Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

by Malyn Bromfield

  ‘The child resists,’ says the midwife. ‘This usually does the trick.’

  A strong hand is raised to strike my belly where it swells high under my ribs.

  ‘No, no,’ I scream. ‘You will harm the child.’

  I have to summon all my energy when the next pain has passed to ask the midwife to call for my husband.

  ‘Whoever heard of a man in the birthing chamber,’ scoffs the midwife as she wipes my brow with a rag. ‘Your neighbours should be here to help me.’

  I am drifting out of consciousness with each pain. I cannot see, only hear.

  ‘The child will not turn,’ the midwife frets. ‘So breech it must be. If you will not have me hasten the birth there is nothing to be done but wait. God’s will is done in God’s own time.’

  I ask for my husband again, cry out his name. With relief I hear running footsteps on the stairs. My husband says nothing. Yet I sense his nearness. Inside my head I see him. His face is ashen. I feel his fear. I taste it, like acid. Someone is with him.

  ‘I thank you, goodwife, God will bless you for this,’ he says.

  I hear myself cry out, ‘Get Bess. Go now.’

  I cannot tell if I am really speaking or in a dream. The now familiar ache drags through my belly, swells and tightens like a creature inside me clutching my child with its sharp pincers to drag it out.

  ‘Go now for Mistress Lydgate,’ a woman tells my husband. ‘I will stay with Avis and the midwife. This house can bring me no worse evil than I have already borne.’

  I open my eyes and see Goodwife Smedley. I want to cry.

  Sleep and pain, sleep and pain. The goodwife wipes my brow, unties my wrists and holds my hand, and I fall into sleep.

  I awake to the ringing of church bells.

  ‘Your aunt is here,’ says the midwife sullenly. ‘I’ll take my leave. That’ll be six pence for my trouble yesterday and six pence more for through this morning.’

  Bess places her hands where the pain is.

  ‘Thanks be to God, I am not too late. We’ve done it before, for others, we two together,’ she says calmly. ‘We will manage again and your good neighbour here will help us.’

  ‘Let us get her into the birthing chair, if you please,’ she says to Goodwife Smedley, ‘and with as much haste as she can bear.’

  ‘Why do the bells ring?’ I ask

  ‘We have a new queen: Elizabeth. Queen Mary is dead, God rest her soul,’ calls my husband from where he waits outside the chamber door.

  I have lost track of the hours, the days.

  ‘It is Thursday,’ Bess tells me.

  I have lain here two days. Am too old to give birth? Has my time come too late?

  ‘It is the seventeenth of November,’ she adds.’

  Suddenly I am alert. I grasp Goodwife Smedley’s hand. ‘Today is the seventeenth of November? Are you sure?’ I ask.

  ‘Do you think me too ancient and simple in my mind to know what day it be?’ my aunt snaps, hurt, for she equates her great age with wisdom.

  The next pain comes gently like a dull ache from my back.

  ‘Mayflowers for November,’ I murmur, squeezing Goodwife Smedley’s hand.

  ‘Why do you speak of mayflowers?’ she asks. ‘Whoever heard of hawthorn flowering in autumn

  ‘She is wandering in her mind,’ she whispers to my aunt.

  When the pain rises and tightens I listen to the bells and hear them speak the new Queen’s name. Dang-dong-dang-dong; E-liz-a-beth.

  ‘Push now,’ Bess urges. ‘Harder, much harder. It is not called labour without good cause.’

  She is right.

  ‘I am exhausted,’ I plead.

  ‘Now,’ she commands severely, ‘push. And quickly.’

  When it is over and the babe cries I hear the door creak and my husband’s footstep in the doorway.

  ‘Just you wait there,’ Bess orders him. ‘There’s women’s things to do yet.’

  ‘All is well,’ Mistress Smedley tells him gently.

  After the cord is cut and the babe and I are washed they help me to bed and prop me up with bolsters. They give me my child wrapped in a blanket. It has brown hair like my husband and a little round nose like a lump of dough. Goodwife Smedley takes her leave and promises to return with the caudle that Goodwife Trinder has prepared.

