Chapter Ten Like a Swan-Man, He Dove #2
“A servant left a window open, and the babe, who couldn’t have been but two or three, toddled over to it and toppled out, right into the moving water.”
“What happened?” asked Anne, her concern for the imagined child rising.
What if Elizabeth had such a fall? Who was there to watch Elizabeth now, to make sure she didn’t fall from a window?
She wished she could write to Lady Bryan and tell her to instruct Elizabeth’s tutor, nurse, and ladies to watch the child around windows, not to open low windows in her nursery, even if the weather grew hot this summer.
“Well,” Alice continued, drawing out the details of the story, seeming to enjoy Anne’s interest in the tale, perhaps—or was Anne imagining this?
—to enjoy Anne’s interest in her. “The father was in the room, and he dove out of the window after her, like a swan-man, caught her by the back of her smock in the rapids, and pulled her to the river shore. Saved her life.”
“She lived?” Anne asked in disbelief.
“Yes,” Alice replied, smiling, for who didn’t like to tell a story with a happy ending?
Then a sadness passed over her face. “You know, sometimes I wonder what men are worth. In my line of work, I meet a lot of unkind men, rogues and knaves, violent sorts, liars, and I hear stories like yours, of your tyrant lord. But then I hear a story like that, and I suppose there can be some good in them.”
“Why did you ask me to leave the pie shop so urgently?” Anne asked.
“I didn’t like the way that man was looking at you, like you were something to consume.
You really must be careful, Anne. That man saw you had money, and that you were weak, leaning against the wall, barely able to stand, transfixed by the water.
He noted the oddity of your collar. He was sizing you up, looking for your vulnerabilities, places he could push to take advantage of you, part you from your money, maybe more.
” Alice’s brows knitted together. “I don’t know what he planned to do, but I didn’t want to stay and find out. ”
“Thank you,” said Anne. She was embarrassed to admit that she’d never given much thought to the interior lives of shopkeepers and workers, common folk.
Haberdashers were there to make hats. Wool merchants to sell wool.
She rarely interacted with skilled laborers or tradesmen, let alone cooks or street vendors, and when she had, they knew their station and addressed her with deference.
It had never occurred to her that the same duplicitous behaviors that existed at court, the same cunning and plotting and taking advantage, might exist among the lower classes.
Perhaps there was a whole world of knowledge about commoners that she hadn’t been privy to, hadn’t been offered the chance to learn, or hadn’t bothered to.
She put an arm through Alice’s so the two were linked at the elbows, a gesture of intimacy. She was glad to have Alice with her. Alice responded warmly, pulling Anne closer to herself. Maybe I’ve found a friend, Anne thought.
Friendship had been difficult for Anne in England.
At the French court, she’d been well-liked, someone people wanted to invite to parties, to spend time in deep discussions with.
In England, she’d struggled to fit in. She thought of her English ladies-in-waiting, daughters of nobility, some whom she loved well, who were her cousins or childhood friends.
But there were more who disliked her, like her aunt Lady Shelton, her father’s sister.
She’d always resented Anne for rising in station, and resented her even more when Anne arranged for her daughter, Mary Shelton, to be the king’s mistress during Anne’s pregnancy with Elizabeth.
Choosing the king’s mistress for him, a cousin of hers no less, would keep the king satisfied, but more importantly would keep him under Anne’s control, under Anne’s watch.
“Thou hast ruined my girl’s virtue,” Lady Shelton had said to her, furious, when she’d discovered the affair.
Anne had shot back, “Remember your place, you daft cow,” for Lady Shelton had the droopy face of a heifer, and wide, bovine hips from birthing no fewer than ten children, an astonishing number, a barnyard number.
Other ladies disliked Anne because of her dress, because, of all things, she wore a swooping French hood that showed off the front and mid-scalp of her dark, thick hair, instead of a conservative gable hood that covered it up, as God intended.
Apparently, according to these half-wit ladies, God could not tolerate a woman’s natural, parted hair.
Anne always seemed to be saying the wrong thing, speaking too loudly, getting a cold look for talking over someone’s mediocre husband.
But wasn’t she queen, after all? Shouldn’t she have been able to speak over whomever she chose?
“She wants to be the king. She wants a prick and all,” she’d overheard one of her ladies whisper to another as she thrusted suggestively, after Anne had canceled a meeting between the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, and the king because she wanted to go hunting with Henry instead.
And though she’d sent that lady away, disgraced, as punishment for her insubordination, the comment stung.
She didn’t want to be a man at all; she just wanted to be treated with the same respect a man would be.
She wanted choices, the option to cancel a meeting with a spying ambassador she knew was sending nasty letters about her back to the continent if she so chose, the option to tell her husband not to meet with such a man either, the control to stop him from doing so.
She wanted to be in charge, to have dominion, to decide.
And wasn’t she queen? Shouldn’t she have had those choices?
But perhaps this intensity, this sense of purpose, this sense of her rightful place at the top of the hierarchy—after all, she’d earned it, by marrying the king, by being smart enough to hold his eye, once she’d drawn it, with her intelligence, wit, and good planning—was why so few ladies in England wanted to be her friend.
She felt Alice’s strong, slender body shift next to her as she walked, and thought again of her friend étiennette, with whom she often walked arm in arm in France, whom she had sometimes held hands with, shared a bed with, whom she had sometimes even kissed—“Juste practiquer,” étiennette had said, just practice—who was then eventually married to a duke, and left court, as Anne knew she would, such things were common.
“De rigueur,” étiennette had said when her engagement was announced.
Of course she would be married off, of course.
Already Anne’s head had swum with visions of the husbands she imagined waiting for her in England, of her cousin, James Butler, with his Irish castle and earldom, whom she knew her parents were eyeing for a match, or perhaps some other love, yet to be found out, maybe a duke, maybe a member of the king’s council, a man of politics.
She’d held these imagined husbands like a clutch of trump cards dealt to her in an amusing game.
“Oh, Anne,” étiennette had said, the night before she left court to marry her duke, “fais-le comme ca,” before running her fingers through Anne’s, showing her how to tease a man, or a woman.
Yes, Alice might be a friend, Anne thought. She felt it so keenly that she almost started speaking to her in French, the language, for her, of familiarity, kindredness, and affection.