The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

by Robin Maxwell

  “Where is he, Anne? Where is my son?” The months, nay, years of strain were gone from his bloated features. He looked just then young and princely as he had when first he’d woo’d me seven years before. “Show me my son.” He looked round the room then, from lady to lady, stared at the gilt cradle and felt a cold and fearful draft at his heart.

  “You have a beautiful daughter,” I said with what small fraction was left of my courage.

  “A daughter,” he whispered. “A daughter?!” His eyes blazed with murder — my own, the child’s. I feared he’d take the tiny wrinkled babe and crush her head like some ripe melon. Smash her body against the bedpost till it was still and limp. His unspeakable anger was a terrible silent wave rearing up to crash down upon my bone weary shores.

  “You,” he shrieked, “are a liar, liar! You promised me a son. For this whimpering cunt I have put aside my pious Queen, the love of my subjects and Rome! You, Madame, will pay for this girl!” And he strode, scarlet and sweating, from my chamber.

  A son. That simple promise to Henry which kept alive our dream, our love, is to be my own great undoing. But O, some promises are hard to keep. Some promises are best never made. Some promises are lies we never meant to tell.

  My mind spins like a paper wheel. What of the Nun of Kent and the “Tudor son” she clearly foretold arising from my belly? A son, she said, who would illuminate the British lands. Did I understand wrongly? Meant she by her words a heavenly orb? Could that “son” have blinded me to her true meaning? When I, no more than a skinny girl, stood in that spare Christian cell, the oracle’s half mad eyes darting this way and that, the prophecy spilling from her bitten lips, did I long to hear with so terrible a need that I took the meaning I sore desired? It must be so, for that soothsayer does never swear falsely. I am such a fool!

  When they’d bathed and swaddled the newborn, tightly bound so only the face was seen in yards of cloth, they placed her in my arms. I looked down to see this creamy pink creature of my own destruction. She was wailing, toothless, struggling to be free from muslin bondage. Her eyes flew open and then I did gasp to see … they were Henry’s eyes! Henry’s angry eyes.

  Elizabeth, O God, you are your father’s child. My womb, my blood, my prayers but your father’s rage. Will he let you live? Will he let me live? My innocent child, my daughter, what terrible world have I brought you into? These breasts of mine cry for you and in this dim warm moment I long for nothing more but to lay you down upon my heart and let you feed upon my mother love. But now she comes, your wet nurse, large and soft and comforting, and she wrests you from my aching arms. It is with a humble smile she takes you from me, but she knows with proud certainty that she will feel your mouth suckling, she will count your fingers, toes, comb the flaxen silk upon your head, dry the tears I’ll never see. No, they’ll not let me near you, child, for you will be a Princess reared. There’ll be curtsies, not kisses. Embraces through yards of stiff satin. Courtly speech, no tender words of love.

  O Elizabeth, tiny and squalling, I hear you in the next chamber. Hear you, feel you, remember you still in my belly. I’ll ask to see you and they will bring you to me this night, but tomorrow you’ll be gone, sequestered in the royal nursery, so far away from here down dark and draughty passages. No crying infant let to mar Henry’s festivities, Henry’s council meetings, Henry’s lovemaking. Less and less will I see you. My breasts will dry and cease to ache for you. I’ll be made to sing and dance, chatter lightly with my ladies, play at cards. Be the Queen and never hold you.

  I read once of a nameless but remembered Roman noblewoman, jailed in some black prison. Starved by her captors who meant to kill her this way, she was kept alive by her own daughter who came to visit daily, and fed her in secret. This good child, herself a new mother, every day hidden by the folds of her dress, pretending embraces, suckled her mother at her own milk heavy breast. The old woman never weakened nor died and when the guards discovered the ruse they were moved, perhaps by maternal memories, and freed her. Mother and daughter, daughter and mother. Cherished, cherished the other. O, Elizabeth …

  Henry hates me now, says I’ve duped him, shamed him. All wild and grandiose tournaments and feasts for his little Prince’s birth are quashed, redrawn into a quiet round of toasts to the health of the Princess and prayers for my womb’s quickening with the desired son. And we will try again to make that son, your father Henry and your mother Anne. Rage with our bodies, one against the other and pray with every thrust that when next I come to this lying in chamber, it is with the promised boy.

