The Boleyn Bride (4 page)

I draped the mistletoe over those trees with all the joy of a lady decking her house for the Twelve Days of Christmas, willing it to thrive, to hug their branches like the most tenacious cobwebs, like a spider ravenous for a new caught fly.
“Hold them tight and never let go!”
I whispered, caressing the tiny leaves with the featherlight touch I once used to coyly stroke my lovers’ cocks. I know how to provoke a man to ecstasy with just a brush of my fingertip. And then I trained creeping ivy and strangling vines over their trunks and limbs to twine and tangle and squeeze the life out of any fruits that dared try to ripen there. “These trees shall be barren,” I regally decreed.

Panting, my jagged, broken nails caked with black dirt and lichen, I leaned my flushed and sweaty brow against the bark of an apple tree and remembered Henry Norris.

Many years ago he had been a tallow-haired youth newly come to court. I found him sitting by the fire at Greenwich one winter’s day, trying hard not to cry. He had just been scorned by his first love, a haughty, flippant auburn-haired coquette, who mocked and deplored his clumsiness and inexperience in the art of love. I took him to my bed and, over a series of delightful afternoons, taught him well.

I always did fancy younger men; 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. Young girls often harbor amorous fantasies about their tutors, so I reversed the roles and made the dreams real.

But that was long ago. That winter ran its course, and though remembered fondly, was never repeated. He was amongst those who died with my son and daughter, declaring from the scaffold, “I know the Queen to be innocent of the charges laid against her, and I would rather die a thousand deaths than speak false and ruin an innocent person.” For those brave and true words I will always honor his memory. When everyone expects a groveling scaffold speech, flattering and glorifying the monarch, to keep his ire from turning on the relatives one leaves behind, it takes great courage to speak the truth, plain and unvarnished, and in simple words that all, even the humblest and unschooled, can understand. I’m sorry, John Skelton and Thomas Wyatt—the two poets who loved black-haired Boleyn women—but Henry Norris’s frankness puts all your poetry to shame.

As I wove blackberry brambles over the graves, to honor the old superstition that they would keep any unquiet spirits within—though I do not fear the dead, especially not those innocents who lie here—I recalled the traitorous Master Smeaton, Mark, whom I would rather forget.

He alone lied and confessed his guilt in the vain hope of saving his life. The fact that he was tortured does not absolve him in my eyes. My son, George, always loose-lipped and wont to confide his amorous escapades to any near and willing ear when he was in his cups—a practice that probably explains why so few of his lovers remained his friends afterward—recommended that I try his latest plaything. “A pretty bauble: It plays well, and it sings too,” he said. The lad was always generous with his toys. What can I say? A lie would serve no purpose at all. And if I cannot tell the truth now, why even bother telling the story at all? I was bored. I did as he suggested and sampled Master Smeaton’s wares. My blood has always been hot, sizzling in my veins, beneath the marble pallor of my skin and the haughty, patrician face many have described as cold, remote as the highest mountains, and expressionless as a chaste marble Diana. What more can I say? The truth is the truth; it is what it is.

George was right. Smeaton was amusing—for a time, a
very brief time
. Then he became petulant and whining, wanting
all
my love, when I had no love to give him—that belonged to another; and what we did together was
never
about love—craving more time than I cared to squander upon a boy who was just a moment’s diversion to me and nothing more. His shrillness grated upon my nerves. He wanted to be the possessor, not the possessed. He wanted to call the tunes, not play them, and seemed to believe all the sentimental lyrics he had ever sung about love. I wanted to be rid of him. Poor lad, he wasn’t jaded and hard, cynical and blasé, like the rest of us; he really wasn’t equipped to play the game. He should have gotten out, married some sweet girl, and become a music teacher or returned to work in his father’s carpentry shop, before he got in over his head. It was inevitable—I soon got bored with him, just like George did.

As for Anne, the one Smeaton
really
loved, even if she had cared a fig for that lovelorn lute player, she knew the stakes were too high for her to ever dally even if she had been inclined to. She had made her bed—a
royal
bed—and was well content to lie in it alone or with her wedded husband, bullish, insufferable boor though he was with a temper to match his Tudor red hair. His infidelities kindled her ire, but not recklessness and a desire to pay him back in kind.

