Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (23 page)

‘But strike the chords with the loudest swell before returning to the sombre chords,’ Weston said, looking up and ceasing to play.

‘We have an audience. What do you want boy?’ Weston snapped, ignoring me.

The boy prodded me with his elbow. ‘You ask them Avis,’ he whispered.

‘My mistress has lost a precious jewel and we are sent to seek it.’

Weston’s fingers and his eyes were busy upon strings of his lute.

‘What is the colour of this jewel that is lost?’ Mark Smeaton asked, all interest, his lute silent and his fingers raised stock-still above the strings.

‘It is a blue sapphire of great worth,’ I said.

‘Lady Shelton is most distressed that it is gone and says that Avis stole it,’ the boy blurted out. ‘And she didn’t steal it. It fell off Mistress Madge’s hood while she was dancing.’

‘Mistress Shelton to you, boy,’ Weston barked.

‘Yes sire, sorry, sire,’ the boy muttered.

‘I imagine Lady Shelton will be greatly distressed at the loss of a bright, shiny sapphire,’ Smeaton said. ‘What think you, Sir Francis?’

Weston continued fingering his lute and said nothing. Smeaton began to laugh heartily.

‘What think you, Sir Francis? That Lady Shelton will be taken with a fit of apoplexy if she discovers the whereabouts of that precious jewel, that it be given as a love token?’

A love token. Was I to be branded a thief because my mistress had given away the jewel as a love token to Francis Weston.

‘I have to find the jewel and return it to Lady Shelton,’ I pleaded to Smeaton.

‘It cannot be found if it is not lost,’ Smeaton said, and glared at Weston.

‘If it is not lost we have no need to crawl about to seek it,’ the boy said cheerfully.

‘You are right,’ I told the boy. ‘We shall return promptly to Lady Shelton and tell her that Sir Francis Weston has the jewel.’

‘You will say nothing of the like.’

Weston jumped up from his seat and nearly dropped his lute. He rested it upon the table, fumbled about inside his doublet and brought out the missing jewel. I could not stop myself from letting out an enormous sigh of relief.

‘Here is the sapphire, take it wench, it was given only in jest. Kindly advise your mistress that she flirts too much and should cease to play these courtly games of love before her lady mother hears of them and removes her from court.’

‘I cannot speak to my mistress of such things,’ I told him, while I grasped the glistering blue stone he had thrown on to the table. ‘The Queen herself advises her maids upon such matters. I have heard her do so many times. She is always very strict with her maids. If Her Grace should hear of this love token it will not please her. She wishes my mistress to marry Sir Henry Norris very soon.’

Smeaton started. ‘My, but you’re a bold wench and no mistake. I always thought so. She’s got you by the cods, Weston.’

How can such a pretty boy be so vulgar, I thought.

Sir Francis took up his lute and plucked the strings. ‘You have the jewel, now leave us to our music.’

‘May I suggest,’ Smeaton said to me, that you tell Lady Shelton that it was I who found the jewel in the dancing chamber and only discovered its owner when I came upon you and the boy searching.’ He winked at Weston then at me. ‘That gets everyone out of trouble.’ He snapped his fingers and a servant boy came running.

‘Here boy, seek out my Lady Shelton and give her this jewel. Tell her that I discovered it amongst the rushes in a window recess in the long chamber and believe it belongs to her daughter.’

I thanked him thrice for his thoughtfulness and was rewarded with a wink and a smile.

‘That was kind of Master Smeaton,’ the boy said, as we walked away, ‘for if we tell Lady Shelton that we found the jewel she might say that you had it hidden about your person all the time and will dismiss you. What think you, Avis? Will you ask Mistress Madge to give us both a shilling or two for keeping her secret?’

‘Ask her yourself,’ I told him. ‘I won’t. We’re servants. We have to keep our mistress’s secrets. That’s what we’re paid for.’

That night, after I had snuffed the candles I opened the drawstring of my cardinal red purse and held the three angel nobles in my palm for a long time. Slowly, very slowly, I let them drop one by one into my purse.

‘What are you about Tom?’ I whispered into the darkness.

‘Will I ever see the fourth or fifth angel before you die a traitor’s death?’

Chapter 25

September 1558

‘That was when I learned to dance; well, to dance just a little,’ I say.

