I took a deep breath. “It concerns the death of Jane Popyngcort. Rumors at the Flemish court—that is, it is being said—”
“Out with it!”
“It is being said that Jane Popyngcort was not killed by robbers, but by men in the pay of Queen Anne. The men have confessed—”
Henry slammed his fist on the table, making the pots and jars on the table bounce.
“Confessed under torture, no doubt! Of course Anne is being slandered! They hate her! But she is no more guilty of murdering that woman than you or I are.” He glared at me, and for the first time I felt afraid. “Don’t you see that it is all a conspiracy? Even my saintly wife—I mean the princess dowager—is not above such tricks and stratagems.”
He sighed, then gave me a baleful look.
“Ah, Jane! We live in such dangerous times! Thank heaven the imperialists have not come after us with an army—not yet—but they still may. And I—I who once led an army of my own into France, when I was a young man—” He shook his head. “I could not do it now, not if my life and the realm depended on it. I could not even enter the lists and compete in the jousting on Anne’s coronation day. My damnable leg was too sore.” And reaching under the table he began to rub his leg, his expression rueful.
“Sit down, Jane, and keep me company. I am feeling old today.” He smiled as he spoke.
I sat on a dust-covered bench, doing my best to wipe it first with my petticoat.
“Sire, there is one more thing I would like to ask, though it is certainly yours alone to divulge or keep secret. I have always been curious about Jane Popyngcort—about what she knew from the past that could have been an obstacle to your marriage to Anne.”
Henry spat.
“That whole business was before I became head of the church. When England was still obeying His Obstructionist the Pope.”
“Yes, of course. It is of no consequence now. Yet—”
“Very well, Jane. Ask your question,” he said indulgently. “What we say here shall not go beyond these walls.”
“Sire, did you really do what Jane said? Was Anne’s mother really your mistress?”
To my amazement the king burst into laughter. “Who remembers? I was only a boy, I was drunk, I had just had my first great victory against the French. What drunken young warrior can remember all the women he has been with?”
For a moment a happy youthful smile lit his face.
“It doesn’t signify, either way.”
“But Jane was given a chest of gold coins and sent away, because she swore that Lady Boleyn was your mistress.”
“Yes, and she should have been shut in the Tower as a traitor, for spreading such slander. Anyone will say anything, Jane, if they are paid well enough to say it.” He sighed once again. “Now, you must leave me to finish making my posset, or I shall have to lie awake all night with the pain in this leg of mine.” He raised his hand in a gesture of dismissal.
“Please forgive me for disturbing you, sire.”
“That’s all right, Jane. Come again—when you have happier news to bring me.”
* * *
I lay in Galyon’s arms, the warm scented air of the soft summer night filling my senses, the quiet around us broken only by the gurgling of the stream and the sleepy murmur of birds.
To my great surprise and delight, Galyon had been brought to England to work on the enlarging of Anne’s apartments, one of a crew of three hundred French craftsmen lodged in a village near the capital. The labor would take many months, he said happily; we would be able to see each other often and without fear that each meeting might be our last. It was as close as we had ever come to enjoying a daily life together, as close as we would ever come.
Galyon had become a master glazier, and as such was entitled to a spacious, well furnished lodging while he worked in England. Often in the evenng, as dusk fell, I met him and we rode together through the darkening orchards and meadows to his house, where we supped together and then went to bed, sometimes in the cool of the upstairs bedroom, sometimes, as on this night, out of doors, at the bottom of the garden, near the stream.
He kissed my forehead softly, then looked over at me. I saw such love in his clear blue eyes, a great depth of love. I thought, what more could I ever ask of life than this?
I drank in everything about him, his familiar scent, his strength, the tautness of his muscles, the curve of his lips, the fullness of his mouth. The gold stubble on his cheeks and chin, the way his hair fell over his forehead.
We stayed as we were, without speaking, for a time, as the moon rose and its light touched the leaves of the trees with silver.
