I stood fast and said nothing, but smoothed my hands over the sides and front of my thin gown, chosen specially for this reason and worn without stays. As I did, his eyes were drawn to the growing swell of my stomach. His heir.
He said nothing at all but, for the first time ever, I saw the smallest of smiles twitch on Baron Asquith’s stern face. I allowed myself a small smile in return. We had come to an understanding.
What I had once so easily dismissed, a simple life as a wife and a mother, had now become my greatest pleasure. I mourned Anne, who had not had the mighty love of a good man, but rather the uncertain affections of a mighty man.
She will never be forgotten, for certes.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I stood in front of Anne Boleyn on Easter Sunday, or I should say, I stood in front of her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Because I wanted to reflect on her life but not inhibit others from viewing the painting, I stood a few feet back and let others pass in front of me. Two women of a certain age did just that.
“Floozy!” one sputtered.
“Schemer!” her friend hissed as she moved quickly past Anne, who stared, calmly, back.
I felt as though someone had just spat on a friend.
Throughout the ages Anne has been portrayed as a man-eater, the woman who used her feminine wiles to woo Henry away from his faithful, aging wife. And while it’s true that Henry sought to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, the woman, and her story, is much deeper, purer, and more complicated than that. Historian Dr. Eric Ives, perhaps the world’s most respected biographer of Anne Boleyn, says, “Historians see through a glass darkly; they know in part and they pronounce in part.” Maybe there has been more pronouncing than knowing where Anne has been concerned.
While this is a work of historical fiction, I’ve sought to remain as true to the history as to the fiction. Ives says that Anne “would remain a remarkable woman in a century that produced many of great note. There were few others who rose from such beginnings to a crown and none contributed to a revolution as far reaching as the English Reformation.”
Anne really was lifelong friends with the sisters of Thomas Wyatt, and they are believed to have accompanied her to the scaffold. The son of the eldest Wyatt sister did have a son named John Rogers who became a priest, and then a Reformer, and was commonly believed to be the first Protestant martyred under Bloody Mary, Henry’s eldest daughter. In my story and genealogy chart, I have switched the names of Meg and her mother and Henry Wyatt’s eldest daughter and her mother for this story so that two “Annes” wouldn’t confuse the reader. Many believe Margaret, Lady Lee, to have been the Margaret in my story, but the birth dates of Henry Wyatt’s children, as well as his first marriage and the birth date of Lady Lee, suggested something else to me, as seen on my genealogy charts and in the story within. Many of the things said and done in the book are actual recorded history, and some, like making Henry and Katherine Carey the illegitimate offspring of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, are theories I have adopted based on what I feel is good history. This is true, too, of the private commitment of Anne and Henry in November 1532, espousals de praesenti, formalized by intercourse, which, according to Eric Ives in his biography The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn is a plausible alternative scenario put forth not only by Anne’s and Elizabeth’s supporters but also by those who had no personal stake, and even by soem who had potential motivation to undermine.
In 1540, just five years after the king made Thomas Cromwell the highest civil and religious authority in the land, after himself, he had him beheaded because he did not like Anne of Cleves, procured for the king by Cromwell. And, perhaps, Henry felt that Cromwell had risen too high, always a danger in Henry’s courts. Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, that very same day. The king seems to have made a practice of tying together murder and marriage.
Jane Rochford, George’s wife, did die by the sword just six years after Meg had said she might. Jane was found guilty of assisting in arranging clandestine meetings between Henry’s fifth wife, Anne’s cousin Catherine Howard, and Queen Catherine’s lover. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower, declared insane, and finally executed by a single blow of the ax in 1542.
Meg’s fuller story, of course, is mainly fictional but drawn from the time. Many women, then as now, give their lives to the call of service that goes unrecorded except by the One who notes all and never forgets.
To learn more about the Tudors and Sandra’s books, please visit www.sandrabyrd.com.
HISTORICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Over the course of my life I have eagerly devoured hundreds of books, fiction and nonfiction, set in Tudor times and all have influenced and delighted me, but there are several books I hold in highest esteem and referred to time and again while writing this book. I’ve listed them below. In addition I was blessed with the resource of living historians. Principal among them was Lauren Mackay, Tudor researcher, scholar, and master of history/ Ph.D. candidate in Sydney, Australia. Lauren, you are a stealth weapon and I can’t express the fullness of my gratitude. Thanks to Professor Matt Panciera, Latinist at Gustavus Adolphus College, for his critical assistance with Latin. I would also like to thank the aptly named Memory Gargiulo for her Tudor historical insight and ready knowledge and Maureen Benfer, Tudor seamstress extraordinaire.
PRINCIPAL WORKS OF REFERENCE
Ives, Eric. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 2005.
Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry the Eighth. 2004.
Tyndale’s New Testament. Translated by William Tyndale. A modern-spelling edition of the 1534 translation with an introduction by David Daniell. 1989.
Hamer, Colin. Anne Boleyn: One Short Life That Changed the English-Speaking World. 2007.
The Love Letters of Henry the Eighth, To Anne Boleyn: And Two Letters from Anne Boleyn to Cardinal Wolsey: With her last letter to Henry the Eighth, and the king’s love-letter to Jane Seymour. Re-printed from the Harleian Miscellany, with an introduction by Ladbroke Black. London: 1933.
Somerset, Anne. Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day. 2004.
Thompson, Patricia. Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Background. 1964.
Zahl, Paul F. M. Five Women of the English Reformation. 2001.
Starkey, David, and Susan Doran. Henry the Eighth: Man and Monarch. 2009.
Worcester, Sir Robert, KBE DL, Chancellor, University of Kent, History of Allington Castle. 2007.
To Die For
Reading Group Guide
1. The book opens with a glimpse of the friendship between Meg and Anne as teenagers and follows them through courtship and marriage, treachery and setbacks, childbearing and childlessness, immense riches, and a final difficult plummet to death. How is the evolution of women’s friendships in the twenty-first century similar to, and different from, women’s friendships in the sixteenth century?
2. A major theme in the book is the balance of love versus duty. Each has its own rewards and costs. In which situations must the women in the book balance love and duty? Does one character have a better grasp on the balance than the other? What kinds of love-versus-duty conflicts do women today face?
3. Tudor women, even and perhaps especially the highborn, had extreme social limits on their autonomy, and yet they did have some personal and community power. How is that illustrated in the book? Which characters use their power only for personal gain, and which use their power for the good of others, and how? Did/do women have certain types of power that were/are unavailable to men?