Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

by Malyn Bromfield

  ‘A boy born on the day of my accession. What will my astrologers say of that, I wonder?’

  ‘They will say it augers well for Mistress Avis’s son, Your Majesty,’ Mistress Blanche says.

  I am about to tell the Queen of the wise woman by the little chapel but think better of it.

  ‘What do you name your long awaited child?’ the Queen asks.

  ‘Thomas, Your Majesty, for his father.’

  ‘When he is grown what will be his trade?’

  ‘He will ferry Londoners along the Thames as his father does, and his godfather before him.’

  ‘Oh, so your husband is a waterman. Does he shoot the bridge?’ she asks sharply. ‘I have no love of watermen who shoot the bridge. But for the mercy of God I would have drowned at that bridge when I was taken to the Tower by reckless boatmen who put my life and their own in peril. And all for a petty fee.’

  I am honest. I confess that my husband will shoot London Bridge for a hefty fare.

  ‘What scoundrels does he ferry along the river who be so desperate to get away that they can neither wait for the tide nor alight and walk a short distance to another boat?’

  Mistress Blanche comes hastily to my defence. ‘I believe Goodwife Avis’s husband to be an honest, hardworking man,’ she says.

  ‘It pleases me to hear of it,’ the Queen replies. ‘I think your husband likes to sport with danger and you must cure him of it. He has a child and a wife to take care of. He must not go risking his life. And now, Mistress Avis, I thank you most heartily for your trouble in coming here.’

  I understand that I am being dismissed and make my leaving curtsey.

  ‘Wait! Do you want something, for your trouble?’

  I tell her there is nothing she could give me that could make me happier than I am. For I have more than I ever wished to have: a caring husband and a healthy son, my own chamber and marriage bed to lay down my head at night, and my cherished bread oven besides.

  I look at Elizabeth and see that she is so very proud, like her mother. Marriage would nullify her power. This, surely, she must know.

  As if she reads my thoughts, the Queen holds out the little bonnet. ‘Take this, if you please, goodwife, in remembrance of times past.’

  And I know that there will be no Tudor boy for Elizabeth.

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  Historical Note

  Any interpretation of history is an amalgam of fact and imagination. It has to be so: we were never there to hear the whispers in corners, to see the meanings of words altered by a sly wink of the eye. Conversations and events reported and recorded nearly five hundred years ago must be interpreted in the light of what we know, or think we know, about the beliefs and prejudices of the persons who spoke those words and made those decisions. Thus, as historians, we must put ourselves in the shoes of these long-dead people. Imagination is key, the more so for writers of historical fiction and their readers.

  In telling this story of Anne Boleyn I have tried to stay true to historical facts evidenced from my sources. I am extremely grateful to those authors whose research has provided a wealth of information to inspire my first novel. Where historians differ in their interpretation of an event I have followed my own instinct. If the reader finds any historical inaccuracies, these are entirely my errors.

  The inference, in my story, that Anne Boleyn was in the very early stages of pregnancy with Henry’s child when she was executed is based upon a letter Henry sent to Richard Pate, the ambassador at Rome, on Tuesday 25 April 1536. He wrote of:

  “… the likelihood and appearance that God will send us heirs male…” and referred to Anne as “…our most dear and most entirely beloved wife.”

  Given the volatile, love-hate relationship between Anne and Henry it is not impossible that while a chaste Jane Seymour was blushingly sitting on Henry’s knee and returning his gifts that, Anne, having recovered from the miscarriage in January, and knowing that her future depended upon giving Henry a son, used her charms to seduce her faithless husband.

  Select Bibliography

  Ackroyd, Peter: Thames, Sacred River (Chatto and Windus London 2007)

  Baldwin Smith, Lacey: Henry VIII The Mask of Royalty (Jonathan Cape London 1971)

  Buck, Stephanie: Hans Holbein, Masters of German Art (Konemann Cologne 1999)

  Burton, Elizabeth: The Elizabethans at Home (Arrow 1973)

  Denny, Joanna: Anne Boleyn (Portrait 2005)

  Doran, Susan (Editor), Starkey, David (Guest Curator): Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the Maritime Museum (Chatto and Windus in association with the National Maritime Museum 2003)

  Doran, Susan (Editor), Starkey, David (Guest Curator): Henry VIII, Man and Monarch (The British Library 2009)

  Fox, Julia: Jane Boleyn, The Infamous Lady Rochford (Phoenix 2008)

  Fraser, Antonia: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1992)

  Ives, Eric: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, The Most Happy (Blackwell Oxford 2004)

  Lofts, Norah: Anne Boleyn (Orbis 1979)

  Lofts, Norah: Anne Boleyn, The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Wife (Amberley Publishing 2012)

  Mikhaila, Ninya and Malcolm-Davies, Jane: The Tudor Taylor Tailor, Reconstructing Sixteenth-century Dress (Batsford 2006)

  Picard, Liza: Elizabeth’s London, Everyday Life in Elizabethan London (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2003)

  Porter, Julia: Mary Tudor, The First Queen (Piatkus 2009)

  Richardson, Ruth Elizabeth: Mistress Blanche, Queen Elizabeth’s Confidante (Logaston Press 2007)

  Salgado, Gamini: The Elizabethan Underworld (Alan Sutton 1995)

  Scott, A.F.: Every One a Witness, The Tudor Age, Commentaries of an Era (Crowell U.S. 1976)

  Sim, Alison: Masters and Servants in Tudor England (Sutton 2006)

  Sim, Alison: Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England ( The History Press 2009)

  Sim, Alison: The Tudor Housewife (Sutton 2005)

  Starkey, David: Six Wives; The Queens of Henry VIII (Chatto and Windus 2003)

  Thurley, Simon: The Royal Palaces of Tudor England, Architecture and Court Life 1460 – 1547 (Yale 1993)

  Weir, Alison: Henry VIII King and Court (Jonathan Cape London 2001)

  Weir, Alison: Mary Boleyn, The Great and Infamous Whore (Jonathan Cape, London 2011)

  Weir, Alison: The Lady in the Tower, The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Jonathan Cape, London 2009)

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank historian and novelist, Prudence Bebb, for inviting me into her home, reading the early, very raw chapters of this novel, offering her encouragement and allowing me to handle her very precious Tudor Bible.

  A big thank you to my sister Janet and my friend Linden who have also read sections of the novel and listened to me talking about it over cups of coffee in Shrewsbury and Hebden Bridge. To all my friends who have asked how my work is coming along, thank you so much for your interest.

  A very special thank you to my agent, Kiran Kataria, from Keane Kataria Literary Agency, without whom I would not have realised my dream of becoming a published author, and finally to Endeavour Press for making this happen.