The Crown A Novel

46


Greenwich Palace, June 1527

The first thing that George Boleyn said to me was “Mistress Stafford, I am certain that you’d look better in French fashion.”

He’d come into the queen’s rooms with my second cousin, the king. I had been presented formally to Queen Katherine as her new maid of honor. I was sixteen years old. It was one of the proudest moments of my mother’s life. All of her frustrated hopes would now be fulfilled, through my service. My rise in court would bring her back into the orbit of the queen.

Katherine of Aragon was gracious, dignified, and warm. I already felt comfortable in these rooms, inhabited by the woman who was my mother’s age and had my mother’s Spanish accent. Her somber dress and tasteful decor also reminded me of my mother. The other ladies welcomed me; one girl, not much older, offered to show me the rituals she performed for the queen after supper.

“We will take good care of your daughter; I know she is your jewel,” the queen said to my mother.

“No, no, Your Highness,” my mother said quickly. “It is now up to her to take care of you.”

They smiled at each other. The strength of the friendship, forged in the Spanish court, was undamaged by the last six years of exile. All was understood.

Queen Katherine turned to me. “I understand you are skilled at needlework. We will sew together—I have a batch of shirts for His Majesty that require finishing stitches.”

I curtsied. “I would be honored, madame.”

The queen smiled again, and then signaled for her Spanish confessor. Through all the years in England—marriages to two royal brothers; the birth of a daughter, Mary; and the sad procession of stillbirths and miscarriages—she had always clung to the service of a Spanish confessor.

The short, stout figure of the queen moved to her private chapel, followed by the confessor.

My mother was tactful and did not wish to hover over me. She had old friends to visit. “I will be back in an hour to say good-bye to you and the queen,” she told me. “Acquaint yourself with the other maids while the queen is in chapel.”

She had been gone only ten minutes when the king appeared.

There was a flurry of activity in the hall, a page appeared, and then King Henry himself strode into the room, followed by a half-dozen other men. I had not been in his presence since I was a young child.

We all sank into deep curtsies. I stared down at the floor, coming up slowly.

“Where is the queen?” His voice was surprisingly high-pitched.

“Sire, she is making confession,” said Lady Maude Parr, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, a tall and dignified woman.

He made an impatient noise; it unsettled me. I still did not look up.

I don’t know exactly which man said it—it wasn’t Boleyn—but someone, a courtier, said, “The queen has a new maid of honor?” By asking that, he called attention to me, made me stand out from the two dozen other women, young and old, and by doing so changed my life.

I could feel all eyes turn toward me. My heart hammering, I looked up.

King Henry the Eighth was the tallest man I’d ever seen. Taller than my father or his brothers. He had red hair, just starting to thin at his temples; small blue eyes; and an immaculately trimmed beard that was more golden than red. He looked younger than his age, thirty-six. That day he wore purple and a shower of jewels: huge rings and two medallions, layered on each other. I knew that royalty alone could don purple, but I hadn’t expected him to wear it about the court on an ordinary day. Later it would become clear that this was not an ordinary day, and there was a reason he wanted to wrap himself in the color royal for what he meant to do. But no one knew anything of that yet.

“Your Highness,” I murmured, and made another curtsy.

“This is Mistress Joanna Stafford,” said Lady Parr, an edge of nervousness in her voice.

He looked me up and down.

I hated my kirtle passionately at that moment. It was a costly one, made of burgundy brocade, carefully selected to flatter my coloring. It had a low, square, Spanish-style neck, exposing the tops of my breasts, something I’d assiduously avoided at home, and so was quite unused to. I was felt undressed before these much older men.

The king showed no lechery. That is the truth. I’d been warned about his lustful nature, not just by my mother but also every adult at Stafford Castle. He’d bred a bastard by one lady-in-waiting and seduced a slew of others, including one of my Stafford aunts, Catherine of Fitzwalter.

I think there are two kinds of females, those who resent it when a lustful man does not leer at them and those who are relieved. I was very much in the second category.

The king merely nodded at me and then gestured toward a young man in his party. He said something to him that I couldn’t hear, then turned and left.

The young man sidled up to Lady Parr and said: “I am to take her to my sister.”

Lady Parr grimaced. “There is another lady who serves the queen, and you will meet her,” she said, very reluctantly. “This gentleman will escort you; he is Sir George Boleyn.”

The man bowed with a showy, mocking flourish. I was taken aback, and confused. If the lady served the queen, why wasn’t she here? But I did not see any other choice but to follow him.

Boleyn was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty and very dark, with huge black eyes. He wore an expensive doublet in a fashion I hadn’t seen before, tightly fitted. He was of medium height and very slim.

Fashion meant a great deal to him. After criticizing my clothes, he pointed out the styles worn by other ladies as we walked through a long gallery. His tone was instructional. I said almost nothing during our walk; I had taken an intense dislike to him.

He showed me into a large room off the gallery, sparsely furnished and flooded with light. The queen’s rooms had been dark, verging on musty. These were airy, with decorative touches I’d never seen before: colored ribbons strung along the window casements and a gaily embroidered cushion on a chair.

A young woman stood by the window. She closely resembled George Boleyn—black eyes and hair and very slim—and looked to be his age. It occurred to me they might be twins.

“Who is this?” she asked, unsmiling. She had a slight French accent.

“The new maid of honor, the Stafford girl,” he said. “Remember? She’s the one the queen insisted on.”

I shot him a furious look.

