But that afternoon, as he covered my body with blazing kisses, I kept seeing the doll maker’s face, as though Remi Jouet’s likeness were painted in vivid colors on the insides of my eyelids. I could not stop thinking about him!
How curious that I should think of him. I had always before yearned for hard bodies, lean and muscular; those were the kind of men who figured in my dreams, partnering me in the most intimate dance of all, when the finery of the ballroom was doffed, and it was only skin against skin, perfume, heat, and sweat, and yet . . . I wanted him as I had never wanted anyone before, and I knew I would never rest content until I had him.
I moaned and groaned and caught at Master Skelton, trying to pull him onto me, into me, as I begged him to come inside and ease me; I was in such torment. But, as always, he demurred. I wanted to pound him with my fists and scream, He wouldn’t be afraid to do it! He may be a doll maker, but he is more man than you are! I never intended the words to be the rather obvious jest reflection shows they were—I can tell by his eyes, his hand around my wrist, and the way he kissed me! But of course I didn’t. John Skelton may have been my first real lover, in the sense that I took all my clothes off and permitted him greater liberties than some hurried fondling and a few stolen kisses, but already I knew better than to discuss one lover with another. Any excitement or adulation I might have felt at being caught between two rival admirers would have soon been transfigured into annoyance. I like excitement, it’s true, but I also like things to be peaceful, free of conflict, fear, and argument.
“I cannot pierce you, Bess”—he always called me Bess even though he knew I loathed it—“ ’twould be the death of me if I, a common poet, deflowered the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.”
The apology and regret in his voice only made me angrier, and it was all I could do not to kick and pummel him from the bed. “But you are not a common poet; you are the poet laureate of England!” I whined, even though I knew a sulky demeanor ill became me.
“But”—sensing my simmering frustration, he lay full upon me and soothingly stroked my hair, as though I were a lapdog frightened by thunder and he was trying to calm me—“I rather would thy lippés bas, than Saint Peter his gates y-pass.” He recited one of his most famous lines, the one wooers often resorted to, as he bent his head and kissed me long and deep.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and thought of Remi Jouet and wished that he were kissing me instead of John Skelton. If only wishes were enough! What I wouldn’t have given at that moment to feel the delicious weight of him upon me, skin against skin, and his lips devouring mine! But at least someone was kissing me, and, for now, that had to be enough. Life often, I find, boils down to making the best of things.
The next morning, as Matilda was finishing lacing me into a black velvet–banded buff velvet gown, while I leisurely sipped the last of my breakfast ale and nibbled daintily upon a honey-drizzled oatcake crowned with succulent, fat raisins, my brother knocked brusquely and came in without waiting for me to call out my permission.
Though only two years older than myself, Thomas, my father’s namesake and heir, was one of those men who even when young seem old. Pinch-faced and crotchety, humorless and dour, stingy with his smiles as well as with his coins, my brother loved full money boxes and worldly honors, like dukedoms and deeds to rich manors, more than he ever did flesh and blood. Even his mistresses were a luxury equated with velvet robes and gold-embroidered slippers; he wanted only the best and discarded his women the way he did old or worn-out shoes. In years to come, when his wife complained of the humiliation she suffered because he had left her bed for her own coarse, red-handed laundress, “a blowsy strumpet,” my brother stripped her bare, bound her wrists and ankles to the four posters of the bed, and donned full armor and rolled upon her naked body until she spat up blood and was bruised all over. She never dared complain about his infidelities again and was naught but the soul of graciousness to her laundress.
Miserly with his words as well as his money and any kindness that might have been lurking, buried deep, within his soul, Thomas merely said I must come with him and took my arm so quickly I scarcely had time to turn back and hand Matilda my nigh empty tankard and snatch up the black velvet hood I had worn the day before.
Without benefit of a mirror, I was still struggling to set it properly on my head and make myself presentable as I hurriedly followed Thomas along the palace corridors, grumbling all the while at his tight-lipped, straight-backed silence.