  But we will fail, always. I know this with a terrible certainty. The mad nun foretold my Tudor sun and when I look into your eyes, your fathers eyes, I know that sun is you, Elizabeth. You will shine on all the world with your light and glory, despite your fathers fury. Of this I’m sure.

  My future flies at me like some dark shrieking wind. I am lost, child, but you are found. And you shall be Queen.

  Yours faithfully,

  Anne

  12 October 1533

  Diary,

  Of late I have had an unhappy education. A pregnant Queen will be lied to for her health, nay the health of her child. I was kept ignorant of a great scandal — the Holy Nun of Kent at its center. She has been speaking out against me and the King, saying we shall come to no good end, with plagues upon our house, and that Henry’s marriage to Katherine is good. His Majesty is angry in the extreme, and Cromwell has had the nun arrested for treason. The Secretary has drawn up a list of her supporters and all tremble at the thought of their name on that list. There is talk that she will confess to corruption, that she has been led astray by divers courtiers, Thomas More amongst them.

  I flop like a gasping fish on the sand. What shall I think of her? Has she lied or does she confess to escape a traitor’s death? Has she never had a true gift of sight, and were her words to me those years ago the ravings of a mad peasant girl made prophetess by Bishops hungry for miracles?

  I believed her then, but I took her words the way I wished to hear them. Elizabeth will yet rule, I know this in my heart, tho my firm hand is necessary in the keeping of this promise. My husband the King has grown plainly weary of me, and I have no strength to rekindle his love. He is pleased enough with his little daughter, speaks to me of an Act of Succession which will promise her place on the throne before Mary, but only after the sons he thinks I will bear him. So I am mild and kind to Henry these days, and give him great encouragement in that law’s passage. The ones who hate me more than ever smirk and whisper that I follow at Henry’s heels like a dog. This knowledge gnaws at my guts but I must grovel, for I feel in my heart I will have no sons with Henry and I must preserve Elizabeth’s crown.

  ‘Tis strange to think on Elizabeth’s coronation day, for now she is so tiny and soft. Pink and gold, sweet eyes that recognize me as her mother, recognize my body as her home, tho few are the moments I may hold her close, and never may I lend her my breast to suck. But she knows me, folds comfortably into me, smiles at me. I love this child with a heart that needs no urging, like the one that loved young Percy, but greater. Whenever I am seated I call for her to be brought to me on a velvet cushion that is placed at my feet. All my ladies think she is beautiful, the flaxen ringlets, the warm satin skin that smells so new.

  I begged Henry that we might dispense with convention, allow our Elizabeth to stay with us where we reside and not be sent from Court to her own household far away. But he scoffed at me.

  “I like my daughter well enough, but she is a daughter, Anne. Do you not think you should spend more effort on making us sons than mooning over this girl?” He was cold when he said that, and empty … like a hedge maze in winter. I knew repeating my plea was useless, but I hoped his fickle mind would turn and he would relent, allow me the comfort of my babe.

  “Royal children are sent to their own household when they are but three months old,” I said. “These rules are made by men who know nothing of a mother’s need to hold her child, He
nry.”

  He turned on me then, roaring like a baited bear. “This is the ritual of Kings, Kings! And you shall forbear to contradict them, Madame!”

  I fell to my knees and kissed his hand to calm him, murmuring apologies. I am ashamed to be brought so low, but I will not endanger Elizabeth with my arrogance.

  Yours faithfully,

  Anne

  ELIZABETH SAT STUNNED and staring blindly at the halos around the flickering candles, tears coursing down her cold cheeks.

  “Mother,” she whispered. She sighed, expelling all the breath she had in her body, and felt hardly able to draw another in again. The revelation had shaken her very soul. Her mother had loved her.

