Early 1533
"She's done it," Anne Stanhope said, her eyes wide with disbelief. "She has actually done it. The Whore is to be Queen."
We were at a family meeting to which Lizzie and I had been summoned to because of the importance of the topic. A letter had arrived from court, summoning me to be Lady in Waiting to the King's Beloved Wife, Lady Anne Boleyn, the Marquess of Pembroke, who was with Child. Lizzie was to go and serve Queen Catherine, the true Queen, now demoted to Dowager Princess, in her Palace at Richmond. Anne Stanhope was called to neither, and our mother with her.
"So just like that we are shut out," My brother Edward remarked.
I could barely hide my joy at the thought that I would go to Court, and be in the midst of all the Intrigue and Power, and Lizzie was to serve the Old Queen, while Anne Stanhope remained at home as if she was nothing.
* * * *
Pregnancy suited Anne Boleyn well. She walked proudly, her protruding belly before her, her face glowing. The King was her servant, the Court was at her beck and call.
People bowed to her lower than I had ever seen them bow to Queen Catherine. When she had been the King's Mistress and the Queen's bane it had been her joy to torment me and Lizzie; she hated all Seymours so, but now she would not even deign to look at me. She would ask no service of me; not to brush her hair, or to thread her needle, or to read to her, or even to pour her wine. It was as though it would be to honour me too greatly, if she gave me these tasks. So all I did was sit and watch.
The King was now Supreme Head of the Church of England. He had done so without Parliament's consent. He had set his marriage aside and illegitimized his trueborn daughter, his only child the Princess Mary with the same stroke of the pen.
And then he publicly married Anne Boleyn, the ceremony officiated by Thomas Cranmer.
* * * *
It was now the day of Anne Boleyn's coronation.
It was a day like no other. A Heretic Whore was to become Queen, and London was half torn between being joyous and jubilant at the thought of the festivities we were all to enjoy and sulking at the thought of a woman who ousted the True Queen lording it over them. We were all waiting for something to happen, and tension and anticipation crackled in the air itself like Thunder.
People great and small lined the streets to watch the Coronation Process go by. They did not cheer or shout words of love as I heard they had done at Queen Catherine's coronation. Rather they watched as Anne Boleyn, on her great white Destrier that belonged to the King himself, looking ethereal in her White Gown with seed pearls sewn into it, her protruding belly before her. She held her hands over it, as if to show the world that they may hate her, they may call her a Whore and a Homewrecker and a Heretic, but she would bear the King an heir. She would give him his Heart's Greatest Desire. And once she did that, her power would be without limits and their Malice would be nothing to her. On her head she wore a most beautiful golden coronet and her long, lush, hair fell about her shoulders in a dark tumble.
The People of London might have been reluctant to accept the new Boleyn Queen, but they did not hesitate to take advantage of the King's lavish generosity at the crowning of his new Queen. Anne had wanted a coronation that would outdo Queen Catherine's own, and King Henry, usually grudging of the smallest expense, poured money into the event like there would be no tomorrow.
Wine flowed out of fountains on every corner where there should have been water; red wine, white wine, sweet rosé... Even water and milk for those who chose not to indulge.
Flower petals were thrown on the street so that all of us in the procession had to wade through White petals inches high. The streets, usually dirty and disgusting and stinking with rot and sewage, were scrubbed so clean today you could dine off of them.
