To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

by Byrd, Sandra

  Praise for To Die For

  “In To Die For, Sandra Byrd gifts the reader with a fresh look at Anne Boleyn through the eyes of her lifelong friend Meg Wyatt. But Meg commands her own interest and respect in the Tudor world of triumph and tragedy. Readers will be drawn to the events, beautifully depicted, but also to the emotions, skillfully conveyed. A new Tudor historical to treasure.”

  —Karen Harper, author of The Queen’s Governess

  “In this moving story of a friendship that survives a queen’s rise and fall, Sandra Byrd reaches beyond the familiar stereotypes to give us the story of two remarkable women: Anne Boleyn and Meg Wyatt. A refreshingly three-dimensional Anne and a Meg of courage and integrity make this novel a must for your Tudor library.”

  —Susan Higginbotham, author of The Queen of Last Hopes

  “Ms. Byrd shows a wonderful sense of time and place in her novel To Die For. Her characters and her story are drawn with precision. The new life she breathed into well-worn notables like Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, as seen through her character Meg, is simply captivating.”

  —Diane Haeger, author of The Queen’s Rival

  “Sandra Byrd’s first venture into historical fiction is nothing short of brilliant. All the Tudor details are perfectly placed, like gemstones in a royal crown, yet there is far more to this compelling novel than mere history. The characters live and breathe, their struggles are real, their longings palpable. Seeing Anne Boleyn’s story through the eyes of her closest friend provides a well-rounded, even sympathetic view of a woman often vilified in history books. As Meg’s story unfolds, Sandra Byrd does Philippa Gregory one better, giving readers a wider glimpse of history, a greater measure of hope, and an ending that satisfies at the deepest level. Simply put, To Die For is the best historical novel I’ve read in many a season, a masterpiece of history and heart.”

  —Liz Curtis Higgs, bestselling author of Here Burns My Candle

  “If you love Philippa Gregory, you’ll adore Sandra Byrd! Through the eyes of Anne Boleyn’s most trusted friend, Meg Wyatt, Ms. Byrd seamlessly weaves sacred threads of history with those of captivating imagination to take us on an unforgettable journey of the heart. The paths we travel—at once familiar and new—are bathed in hope that casts an eternal light on the characters’ hearts, and the reader’s. I’ve no doubt that if Anne and Meg could somehow read To Die For, they would thank Ms. Byrd for telling their stories with such grace and beauty.”

  —Tamera Alexander, bestselling author of

  Within My Heart and The Inheritance

  “As a reader who appreciates well-researched historical fiction, I truly enjoyed Sandra Byrd’s To Die For. Anne Boleyn has long held a fascination for contemporary readers, and I was pleased to discover this account of her remarkable life. Through her charm, intelligence, and wit, she changed the course of history.”

  —Angela Hunt, author of The Fine Art of Insincerity

  Howard Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10020

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Sandra Byrd

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Howard Books trade paperback edition August 2011

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  Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Byrd, Sandra.

  To die for: a novel/Sandra Byrd.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.Y678T6 2011

  813′.54—dc22 2010048161

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8311-3

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8313-7 (ebook)

  All Old Testament Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version. Public domain. All New Testament Scripture quotations are taken from Tyndale’s New Testament. A modern-spelling edition of the 1534 translation with an introduction by David Daniell. Translated by William Tyndale. Copyright © 1989 by Yale University Press. Used by permission.

  ad augusta per angusta

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author’s Note

  Historical Bibliography

  The Secret Keeper excerpt

  Reading Group Guide

  PROLOGUE

  Year of Our Lord May 1536

  Tower of London

  There are many ways to arrive at the Tower of London, though there are few ways out. Kings and queens ride in before a coronation, retinue trailing like a train of ermine. Prisoners, however, arrive on foot, shoved through one cavernous gate or another by the wardens, who live, as all do, at the mercy of a merciless king. Some unfortunate few are delivered to the Tower by water.

  The Thames lapped against our boat as it stopped to allow for the entry gate to be raised. The metal teeth lifted high enough for the oarsmen to row us into the Tower’s maw, called Traitor’s Gate. This beast never ate its fill and, like all beasts of prey, ate only flesh. It brought to mind the words of King David. My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.

  I glanced up as Lady Zouche caught a sob in her handkerchief. I then looked to my older sister, Alice, for comfort. She held my gaze with a somber shake of her head. Our falsely accused brother was even now waiting, being digested in the belly within. For the first time Alice had no comfort to offer me, no tonic of hope.

  Momentarily we bumped up against the stone stairways leading out of the water and were commanded to quickly disembark.

