The people flocked there amain,
The multitude was great to see;
Their joyful harts were glad, and fain
To view her princely maiesty,
Who at length came riding by,
Within her chariot openly;
Even with a noble princely train
Of lords and ladies of great fame.

The afternoon sun was already low as the constables and marshals, their great staves ready in their hands, took up their stations along the route the royal procession would follow. They wore liveries of velvet and silk, in keeping with the pomp of the occasion, but their function would be more than ceremonial this day. The crowds that had gathered to watch the spectacle had begun to bank up behind the railings erected along one side of the route, and threatened to spill out into the path of the marchers. It was a noisy, restless crowd, sullen rather than welcoming, and the men deputed to keep order set their faces in a stern rictus and gripped their staves more tightly as the sound of hoofbeats in the distance signaled the beginning of the parade.

Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII, was to ride in ceremony on this May afternoon in 1533 through the City of London and then westward along the Strand to Westminster, where next day she would be crowned queen of England. The route of march was set by time-honored tradition: from the Tower of London the queen and her attendants would process by Gracechurch Street and Cornhill to St. Paul's, pausing frequently to enjoy the singing and pageantry prepared in Anne's honor, and then along Fleet Street to Temple Bar and so into the Strand. The houses and shops lining these streets were decorated with tapestries and silken hangings, and from their upper windows ladies and gentlewomen who had not been summoned to ride with the queen looked out expectantly, watching for the first of the riders to come into view.

As the procession snaked its way through the narrow streets tradition called for the onlookers to kneel and take off their caps when the royal litter passed, and to give a lusty cry of "God save the queen!" But few such greetings were heard. Instead there were rough snickers and laughter, or silent glares and frowns of disapproval or, when the constables and marshals were out of earshot, insults and curses.

Women jostled one another and rolled their eyes, nodding to indicate the slack lacing of the queen's white satin kirtle. They noted the elegance of her gown, cut in the French fashion and furred with ermine, but they paid more attention to her swollen belly, and to the odd bulge at her neck and the marks of scrofula that, in their eyes, disfigured her beauty and made her monstrous.

Children squinted to look hard at her hands, trying to catch a glimpse of the freak sixth finger which, they heard their parents say, was the sure mark of a witch. And men stared at her, some quizzically, some in censure, curious to see at close range the notorious woman who had caused the great scandal only to be touched despite themselves by the allure of her features and expression.

Through it all Queen Anne rode unabashed, regal, triumphant. She paid little heed to the jeers and mockery around her, and none at all to the appraising stares directed at her person. She carried her head proudly, not only to keep in place the jeweled circlet she wore but from habit, for she had a long and graceful neck and knew how to show it to advantage. She was at her best that day, her color high from excitement and her cheeks rosy in the cool spring air. The contours of her oval face had rounded noticeably in recent weeks, and now that she was in the sixth month of pregnancy her morning sickness was past and she felt as well as she ever had in her life. She sat back against the gold cushions of her litter, aware of the sensation she was creating, aware of the attractive picture she made in her satins and shining jewels, her silhouette framed by the thick black hair that fell in waves to her waist.

What if her subjects mocked her? What if they called her Concubine, Whore, the Scandal of Christendom? She had borne their taunts for years. This day, this procession was her revenge. Today all the leading nobles and gentlewomen of the kingdom — including many who were her bitter enemies — were escorting Anne to the site of her coronation. Tomorrow at the coronation itself they would attend her, kneeling reverently before her to swear fealty. Only her haughty uncle the duke of Norfolk was absent — pardonably, as he was on a diplomatic mission in France. Norfolk's wife, however, had flatly refused to ride in the procession, though his stepmother, the aging dowager duchess, rode conspicuously beside Anne's mother in a handsome chariot; tomorrow she would have the honor of carrying Anne's train.

Yet sweet as it was, the crown was not Anne's ultimate triumph. Her child, the male heir the astrologers so confidently predicted: he was her final vindication.

He had been the real objective from the beginning, from the time seven years before when the king, Henry VIII, first began to woo her. All along the king had needed, had wanted a son to succeed him. And Anne, once she realized that her destiny was to be bound up with the king's, had been determined to bear his son — not a bastard, born in secret like Henry's son by his mistress Bessie Blount, but a legitimate scion of the Tudor line, born in a royal bed, christened true heir to the throne.

For all these years, through all the stumbling blocks and confusions of the king's infamous divorce from his formidable first wife Katherine of Aragon, Anne had held firm to her purpose. She would wait to have her son until she could be queen, until he could be prince of Wales.

Then last fall the waiting ended. The king had taken her to Calais, not as his mistress but as marquess of Pembroke, a great lady with a man's title (for she held it in her own right) and a queenly entourage. At Calais she had been provided with everything a queen could desire, new fur-trimmed silken gowns, her favorite foods — grapes and pears specially imported, porpoises and pasties of red deer — even the jewels of a queen. (These Anne's rival, Henry's wife Katherine, had at first refused to provide, saying it went against her conscience to lend her jewels to adorn a woman of ill repute, but in the end she had yielded.)

Everyone, including Katherine, had been convinced that the king would marry Anne in Calais, during his days of banqueting and jousting with the French king, far from the angry crowds that would have been certain to protest the marriage in England. But Anne's closest confidants knew otherwise. She had reportedly told one of them that even if King Henry wished it she would refuse to marry him in Calais, wanting the ceremony to take place in England, "where queens are wont to be married and crowned."

But if she resisted marriage for the moment Anne had clearly calculated that, one way or another, she would very soon be queen. How long she had shared the king's bed is impossible to say. Rumor had it they had been living as man and wife for years, and beyond the large stake both had...