The Lady Anne Read online

  The Lady Anne

  Part Two of Above All Others: The Lady Anne

  By G. Lawrence

  Copyright © Gemma Lawrence 2016

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this manuscript may be reproduced without Gemma Lawrence's express consent

  For Dan and Gema,

  For becoming a part of my family,

  and for giving me more family to love

  And for Derek,

  Because, as you always said, life is for living

  and taking a chance when you want something.

  Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

  But for me, helas, I may no more.

  The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

  I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

  Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

  Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

  Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

  Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.

  Who list her to hunt, I put him out of doubt,

  As well as I may spend his time in vain.

  And graven with diamonds in letters plain

  There is written, her fair neck round about:

  Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,

  And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

  Thomas Wyatt

  We are the music-makers,

  And we are the dreamers of dreams,

  Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

  And sitting by desolate streams.

  World-losers and world-forsakers,

  On whom the pale moon gleams:

  Yet we are the movers and shakers

  Of the world for ever, it seems.

  With wonderful deathless ditties,

  We build up the world’s great cities,

  And out of a fabulous story

  We fashion an empire’s glory:

  One man with a dream, at pleasure,

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

  And three with a song’s measure

  Can trample an empire down.

  We, in the ages lying

  In the buried past of the earth,

  Built Nineveh with our sighing,

  And Babel itself with our mirth;

  And o’erthrew them with prophesying

  To the old of the new world’s worth;

  For each age is a dream that is dying,

  Or one that is coming to birth.

  Ode, Arthur O’Shaughnessy

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Thank You

  Prologue

  The Tower of London

  The early hours of the 18th May, 1536

  The darkness folds in around me. Only the light of a small candle is left to me now, flickering in the light breeze which ripples through my prison. The women sent to watch me slumber on, unaware of the quiet, dark world in which I sit thinking on the past.

  Outside the window the stars glisten in the heavens. I feel as though I could touch them if I reach out my pale hand to the velvet skies, and yet I know that they are far away. They light the entrance to Heaven, where soon enough I believe I shall be. I am sure that one of those lights is my brother’s soul, looking down on me, whispering to me that all this shall be at an end soon enough. I hope I will see the light of his soul once more when I am come to the Kingdom of G od.

  There has been no word from court, no word from Henry’s men, or from my husband himself. The promises carried by the lips of my friend Cranmer are likely to be as I suspected them; false hope offered to me in order to extract a last soothing balm for Henry’s conscience.

  I have agreed now that I was never his wife, and that I was never his queen, and yet still he will take my life. I know it. I know it with the kind of awful certainty that comes from knowing the man I married so well. He will not allow me to still draw breath in this world, not now… not when he wishes to remove me from his life and his memories. In order to do such, he must destroy me.

  Will they come for me tomorrow? Take me to face Death at last? I know not. I hope that I will be given some warning before the time comes that I will face my death. I hope that I will be given a few hours, perhaps, to gather myself. That I will not face the arms of Death opening for me without having a little time to gather the last bare threads of my courage to me. But I know not how many mercies are left to me in this life. Henry’s patience with the lady he once so longed for has all but run out….

  I want to touch the stars with my fingertips. I want to reach out to them and stroke the source of their light and power. They rest so majestic in the skies, so peaceful… higher than us all; they are secure in their position as I was perhaps never secure in mine. They have looked down on a thousand lives of men, seen their births and their deaths, and they will go on after we all have died… after me… after George… after Mary… my father, my mother, and even Henry himself. They know eternity, the stars, and that is what gives them beauty and peace. Perhaps they saw the very start of the world as God crafted man and beast with His own wondrous hand; and perhaps they will see the end, when Jesus comes once more to this earth to take the righteous into his Kingdom.

  When one knows the end and the beginning of all things, one understands peace in the moments of the present.

  Perhaps that was why I was never a creature made for peace. I knew where I had come from, but in all things, I never knew how high I could climb, or how low I could fall. The path of life is a strange one for many people, and none more so than for me. You read of stories like mine in the pages of chivalric romances, and yet I lived such a love, I had such a love… once. But this ending I have come to is not the happy one of the fairy stories… My end will be different. There is no prince to save me; there is only one who will murder me.

  But there was a time… Yes, there was a time, when my heart was graced with a love like no other. My heart called for his long before he ever really saw me… as a child I thought him handsome and powerful… but there came a time when his eyes finally fell on me, and two souls who were so alike in all things, came to burn for each other in truth.

