Le Temps Viendra: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (46 page)

I made my way along, through the graveyard and down the path that led to the main south entrance of the church. I finally felt at peace with the world and all that surrounded me; indeed, my heart was gladdened by a delightful aria of birdsong which filled that peaceful enclave with vibrant, joyful life. It was mid-afternoon by the time I stepped inside St Peter’s. Turning a heavy iron handle that felt cool and hard within my hand, I unhooked the latch of the great oak door that guarded its entrance; with one push it had swung inwards with aloud creak. It was a relief to step inside that ancient cradle of worship, kept cool from the sultry afternoon sun by thick, sandstone walls, which had long ago been raised up to the glory of God. Closing the door gently behind me, I was relieved to find that at last, away from the tourists, I was alone. The flagstone floor, which had been so pristine when I came here as Anne, had been gradually worn away by centuries of devoted pilgrims and visitors, who had come to commune with their God, or to simply enjoy the divine serenity of the church.

Yet, I had not gone there that day to pray, or to pass the time with idle curiosity. Instead, I was drawn deep into the heart of the church, toward the Bullen Chapel, which was founded by Anne’s great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn in the mid-15th century. For there, I knew that I could finally spend time with the man who had once been my father who, in March 1538, had been finally laid to rest in to a fine, Purbeck marble tomb in a ceremony befitting his status as Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde.

Whatever history made Thomas Boleyn, for a time, he had been my father, and although he was no saint, I loved him nevertheless. Suddenly, standing in front of the well-worn vault, I felt saddened that I had no flowers to lay there, nothing to mark my love or remembrance for the man I had come to know so well. Lost in thoughts of the many conversations we had shared, the ups and downs of our sometimes tempestuous relationship, I imagined my father’s body decayed beneath the hand which I ran lovingly across the top of the rough stone slab that sealed his grave.

Upon this slab, a fine brass etching of Sir Thomas’s figure showed him in robes of a Garter Knight, whilst the falcon, the crest of the Boleyn family, took flight above his right shoulder. I walked around to the top of the tomb to read my father’s epitaph and in the most reverent of whispers, I read it aloud, cutting through the empty silence of the church,

‘Here lieth Sr. Thomas Bvllen; Knight of the Order of the Garter; Erle of Wilscher and Erle of Ormvnde; wiche decessed the 12 dai of Marche in the yere of ovr Lorde, 1538.’

I knew that after the death of Anne and George, Thomas Boleyn had continued to serve at court, although stripped of some of his titles and his close association with the King. He seemed to have soldiered on, but I knew that he must have been a broken man, and I feared terribly for the great heartbreak that it must have caused within my parent’s marriage. He was an old man of sixty-one when he died. No matter what had happened between him and his youngest daughter, I felt saddened for the grief that he must surely have known at the end of his life.

Weighed down heavily by these thoughts, I reached out with both my hands, stretching forward until I was bent over the length of the tomb, finally coming to rest my cheek upon my father’s image, as I whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, so terribly, terribly sorry that it all had to end that way. If in any way, I did anything to cause you sorrow or suffering, please father, forgive me.’ Oh, it was not that I was blaming myself for everything that had happened to the Boleyns, but nor was I—or Anne—an entirely innocent bystander; thus, for my misdeeds and negligence, I truly longed for forgiveness and salvation.

I think I must have stayed there for the longest time, until a click at the door lifted me from my reverie. A young couple entered the church, no doubt to see this most famous of monuments. I quickly brushed myself down and checked my watch; Daniel was due to arrive there at any moment. Gathering my bag, I fleetingly touched my lips with my fingers, placing upon them a kiss, which I transferred to my father’s brass plaque in a final act of love.

When I left Hever that day, I thought I would return again, many times over. As we drove away in Daniel’s Aston Martin, I cast a final glance over my shoulder to see the spire of St Peter’s receding into the distance, I could never have known then that I would never see my beloved Hever again.