“Jeanne,” he said at length, “I have had a letter from my wife, Solange. She is still living with the parish priest of our village, and they are having another child. But something has changed. Père Beignet is no longer a priest. He has renounced the Roman faith. He has been excommunicated.”
“Like King Henry.”
“He is plain Georges Beignet now, and he wants to make Solange his wife. They have begun attending services conducted by a follower of Jean Calvin. In this new church of Jean Calvin it is possible to obtain a divorce and remarry. Solange means to divorce me.”
“Just as King Henry, by becoming head of his own church, divorced Queen Catherine.” I thought for a moment, then said, “That would make you a free man.”
“Not in the eyes of the church, the true church.”
“Surely what matters is the belief that resides in the heart, not in the definitions of theologians.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Jeanne. I truly don’t know. Surely it is wrong to overturn in a few years what has taken centuries to build. What is sanctioned by the Holy Book, by the mass, by all the saints—”
I pondered his words, looking out at the stream, watching the moonlit rippling of the water.
“How many lovers, do you imagine, have lain together in this place, over the long centuries since the world began? Watching the moon rise and set, taking their pleasure together, sharing what is in their hearts? While gods and goddesses have come and gone and the world has changed from pagan to Christian and now—some say—back again?”
Galyon laughed. “And how many priests like Père Beignet have seduced the wives of their parishioners?”
“Luther and Calvin and King Henry all say the Roman church is corrupt and unworthy. That it needs amending.”
“And yet—the king did not set aside his old queen and take a new one because of his belief—rather he has adjusted his belief to serve his lust. And if I recall my catechism, lusting after what is not rightfully yours is against the Ten Commandments.”
“All I know, dearest Galyon, is that my heart is at ease, and overflowing with love, when I am with you. If that is wrong, then I will take my punishment. I will burn in hell.”
He bent and kissed me. “We will burn in hell together, my love.” And after that, we were lost in each other, until at last the moon began to set, and there was a chill wind off the river, and we made our way across the dark garden to the house.
* * *
The summer wore on, the time came for Anne to take her chamber to await the birth of her son.
The entire court was in a constant state of expectancy. When would the child be born? Would he be delivered safely? Would the queen survive?
Nothing else could go forward until the delivery was accomplished, or so it seemed. We paced, we went for long walks through the yellowing grasses. We hunted and gathered fallen apples. Most of all we watched the queen for signs that her delivery was approaching.
She withdrew formally and with great ceremony into the interior of her apartments, where six midwives were in constant attendance and no men were allowed. She would remain there, as custom decreed, until she had given birth. Meanwhile those of us in her household—a much larger household than before her marriage—waited to serve her, to do her least bidding.
The summer days dragged by, the air was hot and full of dus
t. We maids of honor and bedchamber women did our best to keep ourselves amused in the outer rooms of Anne’s apartments, playing card games, doing embroidery, reading and, as always, gossiping. There were so many more of us than in the past, Anne insisted on a larger household than Queen Catherine had had. Besides Bridget and Anne Cavecant, there was the young, pretty heiress Elizabeth Wood, Catherine Gainsford and Honor Grenville, Mary Scrope whose teeth were yellow but who was of acceptable appearance in all other ways, Margery Horsman who I found amusing and half a dozen others. It annoyed Anne that her uncle Norfolk’s mistress Elizabeth Holland had to be given a place within her inner circle, but when she complained she felt the keen smart of the king’s displeasure, and so ceased to complain.
We waited through the long hot days and sweltering nights of late summer—and then, one night, I was awakened by a terrifying scream.
It was Anne.
“Her pains have begun!” someone cried. We hurried into Anne’s bedchamber and found her out of bed and standing, disheveled and slapping at her night clothes, her long black hair in disarray, cursing and shrieking.
“The lice! The damnable lice in the bed!”
The midwives, in a frenzy of distress, were pulling at the linens and elaborate counterpane of Anne’s magnificent bed, the pillows and bedcurtains, in an effort to remove the vermin.
