Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

by Malyn Bromfield

  Goodwife Smedley’s spare frame shudders. ‘Fie, fie, the old priest did everything as the bishop ordered. He has grown so thin of late, I verily believe that the sickness has taken him from us. The Lord takes whom he pleases, priest or pauper, old and young, even tiny babes.’

  Widow Purvis and I say nothing remembering Goodwife Smedley’s two little children who died of the wasting sickness in the summer.

  ‘Pray, cease your talk of the death of children,’ Goodwife Trinder chides and looks in my direction. ‘Cannot you see our neighbour here is big with child.’

  ‘If the mother is worried her unborn child will suffer for it,’ Goodwife Napier declares.

  White Boy pulls my arm and we go home. We eat our pottage and wait.

  ‘Surely, the master will come soon to read the Bible,’ White Boy says.

  We sit idly, doing nothing. There is no work to do on the Lord’s day.

  ‘Is there no sign of the master?’ White Boy asks. ‘Why does he not come?’

  I go to the window and see Goodwife Trinder standing at her door. We are not the only ones wondering where my husband has gone and when he will return.

  ‘The master knows how much you enjoy our Sunday Bible readings and the religious debates which follow. He would not stay away without good cause,’ I say. ‘He has work to do and a living to earn.’

  ‘It is strange, the priest disappeared and the master gone abroad upon the same day.’

  I had been thinking the same thought but do not tell him so.

  ‘Mistress, will you read a chapter from the Bible today?’

  ‘I know no Latin, White Boy. The words inside the master’s Bible are a mystery to me.’

  ‘I meant, your English New Testament,’ White Boy replies. ‘The door is locked. No one will hear us.’

  ‘You would not ask this of me if you feared the fire as I do.’

  ‘Then, pray continue, mistress, with your storytelling. Queen Anne Boleyn’s spaniel has fallen to his death from a window in the Queen’s apartments. An open window in January? In winter? How could this happen?’

  I do not answer. Accidents happen everywhere, even in royal palaces. In the kitchen a spit boy burns his arm. A water carrier slips into the river and drowns. My lord falls from his horse in the lists and it crushes him. In the bake house, a baker falls into the big bread oven and burns. Where are the boys in their thick ox hide aprons? The boys who are paid pennies to reach inside the ovens with their long rakes and scrape away the burning embers. Who knows why the baker has left his kneading to do the boys’ work.

  ‘You were telling of the winter of 1534 to 1535,’ White Boy prompts.

  ‘By summer many people had died for their religion. People were as shocked by King Henry VIII’s persecutions in that year as they are today by his daughter’s burnings,’ I tell him.

  Chapter 20

  May and June 1535

  In spring, when the mayflowers bloomed, the heads of the prior of the Charterhouse and four Carthusian monks were set upon spikes and their mutilated corpses were hung around the city of London for all to see. It was treason not to accept King Henry as head of the English church and his issue with Anne Boleyn as his heirs. Queen Anne’s father, her brother, her uncle Norfolk and the King’s bastard son, Fitzroy, were all present at the executions.

  ‘The Boleyns are showing their strength,’ Father said. ‘They wouldn’t do this unless they needed to. A lord doesn’t muster his troops unless there’s enemies on the march.’

  ‘They are supporting the King and his new laws,’ I told Father.

  ‘King Henry is terrifying his people to force them to submit to his laws. The monks are an example for all to see and fear.’

  ‘This is Anne Boleyn’s doing. We would not have these laws if she had not bewitched the King and beguiled him into marriage,’ Mother said.

  Mother and father knelt by their beds that night and prayed for the souls of the monks who had died and for the poor people who would not now have their help.

  Around this time the burnings began. It was all everyone talked of. First, we heard that the French King was burning Reformist heretics. Soon after, burnings began in England and all the talk was of fourteen Anabaptists who were burned at the stake at Smithfield.

  ‘There were women amongst them,’ Mother said. ‘They fled to our country to escape persecution in the Lowlands hoping to live safely here. I suppose they believed King Henry to be sympathetic to their beliefs because he has broken with the Pope in Rome.’

