Without hesitating, I concurred. “Yes. I am sure of it.” Someone had actually felt the same; someone understood. . . .
“And do you ever wish that you could be there, come into that entrance hall—that’s all muddy—and hear your mother scolding someone for not bringing in enough logs and know that there’s warmth and discomfort there?”
“You mean comfort,” I corrected her.
“Nay, I mean discomfort. Always warmth and discomfort. They go together, and you hate yourself for swallowing the one because of your hunger for the other. And—”
“My Lord!” The unmistakable voice reached me, the voice I had been waiting to hear. My eyes turned toward its source. Anne stood just beyond the doors to her inner chamber. Her face was hidden, but her voice compelled. I turned from my companion.
Anne laughingly pulled me in and clanged the great doors shut. She looked radiant, and her movements were quick and sure. “I have it at last!” she swung round. “The gown. It is perfect!”
She laughed again. “A gown no one shall ever forget. Do you remember how Wolsey called me ‘the night crow,’ because my hair was black, my robe black? Now I want all the people to see me as radiant, as much a true Queen in white. Wolsey and the night-robe were darkness. This is to be dazzling high noon.”
All the time she was skimming across the polished wooden boards, as if she had no feet at all. The strong moonlight and the torches gave light, and yet her reflection on the oiled wood was shimmering, ephemeral. She never touched it.
“Nay, I cannot show you the design!” she laughed, as she reached her inmost chamber. “I have hidden it well. I wish you to be as dazzled as all the rest!”
I was dazzled even now. She stood in the middle of the room, all beauty and darkness and light. No need to hate oneself because of choosing. To choose her was to have all.
The Coronation was not a single ceremony, but a nesting set of ceremonies, one within the other, surrounding the precious moment of anointing in Westminster Abbey. First Anne must be transported by water to the Tower, where she would lodge overnight. Then from the Tower she would be carried in a litter through the London streets to show herself to the people. Then, the next day, she would be crowned. And the following week would be a holiday for all.
Carefully I explained the protocol of each of these events to a restless, glittery-eyed Anne.
“The water procession will make a public holiday of it. The Thames is far wider than any street, and allows room for a great pageant, and fireworks, even cannon-fire. There is nothing gayer. Have you ever seen a royal water carnival?”
“Nay. Only the decorated boats we had at Ascensiontide in Norfolk when I was a child.”
“Pah!” I dismissed that with a snap of the fingers. “I have been told by the Lord Mayor that there is even to be a dragon upon the water, with a mechanized thrashing tail and a mouth vomiting forth fire. And that is just one marvel.”
The same Lord Mayor had earlier been instructed by me regarding the Londoners’ rude behaviour toward Anne. I had threatened him with heinous punishment if any insults marred the day. Aloud I said, “And the Lord Mayor will call for you at Greenwich in the State Barge.”
“What a triumph!” she said, a hard edge to her voice. “My great-grandfather was Lord Mayor of London—and now I am to be its Queen!” The gloating ill became her. As if catching herself, she quickly said, “My royal barge will make a brave show. It is a merry gold now, and its sails of crimson.”
“Katherine has no need of it in the fens,” I muttered. “Although she still claims it as her property.” The thought of Katherine was like a mound of unmelted snow in an otherwise blooming garden. “I will receive you at the Tower steps,” I continued. “And we will spend that night in the royal apartments there.”
“I hate the Tower!” she snapped. “It is gloomy and old-fashioned. It oppresses me.”
“The royal apartments are newly redecorated—and as comfortable as any other palace. It is tradition to spend the night preceding the Coronation there, and besides, there are the ceremonies creating new Knights of the Bath, and conferring new knighthoods.”
“Old things, old ceremonies, old customs, all of it. The old is over and done with and does not concern me,” she insisted.
“The old is never over and done with. It is merely dressed in new clothes and presented as new. That you shall do. As you did your sleeves. Are not sleeves an ancient thing? Yet you made them an exciting discovery.” (How innocently I said it—I who had been dazzled by the voluminous, jewelled sleeves on her gowns, never suspecting they were fashioned to hide her witch’s mark.)