Whatever people may think and say of Anne, she was no fool. And she was never wanton or given to amorousness like me. Even though she spent her youth at the French court, and there is no more licentious place in the world, Anne held herself proud; she knew her worth, even when others didn’t. She had the wit and wisdom to govern herself even when other girls ran wild. Anne knew that, if she played her cards right, virtue would be its own reward. She knew when to hold her cards close and when to lay them down.

Mayhap Smeaton’s confession was his revenge upon the Boleyns for scorning him? We each used him in our fashion—some might even go so far as to say that we misused him—and he never could understand why our “love” didn’t last. To George and me, he was a plaything, a toy we soon tired of; to Anne he was a lute player, a musician—granted, one of the most talented—hired to play as bidden for the court, nothing more. All I know is that he is the one dalliance amongst my many that I regret. Because of him, I will always wonder, did someone spy me, a slender, black-haired woman in the shadows indulging in some quick and indiscreet intimacy with Mark Smeaton, and mistake me for Anne because the light was dim or because there was already malice in their mind? Did I unwittingly, with my own indiscretions, help condemn my daughter? I will never know.

 

Yews, “the cemetery tree,” hide this hideousness in cool and murky shadows. In the mighty Caesar’s time, suicide by drinking the juice of the yew tree was a favored means for tired old soldiers, those too weary to flee or stand and fight, to avoid the sad ignominy of defeat. It was a way to die nobly, by taking your life in your own hands.

Deep purple-blue flowers of wolfsbane, also called monkshood, bloom in profusion. How deceptively beautiful they are! Anyone who did not know better would think them a harmless posy to pluck, tall spires of clustered flowers, to fill a vase or adorn a lady’s hair. But, take care—they will stop your heart and steal your breath away in less time than it takes to say a paternoster. I remember when I was a young girl, a neighbor’s cook mistook monkshood for horseradish. The sauce she made killed her master and his guests; she found them all slumped dead around the table, facedown in the sauce, brows pillowed on their portions of roasted mutton.

And there is beautiful belladonna, deadly nightshade, growing with a lush, dangerous beauty in the dampened shadows beneath the yew trees, mingling with monkshood and toadstools, like old friends meeting for a gossip on the church steps or witches consorting at a sabbat. Their berries remind me so much of Anne. They start out a cool, icy green, then ripen to a deep, luscious red, before they reach their polished, gleaming black perfection—watching them is just like watching my youngest daughter grow to dangerous and desirable womanhood all over again. They say that witches make a salve from the purple-veined yellow flowers that makes them feel like they are flying through the air to find ecstasy in the Devil’s arms. And ladies in Italy use it to make the pupils of their eyes becomingly large, risking their sight to tempt the men whose attentions they desire. Ah, we women risk so much for lust and love! Is it ever
really
worth it? Even without belladonna, I sometimes think we are doomed to blindness anyway.

Then there is pennyroyal, with its pale purple blossoms and strong mint scent. For good or ill, depending on the circumstances, it can be brewed into a tea to prevent conception, bring on a woman’s laggardly courses, or end an inconvenient pregnancy. And hyssop for purges, and spurge for an even more potent one that brings a violent griping, burning heat, and even death if one imbibes too much of its milky juices, which can also, when applied externally, remove warts, even the hardest calluses, and cure fistulas and carbuncles.

And I have planted bitter wormwood; white oleander; stinging nettles; thistles with prickly leaves and tufted purple-pink heads; that bold, smelly little weed herb robert, whose red-tinged flowers are said to play host to little red demons that make mischief in the surrounding countryside during the night; and mandrakes, whose roots buried underground take the shape of a man and are said to utter bloodcurdling screams that will drive any who hear them mad when they are wrested from the earth.

