Glancing at one another again, the boys laugh before racing after her.
*
Two boys climb an old oak tree, the older one helping the other up. They climb up until they find a branch on which they both can safely sit; when they do, they settle their backsides, swing their legs, and look out towards the castle.
“Shall we have a wager on how long it will take for them to find us, Tom?”
The darker boy turns to the fair one, considering him.
“What sort of wager, coz?”
“Father gave me a new dagger for my name day; if I am wrong, you may have it. If I’m right, I get to keep it.”
“Show me this dagger of yours, George.”
The younger boy takes a dagger from his belt, and hands it to the other who inspects it carefully. He looks back to George.
“All right—shall we spit on it?”
Lavishly, they spit on their right palms before clasping each other’s hand. Still holding hands, they pause and look at one another. The darker boy clasps tighter his cousin’s hand.
“Friends forevermore.”
The other boy lays his free hand over those clasped.
“Aye—friends forevermore, Thomas Wyatt.”
Hands released, they look back towards the castle.
“So what say you, Tom? How long before we hear the girls bay at the bottom of this tree?”
“I say but only a short time—when the sun reaches where we sit.”
“Coz, I say more. My sisters were in no hurry. Indeed, they were more intent to fill their baskets up with flowers to take back for Simonette than seek us amongst the oak grove.”
“No matter—we can occupy ourselves while we wait to see who outdoes the other with rhyme. Shall I begin?”
“Aye, Tom. Why not?”
*
In my fifth year my father made the decision to send me to my mother’s kinsman Sir Thomas Boleyn so I could begin my education alongside my cousin George. I find it surpassingly easy to recall my feeling at this time, my feeling of confusion as to why my nurse was not coming with me, and the emotion seemingly stifling the beating of my heart whenever I remembered my mother. I remember being confused and unhappy for so many, many different reasons. Only as I grew older did I understand that families of our status customarily sent their offspring to homes of relatives or friends to gain the beginnings of their education and strengthen attachments already formed. Yea, that knowledge came to me much later. When it happened that my life was altered for the first time, I was but a small lad, very, very wrenched from all that was loved and familiar.
I already knew my cousins well, for there always had been constant goings to and from one household to the other, as our family estates were situated close to one another and, thus, made us near neighbours in our county of Kent.
My cousin George and I were of similar ages. More importantly, we possessed similar interests and fast became good friends. Add that deep friendship to our kinship, and you have a strong tie, one enduring until savagely cut—cut by bloodthirsty events to befall us as grown men. Aye, George and I had, from the beginnings of our lives, a strong bond of companionship. Even more than that, this bond seemed like a stalwart thread of constant affinity running through the fabric of both our lives.
Like me, he had sisters. But where my sister Margaret seemed a necessary bane, a person I knew little but was committed to for duty sake, George was more fortunate. To be more truthful, fortunate with one sister at least. This sister was named Anne, the youngest of the Boleyn children. George’s other sister, Mary, being the eldest, while he, the only boy, born in the middle.
I felt fondness for my cousin Mary. She was a sweet girl, pretty with fair hair and deep blue eyes, interested in female pursuits and largely disinterested in anything too intellectual. Anne, even though possessing the most beautiful and expressive eyes I have ever beheld, seemed less pretty than her sister did. Yet Anna’s body, with its fragile bones, promised enduring beauty. If that promise seemed not enough, Anne, even as an
enfant,
was already turned towards a world of learning. So much so I truly believe even Sir Thomas More—who educated so well his own daughters—would have been captivated with, and approving of, the girl child who was Anne Boleyn.
Aye, even when she was a very little girl I adored her. There is a clear memory of George, Anna and myself as small children. George and I were wrestling, testing our boyish strengths against one another, while Anna—not quite three—sat close by, cross-legged, making flower chains from the assortment of wildflowers in her lap.
Soon the time came when George and I had enough of the rough and tumble of our game. We shook ourselves free of dirt and grass adhering to our persons, and walked, with our arms flung over each other’s shoulder, to be with Anne. Her face lit up as we came nearer to her and she held out to us the flower chains she had made. I found myself laughing at Anna’s obvious enjoyment of her innocent craft, and broke away from George to take the proffered chain of flowers from her smaller hands.
I went down on one knee, while George stood behind his sister—it seemed always so when we were children. George made the decision at Anne’s cradle he would seek to be where he could protect her. He simply regarded it as his right and privilege. Thus, as George stood behind her, I carefully placed the flowers upon her head, arranging them to be as if a crown. Then Anna shook her head, causing the flowers to become lopsided. She giggled, and some of her loose hair blew into her mouth, two fingers following after.
“My lady,” I said, in my best grown-up voice. I took her hand and hair away from her now smiling mouth, and smiled back at her.
“Anna, if you are to be my Queen, you must learn how to behave!”
Anna laughed at me, reaching out both her hands to hold my face.
“Funny Tommy! Give Anna a kiss!” She puckered up her lips to me, and I joined mine to hers in a childish kiss.
I see this scene unfold within my mind and I cannot but help wondering if the events of our past sometimes give us hints, even omens, of what would one day be. But, who is to say which is a brief glimpse to the time before us, and which is but another moment that soon passes into oblivion. If only we could see the omens for what they really are; if only we could see them and arm ourselves, so to protect those whom we love.
