The Boleyn Bride (6 page)

On the threshold I paused and looked back at him. “Look for the grandest and most beautiful lady at court; by the time you have finished your doll, that is who I will be!”

And with that lofty boast, I left him, confident that a day would come when I would see him again. Life just couldn’t be so cruel as to deny me!

 

We reached Baynard’s Castle just in time to join the lords and ladies hurrying into the Great Hall. I paused for just a moment to catch my breath and straightened my gable hood as Matilda knelt to smooth my skirts and swipe the dust from my hems and velvet slippers even as I kicked at her for no better reason than I wanted to. When I married, I vowed, and this became my everyday world, not just a wonderful place I came to briefly visit when the occasion warranted it, I would send Matilda to work in the laundry and have another, and better, maid to serve me, a Frenchwoman perhaps, someone with enough wit and sophistication to be worthy of serving me, who could help me enhance my beauty even more. Just then a young man, a low common clerk in the midst of his twenties, or some dull, dreary bookkeeper, by the look of him—his cold, muddy gray eyes and mirthless mouth; his boring, blunt-cut, mud brown hair framing a gaunt and grim face; and the plain charcoal doublet, hat, and hose he wore—dared to most familiarly touch my arm, as though he presumed the right to such an intimacy, and asked if he might have the honor of escorting me in to dine.

“You may not!”
I cried, snatching my arm away and glaring at him as though he were a scab I wanted to rip off just to make the wound bleed. “
How dare you touch me?
Do you know who I am?”

Without waiting for him to answer, I thrust my chin high and flounced, alone, into the Great Hall.

As for that impertinent clerk, I didn’t deign to favor him with another infinitesimal thought. I had put that insignificant toady in his place, and that was an end to that. It
never
occurred to me that I would ever see him again, not even standing in a crowd; he really wasn’t worth the attention of the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.

 

Later that afternoon, after Princess Catherine had been prevailed upon to show us how the ladies at the court of Spain danced, with slow, graceful steps, and castanets clicking in her plump little white hands, I discreetly stole away. As much as I liked being at court, there were moments when I found it all rather tedious, especially when I knew more pleasing pastimes were readily at hand if I went in pursuit of them.

“Life is dull,” I always said with a languid sigh I imagined made me appear fashionably world-weary. “And one should grasp every diversion that presents itself.” And I was never one to let a precious opportunity pass me by; that was one of the few things I would have in common with the man who was to become my husband.

As the sun sank like a ball of fire, I lay, clad in only my sheer white lawn shift, upon my lover’s bed, reveling in his passionate and skillful touch that made me feel as though my soul had been set aflame.

John Skelton, so aptly named, as he had a very gaunt, cadaverous frame—I often teased him that I could count every rib—was the poet laureate of England (I had crowned him so myself) and tutor to Prince Henry. He was a man alternately passionate and pious; one moment he lived and breathed all for love, boldly proclaiming he would lay down his life for just one kiss; the next he was mired deep in melancholy and claiming he wanted nothing more than to renounce the world, retreat to some austere monastery, become a monk, and live out his days as a hermit and a recluse. He had penned many poems he said were inspired by my beauty, as well as many popular jests at the expense of the court worthies that even the common people loved to recite, especially when they saw the subjects passing by in gilded barges on the river or being carried in elegant litters through the filth-strewn streets of London.

Our affair had begun two years ago, when I was a slight, pert-bosomed maid of fourteen, the very night of a masque in his honor, when I, in a gown of gold brocade woven with a pattern of silver acanthus leaves, stepped forward to proudly crown him England’s poet laureate. How I preened at having been chosen to play such a role! As I solemnly placed the wreath of gilded laurels upon his brow, he glanced down my bodice and smiled. When he bent and kissed my cheek, to thank me for this honor, he whispered poetic compliments about my bosom and stuck his tongue in my ear, making me lose my composure for a moment and giggle like a common milkmaid.

