The Queen's Musician by Martha Jean Johnson
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The Queen’s Musician
By Martha Jean Johnson
SparkPress 2025
Almost five hundred years ago, Anne Boleyn refused to become the mistress of King Henry VIII of England. To possess her, Henry worked doggedly for seven years to repudiate his Spanish wife, finally breaking with the Catholic Church to solemnize new vows – but then only three years later had Anne executed on false charges of adultery with five men. For centuries, this downfall has served as the principal gateway into a fascination with all things Tudor, retold countless times in print and on the screen. Martha Jean Johnson’s remarkable debut novel, The Queen’s Musician, has managed to make it seem fresh and new by telling the story from the viewpoints of unexpected players in the drama: Mark Smeaton and Madge Shelton. Smeaton is a commoner with exceptional musical talent, one of the men who died with Anne Boleyn. Madge is Anne’s cousin and one of her ladies, engaged to another of the victims. With little more known about these characters, Johnson was free to create a secret romance between them, a subplot even more compelling than the main action.
The novel opens with Mark Smeaton in the Tower, then plunges into the history that got him there, starting when he was an apprentice musician in the household of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Soon afterwards, Wolsey is disgraced for failing to rid the King of his first wife, but talent and luck get Mark a position as one of the King’s musicians – where he meets and falls in love with Madge, a woman whose lofty status forestalls any hope for a legitimate future together (“I understood what was allowed and what was not. I could only admire Mistress Shelton in my imagination, and even that was fanciful and unwise.”). Madge is equally smitten, equally constrained (“If he had been [a nobleman] – even a younger son with middling prospects – we could have played at romance”). Johnson shines in showing us the plight of a Tudor woman, even (or especially) a well-placed Tudor woman.
“My mother reminded me daily of our good fortune. ‘If [Anne] becomes Queen, you and your sister will marry very well. All the Boleyns will gain.’ That’s the business of mothers, I suppose – finding landed, titled, husbands for their daughters. My mother was devoted to this cause. ‘Your day will come soon,’ she would say, and I would immediately think, ‘Not too soon, I hope.’ At this point in my life, knights and princes in legends intrigued me more than the toadying men at court.”
The book is evenly split between Anne’s rise and her fall. The first half seeds extensive foreshadowing: several times, Mark is warned that his prior association with Wolsey puts him in danger, that he needs to “choose sides” – i.e. show loyalty to the King and the Boleyns. Mark follows the example of a fellow refugee from Wolsey’s household, Thomas Cromwell, though Cromwell remains solely the King’s man while Mark is happy to be recruited to the Boleyn faction by Anne’s brother George. This complicates Mark’s prospects after Anne fails to produce the promised heir, which Johnson skillfully shows alongside Anne’s descent and its inevitability. The Anne who began as flirtatious and “quick to speak her mind in a whispery, teasing tone” turns sour. Where early on “[s]he collected flamboyant declarations of eternal love the way other women collect hats or gloves,” these traits became dangerous liabilities in a betrayed wife, angry, broken and lashing out. Scene after scene shows how
Panic, fury, and too many cups of wine loosened her tongue and made her restless. One day, she called the king “fat,” “smelly,” and “impotent” while her listeners stood by astounded….she goaded Weston and Breton into joining her as they all drank together, and the men flattered her.
Armed with this reckless behavior and goaded by an increasingly frustrated Henry, Cromwell comes up with a scheme to remove Anne. This is not the Cromwell from Hillary Mantel’s well-known trilogy, who is surprised when Mark’s testimony falls in his lap. This is a Cromwell who sets out deliberately to get Mark to confess to a crime he never considered, let alone committed. This is a Cromwell who plays both good cop and bad cop, promising hope and threatening torture to get his way. (Mantel fans will also be interested to see that Johnson’s Mark is the one who remains loyal to Wolsey on multiple levels).
Tudorphiles will thrill to this new version of the story, and to wonderful scenes that are not usually (ever) portrayed: we are accustomed to hear how Anne and Gorge Boleyn outwitted their accusers so effectively that some oddsmakers thought they might go free. This novel goes further, showing us the joint trial of the other four men, the inevitability of their verdicts – and the true impossibility of fighting back. Some purists may take issue with Johnson’s careful manipulation of the exact historical timeline (the Tudorverse can be picky – I have lost review stars for crediting William the Conqueror with building the Tower without mentioning that its design was first conceived by Cnut), but her choices are well-earned by superb writing and soulful characterization. In all, The Queen’s Musician offers a gripping tale for Tudor fans and newcomers alike.
Janet Wertman is the author of the Seymour Saga trilogy. Her new work of Tudor historical fiction is “Nothing Proved.”