  ‘The clerk of the kitchen says that Evangelicals have been burned for heresy in other towns in England,’ Father told us. ‘It’s the punishment heretics should expect.’

  ‘Death by burning is a terrible thing.’ Mother hid her face in her hands as if to blot out the image from her mind.

  ‘What is King Henry’s religion?’ Father demanded. ‘He burns Lutherans for heresy and punishes Papists with a traitor’s death. If he isn’t a Catholic and he isn’t a Gospel lover, what is he?

  Will all his subjects go to hell with him?’

  This was what worried Father most, that the Pope threatened the King with excommunication. He believed that King Henry had made heretics of us all.

  Father was different these days. Everyone could tell that. He had always been a serious man about his religion, even in the old days when everyone was Catholic but lately, Constantine told me, the sergeant of the bake-house was seen to be visibly trembling when father had angrily refused to change a shift because he would be unable to attend Lady Mass before noon. These days, Father’s large, hunched frame gave him a cowed, defeated look that battled with an anger plain for all to see. Where once a hearty laugh and a gentle cuff on the ear would have sufficed to curb the antics of a spirited baker boy, nowadays there was a grimness about Father that kept the boys aloof. It was as if he had ceased to have any other feelings excepting anger and despair.

  Even when Aunt Bess took us all by surprise with her news, Father seemed untouched.

  ‘Married?’ I exclaimed. ‘How? She’s older than you.’

  ‘Courted and married without a word or even a hint to her family?’ Mother was at the brazier stirring custard in a pan.

  ‘Well, Lord bless us. A secret love affair and her a widow with a son,’ Mistress Pudding said.

  ‘But she only knows women and their husbands through her midwifery. What man has she found, at her age, to court her?’ I asked.

  ‘A waterman,’ Father said bluntly, ‘and off she’s gone, to live in London Town by the Thames.’

  ‘But she doesn’t know any river men,’ Mother exclaimed. ‘She’s always been afeared of them.’

  ‘She does now,’ the pudding wife said, ‘and she’ll get to know him even better as the years pass.’

  ‘I thought she was smiling a lot lately,’ I said. ‘And I thought maybe she had a secret she didn’t wish to share.’

  ‘She must have met this man travelling by water to visit her women. I always said your sister would come to no good, Peter,’ Mother told father scornfully, as if he were to blame for his sister’s behaviour.

  ‘Is there to be a wedding party and dancing?’ I asked.

  ‘Goodness, Avis,’ Mother said, ‘your aunt is too old for the singing of bawdy songs and the antics of drunken bridemen.’ The pudding wife helped her to lift the heavy pan from the brazier and they began to ladle the custard into pastry coffins.

  ‘Just imagine, your Aunt Bess, on her wedding night, lying abed in her nightshift with her new husband naked beside her, while his lewd watermen friends, playing the part of bridemen, throw your aunt’s and your new uncle’s stockings on to the bridal bed.’ Mistress Pudding laughed so much I couldn’t help but join in. Mother didn’t laugh. She sprinkled spices on to her custards and frowned.

  ‘Now I’ve told you, I’ll be off to my work.’ Father headed for the door.

  ‘What’s his name, this waterman?’ Mother called after him.

  ‘Ludgate, Liggate, or s
ome such name.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Master Lydgate, he who rowed us on the Thames at Queen Anne’s coronation pageant. He’s a very old man,’ I said.

  ‘Mayhap ... he’s more virile ... than he looks,’ Mistress Pudding managed to spurt out between fits of woodpecker giggles, making me laugh so much I had to sit down and hold my stomach.

  At the door Father turned. ‘I forgot to tell you about your cousin, Anthony. Now your aunt’s wedded I suppose he’s thinks he’s free to do as he likes. He’s going to sea on one of the King’s warships. The Mary Rose, I think it be.’

  *

  ‘Master Cromwell is going to make King Henry the richest king that ever was in England,’ Mistress Madge gossiped while I dressed her. ‘When he has finished surveying all the religious houses, those that are corrupt will be dissolved and their lands and wealth given to the crown. My cousin, Anne, the Queen, is being her usual saintly self and arguing with the King and Cromwell. She wants to reform the monasteries, not abolish them. I told her the King must get his money from somewhere. Anne takes great delight in the jewels and costly gifts Henry brings, indeed, she expects them, and the King knows that this is the only way to keep her sweet.’

