Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

by Malyn Bromfield

  ‘You look for dead men’s shoes,’ Queen Anne responded haughtily, ‘for if ought should come to the King but good, you would look to have me.’

  Had the words that Weston had spoken in anger fed Queen Anne’s vanity? Did she really believe Norris to be in love with her?

  Norris stammered a denial. ‘Madam, I pray you, do not say such things. It is treason even to contemplate the death of … let alone ... speak of it. If had any such thought, I would my head were off.’

  ‘I can undo you, if I would,’ the Queen said angrily.

  There was sudden silence between the two of them. They must have realised everyone in that busy chamber had stopped talking and was listening to their conversation: the Queen’s ladies, their maids, the King’s gentlemen and their servants. Then Sir Henry did something that I would never have believed of the King’s gentle servant if I had not heard it for myself. He lost his temper.

  ‘It is you who speak of the King’s demise, not I,’ he told her under his breath, but in the quiet chamber his words carried to the shocked listeners. ‘If I have ever spoken out of turn or shown anything other than due respect for the wife of his Grace the King, I swear it was not my intent and this you know full well. I do not look to have you, madam. You do me great dishonour to feed your own vanity. These courtly games of love that you encourage in your chambers, I repeat, that you encourage, might have made fools of others but not of me. Do not mistake me for a lecherous, married gentleman who dallies overmuch with one of your maids or a lowly, lovesick musician who knows no better. Only yesterday, you had occasion to rebuke Smeaton for seeking to aspire above his station. Do not look to find the same fault in me. Of all the gentlemen at court I am closest to the King. He is my friend and I am his. I want no more. As for you being the undoing of me, madam, I would think that what I have seen in your chambers could very well undo you, if I did not know you better, and there are others who don’t.’

  ‘But you do know me better, Henry,’ the Queen pleaded. ‘How many times have I told my ladies that I will not have lewd behaviour in my chambers?’

  ‘You should have chastised the King’s gentlemen while you were about it.’

  Her voice trembled when the Queen begged Norris to go to her almoner, John Skip, to swear that she was a good woman.

  ‘Go with all haste,’ she pleaded, ‘before I am disgraced.’

  It was too late. Someone who had heard their conversation must have gone straight to Master Secretary Cromwell, telling of Anne and Norris, treason and adultery, for by evening the King knew of it. Queen Anne was seen at his open window in the courtyard holding the little Princess Elizabeth in her arms, weeping and begging her husband to hear her pleas for mercy.

  *

  ‘So, Norris wishes to tarry awhile,’ Mistress Madge said when we were alone in her lodgings. ‘I wonder why? He was keen enough before.’

  Why? It was obvious to me. Norris didn’t want used goods, knowing that the King and Weston had had her before him. He had almost said as much to the Queen. My mistress had heard their conversation. Didn’t she understand how much Norris despised Weston.

  ‘Well, I am in no hurry to marry, I would tarry awhile myself. I have no wish to be fat and pregnant and have to leave court.’

  ‘The Queen wishes you both to wed very soon,’ I reminded her.

  ‘What does it matter what Anne wants. Everyone knows that the King is seeking for a way to rid himself of her. The Chin is playing the same game Anne played against Katherine; returning his gifts, keeping King Henry at arm’s length and holding out for marriage. Her brothers have told her to behave thus. There is to be no more sitting upon his lap and playing with his beard until Anne is gone. My lady mother wishes me to snap Norris up before he begins to contemplate that Jane Seymour’s widowed sister needs a husband. Well, good luck to him.’

  ‘Will King Henry really divorce Queen Anne?’ I asked. ‘Won’t he change his mind, forget Mistress Seymour and fall in love with Queen Anne all over again?’

  ‘If I did not know that you cannot read I would think your head was full of tales of romance,’ my mistress said rolling her eyes. ‘This is not the court of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. King Henry has discarded one wife because she could not bear sons. He will the more readily discard another for the same reason and this time he will not take several years to do so. He is too old for that now. My lady mother expects this divorce to be speedy.’

  ‘What, King Henry cast the Queen aside? How so, upon what grounds?’

