The Secret: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Tudor Chronicles Book 1)

by Lesley Jepson

  Anne gasped and then blushed furiously. ‘Hush Mary! No-one must know about Harry’s interest in me.’ Anne kept her eyes on her sewing and hoped no-one else had heard Mary’s insinuation about Harry Percy. Anne didn’t want to sully her reputation at court with scurrilous rumours that might come to nothing.

  ***

  Owing to the cramped conditions of Richmond Palace, all the unmarried maids of honour shared rooms, as did the gentlemen of the King. Anne was pleased that she shared her room with her cousin Madge, as family loyalty came above everything, and she knew Madge would protect her from any gossip about her reputation. And Madge knew all the interesting gossip and romances of the court, sharing the most scurrilous of these with Anne in whispers as they lay in their shared bed.

  Harry came to her side at every opportunity, when the King and his gentlemen came to spend time in the Queen’s apartments, but he was usually with George and the others. Anne was relieved that she had several chaperones, but she was also flattered by Harry’s attentions, although she had also noticed that the King would watch her carefully when she was with George’s group of friends. He would often join them for a jest, and wait for her laughter before clapping one of the others on the back and turn away to join another knot of courtiers for another joke.

  Sir Thomas Wyatt had joined their little group, and he began bombarding Anne with amorous poetry that she tried to disregard. It was enough that Harry hung on her every word; she didn’t want to gain a reputation like her sister’s. She would read the poetry aloud as if it were addressed to all the ladies of the court, rather than just to her, and try to make light of some of the sentiments.

  When the Queen prayed with her Spanish attendants, and the King was closeted with Cardinal Wolsey busy with the business of governing the country, the ladies and gentlemen of both households had chance to get together, fall in and out of love with each other, and generally pass time writing poetry, composing music and planning plays and masques. Harry, constantly at Anne’s side, tried to get her alone whenever he could, to steal kisses and give her poems he had written for her eyes alone. Anne, flattered, tried to maintain a dignified distance but Harry was relentless.

  During one of these lazy days, Thomas Cromwell, who was Cardinal Wolsey’s clerk, came and asked Anne if he could have a few words in private. Anne was intrigued, as she had never had any contact with Cromwell before. She knew, from Madge’s midnight whispers that Cromwell was Wolsey’s eyes and ears, and thus the Cardinal missed nothing that happened at court.

  ‘If it would please you, my Lady,’ Thomas Cromwell was unfailingly polite, ‘my master his Eminence wishes to speak with you.’ Cromwell led Anne to a barge on the Thames. ‘It is a short trip down the river to York Place.’ He extended his hand and helped Anne into the barge.

  Anne looked down doubtfully, then gathered her skirts together and stepped aboard, settling herself carefully opposite Cromwell. After a few minutes of vigorous rowing by the boatman, they arrived at the landing dock of York Place. The white brickwork of the palace seemed to glow in the sunlight reflected from the water of the river, and the walls extended along the banks as far as Anne could see. The steps from the wooden landing were slimy with the moss exposed by low tide, and Anne could see it glistening in the sun. In contrast, the stairway disappeared into the darkened maw of the arched entranceway to the river gate. Cromwell leapt ashore so he could assist Anne from the boat. She shook out her skirts and sleeves, and then followed Cromwell into the dark of the palace.

  Cardinal Wolsey sat in grand state in a great hall. His desk was covered in scrolls of parchment, seals and wax. His hands were folded over his enormous stomach as he watched Anne enter the room. She held her head high and met his eyes determinedly. Anne knew this meeting was important, but she couldn’t imagine why the Cardinal was becoming involved in her unimportant life. She walked towards him, swept into a curtsey and bent to kiss his cardinal’s ring. He gave her his blessing and Anne stood upright.

  ‘You will be wondering why I have sent for you, Lady Anne,’ said the Cardinal in a soft, sibilant voice.

  Anne thought he sounded like a snake, and suppressed a shudder before she lifted her eyes and answered him carefully.

  ‘Yes, your Eminence,’ she replied, ‘I was wondering what I had done that necessitated the attention of someone of your – importance.’

