Since I was obviously no further use as a broodmare, Thomas decided it was time for me to take my place beside him at court. After all, there was no sense in wasting a wellborn and attractive wife, he reasoned, and there were still ways in which I could be useful to him.
“There will be a new queen soon, and she will want ladies about her, and it will serve me well to have a pair of eyes and ears in her bedchamber,” as he so succinctly put it. “Someone I can trust, whose best interests are the same as my own. I always knew you would be a credit to me, Elizabeth; you are the best investment I ever made.”
But I didn’t give a damn about being useful to Thomas. In truth, if the choice were left entirely to me, I would not throw him a rope if he were drowning. But I would do what I had to do because it was best for me, so I smiled and said, “I will need at least a dozen new dresses, and jewels. . . .”
At that moment I was so happy to be going to court I didn’t even care what price I would have to pay for it, that I would have to give the Devil his due. I was nearly four years past twenty—how fast my youth was flying past!—and seized the chance to finally, at long last, lead the life I had always dreamed of, the one that had been so cruelly denied me when I became Thomas Bullen’s broodmare bride. Soon I would be where I belonged, in a coveted position close to the Queen, to be admired, worshiped, and adored, desired by all the men and envied by all the women. My vanity preened like a peacock as Thomas rambled on, and I nodded and smiled as best becomes a good and obedient Christian wife while brilliant banners of satin and silk and cloth-of-gold and silver unfurled inside my mind alongside the dazzle of diamonds and pearls, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. I didn’t hear a word he was saying; I was too busy planning my new wardrobe.
So I ordered my trunks packed with all haste, kissed my children good-bye, and pretended not to see Mary’s and George’s tears as I told them to be good and mind their nurses and, to a certain extent, their grandmother, and gaily waved back to Lady Margaret as she ran after my coach shaking her fist and shouting, “A cat’s a better mother than you are!” I ignored that mad, old blue-haired witch and sank back contentedly against the velvet cushions of my coach, luxuriating like a beloved and pampered pet cat on its favorite pillow, and trained my sights firmly upon the future.
As soon as my coach rolled into London, I called the coachman to halt, leaned past my maid, Matilda, opened the door, and shoved her out into the muck and mud. I tossed a penny after her and slammed the door and told the coachman, “Drive on!” ignoring her as she wept and ran after me, beseeching me to stop and take her back.
But I didn’t want or need her. Thomas had already found the perfect lady’s maid for me. A smart English girl named Mary, though she preferred to be called Marie, who had accompanied a diplomat’s wife abroad and lived in Paris for a good many years. Her mistress had lately died, and she was in need of a new position when Thomas engaged her to serve me. It was as though yet another of my prayers had been answered. If I was to be a star in the glittering firmament of the royal court, I would certainly need a proper lady’s maid, not that sniveling fool Matilda; from the start, she had been woefully inadequate, and I was glad, at long last, to finally bid good riddance to her.
True to his word, Thomas took me to live at court, had me gowned and jeweled as splendid as a peacock, and all my dreams came true. I was appointed a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen before the toe of my satin slipper had even touched the marble floor of Greenwich Palace.
My father was there waiting to welcome me with a necklace of jeweled honeybees. Though he had frequently sent me gifts, since my marriage I had been icily cordial toward him, but now . . . now that I was where I belonged, I found it so much easier to forgive.
My heart thawed, and I went instantly into his arms. After all, the only mistake he had ever made was in casting his most precious pearl down before that swine Thomas Bullen, and my brother, that dreadful scheming rat Thomas, had probably persuaded him to do that since the Bullen shopkeeper’s spawn was his best friend.
Everyone makes mistakes, and if the Lord Jesus Christ could forgive those who crucified him, surely I, Elizabeth Howard, could forgive my father for marrying me to Thomas Bullen. So I embraced and kissed my father and happily let him hang jewels around my neck. And when he told me he had a cloak of silver foxes he had been planning to give to my stepmother, but seeing me again, after all this time, and being reminded of how beautiful I was, he saw that against my alabaster skin and ebony hair, it would suit me far better than it ever would my plump and pallid blond stepmother, I kissed him again and told him how glad, how happy, I was to “at long last feel the coldness between us thawing and melting in the warm sunshine of forgiveness.”