  I thought our love was as eternal as the stars, and perhaps so did he, at first…

  Chapter One

  The Road to Hever

  January 1522

  I came out onto the ship’s slippery deck as we sighted the shore of England and stared out despondently at the mist-swathed, hazy coastline, shudderi
ng as I saw the great white cliffs poking out from what seemed like an endless bank of fog and drizzle. Rain fell; a light yet relentless descent of moisture which soaked through my clothing even as I pulled my heavy cloak about me to protect my fine French gown of luscious green velvet. Mist seemed to seep from every part of the land looming ahead of me, and the little lights of fires within the squat houses further up the shore seemed dismal and bereft of hope, desperately flicking against the gloom of England.

  Storms raging across the oceans had meant that I had spent Christmas at the port of Calais, amongst friends of my father. I was not given the choice of spending that festive time of celebration in the birth of our Lord with my family, or within the familiar halls of the French Court. Many a time, when I sat within my chambers at Calais, I had looked out over the seas and berated Fate for having sent me from the comforts of my home, in France, back to a life I barely remembered in England. As the waves arched themselves, like a cat’s back as she stretches, extending their white, frothy claws up over the shore, I thought dismally of all I had lost upon leaving France; friends, companions, excitement and danger… All these things were part of the life I had once had at court and now had no longer. I was being brought back to England, for a marriage chosen for me by my father. I was being ripped from all I had loved and held dear in this life.

  What a blank and terrible homecoming this was, I thought miserably. The whole land was covered in a fog that obscured the earth and met the skies. Gulls flew overhead in great wending clouds, marking my own sorrows with their mournful shrieks. Was there no sun in England? Was there no horizon? My temper that day was such that I believe even if the sun had dappled softly on the lush green fields and splendid forests of England I would have thought it too hot and too shiny to be borne.

  I was desolate to leave France, to leave the court and my friends behind. And I was afraid, though I should never have admitted it to anyone… I was afraid that I would not fit in, in England. I had been so long in the courts and countries of other lands that I knew not what the country of my birth was like. Fears plagued my soul: that I might not have such friends as I had enjoyed in France; that there might be none of the dancing and entertainments I had loved so; that there might be none who shared my views on philosophy or religion; that there might be no one who knew or understood the passions of my heart; that I might be soon married off to a man of whom I knew nothing. England seemed, and looked, like a miserable back-water to me on that day. Even though the English had done many brilliant things I had seen with my own eyes, this island that I hardly knew seemed provincial, dull and crude; an outpost teetering on the edge of civilisation… and the weather was helping my temper nothing at all.

  Where was I to find a place to be myself? Who was this man my father wanted to marry me off to? Where would I live? Would he be a man of the court, or a country lord? I had been told nothing of this man I was to marry. I was trained and polished for a life at court; for the glitter and pomp of living close to the seat of royalty and power. I was not meant to be a country wife. Would I have to stay on the estates of this husband that my father had found for me and wile away my life in seclusion and loneliness? Thoughts such as these plagued me as my ship arrived at Dover. I was miserable and bad tempered. My guards were careful in their attentions to me, but I snapped and snarled at them for the slightest offence. I saw them lift their eyebrows at each other when they thought I could not see them, and that only increased my feelings of loneliness and self-pity.

  I missed Marguerite, I missed Françoise, I missed my gentle mistress Queen Claude and the wry, dark eyes of King François lighting upon me at court. I wished with all my heart that I was back in France, waking to help Claude in her apartments at Bloise or planning entertainments with the beautiful and wise Princess Marguerite. I wished I was back in Mechelen; attending to the whims and wants of the Archduchess Margaret… Truly, I would have wished myself anywhere but where I was, as we alighted onto the damp, sodden shores of misty England.

  But wishing will not bring one what is wanted or yearned for. As I came from the ship, the men showed me to a party of horses and carts for my belongings. I climbed into the slippery saddle and pulled my heavy cape over my head, cursing England for having caught me in her hands and stolen me from all that I loved and understood.

