh, Tom!”

  He put me down and I circled the room, appreciating every object in it, all lovingly assembled by this mysterious, compelling man. I could imagine all the work that had gone into renovating the cottage, all the expense. How could a clerk of the works, even a master clerk, afford all this, I wondered.

  I leaned against one of the carved wooden bedposts and allowed the scent of the rose petals, the soft light and warmth of the room to lull me. Through my half-closed eyes I saw Tom approach me, his bronzed face gleaming in the firelight. I trembled when he caressed my cheek. My body yielded to him when he kissed me. And when we lay, flesh to flesh and heart to beating heart, in the soft silken bed I was carried higher, deeper, further into realms of passion I had never before imagined. Even to try to set down here how intense were the pleasures and raptures we shared seems a desecration. Words are so feeble, actions so vital and strong. The merest touch of Tom’s hand brought my body alive, the merest word he spoke, softly and lovingly, quickened all my senses and sent shafts of fire along my nerves.

  I loved as I had never loved before. As I will never love again.

  I loved Tom—and because I loved and needed him, I saw him nearly every day, saying that I was visiting my long-lost sister-in-law Anne in Grundleford when I was really with my lover. I did not count the days, the blissful afternoons of loving, the nights of longing when we were apart. I let the time flow, as spring turned into summer and the meadow grass grew high and the bluebells ceased to bloom. The days grew hot, the stream dropped lower in its bed and no longer churned and tumbled but murmured and trickled.

  The stream is in no hurry, I thought to myself as we strolled along its banks, hand in hand, and neither are we. Such trivial fancies flashed through my untroubled mind, unburdened as it was by thoughts of duty or obligation. Tom’s love freed me from such burdensome thoughts; he gave me the one thing I had never had: a carefree youth.

  My birthday came. I was twenty-six.

  “Never mind,” I said when Tom kissed me and wished me another happy year. We had spent the afternoon lazily making love and I was gathering my things for the homeward journey to Snape Hall—something I always regretted.

  “What does a day matter, or even a year? With you I feel ageless, the world feels timeless to me.”

  “Yet the season is changing,” he remarked, looking out the cottage window. “Those old willows are growing grayer. Soon they’ll meet the axe. The caterpillars have turned into butterflies, the birds’ nests are empty. Life moves on.”

  Something in his tone alarmed me. I looked at him, his reddish-brown hair falling in careless curls over his collar (a collar that needed washing, I noticed), his linen shirt open at the neck, a faint stubble on his cheeks. I know nothing whatever about this man, I thought, except that his name is Tom and he is thinking about whether he ought to get married and that I love him.

  I didn’t even know where he went when we parted each time we were together. I supposed that he had temporary lodgings somewhere on the grounds of the building site, like the other workmen and supervisors. If so, he had never taken me there. No doubt he was ashamed of his quarters, I thought. He would not want me to see how humbly he lived.

  “I am occupied tomorrow,” he said as I took my leave of him. “But we can meet the day after. I’ll wait for you as usual.” He held me close and his parting smile was sweet, yet I sensed that something had changed. I was apprehensive.

  That night, for the first time since I met Tom, I slept badly. Instead of dreaming of him I dreamed of a woman, young and alluring, a woman who remained just out of reach but was there, a beautiful and menacing presence, wherever I turned. I awoke with a start, frightened, and could not get back to sleep. For hours I lay in bed, waiting in vain for sleep to come, watching for the first light of dawn to appear outside my window, listening to the croaking of frogs and the sleepy twitter of birds. At last I heard the clanking of milk pails and the splash of wash water thrown from a window; the servants were astir.

  I went to meet Tom at the cottage as usual but he was not there. The door was ajar. Leaves and dust from the garden had been blown inside, and the usually tidy interior was in disarray. The silk coverlet and bed hangings had been taken away, along with the carved cupboard and table. The bed was still there, covered by a simple straw-stuffed mattress, the stuffing poking through a rip on one side. Even the candles were gone.

  Dismayed, I thought at first that thieves had taken the valuable furnishings. But as I waited longer, and Tom did not arrive, I realized that there had been no thieves. Tom had gone, taking all the fine furnishings with him—and taking my precious dream of love as well.

  He is gone, I repeated inwardly. He has gone. I will never see him again. I have no idea where he is, or even who he is. And I dare not ask, for fear of revealing (for how could I conceal it?) that he was everything to me, that I loved him.

  I sat down on the threshold of the cottage, the sun warm on my face and hands, and wept. My horse, tethered to the fence by a long rope, walked up to me and put her head down to be stroked. I buried my face in her rough coat.

