Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (12 page)

Her daughter pulled up a stool close beside me. ‘You have a secret sweetheart, Avis, how intriguing,’ she coaxed softly. ‘And he is wealthy, too wealthy indeed for a nursery maid. Come, tell me. You must have some idea who he is.’

‘You are not at court now, Madge,’ Lady Shelton snapped at her daughter. Your games of courtly love are not to be encouraged in a servant.’

‘I think your tongue will be loosened, Avis,’ she told me, ‘if I tell you that this young man is a traitor to the King and when he is found will be given a traitor’s execution. I don’t doubt that you know his identity. Protect him now and the same punishment will come to you and your family when all is revealed.’

For the second time within the hour, I lied.

‘I do not know who brought the gift, my lady.’

‘Then know this, wench. On the same day that this young man brought your pomander to the laundress, a basket of the self-same oranges was delivered, in secret, to Lady Mary’s chambers. Concealed inside one of these fruits, we have this day discovered a letter from Chapuys, the imperial ambassador. Goodness knows what plot has been devised against the King by Catholics in France and Spain who support the Lady Mary and name her Princess.’

‘Surely, it is merely a message of comfort and love from mother to daughter,’ Mistress Madge interrupted cheerfully. ‘What harm can there be …’

‘What harm? A plot, maybe, to smuggle Lady Mary into France and keep her safely there to await the invasion of England by imperial forces, whereupon Mary will be returned to England and crowned Queen. Sir John is even now in his chambers trying to translate the missive, which is written in Spanish.’

She came to me and prodded my chest again. ‘Now do you tell me that you know nothing?’

I felt fear trickling through every part of my body. I had to let the fear bleed away before I could think. Perhaps it would be best to get down on my knees before Lady Shelton, plead my innocence, tell her everything I knew and beg for mercy. I was so very angry with Tom for bringing such danger to my family. Whatever intrigue he had got himself caught up in was his affair. He was the only culprit and should take the blame. By what means he had acquired two angel nobles within six months I could not surmise. Honest means and hard work, this was what he had promised, and I believed him. Tom was no thief. But was he a traitor? I thought of Father and Tom talking privily together divers times at Greenwich Palace since Anne Boleyn became Queen. If the King’s men searched for Tom their first enquiries would be of my father in the bakery. Why had Father been so distressed when Tom disappeared? Why had he so urgently sought to know his whereabouts? Both sympathised with Queen Katherine and Princess Mary. Both had hardly concealed their hatred of Anne Boleyn.

I lied again, a third time, like St Peter. I heard my voice floating above me, thin and sword-sharp but steady. ‘In truth, I know nothing of this young man, my lady.’

When I returned to the nursery Nurse told me to go to the dormitory to pack my bag ready to remove.

‘Where am I going? Am I to be sent to my parents?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Nurse said curtly and turned her back.

‘Then I would like to go to my aunt at Greenwich.’

‘Would you indeed. You think mighty highly of yourself, wench, if you believe you have a choice in this matter. You will go where you’re sent. And I, meanwhile, will have to make shift without a maid until it pleases Lady Bryan to pester Lady Shelton to provide me with another.’

I thought that Nurse was quite capable of doing the pestering herself without Lady Bryan’s assistance, but I didn’t say so.

‘Why not ask Lady Shelton to allow the child Katherine to help you,’ I suggested. ‘She’s very fond of Princess Elizabeth and she likes being in the nursery better than studying at her books. Isn’t she a sort of cousin to the princess? She calls Lady Shelton, “aunt”.’

‘Cousin, indeed! A sister more like. You could say she is the Queen’s niece, she being her sister Mary’s child; or maybe you could say she is the Queen’s stepdaughter, if you get my meaning.

‘There you go again Avis, forever asking your questions and getting secrets out of me while my back’s turned.’

In the dormitory, I found Mistress Blanche already packing a small chest with my spare linen.

‘Pack those slippers in here and wear your outdoor shoes and mantle. And hurry, Avis, you are leaving within the hour.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘Hasn’t Nurse told you?’ Mistress Blanche asked, surprised. ‘All of the maids are very jealous. You are going to court. Mistress Madge wants you for her maid and the Queen has agreed. Queen Anne is in a terrible rage because Lady Mary will not curtsey to her and is leaving as soon as she can.

