The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn Read Online Free PDF Page B

Anne’s great hope — a male child, the heir that Katherine had not been able to give Henry. She knew also that her own sex had contributed to Anne’s death. If she had been born a boy, her mother might still be alive today, might still be queen.
    “Continue, Lady Sommerville. You said you attended my mother at her end.”
    “My uncle needed women to serve the Queen in her terrible confinement and few were willing. Your mother was much reviled, Your Majesty.” The old woman lowered her eyes, ashamed to speak this truth to Elizabeth.
    “She was, indeed. ‘Nan Bullen the King’s whore’ they called her.” Elizabeth’s mouth quivered and a surge of pity swept over her in a great wave. Like her mother she had been the object of hatred and jealousy, rejected and, even as a princess, called ugly names. A few short years ago, until her succession was realized, she had been nothing more than Henry’s bastard. Elizabeth’s chest hurt. Her throat felt dry and tight.
    “I loved your mother,” said Lady Sommerville quite unexpectedly, “from the first moment I laid eyes on her lonely soul.”
    Elizabeth searched the old lady’s lined face for any flicker of emotion to match her words. But there was nothing more than the shriveled lips moving, conveying a precious secret between two women of noble blood.
    “She was delicate in stature, her wrists as tiny as a switch, and that long swan neck. …” Lady Sommerville went on. “And graceful, so full of grace that you overlooked the sallow skin, the eyes almost too large for their sockets. Her voice was lovely, sparkling and gay, despite her terrible circumstances. And such wit. Your mother made me laugh, she did. We laughed together, just her and me, for no one else would share it. The other lady keepers stared and whis-/ pered, and my uncle became very cross with me. But I said, bold as a man, ‘She’s still the Queen until she’s dead. She commands me, not you.’” The old lady stopped and smiled privately, perhaps remembering that moment of brave resistance, then went on.
    “Each night of the weeks she was there she let me brush out her long dark hair. Like thick silk it was, and black as a raven’s wing. That was when she would cry, your mother. Angry bitter tears. And soft whimpering ones as well. Once she said, ‘Henry loved to brush my hair.’ That was all. ‘Henry loved to brush my hair.’ The only other time I saw her cry was when they executed her brother — watching his beheading from a Tower parapet. The deaths of the others, the men accused with him of debauchery with her, did not affect her so. But she loved her brother George.” Lady Sommerville looked into the Queen’s eyes. “Your uncle.”
    “Yes, my uncle.” Elizabeth tried thinking back. Did she remember George Boleyn? Handsome in his portraits, charming by his reputation. No, she had no memory of him, nor of her grandfather, Thomas, who traded his daughter for ambition and abandoned her for expediency. Even her mother, Anne, was an ephemeral vision, a faint scent of spice, a lilting laugh. But always her face was suffused with a light so bright that its details were all but obliterated.
    One of Elizabeth’s childish mementos was a fine linen kerchief embroidered with her mother’s
A
and her father’s
H
entwined like embracing lovers. Later, when Anne was gone and forgotten, supplanted by Jane Seymour, all linens, carvings, paintings, and crests with that bold symbol of Anne’s success were destroyed or discarded, replaced by the new queen’s J entwined with Henry’s
H
. All through her lonely and miserable childhood Elizabeth kept the kerchief, an illicit treasure, in a tiny chest that contained what poor jewels she’d been given, and other trinkets of little value. As she grew older the box of trinkets was pushed to the bottom of a wooden chest, and her mother’s memory faded like a painted fan.
    “Tell me about the diary.”
    “I knew nothing of the diary until the day