And George. How could George ever be forgotten after his day in court, defying death and all by reading out loud a document claiming that Anne spoke and jested to his wife about the grave matter of the King’s impotence? Thus, showing to England how the King’s bruised pride could lead one straight to the executioner’s block.
I believe his action was calculated to be suicidal. George had no desire to live in a world where his beloved sister had been murdered. Yea—murdered with such vicious and bloody intent.
No! No! No!
Why am I remembering this?
I want to stay in a time where all was still golden with the promise of the future. When all seemed good and nothing evil. I want to remember a time when pain was easily kissed aside. Yea, when pain was simply kissed aside.
*
If Uncle Boleyn considered five the age to begin our education, it was also the age he considered us old enough to receive our first riding lessons. Thus, we all acquired our own ponies. Mine was a grey gelding with black markings on its legs that seemed to have never forgiven the fates for rendering him less of a horse than he should have been. Toby was a challenge to ride, but ultimately loyal when the going became rough.
Anne’s first horse was a chestnut mare with a white star upon its forehead, which led Anne to naming it Astra. Anna never so much reminded me of a wild gypsy as when she was astride her mare. Her long hair would always be loose and flowing, with the hint of silver earrings gleaming through her blue-black tresses. And was she clothed in feminine attire? Oh no! Not my girl, not my Anna! She always wore one of her brother’s outgrown hose and tunic that she had hunted out in the clothes chest kept for our cast-offs in Simonette’s room.
On our rides together we always had a loyal and faithful guardian, since forever in grave pursuit of Anna and her horse was the Boleyn’s huge Irish wolfhound, a dog that answered to the name of Pluto. It may have originally been Uncle Boleyn’s hunting dog—given to him by his kinsman, the Irish Earl of Ormond—but the dog had long ago decided the little girl—who took her first riding lessons on its back—was its true mistress.
But Anna always had a strong affinity with animals, especially those of a canine persuasion. All throughout her life she possessed one dog or another, all of which followed her around devotedly.
And she was not just close to animals. Anne also possessed a deep awareness of the natural world around her.
One time, just before she departed from my everyday life for that first and dreadful time, we spent the afternoon together when suddenly there was a burst of incessant rain, even though the sun still brightly shone in a sky with only a scattering of dark clouds. Getting off our horses, we led them quickly to shelter underneath some nearby trees.
“Oh look, Tom!” Anne said, pointing upwards to the sky. “Look over there at that beautiful rainbow.”
My gaze followed to where she pointed. I saw a magnificent arch of violet, red, yellow, and blue in the sky. Indeed, the whole scene around us was just full of the beauties of nature. The shower that had forced us to find shelter seemed to create before our eyes a veil of crystal droplets—droplets embraced by dancing rays of sunlight as they shone through the leaves of the trees.
It made me feel as if there was nothing better to do than to join this magical dance of rain and sun. This feeling, I know, was also transmitted to Anna, who stood by my side.
She turned, beaming at me, and said, “The world is such a beautiful place, Tommy. I just so love everything about it. How the sun rises and how the sun sets. The full silver moon on a summer’s night, and a winter’s sky after a heavy snowfall. How the larks sing in the spring to welcome the new morn. The way the wind smells after rain falls on a hot day.
“Blue skies… cloudy skies. Look over there where the sky is blue. Can you see those clouds, Tom? Do you not think they look like cloudy steps leading into the heavens? You know, Tommy, when I die I will go up a staircase just like that, and maybe when all earthly breath has gone out from me, God will let me become a small part of the air all around us. I feel so akin to the wind, Tommy. I almost feel as if the wind is my brother, and, if I wanted to, I could call it to do my bidding.”
Anna then rushed out from beneath the trees, back into the rain, to the clearing close by. I followed and saw her raise her arms, and spin around and around.
“Brother wind, brother wind,” she sang as she spun.
I laughed at her, and came close to teasing her, but lo and behold the wind did begin to increase its tempo.
To the children we once were, magic seemed to be just underneath the surface of everyday life. Scratch and we would find. It did not completely surprise me then (nor does it now) that the wind appeared to answer Anne’s call. But it was no witchcraft. We three as children felt so deeply about so many things that it was as if all these invisible cords connected us securely to what we loved.
*
Often, when we were out riding, Anna would frighten me, especially since we, her elders and male protectors, were supposed to ensure her safe return. She frequently rode as if the devil himself was on Astra’s tail. However, I took great heart from the knowledge that Anne was a born rider, a girl who grew up to be a woman who immensely enjoyed the chase. Unfortunately this appeared as one of the many things the King would later find compellingly attractive about her. I believe the King had never before met a woman willing to match, even excel, him in any of his own pursuits as Anne often did.
Without any doubt, Anne and the King had a love of music in common. Many, many years later, when our lives began to be deeply shadowed by what the fates had in store for us, Anne told me this. The King first became interested in her when he stood outside Queen Catherine’s door and heard a lovely voice accompanied by a skilful lute player. Opening the door, he found to his great surprise that the voice, and the lute, belonged to the same person. It was at this exact moment—the King himself would one day tell Anna—he made his decision to begin his wooing.
By the Good Lord’s Holy Passion! Why am I tormenting myself with what I know will be? It is the long-ago past I want to look back on; the beginnings of our tragedies can wait for a later time. For the present moment I wish only to stay with the boy I once was. Yea, stay with the boy who possessed such simple, complete faith that only good would befall us in the future.
*
If Father Stephen was mentor to our developing minds, then Simonette, the girls’ governess who also cast a loving, motherly eye in George’s and my direction, was like the guiding star of our hearts. She must have been married and widowed while yet a very young girl because I can never remember her striking anything but that of an exceedingly youthful note—especially compared to the mature auras surrounding our priest and the other adults of our childhoods.
