Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (4 page)

Father and Mother (or “Sir” and “Madame”, as
we publicly addressed them) were godlike creatures who came when we
misbehaved, and administered verbal instructions to the nurses on
how to handle us. Then they retreated, leaving the care and
handling of the three of us to others. However in secrecy, the
nurses disobeyed orders that they should distance themselves from
us as well, so they held and snuggled and nurtured us without our
parents ever suspecting. It was the scoldings Mother and Father
saw, never the hugs.

I was too boisterous for a girl, tumbling
down the stairway with my brother George, while our shrieks rang
out in the hall. I often hurled myself into cartwheels, even
attempting flips behind garden hedges, tearing my skirt on thorns
and having to account for it later. “Pure wickedness,” I was told
with clucks and fiery glances. “A lady doth not fling her skirts to
the breeze with her limbs in full view of God and man! Thou art
tempting Satan! Such sinful immodesty!”

From the moment I toddled upright, I was
drilled for hours in walking like a proper lady, and so I walked as
a proper lady walks. “A lady doth not gallop; she doth glide. Head
erect, chin proud, small steps—
small
ones, Mistress Anne.
Move only the lower portion of thy limbs as much as thou mayest.
Mother of God!
Heed
me, thou wicked girl. Straighten thy
back. Arms bent up at the elbow lest the blood move to thy hands
and make them as pink as the hands of a kitchen maid. Up! Up and
stay
up!” The words were punctuated with smacks from a
wicked long switch. Two steps out of view of anyone, however, I
broke into a giggle and a giddy run.

I liked games that called for movement and
running. I also liked games of pretend, and played the beautiful
maiden while George harassed me as a fearsome dragon or a highway
robber. When Mary joined our play, she would insist upon being the
beautiful maiden herself, and my role became that of the handsome
prince who would save her. George was ever the villain, for he
loved to roar and make noises to frighten us into scrambling out of
the nursery and into the hall. I would cast magic spells on him to
make him die upon the floor where he would twitch and moan in
gleefully dramatic agony. Always, the nurses would scurry toward us
scolding and upset that Father or Mother should hear us outside the
boundaries of our playrooms. We slid down the banisters, and ran
from room to room to escape them, hiding in wardrobes or under
bedsteads in dusty, muffled concealment while they called to us and
threatened us in dangerous tones. Once found, we were separated and
spanked, or punished with isolation, or denied treats or, in
particularly bad instances, turned over to Father whose punishment
was more severe.

If he was at home and not traveling in
service to the King, Father always came with his whip when I
misbehaved or threw fits of temper, lifted my skirts and thrashed
me.

I see Father now, sweeping into the room with
iron fury, larger than life, made larger by rage, voice booming,
eyes coldly examining me upon his approach. As he draws ever
closer, I grow ever smaller, weeping, contrite and terrified, too
frightened even to beg for mercy knowing I would receive none from
my father or his whip.

Frequently berated for “wickedness” and
“willfulness”, I routinely confessed myself to be “wicked and
willful” when I asked forgiveness from the priest. There,
admittedly, were episodes of violent emotion if I did not get my
way. I believed from my upbringing that I should have my way, and
so I demanded it. However, mine was frequently less a display of
will than of volatile temperament, and my demands often less
self-centered than a manifestation of strained nerves. I grew
ill-tempered when excitement or pressure stretched me past a very
tenuous endurance.

I was forced to test that endurance daily.
Both our parents and the nurses made it clear that none of us was
ever to draw attention in public. They warned and forbade us, but
the strong desire to appear in control and to please was within me
as well, so I obliged. I was aware of always being watched and
assessed. Each time we ventured out, I was expected to be silent
and to behave with impeccable decorum. I wanted approval, so no one
could ever find fault with me when it was necessary for me to
behave, and I would always hold the excitement of the outing within
me until I was once again safe in my home. There I would explode
into a tantrum as my only means of releasing my feelings, and fall
exhausted into sleep.