  ‘Pray, tell my neighbours they are welcome to come to see the child if they wish,’ I say. ‘I am in your debt for your kindness today and know not how to repay you.’

  ‘It is enough that you allow me to share your happiness,’ Goodwife Smedly says simply. ‘There has been too much grief these last months.’

  ‘Come, see your child,’ Bess calls to my husband at the door. Gingerly, he tiptoes across the room. He runs his fingers through my wet hair and kisses my forehead.

  ‘I am fine,’ I say, ‘just a little tired. Here is your child.’

  He holds the bundle awkwardly in his arms, as if it is a great gun, ready to explode and as heavy as stone. Outside, the bells toll louder. Musical chords rise and descend: E-liz-a-beth, E-liz-abeth, they chime.

  ‘I have decided upon a name,’ I say firmly. I keep them waiting a little before I announce, ‘Elizabeth.’

  ‘I cannot think of a more fitting name for a daughter born in London town upon this day,’ my husband says, smiling at the babe who grasps his forefinger with its tiny fingers.

  ‘A suitable name?’ Bess has never so much as smiled since the sinking of the Mary Rose but now she is laughing and is obliged to plonk herself down on the bedside and put her bloody apron to her face.

  ‘Avis, I am surprised at you. All these years you have known what other women are carrying, but you can’t do it for yourself. Elizabeth indeed. Don’t you know I cut the cord long?’

  ‘The cord long?’ my husband asks.

  ‘Aye, long, for a boy.’ And Bess is off laughing again.

  ‘Shall we name our son Peter, for your father?’ my husband asks.

  I know this is not what he really wants.

  ‘Our first son should share his father’s name,’ I say firmly. ‘White Boy shall take my father’s name when he is christened with our son. He is the baker in our family.’

  My aunt smiles and dabs her eyes. ‘My brother would have liked that.’

  My husband leaves me and charges Aunt Bess to wait awhile before she swaddles our boy. He is gone only a minute or two. When he returns he sends Aunt Bess downstairs to tend to Goodwife Trinder and the caudle. He has brought my red goatskin purse. The hide is still as soft as the day I found it hanging about my waist at St Bart’s fair, for it has been softened with grease every week for twenty-two years. He pulls out each of the four coins in turn and places them on the bed cover.

  ‘Here is the first noble, to seal my pledge,’ he says solemnly.

  ‘Here is the second, for constancy,’ I say.

  ‘And here is the third to let you know that I am watching out for you, to protect you from danger.’ His voice falters. He is thinking of my father. I know he is. I tell him he is just one man. It is enough to care for a wife. He cannot save everyone.

  ‘Here is the fourth angel that you gave to me upon our marriage, all wrapped in rosemary,’ I tell him.

  He reaches again inside the purse and opens his palm to reveal a glistering, golden angel much brighter than the others.

  ‘I have polished it, in secret, each holy day since we wed.’

  ‘The fifth angel, for the birth of a son.’

  ‘You would have had the fifth angel if it were little Elizabeth lying in your arms.’

  He takes the babe’s hand and closes his baby fingers around the shiny coin.

  ‘Thomas, my son,’ he says and can speak no more.

  I put my finger to his cheek and bless little Tom with his father’s tears.

  Chapter 41

  Spring 1559

  ‘A lady is riding along the lane dressed all in costly black, with cambric ruffles at her neck and cuffs.’ White Boy almost fal
ls upon the settle to catch his breath. ‘She rides a white palfrey and her servant boy follows behind on a little black pony with a brown face.’

  All I can think is that our prayers to Saint Augustine have been answered and a miracle has happened. Have White Boy’s eyes been healed and his pain been taken away after all these years?

  ‘Did you see all this?’ I ask weakly.

  ‘Nay, mistress, how could I? Widow Purvis told me.’

  I see that he wears his clout and has tapped his way home with his stick as usual, although at a greater pace to tell me the news. Just as well he cannot see the disappointment that must be so great upon my face.

  ‘The lady is talking with Goodwife Trinder, who directs her to our house. Widow Purvis told me to make haste to bring you the news.’

  I hear the clacking of the latch and turn towards the door. A lady dressed in black court clothes waits smiling in the doorway.

