The Boleyn Wife

by Brandy Purdy

  Alas! They are so strong!

  My sorrow will not suffer strength

  My life for to prolong

  Alone in prison strange!

  I wail my destiny

  Woe worth this cruel hap, that I

  Should taste this misery.

  Farewell my pleasures past,

  Welcome my present pain

  I feel my torments so increase

  That life cannot remain.

  Sound now the passing bell,

  Rung is my doleful knell,

  For its sound my death doth tell,

  Death doth draw nigh

  Sound the knell dolefully,

  For now I die!

  Even as George was writing these verses, Anne had the same idea herself; it was always thus with them. It was as if they could read each other’s mind even when they were apart. This poem was hers alone.

  Defiled is my name, full sore

  Through cruel spite and false report,

  That I may say forevermore

  Farewell to joy, adieu comfort,

  For wrongfully you judge of me;

  Unto my fame a mortal wound,

  Say what ye list, it may not be,

  You seek for what shall not be found.

  In death, poetry, and legend they had all found immortality. And I would be remembered alongside them, my name a byword for jealousy, treachery, betrayal, and lies. I found my immortality in infamy; I had unjustly become one of the villains in Anne Boleyn’s tale, my true innocence blotted out and obscured by bloodstains.

  In October 1537, Jane Seymour, “the entirely beloved,” died giving Henry his heart’s desire.

  For three days and nights she labored and screamed her throat raw on soiled, sweat-soaked, bloody sheets. The heaving of her great belly and the straining ache of her privy parts wore her strength down to a shadow.

  In desperation the midwife pressed a handkerchief filled with black pepper against her nose, hoping that a bout of violent sneezing would dislodge the infant from her womb.

  The doctors huddled together fearfully, debating whether to cut her open in an attempt to save the child. Which was more important—the child or the mother? Which would the King prefer to save? Surely it would be the child; the King could always get another wife! Was one not just as good as another?

  On her bed of pain, Jane Seymour heard them and silent tears coursed down her face. Did she perhaps then think of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the once beloved and then discarded queens, who had come and gone before her?

  But before they could resort to the knife, it all ended happily in the wee hours of October 12, when the Queen was delivered of “a goodly fair boy.”

  As Henry cradled the precious bundle in his arms and cooed, “At last, my boy, my precious boy!” we hastily combed Jane’s tangled, sweat-matted hair, propped her torn, limp, exhausted body up against a mountain of pillows, and draped an ermine-edged crimson velvet mantle about her shoulders.

  When Henry bent to place a kiss upon her cheek and prattled on about her giving him “a Duke of York, a fine brother for our Edward, next year!” Jane Seymour smiled wanly. No one noticed that her life was slowly slipping away. They were too busy drinking toasts to the newborn prince and congratulating the King.

  Jane Seymour had triumphed where her two predecessors had failed, and when she was laid in her coffin two weeks later, she was also enshrined in Henry’s heart as the perfect wife, the paragon to which no other could compare, the only one who never disappointed him.

  I was one of nine-and-twenty ladies—one for each year of Jane Seymour’s life—who walked in solemn procession behind her coffin, escorting her to her tomb, carrying a lighted white taper clasped in my hands, clad in somber black with the plain white linen headdress that symbolized death in childbed.

  In the years that followed George’s death, I lived, yet I did not live. I woke up each morning and went to bed each night, ate my meals, said my prayers, dressed, and sewed, and served the queen if there was one, but my life lacked meaning and purpose. Without love I was nothing. I was six years past thirty and foresaw for myself a bleak and empty future. Alone in my bed at night I would think of George and weep because I would never feel his touch again. Nor was there any realistic hope that I would ever find someone else to love me; not now, not after what I had done. No man, whether he was in the market for a wife or a casual dalliance, would touch me; I was stained with blood.

  I saved some of George’s clothes and sometimes I would take them out and spread them on the bed. I would lie there in a welter of shirts, hose, breeches, doublets, cloaks, gloves, and hats, and gather them against my breast, bury my face in them and inhale deeply, hoping to catch his scent. I would rub my cheek against the fabric and remember the day he wore this, and this…the cherry red, black, evergreen, peacock blue, butter yellow, russet, tawny, orange fiery as a sunset; I had only to close my eyes and my memory would conjure up a vision of him, tall, handsome, and proud.

