The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Third Wife by Carolly Erickson

Author:Carolly Erickson [Erickson, Carolly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 0312596901
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2011-09-27T07:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

“She’s not at all what I expected.”

“The clothes are good, but her body—well—hardly any bosom, and that nose! The mouth too big, she looks as though she could devour a horse—”

“And those hands! Well, I know what they say in England, the hands of the devil, or the fingers of the devil—”

“Good, thick hair. Straight, but good.”

My French, however flawed, was quite fluent enough to understand the comments I overheard the French courtiers make about Anne. They speculated endlessly on her looks, her clothes, her dancing (this, they agreed, was above reproach), her height (not tall enough), her belly (was she or wasn’t she?).

They snickered, they called her every foul name, every name applied to the women of the streets. They made fun of her walk, the way she gestured with her hands, her favorite posture when irritated (one hand on her hip, a scowl on her face). They drew six-fingered hands on the palace walls, alongside stout phalluses.

We had not been at the palace of Chambord more than a few days before I began hearing these unflattering remarks and observing the mockery. The French had never liked the English, that much I knew; King Francis and King Henry were meeting to carry out a pretense of friendliness and bonhomie that neither of them truly felt. We were instructed to be gracious to the ladies of the French court but we felt no real friendship or courtesy toward them, and we heard their smothered laughter and their whispers whenever we left the rooms in which we met.

There was much sniggering about Anne’s illicit relations with the king, her haughty manner, her lack of graciousness. I heard King Francis’s valets betting with each other how quickly King Henry would discard Anne, and who his new love would be.

But at the lavish banquet held in honor of Henry and Anne in the immense grand salon with its tapestries in glowing tones of blue and deep red, green and gold and ochre, its brilliant painted ceiling, its long tables covered in gold and silver plate, Anne was treated as though she was already queen.

Her device, the white falcon, was embroidered on cushions and borne by the king’s guardsmen on their helms and even molded into spun sugar and served with sweet wine. She was accorded every honor, and addressed as a noblewoman (for she was, after all, Marquess of Pembroke). No one mentioned the name Catherine of Aragon; it was as if Catherine had never existed.

Between the many courses of the banquet, poets read verses composed for Anne, and musicians played dances and songs dedicated to her. We heard her merits praised and admired again and again; her beautiful black eyes, deep and dark as onyx, her swanlike neck, her long slender tapering fingers, her smooth skin, the perfect oval of her face.

I had to smile at the contrast between this courteous formal praise and the jokes and jibes I continually overheard. But then, everything about our reception by King Francis was artificial,

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