The Boleyn Wife

by Brandy Purdy

  As Jane Seymour was firmly cementing her place in Henry’s fickle heart, Anne was fighting her own body, determined to keep in what her womb was equally determined to spit out.

  “Please, God, no!” she screamed to no avail. God had—like all sensible men—abandoned her.

  With a shattering scream the midwife’s apprentice fainted and all around stepped back from the bed, their hands rising to form the sign of the cross or the symbol to ward off witchcraft. Some ladies screamed and fell fainting to the floor, others hid their eyes and turned away, or fled the room, hysterical and babbling incoherently about monsters and demons.

  It was a son, fortunately born dead, for it was a monster much malformed. It had two faces but one huge head, carpeted with wispy tufts of carroty hair, so large it had savagely ripped Anne’s flesh during its egress. The little shoulders slanted sharply so that the right was higher than the left, and the spine was as crooked as the letter S, while all four limbs, though perfectly formed with the proper number of fingers and toes, were devoid of bones and as limp and dangly as a jellyfish. But between its tiny flaccid thighs a perfectly formed male organ was plainly visible. This was Henry’s much-longed-for prince. Indeed, it even had Henry’s blue eyes!

  Seeing it, Anne went wild, shrieking like a madwoman, and had to be restrained lest she do herself further injury. Already she had lost so much blood it was a wonder that she still lived.

  After taking a deep, steadying breath and crossing herself, the midwife bent again to her work.

  “She’ll not bear again, will she?” I whispered.

  The midwife paused in the act of sewing up Anne’s badly torn flesh with catgut thread and, after darting a furtive glance at her patient, now resting and subdued by a strong dose of poppy syrup, answered, “It is not likely. She must partake of red wine and red meat and raspberry tea to replenish her blood and strength, and allow herself half a year’s respite from the marriage bed before she even thinks of trying again, but…” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head.

  But even as she spoke I could tell that she knew what we all knew—that, for Anne, time, and Henry’s patience, had run out; she would not be given another chance.

  Someone brought me a cloak and I sat upon the window seat, huddled in its folds, watching and waiting. Once, I dared venture across the room again to touch George’s shoulder as he sat with his dark head bowed in despair.

  “Go away, Jane,” he said tonelessly. “Never speak to me again; henceforth, I shall share neither bed nor board with you. And do not ask why; you know why.”

  “Because I came to warn Anne that…”

  “You did not come to warn, Jane, you came to gloat, to glory in her misfortune, to frighten her. Perhaps you even intended to cause this.” He gestured angrily towards his sleeping sister, lying still and pale as death upon her bed. “Do not bother to deny it. I shall never forgive you or Norfolk for what you did today. I will have nothing more to do with either of you.”

  “But you saw that thing!” I protested. “It was a mercy it was born dead. Had it lived…”

  George turned his face away from me, and no matter how hard I tried he would not look at or speak to me again.

  Hours passed and, huddled on the window seat, I cried myself to sleep.

  I was startled awake by the door crashing open. Limping and leaning heavily upon a crutch, with his head swaddled in bandages, King Henry came to stand at the foot of Anne’s bed. His blue eyes blazed with hell-hot anger as he glared down at her; his chest heaved mightily, and his face was flushed and mottled scarlet. Had a painter been present and taken his likeness, then he would surely have called the finished portrait “Majestic Rage.” Henry’s hands curled into tight fists and shook hard, and I knew he was fighting the desire to kill Anne with his bare hands.

  Ever so slowly, Anne turned her face from the wall. Her dark, deep-sunken eyes were dull and listless and her sallow skin looked as if it were made of yellow wax. She shakily levered herself up into a sitting position, wincing and whimpering at the pain, and George hastened to assist her, piling pillows behind her back and holding a cup of poppy syrup to her lips, urging her to take just a sip. I could see every bone in her hand—and her nails, once shiny as pearls, now dull, cracked and gnawed—when she raised it to brush her hair back from her face.

  “My lord, I…” she started, then faltered as tears started to roll down her sunken, hollow cheeks. “I thought…they told me you were dead!”

