by Byrd, Sandra
“How goes it at Allington?” I asked. While I enjoyed the festivities at court and even in the queen’s household, such that they were, I missed home.
“Much the same.” He took my hand and rested it in the crook of his elbow. The narcissus were just forcing their way out of the ground and Thomas bent down and plucked one. “Edmund is, as always, sure of himself and Father grows increasingly sure of him too. I think, truth be known, Father would prefer him here at court rather than I. But I am the eldest, alas, so none of the three of us will get what we desire.” He held the flower to his nose and then held it out to me. “’Twould make a fine badge on Edmund’s coat of armor, wouldn’t it?”
“Indeed. I’m fairly certain that Narcissus is Edmund’s patron saint,” I replied. We giggled together and then sat down on a bench.
“Our mother?” I dared ask. Her letters had become further apart and shorter.
“Unwell,” Thomas said, and then said nothing more. There was no need. In the distance I saw Anne and Henry Percy strolling together, her hand also in the crook of his arm, but the meaning much different, of course, than when it was one’s brother.
As they approached Thomas stood and I remained seated.
“You look as beautiful as ever, Mistress Boleyn,” Thomas said.
Anne laughed and the gaze of both men held rapt upon her face. “Oh, Thomas, no need for formalities. Things go well for me, and, I hear, for you. A new appointment at court?”
“Yes.” Thomas appeared pleased to have his achievement recognized in front of Henry Percy. “And how are you, Lord Percy?”
Anyone with eyes could tell by looking upon Lord Percy’s countenance that he was very well indeed.
“Well, thank you,” he replied. No mention was made of his accomplishments. He needed none. He was rich and the heir of the Earl of Northumberland, ruler in all practicalities of the north. The look in his eye told me that he considered the distance between us Wyatts and himself an unbreachable gap. And it was, of course. But I counted it as a mark of weakness to have to intimate that to others by your manner. The king, after all, was known for his bonhomie. We discoursed for a time and then the two of them went on their way, a lady chaperone trailing discreetly behind. No one would mention the word “chaperone,” but that was indeed the role she played that hour.
Thomas rejoined me on the bench and nodded toward the backs of the couple as they retreated from us. “How long has that been under way?”
“Since last spring,” I said. No need to protest that nothing was under way. The court was the ultimate repository of open secrets.
“And his father?”
“Does not know, I am certain,” I replied. The Boleyns were held in high regard by the king—Sir Thomas was even now away on a diplomatic mission on the king’s behalf—but they were certainly not in the same drawer as the Percys.
Thomas sat on the bench, his poet’s hands holding his head in a glum pose.
“Come now, Thomas. You are married. They are not.”
He picked his head up. “Nor will they be,” he said. “Mark my word. Wolsey will not let it happen.”
“Who is Wolsey to say?” I asked.
“Wolsey is the king whilst the king plays,” Thomas replied. Left unsaid was that the king was often at play.
We began our walk back to the palace, to his duties and mine, and that conversation was forgotten until one evening several months hence when Anne burst into our chamber. The suddenness of her action and the atypical loss of her composure shook me.
“What is it?”
She pulled me close. “Cardinal Wolsey approached Henry Percy and asked him what his intentions were toward me. Henry declared his love for me and indicated that he intended to marry me.”
“And?”
“And Wolsey confronted Henry and told him that he would speak with him again and that he was not to see me for now. Also that he would get his father here anon to set things straight.”
My brother Thomas was at York Place working on the king’s figures with Thomas Cromwell when Cardinal Wolsey next spoke to Henry Percy. Thomas heard the cardinal call Anne a foolish girl and he marveled that Percy, heir to one of the noblest and most worthy earldoms on earth, would tangle himself with the likes of her.
Shortly after Thomas reported this to me I returned to my duties. After straightening and ordering the queen’s gowns I asked and was granted dismissal. I threw Anne a look so she’d know to follow me.