“A tincture of chamomile and dock will take down the swelling,” I heard Mary Scrope say. “Our apothecary always advised that, for lice.”
But Anne only screamed again, and flung a fat pillow at Mary.
“You stupid fool! It’s that hateful woman! That nun! First she brought the frogs, and now it is the lice! She’s cursed me!”
I remembered the chilling prophecy of the Nun of Kent, delivered as we traveled along the Dover road. First would come a plague of frogs, then lice, then fleas …
“Lice leave the body of the dying,” Bridget whispered.
Anne’s hearing was keen. “And am I dying then?” she shouted as she tore off the last of her garments. “Is that what you are telling me, Bridget? That I am going to die? That my baby is going to die?” She rushed out of the room, leaving us to cope with the lice and the fouled linen and the wrath of the king, whose loud voice I could hear in the corridor outside.
Anne would have to be calmed, a fresh bed would have to be made up for her. I felt something crawling up my arm and looked down, pulling up my sleeve. It was a louse, its body black and swollen. I slapped it, leaving a spot of red. My blood.
I could hear, through the wall, that Anne’s screams had turned to sobs. I wondered if this fear and excitement would bring on her labor. She was due, the midwives said. Her son could be born any day or any night.
As I thought this I could not help remembering the most alarming part of the Nun of Kent’s curse. “The firstborn son of the adulterer and his Jezebel mistress shall die,” she had said. Could it be true? Were the lice fleeing the dying? And if they were, what would it mean for us all?
SEVENTEEN
The birth chamber was darkened, the heat from the braziers stifling. Thick curtains over the windows shut out the afternoon sun. A cloying odor of musk and lavender, sickly-sweet, overlaid the smell of opium. It was hard to breathe.
We had been called into Anne’s bedchamber to witness the birth of her child, so that no one could say afterwards that the baby was not drawn from her womb. A long table with plates of comfits and goblets of wine had been laid out for our refreshment, but we could hardly bring ourselves to nibble at the food. In the wide bed, Anne writhed and screamed and sobbed, cursing the stern-faced midwives who pressed mercilessly on her belly.
“Let me die!” she cried, her face wet with tears. “Let me die!” In her delirium she reached out for her absent mother, pleading with her to ease her pain, then drew her hand back in terror. “Send the heralds!” she called out weakly. “The queen is dead!”
I prayed that she would not die, that her agony would soon end. But hour by hour her suffering only seemed to grow worse, and still the child would not be born.
At length the chief midwife lost hope.
“I can do no more,” she announced, wiping her hands on her dirty apron. “She is in a condition beyond my skill. It is the Lord’s will that she shall come to Him. She and her child.”
We tensed. Was this to be the outcome of our long vigil, and Anne’s long anguish? Would Anne die? And if she did, how would the king fare?
I had eaten nothing for many hours, yet I could not bring myself to eat of the comfits or drink of the watered wine. I could not, I felt that I must not.
I remembered how Anne had looked when she lay at Greenwich, so very ill with the sweat. We thought she would die—yet she had been spared. Why? So that she could bring shame on the realm, and die giving birth to the king’s child?
“Let the priest come,” the midwife was saying, her face resigned. “It is time. We have done all we can. The last rites must be given.”
Bridget went to Anne’s bedside and sat down on the bed, disregarding the strict rules forbidding anyone to approach the queen without being summoned or spoken to. She took Anne’s hand and murmured, quite tenderly, “Shall we give up then, Nan, shall we let you go?”
I held my breath. Moments passed. Then I heard a small noise. It was Anne, stirring, moaning. As I watched, her body stiffened, the sign of yet another contraction. Her face grew red. While Bridget continued to encourage her, Anne took a deep breath and made a mighty effort to expel the child.
And with such a groan as I had never heard come from a woman’s lips, she began to succeed.
“The little head! It is the little head!” All at once the midwives were stirred to urgent action once again.