  ‘What you have done, Mistress Boleyn, is tempt Harry Percy into asking you to marry him, and that cannot be tolerated,’ Wolsey’s voice became harder.

  ‘I didn’t tempt him,’ retorted Anne, incensed. ‘He saw me just after I came home from France, and told me he was in love with me. I haven’t given him an answer because he said he wanted to speak to my father first.’ She was quivering with indignation at the implied impropriety of her behaviour. Harry was the one that had instigated the romance, and although Anne was flattered at the attention, she didn’t feel she had tempted him into anything.

  ‘Well, he won’t be speaking to your father, because I have spoken to his father,’ said Wolsey, ‘and his father has stated that young Percy is contracted elsewhere, in a much more advantageous match than a mere younger daughter of a knight.’

  Anne’s fury began to build. ‘I am a dutiful daughter, your Eminence, and my father has not mentioned the possibility of a Percy marriage to me. But I am sure he would rather I was happy!’ She couldn’t resist that last.

  Wolsey looked her up and down, noting the elegance with which she wore her green gown, with a lighter green under gown showing and matching sleeves. Her French hood was edged with seed pearls, and she wore a string of those round her slender neck. Anne’s head rose slightly higher under his scrutiny.

  ‘Happiness has nothing to do with marriage, Mistress Boleyn. Marriages are alliances, and the Boleyns will not be allied with the Percys! You may go. Thomas will take you back to the barge.’

  ‘But where is Harry? Shouldn’t he be here too, hearing you forbid this alliance?’ Anne was becoming upset. She wasn’t particularly set upon marrying Harry Percy, although she did like him, but the way Wolsey was treating her made her feel that this was all of her making, instead of being Harry’s idea.

  ‘Young Percy is on his way to Northumberland to await the date of his marriage. You won’t see him again,’ Wolsey thundered. ‘And you need not discuss this meeting with anyone at court, Mistress. This matter is confidential, and is closed. Now leave!’ And as if by magic, Thomas Cromwell appeared at her side, and taking her elbow gently, he guided her from the room.

  ‘Please don’t upset yourself, my Lady.’ he said kindly. ‘His Eminence can be a little abrupt in his manner, but please be assured it is for the best’. Anne looked at him blankly, a little stunned from her confrontation with Wolsey.

  ‘I think you are destined to marry someone far grander than a Percy,’ said Cromwell gently. ‘Far grander than that’. He handed her into the barge carefully, and as the boatman rowed quickly away, he turned and walked back into the palace.

  ***

  ‘She didn’t take that well, Your Eminence.’ Cromwell looked across the room at the Cardinal, sat at his desk as always, with a goblet of wine next to him. ‘Although I think it was more the insult to her family than affection for young Percy.’

  ‘She’ll recover when she finds out the real reason for Percy’s banishment to Northumberland,’ hissed Wolsey. ‘His father was pleased to receive the gifts we sent to sweeten his son’s journey north. We won’t have any trouble there. The Percy family may have lots of money, but they have very little backbone.'

  ‘Norfolk will be pleased too,’ suggested Cromwell.

  ‘That he will, Thomas. Two nieces in the King’s bed will bring him more glory and fortune than he would believe,’ Wolsey took a sip of wine, ‘and when Lady Anne discov
ers the King’s infatuation with her,’ another sip, ‘she’ll forget about Harry Percy and turn her attention to Harry Tudor!’

  ‘You really think she’ll accept him, after all that’s happened with her sister?’ asked Cromwell doubtfully.

  Wolsey emptied his goblet, swallowing quickly, then poured another brimming cup from the wine jug. A brief thought about abstinence for the clergy crossed Cromwell’s mind, then he focussed on his master's words.

  ‘Henry saw Lady Anne the day she came to Queen Katharine’s court and was captivated, he says. “Such an exotic bird of paradise surrounded by sparrows and crows” was how he so eloquently phrased it. And he made it clear that it was up to me,’ another sip, ‘up to us, Thomas, to make sure the lady was available.’

  ‘And willing, Your Eminence?’

