To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

by Byrd, Sandra

  Henry was flanked by the Duke of Norfolk, whose daughter carried Anne’s mantle, and the Duke of Suffolk, who looked as though he’d eaten spoilt meat. Anne knelt before the king and Bishop Gardiner, yea, he who had just months before argued with Henry for the church’s supremacy over the king, read out her patent. “This patent confers to you, and all your offspring, the title of Marquess of Pembroke, and all the attendant honor and income which comes with such title.”

  The title was notable. It not only permanently placed Anne in the nobility, it made her rich. It had once belonged to Henry’s beloved uncle Jasper Tudor and was worth one thousand pounds per year income, a fortune, but one that would not go far. Like all nobility, Anne would be expected to spend, give, employ, and dress according to her rank. No other woman had ever been given the rank of marquess before. It had been solely an honor for men.

  I watched Gardiner’s face as he spoke. He showed not a trace of hypocrisy. There were some at court who believed that the pope was the ultimate law for both church and state in England and some who felt that both were rightly vested in the king. A few, like Gardiner, seemed to know not whether they were fish or fowl and, for that, were respected not by either.

  Mary Howard stepped forward and Henry took the crimson velvet mantle, trimmed in royal ermine, and the gold coronet of a marquess from her small hands. He gave her a reassuring look. “Thank you, mistress,” he said with especial kindness. Mary curtseyed and stepped back. Anne remained kneeling as the king draped her with the mantle and crowned her with the coronet. Their eyes met and locked at that precise moment and I knew, instinctively, what they were both thinking.

  The next time this happens it will be at a coronation.

  Henry had ordered a sumptuous meal of roast oxen and stewed fruit and creamy syllabubs lightly curdled with wine to celebrate the occasion. He and Anne both sat on the dais up front. I sat nearby and, after eating richly and dancing with a few friends, prepared to return to my rooms.

  “My lady?” A voice came from behind me. “A dance?”

  ’Twas the man who’d given me his pew on Easter Sunday. “Sir Anthony,” I said, delighted.

  “Just Anthony, to my friends.” He smiled at me and I smiled back afore I could stop myself.

  “Anthony, then. How do you fare?”

  “I fare well, mistress.” He called me by an unmarried maid’s title, and, though I was a widow, I did not correct him. “Happy to be here to celebrate this occasion with the marquess.” He nodded toward Anne, who was flushed with success and the love of a powerful man. “Would you like to dance?” I was about to beg off when he held up his hand. “Please, help an old man whose joints grow stiff with lack of use.”

  “Old man?” I laughed. “You’re hardly of an age with the king.” Realizing that I may have just insulted the sovereign, I clapped my hand over my mouth. Anthony grinned. Now that we shared a secret I supposed I owed him a dance.

  I danced with him more than once, more than twice, mayhap nigh on five or six times, though I danced with other partners as well. Afterward, he took me aside and we sat and drank a cup of wine to cool down and talked.

  “Where is your wife?” I asked, though just after I said it I wished I hadn’t. It sounded like a personal inquiry! Anthony, a gentleman, did not press an advantage of my impulsive comment.

  “I am not yet married. My father is completing my marriage negotiations even now.”

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Thank you. Methinks. I expect to be married after the court returns from Boulogne and France. Will you be going, to serve the marquess?”

  I nodded. “Yes. And I expect that my own marriage will be settled shortly after we return. My brother has indicated that I’m given leave to attend Anne in France but that he will finish settling my own marriage matter shortly afterward. I’m to marry my former husband’s nephew and heir.”

  “Congratulations are due to you, too, then,” Anthony said.

  “Thank you. Methinks.” I set my tone and expression to indicate my distaste as well. I had so few friends. Anne was ever occupied, Lady Zouche newly wed. It was enjoyable to spend an evening with him.

  “Then let us not waste time, lady. The musicians strike up again.” He led me to the dance and shared the latest news from the king’s privy chamber, funny tidbits about a courtier who cried when he lost a tennis match with the king and one who never paid his gambling debts but came up with feeble excuses such as the need to care for packs of sick greyhounds. When I returned to my chamber that evening I was lighter of heart than I had been for a long while.