  Adored her. Fought to keep her by her side. But it seemed to Elizabeth, reading between the words, that this consuming mother love had taken Anne quite as much by surprise as its disclosure had taken Elizabeth. Anne had for so long fought for the crown, struggled to love Henry, and defended herself against her enemies that the child who would be born to her had become in her thinking the desired Prince.

  What a great love it must have been, thought Elizabeth, for her mother to have overcome the catastrophe of Elizabeth’s female-ness. Or was it, she wondered, quite simply what motherhood meant? A child is born of your body and you are helpless to do other than love it whether it be male or female, docile or a shrieking horror, beautiful or monstrously deformed. But Anne, it seemed to Elizabeth, had felt more deeply, fought more bravely, groveled more pitifully, and believed in Elizabeth’s destiny more stridendy than any mother was wont to do for a daughter.

  She had loved her.

  And what of Henry, her faithless father? What was she to think of him? It was wrong to vilify him, she knew. He was the King and, according to unwritten but age-old English law, he had the right to a mistress, whatever he felt for his Queen.

  He had died the year Elizabeth was fourteen, and by that time he had been transformed from the gloriously handsome, hale, and merry King whose likeness graced portraits, tapestries, jewelry, furniture, and coin to the obscene mountain of flesh whose eyes were mere slits in a bloated, lecherous face. And who, for his great size and diseased leg, had to be carted about from room to room on a litter carried by six men. She had seen him for what he’d become and knew that he had cared very little for her. Elizabeth had been only a valuable political asset to Henry, a princess to marry to a foreign prince, and he had rarely bothered to see her over the years.

  Whenever she had been called to audience with him, her child’s heart had quivered with fear such as most men reserve for their day of judgment before God. She dared not meet his eye, for she knew that always he required complete obedience and submission to himself. That was a child’s unalterable duty to a parent. And of course Henry was king and well acquainted with mindless obedience from his subjects, no matter how high or noble. She would, during such audiences, fall many times to her knees and remain entirely silent at his feet, breathing in the stench of the rotting flesh and putrid bandages of his sore leg. He would forget sometimes that his daughter was there, moving on to other business and only releasing her from prostration when her knees were bruised and she was faint from the noxious fumes.

  And yet, Elizabeth mused, she had always somehow loved her father, admired his power and the loyalty he inspired in his subjects. And she reveled in the parallels that many of her courtiers drew between his character and physique in his younger days and her own. She had always found a way to forgive him his trespasses, his ignorance of her personal existence, his dark and vicious tantrums. His murder of her mother.

  Stop, Elizabeth commanded herself silently as she replaced the diary in her locked chest. She could think on this no longer. It was quite enough for one night, to have learned that she had been cherished by her mother. Something inside the young queen felt to be expanding, growing like a seedling breaking through soft earth, unfurling its tenderest parts and reaching for the warm sun above. And as the morning light crept in through her mullioned windows, Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of Anne Boleyn, found herself smiling.

  “Your Majesty!”

  Elizabeth turned to see her royal secretary William Cecil rushing to catch up with her as she moved down Richmond’s Long Gallery, taking the only exercise she would manage on this cold and rainy afternoon. Cecil unashamedly plowed through the crush of her waiting ladies who surrounded her like a flock of gaudy birds, and strode along at her side.

  “Good day, my lord. I hope you’re well. I did miss our morning conference.”

  “Debate with the privy council was heated and we only just concluded, Your Majesty.”

  She gestured with her finger for him to begin the report, but he demurred, casting a disapproving glance at the twittering ladies.

  “You have my complete attention,” said Elizabeth.

  But Cecil was stubborn and refused to speak whilst among such a flighty audience.

  “Very well.” She turned to her ladies and dismissed them with the most subde lift of her chin. They dispersed and almost magically disappeared. She and Cecil were finally alone in the long hall which echoed with rain pattering on the windows.

  “Let me guess,” began Elizabeth. “Scodand. You want me to throw more of my money at the Protestant rebels.”

  “It is imperative,” pleaded Cecil.

  “I’ve sent too much already. I’m very poor, Cecil. And I doubt the French will take kindly to my openly opposing their allies.” “Then you wish the Catholics to rule the country?” Elizabeth sighed with exasperation. “Then send your troops and make a stand.” “No. I will not.”