“You might have the courtesy to tell me what this is about!” I fumed, wishing he were Matilda so I might kick him without fear of repercussions; but kicking their brothers was something highborn well-bred ladies simply did not do, especially in palace corridors where other nobles or their servants might see and spread gossip about it, so I had no choice but to curtail my violent emotions.
Thomas paused outside the door to Father’s lodgings.
“There is someone Father and I want you to meet,” he said simply as he opened the door and ushered me inside.
The first thing I saw, standing directly in front of me, was that lowly, presumptuous clerk I had had the misfortune to encounter the day before. I had forgotten all about him until this moment.
Taut-mouthed and grim, with an indecipherable gleam in his gray brown eyes, there he stood before me in a brown velvet doublet with a discreet shimmer of gold braid adorning the seams.
I froze, bristling with contempt. Had the fellow dared complain of me to my father? I squared my shoulders, bracing myself for a fight. He would not get away with this! How dare he tattle on the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter?
Father was talking, and, to my astonishment, I soon discovered that this person was not a clerk at all but one of the rising stars of the Tudor court, an Esquire of the Body to Prince Henry, with a seat at the royal table, and the privilege of carving the prince’s meat, sometimes entrusted with minor missions abroad on account of his intelligence and excellent French. He was a good friend of my brother Thomas. Indeed they might have been twins; beneath the skin they were two of a kind. Ambition was their guiding star. They had made a pact to work together to rise above the mistakes of the past—the low birth of one and the grave and disgraceful mistake my family had made in the past when they backed the loser, Richard III, in the war that ended with Henry Tudor taking England’s throne.
This Thomas Bullen, I would learn, despite his clerk’s brain, fluent French, and that oily, ingratiating, insinuating, slithering-snake, worshipful manner that appealed so to the vanity of the Tudors, was born of lowly merchant stock.
His grandfather, Geoffrey, a barefoot farm boy determined to make his fortune, left the family farm and walked to London. There he found work as a hatter’s apprentice. Later he eschewed millinery for cloth, becoming one of London’s most successful silk merchants before he was done. But he didn’t stop there. Oh no! The Bullens, with their bull-like tenacity, had ambition instead of blood in their veins; they were on the rise, determined never to fall back down. “I never want to see a haystack again unless I own it,” he often said. Geoffrey Bullen, the silk merchant, married one of his best customers, a fat and frumpy but very rich widow named Denise, who was over the moon with happiness to have a handsome young man in her bed, and only too glad to instruct him in the social niceties; thanks to her, his days of wiping his knife and blowing his nose on his sleeve were soon past. If I really cared, I would light a candle for her. But the exuberant joy of wedded bliss soon wore out poor Denise’s heart; she was not a young woman after all. Denise Bullen was barely cold in her grave before greedy Geoffrey was betrothed to a Bedfordshire heiress, the Lady Ann Hoo. Through this lucrative and fortuitous union, he acquired manors, a knighthood, became an alderman, and later Sheriff of London, and eventually Lord Mayor. When he died he left one thousand pounds to the poor, a showy, vulgar gesture just to display how far he had risen from the barefoot farm boy who had walked to London to make his fortune.
His only son, William, Thomas
’s father, followed in his father’s footsteps, acquiring over time a tart-tongued Irish heiress, Lady Margaret Butler, the daughter of the Earl of Ormonde, for a bride, a few more manors, and a knighthood, and lots more money without having to sully his fingertips with dye from new cloth, even if it was the finest silk, or deal with flighty and indecisive customers, like his father had in his ambitious fortune-seeking youth. Oh yes, with each generation, the Bullens were rising higher and higher. Thomas hoped to trump them all before he left this world.
My father, still in his wine velvet dressing gown, silk-tasseled nightcap, and gold-embroidered slippers, smiled broadly and opened his arms to me, his adored only daughter, and I went into them gladly.
So stunned was I that I didn’t even feel his embrace or his lips upon my cheek. As though from the bottom of the sea, I heard my father speak that lowborn toady’s name—“Sir Thomas Bullen,” coupled with the words betrothed and husband.