  How long I sat there, wretched and in pain, I cannot remember. But at last, my spirits very low, I got to my feet and managed to disguise my sorrow sufficiently to ride back to Snape Hall and pretend that my heart had not broken, my hope had not died and my world had not ended foreve
r.

  20

  IN THE MIDST OF MY SORROW I WENT TO SEE ANNE, WHO AFTER recuperating in Grundleford had moved with her children into a cottage on my husband’s estate. I had visited her several times before and was glad to see that she was getting stronger and that her baby son was growing plump and sturdy.

  When I got to the cottage she was out in the garden, wearing an old brown smock and an apron of coarse cloth, pulling tall weeds out of the rose bushes. She smiled when she saw me, an open smile with no hint of the hauteur she had shown as a younger woman, before she left Will. Her once luxuriant auburn hair, thinner now and darker, was pulled back off her face country-style, making the deep lines around her mouth and nose prominent. She was only a few years older than I, but she looked like an aging woman of forty.

  “If only Old Squibb could see me now,” she said. “Remember how rude I was to him?”

  “If he were here he’d probably help you with those weeds. He loved his roses.”

  “And I once had no tolerance for thorns, as I recall. Well, I’ve certainly been down a thorny path since then!”

  “Tell me, what did happen to you, after you left Will?” I sat down on a bench in the shade of a cherry tree. Anne went on with her weeding while she talked to me.

  “I ran. I got as far away as I could. I was afraid someone would find me and lock me up for the rest of my life, like Anne Boleyn’s uncle did to his wife. I knew my father would be furious. He beat me when I was a girl, I was afraid he would beat me harder as a woman.”

  She turned to look at me, one hand on her hip. “I tried to convince everyone I was tough and brave, but underneath I was a coward.”

  “No one could call you that.”

  She laughed. “I know I’ve been called much worse names. And I’ve deserved them. Some of them at least. I hid in Paris for awhile. King Francis found me amusing—at first. He sent me into the country and there I met an outlaw who had once been a priest. Jean-Guillaume was his name. We had two babies. One died. I met an English pirate and came back to England, to Cornwall, with him. Then there was a sailor, and an Irish horse trader—what a good-looking brute he was!—and a hop-picker who dragged me all over Kent. I had three children by the time he came along. But I was tired of the rootless life. I thought many times of going back to Will, just to ask if he would give me shelter—for me and the children. But I couldn’t do it. I had my pride.”

  “He would have done much more than just take you in. He was concerned about you. He wanted to make sure you had enough money to live on.”

  “I did—at first. I had my jewels, and my mother’s. I sold them one by one. The sailor stole the rest when he left me. By the time I met Monsieur Herbault, the stonemason, I was desperate. I couldn’t feed the children. No one would give me charity, not even the monks. They knew from the way I talked that I was wellborn. ‘Go back to your rich relations,’ they told me. ‘Christ had no pity for the rich.’ ”

  The pile of weeds she had pulled grew higher.

  “I was an outcast, with nowhere to go.”

  “You could have come to me. I would never have turned you away.”

  “I know that now. And I’m grateful,” she added, her voice low. “But at the time, the stonemason, repulsive as he was, seemed my only hope. He was willing to take me and the children. All I had to do was sleep with him, and cook and keep his house clean. He brought us all here to St. Mary’s when the work began on the new royal palace. He got a good wage. When he wasn’t drinking, he treated us well enough.

  “Then I got pregnant with his child, and that angered him. ‘I don’t want to feed any more brats,’ he said. He already had a wife and children somewhere in France. He tried to make me drink something to get rid of the baby but I couldn’t do it. When I went into labor, he left. Just like that. He didn’t even leave any food or money for us. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t found me.”

  “The priest from Grundleford sent me. One of your neighbors, a woman, told him you were in need.”

  “So why didn’t she come herself to help me?” Anne sighed. “Never mind. I know why. The women here shun me. I’m not one of them. They don’t know what to make of me.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and came to sit beside me. “I don’t belong anywhere any more, Cat.”

  “You belong with us. With me. Or with Will.”

  She shook her head. “I could never live with Will again. Not with my children. As long as I stay away, the scandal I caused will fade in time.”

  “Then stay here. Call yourself by a new name. Start a new life. What was the handsome Irishman’s name?”

  “Bobby Daintry.”

  “Call yourself Anne Daintry. Put the past behind you. Say you were a nurse or a cradlewoman in a great house and that was where you learned to speak like a lady and walk like a lady.”

  “And read and write and speak French.”

  “Why not?”