Into Bridget’s waiting hands, the midwives clustering around to aid her, the tiny infant emerged into the world, slippery with blood, still bound to Anne by the thick cord sprouting from its small stomach.
Whispering an incantation, the chief midwife cut the cord, then gasped.
The room was so dark that we could not at first see what had shocked her. Then came the fateful words.
“No! It can’t be!”
“Oh, Lord God in heaven, it is. It is—a princess.”
* * *
“Cancel the tournaments. Take out that cradle of estate. Bring in the other one, the wooden one. Draw back those curtains. Let us have some light!”
The king’s orders were swiftly obeyed. Anne was asleep, her tiny daughter, washed and put to the breast of a wetnurse, had been wrapped warmly in a swaddling cloth and laid in the lovely old cradle of carved wood. The splendid golden cradle of estate, lined in purple velvet, its small counterpane trimmed in royal ermine, was removed; it had been meant for a son.
The king, as soon as he was told that Anne had given him a daughter, had sent all the midwives away and shouted for the astrologers.
“Kill the whoreson villains, every last one of them!” he shouted. “I’ll have them racked! I’ll have them thrown in the Tower and whipped!”
But the astrologers, who had also heard the news from the birth chamber, had swiftly departed, as had all those who were waiting in the corridors and outside.
“Shut down the kitchens,” I heard the king snap. “Tell the cooks to give all the food to the beggars at the gates. There will be no banqueting tonight!”
* * *
It was the opium, Anne insisted as soon as she had recovered enough to find her tongue and struggle to her feet. She had been given too much opium during her terrible labor. No doubt the princess dowager, the former Queen Catherine, was to blame. Or her wicked accomplice, the Nun of Kent. The nun cast spells and worked demonic magic. Her dark magic had turned the boy in Anne’s womb into a wretched girl.
Hadn’t the Nun of Kent prophesied that Anne would not bear a living son? Had she not sent the plagues of frogs and lice to torment Anne as she waited for her child to be born? There was magic in those damnable creatures! They had been the familiars that worked the nun
’s dark spells!
It was no good reminding Anne, as Bridget and I and many others did, in an effort to soothe her fears, that the Nun of Kent was locked away in a royal prison. She could still do harm, Anne said sharply, and I saw a flash of fear in her eyes as she spoke. She could still act through her familiars.
And one of those familiars, I knew, was not only free but had been seen at court. Father Bartolome, the black-robed priest who had become the princess dowager’s confessor, had eluded Thomas Cromwell when the latter went in search of him at Buckden. He had disappeared—only to be glimpsed among the crowds at court, always fleetingly, his shadowy presence just out of reach. I had seen him myself, or thought I had, on more than one occasion, slipping in or out of a dimly lit room, hurrying along a dark passageway, even at the christening of the royal child. Anne’s small, pale, weak little daughter who was given the name Elizabeth and who everyone said would not live long.
Imprisoned or not, Anne was clearly terrified of the Nun of Kent, who continued to have visions, and managed to report what the heavenly voices and visions told her to others in the prison who spread the word throughout the capital. She claimed that Christ Himself appeared to her while in her captivity, moaning in agony from the wounds He bore, and told her that He could never be free from his pain until King Henry ended his adulterous, accursed marriage to Anne.
Because of the furor she caused, the nun was moved to the Tower. But immense crowds gathered on Tower Bridge and in boats out in the river, watching and praying and hoping to hear more of her revelations. Sick and dying people were laid at the fortress gates, and on the shore, and some, it was said, were made whole. Truly the nun was one of the Lord’s own, touched by His holy hand, while the wicked Queen Anne who bore the sign of the devil was cursed. And the realm still waited for, and longed for, a prince.
“That woman cannot be allowed to live,” Anne announced to the king once she had recovered from her ordeal in childbed. She was in the throne room, her arms folded, her head held imperiously high.
“She has cursed me. She is evil. She is the pope’s familiar.”
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