I bit my tongue and tasted blood. I felt faint. A red mist obscured my sight. There was a loud humming, like a swarm of angry bees, which made me imagine there was a beehive on my head where my hood used to be. I could hear nothing else, so I did what I was raised to do—my duty—and nodded and smiled while Father’s voice droned on and on, while inside I was raging like a madwoman, screaming and rattling the bars of her cage.
How could my father do this to me, his only daughter, a girl so beautiful and well-bred? The insult was beyond belief! I stood there smiling and blinking, dumb as a cow, willing myself not to fall down and embarrass myself by sprawling at the feet of one who was not worthy to wash my own. And, in those few moments, it was done. My future was decided, like a black velvet curtain being drawn over the bright sun. I was doomed. My father had thrown his most precious pearl down before a swine, and I knew then how truly little he valued me. So much for being adored!
My affianced husband executed a gallant bow and kissed my hand.
Long schooled in ladylike obedience, I had dutifully extended it to him without even realizing what I was doing. I was too stunned to even think of slapping that smile of victory right off his cunning weasel face.
“You snake!” I wanted to scream and trample him beneath my feet, but you would have never known it by my face; I kept smiling.
My father was saying something about my betrothed’s bright future, how “great things will come to him,” a jumble of meaningless words about service abroad and impeccable French, and how high he stood in the royal family’s esteem, but my mind couldn’t string them together in any way that made sense. And then, I don’t even remember how—I have no memory at all of curtsying and leaving that room or walking back down the corridor—I was back in my bedchamber.
Behind my closed door, all hell broke loose. I was as a woman possessed by a hundred demons. I wept and screamed, kicked and stamped, and struck out blindly, at Matilda, the room, and all its luxurious contents, breaking and smashing and tearing everything within my reach.
I ran to the elegant little gilt-embellished oak bookcase Father always insisted travel with me everywhere I went, so the precious knowledge that would make me the perfect wife, mother, and chatelaine of my husband’s castle would always be within reach of my fingertips in case a spare hour for study suddenly presented itself, even if I were only coming up to London, to visit the court, for a few days. I yanked out all the tomes of etiquette, cookery, and housewifery, the herbals, books of household hints, child rearing, and midwifery, and began tearing their pages from the costly blue leather bindings with their titles and my family’s crest and my initials in gilt lettering upon the covers and spines that Father had chosen just to please me.
When Matilda tried to stop me, I turned on her, snarling like a savage beast, wielding the book I held like a weapon. I smashed her nose in with The English Housewife and watched as she fell back with blood spurting from her red and flattened nose. I had broken it, but I didn’t care; at that moment I had more important things on my mind.
Soon the floor was littered with elegant but empty blue leather bindings and hundreds of torn pages, their edges glinting knife-edged with gilt, stained with Matilda’s blood and my furious tears. I kicked at them viciously, sending pages flying, scattering like the wings of a flock of frightened black, white, and gold birds.
Thousands of words, centuries of wisdom, I in that moment rejected; I refused to squander it all on the likes of Thomas Bullen. I had spent my life learning to be perfect—for this! I felt so betrayed! I stood for a long moment, gasping and reeling amidst the ruins of my perfect life, and then I collapsed, weeping on my blue velvet bed amidst the wafting feathers of the pillows I had ripped and the gold fringe I had torn from the bedcurtains and coverlet.
It was so unfair! I was born for far better things than to be the wife of Thomas Bullen! I deserved better than better; I deserved the best! How could life be so cruel and unkind to me when I was so beautiful? I was far above rubies and a silk merchant’s grandson!
2
We lingered in London long enough to attend the royal wedding, but with my own nuptials looming and Thomas Bullen by my side—gazing at me, the prize he had just won, with greedy, gloating, calculating eyes, tallying up the advantages, the prestige, and the connections my highborn pedigree would bring to him—I could not enjoy a single moment of it.