“Elizabeth,” my father said, “you have made me the happiest of men!”
I was also reunited with my old lover—my first lover—the poet laureate of England, John Skelton. But it was not a happy reunion. He was old and ugly now, more cadaverous than ever, with a vinegary old-flesh stench about him, and his touch repelled me. I shrank from his embraces the way I would if a skeleton had walked out of a charnel house and tried to climb into bed with me. I wanted nothing to do with him and soon stuck up my nose, turned my proud Howard back on him, and bestowed my favors on other men more worthy of me. My beauty was too precious a gift to squander lightly.
But I should have known better than to cross a poet, and he soon showed himself a spiteful creature. Writers can, and often do, wield their pens as weapons and are not afraid to use them against those who have spited, slighted, or scorned them. Words of love and passion can all too quickly turn to words of bitter hate and mockery.
To welcome me back to court, he reworked an old poem, written in the first flush of his love for me, and branded me the false Cressida. Everyone knew the story of the beautiful Trojan woman who had vowed everlasting love to one man, then spurned him and embraced another. Her name was a byword for feminine inconstancy. To compare a woman to Cressida was to call her cunning, wanton, and deceitful, the sort of woman who would not hesitate to change lovers at a moment’s whim and fancy or betray the connubial couch and crown her husband with a cuckold’s horns.
“To My Lady Elizabeth Howard.” He stood up boldly before the court at a banquet one night to recite words supposedly written in my honor, in remembrance of the occasion when I, as a maiden of fourteen, had crowned him poet laureate, but that were in truth like a dagger hidden in a bouquet of flowers.
“To be your remembrancer, Madame, I am bound:
Like unto Irene maidenly of porte,
Of virtue and cunning the well and perfect ground,
Whom Dame Nature, as well I may report,
Hath freshly enbeautied with many a goodly sort
Of womanly features: whose flourishing tender age
Is lusty to look on, pleasant, demure, and sage.
Goodly Cressida, fairer than Polyxena,
For to envy Pandarus’ appetite:
Troilus, I vow, if that he had you seen,
In you he would have set his whole delight:
Of all your beauty I suffice not to write,
But, as I said, your flourishing tender age
Is lusty to look on, pleasant, demure, and sage.”
While some might say having a poem written about her makes a woman immortal—I myself used to think that—now I know it isn’t always so. This—as false Cressida—was certainly not the way I would have wanted to be remembered; now I say I would rather be forgotten!
After the court had finished applauding Master Skelton’s clever verses, I stood up, knowing full well what a beautiful picture I presented in a new gown of glowing sapphire velvet with silver-embroidered silk kirtle and sleeves the pale blue of a perfect sky, and a new necklace of the most exquisite little sapphire birds circling my throat that my father had lately given me, and a diamond crescent moon atop the sleek black coil of my hair.
After most graciously thanking Master Skelton in honeyed tones, and
smiling and nodding to the court, framing my words as a jest, I quoted a line from Chaucer’s own poem about Cressida.
“Alas,” I dolefully sighed, eyes downcast onto my plate of mutton, “of me until the world’s end shall be wrote no good song!”
Led most enthusiastically by the new King, the court laughed and applauded my witty rejoinder, and I smiled and sat down triumphant as my husband nodded his approval. I am proud to say that I resisted the fervent impulse to turn and stick my tongue out at John Skelton. But that would not have been ladylike or becoming of a good Christian woman and wife, and now that I was at court, appearances were more important than ever before.
Smitten with his brother’s widow, despite the seven years between their ages, our ruddy-haired young monarch swiftly made Spanish Catherine his bride.
And I, in a swirling pearl-embroidered confection of a cream and gold brocade gown, with ropes of lustrous pearls and chains of diamonds and gold about my neck, and yet more pearls and diamonds braided into the coils of my sleek black hair, and the horrendous broad and heavy golden Bullen bull collar clasped stiflingly tight about my throat, fastened there by my husband’s own hands as though he were putting a collar on his prize bitch, was amongst those pleased and honored to walk behind her on her wedding day.