  At night he appeared like a ghost in my dreams. I would see him, walking away from me, in the stark black and white clothes he had worn the day he died. I would follow him from his cell in the Tower all the way out to the scaffold, calling to him, begging, entreating him to “Come back to me and forgive everything!” Yet no matter how much I pleaded, how loud I cried, or how fast I ran, I could never close the distance between us; I could never catch up with him. He always evaded my touch and he would not turn and look at me, nor did he speak to me. Upon the scaffold, where the block should have been, she—Anne Boleyn—awaited him in black velvet, sable, and pearls. I watched in horror as George went to her and enfolded her in a passionate embrace and kissed her as a lover would. It was then that I always woke up screaming.

  No one would ever believe how much I loved him. I would have sold my soul to the Devil to get him back, but neither God nor the Devil would heed my prayers. My penance was clear—I would be forever condemned and despised as the madly jealous and vengeful wife who had lied and sent her husband to the block.

  Only I did not lie. I did not! He loved her more than anything or anyone. His love for her was unnatural, more than merely a brother’s affection for his favorite sister, and so was hers for him! To one another they were entirely devoted. But everyone was blind to the truth. I did not kill George; he killed himself. When he read that paper aloud he had knowingly and deliberately committed suicide. He could have saved himself, but he chose not to. He wanted to be with Anne; he knew she was going to die and he chose to follow her. It was his decision to die. I did not kill him; he chose to die. I wanted him to live! I wanted him to love me and come back to me! Why could no one see that? Why did no one believe me?

  Then, in 1540, “The Flanders Mare” trotted into Henry’s life and I resumed my duties as a lady-in-waiting.

  Anna of Cleves was four-and-twenty, German, Protestant, and eager to please but utterly incapable of doing so. She was singularly lacking in all the graces. She could not dance, play an instrument, recite poetry, carry a tune, roll the dice, or deal a hand of cards, and had been reared to believe that all such things were the Devil’s vices. Her mother and governesses had diligently taught her that needlework, housewifery, and prayer were the only suitable occupations for a noblewoman.

  Henry married her only to cement Cromwell’s Protestant alliance; now that Catholic France and Spain were friends again, England needed an ally to tip the balance of power back in her favor.

  Henry liked Holbein’s portrait of her well enough to wed her, but not enough to bed her once he saw her in the flesh. Then he wrinkled up his nose and pronounced decisively, “I like her not!”

  Aye, she was a rank, vile thing, with her guttural broken English that sounded like a hog grunting greedily at trough, and she possessed a marked aversion to bathing. Her dowdy German gowns, with their round skirts without trains, fussily gathered sleeves, and overly ornate bodices, hid a plump, slack-breasted, sagging bellied body that—to be perfectly blunt—sta
nk.

  Several times a day we scrubbed her down with vinegar and lemon juice and doused her with perfume. Once, in exasperation, I grabbed a pair of sewing scissors and snipped away the thick, matted clumps of stinking hair from her armpits. Several times a day I brought her cups of hot clove water to gargle with and kept a box of mint comfits always close at hand, but even then her breath always stank of beer and onions.

  Her Dutch caps, with their sheer gauze wings, golden fringe, and great Orient pearls, were the only pretty thing about her, but beneath them her waist-length hair, as yellow as cheese, was so greasy and slick it was a trial to make the pins stick. I loathed to touch it and afterwards could not wash my hands fast enough.

  And she was stupid beyond measure! As a lady of the bedchamber, I had noticed there had never been the telltale virgin’s stain on the bedclothes, and His Majesty’s distaste was quite apparent, and indeed it could not be faulted. So I undertook one day to question her about it, making my manner and voice most concerned and solicitous as I expressed the hope that she would soon give Prince Edward a little brother.

  “I think Your Grace is a maid still,” I said knowingly.

