That night in my father’s study at our London house, with the busts of wise Athena, chaste Diana, beautiful Venus, and bountiful Juno staring down at me from the mantel, I sat beside the hearth and rested my head against my father’s knee and asked how the marriage negotiations progressed.
‘Ah, Janey.’ He reached down to stroke my hair, now freed from its golden net. ‘It is a fine match to be sure, but I confess, I’ve had my doubts. I’m troubled about young George and the company he keeps. I’ve heard tales; things not fit for your ears. Perhaps it’s nothing and age will curb his wildness, but…’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘I want my girl, my only child, to marry well, but I also want her to be happy.’
‘And I will, Father!’ I sat up straight. ‘I will! I will be the happiest woman alive—the happiest woman who ever lived—if I marry George Boleyn!’
‘Ah, Janey.’ He reached down to caress my cheek. ‘Your eyes are dazzled by a pretty face, and your heart bewitched by longing, masquerading as love! But you must trust me to know what’s best; though my eyes are old, my sight is truer through the wisdom that comes with experience and age. And I am quite sure that George Boleyn—handsome devil though he is—is not the man for you.’
At these words I flung myself down and wept as though a storm had broken within my heart. Such a sharp, wrenching pain seared my breast, and my whole body shook with wracking sobs that seemed to tear at my lungs, as if a cat were trapped within and trying to claw its way out. And my throat sang out a long, keening wail, a dirge of deepest despair, like a mourner’s lament.
‘Janey, Janey!’ Heedless of his gouty knees, my father knelt down beside me and stroked my back. ‘I know it is hard for you to believe me now, but time will prove me right; if you marry George Boleyn he’ll bring you nothing but grief!’
‘I would rather come to grief with him than find the greatest joy with another!’ I vowed.
‘Janey, I was watching you tonight, with him and his circle of friends, and you were always on the outside looking in, but never were you a part of it.’
‘But, Father,’ I protested, ‘that will change, after we are married…’
And in my heart I firmly believed this. Once we were alone together as man and wife, away from the pleasures and wayward distractions of the court, ‘darling Nan,’ and his band of brilliant friends, George would come to know me, and he would see that I worshipped him and that to earn his love was all I craved. My arms would always be open to him, I would give him children, and to his every comfort I would personally attend. And though he might have had a more beautiful wife, never would he have found a better one. I might lack the dazzle of a diamond, but I would make up for it with devotion as perfect as a pearl. No one could ever love him as much as I did. There was a flame in my heart that burned and yearned for him that could never be eclipsed, extinguished, or dimmed.
‘And if it doesn’t?’ my father asked gently. ‘If it is always like the necromancer’s magic circle and you can never, like the spirits, step inside?’
‘Nay, Father, he will come to love me, you will see. I will make him love me!’
Oh, how young and full of certainty I was then. I did not know then that it was impossible, no matter how much you desire and crave it, to make someone love you.
‘Please, Father, do not deny me this! My heart will surely break if you do!’
With a reluctant sigh he gave in. ‘It is with grave misgivings that I say this, Janey, but I will leave things as they are; I will say nothing to Sir Thomas of my doubts. The negotiations shall continue and we will see what comes to pass.’
‘Thank you!’ I whispered fervently. ‘Oh, Father, thank you!’ I flung my arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses.
While the threat of losing my heart’s desire was but narrowly averted, Anne would not be so fortunate.
Robert, a distant cousin of mine, was a gentleman of Cardinal Wolsey’s household, and from him I had the whole story.
Wolsey summoned Harry Percy into his presence chamber and, before his entire household, soundly berated him, lashing poor Percy with his tongue as if it were a whip. How dare he dally with that Boleyn girl? Nearly foaming at the mouth, jowls quivering, eyes flashing, Wolsey declared himself astounded by the sheer gall, the presumptuousness and audacity Percy had displayed by allowing himself to become entangled with a common little nobody, the granddaughter of a merchant no less! Even if the man had risen to the rank of Lord Mayor of London and had prospered to such an extent that he was able to leave £1,000 to the poor upon his death, that dark-eyed minx with her long legs and swinging gypsyblack hair was no match for the Earl of Northumberland’s heir. Furthermore, Percy’s thoughtless behavior had grievously offended the King, and his father would arrive forthwith to deal with him personally.
Never a very brave man under the best of circumstances, Percy stammered that he had not meant to offend anyone, but he was a grown man and thought himself capable of choosing his own wife.
‘I…I l-l-love Anne!’ He fell to his knees at Wolsey’s feet, blubbering and shuddering, like a man made of jelly.
‘Love? Bah!’ scoffed Wolsey. ‘Do you think that the King and I do not know our business? Do you think your father is a mutton-headed dolt like you are? Whom you marry is no concern of yours; it is for us—the King, myself, and your father—to tell you who to marry and when to marry, and it is for you to obey without quarrel or question!’
Clutching like a drowning man at the Cardinal’s scarlet robes, Percy begged him to intercede, to plead his case before the King, asserting again that he loved Anne wholeheartedly.
But Wolsey would have none of it. He ordered Percy from his sight, to be locked in his room until his father arrived.
And oh, what a sight that was! His long red beard swinging, green eyes blazing, he swept down from the North, where it was his duty to safeguard the border from marauding Scots. Without waiting for Percy’s door to be unlocked, the Earl kicked it down, seized his son by the hair, and slapped him until his nose poured blood and two teeth wobbled in their sockets; then he dragged Percy out to the barge by his collar, flung him in, and bore him away, bawling like a baby, to marry Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s only daughter, and a loathsome shrew if ever there was one.
It was Anne’s turn next, and I was there to witness it, having chosen that moment as just the right time to bring my future mother-in-law a gift of embroidered gloves.
Anne stood straight and defiant while her father paced before the hearth, raging and roaring at her. And I, seated out of the way on a window seat, my presence quite forgotten, could not help but tremble.
I was glad that Thomas Boleyn was not my father. I swear ice water instead of blood coursed within his veins, and his heart was harder than marble. Gaunt and unsmiling, his dark hair speckled with gray, he spoke in crisp, curt syllables and was liberal with his blows, which he dealt swiftly and without remorse.
‘Did you not know that we had other plans for you? The Earl of Ormonde…’
There had been some talk of marrying Anne to her cousin in Ireland to resolve a longstanding family dispute about the rights to an earldom.
‘James Butler,’ Anne announced, ‘is a drunken fool with a voice like bagpipes, he stinks like a stable, and I will not have him!’
‘You will not?’ Thomas Boleyn repeated incredulously.
‘I will not.’ Anne repeated each word slowly, enunciating clearly as if she were addressing a deaf man. ‘It is Harry Percy I love and I mean to marry him!’
Thomas Boleyn raised his right hand and dealt Anne the first of three ringing slaps.
‘That is for your impertinence!’ he explained after the first. ‘That