To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

by Byrd, Sandra

  “Thank you,” I said, my tone softened. She left and I rolled over in the linens and stared at the cold winter moon. I was at least honest enough with myself to recognize why I had snapped. It was myself I was irritated with. I had not been able to exorcise every superstitious thought from my heart, either, and the worry had crossed my mind about death happening in threes too.

  Henry’s joust had been planned for January 24, and that morn I arrived in my lady’s chamber to help her dress for the event. The king would be wearing one of her favors, and I’d had a dress made of similar fabric, fashioned so it was clear to all present whose favor the king rode under.

  When I arrived in her apartments, though, she was still in bed. “I am afraid I am unwell,” she said.

  “But, lady—the king’s joust!” I insisted. Nan Zouche looked at me, urging me on. The king did not like to perform without an audience; he played to the ladies, of whom his wife was foremost.

  “’Tis all the activity and chatter round Katherine’s death,” Anne said. “I shall send my regrets to the king, with a note, and hope to lie here and recover my health before the dinner tonight.”

  She sent her secretary with the note, and I and many of the other ladies followed to the jousting arena shortly thereafter. The king did not have Anne’s favor on his lance. ’Twas not certain whose favor he rode under, but the plain fabric looked distressingly like the light brown gown on Jane Seymour.

  He turned back to the field, ready to meet his challenger at the lists, when all of a sudden his great horse stumbled. The crowd let out a collective gasp and then many screamed as both Henry, wearing over one hundred pounds of armor, and his horse fell heavily to the ground. Shockingly, the horse fell partly on top of His Majesty.

  “Help us, help now!” one of the noblemen near the field called out. Several men threw off their own armor and ran to the king’s side and many others streamed from the arena to the field. They lifted the horse, who was frothing at his bit with his eyes rolling back into his head, and pulled the king out from under him. Tearing off Henry’s armor, one checked for a pulse.

  “Someone tell the queen!” a call went out, and I saw Norfolk dash back toward the palace. I stood of a moment, looking at His Grace, willing him to stand up, to sit up, to call out. He did none of them, rather continued to lay without consciousness.

  “Come.” Nan Zouche grabbed my arm. “We must to Anne!”

  I picked up my skirts and we ran toward Anne’s rooms. We were still well down the hall when we heard her wailing. I pushed open the door to see Norfolk trying to talk sense to her.

  “He’s dead! Dead!” Anne cried out, and held her hands in her hair, clutching great clumps of it but not tearing it. The tactless Norfolk, always ready to crow bad news, had told her the king was dead!

  I took her face in my hands and stared in her eyes. “He is not yet dead, madam. He has lost his senses, but he may yet regain them.”

  She looked at me, eyes going from wild to guarded. “Is it true?”

  “Yes, dearest,” I said. “He is fine. Now calm yourself for the babe’s sake, if not for your own.”

  She breathed heavily for another few minutes whilst Lady Zouche rushed Norfolk from the room. Anne settled and within hours someone had sent word that the king was now conscious and speaking but badly bruised.

  I spent the night in Anne’s chambers, brushing her hair, whispering about light topics to bring a smile to her face. It was first light when she called to me. “Meg.”

  I awoke from my chair near her bed and came to her side. “Yes, Anne?”

  “I feel a trickle of blood down the inside of my thigh,” she whispered. “’Tis yet only a trickle. I need linen. And prayer.”

  For whatever reason, it seemed as though the Lord Jesus had stoppered His ears against our many entreaties, because soon thereafter the trickle turned into an ooze and by the fourth day, it was clear that the queen was going to have to do the mighty, sorrowful travail of delivering a child which would not live to take a breath. Our king was delivered from death just afore his child was ushered into it.

  The midwife had been called. After the baby’s body had been delivered Anne called out, “Was it a boy?”

  The midwife looked at the tiny child, crossed herself, and then said, “Yes, madam. A son.”

  The second death of the new year.