Dear me. Anne had brought me here to be her friend, and I had been so taken in with gladness that she had found love, and had so enjoyed late-night talks about him, that I had not advised her well. I needed to take off the cloak of a girlish friend and put on that of a womanly advisor. When she arrived, I recounted what Thomas had told me, but she already knew.
“Anne! What of Butler?” As far as I knew, her father was years into negotiations for a marriage between them.
She waved that away. “Who knows if that will come to pass? And my father would let go that proposal in a moment if he thought the Earl of Northumberland was in my reach.”
This, I knew, was true.
“I have…. corresponded with him.” Ah. So Sir Thomas had given a tacit approval to this match and was letting Anne wrangle to win.
“Anne, think. Wolsey is the most powerful man in our world and he is implacably against you.”
“Because he does not want to advance the Boleyns, see us reach too high beyond our grasp. Although why he, as a butcher’s son, should be the judge of that I know not. And he’s obsessively against my father’s interests in the reformers’ thoughts on faith. He removed my brother, George, from his position in the privy chamber, for example.”
Please, please don’t let Jane Parker be idling about.
“So what next?” I asked.
“Henry Percy will declare his love for me and my love for him and convince his father that we should be married.”
“And if not?”
She shook her head. She never considered the possibility of losing. “I know how Percy loves me, and I believe that will give him the strength to do what needs to be done.”
Shortly thereafter Anne had me deliver a letter to Henry Percy. She could not be seen with him, but I knew by her determined look that she had not given up. I knocked lightly on the door to his chamber and he opened it himself. His face was a bit crestfallen when he saw who it was—I suspected he’d hoped it would be Anne—but then recovered his graciousness and invited me in. I stepped in, to be polite, but had no intention of staying.
His chambers were large, the largest of any gentleman’s chambers I’d been in, and richly appointed. We moved to the back of the large greeting room, toward a window, and I withdrew the letter from inside my deep French sleeve. “I’m to wait for a response, if you like,” I said. He nodded, then left me standing by the window while he retired to his desk to read the letter and, I presumed, respond. I wandered to a further window, and then another, looking outside as I did. A large barge, one I didn’t recognize, had been moored on the riverside alongside the palace grounds. It rivaled the king’s for its ornamentation, though mayhap not Wolsey’s.
I idled, but within a few minutes there was a sharp knock at the door. Percy’s manservant answered and like a cloud clap a large man, emanating power, burst into the room.
“My Lord Northumberland,” the servant stammered. The Earl of Northumberland approached his son, who had blanched.
“Sir!” he said in a menacing voice.
His son, who looked nothing so much as a just-weaned whelp, cowered as he turned before his father. I, tucked into a dark corner in the room, went unnoticed.
“I’ve always considered you an unthrifty wastrel, proud, disdainful, and certainly you should have been the runt of my pack rather than one of your nobler brothers. Now you’ve proved it to me and to all assembled. We shall discuss this, and the prospect of your disinheritance, with the cardinal’s attorneys.”
His father turned a
nd as he did, Percy followed him out of the room and down the hall. Forgotten, I waited a moment and then took my leave. As I did, I knew Percy would never be the champion Anne hoped him to be.
Two days later Anne and I watched as our laden trunks were loaded into fine carts. She was banished to Kent to get her out of Percy’s field of vision till his marriage to Mary Talbot, which had been ponderously negotiated for years, could be quickly consummated. I tried to make good conversation. “I will be glad to judge my mother’s health on my own.”
Anne remained silent as we rode our steeds.
“Was it the man or the title?” I finally asked what only the closest friend could.
“The title was important, of course. But I loved the man too.” I’d never seen her defeated in position and in heart. A tear slid down her cheek and she abruptly brushed it away.
I picked at a sliver that lay just below the skin covering my own heart. “Through Wolsey, God has taken away both of our loves,” I said.