She put my mantle around my shoulders and gave me a hug.

‘Listen, Avis,’ she said, ‘Mistress Madge is very much admired at court for her gentle manner and her beauty; too much admired, perhaps, for her own good. I’ll say no more about her for I’m not a person to take heed of gossip about aught that I haven’t seen with my own eyes, but I’ll say this … don’t let her make you do anything that your mother would not want you to do.’

I didn’t want to go away without taking proper leave of the wet-nurse for although it was her way to be snappish and tart she had trusted me and sometimes taken me into her confidence. She had respected my privacy and had not pestered me with questions about the pomander. Mistress Blanche told me that I would find her with Lady Bryan in her privy apartments so I hurried there and waited quietly by the open door until I should be noticed.

Lady Bryan sat with baby Elizabeth awake in her arms.

‘The Queen will arrange for her brother to visit shortly,’ she told Nurse while she gently bounced Princess Elizabeth. ‘Uncle George will come to see you soon,’ she said smiling into Elizabeth’s wide eyes.

‘I wouldn’t have thought Lord Rochford to be fond of babies,’ Nurse said. ‘If my lady princess pukes on his velvet clothes, he will blame me.’

‘Lord Rochford’s purpose is to speak with the Lady Mary. He will, in the Queen’s own words, bring down the pride of this unbridled Spanish blood. My Lord of Norfolk, the Queen’s uncle, will accompany him. The Queen may also bid Master Secretary Cromwell to have some communication with the Lady Mary. He is, as you know, staunchly loyal to the King, and a great friend of Queen Anne besides, and he has a way of dealing with people, of gaining their trust. He will approach the Lady Mary as a friend and go-between offering to speak to the King on her behalf.’

‘So the brother and the uncle will wear her down with threats while the secretary entices her with sweet words,’ Nurse said bluntly.

‘I am hopeful that Master Cromwell will persuade Lady Mary to accept the reduced position in which she finds herself so that she may go to court and enjoy some pleasant pastimes as she used to when she was a child.’

‘And meanwhile, we may be sure that Master Cromwell’s spies will hunt out these Catholics who support Lady Mary’s claim to be a princess and will get to the root of this matter here concerning the missive in the orange,’ Nurse said.

Lady Bryan handed the wriggling Princess Elizabeth to her. ‘I suppose it will be a traitor’s death for those responsible.’

Oh, Tom, Tom, I thought. Look where your loyalty to Queen Katherine has taken you and possibly father too. And what of me? And Mother? How many folks in the outer courtyard would swear that they had heard both my parents curse the name of Anne Boleyn?

‘Do you believe your girl has any connection with this matter?’ Lady Bryan asked Nurse.

‘Now I come to think of it, she has kept her own business very close. She is forever asking questions of me although she has told me nought of herself or any sweetheart she might have. She has the nose and ears of a spaniel yet is as mute and proud as the dyers’ and vintners’ swans upon the Thames.’

‘Has she shown sympathy towards Lady Mary?’

‘On the contrary, she has shown a great admiration for the Queen.’

‘Which queen?’ Lady Bryan asked.

‘Queen Anne, of course. What other queen could you possibly mean, Lady Bryan?’

‘A mere slip of the tongue,’ Lady Bryan replied hurriedly, in a low voice. ‘I wondered if you referred to Katherine, the Princess Dowager.’

‘You need to watch yourself, my lady. These little slips of the tongue keep happening. They will get us all into trouble.’

‘Is that a good likeness of your son that hangs above the fireplace?’ Nurse asked while she walked around the chamber rocking Elizabeth in her arms. ‘The eye patch gives him a gallant air. He lost his eye in the King’s tiltyard, I believe.’

‘I rarely see him,’ Lady Bryan replied. ‘The painting is a comfort in his absence and yes, it is a good likeness.’

‘It is a pity he was unable to accompany the Queen upon this fleeting visit, he is her cousin after all.’

‘My son is always busy tending to the King’s affairs. He worked hard as his Majesty’s ambassador in Rome to try to solve the great matter of the divorce and spoke plainly to the King where others lied and gave false hope.’