“Yes,” she agreed, eager to leave the subject of the sleeves. “I will try to make it all new—to make it a happy memory for everyone.”
“That I am sure of, sweetheart. And I shall experience it first-hand. On the Thames, in disguise. Will is arranging it all.” I enjoyed the look of surprise on her face. “You are not the only one to attempt something new. I will become one of my own subjects that day, and see your triumph through their eyes.”
“What a gift you are giving me,” she murmured.
I had no way of knowing it was to be the last great celebration of my youth—the last time I would frolic in a shower of glittering gold and high hopes.
L
It was a glorious day. The bettors were to lose great quantities of money, and I did not pity them in the least. The sun had risen to a flawless sky, and even the water was warm. There was an air of festivity amongst the small craft and the people in them as the water rocked them gently to and fro.
Will and I slipped quietly to take our places in the leaking rowboat that Will had procured for us. We were both properly disguised—I in a moth-eaten cloak and battered hat (discarded by a groom in the royal stables) and he in an old costume left behind by a tinker in the courtyard. How merry to be allowed to be in the background for one blessed day!
The watchword was excitement and the unexpected. Suddenly an odour of garlic reached me. The people in the neighbouring boat were slapping hunks of Kentish cheese on large slabs of bread, then sprinkling them with garlic. They passed them from bow to stern in the boat. They made one too many, then looked about. They saw me.
“Will you have one?” They waved it in the air.
“Aye.” I reached out and took it. Will looked at me and frowned. I broke off half and shared it with him. He chomped on it eagerly, as did I. It was good.
A wave reached the boat and rocked it. Our neighbours complained loudly. “The river isn’t as quiet as it should be for this late in the year. Only for a Coronation would I sit out here all night and then endure the—”
“Were you here for the previous one?”
“Eh?”
“The King’s.”
He looked apologetic. “That was so long ago. I was but a lad.”
And I, I thought.
“But my father brought me to London. I remember seeing him. My father carried me on his shoulders. The King was very beautiful. He was so young, so . . . so golden. Like a jewel he was, and—”
CRACK! The sound of a cannon salvo from the shore cut off the conversation. I turned to see Will raising an eyebrow at me. He hated the way I “drank at vanity’s well,” as he put it.
“Here she comes,” the man exclaimed.
I craned my neck like any provincial. I stood on tiptoe on the seat of the small boat. All I saw was deck after deck, boat after boat: the State Barge, the decorated barges of the craft guilds, the nobles, and the clergy, and countless small craft like ours. They were so thick the Thames itself was all but invisible.
Then I saw a slight parting. The small craft were falling away, leaving a great and broad path for the royal barge. The sun shone off it as if burnishing the way, making it warm.
A snap. The wind had caught Anne’s sails. No need for rowers. A hiss. The oars were out of the water, trailing a few drops, then poised like butterflies’ wings.
The barge hove into sight.
Katherine’s barge—but no longer Katherine’s. It was transformed.
Everything had been repainted. Where once the Spanish pomegranates and emblems of Spain had been on the prow, now sat Anne’s: a white falcon, with her motto beneath. Me and Mine. A proud motto, proud as the lady herself.
The wind filled the sails. They were crimson, snapping and billowing with the breeze. Beneath them, seated on a chair of estate, all in white, was Anne.
She did not look at anyone. Thousands surrounded her and gaped, but she looked straight ahead. Her hair blew in the wind as the sails.
I loved her then as at no other time. She was riding on the water like a goddess. I reached out to Will and said, “Is she not lovely?” But I did not hear his answer.
Anne’s barge approached, then passed us. “Like Cleopatra, my Lord,” said Will, finally. The barge was to be silhouetted by the sun, which it was sailing into, for the rest of the day. Against the sun it resembled a bat—great black wings outspread.
The people around us packed their food and gear to return home. I bade them farewell.