She looked up. “No, that’s where we disagree. You blame God for the deeds of men, I blame the men themselves. Mark me, this will return to Cardinal Wolsey. He’s a gluttonous climber who has become a wolf in shepherd’s cloth of gold. As a man sows, so shall he reap.”
I was not sure if she was vowing revenge on Wolsey herself or quoting Scripture to remind God what should next follow.
“How can anyone truly respect a weak man?” she asked. I had no answer, because the truth was, you couldn’t, and we both knew she didn’t mean Wolsey.
“I do know this,” Anne said after some miles of silence. “I will never again pledge myself to a weak man.”
I remained silent, pretending not to hear the word “pledge” in relation to Henry Percy. It was a dangerous, even perilous, word.
SIX
Year of Our Lord 1526
Allington Castle, Kent, England
I was an educated woman, not susceptible to superstition, so when old ladies waggled that bad things happened in sets of three I’d dismissed it as easily as one dismisses a gossipy servant. You can always look back on events past and find patterns in them, like seeing a tapestry after it’s woven. And sometimes, by happenstance, bad did come in threes. Of course some events seemed bounteous at first sight but upon later reflection were clearly catastrophic.
“Mother is not well and will not be joining us for dinner,” I announced to my father one evening as the whole family gathered for the evening meal. “I will remain with her, if it’s agreeable to you.”
He nodded, solemn. We all knew her time drew near and were reluctant to leave her alone. I had forgone joining my sister, Alice, for much of the past year, and my father had delayed my marriage negotiations so that my mother might have what comfort could be afforded her last days. I left Father, Thomas and his wife, and Edmund to the meal whilst I rejoined my mother.
“Flora, that will be all for now. I shall call upon you if the need arises.” I dismissed my mother’s servant and approached my mother in her bed. I brushed back her hair. “’Tis unbound, as a bride’s,” I teased her lightly.
“I am a bride, the bride of Christ, shortly to join mine husband,” she said. Her voice was lighter than it had sounded for some time, which concerned me.
“And you shall shortly be a bride too,” she continued. “Your father will complete your negotiations with Lord Blackston, for certes, when I am gone.”
“Hush, now,” I said, not wanting the conversation to turn down that narrow path. We’d avoided it thus far and I feared that we would not find our way back once it was taken.
“In that trunk”—she pointed—“there is a portrait. I would have you bring it to me.” I walked over to my mother’s marriage trunk and opened the lid. There were folds of cloth and some of her fine gowns. I wondered if it had been with joy or trepidation that she had packed this as a girl, and unpacked it as a young woman come to Allington to take the bed of a dead woman. It was a fate that now, seemingly, was my own.
I lifted out what seemed to be a small wrapped portrait and my mother nodded her approval ere coughing into her linen. I brought the portrait to her bed and handed it to her.
She unwrapped it and handed it back to me. “’Tis me!” I exclaimed.
She laughed, a beautiful sound, and I thanked God reflexively, begrudgingly, for the small gift of it, because I knew it would echo in my heart long after my mother had taken His hand. “’Tis not you, darling, ’tis me.”
Now that I looked harder at it, I could see there were some differences. She had not the dimple cleft in her chin as I did, and her brows were thicker than mine. But it was close.
“My father had this painted for me just before I left home to marry Sir Henry. He wanted me to remember my home and you can see, it’s my girlhood chamber in the background.”
I nodded.
“There I kept my treasures. My few jewels, my book of hours, hairpins my mother had given me. And my butterfly jar.”
I looked up at her. “A butterfly jar? What is that, Madam?”
“Oh, I was a free-willed girl, the only girl in my family, as you know, indulged and overloved, perhaps, and I think your father would agree. I had very little responsibility so I ran among the fields—to the distress of my nurses and my lady mother, I fear. One favorite pastime was to catch butterflies in a netting, then let them go. I got an idea—I would catch the butterfly in a net and keep him in one of the physic jars in which leeches had been brought to help my ailing father. I waited till I caught the one I wanted most to keep—he would live with me, we would share secrets. He was beautiful and would adorn my chamber and fly out when I commanded and then return in like manner.”