‘Would he have dared to speak so bluntly to Queen Anne?’ Nurse asked tartly.

‘His Majesty is most grateful to my son and the Queen dotes upon the little spaniel he has brought to her from Lady Lyle in Calais.’ Lady Bryan spoke softly, yet with pride.

‘I hear some folks call your son the Vicar of hell,’ Nurse said and lifted the mewling princess upon her shoulder and patted her back. ‘I admire plain speaking in a person. I speak plain and true myself, as you know, my lady.’

I could wait no longer to take my leave of Nurse or Lady Bryan. Besides, I thought they would have no kind words of farewell for me.

Chapter 15

August 1558

‘The wench who was everywhere and nowhere.’

White Boy nods and smiles. ‘The master would deem that to be a riddle.’

‘So he would.’

‘The master likes to talk of riddles and contradictions.’

‘Indeed.’

‘A damsel who is everywhere and nowhere would not be noticed, mistress.’

‘Attend to your task, if you please.’

‘A little damsel, unnoticed, would hear and see things gentlefolk might not wish her to know.’

White Boy cannot see me smiling. I know where this conversation is going. Ever since I told him that I went to court with Mistress Madge and Queen Anne he has been hinting about the secrets of King Henry’s palaces.

‘This stockfish needs to be soaked in warm water for at least two hours before it be fit for the master to eat and it is not yet beaten,’ I tell him sharply.

He feels his way around the trestle table and fetches the wooden mallet from its usual place beside the box of sweetmeats on the shelf. With his left hand safely upon his lap he begins to beat the dried fish.

‘If the master brings fresh river fish tonight this labour will be all for nought,’ he complains while he shakes his aching arm. I raise an eyebrow at his brazenness. Of course, he cannot see this. It is hard for him, a blind servant. I have to use harsh words where a gesture would suffice as a gentle reproof for a sighted servant.

‘Watch your tongue. A servant should be grateful for whatever victuals he receives. Stockfish tastes well enough boiled and served with mustard and perhaps a little butter for a treat. If the master should bring fresh fish tonight you will take it to Widow Purvis. Our family eats well and we should welcome an opportunity to give to the poor.’

‘Perhaps you should give the salty stockfish to Widow Purvis and keep the fresh Thames fish for ourselves,’ White Boy mutters.

‘That is not how we live,’ I say quietly, ‘and you know it. Widow Purvis must be sick of stockfish. It is all she eats, that and gruel. River fish would be a rare treat which I would not deny her.’

‘The fish is softened enough,’ I tell him, an hour later. ‘Let us eat our noon piece while it soaks. By the time we are refreshed the bread will be baked. Then you may put two loaves in your basket, one for Goodwife Trinder and one for Goodwife Napier. And mind you return with a farthing for each loaf. If Goodwife Napier digs deep into her purse she will find a farthing hiding in a corner.’

‘Goodwife Smedley has had no bread for three days,’ White Boy says. ‘Maybe she is buying from a baker and shuns our home-made loaves.’

‘She forgets to eat since her children died. Her cooking pot is always cold and her husband takes his meals at the tavern.’

‘Aye, where he loses his wages to strong ale and whores.’

‘That’s as may be,’ I say harshly, ‘and none of your business. Mind you remember your place as a servant in this family, for the master and our neighbours do not forget it.’

White Boy hangs his head in shame. It is happening more often now, the need to reprimand him. He is younger than me by seven years or more yet has aged to twice my age. My husband says that I am weak in my discipline of our servant since my pregnancy and he is becoming too bold. He is right, of course. Yet I look at White Boy and I see a child in an old man’s skin. I see his frailty. I want to nurture him into an adulthood that already betrays his mortality.

‘You are getting too big for your breeches,’ I say teasingly, and White Boy lifts his head and smiles like a babe. ‘You are right to remember Goodwife Smedley in her great sorrow. Take a small loaf to her in charity. Tell her we have loaves to spare and do not accept her farthing if she offers it. Anne Boleyn taught her maids that gentlefolk have a duty to the poor. Of course, we are not gentlefolk, but the master provides well for our table so we must help the needy where we can.’

