It was upon her first day to serve Queen Catherine, when she sat sewing beside me, that Harry Percy came in with a group of gentlemen, tripped over a footstool, and fell sprawling at Anne’s feet. We rocked with laughter until tears ran down our faces. Even Queen Catherine herself could not suppress a smile, though she tried to hide it behind her hand. Only Anne was silent. Then, with a gentle smile, she bent down and softly asked, “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I…I…” Percy stammered, staring up at her with eyes big, brown, and adoring as a spaniel’s. “I tr-tripped.”
His words inspired a fresh burst of laughter.
“Take no notice of them,” Anne advised. “Anyone is apt to trip.”
“And what a nice trip it was, eh, Percy?” Francis Weston quipped, laughing harder still when Percy failed to comprehend the jest.
But Anne and Percy were oblivious to it all; they had eyes only for each other.
It all came so easily for her. She had found true love and her niche, occupying a unique place at the heart—and in the hearts—of that band of merry wits. With George, Wyatt, Weston, Brereton, and Norris she was most often to be found. Together they would sit huddled in a window embrasure or outside under the trees, laughing and setting sonnets to song or devising clever masques to entertain the court. She was the flame to which they, like moths, were drawn. Women envied her yet rushed to emulate her—the cunning sleeves, doglike collars, and the French hood (a gilt-, pearl-, or jewel-bordered crescent of velvet or satin that perched upon a lady’s head, often with a veil trailing gracefully behind) which she favored over the more cumbersome gable hood with its stiff, straight wooden borders and peaked tip that framed the wearer’s face like a dormer window. And now she was set to wed the heir to a rich earldom, and it was a love match to boot! Even Dame Fortune seemed to fawn on Anne Boleyn!
But then came a hint of trouble, the distant rumble of thunder, like a storm brewing just over the horizon, and I was among the first to heed it.
2
At first, it was just like any other night at court; no special cause for celebration, no privileged guest to welcome or holy day to mark. We dined in the Great Hall, and afterwards we danced. The King and Queen sat on their thrones, and hovering nearby, at the King’s beck and call, were Cardinal Wolsey—the butcher’s boy turned priest, who had made himself indispensable to the King and now held the reins of power as Lord Chancellor—and his perpetually black-clad, equally grim-faced henchman, the ruthless and clever lawyer, Thomas Cromwell.
Henry VIII was in one of his moods, sullen and silent, a dark scowl perched like an evil gargoyle upon his face. His beady blue eyes narrowed and his cruel little pink mouth gnawed distractedly at his knuckles above the magnificent jeweled rings that graced each finger.
He was like two souls warring for control of a single body. He was “Bluff King Hal” when it suited him, always smiling, always laughing. At such times he could speak to a person—noble or peasant—and make him feel as if he were the most important person in the world. He would look deep into their eyes and nod thoughtfully, as if his whole existence hung upon their every word. But when he was in a red-hot temper or one of his black moods, it was like the Devil claimed him body and soul, and he became a bloated, red-faced, raging monster; a tyrant, ready to shed the blood of friend or foe, anyone who dared cross him.
He was a giant of a man, massive and muscular—at the time of which I now write, an active life of dancing and sport kept the future promise of fat at bay—with broad shoulders and trim, finely shaped calves of which he was inordinately vain. He was very handsome, ruddy-cheeked, with red-gold hair and a short, neatly groomed beard. And his mode of dressing made him seem larger and more dazzling still. His velvet coats, which reached only to just above his knees lest they obscure his shapely calves, were padded at the shoulders to make them look bigger and broader still; his doublets were a frenzy of jewels, gilding, embroidery, puffing, and slashing; and his round, flat caps were garnished with gilt braid, jewels, and jaunty curling white plumes. Silk hose sheathed his legs, and the square-toed velvet slippers he favored were embroidered with golden threads and precious gems. And round his neck he wore heavy golden collars and chains with diamonds, and other magnificent gems, as big as walnuts.
From time to time he would dart swift, peevish glances at the woman by his side—Catherine of Aragon.
At the age of fifteen a golden-haired Spanish girl named Catalina had bid farewell to her parents, Their Most Christian Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, changed her name to Catherine, and left behind her native land, to brave a savage, storm-tossed sea and marry Arthur, Prince of Wales. The moment that that frightened, weary, homesick girl, green-tinged and fluttery-bellied with mal de mer, set foot on English soil, a miracle occurred—the people of England, always wary and distrustful of foreigners, fell in love with her. It was a love that would last a lifetime and sustain her through all the travails to come. Her bridegroom was a pale and sickly boy who succumbed to death’s embrace before, Catherine swore, he could become a true husband to her, and for years afterwards she languished in penury, darning her threadbare gowns and pawning her jewels and gold plate to pay her servants and keep body and soul together, while her father-in-law, the miserly King Henry VII and her equally crafty father, King Ferdinand of Aragon, haggled over the unpaid portion of her dowry.
Then the old King died and young Prince Henry, glowing with promise and golden vitality, at age seventeen was crowned the eighth Henry. His first official act as king was to make Catherine his queen. He loved her brave, tenacious spirit, her kindness, sweet smile, quiet grace, and gentle nature. At the time, it didn’t matter to him that she was six years his senior; Henry was in love. And, for a time at least, everything seemed golden.
Time passed. The luster dimmed and tarnished. All the stillbirths and miscarriages—only Princess Mary lived and thrived—and the poor little boys who clung feebly to life for a week or a month before they lost their fragile grasp, took their toll, as did the years, upon the golden-haired Spanish girl. Her petite body, once so prettily plump, after ten pregnancies grew stout; her waist thickened; lines at first fine, but etched deeper with every passing year and fresh sorrow, appeared upon her face; the golden tresses faded and skeins of silver and white snaked through them. And more and more she turned to religion for comfort, fasting, wearing a coarse, chafing hair shirt beneath her stiff, dowdy, dark-hued Spanish gowns, and spending hours upon her knees in chapel, praying fervently before a statue of the Virgin.
King Henry grew bored and his eye started to wander. And, even worse, his mind started to wonder why he was cursed with the lack of male issue. He needed a son, a future king for England. A daughter simply would not do; no girl, no mere weak and foolish female, could ever handle the reins of government, or bear without buckling the weight of the Crown! Thus was the impasse they had reached by the night my ears first became attuned to that distant rumble, and I knew a storm was brewing.
It was the most hilarious sight! Rarely has a dance inspired so much mirth. Indeed, at the sight of Anne and Percy dancing the galliard, some of us fairly screamed with laughter. I can see them now: Anne, grace incarnate in a splendid embroidered gown done in five shades of red, with a French hood to match, and a choker of carnelian beads. And Percy, equally resplendent in lustrous plum satin, bumbling, bumping, treading upon toes, and stumbling his way through that lively measure; twice he lost a slipper and once trod upon his own hat when it fell from his head.
Suddenly