“ ’Twas lovely,” they said, a trifle sadly. There was a thud as they stowed another item.
“You sound sad,” I ventured.
“Aye. She was so lovely.” They cast off. “I think—” Their voices were lost in the heave of the water and the noise of sails. I turned to our host and to Will.
“ ’Tis time we returned to our home as well.”
“Indeed,” the boatman said. I settled myself and waited for the short journey back to the common Greenwich quay. Even in small things today, it was a pleasure to give up control to someone else, to sit back and dream.
Dream I did, the setting sun on my eyelids. I dreamt of Anne in a great Egyptian barge, Anne as Pharaoh’s wife, Anne as—Potiphar’s wife.
At the Tower that night, Anne was feverishly gay. “Did you see it? What did the onlookers say?” she kept asking, never satisfied with my replies. “The dragon—he was magnificent. Did I tell you he spewed fire right up to my feet? One of my shoes was singed—”
“Hush,” I said. “Calm yourself.”
All around us rose the babble of excited voices. Eighteen young men were preparing for their all-night vigil prior to their ordination on the morrow as Knights of the Bath. The rest of the court was feasting in the hall of the White Tower. And everywhere there were flowers—garlands and petals covered every stone. Bits of broken glass glinted; the boom of the cannons had shattered many windowpanes. Over all this confusion floated string-music.
“Walk with me,” she said. “I need the night air.”
Gladly I took her hand. “Your cheeks are flaming,” I said.
Outside, the White Tower seemed to glow in the luminous May twilight.
“Ah!” She let out a long, shuddering sigh. Then, suddenly, “What of More?”
A jab in my heart. “I sent him twenty pounds to buy himself a new gown for the Coronation. He has not returned it.”
This seemed to satisfy her. “And Mary?”
A second jab in the same place. “My sister lies very ill at Westhorpe.”
“She has always hated me!”
That was true. Mary had begged me not to persist in this “folly” with Anne. She might as well have requested the rain to halt in its falling halfway to earth. “That is not why she is ill,” I stated flatly.
“I insist that she come and pay homage to me as soon as she recovers.”
Her pettiness marred the night, and its glory fled for me. But we walked on in silence for another few moments. Then Anne suddenly wished to go to the little Tower chapel to pray.
“No!” I stopped her. “Not in St. John’s Chapel. It is—it is where the Knights are preparing to keep vigil all night.” It was also where my mother had lain on her funeral bier, surrounded by thousands of tapers, thirty years ago. I would not have Anne pray there before her Coronation.
“But I must pray!” she insisted. Her face looked strained and eager and more vulnerable than I had ever seen it. It also looked different.
“You shall pray,” I said. “But in the little chapel elsewhere on the grounds. St. Peter-ad-Vincula.”
“Is the Sacrament reserved there?”
“Always.”
I guided her to the little stone structure, standing lonely and dark on the far edge of the night’s warm noises and light. She hesitated.
“I will come with you and light a torch,” I said.
I pushed the warped wooden door open into the echoing interior. A single flame flickered on the altar, signifying the sacred Presence of the consecrated Host.
I lighted a large floor-candle near the door, and reached out to touch Anne’s shoulder. “Pray in peace,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for not smiling at me.” I knew what she meant; to express a genuine urge to piety is to risk ridicule.
“Pray for me,” I asked.
June first. In the middle of the night, enchanted May had given way to high summer and the political reality of Anne’s procession through the streets of London. Would the city welcome her? Yesterday’s show on the water had been pretty, but the string-music and cannonfire and fireworks had masked any jeering, and the malcontents had not bothered to venture out on boats.
The streets were different: freshly widened, gravelled, and lined with scaffolding, with a great “display” at every corner—an open invitation to troublemakers. True, the Lord Mayor had been warned, and he had certainly put on a brave show yesterday, but even he could not control the rabble; he knew that, and so did I, in spite of my threats about “traitors.” The idea that two hundred royal constables could keep any sort of discipline over a hundred thousand Londoners was absurd. Today Anne must ride forth, trusting in their goodwill—and God’s.