  “All the more reason to hold on to my son—England’s heir!” Henry’s voice boomed. “Why didn’t you die instead of my boy?”

  George took a step towards him, but Anne’s hand shot out to stay him. When he looked down at her she shook her head and her eyes pleaded, “Stay silent; I need you!”

  For a tense moment he wavered between attack and withdrawal; then he nodded and stepped back and sat down on the bed beside Anne, holding tight to her hand to give her the courage she needed.

  “My lord…” Anne tried again. “Had it not been for the shock…I am certain…next time…”

  “Next time?” Henry bristled. “By Heaven, Madame, there will not be a next time! You’ll get no more boys by me!” He turned his back on her and limped from the room.

  “Henry!” Anne wailed plaintively, reaching out entreatingly to him; but he ignored her, and she fell back against her pillows sobbing, “I have failed! God help me! I have failed!”

  “As God is my witness, I would like to kill him for that, and all that he has done to you!” George cried, quaking with anger. “Oh, Nan!” he sighed, compassion overcoming his rage. He lay down on the bed beside her, and carefully, tenderly, gathered her in his arms. “Do not cry for him, Nan. He’s not worth it; no man is!”

  “Oh, George!” she sobbed. “I’m not crying for Henry Tudor—I’m crying for myself!”

  I watched my husband lying on his sister’s bed, holding her as he had never held me, until I could stand the sight no more; then I crept from the room.

  No one had to tell me; I knew. The end was nigh. Already the winds of change were blowing and soon they would reach gale force.

  25

  For weeks Anne lay weak and weeping in her bed, staring at the walls and waiting for her body to heal.

  Only Meg Lee, Madge Shelton, and her childhood nurse, old Mistress Orchard, dared attend her; all her other ladies flocked to Jane Seymour.

  Even Mary Boleyn was gone, though not through any disloyalty. Anne banished her in a fit of jealous pique because she could not bear the sight of her own sister’s happiness and pregnant belly.

  Mary had at last found the happiness she so richly deserved, and the fact that her husband, William Stafford, was a nobody, a common soldier, without fortune, title, lands, or lofty name, and ten years younger than herself, mattered not a jot to her. They were head over heels in love and gloriously happy, but they had married in secret, without asking royal permission lest Anne and Henry forbid them, and did not reveal the truth until Mary’s stomach began to swell with his child.

  But Anne still had her “evergreen gallants” to console her.

  Mark Smeaton came every day with doglike devotion to play his lute for her.

  Weston, Brereton, Norris, and Wyatt visited too, often bringing delicacies like anise comfits, sugarplums, and marchpane to tempt her appetite. For hours they would sit with her and try to coax a smile, “the only prize worth winning,” according to Weston.

  George, of course, was always there. “My only constant,” Anne called him. He practically lived in her rooms; heaven knows, he never came to mine, and visited his own only to bathe and change his clothes. Where he slept and whom he slept with I do not know. I tried to tell myself I was past caring, but every time I felt my tooth wobble my rage was born anew, and lust for vengeance consumed my soul and made my mouth water.

  When she finally found the courage and the strength to step across her threshold, Anne saw for herself how greatly the tide had turned against her.
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  Nearly every woman had taken Jane Seymour as her personal model for dress, demeanor, and deportment. Except upon Anne’s own head, there was not a French hood to be seen. Every woman stood with her hair hidden and her head boxed in by a gable hood, with her eyes downcast and her hands demurely clasped. Every bodice was filled in with a modest, white lawn partlet. Most of their jewels, except an occasional, unostentatious brooch or ring, had been put away. Their gowns, once a rainbow of bright colors, were now pale, pastel, dark, or drab.

  Looking like a walking wraith, with her sallow skin almost transparent, her bones protruding, and her eyes feverishly bright, Anne stood out most conspicuously in her night black velvet gown and French hood spangled with diamond stars. And her black hair swung glossy and gypsy-free down her back, adorned with diamond stars.

  Nervously, she toyed with the big golden B resting in the hollow of her throat, attached, as always, to her favorite pearls, as she gazed warily about like a frightened animal. She took a step closer to George and tightened her grip on his arm, shaking like an old woman stricken with palsy.

