The Queen of Subtleties

The Queen of Subtleties
Suzannah Dunn

A tremendously vivid, page-turning and plausible novel that depicts the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the most spirited, independent and courageous of Henry’s queens, as viewed from both the bedrooms and the kitchens of the Tudor court.Everyone knows the story of Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII divorced his longstanding, long-suffering, older, Spanish wife for a young, black-eyed English beauty, and, in doing so, severed England from Rome and indeed from the rest of the western world. Then, when Henry had what he wanted, he managed a mere three years of marriage before beheading his wife for alleged adultery with several men, among them his own best friend and her own brother.This is the context for Suzannah Dunn's wonderful new novel, which is about – and told by – two women: Anne Boleyn, king's mistress and fated queen; and Lucy Cornwallis, the king's confectioner, an employee of the very highest status, who made the centrepiece of each of the feasts to mark the important occasions in Anne's ascent. There's another link between them, though: the lovely Mark Smeaton, wunderkind musician, the innocent on whom, ultimately, Anne's downfall hinged…Suzannah Dunn has all the equipment needed for literary-commercial success: wit, a mastery of dialogue, brilliant characterization, lack of pretence, and good humour. The Queen of Subtleties adds to that mix a wonderfully balanced, strong story; Dunn has plumped for a fascinating retelling of one of the most often-told, most compelling stories of our islands' history. In doing so, she's turning from contemporary stories to historical fiction. The result is sensational.

The Queen of Subtleties

Suzannah Dunn

For my own little

Tudor-redheaded heir,

Vincent

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#ue3c5df66-52e2-5b80-a45e-be8269bcdc61)

Title Page (#ue6c3c8c7-f162-5bef-9192-63d8d55ee21b)

Dedication (#ue58ca53c-1a3f-5072-82f9-fead78926e57)

Anne Boleyn (#u185e55e2-a735-5555-aafd-f0aba72faa68)

Lucy Cornwallis SPRING 1535 (#u075261d7-35d5-5daf-a03d-bb9203ad493a)

Anne Boleyn (#uf0301959-d43e-500a-a318-c57270beed93)

Lucy Cornwallis SUMMER 1535 (#u5f0f1b50-25ff-5024-9114-b80384f8c39e)

Anne Boleyn (#litres_trial_promo)

Lucy Cornwallis AUTUMN 1535 (#litres_trial_promo)

Anne Boleyn (#litres_trial_promo)

Lucy Cornwallis WINTER 1535-6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Anne Boleyn (#litres_trial_promo)

Lucy Cornwallis SPRING 1536 (#litres_trial_promo)

Anne Boleyn (#litres_trial_promo)

Lucy Cornwallis SUMMER 1536 (#litres_trial_promo)

Anne Boleyn (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Select Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Suzannah Dunn (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Anne Boleyn (#ulink_8c737419-1715-5383-94a4-bac2e797287d)

Elizabeth, you’ll be told lies about me, or perhaps even nothing at all. I don’t know which is worse. You, too, my only baby: your own lifestory is being re-written. You’re no longer the king’s legitimate daughter and heir. Yesterday, with a few pen-strokes, you were bastardized. Tomorrow, for good measure, a sword-stroke will leave you motherless.

There are people who’d have liked to have claimed that you’re not your father’s daughter at all, but you’ve confounded them. You’re a Tudor rose, a pale redhead, whereas I’m a black-haired, olive-skinned, coal-eyed Englishwoman as dark as a Spaniard. No one has felt able to suggest that you’re other than your father’s flesh and blood.

You won’t remember how I look, and I don’t suppose you’ll ever come across my likeness. Portraits of me will be burned. You’ll probably never even come across my handwriting, because my letters and diaries will go the same way. Even my initial will be chiselled from your father’s on carvings and masonry all around the country. And it starts tomorrow, with the thud of the sword to my bared neck in time for my husband’s public announcement of his forthcoming marriage. As his current wife, I pose a problem. Not such a big one, though, that the thinnest of blades can’t solve it.

I want you to know about me, Elizabeth. So, let’s start at the beginning. I was born at the turn of the century. And what a turn, what a century: the sixteenth, so different from every one before it. The changes I’ve seen. Gone, quite suddenly, is the old England, the old order of knights and priests. England used to be made of old men. Men born to their place, knowing their place. We Boleyns have always prided ourselves on knowing just about everything there is to know about anything, with the exception of our place.

I was born in Norfolk. My mother is a Howard. Her brother is the Duke of Norfolk. I was born in Blickling Hall. I’ve no memories of Norfolk, but I’m told that the land is flat, the sky high and wide. So, from the beginning, it seems, I’ve had my sights on the horizon. The climate, in Norfolk, is something I’ve heard about: blanketed summers and bare, bone-cracking winters. Inhospitable and uncompromising, like the Howards. If the world had never changed, that would have suited the Howards.

