The Baker's Daughter Volume 1 Read online

  Suddenly she felt her gorge rise, perceived the sour taste of bitter bile in her throat, and fought it back down. She would not give the people the satisfaction of seeing her discomfiture.

  On and on the litter made its slow way from Fenchurch Street to Gracechurch Street, to Leadenhall Street, and thence to Ludgate, where she traded the reek of the Thames for that of the Fleet River. Would this journey never end? Finally she reached The Strand, along which pageants had been set up for her amusement and approval, many with Saint Anne as their theme. Children dressed as angels sang her praises. The pageants that did not have religious themes displayed her own device of the crowned white falcon clutching a scepter, perched atop a posy of red and white roses. But as she approached the city limits of Westminster, the pageant of the Imperial embassy ostentatiously sported the Hapsburg eagle, a direct insult. The crowd was larger here and the people, feeling more anonymous than those in the narrower streets, shouted epithets at her that at any other time would have been an occasion for them to have been seized and have their tongues cut out, or at least nailed to the pillory.

  Finally, at long last, the massive abbey came into view, and Anne heaved a sigh of relief. There was not much further to go now. The last of the delegations approached her, this one from the Mayor of London on behalf of the city itself. Why, she wondered, had he not presented the Coronation Purse of gold coins to her at the boundary between the cities of London and Westminster? Suddenly she realized why; the people of London had protested vehemently at having to provide the traditional purse of coins to her, as, despite all of Henry’s new acts of Parliament, they still refused steadfastly to accept her as their queen. Had the purse been presented within sight of the Londoners, a riot may well have ensued.

  Anne reached out her bejeweled hand with a tentative smile to take the proffered velvet bag, but her expression changed as she regarded the mayor’s grim face. Very well, then, she thought. If they so heartily begrudged her this token, then she would not make the traditional gesture of promptly distributing the coins as largesse among those present. To the utter astonishment of the mayor and his escort, Anne thrust the purse into her lap without even acknowledging its receipt and plopped back down into the litter with a thump. The jolt made the horses leap forward and within a few moments she was at the steps of the abbey.

  The cool of the abbey’s vestibule after the sweltering heat of her journey felt inviting, but if she had cherished thoughts of the abbey offering refuge from the hostile crowds, she was disappointed. The abbey was full to bursting, and almost every eye she met glittered with malice. Her father, Lord Thomas Boleyn, was waiting to escort her down the length of the nave to the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor, where the coronation ritual was to take place. At first she was glad of his arm, expecting that he would provide her the welcome support she needed; but it was not to be.

  Suddenly the trumpets sounded clear and true. As the sharpness of their clarion call died on the air, the melodious strains of the great organ began as a small sound, only to rise to a throbbing crescendo until the great spaces of the massive abbey were filled with it. Anne felt a thrill of excitement creep along her skin, and she shuddered.

  At her sudden movement her father suddenly remembered his purpose and pulled his daughter forward with a jerk. Anne looked at him questioningly as the two of them proceeded slowly behind Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, who carried the golden, gem-studded crown that Henry himself had designed for this occasion. It lay upon a velvet cushion sewn in her stunning new livery of blue and purple. Henry had designed the crown, and chosen her colors, which ironically included purple, the color of royalty, not so much for her aggrandizement as for his own. The king sought now, constantly, in many subtle ways and in ways not so subtle, to support the concept of her royalty. But Anne knew the truth; she was no longer the object of his desire or affection, but a vessel, the carrier of the king’s royal seed, of that precious being who was to justify all of his unpopular actions over the past few years, of which her coronation today would be the culmination.

  Anne almost snorted aloud as she recalled that Henry had also chosen her motto, La Plus Heureuse. The Most Happy, indeed! What had she to be happy about?

  She started at the sound of her father’s hissing whisper.

  “Do not stumble and fall under the weight of yon crown, daughter,” said the earl venomously.

  At first Anne took her father’s comment literally; perhaps he was worried that in her condition, she was, after all, six months pregnant, she would not be able to bear the weight of the heavy crown through the lengthy ceremony. But one quick glance at his dour expression told a different story. What he really meant, she realized, was that she should be careful lest she fail in her task of delivering a prince to the king, and in so doing, take her family down with her in the inevitable fall from grace that such a calamity must entail. As understanding dawned, anger flared up in her.

  “If I am in danger of stumbling, whose fault is that?” she hissed back. “I have done all that you and my Uncle Norfolk would have me do, against my own will and desire. Do you now think to judge me?”

  “Yes,” he whispered vehemently. “I do. You have stupidly managed to lose the king’s affection with your unseemly displays of temper and your greed. When you plummet from your lofty height, you will pull us all down with you!”

  “My greed? My stupidity? How dare you say such things to me! Everything I’ve said, everything I’ve done, everything I’ve asked of the king, has been at your and Norfolk’s behest!” Anne’s jaw ached with the effort to subdue her temper and not to shriek her words for all to hear, and the effort to speak through her clenched teeth made her eyes flash their anger all the more.

