by Byrd, Sandra
The day before the ball, Baron Blackston’s carriage arrived. I went to meet him, as was expected of me. But when the carriage door opened Simon came out and no one else.
“My Lord…. I am pleased to see you,” I said. “And”—I looked into the open carriage door—“Lord Blackston?”
“Is unwell,” he said shortly. “I am come to talk with Sir Henry on his behalf.”
I wanted to disallow my heart to hope, hope having often been torn out by the roots in my life. But perhaps, I thought, perhaps….
On the night of the feast my father and Simon shared a cart with Edmund, and I rode with my nephew John Rogers.
“A priest,” I said as we bumped along the hardened path to Hever Castle. “Was your father shocked?”
He nodded. “For a time, but I think he always knew I was thus inclined. He will train my brother to take my place in the family.”
“And…. no wife?” I pressed on.
He shook his head. “Not for lack of desire, I assure you. But in spite of the fact that Luther himself has taken a bride whilst serving God completely, I just do not feel able to part my heart thusly.”
“Luther says priests can be married then.” I was exultant.
“Not in England, they can’t,” John corrected me, and my heart fell. “They can’t even read Tyndale’s New Testament translation in England without risk of being burned alive.”
I leaned forward and whispered, though there were only we two in the cart. “Have you read Tyndale’s New Testament, John?”
He grinned at me and said nothing. His face was alight with passion. I envied him. I felt the desire to read the Scriptures in my own language kindle, but I quickly patted it out.
Anne must have had a hand in the seating arrangements as I was neatly placed at dinner next to my nephew, which meant that all of his friends rallied round our table to talk after the meal was complete. Try as I might to force my eyes away from the Ogilvys, I could not. Rose was there with her husband, the flush of new motherhood making her a bit fairer of face and thicker of waist. My own waist, fashionably thin underneath my corset, felt inadequate and unwomanly. Walter Ogilvy was there, coughing disruptively, and his wife was there, too, appreciably heavy with child. I envied her and felt the yearning in my own small waist. And then there was Will. He locked eyes with me each and every time I looked in his direction so I knew he must have been looking at me often.
The king roared his approval at a joke, commanded the musicians, and the dance began. Noticeably absent from his attention was the pregnant Mary Boleyn. I did not envy Mary her second child, certain, like her eldest, Katherine, to be a golden redhead unlike her husband, dark-haired Carey. The king threw nary a glance in her direction and all knew that his affections had, like the court, gone on progress for fresh lodging and novel fare.
“My lady, a dance?” George Boleyn came alongside me.
“Certainly,” I said, and he swept me into his brotherly arms. I leaned forward and whispered, “Does not your new wife expect you to dance with her alone all evening?”
“If she’d quit of her harsh chattering I may, but alas, there is no hope for that, so I dutifully make the rounds with my father’s guests,” he said.
“Why hasn’t the queen come?” I was certain that as the host’s son he would know.
“She’s angry because the king is considering naming the Duke of Richmond to the line of succession along with Princess Mary. No one other than a lawfully begot son of the king shall take precedence over Richmond.”
“Ah.” The Duke of Richmond was Henry’s bastard son by Bessie Blount, whereas Princess Mary was the one surviving child of Henry’s union with Katherine of Aragon.
“What is your opinion?” I whispered in his ear. As a courtier, George would have heard the murmurs in the king’s privy council.
“’Twas only one woman ever tried to rule England, the empress Maude, and Henry, as well as all of us, knows how that ended,” he grimly replied. I nodded my agreement. Decades of bloodshed, political unrest, and civil war. “He must not let that happen again. And he knows it.”
The music slowed, indicating a change in song. “And now I shall turn the conversation over to more pleasant matters, and the lady to a most pleasant partner.” And, as if by happenstance but most likely by plan, Will came to claim the next dance.
He took my hand in his and pulled me near. I nearly closed my eyes in delight, but I was aware of Simon’s gaze boring into my back. I dared not show my true feelings.