  We were to travel up-country, to Hever, through the soggy countryside escorted by the men that my father had engaged in Calais, by letter, to see me and my baggage back home from France. There was also a young maid waiting at the harbour, sent from my mother to help me. I was to grow fond of Bess. She watched me with round-eyed amazement when she saw me alight from the boat, her round, pretty face wondering at my clothes and bold manner as I ordered the men sharply to have a care with my trunks. Her pale, fair hair stuck to her cheeks in the damp air, and she nodded to each of my commands and demands, looking at me with wide, wild eyes. She seemed to me so young, being perhaps thirteen years of age, but then, I reminded myself that I had been younger than she when I set out for the Court of Burgundy.

  There was mist everywhere, it seemed, and as we started to ride out from the port, I felt as though I should never see a horizon again. This was all this country was, I thought; misty and damp and horrible with nothing to look forward to. The people looked ugly, rough and uncultured. The port was wet, muddy, dull and common. The roads were slathered in sludge and flowing with little streams of running brown water, tumbling over small banks of pebbles and stones. There was nothing to recommend England to me. I shivered in the wind as I pulled my cloak tighter about me.

  We rode through that wet day, growing steadily more sodden. That night we stopped overnight at an inn on the road, to rest and to eat what seemed to me the paltriest pottage of watery grains, followed by dry meats, insipid herbs, sour, cold wine and inferior bread that I suspected had been made with broad peas. I ate little of what was offered, so unhappy and homesick for France was I.

  The inn was near to other small alehouses of the village where women made pots of crude ale for purchase by the poorer folk of the small village. Coarse sounds of laughter and ribald jests were clearly audible late into the night when the ale had flowed for long enough. I pretended not to hear, wrapping my thick woollen blanket around me on my bed of prickly hay. The English tongue sounded so abrasive and crude to me that I felt I could hardly bear it. My English was accented with a French lilt now after so many years speaking French as my primary language. I was indeed more of a French-woman than I was English; I felt like a foreigner, a stranger… an outsider.

  More and more that feeling haunted me as we rode out the next morning. More and more I felt isolated. More and more I longed only to return to France. The air blew fierce and cold against my cheeks as though it too wished to push me back to France. I wished, then, that I could have obeyed it.

  Eventually, we neared the lands surrounding Hever in Kent. It was a wild, late afternoon in January. Darkness was falling fast upon us and the winds started to blow so powerfully that I thought we should be caught up in them and thrown all the way back to the seas. The mist was still hovering, being tossed backwards and forwards in swirling blankets so that one could hardly see the road ahead. The horses bowed their heads against the wind and oncoming rain, snorting to show that their dissatisfaction was as deep as my own. Bess whimpered in her seat at my back, and I reached around to take her cold hand and squeeze it. The poor child was soaked through, and was as miserable as I was, so I felt as though I had a companion in my sorrow at least.

  “We should cut across country,” shouted the leader of the riding party, drawing his horse level with mine. His face was dripping with rain and he glowered darkly at the road ahead. “We can send the carts on by road, but if we take the paths through the forest, I am told we can have you back to Hever faster, Mistress Boleyn.”

  “I will take any road that will take me from this hideous tempest faster,” I cried against the wind and the rain. “Take us on the path you recommend, Master Coop
er, and I will follow you eagerly if it means I am taken to a warm fire and a good bed sooner.”

  The man nodded and went to order his men on the carts to continue on the road as we took to the paths through the forests. As we steered our shivering horses into the cover of the trees I breathed a slight sigh of relief; for within the dark shade of the forest, there was at least a little respite from the chilling winds.

  The bags and chests were better protected than the riders on the mounts, they at least were covered in leather and nailed shut. Even if they took the longer road, my fine gowns and precious books would likely know a happier time of this journey than I.

  We rode on through the forest; watching the skies with wary eyes as the darkness drew around us. By the time we got within some miles of my family’s home, we riders and our horses were drenched. The men were sure that we were close to the lands of the Boleyns, they told me, but within the forest, the winds and the rain were replaced by the cursed fog once more. It seemed to settle about us, taunting us with its swirling tendrils. We stopped before a fork in the track, and Master Cooper admitted to me that he knew not where to head; the horses were struggling in the mud and we were all exhausted and sodden. Night was coming and we could not find our way.

  “We cannot stay in the forest!” I cried, laughing, although the situation hardly deserved such mirth. “We have neither tents nor food, nor means to make a fire. Everything here is soaking, and soon it will be very cold. Come, we must press on or we shall freeze to death out here. Like as not we shall find somewhere to shelter. Hever cannot be far now.”