  Everyone kept their distance. There were no curtsies or bows. Thomas Boleyn and the Duke of Norfolk pointedly turned their backs and engaged Cromwell in conversation. And Elizabeth Boleyn turned to Jane Seymour and complimented her for resurrecting modest and traditional English dress; it was so much nicer than those decadent French styles favored by her daughter.

  All around her conversations quickly resumed and people made a great show of pretending to ignore Anne while surreptitiously watching to see what she would do. Would she break down in tears or fly into one of her famous rages?

  “Cowards!” Francis Weston sniffed contemptuously as he elbowed his way through the crowd, followed by Will Brereton and Henry Norris.

  “Aye.” Brereton nodded, wrinkling his nose and exaggeratedly sniffing his gilt pomander ball. “Not all the perfumes of Araby could disguise this great stink of cowardice!”

  “Mark well, we at least have the courage to be true, and the rest of you be damned!” Norris added boldly.

  “Most Gracious Majesty, pray forgive us; we were detained.” Weston jangled his velvet purse and explained, “A dice game.”

  Thus they became marked men. Now was the moment of truth when the fools from the wise men would be parted. Crafty, devious Cromwell was watching, and he would not forget. And, if perchance he did, I would be there to remind him.

  One of the diamond stars fell from Anne’s hair.

  “My star has fallen,” she quipped as all four men bent to retrieve it. “Should I take that as an omen, I wonder?”

  “Of course not!” they scoffed.

  Anne smiled, grateful but unconvinced. “They do say that the brightest stars burn out the fastest!”

  George ignored me entirely now; we never spoke at all. When we met he looked through me as though I were a woman fashioned of glass. He would not even speak to me at table. If there was anything he absolutely must say it was conveyed to me via a servant. I must have poured my heart out in a hundred letters, yet all of them were returned to me by the bearer I sent them with, their seals intact. He would not hear me or even read my words. I tried countless times to throw myself in his path, weeping and begging for mercy, begging him to hear me out; but every time he blindly passed me by, leaving me feeling like a ghost or phantom desperately, but futilely, trying to convey some message to the living, but doomed to failure. Our marriage was over and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew I must accept and resign myself to the facts, yet I could not. I had to keep trying every waking hour to break the barrier he had erected between us. George was my world; he meant everything to me, and without him my life was a worthless, pallid, living death.

  In April I discovered that he had found a new diversion—Anne’s pet musician, Mark Smeaton.

  “I told him to take off his clothes and get into bed, and he did!” I overheard George boasting to his friends over their wine cups. “Afterwards, I told him to put on his clothes and get out, and he did!”

  But Smeaton—poor simple, lovestruck Smeaton—longed for more. Like so many others, he made the mistake of letting George Boleyn touch his heart. He had yet to learn that charm, the appearance of interest, shared laughter, and carnal lust combined do not equal sincerity. For George, lovers were for the moment’s pleasure, and once the moment had passed, they meant nothing to him. Smeaton thought George was his friend; that was his first mistake. Thinking that what they did in bed actually meant something was his second.

  Once, seated nearby with my embroidery, I watched them together. George got up from the window seat and started to leave, but Smeaton, womanlike and clinging, begged him to stay. He had that look in his eyes I knew so well, the look of a woman who watches, hurt, angered, and bewildered, as the man she loves leaves her bed and begins pulling on his clothes with cold, silent efficiency, ready to leave now that he has been sated, while she is, like a plaything, put back upon the shelf and forgotten.

  Impatiently, George shook off Smeaton’s hand.

  “I’ll go my way, and you go yours and leave me be!” he snapped as he had so many times before, at so many others, turning his back and casually dismissing yet another lover without a qualm, care, or remorse.

  Part of me wanted to set aside my sewing and go to Smeaton, touch his hand, and tell him “I understand,” but no, my hard heart said, let him suffer like all the rest!

  Across the room, Anne was laughing with Norris and Weston, the three of them darting surreptitious glances at Madge Shelton, sitting nearby, bent over her embroidery.

  “Why do you not just marry her and have done with it?” Anne inquired of Norris, who had been betrothed for years to the flighty Madge, with no hope of leading her to the altar anytime soon.