“You look well, Meg,” Will said, his voice deep and thick with emotion. I allowed myself to look into his eyes briefly and then willed the look he returned imprinted upon my heart and mind.
“You, too, sir. I trust your studies have gone well? My nephew John tells me that you both shall graduate with your MA at Cambridge and are shortly to take your vows.”
He sighed heavily. Well, I couldn’t help it. What other were we to talk of, and in any case, I had never hidden my true heart from Will Ogilvy and I wasn’t about to start now.
“Yes. My brother’s wife will soon have a child and my father feels secure in allowing me to take my vows. I shall do so shortly. Will you attend the ceremony with Alice?”
We parted momentarily but remained partners for the next dance as well, a notable social indiscretion and sure to draw eyes. I held my voice aloof. “I shall be married soon so I shan’t be close enough to attend. I wish you well.”
“Meg, please don’t put this barrier between us. Let us sit awhile and have a cup of wine, as friends, and I shall tell you about what I’ve been studying and where I plan to go.”
The idea of an intelligent discourse that did not include what was remaining in the larder, or how much small beer had spoiled, drew me. And the man did too; I admit it. He put his hand in the hollow of my back and steered me to a table, where a servant delivered two cups of wine. I looked about me and, not seeing Simon, Baron Blackston’s eyes and ears, breathed easier.
Will leaned in toward me in order to be better heard above the musicians. I had no place to look—not his eyes lest I be drawn in, not his lips lest I imagine what could not be. I affixed a firm, friendly, sisterly look to my face and tried to focus on his cheekbones. I’d traced them once and longed to do so again but a verse of Scripture came back to me, unbidden. Touch not God’s anointed. Noli tangere. He was not mine to touch.
“I’m going to Antwerp, to be a chaplain to the cloth merchants. But also…. there is printing going on there. And translating. Tyndale is there. And I have honed my gift for languages. I’m going to see if I can be of some help. Perhaps it was for this that our Lord called me. Imagine it, Meg, hundreds, thousands of people able to read what God says in their own language. German, French, English. Not dependent upon Latin anymore.”
“I’ve done quite well without Latin myself,” I said, wanting to remain aloof in light of his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t. I grinned.
“Still my stubborn girl,” he said, unaware what the words “my girl” meant to me. Or maybe not.
I could see Simon making his way toward me. I drew my shoulders back to appear disinterested. “Be careful in Antwerp,” I said. “I will pray for you.”
“Te somniabo.” He quietly echoed his long-ago words spoken in the gardens just outside. I will dream of you.
“Don’t,” I urged him. “It’s not fair to either of us.”
He nodded but held my gaze. “You’re right. I apologize. I love our Lord with all that I am, but I am still a weak man in at least one area. I…. I will not reach out to you again.”
At precisely that moment Simon arrived. “Meg,” he said overfamiliarly, “a dance? You’ve been sitting here so long.” He shot a look at Will.
“Thank you, yes,” I said. “This is Will Ogilvy, a childhood friend. He’s about to take his priestly vows with my nephew John.”
At that Simon relaxed, but not completely. They made small talk for a few moments and then Simon led me onto the dance floor,
holding me, if anything, even tighter than Will had. As we did I thought, Unlike Anne, I could love a man with a weakness, so long as it was the right one.
Will had left his seat and was talking with his sister, Rose, and a demure friend of hers, auburn-haired like me. But I saw his face as I danced with Simon; it was tinted with jealousy.
My brother Edmund danced with Rose Ogilvy’s young friend. Anne sat in a corner, attended by several young men. I joined them and we chattered for a moment. I was about to suggest a walk in the garden when the young men disappeared like ice on a summer pond. Anne—Anne!—grew demure and I looked behind me. It was the king. I quickly dropped to a curtsey, but I needn’t have bothered as it wasn’t me he was looking at.
“Do I know you?” the king asked Anne.