  ‘I’m certain that Lady Anne will be more than willing when the King makes the request, Thomas.’ Wolsey looked at his servant, his tone of voice indicating his doubt at the suggestion that the sister of Mary Boleyn wouldn’t be willing.

  Cromwell’s countenance betrayed his doubts about that statement, but he said nothing. He thought, from his observation of Anne and his brief acquaintance with her, that she was very different from her sister. He wondered how long it would take Henry to realise that fact for himself. That wasn’t his concern, he told himself. His task was to do Wolsey’s, and therefore the King’s bidding, and smooth the path to Lady Anne. That path may be more rocky than any of them realised, he thought.

  Chapter 7 - 1526

  nne stormed around her chamber, gathering up her possessions and flinging them into her clothes chest. Tears of anger and humiliation coursing down her cheeks went unheeded as she packed to leave court.

  George lounged impassively on the bed and watched his sister’s fury.

  ‘How dare he? How dare he speak to me like that? “A mere younger daughter”? And he’s just a butcher’s boy!’ Anne’s oval face was pinched with anger, her dark eyes stormy.

  ‘A very powerful and influential butcher’s boy,’ said George quietly. ‘Perhaps too influential.’

  Anne looked across at her brother and her expression softened. ‘I shall go home to Hever for a while, George. Away from all this intrigue and gossip.’

  ‘Will the Queen allow it?’ he asked. ‘The days at court will indeed be dull without your presence, sister. Who will I talk to and read poetry with, if not you?’ He laughed shortly ‘Who else can soothe my soul in this den of iniquity as you do?’ Anne looked at him quickly, thinking she heard his voice crack on that last strange statement, but George’s face was hidden as he levered himself off the bed and strode towards her, taking her hands in his.

  ‘The Queen is going into confinement to await the birth of her child, and I am assured that she only ever takes her Spanish crows with her. We maids of honour will have nothing to do to help her for at least three months.’

  The conventions of a royal lying-in were tiresome and lengthy, with no men allowed near the expectant mother, who had to spend weeks closeted in a darkened room both before and after the birth. The King’s grandmother Margaret Beaufort had written a book detailing every aspect of court life, and this was followed to the letter without fail. After a celebratory dinner, the Queen would withdraw from the court six weeks before the birth of her child, and read and sew quietly, spending time in prayer for a successful outcome of her pregnancy. She wouldn’t be allowed to re-join the court until she had been churched, six weeks after the birth.

  ‘Then go to Hever, sweet sister, although I shall miss your companionship so much. You will be needed here soon enough after the new prince is born. We gentlemen of the King’s household will stay and amuse him while his wife is confined.’ George pressed Anne’s fingers to his lips, and he closed his eyes as the lavender fragrance she always wore enveloped him.

  ‘I have no doubt that Mary will continue to amuse the king in his wife’s absence,’ replied Anne tartly, referring to the continuing relationship between their older sister and the King. ‘Since Mary has come back from the birth of her daughter, the King seems even more taken with her.’ Anne’s voice took on a disapproving tone, ‘I don’t know how the Queen puts up with his dalliances, and how Mary can hold herself so cheaply as to be at the King’s beck and call.’

  ‘Mary loves male attention, sister,’ said George, smiling down at her, ‘and never had the wit to realise she could always have said ‘No.’

  ‘Father and Uncle wouldn’t have let her say no to the King,’ replied Anne, still with her hands in George’s grip, ‘and now I am going home, they will have to arrange a suitable match for me, since the Butler alliance has come to nothing.’ She leaned forward and kissed George gently on the cheek. ‘I need my hands to finish packing, brother,’ she whispered. He dropped them instantly, as if he had forgotten he still held her.

  ‘I will go and arrange for your journey.’ He strode from the room abruptly. Anne gazed sadly at the closed door. She was looking forward to having a quiet few weeks at her family home, but she didn’t know how she would manage without seeing George every day. She sighed, then finished her packing before the page knocked to tell her that her horse and carriage was ready to take her home.

