The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

by Robin Maxwell

  “You don’t love me. You don’t love me!” she cried, praying with all of her soul that Thomas Seymour would quickly and vehe-mendy deny her accusations, prove her harsh assessment altogether wrong. She had not long to wait. He’d fallen to his knees clutching her skirt in his hands.

  “Do you think so litde of me, Elizabeth, that you could have so low an estimate of my sincerity?” He gazed direcdy into her eyes and forced her with his will not to turn away. “And do you think so little of yourself? For with such sentiments you disparage your worthiness as a woman who could be adored by a man like myself. Do you not see how lovely you are? How desirable? I think …,” he went on, great passion causing his voice to quiver, “I think I shall die without you.”

  She was lovely. She was desirable. She was a woman, no longer a girl. And this beautiful man, he loved her. Loved her. An unbidden sigh of joy and relief escaped Elizabeth’s lips. It was this sigh that the High Admiral took as his leave. He rose to his feet, swept the Princess into his arms, and kissed her deeply and soulfully as a man who loves a woman is wont to do, and as a young girl only dreams of being kissed. Elizabeth was drowning, tossed about in a great wave of sweetness and passion. Drowning. Dying …

  “Oh God!”

  Hearing these words as though from a great distance, Elizabeth struggled to pull herself from the deep. She opened her eyes to find Lady Seymour, bloated with pregnancy, slumped heavily against the schoolroom door.

  Elizabeth and Seymour stood apart then, trembling and mortified. No one spoke. Elizabeth hardly breathed for the unbearable, unutterable shame of it. The silence was finally broken by two starlings squabbling on the window ledge. Elizabeth chanced a look at Seymour. His eyes were alive, darting. Inside his head, she could see he was forming his arguments, his excuses, his lies.

  Catherine, mustering what dignity she retained, had turned and walked away. And Seymour, with no more than a stricken look at Elizabeth, followed.

  Elizabeth’s waiting lady opened one eye to find herself sitting across from Parry in the stuffy coach being bumped along the dusty road. “Aaugh, haven’t we yet arrived?”

  Parry signaled with his eyes that they were not alone.

  Instantly Kat straightened her posture and forced a smile onto her face. For although the woman was as intimate a companion to Elizabeth as any person alive, she retained always a strict code of etiquette, and a firm sense of her place as servant to the Queen. “Your Majesty …”

  “Have you had a good nap, Kat?” inquired Elizabeth.

  “I wouldn’t call it good, jounced as I was to Kingdom Come and back. But it passed the time well enough. Come, Parry, what have we in the basket to eat? I get hungry when I sleep.”

  “When are you not hungry, Mistress Ashley? I think one of those legs of yours is hollow.”

  Kat swatted old Parry with her fan and he pinched her bony knee in return. Elizabeth watched their antics, two old friends as easy with each other as they were with their charge, once princess, now queen. There was a time when things had been far from easy for all of them.

  “So, you all sing the same song?” growled Lord Tyrwhitt.

  Elizabeth refused to let her inquisitor see her trembling, though it pained her to think of Kat Ashley and the Parrys prisoners in the Tower, being likewise interrogated. This Thomas Seymour treason conspiracy had enmeshed them all.

  “We do, Lord Tyrwhitt, for the song is the truth and so we cannot forget the words.”

  “I will ask you again, Princess. Had you any knowledge of the High Admiral’s plot to kidnap your brother the King and foment an uprising?”

  “And I will tell you again. I knew nothing, and my servants were ignorant of his rebellion as well.”

  “But you were to be his wife and the successor to the throne. Did you not realize that your marrying without written and sealed consent of the Council is strictly illegal and would have forfeited you your place in the succession?”

  “I had no plans to marry Thomas Seymour.” She struggled to keep her voice calm and steady, as her thoughts were not.

  Marry a man who had betrayed his own wife and caused Elizabeth to betray her as well?

  Marry a man whose sinister influence had sent Elizabeth in disgrace from her stepmother’s house, the shame of which had destroyed her own health, and now placed her and her servants in mortal danger?

  “But your man, Thomas Parry, spoke with Seymour on several occasions about that possibility,” insisted Tyrwhitt.

