by Diana Rubino
Amethyst was especially jubilant, for the King had invited Matthew and the lads to court for the holiday. He was to arrive that evening, having sent her a message from his last stop, which had been Waddesdon Manor, another of his residences northwest of London, where they'd spent the night. If the roads were passable and no more snow fell, they would be on the palace grounds by nightfall.
She rehearsed Christmas carols with the King's Musick, her favorite of all songs. She was in her solar with three other musicians, playing a tune on the virginals composed by Henry called "Greensleeves" when the door swung open and Anne stood there, surrounded by several of her ladies-in-waiting.
Anne wore a tight-fitting coif tied under the chin, and a bright yellow satin gown. Her sleeves billowed out like those of a specter fluttering through the night, slashed at the tips of her fingers. The underskirt was embroidered with a delicate gold braid, accentuating the layers of gold ropes suspended from her neck. A sumptuous three-tiered diamond choker was wound round her throat. The deeply plunging neckline revealed breasts that had been pumped up and pushed together, to create this rather questionable effect, for if she made one jerky move, out they'd pop like the tiny charms concealed within Christmas crackers.
It was the first time she'd seen Anne since returning to court. She tried not to let the sight sicken her.
"Mistress Anne! What brings you to my conservatory?" she asked, using the term she now used for her solar, since Henry had given her the virginals and music stands so that she could practice alone.
"When does Sir Matthew arrive, Amethyst?"
"He should be here after supper, weather permitting."
"I was hoping he could bring me some of his luscious apples that he grows at Kenilworth."
Matthew's gift of apples was a favorite at court, for his orchard produced an abundance of plump, juicy fruit matched by virtually no one throughout the kingdom.
"I expect he will bring some. He always does."
Anne stepped into the room, peered over Amethyst's shoulder at the sheet music and laughed. "Greensleeves! One of the King's more mundane pieces, but I am sure you can master it, Amethyst."
The entire court was aware of Amethyst's musical talents, no one more than Anne, whose simple homespun melodies were given to courtiers' children to learn the rudimentary basics of music, while Amethyst's compositions continually managed to enchant foreign dignitaries as well as the King himself.
"Do you wish to sing with us, Lady Anne?" Amethyst asked, knowing Anne liked to sing solo. When it came to harmonizing with a group, her ear simply shut itself off.
"Nay, I must find some apples! I have such a longing to eat apples! Do you know what the King says?" Her voice intensified, as if she were singing a capella, "He says it means I am with child! But I tell him no. No! It couldn't be...no!"
Before any of them could reply, Anne burst into laughter and ran from the room, taking two of her ladies by the arm, slamming the door behind her with her foot.
"God's truth, you do not think she is with child!" Mark Smeaton exclaimed. Apparently, neither Anne nor Henry had announced their impending arrival to any of the courtiers. Amethyst certainly didn't intend to be the one to herald that declaration.
"I am not sure, but she likes to tease people, keep them guessing about her. The King finds it awfully amusing as well," Amethyst replied, rummaging through the sheet music for more carols.
"But we shall see how amused he is when Anne delivers him of a girl," she murmured, voicing her desperate wish, more to herself than to the others. She counseled herself to bide her time and wait. She had seen many women throw themselves at the King, but none had stuck. This one would weary him too one day, she was sure of it. It was all a matter of time with Henry
With that consoling thought, she turned back to her rehearsals and reminded herself that time would bring her another eagerly awaited event, her nephews' arrival.
Matthew arrived that evening with the lads in tow, two trunkloads of clothes and gifts, and baskets of apples. Anne was pleased and she did not hesitate to demonstrate her appreciation in a most flirtatious manner which set both Matthew and Amethyst frowning.
At supper that evening, the great hall glittered with candles, and gold-and-silver tissue graced each table. Golden plates and goblets twinkled as wine flowed and servitors brought in tray after tray of steaming meats, game, and vegetables.
The courtiers joked, laughed, and danced joyfully as the King's Musick played a jaunty tune upon their lutes and recorders.
"Matthew Gilford, you are the handsomest man at court." Anne flirted openly as they sat upon the dais, while the King was preoccupied with Cromwell in discussing the divorce, their heads together in deep discussion.
"Thank you so much for the apples, for they are the most delectable in the kingdom. So red, so juicy, so succulent." Her ubiquitous touch of French played about the vowels, elongating them, rolling them round her tongue like fine wine.
Anne's long fingers cupped his chin, ran down his arm and casually brushed his knee, while Amethyst sat at his other side. Patiently letting Anne enjoy herself, Amethyst sipped her wine, daintily clasping the goblet between thumb and forefinger, while the other hand enfolded Matthew's, his fingers tightening round hers in a reassuring squeeze under the tablecloth.
Later as Matthew and Amethyst shared a drink in her receiving chamber, he mused over the incorrigible Anne.
"What a flirt she is!" he commented, sipping ale from a goblet. "The King will have a jolly good time keeping her in check."
