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 is for risking this family’s standing with the King. We would be nothing without his favor!” he said after the second. His hand rose again and delivered the hardest and most stinging slap of all. “And that is because you failed! You have sullied your good name; your reputation has been compromised. Go now; you are banished to Hever until it is the King’s pleasure to recall you. Go! I cannot stand the sight of you; I never could suffer a fool!”
With her head held high, showing the red print of her father’s hand blossoming against the pallor of her cheek, Anne left the room.
I followed her, but she ignored me. The sight of her thus drew many alarmed and inquiring glances, and as she passed many fell to whispering, but Anne was oblivious to all.
George, in his dust-covered riding clothes, his white shirt open at the throat and sweat-sodden, caught up with her in the garden.
“Nan, oh, Nan, I came as soon as I heard….”
Gently, he led her along the graveled path, to a quiet, leafy bower. Not once did he glance at me. I might as well have been a ghost; to him I was already invisible. His gloves fell unnoticed to the ground. I picked them up, pressed them to my nose, and inhaled their scent of spice, sweat, and leather.
“Nan!” he breathed as his fingers lightly traced the bruise flourishing on her cheek. His other hand tightened around his riding crop. “By Heaven, I should like to give him a taste of what he metes out so freely!”
“It is all Wolsey’s doing,” Anne said numbly. “Wolsey!” she hissed, with all the venom of a serpent. “Heaven upon earth was within my grasp and he snatched it away, because he—that butcher’s boy!—deemed me unworthy. George, before you and God, I swear that if ever it is within my power I shall work the Cardinal as much displeasure as he has done me!” And with these words she fell weeping into his arms, burrowing her face into his strong shoulder as I so longed to do.
Neither of them seemed to realize what I knew from the start—Wolsey was only following orders.
The next morning, Anne, dressed for travel, knelt at Queen Catherine’s feet to formally take leave of her.
“I trust Your Majesty will know the cause,” she said softly, her bitterness and anger ill-concealed.
Queen Catherine leaned forward in her chair and gently took Anne’s bruised and tearstained face between her hands.
“I am sorry, Mistress Anne. He is a sweet boy and I know your love for one another was sincere. Go with God”—she pressed a dainty gold filigree cross set with seed pearls into Anne’s hand—“and know that you are in my prayers.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Anne whispered, her voice shaking with the tears she was struggling not to shed.
Impulsively, Queen Catherine gathered her close in a motherly embrace.
“Do not be afraid to weep when you are alone,” she counseled. “Tears cleanse the soul and will give your heart blessed release.”
3
And so back to Hever Anne went, to mourn her lost love, dream of revenge, and nurse her wounded pride.
A year passed, followed by a second, and a third, with Anne stubbornly refusing to return to court. Whenever her father broached the subject, she spoke so wildly that he dared not force her lest she behave in such a manner that the King’s goodwill and the Boleyns’ fortunes would be lost forever. So he let her be. Bleating sheep, taking inventory of the larder, and supervising the cheese and candle making, he reasoned, must soon pale beside the remembered pleasures of the court. But Anne was nothing if not stubborn.
She changed dramatically during those three years. Gone were the elegant French gowns, packed away with sachets of lavender, and with them her jewels, locked in their velvet-lined casket. And the volatile, vivacious nature that had captivated an entire court seemed also to have been snuffed out. Like a ghost, she drifted about Hever, in somber-hued gowns of gray, black, white, and brown. And her hair too had become a prisoner of her pain, denied its freedom, confined and pinned beneath a modest coif, white and nunlike.
She went for long, solitary walks and would sit for hours immersed in a book of scripture. She wore her Book of Hours, beautifully illuminated, bejeweled, and gilded, dangling at the end of a golden chain around her waist. Except for Queen Catherine’s cross, it was the only adornment she allowed herself.
She was fascinated by the “New Learning” that was sweeping Europe, heralded by Martin Luther’s heated demands for Church reform—to curb the avaricious excesses of the Catholic Church, for the lucrative trade in Indulgences to cease, for people to accept that prayer alone was no guarantee of salvation, and that God and man could commune freely without priestly intervention, and everyone should be allowed to read and hear the word of God preached in their own language instead of Latin only. And though it was dangerous, and by the law deemed heresy, to possess such texts, Anne owned several, prizing greatly a book of scriptures written in French and William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament. It was a passion George also shared, and they made use of merchants importing goods from France and like-minded friends in the diplomatic service to procure these banned volumes, which they discussed fervently, albeit in hushed tones, and kept carefully hidden. Both hoped someday to see the Bible fully translated into English and legally sanctioned. For how else could the word of God reach the people, most of whom understood not one word of Latin, it being the tongue of priests, lawyers, and scholars and not the common man?
It was a lonely life Anne led at Hever. Her parents and Mary were almost always at court. But George did not forsake her. Whenever he could obtain leave from his duties at court, straight to Hever he would ride. If she wanted to talk they would talk; if she wished to sit in silence he would speak not a word and instead give her the comfort of his presence. He was the only one who could draw her out of her cloistered shell and make her smile. As they debated the tenets of Lutheranism, the new ideas espoused in their forbidden books, or made music together, the shell would crack to reveal a glimmer of the old Anne. Her spirit was not dead, only sleeping.
Another frequent visitor was Sir Thomas Wyatt. Most unhappily wed to a wife who shamelessly cuckolded him, he would tarry long with Anne at Hever.
He laid siege to her, bombarding her with sonnets.
“Persistence is my only virtue,” I heard him once declare as he lay sprawled upon the grass at her feet, “and with my heart entire I hope that it may be rewarded.”
“Oh?” Anne arched her brows. “Are loyalty, friendship, and kindness masks you don only to woo me?”
“Nay, dear Anne, but I do not want to claim too many; it would ruin my reputation if I were to appear overly virtuous. It is more