I glanced up at the sun, already a bright hot ball in a clean sky. That, at least, was auspicious. Ascending to the highest ramparts of the square White Tower, I could see westward all across London, whence Anne must cross to Westminster Abbey. Already the streets were choked with people, some of whom must have been there all night.
I myself intended to watch the procession from a window in Baynard’s Castle, and it was time I set out, before the crowd thickened.
Cromwell, having no part in the procession, awaited me in the appointed room at Baynard’s Castle, actually not a castle at all but a decrepit old royal dwelling that happened to be situated along Anne’s route. He had arranged for comfortable viewing-chairs, deep cushions, and music to amuse us as we waited.
“We are quite without a part in today’s show,” I commiserated with Cromwell. “Which I find consummately amusing, since we are the ones who arranged it all.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The Lady Anne—that is, the Queen—also played a part.”
“Not as big a part as you and I.” I spoke the words easily, but was well aware of their significance of our partnership. “Today the people will see a passing parade of robes and titles, while the true power stays out of sight.”
“It was ever thus,” he shrugged, presenting me with a covered silver bowl. I took it; it was icy cold. Curious, I removed the top.
“Sherbet, Your Majesty. They have it in Persia to cool themselves on hot days like today.” Cromwell nodded. “I can have it made in other flavours, but mint is my personal favourite.”
I tasted it; it was a splendid fillip on the tongue. “Marvellous! Crum, you are marvellous!” How did the man find such ingenious ways of making everything pleasant—and feasible? Not only the coronation of an unthought-of Queen, but the sherbet to pleasure it.
By noon I could hear the trumpets sounding from the Tower, and I knew Anne had set out. It took an entire hour for the front part of the procession to pass by. It was led by twelve Frenchmen, all dressed in blue velvet, both they and their horses, signifying Francis’s goodwill; after them came squires, knights, and judges in ceremonial robes; the new-made Knights of the Bath in purple gowns; then the peerage: dukes, earls, marquis
es, barons, abbots, and bishops in crimson velvet. In their steps followed the officers of rank in England—archbishops, ambassadors, the lord mayors of London and other cities, the Garter Knight of Arms. . . .
Finally, Anne. She was borne through the streets like a precious jewel, sitting in an open litter of white cloth-of-gold, borne by two white-caparisoned horses, a canopy of gold shielding her from the rude stare of the sun.
But not from the rude stares and sullen silence of the crowd—nothing could shield her from that, except she bury herself in walls of stone two feet thick.
Her head was held high, the chin lifted insolently, like a swan’s. Around her thin curved neck, like a great collar, was a circlet of unnaturally huge pearls. All in white, dazzling—with that long black hair hanging loose down her back. Pregnant, she was dressed as a virgin, all in white with unbound hair. Scorned, she held her head as proud as Alexander the Great.
My will seemed to me a living thing, as I pitied her and willed the onlookers to welcome her, give her some sign of affection. If desire could have moved them, every person would have cheered.
Anne’s fool, scampering along behind her, attempted to move them to shame and goodwill. “I fear you all have scurvy, and dare not uncover your heads!” he shouted, snatching off his own cap by way of example—an example they did not follow.
As Anne passed on, followed by all her royal household—her Chamberlain, Master of the Horse, ladies in velvet, chariots of peeresses, the gentlewomen, and finally the King’s Guard—the people spontaneously began to cheer. The insult could not have been greater.
Beside me, I saw Cromwell’s expressionless eyes upon me. “Pity,” he said, and I saw that to him it was but another political fact, to be used as suited our purposes best. “More sherbet?”
Anne was shaking with anger when I came to her at Westminster Palace that evening. “The crowds were silent! The common people all but spat on me, and the German merchants of the Hanseatic League—oh, they think the Emperor will protect them, just as Katherine does, she who paid the people with her nephew’s money, but—”