"Anne has been wearing Catherine's jewels and acting very much like a queen when in the presence of court. How she behaves alone with the King is a different matter."
She laughed, remembering Henry's bellyaching one evening. 'She squawks and bellows and balls her fists and throws things to the floor whenever I mention Catherine, Mary, or Wolsey,' he'd said. 'At first I found it so girlish and pretty. Now I remove myself from her presence when she goes into these tirades. 'Tis my fault,' he sighed. 'I have been neglecting her, but now I must train her to act in a more royal, subdued fashion worthy of a Queen of England. She's just too Continental...too Frenchified!'
"But how about his need to marry a princess?" Matthew asked. "She's no more than the daughter of a Kentish knight. Tom Boleyn is far from royalty. You are more royal than she!"
"Aye, perhaps I was born closer to the crown than she," Amethyst replied. "But the Boleyns do have some royal blood in their veins as well. They are direct descendants of Edward the First. Her father was Henry's envoy to the Netherlands. He holds Thomas Boleyn in high favor. The family's well connected. She's not a serving wench he stumbled upon in the buttery."
"I still can't fathom how this came about so quickly?"
She sighed. "When I decided I could wait no longer for him and returned home, she caught his eye, mystified him with her aloofness, and he, in that characteristic Henry style, plucked her up, decided she was the most suitable of the eligible court wenches to breed his heirs, ordered Wolsey to forbid her marriage to Henry Percy, and here she is."
"She's not much to look at, with that black hair and all those gowns with the cinched waists she brought over from the French court. Such a contradiction to her dark, enigmatic disposition."
"Did you see the claw-like nub jutting out from her little finger?"
"Nay," he replied. "Her hands were touching parts of me that were not in full vision."
"Well, those who like her not call it a witch's mark. Imagine!" she laughed. "If it were I in that position, I would be the witch of whom the scandalmongers tattle!"
"So what does he see in her, then?"
She shrugged. "A conquest first, and a son, pure and simple. He sees in her his son. But we shall see what she does bring forth."
"You want him back, don't you?" Matthew asked quietly.
She nodded. "Aye, with all my heart. 'Tis just a matter of time. And anything can happen. Who knows, she might fall from grace as easily as she stumbled
into it."
But by January Amethyst's hopes were dashed, for the King married Anne Boleyn as soon as he was certain that she was indeed with child.
No one outside the intimate confines of court was privy to the information, and the ceremony was performed in secret lest the Pope refuse the bulls for Cranmer's consecration.
As the King's case was still pending in Rome, Cranmer was able to bypass the papal authority and declare the marriage annulled.
The King finally carried out Cromwell's plan. England was now declared an Empire under a monarch supreme over Church and State. Many of the monasteries were now in ruins, monks scattered throughout the kingdom.
The King still insisted he had been living in sin with Catherine, who was now banished to Ampthill, and was Princess Dowager by an act of Parliament. In May, sentence was given by Archbishop Cranmer for the King's divorce.
This was followed by Anne's coronation, a solemn affair, as the masses ventured out and watched out of curiosity rather than reverence for their new Queen. A hostile hush hung over London like a dark thundercloud as the procession wound its way toward Westminster Abbey.
Fifty barges were decorated with festive flags, streamers, and banners for their trip down the Thames to Greenwich where they were to meet and escort the Queen's barge to the Tower. A foist carrying a red dragon led the way, spitting fire and emitting a loud cacophony of sounds.
The lead barge carried musicians playing trumpets, clarions, crumhorns, and viola-da-gambas. Next to the Lord Mayor on this barge was Anne's device, a white-crowned falcon, sitting upon a root of gold with red and white roses, surrounded by singing virgins.
When the barges reached Greenwich, Anne appeared, dressed in cloth of gold, attended by her retinue of ladies. The blast of guns rang out as her barge came gliding downriver, accompanied by the barges of other noblemen, including her father.
As she arrived at the Tower, a booming cannon shot rang out and the Lord Chamberlain took her inside. Amethyst joined the King and Cromwell at Baynard's Castle, a royal residence by which the procession would pass, and watched it all just as she had at Henry's coronation, but the mood was not the same.
The royal purple, blue, and crimson velvet banners, canopies, and caparisoned horses were all there, but there was none of the jubilation, the drunken revelry outwardly displayed at the appearance of the new king.
The streets were railed on one side, graveled to prevent the horses from slipping, and decorated with tapestry, carpets, arras of tissue, gold, and velvet. Anne's procession was led by twelve attendants of the French ambassador in blue and yellow, followed by gentlemen, knights, judges, Knights of the Bath in violet, doctors, abbots, noblemen and bishops, the Lord Chancellor, the archbishop of York, of Canterbury, every other noble of the land, all clothed in crimson velvet.
Amethyst looked at it all in wide-eyed wonder and detested the very sight of it at the same time. "This should have been for me, all for me," she murmured as she gazed out the window.