  I saw a light come into her eyes. It amused her, to imagine taking on a new identity.

  “I’d have nothing to lose, would I?”

  Only your noble heritage and your inheritance, I thought to myself. And you walked away from the former years ago, and have already lost the latter to Will, who was awarded all your property.

  “No, nothing.”

  She slapped her knee, a most unladylike gesture. “I’ll do it. As of now, I am Anne Daintry, of—of Antrim, but I’ve spent all my life in castles and great houses and don’t sound Irish any longer.”

  Two of the children ran out of the cottage and Anne watched them with a soft look in her eyes. “To them I’m just mama. A new name won’t make any difference.” She spoke to the boy. “Is the baby still asleep?” He nodded.

  “You look tired, Cat,” she said, looking over at me. I hadn’t been sleeping well. I awoke in the middle of the night, tried to read, tried to work at my tapestry frame, even tried to say my prayers. But nothing could distract me from thoughts of Tom. I kept remembering how he smelled, how it felt to yield to his strong embrace, how it felt when he touched me. My body had become so accustomed to responding to him that the mere thought of him made my muscles weak. Even in his absence I felt myself surrender.

  I remembered every detail of him. The creased brown leather of his high boots. His long fingernails, which he neglected to clean. His untidy waves of hair. His very very blue eyes. His smile. The taste of his mouth, sweet like ripe fruit. His uneven moustache, fuller on the right side than the left. The small red birthmark beneath his ear, shaped like a scallop shell. His laugh, open and hearty and careless. How we both drank from the wine jug, passing it back and forth, and how he licked the drops of wine from the corner of my mouth.

  Deep in the night, I remembered him, I longed for him, and nothing could assuage my longing.

  “You look thinner,” Anne was saying. “Are you eating enough?”

  I shook my head.

  “What is it?”

  I took my time answering her. “Sorrow,” I said at length. “Like you, I’ve been abandoned.”

  “That handsome Tom.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded knowingly. “He was even better looking than Bobby Daintry. A man like that—well, a woman can’t be too careful.” She laughed. “Listen to me! As if I was ever careful!”

  “I loved him,” I went on, ignoring her light remark. “I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “Go to confession. You’re not the first pretty young wife to stray. Your husband is an old man, isn’t he?”

  “Well, John is—aging—and we haven’t lived as man and wife for a long time.”

  “Was your Tom married too?”

  “He said he wasn’t, but was thinking of marrying. But then, I don’t really know if he was telling me the truth. I don’t know anything about him. Not even his name. I thought he was in charge of the building works here. Now I realize he couldn’t have been. He was a stranger.”

  “He deceived you.”


  “We had a bargain. No names, no ranks.”

  “No responsibilities, was what he meant!”

  “But he loved me. I know he did.”

  “He hurt you. He was cruel to leave you.”

  I had turned this over in my mind so many, many times. I didn’t want to accept the truth: that he had indeed hurt me badly.

  “Maybe he had no choice.” I spoke softly.

  “Ha!” Anne exclaimed, getting up suddenly and turning to face me, her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t try to excuse him! He’s a rogue and a liar! And he broke your heart.”

  She was right. I had no answer to what she said. Only the voice inside me that kept repeating, he loved me, he loved me. I know he did. The voice that would not be stilled, however many contrary words were said against it, for however long.

  21

  HE LOVED ME. I KNEW HE DID.

  I kept faith with that love, and continued to believe, despite all, that one day we would be together again.

  Anne laughed at me for clinging to my lost lover, and said I was even more deluded by men—or at least by one man—than she had ever been. At times I thought she was right. Yet deep in my heart I did not lose hope, and the memory of my lovely days with Tom remained fresh, unsullied by the shock and pain of his departure.

  My lover was gone, but might one day return to me. The king’s lover, his plain wife Jane, was gone for good. Once again King Henry was a widower, and we learned from my kinsman Cuthbert Tunstall, who spent a good deal of time in the capital, that the king pined for Jane and mourned her as he had never mourned anyone.

  Their marriage had been cruelly brief, less than two years. Jane had borne a son, Prince Edward, and the boy had lived. But Jane herself, like so many women, had grown ill with childbed fever and not all the physicians in the realm had been able to save her. Now the king was alone again.

  Not long after we heard of Queen Jane’s death a ragged man came to Snape Hall and begged for food. I gave our steward permission to let him sleep in one of our barns and he was taken on as an under-groom. One day as I was riding to Grundleford to visit Anne, I was alarmed to see the man sitting at the side of the road. He got up when he saw me approach and removed his cap.