  I thought that the only way for King Henry to keep Queen Anne sweet would be to get rid of his latest mistress and never take another, but I did not dare to say so.

  ‘King Henry is planning to refurbish his privy chamber at Greenwich,’ my mistress prattled on. ‘There is to be a new bay window in the donjon. All this building work costs money.’

  ‘Will Master Richard Ridge come to do the carpentry?’ I asked, intending my question to sound careless. I felt myself blush when I heard the eagerness in my prompt response and the tremor in my voice.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mistress Madge replied with a smile. ‘I should like to have a peek at your apprentice boy. Tall, broad and fair is how you described him to my lady mother, if I remember correctly. Come, Avis, there is no need to blush at the mention of a handsome boy. We shall walk in the garden. We must make the most of an afternoon without rain. The Queen is busy discussing business matters with her Uncle James Boleyn, so we will take the air and maybe find some pleasant company along the way.’

  The pleasant company was, of course, mainly male. I wished my mistress had warned me of the new fashion of hairstyle for gentlemen courtiers. I had to pinch my cheeks and turn away every time a gentleman doffed his bright, feathered cap to her. Each one had a shaved head.

  ‘The King has polled his hair because he is going bald,’ Mistress Madge told me, ‘so of course, nearly every gentleman at court has likewise polled his hair.’

  ‘They haven’t shaved the stubble on their chins.’

  ‘They are all growing beards, as fast as they can. The King has set a new fashion for knotted beards. Sir Francis Weston’s beard is growing very well.’

  I said what a shame it would be if Mark Smeaton polled his curly locks.

  ‘He is not a gentleman, just a commoner. There’s no need for him to follow fashion. He’s a sulky boy for all his good looks and he seeks to have privileges above his lowly station. Goodness knows how he has the means to keep servants and stable a horse on his musician’s pay. He is only allowed into the Queen’s privy chamber because his skill on the virginals and his sweet singing surpass that of most gentlemen, although I believe Sir Francis Weston to be at least his equal on the lute and better company besides.’

  Mistress Madge could not talk for many minutes without bringing Weston’s name into the conversation. She had no idea that I knew he was her lover. She thought I slept soundly when he crept into her chamber at nights.

  ‘Is it now unfashionable to speak a little French at court?’ I asked her. The Queen used to have so many little French phrases in her conversations and her ladies had learned to use them. I had heard none lately.

  ‘The Queen will tolerate nothing French at present but there is to be a meeting in France which the Queen’s brother will attend. He will persuade the French king to agree to betroth his eldest son to Princess Elizabeth and all will be well.’

  ‘And the Queen will wear her French hoods again,’ I added.

  ‘The English gable hood is one fashion I will not follow, whatever the politics.’ Mistress Madge winced as if she had eaten something sour. ‘I will wear my French hood even though my cousin, the Queen, has snubbed the French ambassador and refused to invite him to her entertainment. The Chin and the older ladies are welcome to their clumsy gable hoods. How may a gentleman choose a lady to serve if he cannot see her hair?’

  There was more to the politics between France and England than fashionable head gear. Even I knew that. What of talk of a French invasion and plans to put Lady Mary upon the English throne?

  ‘Did Lady Shelton ever discover who brought the message to my Lady Mary in the orange at Hatfield?’ I summoned up the courage to ask.

  ‘I’ve never given it a thought,’ she replied and bade me pick violets to make a posy.

  We sauntered through the primrose garden, a yellow and green delight despite the dull spring weather. In the strawberry garden the weeding girls wore wooden pattens to protect their shoes from the mud. They bent over the beds in their coifs; no need for straw bonnets when there is no sun. One of the girls recognised me and smiled.

  ‘The strawberries will be late this year,’ she said. ‘We need sunshine to ripen them.’

  In the rose garden Mistress Madge rested on a bench and held the posy to her nose. I strolled amongst the plants. There were buds a plenty but they were small and green. What a dull summer it would be without the sunshine to open the buds.

  ‘You will catch cold sitting on this stone bench. Pray, Mistress Shelton, take a turn around the garden to warm yourself.’

