Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (7 page)

‘What manner of coin is this?’ I asked.

‘It is a golden angel,’ Mother told me. ‘Some folks call it an angel noble.’

Chapter 11

September 1533

On Monday the twenty-fifth of August the King’s harbingers galloped through the courtyard. The King and Queen were returning to their favourite palace to await the birth of their first legitimate heir. The next day, everyone in the palace knew that the Queen had taken to her chamber to shut herself away for the few weeks before the birth. I thought of her often and imagined her sitting amongst her ladies while they sang and played beautiful music upon their lutes or silently read their prayer books by candlelight.

While the servants went about their duties in the morning of the seventh of September they learned that Queen Anne had begun her labour earlier than expected. Everyone talked of a prince. After more than twenty years England was about to have a male heir.

At three o’clock in the afternoon the Queen delivered a healthy child. It was the maid child I had foreseen.

‘The King’s doctors and astrologers will be hiding in corners with their tails between their legs,’ Mistress Pudding said. ‘How can it be that every one of them got it wrong?’

‘The King will not want our sugar deceits now that he is only celebrating a princess’s birth,’ mother said, and stopped her beating.

‘The King and Queen will have to eat them. My lord, the comptroller of the household, will not allow sugar and gold leaf to be wasted. Just imagine,’ Mistress Pudding said with a giggle, ‘if I had to serve a sugar banquet to the outer courtyard servants to save it from going to waste.’

‘Master Lydgate, in his wherry, can read the stars more truly than the King’s astrologers,’ Aunt Bess said later when I visited the laundry.

‘I got it right,’ I confided to her. ‘I knew it was a maid.’

‘Queen Katherine divorced and the Pope defied and all for nought,’ Father said. ‘King Henry has no need of another daughter.’

‘This is God’s doing. The King will beget no son with that whore, Anne Boleyn,’ Mother told him.

*

A few days later, a thin young usher wearing new purple and blue livery stepped into the confectionary.

‘Avis, daughter of the confectioner’s servant, come hither.’

Mistress Pudding set aside the quill with which she was glazing an almond pudding.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ Mother asked.

The usher stuck his nose into the air and announced in a voice deeper than is normal for a skinny boy, ‘It is our most gracious Queen Anne’s pleasure that Avis, daughter of the confectioner’s servant, come to the …’

‘What, come to the Queen,? Now?’ I pulled off my apron and threw it into mother’s lap.

The usher stuck his nose up higher, sighed and repeated. ‘It is our most gracious Queen Anne’s pleasure that Avis, daughter of the confectioner’s servant come to the royal …’

‘She kept her promise, mother. The Queen kept her promise.’

‘I know of no promise.’

The usher stuck up his nose so high he was almost looking at the ceiling and announced at great speed, ‘Avis, daughter of the confectioner’s servant, is to come to the household of our most gracious Queen Anne, tomorrow at eight of the clock, to be a servant in the service of the Princess Elizabeth.’ He set his voice at a gentler tone and his nose at a lower pitch and spoke conversationally. ‘You’ve to come with me now, Avis. Nurse wants to fit you for your servant’s attire.’

‘This is unexpected.’ Mistress Pudding looked towards me and Mother.

‘You owe the goodwife and myself an explanation,’ mother said flatly without raising her eyes from the mound of sugar she was working.

‘It had to be a secret. Be pleased for me, Mother.’

‘Go with the usher and remember your place. He is the son of a gentleman and deserves your respect,’ Mistress Pudding said. ‘Even though he be a little spotty of the face and squeaky of voice,’ she added in a whisper.

I danced in circles around the boy. ‘I’ll be back soon to show you my new clothes.’

It was as if I was a ghost. Invisible. Unheard.

Mother was wringing out my apron with her sticky hands, like wet washing. ‘Why my daughter, why must she take my daughter?’ she chanted like a nun at her prie dieu. Mistress Pudding stood by Mother’s side with one hand upon her shoulder. In her other hand she held a kerchief that caught a tear running down mother’s cheek.