  ONE

  Year of Our Lord 1518

  Allington Castle, Kent, England

  Come with me,” I whispered to Anne. She turned to look at her older sister, Mary, busy flirting with our tutors—forbidden, and therefore enticing, conquests. After assessing the safety of our escape Anne turned back to me and nodded. She was up for an adventure, as I knew she would be. Rose Ogilvy sat in the corner, carefully plying her needle in and out of a stretch of muslin. She was seventeen years old, same as Anne and I, but I knew she would shy away fr
om this particular exploit, any particular exploit, in fact. To save her embarrassment I didn’t ask her along.

  We slipped out the door, gathered the layers of skirts in our hands, and then raced down the long stone hallway. Recently painted portraits of my Wyatt ancestors were awkwardly affixed to the walls. When he bought the castle, my father, Henry Wyatt, had placed them there to make our family seem more ancient and noble than it was. We were not exactly pretenders but not exactly of Norman blood, either. They stared down at me, ill at ease, smiths and butchers and small-time landowners now forced into velvets and ruffs within a span of time no broader than the width of my hand. And yet we were gentry now. My father expected me to act like the lady he’d suffered to make me be.

  We slid out the main entrance, one or two servants catching my eye and warning me back inside with a stern look. “No, Mistress Meg,” one urged me. I disregarded them. They knew what might lie ahead for me—they’d borne the same fate, maybe worse. But I refused to be intimidated.

  Anne and I linked arms and strolled toward the rows of unattended garden. Just beyond, on the neatly clipped field, our brothers play-jousted with long branches though all were training for real jousts as well. As we strolled by, my brother Thomas stopped, dipped into a bow, and flourished his hat in our direction. “What a polite young man,” Anne said. “Mayhap you’ll notice, my brother George isn’t tipping his hat toward me.”

  I grinned. “My brother isn’t tipping his hat toward me, either. He’d as soon ignore me as do me good. It’s you he’s trying to impress, as well you know.” A light flush of pleasure spread up Anne’s long neck and a little catlike mewl escaped her lips. She fully realized the effect she’d begun to have on men. Whilst she didn’t court their praise, false modesty was not her besetting sin, either.

  “I see another bow and this one is particularly in your direction,” she said. I looked up and saw Will Ogilvy.

  A year older than I, Will had brown hair that was long and tousled, his face slightly reddened from the joust. I couldn’t help but notice that his arms and chest had thickened over the summer as he grew from a gangly boy into an assured young man. Even from this distance I could see his eyes had the same merry twinkle for me they always had. I nodded primly in his direction—after all, I was a lady, and we were in mixed company. He winked at me.

  A wink! The audacity. Who else had seen it?

  “Mayhap Lord Ogilvy’s son should come out of the field. He seems to have dust in his eye,” Anne teased. I turned toward her and grinned, thankful for her faithful friendship. She never trained her charm on Will. She knew I planned to have him for myself.

  Rewardingly, he seemed completely uninterested in Anne.

  We sat in the gardens, enveloped in the haze of the exotic scent of my mother’s jasmine plants, gossiping about overheard conversations between Anne’s ambassador father and high-born mother; they had sent Anne and her sister, Mary, to apprentice at the French court when Princess Mary married some years back and they were to return shortly, after this visit home with their father. We talked about my sister, Alice, who had borne yet another child. I would soon go to stay with her for a few months, if my father allowed it. But as Alice was an obedient girl, marrying young and bearing quickly, my father favored nearly every request she made. Alas, the same could not be said for me.

  “We’ve got new horses.” I finally got the conversation around to its planned target. “My father’s horsemaster brought them round last week.”

  “Ooh,” Anne said. “Are they fast?”

  “I don’t know…,” I answered. We’d prided ourselves—unseemly, I suppose—on riding as fast and as well as any boy in our group.

  “Should we see?” she asked me, as I knew she would. For me to suggest the idea would be disobedient, but for me to accommodate a friend would be hospitality indeed.

  We ran to the stables and after petting old favorites we walked to the stalls where the new horses were housed. Our vanity guided our choices. Anne picked out her favorite, a raven mare, barely three years old with deep black eyes, like her own. I showed her the one I loved best, a tamed stallion with a thick auburn mane like my own. He glanced nervously about his stall till I gentled him with quiet words and touches.

  “Should you have them saddled?”

  “My father shouldn’t be home from court till tomorrow morning.” Then I called over a stable boy. “Saddle these two for us, please.”

  “If ’n you say so, miss,” he said, unable to disobey me but nervous nonetheless. I smiled kindly at him, hoping to gentle him as I’d done the stallion.

  “I do,” I said. And then Anne and I raced and rode.

  The fields were thick and green, flowers clinging on the tips of the field grass, ready to fall forward into the late summer’s heat. We slowed when we came to the woods and picked our way through the tangle of downed trees, their mossy shroud bringing a soft, dank smell.