Something else I’ve heard about the Howards: that the Duke, my Uncle Norfolk, has the common touch. At first, it seems a strange thing to hear about the last man in England to have owned serfs; but in a way, it’s true, because, for him, business is everything and he’s unafraid to get his hands dirty. No airs and graces. Land and money: that’s what matters to a Howard. My uncle has never read a book, and he’s proud of the fact. Ruthlessness and efficiency: that’s what matters. He’ll clap you on the back, one day; stab you in it, the next. No hard feelings, just business as usual. Never trust a Howard, Elizabeth, not even if you are one. Look where it got me, sent here to the Tower by my own uncle.

But I’m a Boleyn first and foremost. My father didn’t have the Howard privileges; he’s had to make his own way in the world. And he has; oh, he has: cultured, clever, cool-eyed Thomas Boleyn. England has never seen the likes of him. For a start, he has a talent almost unknown here: he speaks French like a Frenchman. Which has made him indispensable to the King.

We Boleyns have lived a very different life from everyone else, in this country; from everyone else under these heavy English skies, in their musty old robes and gowns, slowly digesting their stews. I lived in France from when I was twelve until I was twenty. I grew up to be a Frenchwoman, I came back to England as a Frenchwoman. There are women in France who are strong, Elizabeth, because they’re educated. Unlike here, where the only way to be a strong woman is to be a harridan. Imagine how it was, for me, to come back. For years, I’d been thinking in French. In France, anything seems possible, and life is to be lived. Even now, stuck in the Tower, a day away from death, I’m alive, Elizabeth, in a way that most people here haven’t ever been and won’t ever be. I pity their bleak, grovelling little lives.

Forget Norfolk, Elizabeth; forget the Howards, and old England and Catholicism and creaky Blickling Hall. Think Hever: the castle which we, the Boleyn family, made our home. Mellow-coloured, grand and assured. Perhaps you’ll go there, one day. I grew up there.

I was a commoner, but I became queen. No one thought it possible, but I did it. I supplanted the woman who’d been England’s queen for nineteen years, a woman who’d been born ‘the daughter of the Catholic Kings’. Her royal blood, her regal bearing, her famed grace and benevolence were nothing against me, in the end. She was a fat old pious woman when I’d finished with her. And England was changed for ever. It had to be done. I got old England by the throat, and shook it until it died.

Forget the ex-wife, for now, and let’s start instead with men. Because the story of my life—and now, it seems, my death—is largely a story of me and men. I like them. They’re easy to impress. I like male openness, eagerness. When I came to the English court, twenty and fresh from France, I fell in love with Harry, Lord Percy. Nothing particularly unusual in that. Women did it all the time. What made the difference was that Harry was in love with me. Twenty-two-year-old Harry Percy: that lazy smile; the big, kissable mouth. He dressed beautifully, but with none of the awful, old-fashioned flamboyance of his fellow-Englishmen. He was stylish. He could afford to be: he was one of the wealthiest heirs in the country. Which was another point in his favour.

Too easy-going for the saddle, and clearly bored by the prospect of tennis, he managed to be surprisingly popular with the men. He was a drinker, though, even then, which might explain it. He was somehow in the thick of things yet an outsider, an observer; and that appealed to me, newly arrived at court. Women loved him because he loved women: loved women’s company, women’s bodies. That was obvious, or at least to women. Men, clueless, probably didn’t see him for the competition that he was. We women instinctively understood that Harry was a pleasure-seeker and that if we granted him his pleasures, he’d savour them. Nevertheless, as far as I could discover, he had no reputation for sleeping around. On the contrary, it seemed that he was choosy, and unwilling to play the game of big romances. There was a take-it-or-leave-it air to him, a clarity of purpose and refusal to compromise that intrigued me and which I admired.

We circled each other for a couple of weeks, if ‘circled’ isn’t too active a word for Harry. I knew he’d noticed me. How could he not?—I was the new girl at court, wearing the latest French fashions. One late afternoon, when I was sauntering down a passageway, he stepped from behind a door to stop me in my tracks.

‘Walk with me,’ he said.

I said nothing—biding my time—and simply did as he requested, moving ahead of him through the doorway into a courtyard. The air was warmer than I’d anticipated. All day long, I’d been stuck indoors, doing my lady-in-waiting duties: playing cards, playing music. Outside, my eyes seemed to open properly, wide, and I felt my shoulders drop. I wondered, briefly, why I didn’t do this more often: get away, walk away.

We went towards the rose garden. ‘Back home,’ he said, breaking the silence, ‘in our gardens, we can smell the sea. I miss it. I feel so hemmed in, here.’

‘Oh, so, we’re walking and talking, are we?’

That shut him up. Good. Walk with me, indeed.