The Boleyn Bride by Brandy Purdy Read Free Book Online Page A

never be dull—and I would wager every jewel I possessed that ladies too numerous to count would flock to him for spiritual consolation and to give him their confession. Indeed, my fluttering heart told me, if he matured as well as I imagined, I was likely to be amongst that smitten throng.
    I should like very much to play the penitent Mary Magdalene to his Jesus Christ, I thought, savoring the wicked wanderings of my mind as I imagined myself kneeling at his feet with my hair unbound and flowing over my naked breasts. What a wicked one you are, Elizabeth Howard. Your soul is as black as your hair, I chastised myself, though I wasn’t really the least bit sorry. Maybe he will take me over his knee and spank me, I thought. I sincerely hope so! I giggled and exchanged smiles with the rustic old beldam standing beside me with a sheepish grin, a guilty expression, and a blush spreading brightly over her wizened cheeks that told me that her mind was meandering down a sensual path very similar to my own.
    Then the Spanish heralds came in a vivid, dizzying sea of yellow and red, fluttering satin banners dripping with gold and silk fringe, and blaring gold trumpets that gave way to a flock of red cardinals, in voluminous velvet robes and wide-brimmed hats, prayer books and rosaries clutched in their red-gloved hands, and next a solemn mass of pious, black-robed priests with bowed heads, each one carrying a silver crucifix clasped tightly against his chest.
    All of a sudden there she was—the one we had all been waiting for, like a single precious white pearl washed up upon the shore in a tangle of garish shells and dark seaweed. We had never seen anyone like her before, and she took all our breaths away.
    Petite and plump and golden-haired, she was clad all in the purest, most radiant white. The full skirt of her satin gown was draped over a stiff farthingale that billowed about her like a great bell, swaying with her every step to reveal dainty white leather boots worked with gold embroidery and fringed with gold about the ankles. Her hair fell like a cloak made of abundant golden strands down about her hips, flowing from beneath a broad-brimmed white hat, just like a cardinal’s except for its pure, virginal color, tied with gold laces beneath her plump little chin, and adorned with a bit of jewel-studded gold trimming with peaked edges around the crown to suggest the crown that would be hers one day when she became England’s Queen.
    The crowd went wild, deafening me with their cheers, throwing posies and nosegays of sweet-scented herbs and pretty flowers at the princess, welcoming her, praising and blessing her, and the future fruit of her womb.
    Suddenly a little girl broke from the crowd, an adorable, dirty-faced, barefoot cherub whose head was a riot of springy tawny curls. She had never seen anything like the stiff farthingale that puffed out Princess Catherine’s skirts and wanted to feel, to find out if this foreign princess was really shaped like a giant bell. Boldly, she reached out and embraced the full, billowing cloud of white skirt, smiling up at the princess with such innocent, radiant joy that it made every heart melt.
    There were sighs and smiles and good-natured chuckles all around as her blushing mother hastened to pull her away, though not even she had the heart to utter a word of chastisement, and the Spanish princess smiled and bent down to caress the child’s face with a gold-embroidered and fringed white kid glove. She took a pearl rosary from where it hung at her waist and pressed it into that dirty-faced little angel’s grubby little hand as a remembrance of this joyful day.
    Then she was gone, walking past, so that others might see her, and two dozen dignified, solemn, and serious-faced Spanish ladies took her place, led by the princess’s formidable duenna, Dona Elvira. They walked with their chins up, as though in silent comment on the great stink of London, and their hands folded demurely at