“Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”, is the mnemonic used to remember the fates of Henry VIII’s famous six wives. But how can we recall the lives of those forgotten by history, yet no less pulled into the orbit of a volatile king?

In her debut novel, The Queen’s Musician, Martha Jean Johnson takes us behind the scenes of Anne Boleyn’s tumultuous rise and fall to tell the tragic story of court musician, Mark Smeaton. With the sumptuous but claustrophobic court of Henry VIII as backdrop, we witness Mark’s parallel trajectory from obscure musician to court favorite, until he too is caught in the crosshairs of political manipulation.

From tantalizing historical footnotes, Martha Jean Johnson has created an immersive novel from the perspective of real-life lutenist Mark Smeaton and that of his secret love, Madge Shelton.

The Queen’s Musician, released on 5/27/25.

Kathleen Flynn: From the very first chapter of The Queen’s Musician, we know Mark Smeaton is a doomed man imprisoned in the Tower of London and awaiting execution. With the fate of Anne Boleyn and the five men accused of treasonous adultery such a well know historical fact (so many beheadings!), what were the challenges in building suspense and keeping the stakes high?

Martha Jean Johnson: In some respects, the infamy of Anne Boleyn’s death was an asset. In the novel, readers come to know Mark Smeaton and root for him. They meet all the condemned men. The awareness that these human beings will be entrapped, imprisoned, and unjustly executed creates its own tension and heartbreak. We use the phrase “waiting for the axe to fall” to suggest dread. Here, it’s literally true. However, I also continually reminded myself that none of my characters knew their fate until their final weeks. Before that, they had moments of pleasure, disappointment, and triumph. They lived as most of us do, going from day to day.

The action of the novel plays out over the seven years between Anne Boleyn’s installation at Hampton Court and her execution. How did you use the device of the “ticking clock” to speed up or slow down the pacing of the novel?

Although the novel opens with Mark in the Tower, it immediately steps back in time to show how he became a court musician and chronicle his initial years serving Henry VIII. During this period, Anne Boleyn was ascendent, and these early chapters are episodic. They depict Mark’s growing success juxtaposed against Anne Boleyn’s astonishing trajectory. Time passes quickly. Only the reader senses the peril. Then, the relationship between Anne and Henry sours, and suddenly, Thomas Cromwell interrogates Mark, accusing him of adultery and treason with the queen. From this point onward, the storytelling slows. If you’ve ever done any hiking, you know that when you see a plunging descent ahead of you, you take it step-by-step. This is how I thought about the novel’s pacing. I took some time to lay out the conspiracy and final tragedy.

While there is quite a wealth of historical documentation available on several of the real-life personages who appear in your novel, you chose to write about Mark Smeaton, a court lutenist, and Madge Shelton, Anne Boleyn’s cousin and Lady in Waiting, about whom we have only a few meager facts. What drew you to these two?  

Mark intrigued me because he was young, probably 23 or 24 when he died. He was a gifted musician who rose in life against the odds. Then he lost everything in the space of a single day. To me, that’s a story worth writing about. During my research, I had my eye out for a well-off young woman about Mark’s age. I kept encountering these strange tidbits of information about Madge Shelton. She may or may not have been the king’s mistress—or maybe it was her sister. She was betrothed to one of the other doomed men. Some sources mention her beauty and love of poetry and literature. So many possibilities there.

This novel took an enormous amount of painstaking research. In addition to Henry, Anne, their families, and the many nobles vying for power in the court, you introduce us to a vibrant “downstairs” community: servants, artisans, brothel workers, and a large body of court musicians. How did you balance history with story?

Tudor aficionados are typically quite knowledgeable about the history; it’s a sophisticated reading audience. Consequently, I often viewed my plot as a form of braiding. One strand was Mark’s story, which was largely invented. Another was Madge Shelton’s tale, also mainly a product of my imagination. But the third was Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall which is much better documented. I tried to stick to the record regarding the queen. And since Mark was “only a musician,” I believed it was important to show the breadth and variety of his world when he left the royal halls and chambers.