“I am Mistress Anne Boleyn,” Anne said. I found it hard to believe that he did not remember Anne, having been to Hever Castle many times. But Henry was a man with a singular focus and it had been trained on another Boleyn girl for many years. And in the years since she’d left court Anne herself had blossomed from a somewhat cocky, self-sure girl to a young woman in complete command of her alluring repertoire.
“Why are you not at court?” Henry asked. “Surely such a lovely flower should not be hidden away in the countryside to blossom and die unheralded.”
Ah yes, the master of courtly flirtation.
“I had the privilege of serving the queen for some time, sire, but Cardinal Wolsey thought perhaps the fields of Kent were better suited to me than the garden of Your Majesty’s court.” The words themselves were straightforward but Anne, too, had been well trained in court manners and there was a certain lure in her voice that men found irresistible. Henry, it need not be said, was a man.
“The cardinal has made a grievous error, I fear,” Henry said. He bowed slightly, chivalrously. “A dance, mistress?” As if anyone would dare decline!
Although the king had been expected to return to Penshurst Castle that night he chose, instead, to accept Sir Thomas’s offer of hospitality and dwell a little longer at Hever. Anne and I spent the night awake, nearly all night, giggling like young girls in front of her fireplace talking about women and their clothes and their prospects and Will and Simon. And the king, of course.
The next evening Sir Thomas put on another dinner, smaller, of course, but certain to bring him to the edge of bankruptcy, as visits from the king were often the financial ruin of the host. George Boleyn was the king’s cupbearer, and as Anne and George sat idling, talking, the king beckoned to George. “I’m thirsty.” I watched from some feet away as Anne let go of George’s arm so he could assist the king with his wine. And then Henry spoke again, loud enough for all to hear.
“Bring your sister with you.” The king looked directly at Anne, comely in a yellow gown that didn’t fix her dark complexion as sallow so much as sun-kiss it. I wondered if anyone considered that he might have been asking for George’s sister Mary instead. But she was nowhere to be seen.
All those present separated to two sides and Anne glided along the open path toward the king. She approached him, curtseyed deeply, and held his gaze. It was rare for anyone to hold the king’s gaze, much less a woman. He reached out and took one of her hands in his own, and then took the other one. He held them for an exceptionally long time ere turning to speak to George.
“Methinks these hands are prettier than yours, Boleyn.” The room roared with laughter. “I should rather be served by yon delicate fingers than by your hairy ones.” George grinned, bowed, and handed the king’s gold cup to Anne. She approached the king and lifted the cup to the king’s lips, gaze never wavering. After a moment, she lowered the cup and stood fast. I realized, with a start, that I was not breathing and forced myself to do so.
The king spoke again. “I feel refreshed as I haven’t in some time, mistress. Where have you learnt such comely manners?”
Anne spoke clearly, sweetly, with a well-cushioned barb. “Here in the house of my father, sire. And at the French court.”
There was an audible gasp then, the implication being that etiquette was better learned in a French court than in an English one. But Henry seemed delighted by her forthrightness, becomingly coupled with her feminine charm. He laughed aloud.
“Well, then, mistress, I will depend upon you to share with us what you have learnt. The French court’s loss is our gain.” He indicated that she should take a seat next to him, and, in fact, fairly shoved the Duke of Suffolk out of the way to make room for her.
He never took his eyes off of her. It was as if he’d commissioned an expensive tapestry some months before and now, to his delight, it had been set before him. I suspected the musicians were going to have to play well beyond their commissioned hours in order to provide an extended, acceptable opportunity for Anne and the king to talk. She was bold but not bawdy as she paid him attention, a sophisticated flirt. I doubted he’d ever seen anyone like her.
Late that evening I spied someone in the tattle’s corner, a dark corner to hear from but not be seen. It was Mary Boleyn Carey. Our eyes met and I saw that she knew her time with the king had ended. He had nary a further thought for her, but he had given her a husband, a fine manor, some baubles, and two children.
My heart reached out. I pitied her, and Sir William Carey as well.