And lords and ladies, evilly handsome, these sleek, sophisticated, floral, phallic spears are the subject of all manner of rude and titillating names—I myself like to call them the Devil’s Pintle. They harbor poisonous red berries within and reek of rotting corpses, attracting hoards of hungry flies. The stench grows worse as their waxy petals unfurl. Some men swear they are a heaven-sent aphrodisiac and, ground into potent red wine, they will make even the limpest man ardent, so hard he imagines he has become a marble statue of Adonis with the strength of Hercules and his cock is his mighty club. But there is
always
the Devil to pay afterward, and many a man has perished with his ecstatic smile transformed into a grimace of pain, and his berry red and grossly swollen, rock hard pintle pointing like an accusing finger straight up at heaven as he lies dead upon the floor or tangled in his lover’s sheets. Sometimes, if one acts in time, a poultice of sour milk will save his life and stave off his discomfort, and he will live to find a new kind of bliss in limpness; but only
sometimes,
if one acts quickly and there happens to be a pitcher of sour milk fast at hand.

As I sit upon a thorn-embraced bench that snatches like a greedy child at my already tattered black skirt and trailing mourning veils, with clinging burrs taking the place of ornamental buttons and embroidery, serenely regarding my pernicious plants, sprawling in tangled, snarled, and matted masses across the graves and climbing the stone crosses and innocent fruit trees, I cannot help but marvel what a far cry it is from the neat and orderly beds of sage, fennel, mint, rosemary, thyme, basil, chamomile, dill, and rue in the walled garden behind the kitchen. If I have my way, by the time I die, it will be a wild, impenetrable jungle that none dare penetrate unless they desire death or like to gamble with their lives.

I hope Thomas has the very devil of a time, and the Devil to pay, restoring it all to the order he desires. I hope it blunts every ax his men bring and forces him to part with more coins than he counts on. I laugh to think of him tangled in convolvulus, which some call hellweed, bindweed, and the Devil’s guts and garters. It strangles the life out of every plant it touches. Beneath the soil, it weaves itself into a nightmare of tangled roots so deeply entrenched it will never completely die; it will
always
come back. The white flowers it breeds are like church bells. They look so sweet and innocent, wholesome, pure, and virgin white; they close demurely as the day ends. Some daring souls use them as a purge to rid their bellies and bowels of unwelcome or uncomfortable contents, and to try to lose weight, but unless the dose is minute and liberally mixed with sugar or honey to sweeten it, or even a spice such as cinnamon strong enough to disguise the flavor, the gambler, fool, or desperate woman who dares take it may die squatting over their chamber pot.

I hope my wicked plants fight Thomas’s every attempt to conquer and eradicate them with all the vengeance of a wronged woman and those unjustly defamed and done to death. I am no witch, but this curse I lay upon my husband and his land, even though this patch of land is sacred, consecrated to the church, sans regret, still I make it.

I alone walk fearlessly in this place, letting my black skirts and scarred and roughened fingers trail aimlessly amidst the thorns and brambles, never starting at the now familiar pricks. I suck the blood welling from my fingers and go on as though it were nothing at all; the prick of an embroidery needle or a lover’s kiss I have grown bored with. My passion has been quelled; all that remains is the anger and furious pain and lust for vengeance. Nor do I shudder when the snakes and vermin that shelter in the knotted roots and twisted weeds slither and rustle past my feet. I don’t fear them either. There’s so much poison in me, I think I have become immune. Nothing here can harm me. And if, perchance, I am mistaken, I do not care. If one day they find me lying dead in a nest of stinging nettles, bindweed, and blackberry brambles, poison welling from my pricked fingers or berry juice staining my lips, so be it. I’ve had my life, and I am ready to leave it.

1

T
hat blustery November day in London, 1501, when the century was still new and it felt
so
good and exciting to be alive, would change my life forever. But, of course, I did not know that at the time. God seldom does one the courtesy of sending an angel down from heaven to wake one on the morn of a monumental day with the solemn pronouncement:
This will be a day that changes forever the course of your life
. Back then, my head was still filled with the usual dreams a young girl harbors—going to court; serving the Queen; being surrounded by dozens of admirers, who would write songs and poems about me and give me gifts; and finding a wealthy, highborn husband who was also handsome and lusty; and being rich, popular, and happy for all the rest of our days.