She took a moment and coughed so that I thought she might not be able to stop. After some minutes she regained her breath.
“Alas, one morning shortly after bringing him to my chamber I awoke to find that he was dead. He was not meant to live in a glass jar, even a beautiful, expensive glass jar. Instead of flying freely about he beat his wings against the jar, and try as he might he could not adapt. Thus trapped, he sickened and died. I think he gave up, because there were holes aplenty to let him breathe.”
I had not taken my eyes off my mother. She now looked full into mine. “Do you understand, Meg?”
I nodded.
“Thomas is a dreamer, and Edmund is your father’s son. But you, dear Meg, you are mine.”
“I will not let you down, Madam. I promise you that.” I leaned over and kissed her wan cheek.
Exhausted with the effort, she fell back in her pillow and I stayed by her till her shallow breathing grew regular. I then took the portrait with me and slipped back into my own chamber.
In the springtime, we buried my lady mother at the priory near Allington. I spent days going through her belongings, folding her linens, reading her letters, dabbing on her scented water, crying silently into her gowns after I folded them and before I laid them away. One afternoon I found Edmund sobbing behind the gatehouse. It reminded me of how, as a boy, he’d held on to my skirts to steady himself, how he and I had sat in the long hallway and rolled balls to one another. As we’d grown older, we’d grown apart. “Edmund,” I said. He looked up, startled to see me and clearly not happy at having been caught at grief.
“I am sorry for, well, for whatever has driven us apart. Mayhap it was my fault as I spent more time with Thomas. I don’t wish us to be distant any longer.”
He brushed his riding gloves across his face and stared at me with not one scrap of warmth. “I have no use of, nor desire for, your affection or interest, now or at any time.”
I looked into his flint-blue eyes. The boy Edmund was gone. The man Edmund was no one I cared to know, dangerous and ugly.
* * *
Some months later I was going over the kitchen accounts with the chamberlain when a messenger arrived from Hever Castle. As the lady of the house now, I took the correspondence and opened it. It was an invitation to a feast being held in the king’s honor
a fortnight hence. The whole family was invited, and Sir Thomas took special care to inform my father that my nephew John Rogers would attend along with some of the other fellows from Cambridge in advance of their priestly ordination.
Which other fellows? It had been several years since I had seen Will, and truthfully, he had probably forgotten me. We were, as I’d told Thomas, a long-passed youthful flirtation akin to his affection for Anne.
I brought the invitation to my father, who was home from court as the treasurer of the king’s household for the time being, the better to allow my brother Thomas to become proficient at his job as clerk.
“Sir, this has just arrived from Sir Thomas and Lady Boleyn.” I handed the invitation over to him, fully expecting him to instruct his secretary to write a polite note of refusal, as we were still a household in mourning. Still, I hoped he would allow us to go, as I was eager to see Anne again.
My father read it quickly. Then he turned to his secretary. “Please write Sir Thomas and thank him for the invitation. My sons and my daughter and I will attend, and my grandson John Rogers can return to stay here at Allington, as I know that the king is on progress and the other houses likely to be well occupied. Oh—and please inform Sir Thomas that My Lord Blackston will attend with our family. He will be here anon to complete his marriage with my daughter.”
I swooned, but just slightly.
“That will be all.” My father dismissed his secretary, and I remained for a few moments whilst he instructed me to prepare to be married shortly and return to my husband’s home with him afterward.
I went up to my chamber. Edithe was there, mending one of my gowns. “We will find something for Flora to rework among your mother’s gowns for the dance at Hever Castle,” she said. “Flora may accompany you to Baron Blackston’s, if it be a’right, lady. My Roger is here at the Boleyns’.” I nodded mutely, knowing I’d miss her desperately.
