The Boleyn Bride

by Purdy, Brandy

  “I was a dutiful wife and slept beside him in life, but my obedience to him ends with death, and I will not spend eternity sleeping beside a man I despise, a father who denounced and condemned his children to an infamous death when he knew them to be innocent. False belief I could forgive, but he knew the truth full well. He did what he did solely to retain the favor of the King, and that I cannot, and will not, forgive.”

  She chose instead the church of Saint Mary-at-Lambeth, where some of her illustrious Howard ancestors were entombed, as the place for her eternal rest. The site of that church is now the Museum of Garden History.

  The night her coffin, draped in black, emblazoned with a large white cross, was ferried by torchlight across the Thames to Lambeth, a single mourner, a rotund, bearded, black-clad figure, sitting bareheaded in a hired barge, followed, quietly weeping.

  When the coffin was set down inside the church, he softly approached. He lit a candle and knelt in prayer and stayed there for some time, then pressed his lips to the coffin lid, just where the lips of the woman lying within it would be, and vanished into the dawn. No one ever knew who he was.

  As he departed, as silently as he had come, rude jests were uttered amongst the oarsmen and servants who had carried the coffin in. They dredged up all the old gossip about the Lady Elizabeth Boleyn’s lax morals and many lovers and said the late Queen Anne must have gotten her wanton ways from her mother, and wondered would the daughter she left behind, the red-haired bastard Elizabeth, go the same way. They marveled that this mystery man who was obviously of humble origins, and being such a corpulent, portly fellow, had ever been the lover of such a beautiful woman. How had he ever coupled with such a slender lady without crushing her bones to powder? Why had a woman reputedly so beautiful in her prime and so vain of her pedigree, with all the gentlemen of the court to choose from, ever have chosen a fat tradesman to warm her bed? But Remi Jouet, even if he had heard them, was not telling. He remained, as he had always been, a man who knew when silence was indeed golden and when to spend a few words; and this occasion, to satisfy the lewd curiosity of some bargemen, was not one of them.

  As Elizabeth predicted, Thomas Boleyn immediately dispatched a team of gardeners to restore the churchyard at Hever to a sedate, orderly, and elegant appearance befitting of his station. Hever Castle and a reconstruction of the rose garden where Henry VIII wooed Anne Boleyn remains a popular tourist attraction to this day.

  Thomas Boleyn retained his sovereign’s favor to the very end. He died March 12, 1539, at the age of sixty-one, a month shy of marrying the King’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas. He was being fitted for his wedding whites when the fatal fever came along and laid him in his coffin. Already in declining health, though he put up a valiant fight, in the end, he could not withstand it.

  His steward wrote of his passing, “My good lord and master is dead. He made the end of a good Christian gentleman.” King Henry ordered masses said for his good and faithful servant’s soul.

  He was entombed in the church at Hever beneath the magnificent monumental brass he had commissioned showing himself in his prime clad in the full regalia of a Knight of the Garter.

  Lady Margaret Butler lived out her days at Hever, sinking ever deeper into dementia. As her mind returned to her childhood in Ireland, she was given dolls costumed as princesses, fairies, and mermaids, kindly supplied by Remi Jouet, to amuse and divert her. She died at the age of eighty-five and was entombed near her son in the church at Hever.

  Mary Boleyn lived happily with her second husband, William Stafford, never wanting for love, though the same could not be said for money. She lost the child she had been carrying when she was banished from Anne’s good graces. She and her beloved Will, to their great sorrow, had no more children. They lived for a time abroad as William resumed his military service and later returned to England as part of the retinue of Anne of Cleves when she came to become Henry VIII’s fourth wife in 1539.

  Mary lived to see both her children make good and—most importantly to her—happy marriages in which each found love. She died of consumption in July of 1543, greatly mourned as a beloved wife and mother.

  Discounted during most of her lifetime as a fool, even by those who should have known and loved her best, Mary was the Boleyn girl who got it right in the end; she knew how to follow her heart and go after what was really important.

  Country folk claim that on moon-bright nights Anne and George, clad in spectral white to symbolize their innocence, still ride the country lanes of Norfolk in their elegant, eerily glowing coach and four, reaching Blickling Hall at the stroke of midnight.

  George hands Anne down, and they glide, arm in arm, each with their head tucked beneath an arm, into their ancestral home, passing seamlessly through doors and solid walls.

  While they visit until dawn, seeing the changes time has wrought, including a completely new house rebuilt from the ground up in the seventeenth century, the legend says, the coach rolls on, dragging the damned soul of their father, Thomas Boleyn, behind. On and on he goes, being dragged through hedges, brambles, and ditches, banging and bouncing over rutted and rocky roads, mud and twigs tangling in his gray hair, fire sometimes shooting from his mouth, scraping and clattering over the twelve bridges that lie between Wroxham and Blickling Hall, as orbs of colored light and fireballs and a horde of screaming demons follow, some in the form of hounds that occasionally pause to lick up his blood, cursing him for betraying his own flesh and blood, damning him to endure this ordeal as penance for five thousand years. They say that anyone witnessing this sight will be instantly dragged down to hell by the same demons that torment Thomas Boleyn.