Emotion affected me to the extreme and would
result in my becoming feverishly agitated. When I was happy, I
would be overcome by a happiness that always seemed to be far
happier than that which others felt, and hence unseemly. Then my
emotional reserves became entirely spent on this emotion and I
would violently snap, collapse into tears, and fling myself until I
was drained.

Grief was always over-felt and even more
exhausting than happiness. I could feel it for days or weeks with
no decrease in intensity. The dismissal of a servant, the departure
of a favorite visitor, the death of a robin I had unsuccessfully
attempted to nurse, or—God forbid—the death of one of my little
dogs, each had the effect of leaving me prostrate and hysterical
while I mourned and missed them. I was inconsolable at such times,
and refused any pleasures.

Impatience and exasperation with me prompted
whippings that sometimes had the effect of taking my mind off the
grief and placing it elsewhere. For this reason, my parents viewed
these as necessary and beneficial. Each time a tragedy struck, I
was called aside and whipped. I grew up expecting to be rightly
punished for misfortune.

It is difficult for an adult to make the
distinction between will and emotional upset. It is even more
difficult for a child. The reason for my tantrums was of little
interest beyond the fact that they occurred and must stop. I should
have control over my behavior, yet I felt possessed by the Devil
himself when the hysteria overcame me. I cringed with shame and
remorse at the passing of each episode, and accepted the whippings
with a sense that I had failed.

Always, I sensed the difference between
others and myself in the power of my emotions, and felt ashamed
that I was less calm than Mary, and less able than George to view
matters with level-headedness. It was so difficult for me. I was
too easily carried away and wished to hide this, for expression of
feelings always drew frowns or gasps, and was generally viewed as
something base and common, as well as inappropriate. I prayed often
that God might make me good.

I never learned to feel less intensely. I
knew not how to change it. I never learned to control the hysteria
either, except by degree. However, knowing that one simply does
not
express emotion, I was able to repress my feelings in
public with such a force of will that I appeared cold. I could not
cry or shout or misbehave before outsiders; I had too much pride
and was too aware of my station and of the inevitable fury I would
incur to ever indulge in such antics. In public, I was a perfect
little girl. I was a credit to my parents. Inside, I was churning
with emotion, and was always on the verge of erupting.

The little girl grew into a woman, and did
not change so very much.

It should not be thought that I spent my
entire childhood in fits of hysteria or subsequent punishment. In
truth, the household considered me the “sunny” child and, though I
did not know this, it was I, not Mary, who was the favorite of the
nurses and the servants. I was gregarious and precocious. It was I
who was first to give hugs and kisses, and who grew wildly ecstatic
over the return of a nurse from her visit home, or at the birth of
a servant’s child. I knew the family histories and medical
complaints of all of them, brought treats to the babies, and kept
company with the old ones and sick ones as they lay abed, prattling
as ever to all who would listen. In return, they loved me as their
own, despite the scoldings I cost them when I blurted out some
truth they wanted hidden.

I did not distance myself from underlings,
except when I wanted them to serve me. I knew proper protocol, and
the servants expected it of me when they were on duty. I could be
quite demanding and cold if I was ill or hungry or feeling
bad-tempered. Otherwise I merely ordered them about with
self-centered impatience and expectations that were sometimes
selfish and unreasonable.

Even so, I was not as bad as most in my
station. I fully knew our servants were beneath me, but I
loved
them. They were my world, and as much my family as
Mary and George. When I was ill tempered or spoke harshly, they
forgave me and served me with parental patience and good-humor. I
grew up expecting to be forgiven my moods. I grew up expecting to
be understood.

I was never to entirely disabuse myself of
the illusion that all servants, and later my ladies, loved me as I
loved them because of the servants I had in my earliest years.
Toward the end, virtually none except Emma was a friend, yet I
thought them so, and spoke too much or spoke to them harshly
expecting, once more, to be forgiven.