I was sixteen and wearing a new gown of the richest sapphire velvet, edged with broad bands of black velvet and lovers’ knots fashioned of golden braid. Shod and hooded in gold- and pearl-festooned black velvet, I stood fearlessly amidst the jostling crowd lining the street, eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of the newly arrived princess from Spain.

Catherine of Aragon, the beloved youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, had come to marry our Prince Arthur, who, God willing, would be our next king. And hopefully, for her sake as well as all his courtiers, far more fun than his severe, taut-lipped, penny-pinching father, that old gray miser, Henry VII. Today she would make her official entry into the city of London, and soon I, my father had promised, would marry a man worthy of my rank and beauty, and come to court to serve her. And—though he could not promise it—she might even single me out and bestow upon me the honor and precious gift of her friendship. Certainly there was no one more deserving than I of such a privileged intimacy. She was after all only seventeen, a scant few months older than myself, so it was possible we might have much in common and become the best of friends. I could hardly wait! Surely my dreams
must
come true! I was born to have the best of everything. I smiled and clasped my hands and hugged them tight against my pounding heart. Soon I would be dancing every night, the radiant, beautiful beacon of hundreds of admiring eyes, my name on smiling, adoring lips that praised me as the most beautiful lady at court, mayhap even in all of England or even the world. And my father would choose the richest and handsomest and finest of those gallant gentlemen to be my husband, and ours would be not only a marriage of duty but passionate, lusty love!

“You have only to wait, my love, and everything you desire will be handed to you as though upon a golden plate,” my father always used to say to me; and I saw now that he was right. Everything I had ever wanted or spent my young life dreaming about was suddenly within grasp. I could hardly wait to reach out and take it.

Everyone was so eager to see her and wondering what she would look like. A babble of a hundred questions seemed to fill my ears. Would she be tall or short, slim or fat, dark, ruddy, or fair? And what would she wear? Something exotic, dripping with gold or silver spangles, embroidered with fantastical oriental arabesques, encrusted with a rainbow of gems or the cold glitter of diamonds or paved with the snowy nacreous luster of thousands of pearls? Would it be somber, bright, dowdy, daring, showy, or meek? What would it be? Would she be veiled or show us her face? Would she be coifed modestly, covering her hair, or in some exotic headpiece the like of which had never been seen on English shores? I could hardly wait to see. Surely she would set fashions we would all rush to follow. Would she be exotic as a peacock or plain as a sparrow? And what would it be like to serve her? Would she be a kind mistress? Or hard and harsh, a stern taskmistress, lofty and remote? Or even worse a jealous, spiteful one who took pleasure in meting out petty little cruelties and punishments? Would she be fun-loving and leave her ladies free to do as they pleased, or a strict and pious mistress who sought to mold and shape us, the kind who cared more for our souls than our selves?

I had long since lost—and gladly—Matilda, my bothersome, vexsome maid, whom I often had cause to swat and slap away. I
hated
her red, chapped hands that were always tugging so insistently at my arm, and her whiny voice hissing or screeching that I mustn’t do this or mustn’t do that. She was like smallpox on my nerves. I could not stand the way she had been pulling at me, at the same time whining and pleading, even stooping to wheedle, that I must come away at once, that it was not proper for the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter to mingle with the common populace, dirty, stinking people who were doubtlessly up to no good and would pluck the gold beads from my gown and use them to buy beer.

“Free at last!” I crowed, elated, when I could no longer see or hear her.

I had never been on my own like this in public before. I had spent my life cosseted and closeted, always properly chaperoned, with maids, governesses, tutors, and retinues of servants sheltering me, surrounding me, stifling me until I sometimes felt I could hardly breathe, fencing me in, protecting me from harm, and shielding me—or so they claimed—from the coarseness and ugliness of a world full of improper and unsuitable persons with dubious intentions, so I found any moment when I could slip away and do any little liberating thing that those who had charge of me would frown upon as heady and exhilarating as getting drunk on strong wine for the very first time.

I wasn’t afraid. No one would be such a fool as to dare harm the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter. Imperious as a queen, I boldly tossed the long gold- and pearl-embroidered black velvet lappets of my gable hood back over my shoulders, and smiled at the goodwill that surrounded me as the people waved and cheered and called out blessings upon the royal family and the newly arrived Spanish princess. I was eager to enjoy myself, to watch the royal parade pass by. At that moment, I had no other care in the world. Everything else, including any punishment I might face, could wait; I would worry about it later.