  “They spoke only of land, some his, some mine, which lies in close proximity. ‘Tis a far cry from talk of marriage.”

  Tyrwhitt leaned very near Elizabeth, his face so close to hers that she could smell on his breath the stink of stale beer and onions.

  “Rumor has it that you are even now pregnant with Seymour’s child. Surely you plan to marry him?”

  “That would not be possible,” she said, defiandy holding Tyr-whitt’s gaze. “The Lord Admiral is not at liberty, but a prisoner in the Tower of London.” Elizabeth summoned the memory of Thomas Seymour’s rugged face and tried to imagine what terrible passion had possessed him that he should steal into the royal palace and shoot the King’s favorite watchdog in trying to reach her brother. She wondered what Seymour was now suffering in his captivity. Were they torturing him as they had already threatened to torture Kat and Thomas Parry for statements that would link the Princess with the traitor?

  “What is your knowledge of the men and arms that Seymour had amassed in the West Countries to feed his rebellion?”

  “I have no knowledge! How many times will you torment me with the same questions?”

  “Until I have the truth from you,” he spat.

  Elizabeth felt her spine stiffen. Her words were clipped and icy as she spoke them.

  “Lord Tyrwhitt, I had always believed you to be a toward and intelligent man. But to treat with someone who might one day be your sovereign as you would treat with a lowly beggar on the street, is nothing less than stupidity.”

  Elizabeth saw hatred flare in Tyrwhitt’s watery blue eyes. To be spoken to thusly by a fourteen-year-old child — and a girl — was an outrage. But, Elizabeth mused, if ever there was a legacy from Catherine Parr it was her keen grasp of diplomacy. When to practice restraint. When to remain silent and protect one’s loyal friends. And when to speak out with eloquence and fearlessness.

  “I would caution you,” she went on, “to have a care, my lord, for I am my Father’s daughter and I have much of his anger, as well as his long and terrible memory for enemies to the crown.”

  Elizabeth’s Master of the Horse galloped up to the carriage and rode alongside as he spoke through the open window.

  “Your Majesty. We approach Oxted. What is your pleasure?”

  “I wish to see as many of my subjects as is possible. And I wish them to see me. What preparations are made there?”

  “The usual. Streets have been swept clean. All prostitutes and idiots are gone out of sight, the gallows taken down, houses and shops and public buildings freshly painted and decorated. And great crowds in the village square await your arrival.”

  “Send word that I’m coming into their town,” she said to Dudley, “and that I await their sight with great pleasure.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “And, Robin, have my horse brought round. I shall ride into the village.”

  Dudley smiled then, a smile so warm and proud that her queenly demeanor threatened to waver. He spurred his horse and disappeared. Her darling Robin. So loyal. So trustworthy.

  So unlike Thomas Seymour.

  Seymour had died on the block. Elizabeth still trembled as she remembered how narrowly she had escaped with her life. Lady Catherine had not been so lucky. Three months after Elizabeth had been found in Seymour’s arms and sent away in disgrace, Catherine had given birth to a little girl. She had sickened in childbed, but Thomas had delayed summoning a doctor for three days. The once regal dowager queen had grown frantic, perhaps suspecting tha
t her wayward husband wished her to die. As her fever spiraled she’d given furious voice to her sense of betrayal, charging him and all those round her bed of caring nothing for her and laughing at her grief. Thomas, it was said, had lain down beside her to quiet her with gentle communication, but she had pushed him away, blaming him for keeping the doctor from her. Her fever had worsened still and she’d died two days before Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday. All the harsh deathbed accusations had been put down to the ravings of a delirious woman. But Elizabeth’s grief for her stepmother was compounded by suspicions. It was contended that Catherine had regained her senses enough before she’d died to dictate a new will “in good mind and perfect memory and discretion” which bequeathed all of her great wealth to her husband. The deathbed declaration, though not signed by Catherine, was nevertheless hurriedly approved and accepted. Overnight Thomas Seymour had become a very wealthy man.

  The Seymour affair had been Elizabeth’s first lesson in the treachery of ambitious men. She had forgotten Thomas as one forgets a painful dream in the light of morning, pushed him far from her thoughts all these years past, till her mother’s diary had plucked the images and memories from the furthest recesses of her mind.