Indeed, I had the supreme honor of lacing her into her boiled leather stays before we lifted the gown of shimmering white sarcenet over her head. And I was also the privileged one who held out the velvet cushion from which her proud Spanish duenna, Dona Elvira, lifted the crown of gilded rosemary and placed it on the abundant cascading waves of her golden hair.
How my shopkeeper’s spawn of a spouse smiled when I passed him, following in the wake of Catherine’s gold brocade and ermine train. I thought the strain of such a wide smile would surely tear the corners of his lying, hypocritical, yet oh so flattering, self-interested mercenary mouth.
And he was smiling again the day I walked, through a cheering populace, and showers of blessings and flowers, to Westminster Abbey in ermine-bordered crimson velvet behind Queen Catherine on her coronation day.
I was close enough to hear the gold-clad, diamond-flashing King, when he turned astride his gold-caparisoned white steed and called back to the radiant little woman riding in a golden litter drawn by four white Spanish mules, gowned all in gold with her hair unbound beneath a coronet of gold and jeweled pomegranates, “Everyone loves my golden Queen, but none more so than I!”
Thomas smiled. And I smiled too. I had never been so happy. Oftentimes my husband was so busy with his business about the court, currying favor with the new King and court worthies, or gone on missions abroad, deploying his superb French in the service of King Henry, that many nights we didn’t share a bed.
What bliss it was to lie alone in the marital bed without Thomas Bullen beside me delivering a curtain lecture! And other nights, whilst he slept alone, I was chosen to sleep on a pallet at the foot of Queen Catherine’s bed in case she needed something during the night. Thomas deemed this a very great honor, and I was grateful to our gracious Queen, for I would much rather sleep on her floor than in the most comfortable and luxurious bed in the world if I must share it with Thomas Bullen—I mean Boleyn!
One evening I found myself unexpectedly alone with Queen Catherine in her bedchamber.
She stood in her gold-embroidered amber velvet dressing gown with her luxuriant golden hair rippling down past her waist and an awed expression upon her face. Her white fingers toyed absently with the gold filigree cross at her throat, dripping with pearls and studded with rich amber-gold topazes, as she examined the bountiful array of new gowns, petticoats, cloaks, robes, bed gowns, stays, stockings, blackwork-embroidered shifts of the sheerest white lawn, jewel-bordered headdresses, embroidered and fringed gloves, and the overflowing jewel caskets that covered the huge purple velvet expanse of her immense bed with its tassels and fringe of Venice gold, and every table, stool, bench, and the backs and seats of every chair in the room, and even draped the fireside settle. Dozens of pairs of satin and velvet slippers littered the floor, their toes encrusted with gems and embroidered and beaded embellishments, and riding boots of Spanish leather adorned with gold or silver buckles, embroidery, or fringe.
Everywhere I looked there was the glimmer of gold and the shimmer of silver flashing in the fire and candlelight. I don’t think I ever saw so much gilt embroidery in one room in my life.
With a timid smile, she shyly confided in me, “After my husband, Prince Arthur, died, while my father, King Ferdinand, and the late King Henry, my father-in-law, argued over my dowry and what was to become of me, whether I should return to Spain or remain in England and marry Prince Henry when he came of age, my gowns grew shabby and frayed, as did those of my Spanish ladies.
“What a raggedy, threadbare lot we were, all of us ashamed to be seen! I cannot tell you how awful and ashamed I felt! I was responsible for the ladies who served me. It was my duty to provide them with food, shelter, clothes, and dowries so that they might make good marriages amongst the English nobility. That was why most of them had come with me; they were willing to brave a new and possibly hostile land to try to make a better life for themselves. And, to my great shame, I found that I could give them nothing.
“I was a princess and yet a pauper; I could not even properly clothe myself. I was a virgin widow who did not know if she would ever be a wife again. In those sad, bewildering days we lived on day-old fish and stale bread bought at a reduced price in the marketplace. My proud duenna, Dona Elvira, went out and haggled for these provisions herself. Oh”—Catherine shuddered—“I shall never forget that bread! We wore our arms out sawing through it, and it made our jaws ache to chew it; we all feared we would wear our teeth down to the roots.”