One week hence Simon and I met in my father’s chamber. The village priest was there, twitching in front of my father. I was to marry Baron Blackston by proxy. He was too ill to travel south to complete the marriage, but neither he, nor my father, wanted it delayed any further. Simon had told us that he’d argued against a hasty marriage but that the baron had pressed on. “I finally convinced him to do it by proxy, if he must,” he said. “I insisted that he didn’t want his young bride to come to him as a nursemaid and not as a wife, and he agreed.”
Since my mother’s death my father had grown less and less interested in the matters of our estate, so Edmund and Simon had completed the negotiation of my marriage portion. Neither shared the details with me. Simon would stand in for the baron and I would join him, at least for a time, within a year, for certes.
Edithe dressed me in a fine gown, merrily chattering as she did, though we both knew this had not been a wedding day any girl or woman should desire. As she spoke of the simple village wedding she herself had had, I wondered, for the first time, if perhaps simple folk had an easier life in some ways than the higher born. We made our way to my father’s study, where Simon waited.
The proxy words were read and I numbly nodded and added my agreement, though of course ’twere no agreement at all. After the priest married us, Simon spoke up. “A marriage isn’t complete till it’s been consummated. To the bedroom.”
Surely not…! But my father insisted. Simon gleamed with malice.
We walked to my bedchamber, and, to my horror, the priest instructed us to get upon the bed. “Bare your lower legs,” he said next, and, feeling somewhat immodest, I obeyed. “Touch them together,” he continued.
We did, although Simon pressed his firmly into mine and kept them there, rather than a moderate and transient touch.
When he took his legs from mine he gave me a look that told me he’d rather have dismissed them all from the bedchamber and consummated it the traditional way. Thankfully, as he was not my husband, that would never be.
I tried not to think about when I would have to consummate my marriage the traditional way with Lord Blackston. But I was wed now and there was no turning back.
With a wicked grin, Simon bowed to me and then left the chamber. After dinner he played cards with Edmund late into the night and then, the next day, left for the north.
I was a married woman and yet I’d never felt emptier. I stayed my mind from the memories of dreaming of my wedding day to Will and sat quietly in my chamber that night so as not to give others acquaintance with my sorrow.
I idled for a month, reading my books and talking to the servants as they prepared to finish the chores that accompanie
d our property just before harvest time. One day a Boleyn retinue arrived at Allington on horseback. Anne dismounted, her black hair shimmering against a French hood. I went to meet her.
“The king sent me a stag he’d killed at hunt,” she said. “And a letter.”
“A letter?” All knew that Henry detested writing.
She nodded, and we headed toward the sitting chamber, where she pulled me close and then handed the letter to me. I scanned it, amazed at some of the words as I read them aloud. “‘My mistress and friend, I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to recommend us to your favor and to not let absence lessen your affection to us. For it were a great pity to increase our pain, which absence alone does sufficiently and more than I could ever thought.’”
I stopped reading and looked at her with alarm. “What does he mean by this?”
“One can speculate,” Anne said. Her bemused expression told me she’d been doing just that. “He wrote to my father at the same time. I am commanded to court. At the very least, my father is sure to find a fine marriage match for me whilst I am there. After all, that’s how I met Percy….” Her face grew suffused with excitement. She’d been worried since negotiations with James Butler had soured and little else had surfaced in the ensuing years. The king kept her father busy, perhaps too busy to find a good match for Anne. Truth be told, she was indeed a flower who thrived on the close heat of the court and not the whistling breeze of an empty countryside.
And then, a surprise. “Come with me,” she said. “I need a friend. A true friend there, a trusted friend. I feel that it was my fault that you left court early last time and I’d like to make it up to you. I know the king would not take exception to my inviting you to join me in service to the queen again.” Henry would certainly not take exception to anything she asked, judging by the tone of his letter. But I shook my head. “I am married and will go north as soon as my husband has recovered his health.”
“Mayhap he’ll pass on afore you can meet with him. God rest his soul.”