‘Take heed, daughter,’ Father said, later that day. ‘Conversations at court are like autumn leaves in the wind, blown hither and thither into corners and crevices where they be discovered later, rotten and corrupt.’

‘You will worry the girl,’ mother said. ‘Gracious me, she is quiet enough and keeps her own counsel. She will not speak out of turn and will do the right thing if she hears something amiss.’

‘Do the right thing? Now what in our Lord’s name do you mean by that.’

‘Keep her mouth closed, of course, especially touching religion and the Pope in Rome. We keep our beliefs to ourselves and to God and let our masters see what we want them to see. That’s how we must live, and Avis knows it.’

Mother dropped my clogs into the coffer where she would store my old shift and kirtle after I had I left in the morning wearing my new attire.

‘You may as well give those to a beggar at the gate, I won’t wear them again,’ I said, holding my new kirtle of soft blue wool to my shoulders and twirling around.

‘Heed what your mother says and remember what I tell you,’ Father said. He steered me towards a stool and sat himself upon another beside me. ‘Honour the Pope in your heart and close your ears if you hear the Lord’s word read from a Bible in the English tongue, for it is heresy.’

He said nothing for a while and then he put his arm around my shoulder. ‘There is a gentleman at court who I have had occasion to speak to once or twice. He is a servant of Sir Henry Norris, the King’s friend. George Constantine is his name. He has not been long returned to court for he had to escape abroad into exile. He calls himself a friend of the Gospel, you see, and Sir Thomas More would have had him burned for heresy. I pray that God will bring him back to the true religion for he is a good man, like his master, an honest man for all his heretical beliefs and his English Testament. If you find yourself in trouble at court, you may trust him. God knows who else you may trust, for I don’t.’

‘Really, Mother, Father,’ I said, ‘you should both heed your own advice. Everyone knows you both hate Anne Boleyn and the new religious ways. You should seal your own lips with wax. There’s no need to concern yourselves about me. What am I likely to hear in a nursery except a babe’s wailing?’

‘The gossip of nursemaids for a start, concerning the privy matters of the Queen and Jesu knows what else besides.’ Father cupped my chin in his hand.’Take heed of my words, Avis.’

*

A day or two later, I saw the King.

The wet-nurse had laid Princess Elizabeth in her cradle and came to me where I waited on a settle in the outer chamber. I was stretching out my feet to admire my new leather slippers. Every few minutes I would take a turn around the room for the pleasure of walking softly upon the matting as if with bare feet. No more heavy servant’s shoes for me now that I was a servant of Queen Anne’s household, albeit a lesser one.

‘The princess is satiated, she’ll bide two hours before suckling again,’ the nurse said, tucking in her breast clouts and lacing her bodice around her breasts. I wondered if I would develop large breasts like these.

‘Why are you sitting around doing nothing, girl?’

‘I have but lately returned from the laundress. I’ve folded Princess Elizabeth’s linen and put it neatly away in her chests with sprigs of lavender, as you told me to do.’

She opened each chest and inspected my work, pulled out a sheet, tut tutted and folded it again. ‘How came you by your position?’

‘I was asked to be a nursery maid.’

‘A lowly girl like you from the outer courtyard?’

I didn’t know how to answer so I shrugged my shoulders and did what mother had told me to do. I said nothing.

‘You look very young,’ Nurse said, peering into my face.

So did she. She was younger than I had supposed a wet-nurse would be, barely into her twenties, younger by several years than the Queen, too young, surely, to have had many children.

Her name was Mistress Pendred but I had to call her ‘Nurse’.

I told her that I was just past my fourteenth birthday.

‘You look younger. Are you well?’

I nodded, wondering whether I looked pale and sickly for I had been constantly indoors for days and, already, I was missing the sunshine and the gardens.

Nurse poked at my eyes and ears. She made me open my mouth and stick out my tongue.