Heralds and trumpeters in the Tudor livery of white and green came first, their banners embroidered with red and white Tudor roses fluttering with gold fringe. Then, looking as peevish and glum as a mourner who had bumbled into a wedding instead of the funeral he meant to attend, came the King, Henry VII, graying, pinch-faced, and dour in plain and obviously old black velvet trimmed with ratty fur that had clearly seen better days. Apparently he had not deemed this a fit occasion to order new clothes, and one could only hope that he had felt differently about the wedding to come, otherwise the foreign ambassadors would soon be gleefully spreading the word of our monarch’s moth-eaten apparel abroad and making a laughingstock of the English people. I shuddered to think what they would say of him in Paris! He offered the occasional curt nod to the crowd but mostly kept his squinty gray eyes trained straight ahead as he rode past on a horse that would have suited a brewer’s cart better than the sovereign lord of England.

How can such a beautiful woman bear such an unbecoming old miser? I wondered as I beheld the Queen, the beautiful Elizabeth of York, fair as a white rose, with vivid blue green eyes and red gold hair. She wore a sumptuous gown of rose red velvet, trimmed in gold and black and rubies and pearls to match the trim on her black velvet gable hood. A necklace of gold and enameled red and white roses encircled her throat, and her slender fingers blazed with rubies and diamonds as they delicately gripped the reins of a snowy mare caparisoned in cloth-of-gold and red silk fringe. How we all loved our beautiful Queen! Those who knew her said she had a gentle manner, kind and gracious, and that her husband, the King, could deny her nothing. Looking at her clothes, it
must
be true—she was too beautifully garbed for the King to enforce his miserly, penny-pinching ways when it came to paying her dressmakers.

The royal bridegroom came next—Arthur, Prince of Wales. He was mounted on a handsome white steed caparisoned in cloth-of-silver, ropes of pearls, and grass green velvet. Our prince was a handsome lad of fifteen in white fur and sea green silk broidered with swirls of silver, emerald brilliants, and seed pearls. But all the finery in the world could not disguise the fact that he was alarmingly frail of form; one might even go so far as to say that he looked “sickly”—the sort one imagined a gust of wind would knock right off his horse. Like his mother, he was fine-featured and white-rose fair, but even his red gold hair seemed pale, and his washed-out blue eyes peered out of dark, purplish blue circles. Sleep, I guessed, did not come easily to him.

With a shy, becoming smile and a timidly raised hand, he acknowledged the crowd as he rode past, followed by a cheeky and vibrant ruddy-haired lad, like a fat little rooster preening in gold-embroidered tawny velvet trimmed with the red fur of foxes. The ends of his chin-length red gold hair curled as though they might tickle his plump pink cheeks and be the reason for his smile. A peacock plume jauntily crowned his black velvet cap and seemed a most fitting touch for one so obviously, and with every reason to be, proud and vain. Prince Henry, our fun-loving Duke of York, grinned and waved at the crowd with the greatest gusto as he cantered past on a chestnut gelding caparisoned in green and white velvet emblazoned with red and white roses.

All around me the cheers grew louder and people pressed closer at the sight of him as though they longed to reach out and touch and hug and kiss him. They clearly
adored
him.

Though only ten, Prince Henry had such a way about him; he was so charismatic, like the always-alluring flame that moths could never resist. No witch or wizard could ever cast such a powerful glamour as his smile and eyes did; simply put, he was spellbinding. As his blue-gray eyes swept the crowd, he made each person feel special, as though his smile were a special gift intended solely for that privileged individual and no other. He truly was the people’s prince. He collected hearts and kept them.

What a pity such a one was destined for the church! Though I did not doubt for a moment that his sermons would be immensely popular and well attended—with his charm they could
never
be dull—and I would wager every jewel I possessed that ladies too numerous to count would flock to him for spiritual consolation and to give him their confession. Indeed, my fluttering heart told me, if he matured as well as I imagined, I was likely to be amongst that smitten throng.