  Norris shrugged. “Methinks I shall tarry awhile,” he said, though everyone knew it was Madge herself who tarried; she enjoyed her free and easy ways too much to think seriously of settling down with just one man.

  “Perhaps you look for dead men’s shoes?” Anne batted her lashes coyly. “If any misfortune befell His Majesty you would look to have me!”

  A hush fell as the folly of her words sunk in.

  Norris, his round baby face draining of color and his blue eyes wide with alarm, shook his head vehemently. “May my head be struck off if ever I thought such a thing! It is treason, Madame! Have a care what you say, even in jest!”

  Treason! I pulled my embroidery thread so taut it snapped. It was dangerous banter they were indulging in, and I resolved to commit every word of it to memory.

  Then Weston came rushing to the rescue, as always was his wont. “If you tarry too much longer, I shall try for the fair Madge myself!”

  Whereupon Norris reminded him that he was married and the father of a newborn son, and thus should not be dallying with the Queen’s ladies. Besides, though no one said it, everyone knew Weston had sampled Madge’s charms already.

  “Aye”—Weston grinned cheekily—“but it is not Madge I come here to see. There is one here whom I love far more than Mistress Shelton or my lady wife.”

  “Oh?” Anne arched her brows. “And who might that be?”

  “It is yourself,” Weston answered.

  “Flatterer!” Anne tapped him playfully with her fan. “I have had enough of court gallantry for today; I shall go and discover what ails Master Smeaton—he looks so melancholy.”

  As Anne approached, Smeaton fell to his knees and bowed his head low in a futile attempt to hide his tears.

  “Mark?” She reached out and gently tilted his chin up. “Why so downcast?”

  Across the room, George flung an arm about Weston’s shoulder and threw back his head, laughing at some jest. Seeing this, Smeaton’s lovelorn eyes blazed with jealousy.

  Anne saw it too, but she misunderstood.

  “Mark.” She turned his face back to her and said gently, as if she were speaking to a child, “You must not look to have me speak to you as I do to them, for t
hey are gentlemen born, and you are not.”

  “Oh, no, Madame, a look will suffice!” Smeaton gazed up at her with worshipful eyes, boldly raising his fingertips to brush briefly against the too slender wrist of the hand that still lingered upon his chin.

  Anger flashed in Anne’s dark eyes and she snatched her hand away. “Do not presume upon my kindness, Master Smeaton!”

  In an indignant swirl of purple satin skirts she spun round and returned to her friends, leaving poor, lowborn Smeaton behind to wallow in misery, hopelessly in love with not one but two Boleyns, and with no hope of possessing either.

  26

  On the final day of April 1536 Anne sought respite from her sorrows with her daughter in the gardens of Greenwich. Only Meg Lee and I attended her, sitting on benches on opposite sides of the garden, she with a book of scriptures and I with my embroidery.

  Dressed all in black satin, Anne stood out starkly against the colorful blossoms and greenery flourishing all around her.

  Laughing, she knelt with her arms outstretched and Elizabeth, face puckered with concentration, red curls the color of autumn leaves spilling from beneath her gold-embroidered orange cap, gathered up the stiff, rustling folds of her gown, and toddled determinedly into her mother’s arms.

  Anne embraced her and swung her up onto her hip.

  “Soon you will be too big for Mama to lift!” she cried as she spun around, laughing, with her gypsy hair swinging free.

  She paused suddenly and looked up at the King, standing frowning down at them from his window above. The smile on her lips faltered and she shivered a little and hugged Elizabeth closer.

  Elizabeth reached out to grasp the golden B at Anne’s throat.

  “Look there!” Anne pointed up at Henry. “Wave to Papa!” she cajoled, smiling encouragingly and settling Elizabeth more comfortably upon her hip. “Go on, wave to Papa!” she urged as Elizabeth, showing herself to be a true Tudor, refused to wave and instead scowled up at her father as she tightened her grip upon her mother and matched Henry Tudor stare for insolent stare. Indeed, it would not have surprised me if the little minx had stuck out her tongue at him.