‘Queen Anne Boleyn instructed her maids in a great many things. You have told me so on divers occasions, mistress.’

‘Hush, White Boy, I should never have mentioned her name. Touching religion, her beliefs are heretical now that England is Roman Catholic again.’

‘So many folk have died for their beliefs either for the old religion or the new, all believing that they are martyrs,’ White Boy says sadly.

I think of Anne Boleyn’s beautiful copy of Tyndale’s English New Testament. It was a banned book even then, in 1534, yet she kept it openly on a lectern in her chambers for everyone to read, and the King knew this. I loved to see the colourful woodcut illustrations and the bright red, handwritten capital letters. Although in those early days, before my marriage, I could not read the written words, and although I knew that they were not the ancient Latin words the priests had read for centuries, I could feel that the book was holy. I did not dare to touch the pages, but I could sense a tingling in my fingers when I let them hover over the page, as if there were a halo around it. The word of God had been rewritten in the vernacular, bringing it closer to the people; closer to me. I was young and the Renaissance was growing around me and within me too. I was a child being reborn into womanhood while the Christian faith was painfully, even cruelly, bringing forth new ways of believing.

‘Why so pensive, mistress. Have my idle words distressed you?’

White Boy’s voice fades as if the silence smothers his words. The master has charged him often enough to make no mention of the burnings to me.

‘If we do not speak of what we fear we will go mad,’ I say.

We eat our cheese and gingerbread. Outside, on the street, boys are chasing a runaway pig and there is much shouting and laughter. Goodwife Napier cries out to a beggar who has lain by her door like a faithful dog all morning. She tells him he is not aged, sick or blind. ‘Be gone, thriftless rogue,’ she scolds, ‘we want no vagabonds here.’

‘Many beggars crowded outside the King’s gates,’ White Boy says. ‘They were always there, at every palace, beggars and vagabonds, crowds of them smelling of filth, and I was one of them. When King Henry and Queen Anne Boleyn had finished their dinners and a servant brought the food that was left, the beggars surged forward, not caring what blind boy they might push out of their way. Some cried out; “God bless you sire, pray help a poor man feed his family”, but there was something ferocious in their pleading; something hate-filled and threatening.’

‘I have seen some poor men beg silently with eyes that might be blind for all the hopelessness that dulls them,’ I say.

White Boy sighs deeply. ‘So I was not alone in my blindness.’

Never before has he spoken of his other life, those years of begging at Greenwich Palace, where we found him on the death day of Anne Boleyn. I think that he has more to say and I dare not interrupt the silence. He has a story to tell and I must take care not to stunt it in my eagerness to hear it.

After a while he says, ‘It wasn’t the hunger, nor the cold, nor the wretchedness of hanging on to life when there is no life to live; it wasn’t loneliness, for I had ever been alone and knew no other way to be: none of these touched me at all. It was not belonging that cast a pall over my soul. I had fallen from my mother’s womb and slipped off the edge of a world that had no place for me.’

I hug my belly, close my eyes, and pray to God that my daughter will never know such a life. For it is a maid child that I carry, I am sure of it.

‘One day,’ White Boy continues, ‘a deaf musician came to sit with me. I took his hand and let him feel the clout around my eyes, and everything changed. He could talk, but he couldn’t hear; yet he played his harp beautifully. He hadn’t always been deaf. They had cut off his ears and branded his earholes, you see. He never told me what he’d done to deserve such punishment. He showed me how to listen for the sounds of the strings when he tuned his instrument with a little set of chimes. When a string and its chime made equal sounds, I nodded to him. Each day, little by little, he taught me how to play. And thus, together, each in our own solitude, we passed the time in music; me in my world of shadows and he in his deathly quiet clime.

‘“When your playing is as good as mine, your smiling face will tell me so, and my harp will have a home,” he said. He played such wonderful sweet music; I thought I could never learn to play as he did. How long did he patiently teach me to get a tune out of that instrument? How do you measure time when you cannot hear the church bells chime or the crier call the hour? How do you know when night turns to morning when all is darkness?

‘There came a day when he shook my hand and walked away. “My music will be with me always,” he said. “It is all inside my head. No one can ever take it from me. The harp belongs to you now, boy.” He didn’t know my name, I had no way of telling him. I never saw him again but every time I played I knew that we were hearing the same music.’