  Anne burst out in tears, long jagged sobs from which she would not be pulled back. Four days of weariness and birth work coupled with the certain knowledge of how her husband would take the news fused into an animal-like wail. I sat on one side of her and my sister, Alice, on her other. After some time she looked up at us, composed herself, and said, “I have miscarried of my savior.”

  Henry was well enough to come to visit her within days. We had her made up to look as lovely as could be, but she was still wan from the delivery. She dismissed us, but I and my sister remained, unseen, in her closet nearby. I wanted to be at hand should she need me when the king took his leave.

  He came into the room, dismissed his men, and, from the foot of her bed, said, “I see that God does not wish to give me male children. At least, not by you.”

  “I am sorry, sire. It was my worry for you, my worry for your well-being when you had been unhorsed.”

  “You would have done better by me to have kept your peace and nurtured my son rather than let your emotions run untamed and cause his certain death.”

  I held my breath. Anne—causing the child’s death? Could he not find it possible to offer her a word of comfort or hope as he had before?

  “I do keep my peace, sire. But ’tis hard to do when I see how you favor others with that which rightfully belongs to me.”

  She spoke of Mistress Seymour, of course, and all the others that had come before her.

  “Nothing belongs to you, madam, you understand, except for what I give you. You would do well, as I once warned you, to shut your eyes and ignore, as your betters did.”

  I could hear Anne sit up in bed. “Katherine shut her eyes because she loved you not. Yea, she may have served you. She was obedient. She did as she was told and as was expected. Because she did not love you, Henry, as I do, she could afford to shut her eyes; it pained her not to shut her eyes. But when I shut my eyes I see my husband in bed with another woman and I cannot bear it!” By now she was shrieking.

  Please, Lord Jesus, close her mouth. Close it. Henry hated a scene unless he was throwing it.

  She quieted herself and finished softly, “My heart breaks when I see you with others.”

  Henry stood for a moment, shocked, I was sure, that anyone was speaking to him thusly. If her words moved him, he didn’t show it in his response. “I will see you when you are well,” was his reply. Within minutes the door to her chamber closed and I went to her. She accepted my arms and words with nary a response.

  By March my sister told me that the king had sent a purse of gold to Jane Seymour, along with a sealed letter. An invitation, all were certain, to join him in his chamber.

  Mistress Seymour returned the letter to him unopened—thereby deftly sidestepping a direct answer to his invitation—but did reply that as a gentlewoman born of good and honorable parents, and she with an unsullied reputation, she must refuse His Majesty’s gift. She would be prepared, however, to accept a gift from him upon her marriage. She withdrew from court to stay at the home of Sir Nicolas Carewe, who had turned into one of Anne’s deadliest enemies.

  Henry was noted to be moping about at Jane’s absence.

  And then it was April, not March, that was in like a lamb, out like a lion.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Year of Our Lord 1536

  Greenwich Palace

  In early April, afore the Easter celebrations, Anne held a quiet dinner in His Majesty’s chambers with some intimate courtiers and noblemen. Subdued laughter and talk wound quietly through the dolorous Lenten evening as we mingled while waiting for the king to arrive; he had been called into a last-minute discussio
n with his chamberlain. Anne made sure all were comfortable with sugared plums and sweetmeats and wine before seating herself next to Cromwell. ’Twas clear to me that their once-warm friendship had suffered a draft of some sort and I sorrowed it because she needed his protection. I chatted with my brother Thomas, with one ear to Anne in case she needed assistance.

  And she did. Though in this matter, I could not help.

  “So, Master Cromwell, I understand that the dismantling of the monasteries is well under way. I’d heard that more than half have already been turned over to the crown,” she said, ensuring that he knew she was kept informed. Her voice was light and she kept a smile on her face, but all who knew Anne could tell the difference between her light court banter and her prose with a purpose. I admired the fact that she consistently upheld her causes but wondered if, in light of her not-yet-mended relationship with the king, it might not have been wiser to keep the conversation to lighter matters and win some allies.