  * * *

  On October the eleventh we set sail in the Swallow, leaving Dover for Calais. I leaned over the side of the ship, not sick, as others were, but giddy with excitement.

  “I’ve never been anywhere but England!” I exclaimed. The wind ran wild through my hair and the sea salt sprinkled both skin and garments. I cared not. It was exhilarating. And, for a little while longer, I was free like the swallow we sailed on.

  Anne laughed at me. “You’ll arrive in England again shortly. At Calais. But from there, nous irons à la France!”

  Henry had spared no expense on this, her bridal trip. He knew he was safe now that he and Francis had become firm allies and his realm was under his control.

  “Ten years ago you returned from France, lady. And now you return hence to become queen!”

  She smiled. “I am hoping that Jean du Bellay, the bishop of Paris, will marry us,” she said. “With Marguerite to stand in for me. I feel as if I became a woman in France, and Marguerite is more a sister to me than Mary ever was. She first introduced me to true faith.”

  “I wish that for you then, too,” I said. “Are you certain, about the king, I mean? That he is being completely forthright with you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She did not chide me for asking yet again. It was my duty as her dearest friend, and she knew it. “I have looked into his eyes and he told me the truth of the matter with Katherine. Who besides a man, the woman, and our Lord would know if the woman was a maid or not? I am nobody’s fool,” she reminded me, and I stood reassured.

  More than two thousand nobles and knights escorted Anne and Henry to Calais. Some of the most important Englishwomen were missing—Henry’s sister Mary, who loathed Anne, and the Duchess of Norfolk, who was as welcome as a persistent itch. But it mattered not. The Boleyn contingent was there in full force. Henry had even allowed my brother Thomas to accompany Edmund and me. Edmund speculated that it was because, as we were so close to Anne, our family had risen with the tide. I agreed that might be a part of it but I also suspected that the king wanted Thomas to witness the wedding for himself. Thomas had lost. Henry had won. Match over.

  Although Anne had separate chambers, she lodged at the Exchequer with the king. I, and twenty or so of her other ladies, were nearby to attend to her needs, of course. We dined and danced every night; though Calais was English, French musicians and performers came from all over France to delight Henry and his bride-to-be. Anthony was among the men’s contingent and often sought me as a dance or conversation partner, which made the trip more pleasurable yet.

  However, there was still no word from Father du Bellay about the wedding. On the fifteenth of October Francis sent a delegation of notables to Henry. They arrived in the room he’d commandeered for a receiving chamber.

  “Sire.” The ambassador bowed low. “I am come to invite you to France. My noble master, King Francis, has planned a, how do you English say, a par-tee, une célébration, for your final days as a man unmarried, in advance of your wedding. There will be hunting and bowls and wrestling and all sorts of diversions suitable for Your Majesty. C’est ça!”

  “Marvelous!” Henry boomed. “Have preparations been made for the marquess to attend as well?”

  The room grew quiet. The ambassador wiped his hands on the sides of his breeches. “I am sorry, sire, but as the Princess Marguerite has taken ill there woul
d be no femme of appropriate rank to meet your most gracious lady. My master does not wish to display any disrespect in that matter. He has, though, left instructions that the marquess and all her party are to be well entertained and taken care of in your absence. And le roi, King Francis, has made the arrangements pour retourner with you after the ten days, to visit his friend la marquise.”

  Anne sat quietly, looking first at Henry, then back at the ambassador. It was a slap to her and she knew it. But what could Henry do? He could not decline Francis’s hospitality without endangering their alliance. And Francis had given a respectable reason for Anne’s dismissal. Anne herself came to Henry’s aid.

  “Merci, monsieur,” she said in perfect lilting, sensual French. “Please thank your master, le roi Francis, for his thoughtfulness on my behalf, and tell him that I shall look forward to claiming the first dance with him when he arrives at Calais.”

  A look of relief refreshed the ambassador’s face and the king became genial once more. Henry was always happy when someone eased him out of a pinch.