She paused by the fireside settle and held up against herself a gown of plum-hued Florentine velvet, a beguiling deep purple infused with crimson, elaborately embroidered with a raised design of pomegranates in rich threads of silver and gold embellished with pearls and rich purple amethyst and wine-dark garnet brilliants. She looked like an angel with her golden hair flowing down around her fair, round face, smiling gently, with a faraway look in her gray eyes, as she caressed the fine fabric and recalled the grim, uncertain, and shabby days that were now thankfully behind her.
“I implored our ambassador to intercede for me, as my servants and I were ready to go out and beg alms in the streets for the love of God, but both my father and King Henry maintained that I was the other’s responsibility until such time as I remarried, then my husband would see to my needs. I spent my days writing begging letters, and trying to patch my gowns and undergarments, and darning my stockings. There were holes in the soles of my shoes; I patched them as best I could with folded parchment and scraps of leather when I could find them. I could not afford to buy even a length of linen to fashion new shifts, so that beneath my gowns I was often naked. Those I had brought from Spain as part of my trousseau were worn thin enough to read through; there was nothing left of them to mend, and the blackwork embroidery stitched on their hems had unraveled and frayed so that instead of beautiful flowers I now had a frayed mess of unsightly weeds.
“I lived on the edge of the court. No one was ever quite sure how to treat me; with respect always, yes, but they kept their distance just the same, as my position was so uncertain. They did not dare offend me lest I one day marry Prince Henry”—she took up and caressed his miniature framed in diamonds and suspended from a golden chain, and gazed upon his face with eyes filled with the purest love—“and thus become their queen one day. But as this was yet in much doubt, it would not do to fawn and pay too much attention to a person of little importance either. My position was so tenuous no one dared offer me friendship and aid I might never be able to repay. I kept my faith in God, but I confess often I did despair and weep and wonder, What will become of me?
“Yet through it all, like a golden beacon of hope, there was Henry. I watched him grow from boy to man. Whe
n I came to England he had to look up at me, but now I was looking up at him. He towered above me, tall, lean, muscular, and fine, a pillar of strength, mighty as Samson, handsome beyond the poets’ words or the painters’ pigments and brushstrokes; no artist could ever do justice to his life and vivacity, his zest for living life to its fullest. How I adored him!” She clasped his miniature to her breast. “I loved him as I never dreamed I could love anyone! My heart was like a cup overflowing, running over with love, ever replenishing, never exhausted! I prayed every night I would one day be his wife. I never wanted anything more.
“There were stolen moments over the years that I regarded as precious treasures, storing them safe inside my heart, where I could take them out and relive them again and again and remember all those times when he had doled out kind words and given little gifts to me that made me feel special and wanted, like I was important to someone, and helped give me the strength to go on. A little book of devotions, verse, or scriptures; the words of wise holy men and women to give me quiet comfort; a poem or a song he had written; a crystal vial of scent; a pomander ball smelling of cloves and oranges that reminded me of Spain and the trees in the gardens of my parents’ palaces; a pair of pomegranate velvet gloves fringed and embroidered in gold with my initials and pomegranates, the fruit of fertility, because I had chosen it as my own personal emblem; a pink coral rosary, and another day one of turquoise beads; a nugget of amber with an exquisite little flower trapped, preserved for all eternity, inside; a necklace of little golden loaves and dangling silver fish to remind me that the bad fare would be much better one day; a bouquet of May flowers tied with green and white ribbons—the Tudor colors, you of course know; a single white rose, its petals still wet with the morning dew, that he climbed softly through my window to lay upon my pillow as I slept; an orange that filled my palm perfectly; a bunch of black grapes; his hat filled with cherries he had himself picked or a damson tart fresh baked from the palace kitchens; once even a dainty red rosebud exquisitely wrought from marzipan he had asked the pastry cook to make specially for me. I have many of them still, those I could keep.” She turned and pointed to a beautifully carved chest peeping out from the folds of the velvet, satin, damask, and silk gowns draped over it, smilingly calling it her “treasure chest, filled with those worldly things I hold most dear.”
The Boleyn Bride Page 10