It was instructive to wait with the other filles d’honneur upon the Regent as she sat in council, kneeling unobtrusively in a group on the floor and trying to understand the commands and directives Margaret issued from her seat at the head of the table, or deciphering the advice given her by the worthy, solid men who deferred to her. Clearly they respected her wisdom and judgments. Anne was so keen to learn more about how a woman ruled that she redoubled her efforts to be proficient at French.
After just a week, the Regent sent for her. “I have written to your father to tell him that I am delighted with you,” she said, “and to thank him for sending you to me. He could not have given me a present more welcome. I have told him that I find in you so fine a spirit, and such perfect courtesy for a young lady of your years, that I am more beholden to him for sending you than he can be to me for receiving you.”
Anne exhaled in relief and happiness. She had feared she might be admonished for the many small mistakes she had made in trying to do and learn all that was expected of her. To see the Regent smiling so broadly and to be enfolded in her wholesome embrace was more than she could ever have hoped for. She sank to her knees, full of gratitude.
“My pleasure is only to serve your Highness,” she declared with fervor.
How very fortunate she was, not only to be serving a kind and affectionate mistress, but also to have come to a court that led the rest of northern Christendom in manners, art, and learning.
“This is a princely school and a place of high culture and advanced civilization,” Monsieur Semmonet told her and her fellow pupils. “All scholars are welcome here.” Anne soon discovered that the Regent, who was rarely without a book in her hand, was especially devoted to something called “the New Learning,” which meant the recently rediscovered texts of ancient Greece and Rome. There were ripples of excitement when the famous humanist scholar Erasmus visited Mechlin. Anne was privileged to be in attendance on the Regent that day, and she listened enthralled as this learned man with his ready wit and wise, sensitive face talked about his plan to make pure Latin and Greek translations of the Scriptures. She was stunned to realize that the Bible used in churches was not in its original form. How exciting it would be to read Erasmus’s translations and know the truth.
More shocking was his attack on the extent of corruption within the Church, for at home Holy Mother Church was always spoken of with the greatest reverence. Yet to hear Erasmus talk was revelatory. As Anne listened to his passionate exposure of the degeneration of Rome, the avarice of priests, and the worldliness of the clergy, she began to see a great deal of truth in the great man’s criticisms.
In the little leisure time she had, her newborn thirst for knowledge drew her to the Regent’s wondrous library, where she and her companions had been permitted the free run of the numerous manuscripts, missals, music books, and printed volumes. There were racy tales by Boccaccio, the delightful fables of Aesop, the blushingly erotic poems of Ovid, and heavy works of philosophy by Boethius and Aristotle, among many others. Anne’s favorites were the collections of verse expressing devotion and love. She read them avidly. It helped her to write better poems of her own.
She was leafing through a brightly illuminated bestiary one day when her eye caught a pile of books at the other end of the table. The arms of the Regent were stamped on the tooled leather binding. Curious, she got up to see what they were, and discovered, to her astonishment, that they had been written by a woman. She had thought that only men wrote books. But this Christine de Pizan, who had lived over a hundred years ago, had been no milksop maid, and had had some pithy things to say about the way men treated women. Anne’s eyes widened when she read: “Not all men share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.” She had never heard anyone voice such an opinion.
She had been devouring the book for an hour when the Regent walked into the library. She smiled when she saw Anne, who had risen and sketched a hasty curtsey, and took the book from her.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Boleyn. I see that you have discovered my favorite writer.”
“Your Highness, what she writes is extraordinary.”
“You think so?”
“Madame, this Christine de Pizan would have laughed at my father’s insistence that men, by the natural law of things, are cleverer than women.” Anne took back the book and opened it at a passage she had marked with a ribbon. “?‘Just as women’s bodies are softer than men’s, so their understanding is sharper,’?” she read aloud. “?‘If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the Lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.’?”
Margaret nodded sagely, opening another volume. “I like the passage where she asks, ‘How many women are there who, because of their husbands’ harshness, spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?’ Not that my poor late husband was cut of that cloth. But most astonishing of all are her views on female rulers. ‘The wives of powerful noblemen must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise—in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a noblewoman must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Moreover, she must have the courage of a man.’?”
No wonder the Regent favored Christine de Pizan’s works. They were something that every woman of rank should read—and heed. Was it possible that women really could be the equals of men?
—
Anne was at her happiest when she was in the company of the Regent, who was so approachable that she found herself asking Margaret for her views on women, the Bible, and a hundred other things she had learned about in this exciting new world. Margaret always answered her with humor and wisdom.
“Ah, la petite Boleyn, you are right to ask if women should be the equals of men. But it is not often given to women to shape their destiny, or to rule as I do. My late mother-in-law, Queen Isabella of Castile, was a queen in her own right, but hers too was a rare example. It is up to us women to show men that we are just as capable as they are.”
“We could not lead armies into battle, madame,” Isabeau piped up, and the others giggled, but the Regent silenced them by raising her hand. “Isabella did,” she said. “She did not fight, of course, but she was an inspiration. And that, ladies, is what we must all aspire to be. We want men to admire us for our courage, our characters, and our intellect, not just our beauty.” It thrilled Anne to hear her say this.
She soon discovered why the Regent always wore black.
“Many call her the Dame de Deuil,” Gerda said one morning as she was brushing Anne’s hair.
“The Lady of Mourning? How sad. But why?”