The Boleyn Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

music teacher or returned to work in his father’s carpentry shop, before he got in over his head. It was inevitable—I soon got bored with him, just like George did.
    As for Anne, the one Smeaton really loved, even if she had cared a fig for that lovelorn lute player, she knew the stakes were too high for her to ever dally even if she had been inclined to. She had made her bed—a royal bed—and was well content to lie in it alone or with her wedded husband, bullish, insufferable boor though he was with a temper to match his Tudor red hair. His infidelities kindled her ire, but not recklessness and a desire to pay him back in kind.
    Whatever people may think and say of Anne, she was no fool. And she was never wanton or given to amorousness like me. Even though she spent her youth at the French court, and there is no more licentious place in the world, Anne held herself proud; she knew her worth, even when others didn’t. She had the wit and wisdom to govern herself even when other girls ran wild. Anne knew that, if she played her cards right, virtue would be its own reward. She knew when to hold her cards close and when to lay them down.
    Mayhap Smeaton’s confession was his revenge upon the Boleyns for scorning him? We each used him in our fashion—some might even go so far as to say that we misused him—and he never could understand why our “love” didn’t last. To George and me, he was a plaything, a toy we soon tired of; to Anne he was a lute player, a musician—granted, one of the most talented—hired to play as bidden for the court, nothing more. All I know is that he is the one dalliance amongst my many that I regret. Because of him, I will always wonder, did someone spy me, a slender, black-haired woman in the shadows indulging in some quick and indiscreet intimacy with Mark Smeaton, and mistake me for Anne because the light was dim or because there was already malice in their mind? Did I unwittingly, with my own indiscretions, help condemn my daughter? I will never know.
     
    Yews, “the cemetery tree,” hide this hideousness in cool and murky shadows. In the mighty Caesar’s time, suicide by drinking the juice of the yew tree was a favored means for tired old soldiers, those too weary to flee or stand and fight, to avoid the sad ignominy of defeat. It was a way to die nobly, by taking your life in your own hands.
    Deep purple-blue flowers of wolfsbane, also called monkshood, bloom in profusion. How deceptively beautiful they are! Anyone who did not know better would think them a harmless posy to pluck, tall spires of clustered flowers, to fill a vase or adorn a lady’s hair. But, take care—they will stop your heart and steal your breath away in less time than it takes to say a paternoster. I remember when I was a young girl, a neighbor’s cook mistook monkshood for horseradish. The sauce she made killed her master and his guests; she found them all slumped dead around the table, facedown in the sauce, brows pillowed on their portions of roasted mutton.
    And there is beautiful belladonna, deadly nightshade, growing with a lush, dangerous beauty in the dampened shadows beneath the yew trees, mingling with monkshood and toadstools, like old friends meeting for a gossip on the church steps or witches consorting at a sabbat. Their berries remind me so much of Anne. They start out a cool, icy green, then ripen to a deep, luscious red, before they reach their polished, gleaming black perfection—watching them is just like watching my youngest daughter grow to dangerous and desirable womanhood all over again. They say that witches make a salve from the purple-veined yellow flowers that makes them feel like they are flying through the air to find ecstasy in the Devil’s arms. And ladies in Italy use it to make the pupils of their eyes becomingly large, risking their sight to tempt the men whose attentions they desire. Ah, we women risk so much for lust and love! Is it ever really worth it? Even without