  Mistress Madge shrugged. ‘He’s done it before, Cromwell will find a way again. Perhaps he already has. Everyone is saying that Anne is disgraced. That’s all I know. The Boleyns are wetting themselves. The Seymours are going to be the dominant faction at court and there is nothing George or Uncle Wiltshire can do about it. Norfolk doesn’t care. Anne has been too haughty with him for years. Anyway, he’s a good Catholic and despises Anne’s reformist ways.’

  ‘Surely Queen Anne will go to the King and talk to him sweetly and …’

  ‘Henry is refusing to speak to her. She knows that he has given up any hopes he had of getting a son by her, after all her miscarriages. When Katherine was around her age she stopped bleeding. What reason is there now for him to come to Anne’s bed? She has already spoken to her chaplain, Matthew Parker, who is Princess Elizabeth’s godfather, and charged him to take care of the princess if she is not around; to bring her up in the reformed religion and as a future queen.’

  ‘Where will Queen Anne go?’

  ‘Don’t look so sad, Avis. Anne will probably have a happier retirement from court than the dowager Princess of Wales. My lady mother says she may go to the Low Countries where the friends of the Gospel will welcome her and allow her read her English and her French Bibles and every other illegal volume, which King Henry hates, to her heart’s content. Or perhaps she will stay in England and retire to the Westcountry. The people liked her there on the summer progresses. So you see, she will be with friends. King Henry cannot send her to a nunnery as he wanted Katherine to do when he divorced her; there won’t be any left when Cromwell has done with them. Maybe when the Chin is queen she will allow Weston to show a little chivalry towards me. Come, a bet or two upon the dog fight will pass the time until this evening’s dancing. Did I not tell you my cousin, the Queen, has promised to send one of her own gowns for me to wear?’

  *

  While Sir Francis Weston held Mistress Madge around the waist and twirled her aloft in a flurry of deep blue velvet and golden brocade, while the Queen’s brother passed her from partner to smiling partner and her sister in law and her aunts drank their wine together and would not dance, King Henry met with his council.

  ‘Even Norris does not know what business is so urgent that they must debate it into the night,’ Constantine told me as I waited behind the arras to tend my mistress. ‘See him there so forlorn, watching the dancers.’

  ‘He is sorrowful to see his betrothed dancing with another,’ I said.

  ‘He does not look to Mistress Shelton but to the Queen,’ Constantine said.

  ‘Perhaps he broods about their argument earlier today. Everyone heard it.’

  ‘What, even you?’

  My mistress was undressing the Queen in her bedchamber when a messenger from the King asked Mistress Madge to inform her Grace that the planned visit to Calais was postponed.

  ‘Her gowns are already packed for the journey,’ Mistress Madge told me later when I unpinned her from the Queen’s velvet gown. ‘Now they will have to be unpacked and returned to her wardrobe.’

  ‘Is that what all the fuss is about?’ I asked. ‘How did it take so long to postpone a journey? The King has been with his councillors for hours. Everyone has been hanging around in the courtyard wondering what is happening.’

  ‘Oh, I’m too tired to care. Get me out of these sleeves and let me sleep and dream of dancing.’

  I draped the Queen’s gown across the coffer and stroked it from the shoul
der to the hem. The velvet was so soft and beautiful that I wanted to delay snuffing the candles so that I could watch it shine in the candle-glow.

  ‘Mark Smeaton was not in the gallery tonight,’ I said as I slipped between the crisp sheets on my truckle bed.

  ‘Oh, did I not tell you,’ my mistress called sleepily from within her bed curtains. ‘He was called away to Cromwell’s house earlier today. Did you not see him rushing away with his lute when we walked to the dog fight?’

  ‘But Master Secretary does not like Smeaton’s singing, he told me so himself,’ I whispered into the darkness.

  Chapter 33

  May 1536

  May Day was hot and dry. In the villages, peasant girls were bringing in the may and the boys were setting up the maypole. Later, in the fields, they would do what lovers do.

  At Greenwich Palace, branches of may were brought to the Queen’s chambers and in the tiltyard knights and their grooms were preparing their steeds for the solemn jousting tournament. The yard was packed to bursting with spectators full of ale and holiday spirits. The Queen and her ladies paraded through the palace to watch the jousting from the royal stand between the twin tiltyard towers.