White Boy’s fingers fly across the harp’s strings and I try to remember the steps. I dance clumsily with my big belly before me and my feet swelling inside my slippers.

‘Mistress, you are breathless, you should rest.’ White Boy stops playing.

‘I will have the music. Play,’ I say.

‘Mistress, the master has charged me to ensure that you take your rest.’

White Boy is right. I should rest. My belly has been tightening in little spurts all day. They are not proper contractions. They are painless and strangely reassuring. As if my belly is practising for when the time is right.

‘Fear not for me. I will rest and we shall sing together.’ It occurs to me that I have never heard White Boy singing.

‘I know no songs, mistress. I cannot read the ballads that the master has pasted upon the walls. The master does not sing them.’

‘Shall I teach you Anne Boleyn’s song? A song of love?’

‘I believe you have told me a little of this song already. Is it not the song you were singing when Sir Francis Weston came upon you in the King’s park at Greenwich?’

I begin to sing and White Boy plucks his harp and tries a few chords before settling upon a gentle, pretty melody and we sing together:

First love is the only true love,

Precious in its tender newness.

Dawn’s first light on Earth’s first day,

Softly promising to stay.

How perfectly do our voices mingle. White Boy sings in a thin, wavering tenor that weaves in and out of the words and the music, binding them together. I hear my own voice fuller, richer against his silvered tones.

For each other we shall be,

First flower of the month of May,

First cry of a new-born babe,

Last kiss on an age-old grave.

White Boy learns the words easily. He hears each stanza only once and he has it forever. Hearing is all to him. If he should lose it as he ages, if he should be both blind and deaf ... I dare not think of this. I have to close my eyes and pray to God to take good care of White Boy’s ears. Is there a saint for hearing, I wonder? Should White Boy visit his shrine?

‘Why so pensive, mistress?’ White Boy asks. ‘The words are beautiful. Do they sadden you?’

How can it be that he knows my mood without reading my face? He is sharp-witted, this servant of ours. My husband has often said thus. My mother named me a sorceress; a cunning woman. Does White Boy have the cunning too? Does he read my thoughts like I read a woman’s belly, seeing the secrets that lie inside her?

I want to ask White Boy if he has ever been in love, if it is possible to fall in love without eyes to see your lover. I answer my own question. A loving touch or a gentle voice is all that is needed. It was all that I needed.

‘Where there is love all is beautiful,’ I say and we sing;

Timeless beauty caught in time.

A lifetime for this love of mine.

A lifetime for my love, so true,

Is not enough to give to you.

‘Did Anne Boleyn compose this song for King Henry?’ White Boy asks. ‘For he did not give her a lifetime of love. You have told me that he took a mistress within months of marrying her.’

‘When you have learned all of the song you will be able to answer that question yourself,’ I tell him.

There is a melancholy about the music when we sing the final two stanzas, as if the harp weeps.

To meet and love and not to touch,

This is a torment much too much.

To see and speak and needs refrain

From loving, brings me too much pain.

‘This song is not about King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,’ White Boy exclaims. ‘It is about a secret love the Queen must hide.’

He has predicted the final stanza which we sing in sad unison.

Our separate lives the years must take.

My love for you I’ll not forsake.

Forever in my memory,

My secret love to comfort me.

‘The song is about Anne Boleyn’s first love,’ White Boy says. ‘A secret love. Was he banished? Who was he? Was he there to comfort her at the end?’

‘Yes, he was there. How much comfort he gave I will leave you to judge for yourself when we come to the end of her story.’

‘Play again, White Boy, and I will tell you of a happy time, for there was a brief, happy time for Anne Boleyn, between the months of disquiet. And the music was wonderful.’

Chapter 26

November 1535

The Queen was finally with child again. There was no need for a doctor or midwife to give their expert advice. Everybody knew that it was so, beyond any doubt. My mistress had to sleep in the Queen’s bedchamber every night and I in a closet nearby for, when the Queen awoke in the morning, Mistress Madge had to be alert to her needs and call for me to hold the beautiful silver basin decorated with nymphs and all manner of foliage, for the Queen to vomit into. It happened every morning for weeks.