  “Yes, madam, ’tis true,” Cromwell replied. “And as we share a faith, for certes you are glad that good English money no longer flows to Italy to support His Majesty’s enemies.”

  “I am very pleased of that indeed,” Anne said. “Of course the monasteries and other religious houses were intended to help the poor and educate the people. Am I to understand that will continue to be their purpose under the Church in England? I have of late appointed my chaplain, Matthew Parker, to oversee education at Stoke-by-Claire. I endeavor to see the monies from these houses, as they become available, do good to the people of His Grace’s realm.”

  Cromwell shifted in his seat but he did not retreat from his position. I suspect he knew he had the king’s approval for the direction he was taking. “We all seek the best possible outcome for the king, madam. At present, I believe that will be found by shoring up His Majesty’s coffers and winning and retaining the goodwill and support of the noblemen—especially those in the north.”

  “I agree those matters are of great import, but I sharply disagree with using religious houses to achieve them,” Anne said, “and I shall actively work to see that the Lord’s money is put to benevolent purposes.”

  Cromwell dipped his head. It seemed as though Anne took that for a capitulation, but actually, it was an acknowledgment of the king, who had entered his chamber. From the look on his face he was in a foul mood.

  “Lord Cromwell.” Henry clapped Cromwell on the back. “How goes my business?”

  “It goes well, sire,” Cromwell said after we’d all righted ourselves from prostrate positions. The king took his seat next to Anne and greeted her properly. “I was sharing with your most beloved wife that we are using the monies gained from liquidating properties to enrich Your Majesty, where all good English money should have ended up all along. I shan’t let anyone stand in your way.”

  “Yes, of course,” Henry said. “Good work, man.” He turned and signaled to one of his menservants. “And now, we are hungry.” The first of seventeen fish courses was brought out. I noticed that but for a small slice of carp and a tiny forkful of eel Anne ate nearly nothing. She’d looked particularly wan since the loss of the last baby. Henry did not, as were his usual custom, offer her the best bits from his plate first.

  Master Cromwell never looked in her direction again that night. Anne had alienated a powerful man. Like Katherine before her, did she not realize that in a battle of wills with His Majesty the challenger would always lose? I suspected that she would not give up, though, as she, too, had a call and remained faithful to it. She pleaded with the king on behalf of the wealth of the abbeys for days afterward to little avail, except to irritate him further.

  If she didn’t understand where things stood between them at the beginning of the month, for certes, she did at the end.

  Late in Easter week my brother Thomas slipped into my room after quickly knocking. I was already in my dressing gown for the night and Edithe had left.

  “Thomas!” It was unusual for him to appear at my chamber at nighttime.

  “I have overheard something that you must pass on to Anne,” he said. He drank down an entire cup of ale and then told me. “Nicolas Carewe is planning to bring Anne down. He’s got Cromwell on his side now—told Cromwell that his plans for the abbey and monastery money would never be approved by Anne and that all knew when Anne was in favor things went the way she directed the king. That Cromwell couldn’t take a chance on Anne becoming pregnant again and winning His Majesty to her side.”

  “And Cromwell believed him?” I pulled my robe around me.

  “He did,” Thomas said. “He has risen a long way from the smithy and seems, in his own eyes, anyway, invincible. He likes that noblemen such as Carewe play to his ego. Carewe has promised that if Lady Jane Seymour is made queen she will be pliable to the will of Carewe, who will remain pliable to Cromwell’s. Carewe also reminded Cromwell of the fate that Anne had wrought on Wolsey, who had, as you know, been in Cromwell’s position for many years.”

  “Henry wrought that on Wolsey, not Anne.” I sat down in my chair. “Exactly how do they expect to get Anne out of the way so Mistress Seymour can poach her stag?”

  Thomas looked at me. “I know not for sure, because as they approached this juncture in the conversation they noticed I was about them, and all know, of course, my feelings for Anne. I do know that Carewe whispered ‘adultery’ to Cromwell.”

  “And adultery against the king, under the new acts, is treason.”

  “A capital offense,” Thomas agreed.