  “You are wrong, Madame, and entirely ill advised in this decision!”

  Elizabeth stopped and wheeled on her councillor with the intention of chewing the head completely off his neck. But his look was so sincere and so determinably right that she paused. William Cecil was the most conscientious of her advisors and the most prodigiously well informed. Her former steward was a staunch Protestant and had somehow managed to make himself indispensable to her Catholic sister Mary during her reign while remaining faithful to Elizabeth.

  She realized that he always took this position in support of English intervention with the Scots. He had believed in the right-ness of it since the 1540s when he himself had fought at the battle of Pinkie.

  “I am not inclined to agree with you just now, Lord Cecil. Speak to me of it in a week or two.”

  “In that case, I shall resign my post,” he said suddenly.

  “What!”

  “That is how strongly I feel. It would be a mistake of unparalleled proportions, and I could no longer call myself your advisor if you insisted on pursuing such a disastrous course.”

  Elizabeth stared at her secretary, searching his face for even a glimmer of indecision. There was none. Not the smallest particle of doubt.

  “Very well. See to the details and make full report to me.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. I promise you will be glad of your decision.” He turned to go.

  “Do you also promise that when we are finished paying for a foreign war we will have enough money for our own government?”

  “No, Madame. But I will promise that your northern borders will be safe from a Catholic invasion in future.”

  “Well, that is something,” said Elizabeth tartly. “That is something.”

  2 December 1533

  Diary,

  I am sick with an anger that lives like some black rat gnawing at my belly. They have taken Elizabeth from me, taken her to Hatfield where she’ll live with strangers who’ll soon become her family. I am the Queen and I am helpless in this unnatural matter. Torn from my child, trapped within cold tradition — rules made by men with no care for women’s hearts.

  Miserable too is my hatred grown blacker every day for the Lady Mary. How wretched was my luck that, finally past the dreadful battle with her mother Katherine, I should have no respite, none at all. For like a dragon rising from the ashes of its slain predecessor, Mary
looms large, fangs bared, burning eyes fixed on the crown she claims as hers. She defies her father, sweetly stubborn as her mother has done, but defies him all the same. When told she was no longer Henry’s heir, her title Princess of England stripped away and now simply Lady Mary, she replied that she knew of no Princess of England save her self and refused to answer to any name but that which she had earned rightly in God’s eyes and under English law.

  This girl, just seventeen, flirts with treason, for she knows these words and quietly rebellious deeds inflame the population who still hate me, the Great Whore, and Elizabeth, the Little Whore, and would gladly see this Spanish bitch upon the throne. O Diary, I have prayed fervently that my subjects come to love me and my child. But they are too perverse. When I give generously to the poor in every town into which we move our Court — £10 for a cow to feed their children when several shillings would make that purchase possible — it is said the witch tries to buy her subjects’ love. And tho the people hate the scurvy Pope and clergy, rail against corruption and indulgences, they would have a Papist Queen again and long for Catholic ritual. I do not understand!

  Here at Court the Lady Mary has her loyal followers as well who, given half a chance, would raise a traitorous banner in her name for all those common folk to follow. There is always whispering that speaks of my well deserved downfall. And this low gossip lives always with Mary at its center. Somehow the girl’s spirit must be bent or broken, but I fear Henry’s plan for this will come to a bitter end. He has ordered Mary hie to Hatfield, take up residence there and serve as Maid of Honor to her half sister Elizabeth. I asked the King, Why place a viper in our daughter’s nursery? But he dismissed my worries, seeing Mary only disobedient, never dangerous.

  Mayhaps I see enemies lurking behind every tree but I feel Henry’s scheme and his dismissal of my fears as some mild revenge upon myself. Revenge for his humiliation that a daughter, not a son, was born. For tho he pursues this Act of Succession into law, he remains distant from me, coming to my bed only as need prescribes. I would in deed be blind if I did not see the way his eyes devour my pretty maids, or deaf if I did not hear the bitter tone he uses when he calls me his Queen.