Dear Heart, How Like You This by Wendy J. Dunn Read Free Book Online Page B

exhilaration.
    If I shut my eyes for a moment I can still see us: four children rushing around the towering trees while Father Stephen stood steadfast, his great body overshadowed by the tall oaks, with sunlight filtering through the green leaves, dappling their design on him.
    Aye. There, deeply engraved in the memories of my childhood in his long, grey cassock, our Priest will eternally stand. Father Stephen was the centre of our universe, and we (yea, I believe even Mary!) were his four unstable and very energetic planets, forever seeking out ways to rotate around him.
    *
    I think it now must be obvious that, to us these two people—our aging priest and our gay, young French belle—were a greater influence on our lives than were those other two elusive figures, the seemingly forever-absent lord and lady of the manor.
    Having been fortunate in my own father, I could not but help wondering how the fates could have bestowed Anne and George on such an unimaginative and cold man as the Lord Thomas Boleyn. Perhaps he too was bewildered by the offspring that he had begot. I wonder about this because I often caught my uncle gazing on these two of his offspring with a look that could only be described as deep dislike and utter contempt. This attention seemed to be fixed especially on poor George. George, who was sensitive, artistic, gentle, brave—all the things which his father was not.
    And there is one more thing I will write down now. Something I have kept deeply repressed in my memory; something only now I remember… Was Uncle Boleyn really the father to these two amazingly talented youngsters? George told me, when we were children, how he had once heard his parents having a violent argument, and George heard his father call his mother no better than a whore and accuse her of trying to fob her bastards onto him. Knowing now what time held for all of us, knowing how Uncle Boleyn cold-heartedly offered to sit on the judgements of both his children, judgements certain to condemn them both to violent deaths, I remember now that narrow-eyed look he sometimes gave to both of them. And I cannot help but wonder.

CONTENTS
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Chapter 3
     
     
    “And I have leave to go of her goodness.”
     
    Our lives began to change drastically after Mary’s departure to Brussels. It was obvious Uncle Boleyn’s interest in his other offspring was now increased, as if debating with himself the best course to take concerning their futures.
    This was the time when the betrothal between our Princess Mary Rose to Charles of Castile, later elected the Holy Roman Emperor, was broken off after Ferdinand—Charles’s grandfather—betrayed our King—his son-in-law—by signing a treaty for peace with Maximilian, Charles’s other grandfather. Thus, Cardinal Wolsey brought into being a new political alliance more to his own liking. The young Princess Mary of York was wed to King Louis XII of France.
    Even at nearly twelve I was aware of the uproar this marriage caused. How could I not be? Simonette and the other women of the household buzzed here, there and everywhere their deep disapproval of this spring-to-winter marriage. Furthermore, my father told me their feelings of disgust were likewise echoed throughout England to those people living beyond our shores. Mary was just eighteen, and said to be a true paragon of beauty. Many called her “The Rose of all England.” Aye, England’s budding Rose married to Louis of France—a tottering, toothless old man. When the news finally reached us at Hever Castle, our feelings of sympathy speedily went out to the young Tudor Princess. However, Mary was no less than a Tudor and it was known she had obtained from her brother the promise that, after this forced diplomatic marriage, she alone would have the choice of who her next husband would be.
    Thus, after a proxy marriage had been performed at Westminster in October of 1514, preparations were put under way for the beauteous new Queen’s departure to