  The coach always returns to collect Anne and George as the dawn is breaking. With a crunch of wheels upon gravel, and the fading neigh of horses and ghostly hoofbeats, the entire equipage vanishes in a burst of white light as the cock crows.

  According to a member of the British Folklore Society, writing in the 1940s of the ghostly goings-on at Blickling Hall that had been occurring through the centuries, “the occupants of the house are so accustomed to these appearances that they take no notice of them.”

  The unquiet spirit of Anne Boleyn has also been seen at Hever Castle and the Tower of London, where, in 1864, a sentry was once almost court-martialed, accused of drunkenness and dereliction of duty, when he fainted after a late-night encounter with the white-gowned ghost of Anne Boleyn, who had walked straight through him and the pointed bayonet he used to challenge her. Luckily, two of his fellow officers had heard his cry of terror and seen what transpired from a window, and he was acquitted.

  Remi Jouet remains, as he was in life, maddeningly elusive, a brilliant artisan, yet one of those ordinary people whose lives are lost in the mists of time unless they happen to rub shoulders with the great. No further details of his life are known. Only a few of his dolls remain in museums and private collections, where they are lovingly preserved as cherished treasures and continue to delight adults and children alike.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE

  BOLEYN BRIDE

  Brandy Purdy

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included to

  enhance your group’s reading

  of Brandy Purdy’s

  The Boleyn Bride!

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Elizabeth Boleyn readily admits that she is a vain woman. What do you think of her vanity and pride and the way they affect her thoughts and actions? Do you agree that she was raised to be this way or do you regard this as an excuse and her attitude as more of a personal failing? Does she remind you of the Tudor era equivalent of the mean, pretty, snobby girls everyone encounters in high school? What do you think of the way she treats people, like her maid Matilda, her husband, children, and the men she has affairs with? Near the end of this novel she describes her husband’s attitude toward people as “use and then lose”—he discards them when they are of no further profitable use to him. Though, as f
ar as we know, no one has ever died as a result of Elizabeth’s behavior, is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

  2. Discuss the marriage and relationship between Elizabeth and Thomas Boleyn. Do you believe he deserves the contempt Elizabeth treats him with? She regards herself as superior, sneers when he changes the spelling of his name from Bullen to Boleyn, and rubs his family’s mercantile origins in his face whenever she has the chance. She glories in cheating on him with men of an even lower social status. What do you think of all this? How would you react, if you were in Thomas Bullen’s shoes, to a wife like Elizabeth?

  3. Elizabeth Boleyn views her life as that of a broodmare, though one of a Tudor era wife’s primary responsibilities was to provide her husband with heirs. She endures numerous pregnancies as many women did, many of which end in miscarriages, stillbirths, or the death of the baby soon afterward. In the prologue where she describes her poison garden and later when she advises Mary that “there are other teas,” she shows she has knowledge of contraception and abortifacients; do you think, though she never directly tells the reader so, that Elizabeth has resorted to either, or both, of these measures? She appears to regret the effects pregnancy has upon her body more than she does the loss of these little lives. Do you think, reading between the lines, that she directly caused some of these miscarriages? Discuss Elizabeth’s attitude toward pregnancy. In your opinion, is it natural or unnatural? Do you think she is one of those women who is devoid of maternal feeling?

  4. Thomas Boleyn tells his wife and children, “If you doubt you can succeed, why even bother to try? Never invite failure into your life if you can possibly help it.” This is one of the very few things husband and wife agree upon. Elizabeth believes this is true and good advice. Do you? He also urges them to always be on the winning side, that this is the only side that matters. Do you agree?

  5. Discuss Elizabeth’s relationship with the doll maker, Remi Jouet. He’s the man she claims is the love of her life, yet she continues her casual dalliances with other men, and throughout the story he remains something of an enigma, a soft-spoken man of so few words that Elizabeth and the reader never truly know what he is thinking. What does each of them gain from this relationship? Despite being adulterous, is it a good, healthy relationship or are they merely using each other? Is Elizabeth, as she sometimes worries, holding Remi back from having a normal life with a wife and children? What do you think this man truly wants out of life, and does he get it? The reader never sees his life, except in the moments he shares with Elizabeth; what do you think it is like when she is not there? Do you think Elizabeth has grounds to be jealous and that he has affairs with other women who come to his shop?

  6. Since time began women have been on a quest to keep young and beautiful, sometimes going to outlandish and dangerous lengths. Today you can’t turn on a TV or open a magazine without seeing an advertisement for the latest and greatest miracle cream. In this novel, Elizabeth Boleyn mentions some of the methods she tries to maintain her complexion, color her hair, and whiten her teeth, even going so far as to brush them with the urine of a Portuguese sailor and trusting her mouth to quacks with none too pleasant results. Discuss the lengths that women, past and present, go to, to preserve or enhance their beauty. Is it worth the fight, and submitting to expensive treatments that are sometimes risky or even fraudulent, or is it better to grow old naturally and gracefully?