You deftly weave the beautiful song, “Greensleeves”, one time considered to be a composition of Henry VIII, into the plot of the novel. How did you steep yourself in the music of the period and learn about the crafts of lutenists and composers? Did you have a Tudor playlist as you wrote?  

I’ve always loved classical music, and a close friend is a dazzling pianist and composer. I gained much of my understanding about “the musical life” from him—the elation music offers, the practice and focus, the care for the instruments, the bonds that form among musicians and between musicians and their teachers. I see those qualities in Mark. And yes, I listened to and learned about Renaissance music during my research. Now I follow a number of choral groups and soloists. Traditional English music is often haunting, like “Greensleeves”, and the sacred music with the boys’ choirs is sublime.

The Queen’s Musician is definitely Mark Smeaton’s story, but you alternate chapters between Mark and Madge Shelton. What lead you to the decision to have two POV characters?

Partly it was the chance to explore two contrasting perspectives on Anne Boleyn—one from afar and one from within her intimate circle. Mark and Madge come from different levels of Tudor society, so the disparities between them interested me. Plus, I thoroughly enjoyed describing a “love at first sight” romance from opposing viewpoints. That was truly fun.

In the drafting and editing process, did you make any huge changes? What were your biggest challenges in completing the novel? 

My first draft told the story solely from Mark’s perspective. But during that period, I read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. Both switch the storytelling back and forth among different characters, and I found both utterly compelling. Deciding to adopt the dual narrator strategy was my most significant change. The biggest challenge was coping with the massive amount of historical detail. I tried to follow Elmore Leonard’s advice: “Leave out the boring stuff.”

You are a prolific and well-published writer of non-fiction, but a first-time novelist. What challenges did you face when diving into the world of make-believe in a novel based on historical fact?

At first, I was gleeful at the prospect of ditching the fact-checking. Then I realized that if I planned to write credible historical fiction, I needed to stay within the lanes of the documented truth. The fact-checking came back. Luckily, no one knows what any of my principals were thinking, so I had much more leeway there. For me, the biggest difference between writing non-fiction and fiction is the need to create characters and make them nuanced and lifelike. In a novel, you work hard to develop your core group of characters, and then you fall in love with them.

We seem to have an insatiable hunger for all things Tudor! What is it about this time period and these individuals that keeps us so in thrall? In what ways were you able to create a fresh take on the period?

The basics are inherently dramatic, aren’t they? Henry VIII married six times and had two of his wives executed. No one had to make that up. My guess is that part of today’s fascination with the Tudors rests on the roster of strong women we can read and write about—from Katherine of Aragon to Elizabeth I. That’s very tempting. At the same time, most Tudor fiction revolves around the royals, not people who are more like most of us. That was my opening. To my knowledge, no one else has told the Anne Boleyn story from Mark’s vantage point. After several hundred years, it seems only fair to give him a voice.

Martha Jean Johnson is the author of four nonfiction books on politics and public opinion. Her debut novel, The Queen’s Musician, was published by SparkPress on May 27, 2025, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. She also reviews historical fiction and discusses her own love of reading and writing in her biweekly Substack, Historical Magic.

During a long public policy career, she analyzed and reported on American public thinking, working with noted social analyst and public opinion pioneer, Daniel Yankelovich. She has published articles in USA Today and The Huffington Post and appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. She is the author of three nonfiction books with Scott Bittle—all from HarperCollins: Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis; Who Turned Out the Lights? Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis; and Where Did the Jobs Go? In 2012, she published You Can’t Do It Alone: A Communications and Engagement Manual for School Leaders Committed to Reform (Rowman & Littlefield). She has also worked with the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), an organization that encourages civil discourse and nonpartisan deliberation on national and local issues. Recently, she partnered with NIFI and John Immerwahr to create and test an online town hall meeting prototype called Everyone’s In.