*
In our childhoods, George and I—with Anne forever tagging along after us—would find every excuse imaginable to enter my uncle’s library—a place none of us children were supposed to enter unless accompanied by our tutor, Father Stephen. It was a wonderful library, possessing one of the most extensive ranges of books in the whole of England. For us three, the library seemed as if some kind of Eden full with forbidden fruit. But, like Adam and Eve of time long passed, we could not resist the temptation of sampling the fruits held within the library’s four walls…
Three children—boys of ten and nine and a small girl of seven—sat huddled together on a bench, their three heads bent over a thick and open tome resting upon the middle child’s lap. All at once, the closed library door swung open, and a young girl of eleven rushed into room.
“George! Tom!”
The children looked up guiltily at the elder girl’s entrance. Then one boy stirred angrily on the bench.
“Mary!” he cried in a pained voice. A fair, tousled-haired lad, his face specked with freckles, he gazed at the girl as if just recovering from a major fright. “Why can you never knock, or give some kind of warning, before barging in on us?”
The younger girl, her body gently leaning on the boy, as if drawing her security from being thus close to him, gazed up at Mary with huge, dark eyes.
“Please, Mary, do not tell! I begged George and Tom to take down from the shelves father’s
Tales of Canterbury.
It was my idea truly,” the girl pleaded in a soft, melodic voice.
Mary, hands on hips, glanced at the book.
“Oh, that—as if I care whether you three desire to get into trouble and gain a hard beating for taking father’s best books from their proper places! Listen! I’ve just heard the most enthralling news from Simonette. Father has at last persuaded mother to allow me to be sent to the Continent. I am to go to the court of Brussels next month!”
She began dancing around the room in excitement.
“I can hardly believe it, but I am to be a Maid to Margaret, Duchess of Austria!” Mary stopped in front of the bench, giving a slight curtsy in the general direction of the other three children.
Anne and George stared long at Mary. Then they looked at each other, unaware that, beside them, the older boy gazed at them both. He knew, without questioning them, why they looked at each other with such fear. He feared the same thing: that Mary’s departure would soon be followed by other departures, the three of them separated
too
.
Mary, becoming aware of the silence and mistaking its meaning, stamped her foot.
“You two are just jealous! I am glad to be going. Glad, I tell you! By my troth, so very glad to be getting away from both of you!”
She spun around, her blonde, untidy loose hair twirling around her head as if wind-whipped by her anger, and was out the door as quickly as she had entered.
*
I had lived with the Boleyns for about five years when Mary was sent to the court of Brussels. Mary rarely appeared as cross as she was that day. In sooth, of all the Boleyn children, I would have said that Mary was the one to have the sweetest temper.
Nonetheless, it was extremely difficult for my cousins to grow up as children of my uncle. Uncle Boleyn was an uncommonly handsome man, with a well-shaped face bedecked by a glorious red beard and possessing piercing blue eyes that reminded you of an eagle surveying its world. He was also an extremely ambitious man, a man who planned to step higher in the society in which he lived via the use of his three young children. And they were intelligent enough to realise, from an early age, what his purposes and ambitions were. His children also knew that they had to strive very hard indeed to be able to give to him his pound of flesh, and thus gain their father’s hard-won approval.
I had not much liking for my uncle and felt very thankful his duties at court meant that he was rarely in residence at Hever Castle. In truth, we never welcomed his visits to Hever. Rather we knew when we heard his heavy step approaching the nursery that one of us was likely to be violently punished for some minor transgression. No, I did not much like my uncle. Even when I was a child, he struck me as a heartless and unrelenting man. A man who calculated every move he made. A man only interested in what best served the achievement of his own desires. I speak only but the truth—my uncle was a selfish man who heartlessly ignored his children’s need for a father’s love and approval.
I believe it was especially hard for Mary. My cousin never did have the inner strength needed to meet any of Uncle Boleyn’s hard demands. Nor was Mary—at least, not until a woman full-grown—able to stand up to her father in any way.
I felt grateful my own father was very much different. He too was a busy official of the Crown, so was also much away from our family estate at Allington. But when home, he would always ride his horse over to come visit me or send for me to return home for a short visit so to see my sister. My father is a godly man, wise, gentle and always even-tempered. His greatest desire, in contrast to my uncle, was to do good and be the loyal friend of all who sought for his friendship. Indeed, in the life ahead of me, never was I to meet a man more faithful to his friends. My father valued truth and honour above all things. Thus, I always looked forward to his visits, and to my visits to Allington.
My mother? What of her? Why do I remain so silent?
Yea, I remember her. Aye, how do I remember my sweet mother—she who I loved and then lost forever. Something in my life that once was a tangible substance, and then altogether too swiftly, like an arrow in flight finding its target, became a black vacuum. I remember, and yet do not want to remember… If I delve too deeply into myself in search of memories of her I begin to tremble and ache, as if inflicted with some unresolved torment. If I delve, I begin to bleed. Therefore, it is best to leave my feelings of dark despair locked inside of me forever. Aye, my loving and beloved mother died in childbirth before I left for Hever, which was one of the many reasons why this arrangement for my upbringing came to be.
As well as my sister, I also had a younger brother, Henry, the child my mother bore into the world as her own life was taken, whom I had left as but an infant when I departed from home. My infant brother died before I had a chance to grow to know or love him, thus being brought up with my cousin George seemed like gaining a brother in his stead. Perchance, even if Henry had lived, George would have taken his place in my heart. The friendship George and I shared comes only once in a fortunate lifetime.
Aye. My cousins became easily and quickly the objects of my boyhood affections. They were also the people I enjoyed squabbling with. And, being children, we had many, many squabbles, but they all ended as they began—in friendship.
Aye. ’Tis so easy to recall my cousins from those early years. Mary, all blonde and always pretty—even if often untidy. A gentle, sweet girl who seemed to never think deeply about anything too important, who grew into a woman easily persuaded and, just as easily, hurt and cast aside.