Chapter Five

Greenwich and The British Library, London

April 21, 2009

In the end, nothing turned out entirely as I had expected. As the weeks rolled steadily by, and I watched the seasons come and go, the stalemate in my relationship with Daniel stubbornly endured with little change, despite my earlier, fledgling hope for a new beginning. Like Anne, I had become the undisputed mistress of perseverance. At the time, I beheld my tenacity as a virtue, which set me apart from those who fell by the wayside under similar circumstances. In my conceit, it spoke only of my inner strength—of which I had become inordinately proud; my ability to bear the intransigence of my trial with resilience and equanimity—at least on the surface. The fact of the matter is that for the longest time, I deluded myself about the unending pain that the situation inflicted on me. It is only now that I truly see the wasted years and the full scale of my self-deception. I see my arrogance; my futile determination to bend circumstance to fit my will, and my utter foolishness to think that the ending would be any different than it was always going to be. I ask for nobody’s pity; for as the Good Lord has said, as you sow, so shall you reap. And it is not that I meant to hurt anyone; but somehow I became lost, confused in my own ignorance of the powerful karmic forces that were at play behind the scenery of my life; forces which at the time, I could not see and did not understand.

Thus, a full twenty months slipped by since my visit to Hever. Physically, I was incredibly fortunate to regain much of my strength. Apparently I had been lucky. It was only much later that I realised just how fortunate I was, being in the fifty percent of the population who suffered the same condition, and yet who went on to live for more than a year. However, because I experienced some minor swelling at the base of my brain, I had had to take prescribed drugs to prevent epileptic seizures, which I was warned could follow. Thankfully, none had, so statistically I appeared to move out of the danger zone and the medication had been discontinued. Mr. Harris’s optimism for a healthy future blossomed. However, I still carried a ticking time-bomb within my skull, and I suppose I just learnt to live with the uncertainty over if, or when, it might detonate. In hindsight, I coped through indefatigable optimism, always seeing myself as one of the lucky ones, dodging the spectre of death at every turn.

With my health improving, I had eventually returned to work, part-time. Psychologically, I suspect of all things, work encouraged me to live my life again. After my visit to Hever several months earlier, initially I had continued to dwell upon the time that I had walked in the footsteps of Anne Boleyn. Faces from a lost world were ever-present, filling my dreams and preoccupying my waking hours. But I knew that apart from my initial confession to Daniel, I could not share my experiences with anyone; no single living soul would ever understand what had occurred to me. And over the months, these deep wounds too gradually healed, for as they say, time is the most benevolent of healers, and evermore I had continued to make peace with my loss.

At the same time, I made a conscious choice to keep away from places that I associated with Anne; I never confronted myself directly with the truth behind my avoidance, which was that I was afraid that to do so would stir up the pain of losing her, and those dear to me, all over again. Instead, I concentrated on my work, which kept me inordinately busy and therefore at a distance from my Tudor past.

I now think that my visit to Hever in those early days was mainly to test my sanity; to know that I had not just made it all up; and of course, I had secretly yearned to be sucked back in time once more. But in the end, the visit signified the beginning of my return to the 21st century, and the singular acceptance that I would never return to Henry or my Tudor family.

While Lady Luck happily smiled down on my physical good fortune, I can’t say the same about my relationship with Daniel. For several weeks after my discharge from hospital, he was attentive to my every need and full of physical affection. Our love was sweet and tender; and as I had done with Henry so many times in the past, I often found myself looking into his eyes and seeing them alight with longing. I assumed that his longing was for us to be together openly; to do the things that normal people in love would do. And for a while, I thought my wishes would be fulfilled, as we talked of the home that we would set up together, of the bliss that we would create forging something beautiful out of the ashes of a situation that neither of us was particularly proud.

And so the months rolled on; reunited shortly after Christmas of the same year, we fell into each other’s arms, yearning to see each other again after a festive season spent apart; each of us alone and isolated in our own way. I had no family to retreat to, and Daniel remained bound up in a loveless marriage. For the briefest moment, we teetered on the edge of him finally finding the courage to end it with his wife, and to sort out the mess in which we were mired. But the winds of change were to turn again, blowing cruelly from a different direction that would drive yet another invisible wedge between us.