  ‘May I come in, Avis?’ she asks in the same lilting Welsh accent that I remember from so many years ago.

  I curtsey but she pulls me up short and we are in each other’s arms saying how the years seem mere moments when friends meet again.

  ‘Look at you,’ she says, glancing at the crib by the fire. ‘A mother now.’

  She sees the harp. ‘Do you play, Avis?’ she asks.

  ‘My servant plays. Do you remember the blind beggar boy who used to play by the watergate at Greenwich palace? This is he.’

  ‘Ah, we missed you when we found that you were gone,’ she tells White Boy. ‘Nurse and I loved to hear your harp when we alighted from our barge.’

  I send White Boy to her servant to direct him to the tavern and give him coins from my purse for food and drink for the boy and the horses.

  ‘I saw you amongst the Queen’s ladies, following Queen Elizabeth when she paraded through London at her coronation,’ I tell Blanche, excited like a girl. ‘You wore a gown of crimson velvet adorned with cloth of gold all trimmed with blackwork.’

  Blanche smiles. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Avis. You always did love to admire the ladies’ gowns and noticed every little detail. Did you see the Queen’s cousin, Katherine Carey, amongst the ladies? She is Lady Knollys now and has but recently returned to court to serve Elizabeth. She lived abroad in exile during Queen Mary’s reign, she and her husband being of the reformed religion.’

  ‘I remember that you both loved Princess Elizabeth and wished never to leave her. Now your wishes have come true.’

  ‘What of Mistress Madge?’ I am almost afraid to ask. ‘How does she fare?’

  ‘She is rarely at court these days. She lives in the country with her husband and her little children.’

  Is she happy? Please let her be happy, I say silently to God.

  Mistress Blanche asks if she may rock my son’s cradle but I lay him sleeping in her arms where he stays cosy and does not awaken while I prepare wine and biscuits.

  White Boy returns from the tavern and she will have no excuses that his music falls far short of what she hears at court, and insists that he play for her while we talk of old times. Later, I bring downstairs the precious gifts I have kept for Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘What beautiful embroidery,’ she says of the baby bonnet. ‘It would be wonderful to me if Queen Elizabeth were to marry and have a little child for me to rock.’

  She looks at the portrait in her palm. ‘Such a good likeness,’ she says. ‘So proud and regal, just as I remember her. Oh, but Anne Boleyn had a sharp tongue, did she not, and Lady Shelton was so fearful that she would find fault with her housekeeping that she scolded the wet-nurse terribly before Anne Boleyn’s visit, and Nurse’s milk turned sour and gave the princess colic, do you remember?’

  ‘Queen Anne was always kind to me,’ I say quietly. ‘Does Queen Elizabeth talk over-much of her mother?’

  ‘Never,’ Blanche replies. ‘Not once since that terrible day in May when Lady Bryan told her that her mother was dead.’

  ‘Will she want Master Hans’s miniature?’ I ask, worried.

  Blanche returns the bonnet and the portrait to me. ‘You must ask her yourself.’

  Chapter 42

  Spring 1559

  ‘Goodwife Avis, you have burrowed your way through this palace to reach me. There is a matter that touches us both, I understand?’

  ‘If Your Majesty pleases, I knew you when you were small.’

  I had not felt nervous about this meeting with a queen. I am here on her mother’s behalf, after all, not my own. And my friend, Mistress Blanche, is here, sitting quietly and smiling her encouragement. Yet here I am, tongue-tied, worrying that the Queen will curtail the interview before I have fulfilled my duty to her mother.

  ‘I don’t remember you. Should I?’ Queen Elizabeth asks.

  ‘Once, I rocked your cradle,’ I say in a small voice.

  ‘You and others. To speak truly and plainly, I have no recollection of you at all.’

  ‘I was just a servant, Your Majesty. You were very small, but I spoke to you once or twice and watched you dancing when you were only two years old.’

  ‘You did? And our discourse?’

  ‘You asked so many questions, Your Majesty, about the music and the people around you.’

  ‘They say that I was a precocious child.’