  “Tu es vraiment une reine,” Henry whispered to her in familiar French on the way back to their lodging. You are truly a queen. She had handled it magnificently. I couldn’t have been the only person who viewed the gloating smirks exchanged between Sir Nicolas Carewe and the Duke of Suffolk.

  In her quarters with her ladies, though, Anne wept hotly. “This is Eleanor’s doing, for certes. She prevented the bishop from coming to perform the marriage. She prevented me from going to France, and she prevented Marguerite from meeting with me.”

  I made soothing murmurs to agree and reassure. Anne had been close to Queen Claude, Francis’s first wife, in whose court she had come of age. His second wife, Eleanor, was the sister of Charles the Fifth—niece, therefore, to Katherine of Aragon, incentive, therefore, to degrade Anne whenever possible.

  An hour passed and then Anne dried her tears and looked in the mirror. Then she glanced up, a firm look upon her countenance. “This shall not stop me. Je suis vraiment une reine.”

  True to his word, Francis had arranged for delightful entertainment, singers and mimes and jugglers and puppet masters, for the ladies who remained in Calais. And on October 24, I began to prepare Anne’s clothing and jewelry for the arrival of the men the following day.

  My brothers arrived back from Boulogne arm in arm, which was an unexpected and worrisome sight. They soon parted ways, though, Thomas to the alehouse, Edmund to Cromwell’s offices. Henry had arranged for a three-thousand-shot salute to be fired as Francis arrived at Calais, and Francis bowed graciously in recognition of the honor. Francis sent a box to Anne, and I was with her when she opened it.

  “Mon Dieu.” She lifted a stunning diamond out of a satin- encased box of gold. It was huge, an egg, and it held the attention of all in the room. “C’est magnifique.”

  “’Tis worth thirty-five hundred pounds,” Lady Zouche declared, and we broke into fits of giggles.

  “Have you been apprenticing with Master Hayes, the king’s jeweler?” I teased.

  “Mayhap so.” Lady Zouche responded with a high-arched brow and we laughed again. “How else should I know if Lord Zouche does right by me of a New Year’s gift?”

  Anne had her secretary write a note of thanks to Francis and sent it with an expensive illuminated manuscript, embossed in gold, with delicate, intricate designs and in blue ink made of carefully crushed stone. But Anne would not see Francis herself, not yet. That she had reserved for Henry’s great banquet a few days hence.

  The banqueting hall had been magnificently decorated with finely woven Turkish tapestries as well as with cloth of tissue and cloth of silver. At each table were gold wreaths encrusted with precious stones and pearls and the room was lit by dozens of candleholders wrought finely by English silversmiths. Hundreds of beeswax tapers were lit and replaced as needed to keep the room in a warm hum.

  We were but fifty courses into the night on two hundred French and English dishes that had been prepared before my dining companion excused himself. I glanced at Mary Howard and we hid our smiles. The good people of Calais did not pace themselves as courtiers knew to do for Henry’s many courses and often took sick partway through. The room was discontented, though, because Anne was nowhere to be seen. Of course I knew why.

  Someone slipped in next to me. “I see your dining companion has abandoned you. I came to remedy that, if I am welcome.” It was Anthony.

  “You are most welcome,” I replied warmly.

  After the final course was cleared the trumpeter blew his horn. Anne and six of her ladies entered. Anne was finely dressed in cloth of gold with a shimmering, lacelike cloth of gold loosely draped over her gown. They were all masked, of course, I had seen to that; it was part of the tableaux. Anne’s sister, Mary Carey, was by her side, as was her sister-in-law, Lady Rochford; both women knew their fortunes now lay like gown and kirtle with Anne’s. Each lady chose a French man to dance with. Anne, of course, chose King Francis and stayed close with him all night, to Henry’s obvious envy.

  I felt sorry, then, for the Duchesse d’Etampes, Francis’s official mistress, who was also present. For the look upon his face during that dance proved that Francis, too, found Anne irresistible, though she acted with perfect decorum.

  After Anne had opened the dance floor the musicians struck up again and the rest of the guests danced in the great dance chamber. Henry immediately reclaimed Anne from Francis and unmasked her. I smiled at that. It was hard to keep my eyes off of Mary Howard and the Duke of Richmond as they were obviously besotted with one another. It recalled to mind my young love with Will Ogilvy.

