The Heretic’s Wife (56 page)

“No. I think it should be the crimson. Definitely the crimson if I am to become a fallen woman,” Anne Boleyn said to the trusted servant who had accompanied her to Windsor. The old woman had been with her since childhood. Anne had left Lady Margaret and the simpering Jane Seymour behind at Hampton Court. This was not a night she wanted either of them around.

She handed the green sleeves back to the maid, along with an underskirt of green satin. “Sleeves of crimson velvet to match the velvet kirtle. And an underskirt of scarlet silk, girdled with a rope of twisted gold and crimson, I think.”

I will come to him in shades of red,
she thought,
to heat his blood the more.
“And the black heart-shaped coif, studded with rubies. And a single ruby at my throat.”

“A very wise choice. The king will be unable to resist you, my lady. The crimson will bring out your eyes. Shall I dress your hair?”

The old woman’s smile was conspiratorial, and it warmed Anne’s heart
on what was to be the most important night of her life. For tonight she was going to be made a peer of the realm, Marquess of Pembroke, with her own lands and rights, not dependent on her father’s less than worthy merchant background or her Howard relations. By using the male form of the title, Henry was bestowing on her an honor never before accorded to a woman in her own right. That could only mean one thing. By giving her the title, he was making her worthy to be his queen. The king had made up his mind at last.

And Anne had made up hers. With the power Parliament had given the king, Cranmer now Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cromwell on her side, everything was in place.

Almost.

If Henry wanted one thing more than he wanted her, he wanted an heir. She needed to be pregnant with his child by Christmas.

“No. I will let my hair fall free this one last time, to remind him I am still a maid.”
Technically, at least,
she thought. Her maidenhead was still intact, though with Percy she would surely have lost it had not Wolsey interrupted them in the queen’s closet.

“Prepare a bath with scented oils from France. There is a blue vial in my garderobe. It is the king’s favorite.”

Two hours later, when the bathing and dressing was finished and Anne stood in front of her pier glass, she smiled with satisfaction. It was a bold choice. The crimson dress did, indeed, accentuate her eyes, and her hair gleamed darkly against the rich velvet of her sleeves. She might be no blond beauty by court standards, but as she practiced the nuanced glance and flirtatious smile, even beckoning toward the figure in the pier glass as she would later beckon the king to her bed, she felt a sense of power.

“I am ready,” she said. “Summon the footman to take this message to the king,” she said, careful as she sat down at the writing table not to muss her skirts.

The message simply read, “Your Majesty, I await your pleasure,” and was signed “Humbly, Anne.”

When the king appeared in person at her chamber door to escort her to the Presence Room, the expression on his face confirmed her choice. But when he leaned forward to kiss the tops of her “little maidens,” as he so fondly called them, she gently protested. “Time enough for that, Your Majesty. First we must attend to the business of the evening.”

He held her out at arm’s length, and looked at her as though he could
satisfy his lust with his eyes. “My lady, you are certainly a witch, and you have enchanted a king.”

Her laughter echoed down the hall as she walked with him to the Presence Room where she would be announced for the first time as the Marquess of Pembroke. She wondered if any of her enemies would be there to witness her singular honor.

When Anne led the king to her bedchamber later that night, the room smelled fresh and sweet. The window was open to the warm night air. The only sounds came from the whispered conversation between a passing breeze and the great oaks outside her window. The room glowed with candlelight, and rose petals had been scattered among the rushes and on the counterpane.

Henry smiled when he saw it.

Anne began to undress, removing her coif and tossing her head to better let the candle glow highlight her tresses.

“Shall I summon your maid?” he asked.

“No need, my lord. I’m sure Your Majesty can be relied upon to give any assistance necessary.”

She peeled the sleeves away and then, untying her kirtle, stepped out of it. Taking his hand, she directed it to her bodice. His hands moved expertly among the laces until she stood clothed only in the diaphanous silk of her low-cut chemise. This time when he kissed her breast, she made no protest. His tongue was moist and warm against her skin. A fleeting thought of Percy crossed her mind, but she pushed it as quickly away, thinking it treaded on the fringe of treason to think of another man when making love to the king.

“Shall I summon my gentleman of the bedchamber to assist me?” he asked, removing his hat. His voice was husky with desire.

“No need, my lord. I shall undress you.”

She lifted the gold chain from around his neck carefully.

With considerably less ceremony he shrugged off his brocade doublet. “There is no reason to hurry, my lord,” she said, her voice breathy and low. She untied his breeches and then unfastened his codpiece, letting her fingers linger teasingly.

“Your Majesty is very . . . majestic,” she said.

When he was stripped to his braies and garters, she lifted her shift over
her head and stood before him clad only in her unbound hair and the ruby necklace. She had a moment of unease. He had never seen her naked before. Indeed, no man had ever seen her naked, not even Percy. Her breasts were too small, she feared, though he had often complained of the queen’s.