  “Nein.” She shook her head vigorously and I nearly gagged at the stench of her. “How can das be so? Vhen de King he comes to mein bed he kisses me und he biddeth me ‘gut night, sveetheart,’ und in de morning he kisses me again und he biddeth me ‘gut morning, sveetheart,’ und vhen he take his leave of me he biddeth me ‘farevell, darling.’ Is das nicht enough?”

  I almost laughed in her face.

  “Madame,” I said, endeavoring to compose myself and keep my features and tone serene when it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. “There must be more—a great deal more—or it will be a very long time before we have a Duke of York.”

  “Nein.” The dimwit shook her head. “I know no more. I am content und I receive as much of His Majesty’s attention as I vish.”

  Six months later we were all greatly relieved when she amicably agreed to a divorce and to let Henry adopt her as his sister to preserve diplomatic relations, and trotted out of his life as placidly as a mare being turned out to pasture to make way for wife number five—Katherine Howard.

  Part Three

  Katherine

  1540–1542

  34

  Katherine Howard danced into my bleak, gray life like a beacon of brightest sunshine. Her bubbling laughter and bright smile contained all the warmth my cold heart craved. Ten years had come and gone since I had seen her last. And, though she was but fifteen, the shy little bud I had met on the Dowager Duchess’s lawn had already burst into full bloom and become a lush and sultry rose.

  I remember the day she arrived to take up her duties as a lady-in-waiting to Anna of Cleves. It was a sweltering summer’s day that turned us all into leaden-footed laggards, weighed down by our court finery. But for the first time since George died, I felt alive. Already I loved her, that little angel whose memory I had for so long treasured. I would watch over her at court, I vowed, and keep her safe from harm and guide her; she would be the daughter I had always wanted but never had. Perhaps this was God’s gift to me, and in Katherine Howard I would find redemption and a kind of love—a far better love—that I had never known before—the sacred and pure love of a mother and her child.

  She wore a gown of angelic white satin with the low, square bodice modestly filled in with a partlet of white lawn fashioned with a collar that opened in the shape of a V, pointing down to her pert little breasts, trussed high by her stays. As she stepped daintily from the Duke of Norfolk’s barge, she raised her skirts and petticoats much too high, giving us all a glimpse of shapely legs sheathed in white stockings held up by white ribbon garters tied in pretty bows just below her knees and, even more startling, a flash of the creamy skin of a pair of plump thighs. Some even swore they caught a glimpse of the auburn curls between.

  As she set her satin-shod feet down upon firm ground, the chin strap that held her white satin French hood in place snapped. As she reached up to grab hold of it before it tumbled into the Thames, her hand knocked awry the thick bun of auburn hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck.

  She pouted her lips—as red and ripe as cherries—in a little moue of annoyance and shook her head vigorously, like a wet dog, and sent the pins flying every which way, so that a mass of unruly auburn curls tumbled all the way down to her tightly-laced waist. And we were all enraptured. There was something about her that drew every eye—male and female—in her direction and made the day seem brighter and hotter still.

  Looking from a window above, King Henry leaned hard upon the windowsill, grimacing as he put too much weight on his bad leg, swathed in stinking, pus-sodden bandages. At first sight little Katherine Howard lit a raging fire in the old King’s loins and made his mouth water.

  Down below, the Duke of Norfolk was frowning and about to step forward to chastise his niece for her unladylike behavior when the sunlight, flashing on the emeralds and diamonds that encrusted the King’s great puffed sleeves as he leaned on the windowsill, caught Norfolk’s eye. At the King’s look of spellbound longing, the scolding words died upon his lips.

  The wheels of Norfolk’s mind began to turn, calculating and assessing, weighing the risks and odds. Two of his nieces had caught the King’s eye before. Mary Boleyn had a brief moment of glory as Henry’s mistress before she was cast aside like a toy that no longer holds interest. And Anne had soared to the highest heights before she came crashing down like Icarus burned by the sun. So what could little Katherine Howard do? That was the question.

  35

  The Duke of Norfolk summoned me to Lambeth, where the Dowager Duchess and her household were currently in residence.