  ‘There is nothing to see,’ she replied and took up her prayer book.

  Of course, this did not interest her for many minutes.

  ‘Shall we return to your lodgings and warm ourselves by the fire? Your hands are white with cold.’

  ‘We will take the air for a little longer.’

  Huge carvings of heraldic royal beasts bearing shields and vanes were all around the palace gardens. My mistress looked alternately in the direction of one of these and a sundial. This, and her reluctance to leave the rose garden, led me to believe she was waiting for someone. I wanted to run away, fearing to meet Sir Francis Weston, but my mistress bade me sit with her. She took my hands and rubbed them in her own to warm them and when we heard footsteps upon the gravel it was Sir Henry Norris and his servant, Constantine, who approached.

  ‘Wait here,’ she ordered and went to talk to Norris.

  George Constantine came to sit with me.

  ‘Your mistress will need your loyalty tonight more than ever before,’ he said solemnly.

  Norris and my mistress stood by the giant beast. They spoke quietly until my mistress raised her voice: ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘I cannot put him off again,’ Norris responded. ‘I cannot tell him again that it is your wrong time of the month.’

  ‘It is not what I want.’

  ‘Do you think I want this Madge? I assure you that I do not.’

  He took her by the shoulders and I rose from my seat to go to her for I thought that he would shake her. He didn’t. He simply held her and looked into her face. Constantine grabbed my hand and pulled me to my seat.

  ‘Nothing can be done to assist Mistress Shelton. She must do as she is bidden.’

  It was upsetting to hear my usually softly spoken mistress cry out so in distress.

  ‘No, I cannot, I cannot,’ she wailed. ‘I was happy to be the lady whom the King serves and play his courtly games. I will be nothing more. The Queen will banish me from court and my lady mother will never speak to me again.’

  ‘Madam, you have no choice. It is the King’s will and that is the end of the matter.’

  Sir Henry spoke as if he did not know her name, as if he had never courted her and enjoyed her flirting. He spoke only
as the King’s man, the groom of the stool.

  ‘What of the Queen?’

  ‘What of the Queen?’

  ‘If she should ever discover.’

  ‘Who would tell her?’ Norris snapped.

  ‘Who? Lady Rochford, Bessie Holland, Norfolk, her aunt Elizabeth Boleyn who hates her and any others who have known the sharp edge of her tongue, and there are many of those.’

  ‘I will ensure that what is secret remains so,’ Norris said and bowed to take his leave. ‘The King is very discreet about these matters, as of course you and your maid will be. Come Constantine, our business here is done. I will come for you tonight, Mistress Shelton, and you will be ready with your maid.’

  *

  There was a heavy odour of perfume in the chamber.

  ‘The King always chooses rose oil and musk when he entertains ladies,’ Norris said, matter of fact, as if he were talking of condiments the King liked to have with his dinners.

  Mistress Madge would not look at Norris. She had not let him take her arm while he conducted her through the palace. I had followed with Constantine, thinking how strange she looked with her straight back and stiff posture. The ladies and gentlemen we passed, seeing Mistress Shelton walking with Norris without laughing and flirting, must have thought they had had a falling out.

  ‘I can smell ambergris in the King’s perfume. It is so sickly it makes me nauseous,’ my mistress said in a low voice. ‘It has been spilled all over the bedclothes.’

  ‘Other ladies have not complained.’

  ‘Thus speaks the King’s bawd,’ Mistress Madge said in a low voice, and Norris heard, and blushed crimson.

  ‘It is my duty to serve the King. ‘Undress your mistress promptly,’ he charged me and departed.

  ‘Night attire for your mistress is laid upon the bed,’ Constantine told me. ‘There is everything she might need in the little closet yonder, and a servant’s bed for yourself.’

  ‘Is this the King’s bedroom?’ I asked, looking at the silken tapestries and rose plastered ceiling. Every inch of the bed was intricately carved, with all kinds of creatures, painted and gilded. I wanted to touch it and to feel the silky, golden brocade bed-curtains. Two ornate golden goblets of wine and a dish of sweetmeats lay ready upon a cupboard displaying golden plate.