“Is Your Majesty pleased?” she asked in a very small voice.

The room seemed suddenly very quiet. Even the oaks outside her window paused in their windy chatter.

But she needed no words to tell her His Majesty was pleased.

Sing, O Muse, the vengeance deep and deadly; whence to Greece unnumbered ills arose, which many a soul of mighty warrior to the viewless shades untimely sent.

—L
INES FROM
T
HE ILIAD
QUOTED BY
J
OHN
F
RITH WHILE IN
R
EADING
G
AOL

J
ohn Frith recognized the smell. He’d been there before. That foul odor of stale sweat and urine was coming from him. Yet it was nothing compared to the fish cellar, he thought ruefully. At least the stocks were in the open air. The rogues arrested with him had been released after being fined ten pence, which no doubt went into the pocket of the magistrate. But John had not the ten pence to pay the fine if it had been offered.

He spent his first night in Reading slumped in the stocks, scheming between intermittent bouts of sleep how best to deal with this circumstance. When the morning fog rolled in so thick it seeped into his skin and clotted in his nostrils, he shivered until his teeth chattered. But by midday the sun had burned off the fog, and he could feel the warmth beating down on his head and the back of his neck.

He kept his eyes closed most of the time, preferring the visions he conjured in his head to looking at his feet and the brown spot of tramped-down earth, the only things within his field of vision. Some tricks he’d learned in the fish cellar were helpful now. He created and then catalogued inside his
mind pleasant images of his wife: Strong Kate, waving bravely from the harbor, blinking so he would not see her tears when he kissed her good-bye; Determined Kate, squinting over her needle as she sewed for the new baby, swearing under her breath as she ripped out an untrue stitch; Angry Kate, her eyes flashing with contempt when she talked of the heretic hunters; Sweet Kate, sharpening his quills, reading his copy, rubbing his neck—he imagined he could feel her hands on the aching muscles of his shoulders. He summoned the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin, the taste of her lips, until the constancy of her image became his only reality.

By the afternoon his muscles cramped until his mind tricks no longer worked. He could not stifle his groans, and his stomach burned with hunger. He dreaded the whipping mandated under More’s new vagrancy law, but was anxious to get it over. The pain that would come would take precedence over the pain in his legs. Not a relief from pain, but a different agony that might be borne for a time; and if he survived the whipping, he would be free. More might no longer be chancellor, but the law was the law, and what he’d seen of the local law enforcement did not make him think they were inclined to mercy.

His stocks were in the public square, and he considered shouting out his real name to a couple of passers-by, begging them to go to the abbey and tell them of his predicament. Judging from the abuse both real and verbal heaped upon him, however, he doubted the efficacy of such a plan. The fact that his name might fall on hostile ears also gave him pause. After all, he was a known fugitive. A strong man would survive a whipping; a burning he would surely not.

By the third day, he had fallen back on his old fish cellar habit of reciting Homer to occupy his mind, verse after verse in the original Greek. Occasionally a Greek utterance leaked from his mind into his parched throat. Because he kept his eyes closed whenever passers-by approached so as not to invite abuse, he didn’t see the women carrying water from the well.

“Poor man, he’s gone mad. He’s muttering gibberish.”

“Give him a drink; he must be starved for water.”

Hearing the compassion in their voices, John opened his eyes. He could only see their feet, shod in dusty worn clogs, and a bucket of water one of them set on the ground. He looked at the cool, clear water and thought of Tantalus.

“We can’t give him water, Charlotte. It is forbidden.”

He groaned.

“ ‘A cup of water in my name,’ the Scripture says. It’s like giving it to Christ. Would we not give a drink to our Lord?”

They were quoting Scripture. They were Bible readers!

“Please,” he tried to say, but his throat was dry, and it came out in a croak.

Gnarled hands dipped hastily into the bucket and held up a double handful of water to his mouth. He lapped it like a dog, until he could feel the roughness of her palm against his tongue. She scooped another handful for him, and he drank, until choking and coughing, he was able to spit out the words, “Please fetch the—p”—no, he could not ask for the priest—“the schoolmaster. Tell him a . . . scholar is . . . wrongly accused.”

“He is mad,” the other woman said, “or cursed. Let’s go before someone sees us comfortin’ a vagrant.”

“To be punished for giving a drink of water to a thirsty man, it’s an abomination, it is.” Then patting him on the shoulder, the voice belonging to Charlotte added, “We’ll pray for you. They canna punish us for that.”

“The schoolmaster,” he whispered.

He watched as the feet walked away, then closed his eyes and tried to summon his visions.

“His name is John Frith,” Leonard Cox, the schoolmaster, said to the magistrate. “I tell you, the man is a Cambridge scholar. The gibberish your spies heard him spouting was
The Iliad
in the original Greek. You’ve just about killed him. Let him go.”