‘You seem well enough. Three of the rocking girls are ill. A snuffle only, but we cannot take risks. Princess Elizabeth is the King’s only heir now that Lady Mary has been declared a bastard. Tonight, girl, Mistress Blanche will show you how to rock Princess Elizabeth’s cradle. I need not say what a great honour this will be for an outer courtyard wench like yourself.’

She stared at me again and looked me up and down. I held her gaze, confident that my bleached linen shift and apron were as spotless as her dove grey gown and crisp wimple.

‘Off you go wench, don’t tarry, and take good heed of Mistress Blanche.’

This wench has a name, I thought, if you would have the manners to use it. Anyway, how difficult did she think it to be, rocking a cradle.

‘Take a turn around the chamber now and then, to keep yourself lively. Maids have been known to drop asleep,’ she said.

‘There is no fear of that,’ I said confidently.

‘And fetch me at once if the princess wakes. Do you understand? At once.’

‘Yes, Nurse.’ I bobbed a curtsey and passed into the nursery chamber.

*

I saw him immediately: a splash of brilliant gold filling the room. He was sitting in the nursing chair by the fire, cradling his sleeping daughter on her swaddling board. The little cap and biggin bands that had bound her head were discarded on to the floor at his feet alongside his big feathered bonnet. He kissed her forehead, letting his russet hair mingle with her pale-marigold curls while his bulky shoulders heaved in violent jerks, making the little white bundle jolt in his arms.

Behind him a gentleman of my father’s age wearing fur and costly fabrics that glimmered in the candle-glow waved his hand frantically in the direction of the door behind me. He put his finger to his lips. Already I was keeping secrets as Father had warned: the King’s secrets.

I fell into a curtsey, hiding my face in my skirt. On my hands and knees I crept slowly backwards pretending not to hear King Henry’s rasping sobs.

*

‘They’ve hidden their disappointment well,’ Mistress Blanche said while she showed me how to replace the biggin bands that the King had unwound. ‘Everyone was so sure that this time the King would get his boy. The announcement of the prince’s birth was already written. The scribe had to alter the document.’

‘Who is the King’s friend?’ I asked her. ‘The older man with the kindly countenance?’

‘That is Sir Henry, groom of the stool, who always attends His Majesty.’

Sir Henry Norris, the King’s other self: he who took folks’ petitions to the King, who performed acts of kindness to tally against the King’s wrath. Father had spoken of him often: of how Sir Henry had given up his chamber to Cardinal Wolsey when the King had kept the old cardinal sitting on his mule at Grafton Hunting Lodge in the cold and rain, with nowhere to change his wet clothes. King Henry had been angry because the old cardinal had failed to provide him with his divorce.

‘Sir Henry has taken into his own keeping the peacocks and pelican that dwelt beneath the Queen’s bedchamber and kept Her Grace awake. He is the King and Queen’s great friend,’ Mistress Blanche said.

She handed me the little cap that the King had dropped on to the floor. The princess didn’t stir while I tied it upon her curly head.

‘I see that you have swaddled a child before,’ Mistress Blanche said. ‘You do not need my instruction. You have helped your mother to care for younger children, I think.’

So I told her of my aunt’s midwifery and the help I had sometimes given. ‘Pray, do not tell Nurse of this,’ I pleaded, ‘for she will surely disapprove.’

‘I have heard of a good woman who serves as midwife in the inner and outer courtyards,’ Blanche said kindly. ‘This must be your aunt.’

‘One day when you are married you may yourself have need to send for her,’ I said.

‘I am twenty-six and have no plans to marry. I am so very happy here with Princess Elizabeth and Nurse. Mrs Pendred is Welsh, you see, like me, and we both love to sing. Soon Avis, you too will be singing Welsh lullabies to send my lady princess asleep.’

‘The Most Happy, just like the Queen,’ I said, for that was her new motto.

‘Hush, Avis, listen, can you hear it?’

‘Hear what?’

Mistress Blanche ran to the window and opened the shutter and I listened hard and in a while I heard something too.

‘Are the angels whispering?’ I asked and was afraid. ‘Are they calling someone to heaven?’