Anne rode upon a glittering litter of white cloth of gold with a canopy embellished by four gilt staves and silver bells. It was led by two palfreys in white damask. The crowd turned to stare with interest, as if eyeing an oddity, and at the same time the sheer silence displayed their obvious disdain.
She was clearly with child by now, but was dressed completely in pure white, as if defying anyone to question her honor at this point. She wore a surcoat and mantle of white cloth of tissue furred with ermine, her hair hanging under a coif with a circlet of glittering diamonds. Behind her were seven ladies on horseback, her chamberlain and master of horse, chariots followed by gentlewomen on horseback, all in sumptuously hued velvets and silks.
The streets were adorned with pageants, including children dressed as merchants, fountains shooting with wine, statues of mythical creatures, singing, dancing, and reveling. It was a fine show, but none of it came from the heart.
The next morning, Amethyst and Henry went to Westminster Hall to await the Queen's arrival. At nine o'clock, dressed in a robe of purple velvet trimmed with ermine, Anne entered the hall, then began the procession to Westminster Chapel.
Followed by the nobles of the land came Anne under a canopy borne by four men, her train carried behind her by the old duchess of Norfolk. Her ladies followed at the end of the procession. The archbishop of Canterbury began the service, and she lay prostrate before the altar.
He anointed her on the head from the ampulla. The singing of the Te Deum rang through the chapel.
After the service, the procession returned to Westminster Hall, and the banquet followed.
Amethyst, with the King and several ambassadors, sat in a private closet in the cloister where they observed the banquet.
"This will be you in a few months' time," Henry assured her, embracing her lightly. "Once all of my great matters are in order."
Her heart fluttered with excitement and she prayed once again that Henry would get naught but a girl from Anne.
The next day there were jousts at the tilt before the King's Gate, and still more banquets. Amethyst wondered what anyone would have left to eat for the rest of the year at the rate they were consuming delicacies.
Amethyst was presented to Anne formally, and curtsied to her as a loyal subject, though it rankled a good deal. As badly as Amethyst knew it should have been the other way round, she could not resent Anne. She had no one to blame but herself. And possibly Henry, but again, he was doing what he saw as his duty.
What appeased her was the certainty that Henry would divorce Anne as soon as this child entered the world, and the next coronation would be hers. She felt sure the event would be a far more joyous one, for the people could not possibly resent her, since she would not be guilty in their eyes of having ousted their well-loved Queen.
As Anne approached her confinement, Amethyst could see Henry was uneasy and edgy; his appetite was sporadic and he seemed to be drinking more than eating. Goblets of wine flowed freely while trays remained piled with food on the dais and in his chambers, as he told his Lord Steward's servers, "Leave it, I'll eat it later."
He was moody, and discharged Margaret Pole from her duties as Mary's governess when Margaret refused to give up Mary's jewels, but she continued to look after the Princess at her own expense.
"I was only going to give those jewels to you, Amethyst," the King said early one evening as they picnicked on the grounds of Hampton Court in the setting sun. For the first time in her life, she'd eaten more than he in one sitting.
"Please, my lord, I do not want any more jewels! They belong to Mary! Give them to her, and let my Aunt Margaret and Mary enjoy each other's company. Mary needs that motherly companionship, and Margaret is so good with her."
"As you wish." He took another gulp of wine and looked at the simple pearl around her neck, the first token gift he'd ever given her. "Why do you not wish lavish jewels and radiant gold shimmering from your neck and wrists like Anne does? She seems to thrive on it the way normal people thrive on the most basic foods. She devours the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds faster than I can have them made up for her."
"Perhaps Anne will not feel that way in the next few weeks," Amethyst said. "When she is feeling the pangs of childbirth, I am sure glitter will be the last thing on her mind."
"Amethyst, you are truly the earth's most glittering jewel," he said. As she reached over to kiss him, his eyes brightened for the first time in many months. "And to think I almost lost you. Look at the punishments I have had to endure so far. A feeble girl, a strong, healthy bastard boy, a wife I do not love, and a woman I do love whom I cannot marry. Lord knows, Anne is praying for a son as if her life depended on it."
She detected an ominous note, but did not question him about it. They simply sat under the sky striped with fingers of alabaster, purple and pink, listened to the crickets chirping, and said nothing more. The only thing tearing at her heart was that it could have been her. They could even now be man and wife, with their own child to look f
orward to shortly. Now she would have to wait even longer to win Henry's love for her own at last, and live the life they had always dreamed of together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Greenwich, September 7, 1533
The King burst into Amethyst's rooms in a fit of rage causing her to drop her hairbrush as she started back. "What is it, my lord?"
For a moment she wondered if her sister… But no, in recent months she had heard no rumblings of ambitious discontent from that quarter. The night was as clear and peaceful as the soft hyacinth-scented breeze wafting through the window.
"It's a lass, for God's sake! A wench! Nan brought forth a girl! What the Hell am I to do with another female! A useless, useless female. I am cursed, I am convinced of it now!"