  Anthony claimed many dances with me and I even saw Anne and Lady Zouche take notice of this. We talked and laughed and though the conversations never went deep, I enjoyed his presence and humor. He was not classically handsome but the lightness of his face and the sprinkle of freckles across his pale skin were sweet.

  We rested for a moment and he said, “I have fair lodgings here in the Exchequer. A warm fireplace, and I room alone.”

  There was no question mark, and yet a question had been asked.

  I held his gaze. He was a kind friend, a gentle man, soon to be married, who wanted nothing more than to share a few nights in the heated atmosphere of Calais. He assumed, wrongly, that I was no longer a maid, having been married for a number of years. For certes a mood of romance had been set these past weeks.

  I felt the ache of my skin, which longed to be caressed. I tired of awakening in cool, lonely linens by myself. I had no one to share my midnight secrets with. I had never known the intimate pleasures that my sister, Alice, had promised awaited the bride of a good man.

  And yet I could not. I would not. It was not right and, in truth, I did not want it. Not with Anthony.

  I took his hand in mine. “I have fine rooms, too, Sir Anthony. But I am glad to know you are well lodged.”

  He kissed my hand graciously and didn’t immediately slip away as a lesser man would have done, to find more willing arms, but kept company with me till the close of the evening.

  By the time the night ended, all present had been convinced that there was no woman in our realm better suited than Anne to be the consort of our King Hal. She had grace, poise, wit, and a profound intelligence. And it had long been clear that Henry was willing to stake his kingdom for her.

  One night shortly after Francis had returned to France, Anne had her chamber set up with fresh linens and flowers, had spiced wine and fine wafers brought in, and provoked a roaring fire. She gathered me and the Countess of Derby to her but dismissed all others. Shortly thereafter the king arrived with his groom of the stool and close friend of nearly twenty years, Henry Norris, along with a priest whom Anne had pointed out as having been a strong supporter of Luther.

  I looked at Anne. She smiled and said nothing. Instead, Henry spoke.

  “As all are aware, I am a legally unmarried man and the marquess is a legally unmarried woman. She and I, of our own a
ccord, wish to become husband and wife. The good father here”—he indicated the priest—“has agreed to both perform the ceremony and to keep it secret till such time as I see fit to reveal it at court. I trust you’ll do the same.”

  His eyes, wet and beady like a crayfish’s, bore into us. Which of us had the inner fortitude to disagree? It wasn’t I. I nodded my assent, as Anne knew I would.

  The priest performed a short service. We witnessed it. Norris and the priest took their leave, as did the countess. I stayed for a moment to make sure that Anne’s robes were fit for her wedding night and just after.

  “’Tis all satisfactory,” she said, steering me toward the door. The air crackled between them. “Thank you, My Lady.” It was not unkind, but Henry was not a patient man and he’d already waited nigh on six years.

  I kissed her cheek and returned to my cold bed.

  The next morning I arrived later than normal, expecting, rightly, that the king would be loath to take his leave. I helped a love-flushed and exultant Anne into the dressing chamber and then said, “I myself will look after your bedding, madam.” It was hard not to be envious of her just then, she having enjoyed the physical warmth and love the night before that I had denied myself.

  I pulled the coverlet back and spied what I knew I would find. A large blot of blood from the loss of her maidenhood. I called the countess, also a witness to the wedding, to my side and chatted about some pretense. I ensured that she saw the bloodstained sheets. She looked in my eyes, and I looked back at her before speaking to Anne’s laundress. “Please see that these linens are changed immediately.”

  I wanted them to see the blood. Henry’s marriage to Katherine was being dismantled because he claimed she had not come to his bed a maiden. Not one of Katherine’s servants or ladies had rushed to confirm stained sheets the night after her marriage with Henry. Mayhap there had been no stain to confirm. Prince Arthur, after all, had claimed to be lusty and amorous as the court performed the bedding ceremony the night of his wedding to Katherine and afterward had called for water, saying that the previous night he had been in Spain and that being a husband was thirsty work.