Later, when the wine was flowing freely at the banquet tables, he doffed his crown of laurels and donned a coronet his own nimble fingers had fashioned from humble garden vegetables, playing the clown and poking fun at his own reputation. He asked me to dance. I readily agreed. I was flattered to have caught the attention of a poet, and dreams of becoming his muse fluttered and whirled like giddy dancers through my girlish mind. When he begged me for one look at my unclad body, to inspire his verse to greater glories, I instantly agreed. Why ever should I not? His verses would make my beauty famous and immortal! Even when my bones had crumbled into dust, I would live on eternally, immortally beautiful in his words. He was giving me the gift of immortal life! Only a fool would refuse that!

He hurriedly whispered directions to his chamber. I made my excuses, whispering some vague and hasty words hinting at the onset of my courses in my stepmother’s ear, and left the Great Hall, and a little time later, he followed.

As I stood naked, the first time in all my stark-fleshed glory before any man, he knelt worshipfully at my feet, reciting impetuous verses to me, until I grew bored, and lay down on his bed with my legs splayed wantonly wide to show the secret pink heart of me and beckoned for him to join me and “See what inspiration awaits you here, Sir Poet.”

I never would share his passion for poetry. Though it was flattering at first being his muse, the novelty soon paled. I already knew I was beautiful—my mirror and men’s admiring eyes and women’s jealous ones told me so every day—and those looks told me more than all the poetry in the world ever could. And I think, upon reflection, it was my nature to prefer things more straightforward and simpler. Plain speech and perfect understanding were, to my mind, always better than a whole bouquet of flowery words with the meanings all hidden beneath pretty petals and ribbons.

I was often bored and greatly annoyed when, suddenly inspired by our lovemaking—such as it was with my frustratingly intact maidenhead being avoided like a leper despite my urgent pleas that he relieve my agony and pierce it—he sat up, snatched a quill, and rolled me onto my belly to use my back as a makeshift desk for his impulsive scribbling, ignoring the annoyed little shrieks I uttered whenever the point pricked me through the paper and left black ink spots on my snowy skin. These writing sessions frequently lasted longer than our pleasure, and while John’s pen scratched across page after infernal page, often for
hours,
I consoled myself with the plate of raisin-studded saffron buns or gilt-iced marzipan cakes he always left on the bedside table as a treat for me, “his beautiful muse.”

But that afternoon, as he covered my body with blazing kisses, I kept seeing the doll maker’s face, as though Remi Jouet’s likeness were painted in vivid colors on the insides of my eyelids. I could not stop thinking about him!

How curious that I should think of him. I had always before yearned for hard bodies, lean and muscular; those were the kind of men who figured in my dreams, partnering me in the most intimate dance of all, when the finery of the ballroom was doffed, and it was only skin against skin, perfume, heat, and sweat, and yet . . . I wanted him as I had never wanted anyone before, and I knew I would never rest content until I had him.

I moaned and groaned and caught at Master Skelton, trying to pull him onto me, into me, as I begged him to come inside and ease me; I was in such torment. But, as always, he demurred. I wanted to pound him with my fists and scream,
He wouldn’t be afraid to do it! He may be a doll maker, but he is more man than you are!
I never intended the words to be the rather obvious jest reflection shows they were—
I can tell by his eyes, his hand around my wrist, and the way he kissed me!
But of course I didn’t. John Skelton may have been my first real lover, in the sense that I took all my clothes off and permitted him greater liberties than some hurried fondling and a few stolen kisses, but already I knew better than to discuss one lover with another. Any excitement or adulation I might have felt at being caught between two rival admirers would have soon been transfigured into annoyance. I like excitement, it’s true, but I also like things to be peaceful, free of conflict, fear, and argument.

“I cannot pierce you, Bess”—he always called me Bess even though he knew I loathed it—“ ’twould be the death of me if I, a common poet, deflowered the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.”

The apology and regret in his voice only made me angrier, and it was all I could do not to kick and pummel him from the bed. “But you are not a common poet; you are the poet laureate of England!” I whined, even though I knew a sulky demeanor ill became me.