  “For the love of God, lower your voice,” said her father coldly. “Do you want all and sundry to hear you railing like a fishwife on your way to the throne of England?” His eyes dropped disdainfully to her belly. “You are hysterical,” he said derisively.

  “If I am so, you are to blame for it,” she retorted. “Because of you and your ambition, everything has gone wrong for me! And now you have the gall to be angry with me for it! I held out against the king’s lust and desire because you told me I had to! And when I finally surrendered to him, I did so because it was the only course left open to me to exploit! How can you blame me now if things are not as you would wish them to be? You have ruined my life!”

  They arrived in the chapel area, where the Chair of Estate waited for Anne. The Duchess of Norfolk, Anne’s aunt-by-marriage, stopped Anne’s progress with a jerk of the long train of the ermine-trimmed purple coronation robe into which Anne had hurriedly changed in the abbey vestibule. Another of her judgmental, ungrateful relatives, the duchess had hated her ever since she had taken unwarranted precedence over her at the Christmas revels.

  Anne turned to glare at her aunt, and as she did so, the thought crossed her mind that she wished she had thought to insist that her uncle take his wife with him on the diplomatic mission that had taken him to France just in time to cause him to miss her coronation. Henry had balked at Anne’s wish that her uncle not attend the ceremony; the Duke of Norfolk was, after all, the first peer of the realm. But Henry, not wishing to upset the delicate container of his seed, had acquiesced, and off Norfolk had gone to confer with King François over some meaningless bit of foreign policy.

  As Anne swung the heavy robe around so that she might sit upon the ancient throne and face the congregation, she regarded her father and her aunt with steely eyes. Yes, perhaps being queen would be a good thing after all. She added their names to the mental list of people who would feel her wrath once she was queen indeed.

  London, July 1533

  Henry stared at the scroll in his hands with disbelieving eyes. In the distance he could hear the faint sounds of the clank of metal on metal and the intermittent roar of the crowds as a jouster was unhorsed, or was victorious. He also perceived the sound of birds singing in the trees just outside his window. These
were sounds that he heard almost without realizing that he heard them. But the sound of Brandon’s broken sobs were something that he had never heard before and, just as his eyes refused to take in the words on the parchment before him, his ears refused to believe that his friend was weeping.

  Henry rose wearily, laid the scroll on the desk before him, and walked slowly to where Brandon sat in the great leather chair in front of the hearth. There was no fire there today; it was July and very hot. The hearth was spotlessly clean, but it still conveyed to his nostrils the slightly musty odor of cold, dead ashes. He shuddered. Cold and dead. These words now applied to his beloved sister, Mary. It was simply unfathomable.

  Brandon’s shoulders shook and his breath came in jagged sounds like ripping cloth. Then Henry did something that he had never done before. He raised his friend and brother-in-law and embraced him, holding him close until his breathing became more even.

  But then a surprising thing happened. As Brandon’s sobs subsided, Henry felt the tears well up warm and wet in his own eyes. Suddenly grief flowed over him like waves on the shore at the beach, and once that happened there was no holding back the tide. His friend in turn held him in his great grief.

  The thoughts came into Henry’s brain like lightning bolts, flashing, each as vivid as the day, the moment, it had occurred. He saw his sister in her cradle the first time he had ever laid eyes upon her; she had a tuft of flaxen hair, the slate-blue eyes of the newborn, her skin the delicate pink of the inside of a shell. Then suddenly she had looked at him, reaching her tiny starfish hand out to grasp his finger. He remembered the surprising strength of her grip. Then he saw his sister as a small child, her pale little hand trembling in his, the day their sister Margaret married the King of Scots. Then he saw a vision of her running in a green gown across a green field to him at Barking the day she had returned from her lost adventure to France. She thought that he hadn’t seen her coming, but he had. He had watched her long, pale hair flying behind her as she ran, then quickly looked down at his bowling pins. When he looked up again, Mary stood before him, smiling hopefully, holding out to him a bleached white beechwood ball in her delicate hands, which were beringed and flashing with jewels.

  These were all such happy memories, but they were quickly overcome by the recollection of the last two times he had seen his sister. She had been ill and pinched with the pain that gnawed at her insides, but she had been beautiful still. He had spoken sharp words to her both times because she would not bend to his will where Anne was concerned. They had parted in anger three months before, after her daughter Frances’ wedding to the Marquis of Dorset. And now he would never have an opportunity to tell her that he was sorry, to tell her that despite her stubbornness he loved her anyway. At that thought, he sobbed all the harder.

  “Your Grace,” whispered Brandon, as he held fast to Henry and they mingled their tears for a beloved wife, a beloved sister. “You must not grieve so. She would not have wanted that.”

  That, he knew, was true. His sister, like himself, had possessed the Tudor temper in full measure, but unlike him, she was a forgiving person, a happy person at heart, and one who rarely held a grudge. He was certain that Mary would have forgiven him their last quarrels, and would wish him not to grieve.