  “I’ve missed this,” Anne said. “My father won’t let me ride our horses unattended anymore.”

  “Mine says the same.”

  “Why did you not say anything when I suggested the ride?”

  “I felt it would be our last time, as girls,” I told her. “We’re becoming women now and our lives are going to change.”

  We turned our horses around, back toward Allington.

  And then.

  I felt his eyes upon me afore I saw him from a distance. My father stood in front of the stables. My first trembling urge was to turn my mount and gallop back into the woods, as far as he could carry me, and not return. If Anne hadn’t been with me, I might have. But I couldn’t leave her and anyway, where would I go?

  “Your father…,” she said softly, though I heard her over the hoofbeats.

  I nodded. “He’s home early.”

  We rode the mounts into the stable. My father stood at the door, looking at me and no one else. My brothers, and Anne’s brother, George, were there, and Will Ogilvy…. as were all their sisters. Like a bearbaiting, I thought. Everyone come to witness the bloody violence, some there of their own will and pleasure, like my warped brother Edmund. The others dragged there by convention or lack of choice.

  My father indicated that we girls should be lifted from our mounts—more to protect the horse than myself, I knew.

  “I thought I told you not to ride alone. And you certainly understood not to lather my new mounts.” He tapped his horsewhip against his riding boot.

  “I’m sorry, Father.” I felt a trickle of sweat course down my back; it felt like a spider scurrying away.

  “It was really my fault.” Anne nobly stepped in and tried to protect me. “I suggested it.”

  “And I could have told her no.” I spoke up, not willing to let her shoulder the blame on her own. I needn’t have bothered.

  “Thank you, Mistress Boleyn,” Father said. “But Mistress Wyatt knew not to ride out and chose to disobey me anyway.” He cheerfully dismissed the Boleyn and Ogilvy children to the manor; their servants waited to take them back to their homes.

  We Wyatt children knew to stand fast. My brother Edmund grinned. Thomas focused his eyes on the ground, as always. I knew my father would be softer on me if I cried, but I refused to.

  I looked at my friends hastily retreating in the distance, and just as I locked eyes with Will, my father struck.

  He backhanded me against the cheek and for a moment I felt nothing but my teeth chattering as if they would loosen in my heavy skull. I fell to the ground. He yanked me to my feet and then slapped me from another angle. Blood dripped out of my nose and I felt the tingle through the top of it and across the bridge above my eyes. In the distance, I saw George Boleyn restrain Will from coming back to the stable and I silently thanked him.

  I stood up because I knew my father didn’t want me to. I fixed my eyes on his, not blinking, willing myself not to be snuffed out, and forced out the words that we both knew were meaningless. “I’m sorry, Father. Would you forgive me?”

  �
��You’re to be a lady, do you hear me?” he roared. I stood still as he strode back to the house, Edmund nipping at his heels. Thomas waited behind for me.

  At the end of the summer our tutors held a picnic for us on the grounds of Hever Castle, the Boleyns’ home. Each of us was going a separate way, and though we would join again for social occasions and perhaps further instruction, we would not gather together weekly or monthly anymore. My brother Thomas would soon be sent to Cambridge and Edmund and I would continue at home with private tutors after my visit with Alice. My mother, ill again, could not be parted from me.

  Anne, and her older sister, Mary, of course, were going back to the French court to serve Queen Claude. My father allowed a servant to take me to Hever Castle, the Boleyns’ family seat, the day before the picnic so we could look through Anne’s wardrobe trunks as girls are wont to do.

  “Ooh, look at this!” I held up a skirt and stomacher of emerald green, perfect to set off her dark skin and eyes. “The waist is tightly fitted.” I danced around the room with it and curtseyed to my imaginary suitor.

  “Yes, I know,” Anne said drily, rolling her eyes at me. It wasn’t hard to see which of us was the refined friend and which the spontaneous one. Anne had a smart fashion sense and knew how to show off her best features.

  She held up another gown, this one of navy satin, slashed to show a snowy white kirtle below with long French sleeves. “I think this would look good on you.”

  “I do, too. Shall you leave it here?” I teased.

  “No, but sketch it quickly, if you want,” she said. “They’re in the French fashion, my father had them made for me in France. No one here will wear anything like them. Just you!”

  I took a piece of paper from her study book and quickly drew a few of her dress designs. Our seamstress could do a rough copy, I thought. Perhaps not perfect, but still.

  I ran my fingers through the treasures in her little jewel cabinet and then brushed my hand over the stack of her hose—silk, not cotton as we were used to. “I think your father has grand plans for you and your sister.”