  Now the sound of church bells chiming out a welcome could be heard in the distance. Elizabeth imagined her entrance into Oxted. It would be the same as it had been in all the other towns and villages along the progress route. There would be speeches of welcome, plays and pageants and music, sweet children singing songs and reciting verse, all in her honor. She would stop and talk to the crowds, make a kind speech of her own, listen to a serious grievance or two that the town fathers might take this occasion to air. While her purveyors were buying provisions from local farmers and merchants she would visit the weavers’ cottage, then perhaps choose a likely-looking house — grand or humble — and without warning ask for entrance, there requesting a small plate of food or a cool drink from her deeply honored but frantic hosts.

  It was lovely to be bathed in so warm a wash of affection, and though she was weary and sore the Queen found her heart beating faster, anticipating her joyful entry into the village.

  Not queen for six months yet, thought Elizabeth, and already I am greedy for the love of my people.

  The bells chimed louder now and Elizabeth could see the first crowds of townsfolk, women in their Sunday finery, farmers with scrubbed faces, little children perched high on the shoulders of their fathers and brothers straining for a glimpse of Great Harry’s daughter, their new and precious Queen Elizabeth. Yes, she thought as she smoothed back her unruly curls and straightened her jacket, she would give them a good look at Great Harry’s daughter. A very good look indeed.

  But on the morrow when she came to Edenbridge and her mother’s home of Hever, the eager onlooker would be herself.

  25 March 1527

  Diary,

  Sometimes I think my life, the one I live out breath by single breath is but a dream, the vague and swirling scenes of night are the reality. This day is such a one. For Henry, King of England has proposed to me that I should be his wife, the lawful Queen of England!

  He’d pursued me and I’d resisted, made my self a quarry worth the hunt. I’d retreated home to Hever Hall where his letters sent by royal messenger followed me. Letters full of passionate oaths of love to be his mistress. He, claiming to have been “struck by the dart of love for more than a year” and apologizing for pestering and boring me. I wrote back refusing him, quoting his own Grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville who, whilst hot pursued by his Grandfather wishing to bed her said, “I may not be good enough to be your Queen, Sire, but I am far too good to be your mistress.”

  I’d used the wiles I learned in France, coquettry to drive him mad with wanting, tho honestly ‘twas just a game that came most naturally to me. Mayhaps somewhere in my fondest dreams I saw my self as Queen … but they were fantasies! Now he claims the fantasy as true.

  Having sent no messenger or warning here, Henry rode this early morning up to Hever moat and crossed the drawbridge into the cobbled court with clattering hooves that woke the house. He demanded immediate audience of my self, and in a rattled state I threw around me sundry robes, washed my face, chewed a mint twig to clean my teeth. Gathering what small dignity was possible at that ungodly hour I went to greet my King. He was in a wild state, mud splattered, red faced and almost shouting. He grabbed me, pulled me close to him, kissed me roughly on the mouth. He stank of sweat and smoke and horses, but his unbound passion was strangely sweet to me, so reminiscent of another Henry that I felt my own resolve melting neath his touch. He began to pace and stabbed his finger in the air to make his point.

  “I have had enough of this accursed marriage!” he cried. “Gods angry hand has smote my sonless matrimony long enough.”

  “But Katherine —” I began.

  “Katherine is my sister in law. My brothers wife. Family to me and under canon law within forbidden degrees of affinity!”

  “I do not understand how you can seek a separation from the Queen.”

  “The Pope will help me willingly. I’m Defender of the Catholic faith. Clement’s granted other dispensations, voided royal marriages where problems of succession rose. He must only be shown the error. He will help me!”

  “If anyone can make him see reason,” said I most cautiously, ‘tis you, Henry.”

  “And Cardinal Wolsey, he will help in this matter.”

  “What will Katherine say?”

  “She will agree. I’ll make her understand that we’ve been living in a sinful state these many years. And pious as she is, she’ll take the holy vows and henceforth be a bride to Jesus. O Nan, Nan, Nan!” he cried like some mad creature. “Can you not see that I am sick with love? I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot rule my kingdom any longer. All I do is think about having you. I must have you! If I cannot, I swear I will break the world in two with my own hands!” Then he fell to his knees. “Marry me, marry me. Bring me sons and break this wretched curse upon my life!”

