Chapter Fifteen Good Night, Dear Heart
Chapter Fifteen
Good Night, Dear Heart
Anne thought, as she lay shivering by Alice’s side, hoping for sleep to descend and ease her suffering for a few hours, of how she’d gotten herself into this mess.
Not of how she’d gotten herself into the mess of breaking into the Tower of London as an undead woman, committing theft, and being spied escaping, nor of how she got herself into the mess of her own execution, but how she’d gotten herself into the original mess, of knowing Henry to begin with, of opening the door of his affections, his interests, and of hers.
Henry liked to tell people that their first meeting was during Wolsey’s pageant at Whitehall, when Anne was dressed as the virtue Perseverance.
It was a romantic story, and one Anne loved to hear, as it involved both her captivating beauty and the king’s passion for her.
She never corrected him that this was not, in fact, the first time they met.
That had happened almost a decade before the pageant, when Anne was a girl of twelve, staying with the Archduchess Margaret.
Henry and his man, Charles Brandon, the very same Anne had just lied to Alice that she was married to, had come to the Low Countries on the invitation of Margaret to celebrate a military victory in France and discuss the particulars of Henry’s newly acquired French territory, which bordered Margaret’s protectorate.
Their dealings done for the day, they joined the archduchess and her court at cards.
The night was rowdy and raucous. Wine flowed freely.
The king, Brandon, and the archduchess were all quite drunk.
This was the same night when Brandon jokingly proposed to the archduchess, talked her into giving him her ring as a token, then later went about London showing it off, telling everyone they were engaged.
That night, Anne had stayed up late. She’d crept into the gallery where the card tables were set up and mooned about on the edge of the room, watching the adults at play, imagining herself as one of them.
“Why, hello, Your Majesty” she imagined herself saying to the king, as he drunkenly banged his hands on the table, shouting about how he’d been fleeced by the archduchess, who was surely hiding cards up the sleeves of her gown.
Margaret threw her head back in laughter at this accusation from the young king, just twenty-one years old, seated across from her.
“Bonjour, Your Majesty” Anne imagined saying as she curtsied to no one, lost in her play.
She was just a girl, a smart girl, but just a girl.
She had not yet gotten her first period, did not yet have breasts.
She had just lost the last of her baby teeth, had just gotten in the last of her molars.
Margaret had commented that she could see the woman in her, the woman who was about to arrive, but Anne couldn’t see it, and wasn’t sure she wanted to become a woman, not yet.
Anne, looking in the mirror, saw a thin girl, fast of foot, who loved to ride and hunt, as smart as any boy, who had a habit of blurting out whatever thought crossed her mind.
And yet, looking at the king, Anne had felt herself grow shy.
He was so handsome. Athletic, with a full head of hair, tall, all his teeth in place, none half decayed.
She could see this when he smiled, when he opened his mouth to laugh.
She was drawn to him. She didn’t think he would notice her, standing there, but he must have, because she fell asleep, and when she woke, she was in the king’s arms.
The gallery was dark. The king was carrying her through it, into the corridor, toward her bedchamber.
Margaret walked beside him, chattering away, thanking him for carrying the child to bed, saying that Anne must have sneaked out to see the grown-ups at play and fallen asleep from all the excitement, and goodness knew the archduchess couldn’t carry a girl of almost thirteen years.
“ ’Tis no bother, Margaret,” Henry had said, “ ’tis no trouble at all.
” Anne, half asleep, had closed her eyes in his arms. He’d carried her into her room, alone—the archduchess stood outside in the corridor humming a melody Anne couldn’t quite remember—and tucked her into bed, kissing her on the cheek, letting his hand rest on her shoulder, which was bare, her gown having slipped down off it.
“Good night, dear heart,” he’d said, and she’d rolled over, grabbed the rag doll she’d insisted on bringing with her from England, snuggled into it, and fallen asleep.
The next morning, the king was gone, and Margaret was all abuzz about her missing ring, and what a scoundrel Brandon was.
Anne wondered if the whole encounter had been a dream, though she was sure it had not.
There had been a tenderness in the kiss he’d given her, in the way he’d called her “dear heart.” When they met again at the Chateau Vert pageant a decade later, it was clear he didn’t remember this long-ago meeting, where she’d been just one more adoring courtier, one more girl on the edge of womanhood, lining up to fawn over the handsome young king, there for the taking.
—
Henry didn’t remember their second meeting, seven years after the first, either.
By then, Anne was an attendant to Queen Claude, living with her at the French court.
Like any court, it moved from palace to palace, three weeks at one, three weeks at another.
Claude and Francois, the French king, lived separately, meeting often enough to keep Claude almost continuously pregnant, then parting ways.
Francois would head back to Blois or Chambord or Fontainebleau, while Claude preferred to stay in Amboise.
It was to Amboise that Francois brought Leonardo da Vinci, just a year after Anne had joined Claude’s retinue.
Francois set the old master up in the Chateau du Clos Lucé, just four hundred yards from the Chateau Royal d’Amboise, the royal residence.
The two chateaus were joined by an underground corridor that the young Francois used to discreetly visit Leonardo for long hours of conversation, even calling the old man Papa.
Claude was no stranger to the old man either.
He visited her during her confinements, when she lay suffering in bed, telling her jokes and sketching her ribald charcoal drawings that made her blush and laugh.
Anne, by then a teenager, remembered fetching the queen cool water and wine, mopping her brow with a damp cloth, holding her hand as she suffered the final weeks of one pregnancy after another, catching eyes with the wizened Leonardo, whose long white beard hung to his chest, and who called her la dame des yeux noirs, “the lady with black eyes,” or la belle fille, “the beautiful girl.” And though he was not there to educate Claude and her women, Anne watched the man carefully, noticing his love of art and progress, his willingness to propose ideas others thought grandiose or unachievable, and his sense of humor, which put those around him at ease.
When the old man died, Francois was at his bedside and wept openly.
The whole court mourned. Francois framed and hung the paintings Leonardo had brought with him to France: his dark-eyed Mona Lisa; a pastoral, glowing painting of the Virgin Mary pulling a cherubic toddler Jesus off the back of a lamb and onto her lap, the Virgin herself seated on the lap of Saint Anne, her mother, Christ’s grandmother, who looks on amusedly; and his wild-haired, seductive portrait of John the Baptist, head still attached.
This was Leonardo’s legacy, an oil-on-wood world of lush color, voluptuousness, coy smiles, a sense of peace amid chaos, where even those who would succumb to gruesome deaths of crucifixion and beheading were shown bemused and serene, enjoying better moments.
Anne was nineteen when the Field of the Cloth of Gold was held—a drunken, riotous two-and-a-half-week summit between France and England to celebrate the signing of a peace accord between Francois and Henry.
Cardinal Wolsey had worked tirelessly to orchestrate the midsummer festival in Calais, liaising with Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn, English ambassador to France, about pertinent details.
Twelve thousand people converged on the improvised tent city, draped everywhere in shimmering cloth of gold, to celebrate the accord, to witness the two young kings uniting in peace.
Francois arranged for fountains in the encampment to flow with wine, which attendants drank gluttonously, vomiting in the grass when they’d overindulged, slipping off to make love in richly decorated, multichambered tents.
Anne attended with Claude, who was heavily pregnant with her fifth child.