Aye, but then, I could never hold my tongue.
I never could, poor wicked wench.

Mary and I were close as children, and
remained so, even as years pulled our interests in different
directions. I concentrated on music while Mary liked to paint; I
chose the Church, and Mary chose young men. We maintained our
intimacy up to the time Henry came between us and forever strained
our relationship. While still children, though, we whispered and
plotted, and planned our grand lives, and slept in the same bed (I
could not endure to spend the night alone, and crept down the hall
and into Mary’s room), hugging each other during cold nights. Mary
told stories of the great man she would marry and the grand house
she would have, whereas I fantasized myself into sainthood and told
stories of that. We made up frightening tales about the things to
be found in the woods, or the fantastic magical spells cast by an
old beggar woman we often passed in our carriage when we went out
for air, then went to sleep pressed close for warmth.

George sometimes crawled into bed with us
until he grew too large and proud to be with his sisters. Our
nurses slept soundly, and they were country women raised three or
more to a bed themselves, so even if they woke and checked in on
us, they did not mind or waken George to send him back to bed
alone. He feared the darkness and liked the company. He would weep,
if forced to leave on those nights when the very villains he often
pretended to be himself were lurking in his wardrobe or hovering
outside his window. He outgrew the need by the age of six or seven,
and would look fierce if anyone mentioned that he had once scurried
into bed with his sisters from fear and need of comfort. When I
think of us though, I think of us that way: three little poppets
nestled sleeping and intertwined while the nurse snored softly in a
nearby room. That sweet time swiftly passed for us.

It was George to whom I turned as we neared
ages 9 and 11, and Mary, at 12, was less interested in childish
play. We chased one another while Mary looked up from her
needlework with patronizing boredom or conversed in soft-spoken,
well-mannered phrases with the older women in the household. George
was a companion as wicked as I, and as prone to mischief. We often
recruited Emma, a servant’s child, to join us in devilish pursuits
that led us upstairs and down, inside and out, with nurses
threatening us from all directions. Without Mary’s restraining
influence, the number of whippings for each of us increased.

I missed George’s companionship, when he went
away to school and I left home to live on the Continent. When I
came back, he was a man, and I was a woman, and he was
concentrating on his career and his fortune at court. We had much
to say at first, and the intimacy was still evident, but we had
lives apart from the family now, and found our opinions had
diverged over those years. George was very serious and intense
about his future and his prospects. I was more flighty and
carefree, content to attend feasts and masques, and to chatter
among the women at court about the women who were not present in
the room. We each experienced exasperation in the company of the
other, and heard word of each other mainly through George’s wife,
who carried messages back and forth between us.

Meticulously well-informed, George was
opinionated about the subject of politics and liked to discuss it
at length, whereas I had no opinions except to comment on the
personalities involved, what they wore and whom they had bedded. At
first, I politely extricated myself from his conversations when
they turned to current events. Later, I sought him out and grilled
him endlessly, not only for information concerning that which was
taking place now, but all things that had led up to it, and his
speculations as to where an event might lead. The result was a huge
surprise to both of us: I had a head for it, and a mind sharper
than that with which I had thus far been credited. George viewed me
differently afterwards, and spoke to me with more respect and less
condescension. Over the course of several months, it lessened his
habitual annoyance with me somewhat, but alas, did not erase it
entirely. His wife still formed our strongest link to each
other.

I spent a good portion of my time in George’s
company after my duties required that I obtain a better grasp of
politics within and outside the court. He assisted me with an
understanding I had previously neglected to develop, and his
coaching spared me some embarrassment. In pursuit of the goal of
educating me for my duties as Henry’s wife, we spent many hours
together before and after I wed, giving neither Henry nor anyone
else cause to believe we were engaging in unnatural acts. Henry
once caught me affectionately kissing George’s cheek, and at the
time had smiled. He had also smiled at the stories I told him about
our sleeping all to a bed as small children.