  I stood still and silent as a statue as my mind flew wildly from post to pillar. Good Christ, I thought, this man at my feet would depose a Queen for me, send her to a nunnery! Thro old Wolsey he would argue with the Pope in Rome to have me. How that would gall the Cardinal! So now beyond the title and the value of the Kings own love, I could smell the odor of some sweet revenge in this.

  “Say yes, Anne,” cried Henry. “Say yes and be my Queen!” But as I stood in Hever Hall, a King kneeling at my feet, the morning sun warming the air and the stone beneath us, I felt such a chill foreboding draft, like some evil wind, that the answer froze within my throat. My hand went to my neck as if to coax it out, but it was useless.

  “I shall have to think on this,” said I. “Ponder your proposal, let you hear my answer when it comes to me to know.”

  He was speechless that I’d not leapt upon his offer. And if truth be known I’d shocked my self. But something odd, something cold held me paralyzed. I bade him go and that he did, muttering some low curses after womanhood. And that is where I stand even now, looking for a sign to show my future clear to me — doom or glory if I take this path with Henry. So I wait.

  Yours faithfully,

  Anne

  9 April 1527

  Diary,

  I have just now returned from Canterbury with George, tho I spoke not at all to him on our ride home, for I was speechless. Speechless and trembling in my soul. I have had my future laid down before me like a midsummer’s feast, and its glorious bounty overwhelms. Unless the Saints lie, I am to be Queen of England and will bear Henry’s desired son. This I know to be true, and where once I foundered in a sea of fear and indecision, I now stand saved, feet planted firmly in the soil of English destiny. Queen Anne. This is how I know.

  Henry pressed and pressed, showering me with promises and kisses. “I will marry you,” said he, “marry you and put aside Katherine.” The words tho pretty did ring false to me, for Katherine, of most royal Sp
anish blood, is loved by all and so devout she must have Gods ear. But Henry was persuasive. This man who wages war with Emperors and fixes laws upon the land and counts his neverending gold, this man on bended knee was seeking to convince a lowborn girl to be his wife.

  I was wild with indecision. Paced the hedge maze hour upon hour thinking on my destiny. Could I trust the fates and place my life within his hands? Or was it deadly folly to be playing such a game?

  George, palace gossip in his ear, hurried home to be with me. I was glad to see that face, the steady brow, the warm brothers smile.

  “Let us go and pay a visit to the Holy Maid of Kent,” he said. “She can tell the future, so they say.” I had heard of her, this peasant girl who counselled Kings and politicians, whose visions oft came true. And she was cloistered now in Canterbury not far from here.

  ‘Twas east of Kent, a full day’s ride on sodden country lanes. What sights, sounds, smells! The next day’s market found a stream of farmers wives with loaded baskets filled with cabbages and artichokes, turnips, crayfish, peas and gooseberries. Cowbells clanked, oxen and their creaking carts sunk mid wheel into mud. Shepherds, sheep, goats, pigs, a rude horseman splashing as he flew past. Young peasant girls with muddy feet laughing, jostling, rough men who eyed me sulkily. Wet leather, damp wool in my nostrils. Then the spire of Canterbury Cathedral o’er a distant rise. More country folk now making rude camp outside the city wall, awaiting dawn’s first light to sell their wares.

  We rode in, found the Convent St. Sepulchre, asked to see the Holy Maid and were directly taken down a dank and narrow passage. I saw the women there, the sisters — some seemed holy, others simply noblewomen discarded by their families, left to rot. Those girls’ eyes followed after me, jealous of rich clothes they’d never wear again. Stale, starched loveless lives hidden ‘hind the cloistered walls.

  A plain door was opened. There she was, the peasant girl made nun, upon her knees her back to me. The door closed. We were alone within her tiny cell. Grey stone, and no adornment here, no tapestries to warm the chill, no rugs or rushes underfoot. A narrow bed. Rough linen. No cushions on the chair. ‘Twas dim in there except for light from one small window falling on the crucifix hung upon the wall, an altar where now the habitant of this spare room was kneeling, praying fervently. I’d made ready all my queries. She was still, had not stood nor turned to me when I heard a whisper.