We sat prominently amongst the privileged, as I, the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter deserved, inside St. Paul’s Cathedral and watched the gold-clad Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine, in soft, solemn voices, exchange vows, then joined the jubilant nuptial feast at Baynard’s Castle. But the food might as well have been ashes in my mouth. For once, I didn’t feel like dancing. When I must rise and leave the banquet table to take my part in the masques arranged in honor of the newly wedded couple, I felt as though some mechanics, like clockworks, were inside my body, guiding my velvet shod feet and graceful arms. My heart and head certainly weren’t in it. I didn’t even care about all the new dresses my father had ordered for me, telling me to spend whatever I pleased. Even the velvet-lined coffers the jeweler opened before me left me cold. It was as though some automated force guided my finger, compelling it to point and my mouth to utter the requisite word that as I made my selections. I was merely doing what I had to do because I had to do it. I didn’t really care about any of it.
Even my lover’s kisses failed to rouse me, even when I closed my eyes and dreamed of Remi Jouet’s big, soft, warm, delicious dumpling of a body, still I felt like weeping, and frequently I did. I unloosed the tears and let them fall freely. I knew my time as Master Skelton’s muse was fast drawing to its inevitable end and that he would take my tears as affectionate proof that I lamented this. So I let myself have the comfort of weeping in his arms and being consoled by his kisses and the clever things his tongue could do. Sometimes it proved a good distraction, and sometimes I wept all the harder because it did not. And I feared that such pleasures would soon be forever behind me. I was certain I would never experience the like with Thomas Bullen; I doubted that clod even knew what to do with a woman.
I felt like I had been sleepwalking through life and Thomas Bullen had awakened me with a sudden hard slap across my face. I recognized all these fantasies for what they were now—dreams destined never to come true. Were the doll maker of my dreams and I to meet again how could I even face him after my boast that I would soon be the greatest and grandest lady of the court? In truth, yoked to Thomas Bullen as his broodmare, I would be ashamed to face him. I would feel humbled in his sight. Even though I was a lady and he a tradesman, being Thomas Bullen’s bride would tarnish me and make me feel like a false coin of base metal dipped in gold paint. It was the worst blow my pride had ever been dealt.
I took a perverse delight in slighting my affianced husband. In every way I could, I tried to provoke him, hoping against hope that he would change his mind, that my recalcitrance would make him turn his eyes on some other pedigreed damsel with a sweeter and more obliging and amenable nature.
When my betrothed sent me a bolt of sumptuous green velvet and asked that it be made into my marriage gown, green being a fertile and lucky color for brides, I flung it aside, causing Matilda, with her nose still bandaged, to shriek as it fell perilously near the fire and an edge was slightly singed.
Willfully, I chose red instead; scarlet for the harlot I would rather be than Thomas Bullen’s bride, a passionate color flaming bright as my hatred of him.
I bade my dressmaker make me a bodice, under-sleeves, and petticoat of silver tissue latticed with golden braid punctuated with diamonds and dripping pendant pearls that would shimmer and sway with every move I made. And for my unbound head, a delicately woven filigreed gold circlet blooming with flowers fashioned of pearls and diamonds. I stood firm and turned my back upon her superstitious protestations that these “emblems of tears and sorrow” were unlucky adornments for brides. She pleaded with me to choose something else, but that was precisely why I had chosen them. I had a point to make, and I wanted to make it so plainly and boldly that even an idiot could comprehend the message I was sending to those who would sit in the church and bear witness to my unhappy nuptials. I knew this marriage would bring both sorrow and tears to me. I ordered my bodice cut indecently low and rebelliously pushed my gown down to bare my shoulders and the ripe alabaster mounds of my breasts, remembering all the times John Skelton’s kisses had blazed a trail over that pure white flesh and suckled upon those rosy nipples. Goodbye, Ecstasy! I cried with a doleful sigh. Thomas Bullen’s touch was sure to make my skin crawl like an infestation of vermin, and shrivel and shrink as though his kisses inflicted frostbite or leprosy. Oh how I hated him! He was neither lusty nor handsome, entirely lacking in fun and frivolity. His conversation bored me to tears; he was solely occupied with his lofty ambitions. To his mind, diverting pastimes were not an occasion for respite, pleasure, and mirth, merely something to do in order to rub shoulders with, gain the ear of, and be seen with the right people.
The Boleyn Bride Page 6