  How different his sister had been from his daughter and her namesake, the Princess Mary! No, he chided himself, his daughter Mary was a princess no more, merely his bastard, begotten by him in the ignorance of sin on his brother Arthur’s widow. Hadn’t the whole issue of his break with Katharine been the very substance of the quarrel with his beloved sister? Yes, that, of course; but more than that, Mary had resented his marriage to Anne, with or without the blessing of Holy Church. Mary could never stomach the idea that her former lady-in-waiting was the new queen of England.

  And what, in the end, was it all for? He had Anne now; she carried in her belly the prince and the heir to England for whose sake he had broken the hearts of the three women who heretofore had always mattered most to him in the world; his wife, his sister, and his daughter. But what cruel fate had made his heart harden against Anne, for whom he had given up so much? Would these demons never stop torturing him?

  Finally, Henry let out a ragged sigh, pulled away from Brandon and wiped his eyes with his fingers. It was no use; he tried wiping his sleeve across his face, but it was jewel-encrusted and the jewels scratched his skin. In frustration he used the heels of his hands to clear the tears from his eyes.

  Brandon sat down with a thump in the leather chair from which Henry had raised him a few moments before. “What shall I do?” he asked broken-heartedly. “Whatever am I going to do without her?”

  To Brandon’s great surprise, Henry said, “You must marry again, man, and soon. That is the only way.”

  Brandon looked up in complete surprise. He was a good soldier, but never much of a courtier. His way was not to feign shock and surprise, to say no when he really meant yes. So Henry knew that his friend’s astonishment was genuine. Brandon shook his head as if he had not heard aright. He had been wondering how to broach with his brother-in-law, his king, the subject of his desire to marry the Lady Catherine Willoughby as soon as possible, without waiting the customary year of mourning.

  “You would allow such a thing?” asked Brandon. “What of the court?”

  Henry waved a derisive hand. “What of them? Let them think what they wish. I loved my sister, Brandon. Mary was the only person in the world, I begin to believe, who ever truly understood me. Wolsey thought he did, but his love was always tainted with self-interest. You have been my true friend, and have loved me despite my faults; indeed, I believe that you are blissfully unaware of them.” The king laughed. “That makes you the very best of friends, I trow!” The laughter ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and then Henry appeared to brood for a few moments. Finally he heaved a heavy sigh and said, “Mary was of my blood, Charles. She and I were as close as it is possible for two human beings to be. I shall miss her sorely. But do you even begin to think that I would expect you to waste a year of your life, at your age, simply to observe a meaningless propriety? No. You must wed Lady Catherine forthwith. As soon as the arrangements can be made, in fact. You have only one son, man. You must marry and beget more.”

  Brandon looked up miserably at the king. “I…couldn’t. Could I?” He sat in the chair, wringing his hands. He was a straightforward man; rarely indecisive. But how could he bed Catherine, as much as he wanted to, when Mary wasn’t even yet in her grave?

  “Of course you could,” said Henry forcefully. “God’s teeth, man, you are nearing fifty. Some men do not live as long as that! See here, this will be our plan.” Henry glanced at the letter from his niece Frances, officially informing her royal uncle of the death of her mother. “Mary’s obsequies will be observed in late July. As soon as that is over, we shall call the banns. You and Lady Catherine can be married the last week in August or the first week in September.”

  Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, stared at his friend round-eyed. Except on the field of battle, he was much more comfortable when someone else made the decisions and said what must be done. “Say you so, then?” A shadow crossed his face. “That is very near the queen’s time, though, is it not?”

  Henry thought for a moment then he replied, “Well, what of that? Then we will have two joyous events to celebrate. I tell you this, you must not delay. See what delay has done for me!”

  Brandon searched his friend’s face. He knew that Henry was bitter over the whole debacle with Anne. Henry had loved her, had wanted her for so long; he had literally moved heaven and earth to have her. And when he finally had her he found he no longer wanted her. But Henry was a king; he must save his royal face. He would not admit that the thing which had seemed to glitter so brightly from afar was not the gold and diamonds he had taken it for, but was only base metal and glass. What Henry did not realize, and what Brandon could not bring himself to tell him, was that by his actions the king told all and sundry that
Anne was no longer his beloved.

  Brandon thought about Lady Catherine. She had been his ward since she was a young girl, and was betrothed to his own son and heir, Henry, Earl of Lincoln. But it had become clear that Catherine wanted himself and not his callow youth of a son. But her dreams of him would never have been anything more than dreams had it not been known to all how sick his wife was. When it became obvious that Mary had not long to live, Catherine had openly declared herself to him. It came as no surprise; the girl had long made her feelings plain, but propriety had kept her from verbalizing her intentions until Mary’s death was imminent.

  The rub was that Mary had known all along. She was a woman, and another woman’s heart was as clear as glass to her. For years the three of them had kept the open secret. But towards the end Mary, in her great physical pain and agony, had not been able to contain her mental anguish at the thought that when she died, Brandon would remarry, and that his wife would be the girl Mary had always regarded as her son’s fiancé.