  I was delegated to play the role of chaperone, to keep silent and blend into the scenery, and, most important of all, be Norfolk’s eyes and ears. I was to sit unobtrusively upon a garden bench in my respectable widow’s weeds with my embroidery.

  “My brother-in-law Boleyn told me how it was done,” Norfolk explained. “A garden of roses and a green gown. If it worked once, it will work again; it is a myth that lightning never strikes twice. The King is smitten already, and Katherine—thank Heaven!—is not the willful, tart-tongued shrew Anne was. Katherine is pretty and pliant, as a woman should be. We can control her!”

  And there she was, waiting in the rose garden, docile and demure in spring green silk, innocent and unspoiled, with her hair unbound as best becomes a virgin.

  Grimacing at the pain in his leg, and leaning heavily on his cane, King Henry slowly descended the stone steps into the rose garden, assisted by his favorite Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Thomas Culpepper.

  The robust, golden Tudor King lived now only in the vain palace of Henry’s mind and others’ fond memories. Now on the threshold of fifty, Henry’s youth, health, and beauty were long gone.

  Beneath the many layers of bandages, wound round and round his leg like the linen wrappings on a dead Egyptian king, a fetid ulcer lurked, and leaked foul, putrid, yellow pus. The old tiltyard injury had never truly healed despite the physicians’ repeated lancings, leechings, and applications of a costly ointment made from ground Orient pearls, and he could no longer walk without a cane. Now that he could no longer take regular exercise and indulge in sports or dance, his bulk had grown so great that he often had to be carried about in a specially constructed chair, borne by several stout-backed, strong-shouldered men; his great bed had to be reinforced so that it would not collapse beneath his weight; and a winch was utilized to lift him into the air and lower him down onto his horse’s back.

  He tried to disguise his ever-expanding size by favoring doublets with great padded shoulders and ornate, puffed, and slashed sleeves, worn with creaking corsets underneath. Indeed, I had it on good authority that three goodly sized men could fit into one of Henry’s doublets.

  And to his face, Father Time had not been kind. It was fat and florid, with great pouches of pink fat that th
reatened to obscure the squinty blue eyes that now required spectacles with rock-crystal lenses from Venice, great quivering jowls, a nose bulbous and red with broken veins, and a cruel little pink rosebud of a mouth that seemed to always be pursed in a petulant pout. A jaunty, jeweled, feathered cap concealed his bald pate and the fringe of sandy gray that ringed it like a monk’s tonsure. And his beard had also grown sparse and lost its youthful ruddy hue.

  All these things combined had robbed him of his good humor and left a cantankerous, tyrannical ogre in its place.

  “Steady on, Your Grace,” Thomas Culpepper said, jovial and encouraging as, grunting and red-faced, the old King staggered and clutched at Culpepper for support.

  Thomas Culpepper—now there was a man to delight the eye and make a woman’s heart flutter! Just looking at him made my knees wobble as if the bones in my legs had turned to jelly.

  He was a young rake in his middle twenties, tall and handsome, with tawny hair and hazel eyes, who bore himself with a confident swagger. He was also a heartbreaker; kind in the getting, cruel in the quitting. And the broken hearts, letters, and barrels of tears that were afterwards shed by the ladies he seduced were the trophies he prized most and loved to boast of. Culpepper loved no one but himself. To him, honor was the stuff of sermons and something the minstrels sang of, not a principle to live by. He was no poet or wit, like George and his friends had been, just a handsome rascal who delighted in living on the knife’s edge of danger; risk was the most powerful aphrodisiac to Thomas Culpepper. He was the kind of man who liked to duck beneath the bed, inside a cupboard, or out a window an instant before the lady’s husband walked in.

  Recently the court had been rife with the tale of his rape of a park-keeper’s wife. While out hunting with his friends, Culpepper had spied this rustic beauty in a woodland glen and determined to have his way with her there and then. When she refused him, he had his companions hold her down. A woodsman heard her screams and came running to her rescue, only to have Culpepper plunge a dagger into his heart. For this crime, he was sentenced to hang, but Henry hated to lose such a jolly companion, and none but Culpepper, he claimed, could minister so tenderly to his bad leg; so he pardoned him, dismissing it all as just a youthful escapade.