Simonette, in those early years of our childhoods, was a very comely young woman endowed with deep auburn hair, lovely, soft, porcelain skin, and clear blue eyes. She was a laughing girl who spoke with a pretty, lilting accent. She also played and taught us how to play various musical instruments. Verily, we all received our first lessons on the lute from Simonette.
She always seemed one of those individuals who took great delight in just being alive. Therefore, I remember her as an extremely happy person, with a smile that would dimple both cheeks and light up her eyes.
When not busy attending to her other duties, Simonette did not hesitate to sit with the good Father and the three of us. Her hands were kept busy completing yet another one of her delicate and exquisite embroideries, while we children sat under the green shade of oak trees in the midst of some lesson.
At eventide often we gathered into the girls’ nursery to hear yet another one of Simonette’s stories. As well as true stories from our country’s recent past, she knew so many fables. Indeed, Simonette seemed, to us children, to know by heart a multitude of different stories. What we especially enjoyed was Simonette telling us one of the legends from
Le Morte D’Arthur
. The chivalry of these legends inspired us but I must be truthful and say that the bloodier and bolder the story, the better the four of us appreciated it.
As I grew to manhood I could not help but be curious as to why Simonette never saw fit to remarry. There were suitors aplenty, as I recall, but Simonette was content to stay a part of our lives even when her role of governess had fulfilled its purpose. Sometimes I think she too at first was caught up in the magic of our childhoods—magic, I believed, stemming greatly from Simonette’s own joyful nature. But later I came to believe that Simonette did not leave because she loved Anne too dearly to depart forever from her, which would have likely been the situation if she chose to marry. It seemed to me that Anna was more precious to Simonette than a daughter.
Yea, we were very happy in our childhoods. As long as our Priest was there for us to tag after and ask endless questions of, and Simonette to lay beside us on our beds at night, soothing us when plagued with childish fears, we had no desire or need for those other more complicated, evasive adults. Adults who sometimes also chose to reside at Hever.
Later in her life, Anne’s enemies accused her of being more French than English. In a way this was true. Simonette was more mother to her than her true mother. Indeed, Anna’s first words were French and, as she grew up, she went easily from one language to the other. This ability made her later transition to the French court at such an early age so much easier than one would naturally expect.
Of course, learning languages was a very important part of our education. Along with French, we were expected to learn Greek—taught to us via Homer’s epic tales—and of course Latin. My cousin Mary easily managed the French because she had Simonette to help her from the early years of her life, but would often have her ears teasingly boxed by our frustrated priest because of her backwardness in regard to learning the other required languages. Eventually, she managed sufficient Latin to be able to say her Psalter well enough, but that was the end of that.
I reflect as I write that Mary must have felt completely left out in the cold while we had our lessons, because she found it all beyond her uncomplicated intellect. As I have mentioned before, Mary, during her parents’ long absences, frequently sought out every excuse to avoid the time we spent in the library where the harder lessons were taught. It was so different for George, Anna, and me. We savoured every moment of Father Stephen’s tutelage. He jokingly called us the three muses, and often said that we all would have been dedicated to and followers of Apollo if we had been born in the time of ancient Greece.
Father Stephen, when the day promised to be warm and dry, would take the four of us out of doors for our lessons. Aristotle, Father Stephen frequently said, would no doubt have taken his young charges out of doors when the weather beckoned. He then reminded us that one of these charges grew up to be Alexander the Great, proving implicitly that customary education away from books and the quill did not prevent satisfactory learning. Indeed, it often proved the greater benefit.
On these days Father Stephen would take us on long walks in the woods near Hever, and encourage us to discover for ourselves the many different species of plants that grew there. His knowledge of this subject was absolutely amazing. It appeared to us that Father Stephen knew the name of every living plant found within the borders of our Kentish home. I remember these long walks with so much joy and simple exhilaration.
If I shut my eyes for a moment I can still see us: four children rushing around the towering trees while Father Stephen stood steadfast, his great body overshadowed by the tall oaks, with sunlight filtering through the green leaves, dappling their design on him.
Aye. There, deeply engraved in the memories of my childhood in his long, grey cassock, our Priest will eternally stand. Father Stephen was the centre of our universe, and we (yea, I believe even Mary!) were his four unstable and very energetic planets, forever seeking out ways to rotate around him.
*
I think it now must be obvious that, to us these two people—our aging priest and our gay, young French belle—were a greater influence on our lives than were those other two elusive figures, the seemingly forever-absent lord and lady of the manor.
Having been fortunate in my own father, I could not but help wondering how the fates could have bestowed Anne and George on such an unimaginative and cold man as the Lord Thomas Boleyn. Perhaps he too was bewildered by the offspring that he had begot. I wonder about this because I often caught my uncle gazing on these two of his offspring with a look that could only be described as deep dislike and utter contempt. This attention seemed to be fixed especially on poor George. George, who was sensitive, artistic, gentle, brave—all the things which his father was not.
And there is one more thing I will write down now. Something I have kept deeply repressed in my memory; something only now I remember… Was Uncle Boleyn really the father to these two amazingly talented youngsters? George told me, when we were children, how he had once heard his parents having a violent argument, and George heard his father call his mother no better than a whore and accuse her of trying to fob her bastards onto him. Knowing now what time held for all of us, knowing how Uncle Boleyn cold-heartedly offered to sit on the judgements of both his children, judgements certain to condemn them both to violent deaths, I remember now that narrow-eyed look he sometimes gave to both of them. And I cannot help but wonder.