  ***

  Hever was an oasis of quiet days and nights for Anne. She enjoyed the chance for solitude, as the nature of court life meant that she was never alone. She read a great many books, even the forbidden ones by Martin Luther who was challenging the thinking on religion and causing a storm in Europe. She walked in the gardens and rode her horse in the countryside, and she played with her baby niece Catherine Carey, whose birth had caused Mary to leave court for a while. Mary had left her baby in the care of her family when she had been summoned back by the King, and Anne was astonished at the likeness to the Tudors that the baby showed; round faced and red haired Catherine was nothing like blonde Mary, or Mary’s dark-haired husband Will.

  Most days a messenger arrived with a letter or poem from George, and sometimes one from Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had returned from Italy with tales of the wonders he had seen. George wrote and told her that he had started sharing Tom Wyatt’s lodgings now and then since Harry Percy had left, to get away from the jealousy and spite of his wife Jane. She questioned him about all his movements, his friends, his conversations with the King. ‘It’s like living with one of Wolsey’s spies,’ he told her in one letter, ‘constantly guarding my words when I should be at rest in my own apartment is exhausting.’ He also said that he and Tom wrote poetry for the ladies of the court, for the King, and had started a competition between themselves writing scurrilous rhymes about one another. ‘No insult or accusation is too much,’ wrote George. ‘It is proving an exercise of the brain to invent new insults, and Tom is enjoying using his scathing wit against someone who won’t challenge him to a duel because of it!’ Anne was relieved that Tom Wyatt had turned his attentions to insulting her brother, instead of the flowery compliments he paid her.

  On a beautiful summer day, with a pleasant cooling breeze, Anne was taking a walk in the rose garden – her favourite part of all the extensive gardens at Hever. A maid came racing down the steps and stopped breathlessly in front of her.

  ‘My Lady, you have a visitor,’ said the maid, bobbing a curtsey with her words.

  ‘Who is it, Meg?’ asked Anne, curious who would come to see her at Hever, and put such excitement into the servants. Meg’s pretty face was suffused with colour and she was quite breathless.

  ‘Master Cromwell, my Lady. He says he is come from the King.’ Meg’s eyes were wide.

  Anne was puzzled. Cromwell was in service to Wolsey, not the King, she thought. Why would the King send Cromwell to see her? ‘Bring him out to me, Meg.’ Anne asked the girl, who bobbed her knee again and rushed back to the great hous
e.

  Thomas Cromwell, stocky and broad in his customary black garb, made his way through the formal pathways in the rose garden, carrying what looked like a large box. Anne smiled as he reached her, and he bowed his head as he swept off his bonnet. Anne dipped a curtsey in reply. The niceties observed, Cromwell held out the box and opened it as he thrust it towards her.

  ‘His Majesty has sent me to give you this, and a request that you allow him to visit you here, my Lady.’

  Anne’s fine brows rose in surprise as she looked into the box at a beautiful necklace, set with emeralds and pearls.

  ‘Why would the King send such a gift to me?’ she asked, ‘And why would he want to visit me?’

  Cromwell looked at her curiously, then said ‘My Lady,’ he bowed again as if to reinforce his words, ‘the King does as the King pleases, and it is my task to make sure his way is smooth, whatever he chooses to do. The son of the Duke of Northumberland was an obstacle that His Majesty decided I should overcome on his behalf.’

  Anne gasped, suddenly realising that Harry Percy had been sent away at the behest of the King, then she swallowed hard. She closed the box and handed it back to Cromwell. She took a deep breath, then lowering her eyes, she swallowed again and said, ‘Please thank the King for his generosity, but as an unwed maid I cannot accept such a gift. If he would choose to send me a monetary gift on the occasion of my marriage, I would be pleased to accept.’

  Cromwell’s look of incredulity almost made her laugh out loud, but he recovered himself and with his features schooled into his usual mask of imperturbability, he bowed again and left her there.

  Anne sat down heavily on one of the stone benches. Why would the King send her such a gift, she wondered. Why would Cromwell bring it? Why did he want to see her? She realised that she hadn’t responded to that particular request, but surely by returning his gift with such a message, Henry would not come. He would send his gift elsewhere, where it might be more welcome. Mary liked jewellery, she thought wryly.