“But”—sensing my simmering frustration, he lay full upon me and soothingly stroked my hair, as though I were a lapdog frightened by thunder and he was trying to calm me—
“I rather would thy lippés bas, than Saint Peter his gates y-pass
.
”
He recited one of his most famous lines, the one wooers often resorted to, as he bent his head and kissed me long and deep.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and thought of Remi Jouet and wished that he were kissing me instead of John Skelton. If only wishes were enough! What I wouldn’t have given at that moment to feel the delicious weight of him upon me, skin against skin, and his lips devouring mine! But at least someone was kissing me, and, for now, that had to be enough. Life often, I find, boils down to making the best of things.

 

The next morning, as Matilda was finishing lacing me into a black velvet–banded buff velvet gown, while I leisurely sipped the last of my breakfast ale and nibbled daintily upon a honey-drizzled oatcake crowned with succulent, fat raisins, my brother knocked brusquely and came in without waiting for me to call out my permission.

Though only two years older than myself, Thomas, my father’s namesake and heir, was one of those men who even when young seem old. Pinch-faced and crotchety, humorless and dour, stingy with his smiles as well as with his coins, my brother loved full money boxes and worldly honors, like dukedoms and deeds to rich manors, more than he ever did flesh and blood. Even his mistresses were a luxury equated with velvet robes and gold-embroidered slippers; he wanted only the best and discarded his women the way he did old or worn-out shoes. In years to come, when his wife complained of the humiliation she suffered because he had left her bed for her own coarse, red-handed laundress, “a blowsy strumpet,” my brother stripped her bare, bound her wrists and ankles to the four posters of the bed, and donned full armor and rolled upon her naked body until she spat up blood and was bruised all over. She never dared complain about his infidelities again and was naught but the soul of graciousness to her laundress.

Miserly with his words as well as his money and any kindness that might have been lurking, buried deep, within his soul, Thomas merely said I must come with him and took my arm so quickly I scarcely had time to turn back and hand Matilda my nigh empty tankard and snatch up the black velvet hood I had worn the day before.

Without benefit of a mirror, I was still struggling to set it properly on my head and make myself presentable as I hurriedly followed Thomas along the palace corridors, grumbling all the while at his tight-lipped, straight-backed silence.

“You might have the courtesy to tell me what this is about!” I fumed, wishing he were Matilda so I might kick him without fear of repercussions; but kicking their brothers was something highborn well-bred ladies simply did not do, especially in palace corridors where other nobles or their servants might see and spread gossip about it, so I had no choice but to curtail my violent emotions.

Thomas paused outside the door to Father’s lodgings.

“There is someone Father and I want you to meet,” he said simply as he opened the door and ushered me inside.

The first thing I saw, standing directly in front of me, was that lowly, presumptuous clerk I had had the misfortune to encounter the day before. I had forgotten all about him until this moment.

Taut-mouthed and grim, with an indecipherable gleam in his gray brown eyes, there he stood before me in a brown velvet doublet with a discreet shimmer of gold braid adorning the seams.

I froze, bristling with contempt. Had the fellow
dared
complain of me to my father? I squared my shoulders, bracing myself for a fight. He would not get away with this! How dare he tattle on the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter?

Father was talking, and, to my astonishment, I soon discovered that this person was not a clerk at all but one of the rising stars of the Tudor court, an Esquire of the Body to Prince Henry, with a seat at the royal table, and the privilege of carving the prince’s meat, sometimes entrusted with minor missions abroad on account of his intelligence and excellent French. He was a good friend of my brother Thomas. Indeed they might have been twins; beneath the skin they were two of a kind. Ambition was their guiding star. They had made a pact to work together to rise above the mistakes of the past—the low birth of one and the grave and disgraceful mistake my family had made in the past when they backed the loser, Richard III, in the war that ended with Henry Tudor taking England’s throne.

This Thomas Bullen, I would learn, despite his clerk’s brain, fluent French, and that oily, ingratiating, insinuating, slithering-snake, worshipful manner that appealed so to the vanity of the Tudors, was born of lowly merchant stock.