Just a few weeks later, in the early days of 2008, Daniel’s daughter suddenly fell ill with meningitis. He and Rose were lucky to recognise her symptoms early and rushed her to hospital immediately, which had no doubt saved her life. She was severely unwell for several days, drifting in and out of consciousness. Finally, she turned the corner, her small body determined to claw its way back to life. I prayed for her recovery, because if Daniel were to lose Jemima, it would have utterly destroyed him. Thus, I was indeed grateful that my prayers had been answered, while watching helplessly as my own dreams slipped away once more.

Seeing himself so close to losing his daughter forever, something had shifted in the man I loved during that Spring. He later confessed his deep sense of guilt; his feeling that he was being punished for our love through his daughter’s illness. The rebound effect was immediate, causing Daniel to retreat and shut himself away even more deeply into a world that was entirely inaccessible to me. All too soon, I became the outsider again. That unbreakable bond between parent and child was ever the thorn in my side, and oh, how I empathised with Anne! I understood her frustration at wanting to be part of something that eluded her. I imagined that she felt the same as I did; watching father and daughter seal themselves in a select clique whose membership was jealously guarded, all the time with a nagging feeling that one needed a secret password to gain entry, that somehow you were never good enough to be let into the inner sanctum. I saw how Anne had fought to be part of that inner sanctum in her own way, and I understood only too painfully that she would never truly triumph over Henry’s love for his daughter, Mary, in spite of all his grand gestures and declarations of his undying love for his lady. So, once more I watched Daniel melt into the shadows, becoming ever more unavailable, and his heart ever more defended against the poignancy of our love.

By the beginning of 2009, I was exhausted by the interminable revolving door in which I had been trapped for nearly seven years, and I think it is true to say that the spell which bound me to Daniel was finally beginning to break. It was not a conscious act of will, but rather as a result of psychological fatigue and gradual erosion of the trust and respect that I felt for him. But as I was soon to find out, the Gods had not yet finished toying with me. I had not yet broken free enough to completely walk away and find refuge far from the stormy events which were yet again gathering on the far horizon.

April 23, 2009 was no ordinary day. I had made plans; the twenty month long stalemate with my emotions was finally coming to an end. Standing looking out of my kitchen window into my rather compact and bijoux garden that was so typical of London, I watched giant white clouds race across a blue sky, whilst long-stemmed daffodils nodded their heads in appreciation of the fine day, and my equally fine mood. I wrapped my soft, grey cashmere jumper tightly around my body, folding one arm across my chest, whilst in the other hand, I clasped a steaming mug of my favourite lemon and ginger tea, sweetened with a little honey. It was Tuesday and I had the whole week off work. With a frisson of excitement, I looked forward to the week which stretched ahead. Daniel was away with his family, and with no one else to please but myself, I felt ready to re-engage with my lifelong passion for Tudor history; a passion that I had largely turned my back on since the rupture of my aneurysm, nearly a full year and a half earlier.

England was once again celebrating one of the most famous monarchs of English history; it was 500 years since Henry was proclaimed
Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland
in London on 21 April, 1509, following the death of his father Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty. A whole raft of exhibitions, talks and celebrations were planned over summer that year, and at last I felt ready to revisit my Tudor past. Quite coincidentally, I saw a poster on the London underground advertising a special exhibition to be launched at the British Library entitled, ‘Henry VIII: Man and Monarch’ to commemorate the young King’s accession to the English throne. When I saw it, I remember how my heart skipped a beat; those piercing blue eyes of Henry’s stared out from Holbein’s famous image; and whilst the image portrayed on that poster was a little older than the man I had known and loved, those eyes once more held me spellbound. So many memories tumbled forth, one after the other. These took me quite by surprise, as I realised how efficiently I had kept them tucked away in a place that was inaccessible to my casual, daily mind. They were memories of the happiest times, and I smiled, thankful that I felt little trace of regret or remorse.