  The Queen stares for a while at a tapestry on the wall to her side. Gleaming gold and silver threads weave amongst the bright blues and reds, just like the tapestries I remember in King Henry’s palaces when Anne Boleyn was his queen. Elizabeth is all gold and glister like her father, with her golden-red Tudor hair framing her face and her shimmering taffeta skirt. I notice the high collar and ruff about her neck and almost laugh when I think that Mistress Madge would not have enjoyed such modest fashions when she was at court.

  ‘I remember questions without answers,’ the Queen says, ‘conversations without endings. I don’t remember what they told me or if indeed they told me anything at all about … about that dreadful day. I remember whispers, silences. You were there, Goodwife, at her end?’

  ‘I was, Your Majesty, I can’t talk ...’

  ‘You were fond of her, I see.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  We are silent. It is a sad, heavy silence as it must always be when the past meets the present. All those years of waiting to honour my promise to Anne Boleyn. Now that the time has come I am afraid that I will not do it as I should.

  ‘Excuse me, Your Majesty, I have something for you,’ I pluck up the courage to say.

  ‘Do I have need of it?’

  ‘Prithee, Your Majesty, allow me to tell you plainly about a vow I made more than twenty years ago to Queen Anne Boleyn.’

  How strange it seems after all these years, to speak her name and to know that it will not be reviled.

  ‘Continue, if you please, goodwife.’

  I tell her everything in a rush, before she can command me to stop. About how Queen Anne Boleyn had given me the little cap and how I had rescued the miniature portrait after Lady Rochford threw it into the fire.

  ‘Now I’m here, Your Majesty, my duty is discharged.’

  Elizabeth takes the parcel from me. I watch those slender fingers stroke the delicate blackwork embroidery that her mother had worked. Anne Boleyn’s child was stillborn before she completed the stitching and it makes me happy to think that her daughter will finish the little bonnet to give to her own child. When Elizabeth lifts out the little portrait I am horrified to see charred flakes fall on to her lap all over her golden skirt and the beautifully embroidered birds and flowers on her forepart. Mistress Blanche hurries to her and sweeps them away with a little brush that hangs from her girdle.

  ‘The likeness is true?’ the Queen asks.

  ‘It is a pity that the portrait is damaged, Your Majesty, but yes, it is a good likeness, although,’ I add, ‘painters don’t bring much laughter to their subjects.’

  ‘She was sometime happy, say you?’

  I nod, unable to speak
for a mass of sadness that sticks in my throat.

  The Queen asks Mistress Blanche to fetch a looking glass. She examines the portrait silently for a minute or two and when Mistress Blanche returns studies her own face reflected in the glass.

  ‘The dark eyes, the oval face. I always wondered,’ she murmurs to herself.

  ‘The likeness of mother and daughter was very apparent, Your Majesty,’ I say, ‘even when you were small.’

  ‘Yet I was told many times that I favoured my father.’

  ‘A mixture of both, perhaps, Your Majesty, as are most children. I beg pardon for the damage to the picture,’ I plead. ‘I am embarrassed to present it in such a sorry state. I did not know if any other portrait had remained and thought that Your Majesty would wish to have Master Holbein’s miniature.’

  ‘I have seen none,’ the Queen responds sharply, as if to imply that she has no wish to.

  Have I kept my treasures secret for so many years only to discover that they are a paltry matter to her? I think she must have seen the disquiet in my face for she says more gently, ‘Do not concern yourself unduly, Goodwife Avis, about the sorry state of this miniature. I will have an artist make an excellent copy of it and, perhaps, in time, a portrait so small that it will fit inside a ring for my finger.’

  She looks directly at me and says so quietly that I can barely hear, ‘A ring with two portraits, a mother and her daughter.’

  A flush of happiness spreads inside me. The mother and her orphaned daughter together at last.

  ‘How, now goodwife,’ Queen Elizabeth says cheerfully, handing the portrait to Mistress Blanche, ‘I thank you most heartily for bringing these small items from my childhood which, be assured, I value even more than you have done. But one thing if you please, before you leave. Tell me a little about yourself. You and your husband, you have been married long?’

  ‘Twenty-two years this summer gone.’

  ‘You have many children, I think.’

  ‘Only one son, born upon the day that Your Majesty became Queen.’