  7. Elizabeth Boleyn has many affairs with younger men. She says, “I relished the role of instructress. Or perhaps I just liked being the first, the one they would always remember no matter how many others came after.” What do you think about this? It contradicts what she says about forgetting her casual dalliances and wanting to be forgotten too. Why does Elizabeth have so many affairs with men of all ages from all walks of life? Is it really just to appease boredom and, in the case of those of lower social station, to spite her husband, or is something missing from her life? If so, what do you think that is? And despite these many affairs, she spurns the ultimate paramour, the King. Why do you think she does this? Do you believe the reasons she gives?

  8. Discuss Elizabeth’s relationships with her three surviving children—Mary, George, and Anne. She admits she has been an emotionally as well as a physically absent and distant mother who always put herself and her own pleasures before her children’s well-being. She knows this, even as she is doing it, in the early years when there would have still been time to make a change for the better, yet she never does. Do you think Elizabeth had it in her to ever be a good mother? Discuss how having Elizabeth for a mother affects each of her children. Does her indifference and neglect help or hurt them? Does it make them weaker or stronger? Two of them, George and Mary, grow up to be somewhat promiscuous; do you see Elizabeth’s influence in this? Do you see Anne’s transformation from ugly duckling to black swan as a result of Elizabeth’s treatment of her as a child?

  9. Elizabeth is driven, by her disappointment in Anne’s appearance as well as her incessant crying, to attempt to murder her daughter in the cradle. If George had not appeared, do you think she would have done it? Do you think Elizabeth Boleyn was suffering from postpartum depression, or were her actions cold-blooded? How would history have been different if Anne Boleyn had died or if, as Elizabeth ponders near the novel’s end, she had never transformed herself? How would Anne’s life have been different if she had remained an ugly duckling and never captivated a king or had the nerve to refuse him and hold out for marriage and a crown, or if she had gone into a convent? It might have been a longer life, but would it have been a happy, or happier, one? If Elizabeth had loved Anne from the start, the way she did Mary, how do you think this would have affected Anne and the woman she became? Would she have turned out better, worse, or the same?

  10. Mary Boleyn is deemed a failure by her whole family. Over the course of the novel, she goes from adored golden girl to pariah. She repeatedly fails to make the most of the opportunities she is given, to reap a profit from the amorous attentions of powerful men, like the kings of England and France. Her own mother thinks she would be a failure even as a halfpenny whore. She incurs only anger and disgrace when she marries a poor man who truly loves her for herself. What do you think of Mary, the choices she made, and the way her family regards and treats her? Is she really the Boleyn girl who got it right in the end?

  11. After years of leading the broodmare life, Elizabeth’s dream of going to court and serving the Queen finally comes true. Discuss her relationship with Catherine of Aragon. Is it a real friendship or merely a noblewoman proud of her privileged position and of having the confidence of the Queen? When her husband orders her to give up her position as a lady-in-waiting because it does not look right for her to serve Anne’s rival, she does so without argument, though she claims to remain loyal to Catherine in her heart. Do you believe this is true? If so, why? Does Elizabeth Boleyn really love anyone but herself? When she says that she would have fought for the lives of George and Anne, do you believe her?

  12. Discuss the close bond between Anne and George. Do you believe it is in any way incestuous, as George’s wife alleges, or that it is the innocent love of a brother and sister who are best friends as well as siblings? Do you see George’s drinking and many affairs, and his dissatisfaction with his lovers, as proof of incestuous longings, as his drunken confession to his mother might suggest, or was he merely talking in his wine cup? Do you think there was any way George could have shaken off his dark moods and led a happy life? Do you believe he suffered from some form of depression?

  13. Discuss the role the lute player Mark Smeaton plays in the Boleyn saga as depicted in this novel. Do you believe his affairs with George and Elizabeth Boleyn and their treatment of him in any way motivated his confession? Is Smeaton right to resent the way the Boleyns have treated him or do you think he brought it on himself? Do you believe, as Elizabeth wonders in the prologue, that someone might have seen her in a compromising position with Smeaton and mistaken her for Anne
?

  14. Near the end of the book, Elizabeth says, “If only I had known then what I know now . . . it might all have been a different story.” Do you believe this? What do you think she would have done differently if she were magically given the chance to live her life all over again?

  15. With her parting words, Elizabeth leaves her memoir for her daughter Mary. Do you think Mary will forgive her mother after she reads it? If you were in Mary’s shoes, would you? Does Elizabeth deserve forgiveness?

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2014 by Brandy Purdy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-7336-9

  eISBN-13 : 978-1-61773 -03 0-6

  eISBN-10: 1-61773-030-0

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: March 2014