I should like very much to play the penitent Mary Magdalene to his Jesus Christ, I thought, savoring the wicked wanderings of my mind as I imagined myself kneeling at his feet with my hair unbound and flowing over my naked breasts.
What a wicked one you are, Elizabeth Howard. Your soul is as black as your hair,
I chastised myself, though I wasn’t really the least bit sorry.
Maybe he will take me over his knee and spank me,
I thought.
I sincerely hope so!
I giggled and exchanged smiles with the rustic old beldam standing beside me with a sheepish grin, a guilty expression, and a blush spreading brightly over her wizened cheeks that told me that her mind was meandering down a sensual path very similar to my own.

Then the Spanish heralds came in a vivid, dizzying sea of yellow and red, fluttering satin banners dripping with gold and silk fringe, and blaring gold trumpets that gave way to a flock of red cardinals, in voluminous velvet robes and wide-brimmed hats, prayer books and rosaries clutched in their red-gloved hands, and next a solemn mass of pious, black-robed priests with bowed heads, each one carrying a silver crucifix clasped tightly against his chest.

All of a sudden there she was—the one we had all been waiting for, like a single precious white pearl washed up upon the shore in a tangle of garish shells and dark seaweed. We had never seen anyone like her before, and she took all our breaths away.

Petite and plump and golden-haired, she was clad all in the purest, most radiant white. The full skirt of her satin gown was draped over a stiff farthingale that billowed about her like a great bell, swaying with her every step to reveal dainty white leather boots worked with gold embroidery and fringed with gold about the ankles. Her hair fell like a cloak made of abundant golden strands down about her hips, flowing from beneath a broad-brimmed white hat, just like a cardinal’s except for its pure, virginal color, tied with gold laces beneath her plump little chin, and adorned with a bit of jewel-studded gold trimming with peaked edges around the crown to suggest the crown that would be hers one day when she became England’s Queen.

The crowd went wild, deafening me with their cheers, throwing posies and nosegays of sweet-scented herbs and pretty flowers at the princess, welcoming her, praising and blessing her, and the future fruit of her womb.

Suddenly a little girl broke from the crowd, an adorable, dirty-faced, barefoot cherub whose head was a riot of springy tawny curls. She had never seen anything like the stiff farthingale that puffed out Princess Catherine’s skirts and wanted to feel, to find out if this foreign princess was really shaped like a giant bell. Boldly, she reached out and embraced the full, billowing cloud of white skirt, smiling up at the princess with such innocent, radiant joy that it made every heart melt.

There were sighs and smiles and good-natured chuckles all around as her blushing mother hastened to pull her away, though not even she had the heart to utter a word of chastisement, and the Spanish princess smiled and bent down to caress the child’s face with a gold-embroidered and fringed white kid glove. She took a pearl rosary from where it hung at her waist and pressed it into that dirty-faced little angel’s grubby little hand as a remembrance of this joyful day.

Then she was gone, walking past, so that others might see her, and two dozen dignified, solemn, and serious-faced Spanish ladies took her place, led by the princess’s formidable duenna, Dona Elvira. They walked with their chins up, as though in silent comment on the great stink of London, and their hands folded demurely at their stout, matronly waists, clasping dark-beaded rosaries with dangling golden crucifixes replete with the suffering Christ frozen forever in mute agony. All of them were clad in dark, dour opulence. They marched past without acknowledging us, in high-collared, somber-hued Spanish and Genoese velvets trimmed with discreet daubs of muted gold, wearing headdresses that looked like rotten dark brown or black pumpkins that had been cut in half, hollowed out, and studded with pearls and shimmering, winking, and faceted jet, garnet, smoky- and honey-hued topaz, and antique gold beads before being crammed onto their heads to hide each and every hair of their severely pinned tresses. By the look of them, they followed the old fashion of shaving back their hairlines to make their foreheads appear even higher, which had the effect of making them all look bald beneath those ludicrous beaded pumpkins. In the crowd around me, some poor and ignorant people wondered if it was indeed the fashion for Spanish women to shave their pates after the wedding.