  Queen Anne sat proudly, as she had for the miniature Master Hans had painted, except that she was wearing an English gable hood that hid her hair and made her face look thin and old. She rested her arm upon drapes of cloth of gold and chatted excitedly with her ladies about her brother who was leading the challengers against Sir Henry Norris, the leading defender. The King joined them with his gentlemen, those who would not joust that day. He was courteous, offered his wife, ‘good day, madam’, and sat beside her.

  ‘I trust I find you in good health, my lord,’ she enquired politely of her husband, as if he were a visiting ambassador who was her guest.

  ‘Were I in good health, madam, I would not be sitting here with you, but astride my steed,’ the King replied irritably, in his high pitched whine, loud enough for all to hear.

  My mistress came to where I waited with the other maids at the rear of the gallery. She held her sleeve over her mouth to hide her giggles.

  ‘I thought the King was going to say … astride Mistress Seymour,’ she whispered to me.

  Already, her hair was damp beneath her hood and I wiped her brow with a cloth dipped in cool rosewater. For once, I was glad that I was not a noblewoman. I was cool in my thin wool kirtle with my crisp linen shift beneath and my hair wound inside my coif. Even in her summer damask gown and thin cambric undershift my mistress was sweltering beneath heavy petticoats and big sleeves.

  When Lord Rochford and Sir Henry Norris charged into the lists on their great armoured horses with their colours flying, the crowd roared and then groaned because Sir Henry’s horse shied and would not be calmed and it seemed he would be unable to compete.

  ‘Sir Henry will be embarrassed to have to retreat,’ Constantine said, and was ready to depart to assist his master to remove his armour when the King stood and commanded that one of his own horses be armoured and brought for his best friend to ride. How the spectators cheered and praised the King’s generosity.

  Before the jousting was finished, Sir Henry joined the King and Queen in the gallery, and shortly afterwards a messenger came and a paper was passed to the King. King Henry left his seat and beckoned Norris to follow him. Constantine bid me a hasty goodbye and followed his master. The King had departed so suddenly that the Queen, engrossed in the jousting, was unaware that he had gone until she turned in his direction to make some comment and saw the empty chair. She watched King Henry riding away in the direction of London with only half a dozen attendants and Norris by his side.

  ‘He has left me,’ she told Mistress Madge, later in her chambers. ‘When did he ever go away and I did not know of it? When did he ever leave without a fond goodbye for his best beloved wife?’

  *

  No one dared to tell the Queen of what Smeaton had confessed to Cromwell’s men. She was surrounded by members of her family; her cousin, her aunts, her sister-in-law and her uncle’s mistress and no one would tell her. Mistress Madge fiddled with the pins at her cuffs. The aunts; Lady Shelton and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, looked to each other, looked to the Queen and shook their heads. Mistress Holland rarely spoke to the Queen these days anyway. She sat at her embroidery a little apart from the others muttering ‘tut, tut, tut’ to herself to the annoyance of the Queen, who eventually bid her cease her prattling for she was beginning to sound just like Uncle Norfolk in one of his moods. Only Lady Rochford, sitting by the window, held her head high and I thought that something other than the sun made her screw up her eyes into little slits when she turned to glance at the Queen.

  It was the Little Duchess who had to break the news.

  ‘My lord has charged me to tell you something, Your Grace,’ she said, trembling, after she had made her curtsey.

  ‘My lord of Norfolk must have dire news indeed if he durst not tell you himself for fear of your sharp tongue, Anne,’ Lady Rochford said.

  ‘It was Norfolk’s bringing of bad news that caused my boy to die inside my womb. Come, tell me gently, Mary. What trouble is afoot? Whatever it be, I am prepared for it.’

  When she said ‘gently’ like that, the aunts raised their eyebrows and looked at each other as if to say, does the Queen believe herself to be with child again? How can that be? The King has not been near her bedchamber for weeks. If he had, surely we should have known of it.

  ‘Oh, Madam, the worst trouble,’ the Little Duchess cried and blurted everything out: that Norris was arrested and taken at dawn to the Tower where Smeaton had also been imprisoned the previous evening.