The Queen was brought all the remedies that her ladies knew. She could not suffer the odour of mint, albeit blended with sugar paste, so early in the morning and indeed, she vomited all the sooner for the smelling of it. A concoction of wormwood and balm helped a little but after a few days she had a flux of the bowels so she would not take it again. Mistress Pudding made ginger biscuits and suggested that the Queen try to eat one immediately upon waking. The Queen told me to thank Mistress Pudding for her kindness and gave them to her ladies. She could never abide strong spices before midday.

There was no mention, of course, of what had happened last time or of the many disappointments during the last year some of which may have been early miscarriages.

‘I am happy to have this sickness each morn,’ the Queen told Mistress Madge, ‘I was never thus with Elizabeth. It is a boy this time, surely. I have heard it said that the mother must suffer more with the carrying of a boy.’

While she lay abed in the mornings the Queen worried about the plight of the poor people. The summer of 1535 had been doubly perilous. The plague had taken many lives in the towns and villages. In the countryside, the wet summer had ruined the harvest. Bread was scarce, although there was plenty at court. Some poor folks had to eat horse bread made with beans. Others starved. The Queen lay upon her bed wearing her purple embroidered cap and black nightgown trimmed with ermine, very similar to the one King Henry had given to Mistress Madge, and called for her uncle, James Boleyn, who was her chancellor, and Master Cromwell to talk of what could be done to help the needy people.

She worried about the King too.

She confided to Mistress Madge that she would fain have kept the pregnancy secret from the King for a little longer to keep him in her bed. ‘He will seek a mistress to get what he cannot have from me for many months to come,’ she complained.

‘Do not look to me to take that part again,’ my mistress snapped.

‘He tired of you soon enough,’ the Queen retorted, ‘and I will not have another of my ladies betray me. Watch them,’ she charged Mistress Madge. ‘Tell me of any wanton behaviour, of anyone who dances and smiles overmuch with the King. I will not have lewd behaviour in my household, Madge, whether it be with the King or any other gentlemen.’

‘Of course not,’ my mistress replied sweetly, ‘yet once you did encourage a certain married gentleman to look in my direction,’ and she turned her face away from the Queen.

‘Forget Weston. He has a wife at home and dallies with you at his pleasure, your ruin, and the disgrace of my household. Norris wants you and it will be a good marriage. Good for the family.’

‘The King has been much in conversation with the Chin since the court returned from progress, haven’t you noticed?’ Mistress Madge said, hoping, I thought, to divert the conversation from talk of marriage plans.

‘The Chin? Whoever do you mean?’ the Queen asked.

‘Mistress Jane Seymour, of course. Don’t you think she has a rather ugly chin?’ Mistress Madge replied.

‘I’ve hardly noticed her,’ the Queen said. ‘She sits and reads and says nothing. Is she dumb?’

‘I think she expects her brothers to do her talking for her excepting when she is in Henry’s company.’

‘Watch Bessie Holland. Norfolk is too thin and small to be much of a man between the sheets and that woman might want more than he can give.’

‘Gracious Anne, the King is not attracted to bawdy baskets like her. He likes his women to be sweet and virginal and Mistress Seymour is both.’

‘She is not beautiful enough to entice the King.’

‘Sweet enough, perchance, to entice Henry to have a little taste,’ Mistress Madge murmured.

‘Oh Madge,’ Queen Anne wailed. ‘How am I supposed to keep loving him when he is so faithless? If I did not see with my own eyes men like Weston and Wyatt casting admiring glances in my direction, I would verily believe that I am as old and ugly as Katherine was after all her useless pregnancies.’

Mistress Madge laughed. ‘One thing’s for sure. You’ll never be as fat as Katherine became, even when you take to your chamber in seven months’ time.’

The Queen was as happy as she could be for those early weeks of the pregnancy. When she was up in the afternoons, she smiled graciously to her ladies and her husband’s gentlemen, to ambassadors, poets and musicians who enquired of her health. She enjoyed sending to her privy kitchen for special delicacies to tempt her poor appetite and asking for her seamstress to alter her garments although there was no present need for her stomacher was not at all raised. She began to embroider a baby’s cap while her ladies worked new hangings for the ornate silver cradle that the King had ordered during that other pregnancy, the one no one mentioned.

I knew what the Queen really needed was belladonna, to prevent a miscarriage. Aunt Bess had taught me well. Of course, the Queen would have to be given a very small amount, an overdose would be fatal, but first, she had to ask for it and she never did.