‘I always wondered how you learned to play and where you got your harp,’ I say.

‘You should have asked, mistress.’

‘Stories are told in their own time.’

I go to the oven, scrape out the stopgap dough and lift off the door. I slide the peel under the loaves and the kitchen is filled with the smell of freshly baked bread. White Boy fetches his harp and begins to play while the loaves cool.

‘How many doors between the beggar at the gate and the King in his secret chambers?’ White Boy asks while his fingers pluck a melody that would invite a king to dance if he should happen to be there in our kitchen.

‘Why, there are many doors. And stairs, and galleries.’

‘Tell me about the palaces, mistress, all of them. I want to see the King and Queen Anne making a progress through his palace. Tell me, mistress, tell me what you saw. You saw it all. You saw every palace.’

‘Not every palace: Hampton Court, Windsor and Greenwich, of course, some others. It was so long ago. The court travelled. We never stayed anywhere for longer than a few weeks. Sometimes when I awoke I couldn’t remember where I was. I was a maid in my mistress’s lodgings and some days that was where I stayed while I sewed or tidied her chambers, or did nothing at all while I longed to be outside. There was so much to see, White Boy, I could not see it all. I was only a servant.’

‘Begin at Greenwich. Remember, mistress, all our stories must begin at Greenwich. When I heard the King’s musicians I knew that his barge was approaching. Let me see King Henry VIII as he arrives by water at Greenwich Palace.’

‘The King’s barge is canopied, gilded and brightly painted. It is strewn with sweet herbs to disguise evil smells from the river and to ward off disease.’

‘As is the master’s wherry.’

‘Quite so, but the King also has his perfumed pomanders. His barge will smell sweet, not foul like a waterman’s vessel, which carries all kinds of rogues and wayfarers. The King sits upon velvet cushions listening to his musicians. Across the water the people marvel at the beautiful music, as you did. Along the Thames, Greenwich Palace stretches wide and colourful with its bright red bricks, and the tall donjon, and the tilt-yard towers flying Tudor flags of green high amongst the clouds. So many windows glint in the sunshine; too many to count.

‘The King steps out of his barge at the great watergate. He climbs the privy steps which are guarded by giant heraldic beasts.’

‘And the King’s guards also?’

‘Everywhere King Henry goes, his route is lined by his Yeomen of the Guard in their bright red and gold uniforms with their shining halberds ready to defend him. He climbs the stairs to his privy apartments on the first floor. Only the King uses these stairs. And the Queen, of course. She has her own apartments near the King’s.’

I tell White Boy of other stairs, those that lead to the King and Queen’s apartments from the pages’ chambers, the wardrobes and the privy kitchens.

‘And of course there are the secret stairs,’ he says, ‘those stairs the musician made you climb in darkness when he took you to Queen Anne Boleyn.’

White Boy puts his harp aside. He counts out three warm loaves from the peel, wraps them in a cloth and puts them in his basket.

‘How many chambers between the beggar outside the palace wall and the King within his privy chamber?’ he asks.

‘Far too many to count,’ I say. ‘There are the outward chambers, many of them, and all guarded by yeomen ushers ready to purge the palace of all manner of servants and rascals who have no right to be there. Then there is the great hall where food is served, but not to the King and Queen who usually eat in their privy chambers. After this comes the great watching chamber full to bursting with red liveried guards and this leads into the great presence chamber, all hung with silken arras. Here, the ladies and gentlemen courtiers linger, and if they look up to the ceiling they will see how the gold leaf glisters. King Henry sits upon his throne in all his magnificence underneath his golden cloth of estate. No one but the King is allowed to go beneath it. His surcoat hangs from his wide shoulders all gleaming with gold. The gossamer linen ruffles at his wrists are decorated with costly black-work and golden embroidery that maybe his queen has wrought. Here the King receives ambassadors and sometimes they will dine here. In the gallery, feather capped musicians play their sackbuts, brightly bannered trumpets and lutes while courtiers dance.’

‘Take me further into the palace,’ White Boy pleads. ‘Take me to the King’s most secret rooms.’