  ‘What, Norris, arrested? Norris in the Tower? And Mark too?’ The Queen spoke calmly but there was a tremor in her voice. ‘What have these two gentle souls done to offend?’

  The Little Duchess burst into tears. ‘My husband will not have me speak of such vile deeds as they have done.’

  ‘Let someone fetch my lord of Norfolk and have him relate this vile tale.’ Lady Rochford stared in the direction of Norfolk’s mistress.

  Mistress Holland gave her kerchief to the weeping duchess and went to find the duke. Norfolk did not bow when he strode into the Queen’s chamber.

  ‘Norris is arrested for treason and adultery with yourself, Anne.’

  He waited to see the impact his words had on his niece. She said nothing, just sat there holding her head high inside her jewelled hood, as she always did.

  ‘What of the musician?’ Lady Rochford asked. It was more of a prompt than a question. Norfolk turned away from the Queen and spoke to her ladies.

  ‘Smeaton has confessed to Cromwell of adultery with Anne upon three occasions. I understand that Norris has made a confession, of sorts.’

  Still the Queen said nothing.

  ‘Come, Bessie, Mary,’ Norfolk said. ‘This is no place for you. It is all bawdy and lechery.’ He put his arm around his mistress and led her away.

  ‘I think I had better find my husband,’ the Little Duchess mumbled and hurried away after her father.

  My mistress might have been told that her betrothed was going on a short progress with the King for a day or two’s hunting instead of being arrested for a vile and treasonable offence, the way she sat so calmly, pretending to read her psalter.

  The two aunts turned to each other and raised their eyebrows in wordless conversation. Twice I saw Lady Rochford open her mouth as if to say something and then shut it quickly.

  ‘Madge, look to the Queen,’ Lady Shelton cried out, for Queen Anne had begun to shiver violently, like a rabbit caught in a trap.

  ‘Avis, fetch wine and with haste,’ my mistress called to me.

  When I returned, Mistress Madge was standing beside the Queen holding her about her shoulders. Her whole body had gone into an ague. Mistress Madge held the goblet to her lips but she gagged on the wine and retched it up on to her skirt. And then she started to vomit a torrent of words that came in little s
purts.

  ‘Why do you all … stare at me so … I see how my aunts look to me … as if I were a whore. Oh, Mark, Mark, how could that sweet voice … that sweet voice … become so harsh in its betrayal? Whatever did I do but raise you up beyond your station … and that at the King’s request … and now … and now … you are my undoing.’

  She stretched out her arms to plead with her aunts. ‘He has done this for spite. Don’t you see that he lies for only on Saturday I had need to bring him down for he would have me speak to him as a gentleman and he be only a … a mean person … and … this … this I told him. And he sulked and went his way saying “a look suffices” … by which I took him to mean that he is … he is in love with me. But, of course, he cannot have me. And not two days since … he has spoken evil to Cromwell … for spite.’

  ‘It is treason for the King’s wife to commit adultery,’ Lady Rochford said.

  ‘The penalty for a queen who commits treason is burning,’ Lady Boleyn said in a low voice to Lady Shelton, but the queen heard and collapsed into her chair with her chin on her chest as if her head had bowed beneath the weight of her hood.

  ‘I never thought that it should come to this,’ Lady Shelton moaned. ‘Surely, surely, the King would never be so cruel. Oh sweet Jesus, never this, never this. You were never my favourite niece, Anne, with your sharp tongue and your proud ways but I would not have wished this grisly punishment upon my brother’s daughter, whatever the crime.’

  ‘Hush, Lady Mother, hush,’ Mistress Madge said, running to her mother and putting her arms around her. ‘You are distraught.’

  She ran back to the Queen and knelt at her side.

  ‘Heed not what Aunt Boleyn says. My lady mother is right. Our gracious King would never be so cruel. Cromwell’s men will surely have tortured Smeaton to get such a wicked confession, and when the King knows of this, he will be kind, you will see.’

  This was the king who had not allowed his daughter say goodbye to her dying mother, who had sent his friend, Sir Thomas More, to the block while he went hunting. I found no comfort in my mistress’s words. I knew our King could be so cruel, if he wanted to be.