The woman laughed, a low, throaty laugh. “She doesn’t like you, George.”

“No, she doesn’t.” He sounded gleeful.

She smoothed her skirts as she walked toward me. I had to admit she was graceful. They both were, but in a way that was strangely mannered. As if they were always on display, and reveled in it.

“I am Anne Boleyn,” she said simply.

“And you also serve the queen?” I asked.

Her enormous black eyes danced with a joke I didn’t understand. “For now,” she said. George Boleyn burst out laughing.

I turned on him. “Take me back to the queen’s apartments,” I said.

“What spirit she has,” said Anne.

“Yes, I know. And she has a good figure. Don’t you like her, Sister?”

She looked at me for a moment and then wrinkled her nose. “No.”

This was going too far.

“I don’t know why I am here, but I insist on going back,” I fumed. “I have been appointed to serve the queen.”

They laughed again at their private joke.

“I don’t think she understands a thing,” George Boleyn said. “The Staffords have botched it. Of course, they live so far from court and are in complete disgrace. They don’t know anything.”

“Do not insult my family, sir,” I said. “We are one of the oldest in the land. Before today I had never heard the name ‘Boleyn.’ ”

I did not know it, but I had thrown down a gauntlet before dangerous people. I meant that I had not been informed who the Boleyns were, but they took it as an insult against the prestige of their name. The mood in the room shifted from mockery to something more malignant. I started toward the door, to get away from them, when a page hurried in. I almost collided with him.

“The king,” he said, breathless.

George Boleyn took me by the arm—I thought to lead me out of the room, out of the way of the king, who for some reason was stopping here. But in the next moment I was in a tiny alcove off to the side of the room, separated by a heavy curtain.

A hand clamped over my mouth. “Don’t say a word,” George Boleyn breathed into my ear.

I tried to pull away, but he wrapped his other arm around me and pressed me close to him. He was strong.

The voices in the other room made me stop struggling. One of them was the king’s.

“Confession,” he groaned, as if in agony. “I was ready—I was completely and utterly ready, Nan. But she’s making confession.”

“That won’t last long,” said Anne Boleyn, soothingly.

“I’m not sure that it should be done today.”

“You promised,” she said, much more sharply. “And it’s dangerous to keep delaying. There are so many rumors; you’ve said the worst thing that could happen was if she sent a message to her nephew, the emperor. You have to tell her, and you have to get her to agree. No messages.”

I could not believe this young woman spoke to the King of England in this way.

“Eighteen years of marriage—it’s not a simple matter,” he groaned. “I was ready when I went in before, but now . . .”

“By nightfall it will be done and behind you, think of that.”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then in a voice full of pleading, he said, “Would you let me—?”

“No, no, no,” she laughed.

“Please, Nan. Please.”

There was silence, and then the softest moan.

At the sound of that moan, George Boleyn stirred. His left hand remained rigidly clamped over my mouth; the other began to move over me. His hand cupped my breast. I pulled away, horrified. Again he whispered, faint but with a new, terrifying roughness, “If you make a sound, it will be the end of you.”

And then he put his hand down my dress.

How many minutes passed? I don’t know. It could have been five. Or fifteen. Or much longer. But George Boleyn stopped the instant that the king and his sister stopped. The king said something, she answered, then there was moving around, and someone else came into the room. In another minute it was completely silent. Everyone left.

George Boleyn gathered together his hose, which had become loosened from his doublet, and rearranged his codpiece.

“And now, Mistress Stafford,” he said with a laugh, “I will take you back to the queen’s apartments.”

When he’d dragged me into the room his sister and the king had just left, he said, “You will tell no one what just occurred. If you do, I will deny it. I am the favorite of the king; he will believe me. Or he will fear that his conversation with my sister will be made public. That could never be allowed. Your parents will be punished; you and your family will be shunned forever. You’ll never, ever get anyone to marry you.” He pressed his lips to my ear. “This will just be our secret. And who knows? You may come to like me. After today, I think I should be the one to take your maidenhead. Don’t you agree?”

The gallery was a blur on the way back. I had a hard time walking; George Boleyn had to hold me up a few times, to keep me from falling. I don’t know if anyone noticed my state. If they did, they didn’t inquire.

When we were outside the queen’s apartments, my mother appeared. “Where did you go? Did you have the queen’s or Lady Parr’s permission?” She looked at me more closely. “What’s wrong, Joanna?”

I shook my head, numbly. I turned around. George Boleyn had gone. I am not sure she ever noticed him.

“The king is speaking with the queen privately,” she said. She spoke about the friends she had seen, but she was agitated. She would look at me, worried, then peer inside the queen’s chamber, worried for some other reason.

The king appeared, suddenly, and his waiting courtiers and pages reassembled around him, like barnacles to a ship.

His face was red and furious. For such a tall, powerful man to look like that, so enraged, it was terrifying. My mother actually flattened herself against the wall as he strode past.

We heard the queen then. A wounded sob.

My mother ran inside the rooms right after Lady Parr and the other senior ladies; I should have gone with her. I was a servant to the queen, after all. But I didn’t move.

She reappeared in a few minutes, her face drained of color. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “Unbelievable. He told the queen he wants an annulment, that they have never been truly married. Madre de Dios.”

The queen was still sobbing. But she was soon to be drowned out. There was a louder noise, a hysterical scream.

It was mine. And it lasted as long as it took my mother to hurry me out of the royal palace of Henry the Eighth.