  Capitalis. My Latin rushed back to me. Of the head.

  “I must keep a low profile myself now, and, sickeningly, ingratiate myself with Cromwell so I myself am not suspect. But warn Anne to have a care where other men are concerned.”

  He slipped out as quietly as he arrived. I could not go to Anne that night without drawing undue attention, but I did ensure an early arrival at her apartments the next day. The news didn’t seem to surprise her but did further aggravate her uneven nerves.

  A week or more hence a young musician, Mark Smeaton, was mooning about Anne’s chambers, flirting with one woman or the next in between the songs that he played on his lute. He was a young lad, not yet twenty, and unschooled in the ways of the court though quick to pick up on courtly flirtation. When he tried it on Anne, however, she batted him down and he moped around playing melancholy songs. Finally, she could take it no more.

  “Why are you so sad, Master Smeaton?” she asked.

  He sighed, looked longingly in her direction, and replied, “Ah. ’Tis no matter.” He mooned after her in a distressingly familiar way and she needed to put it to rights.

  “You may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman,” she said, “because you be an inferior person.”

  Truly, a man with any manners at all would not have placed her in such a position.

  “No, no, madam,” he replied. “A look sufficed me; and thus fare you well.” He took his lute, and his charms, to Mistress Shelton, who received him as coldly as Anne did or worse.

  Where Sir Henry Norris was concerned, though, Madge Shelton was not so ready to forgive nor forget an offense. It seems she had not forgotten being snubbed at Wolf Hall, and rather than blame her own loose shift for a lack of suitors she had decided to blame Anne.

  “Tell us, Sir Norris, why have you not yet taken a wife?” Madge asked in her pretty voice one evening over cards.

  “I would tarry for a time,” Norris said.

  Madge laughed loudly, as did some of her friends. “Sir, a time? By your age many a man would now have sons and daughters ready to be placed at court.”

  I held back a tart retort that many women her age would, too, because of course it could be directed back at me.

  “Mayhap you prefer a woman who is already taken?” Madge badgered, looking at Anne. “A queen, mayhap?” Norris and Anne had enjoyed one another’s company, but only as friends; she played cards or engaged in light banter with him, as she, and all of
us, did with many courtiers.

  There was an audible gasp in the room. I recalled to mind that Madge’s mother was the governess to Mary, Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, whom many hoped to restore to the succession. Was she pushing Anne?

  “Then you look for dead men’s shoes!” Anne snapped. “For if aught were to come to the king but good you would look to have me? Foolishness!”

  The room grew silent. Naught had been charged afore Anne spoke, but under the new laws, by thus speaking of the king as dead, trying to forestall an accusation, Anne had rather stepped into a previously nonexistent trap. Norris knew it.

  “If he should have any such thought,” he said, “I wish my head were off.”

  “Begone!” Anne said, clearly shaken by the direction of the conversation. Norris fled from the room and one by one the ladies and gentlemen dispersed as well, leaving only Nan Zouche; my sister, Alice; and me to serve Anne.

  Madge Shelton was one of the first to leave, of course, arm in arm with Jane Rochford. It was not difficult to guess where they were going. Sir Nicolas Carewe.

  On April 30, Master Smeaton was arrested. No one spoke of it, but rumor filtered back that he was being racked in order to force a confession of adultery with the queen. As the king prepared for a week of celebrations, including a May Day joust, he introduced Anne to some visiting ambassadors as “my entirely beloved wife.”

  His eyes, though, were dead. For the first time I felt that mayhap all was truly lost.

  That night, Anne and I were in her rooms. “What shall I do?” she asked me. Her long, tapered fingers were clenched into fists. She was too thin, and there were ash smudges under her eyes.

  “Can you go to him quietly, speak of your love?” I asked.

  “He will not see me privately. In public, he acts as though all is well but he knows, and I know, that there is a wall between us. A wall he has placed.”

  “Does he see Elizabeth?” I asked. We had previously judged the king’s affections for Katherine by his willingness to see and act kindly toward Princess Mary.