The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  I found my heart was pounding. I put my hand to my throat as if I would still it. “What sort of hell?”

  “Wolsey’s still in Europe but the Pope is forewarned and won’t have him as deputy. None of the cardinals will support him and even the peace deal has fallen through. We’re back at war with Spain. Henry’s sent his secretary flying off to Orvieto, straight to the Pope’s prison, to ask him to annul the marriage himself, and allow Henry to marry any woman he pleases, even one whose sister he has had, even one he has had. Either a whore herself or a whore’s sister.”

  I gasped. “He’s getting permission to marry a woman he’s had? Dear God, not me?”

  William’s sharp laugh barked out. “Anne. He’s making provision for bedding her before marriage. The Boleyn girls don’t come out of this very well, do they?”

  I sat back in my chair and took a little breath. I did not want my husband to taunt me about unchastity. “And so?”

  “And so it all rests with the Holy Father who is reposing in the care of the queen’s nephew at Orvieto Castle and very very unlikely, I would think—wouldn’t you?—to issue a papal bull which legitimizes the most unchaste behavior one can think of: sleeping with a woman, sleeping with her sister, and marrying one of them. Least of all to a king whose legitimate wife is a woman of unsullied reputation, whose nephew holds the power in Europe.”

  I gasped. “So the queen has won?”

  He nodded. “Again.”

  “How is Anne?”

  “Enchanting,” he said. “First up in the morning. Laughing and singing all day, delighting the eye, diverting the mind, up with the king to hear Mass, riding out with him all day, walking in the gardens with him, watching him play tennis, sitting beside him while the clerks read the letters to him, playing word games, reading philosophy with him and discussing it like a theologian, dancing all night, choreographing masques, planning entertainments, last to bed.”

  “She is?” I asked.

  “A perfect perfect mistress,” he said. “She never stops. I should think she’s dead on her feet.”

  There was a silence. He drained his cup.

  “So we are as we were,” I said disbelievingly. “No further forward at all.”

  He smiled his warm smile at me. “No, I think you are worse than you were,” he said. “For now you are out in the open and every huntsman knows the quarry. The Howards have broken cover. Everyone knows now that you are playing for the throne. Before, you all looked as if you were only after wealth and places, much like the rest of us, only a touch more predatory. Now we all know that you are aiming for the highest apple on the tree. Everyone will hate you.”

  “Not me,” I said fervently. “I’m staying here.”

  He shook his head. “You’re coming to Norfolk with me.”

  I froze. “What d’you mean?”

  “The king has no use for you, but I have. I married a girl and she is still my wife. You shall come with me to my home and we shall live together.”

  “The children…”

  “Will come with us. We shall live as I wish.” He paused. “As I wish,” he repeated.

  I got to my feet, I was suddenly afraid of him, this man whom I had married and bedded and never known. “I still have powerful kin,” I warned him.

  “You should be glad of it,” he said. “For if you had not, I would have put you aside five years ago when you first crammed cuckold’s horns on my head. This is not a good time for wives, madam, I think you and your family will find in the mess you have made you may all slip and tumble down.”

  “I have done nothing but obey my family and my king.” My voice was steady, I did not want him to know that I was afraid.

  “And now you will obey your husband,” he said, his voice all silk. “How glad I am that you have such years of training.”

  Anne—

  William says that us Boleyns are lost and he is taking me and the children to Norfolk. For pity’s sake speak to the king for me, or to Uncle Howard or to Father, before I am taken away and cannot get back.

  M

  I slipped down the little stone stairs that led into my father’s study and from there out into the courtyard. I beckoned one of the Boleyn men and told him to ride with my note to the court which would be somewhere on the road between Beaulieu and Greenwich.

  He tipped his hat to me and took the letter. “Make sure it gets to Mistress Anne,” I said. “It is important.”

  We had dinner in the great hall. William was urbane as ever, the perfect courtier, keeping up a stream of news and gossip about the court. Grandmother Boleyn could not be comforted. She was resentful, but she did not dare openly to complain. Who could tell a man that he might not take his wife and children to his home?

  As soon as they brought the candles in she heaved herself to her feet.

  “I’m for my bed,” she said sulkily. William rose to his feet and bowed to her as she left the room.

  Before he sat he reached inside his doublet and took out a letter. I recognized my writing at once. It was my letter to Anne. He tossed it down on the table before me.

  “Not very loyal,” he remarked.

  I picked it up. “Not very polite to stop my servants and read my letters.”

  He smiled at me. “My servants and my letters,” he said. “You are my wife. Everything that is yours is mine. Everything that is mine I keep. Including the children and the woman who carries my name.”

  I sat opposite him and I put my hands flat on the table. I drew a breath to steady myself. I reminded myself that although I was a woman of only nineteen years, for four and a half of those years I had been the mistress of the King of England, and I had been born and bred a Howard.

  “Now hear this, husband,” I said steadily. “What is past, is past. You were happy enough to get your title and your lands and your wealth and the favor of the king, and we all know why those came to you. I have no shame in it, you have no shame in it. Anyone in our position would have been glad of it, and both you and I know that it is no sinecure earning and keeping the king’s favor.”

  William looked taken aback at my sudden frankness.

  “The Howards will not fall over this mischance of Wolsey’s. It is Wolsey’s miscalculation, not ours. The game is far from over yet, and if you knew my Uncle Howard as well as I do you would be in no hurry to assume that he is defeated.”

  William nodded.

  “I am very sure that our enemies are at our heels, that the Seymours are ready to take our place at a moment’s notice, that already some Seymour girl somewhere in England is being primed to take the king’s eye. That’s always true. There’s always a rival. But right now, whether or not he is free to marry her, Anne’s star is in the ascendancy, and all of us Howards—and you too, husband—serve our own interests best if we support her rise.”

  “She looks like she is skating on melting ice,” he said abruptly. “She is trying too hard. She is sweating to keep her place at his side, she never lets up for a moment. Anyone watching carefully could see it.”

  “What does it matter who sees it, as long as he does not?”

  William laughed. “Because she can’t keep it up. She is dancing him at her fingertip ends, she can’t do that forever. She might have held him till the autumn but no woman can do it forever. No man can be held the way she will have to hold him. She could hold him for weeks; but now Wolsey has failed it might be months. It could be years.”

  I was checked for a moment at the thought of Anne getting old while making merry. “But what else can she do?”

  “Nothing,” he said with a wolfish grin. “But you and I can go to my house and start to live as a married couple. I want a son who looks like me, not a little blond Tudor. I want a daughter with my dark eyes. And you are going to give them to me.”

  I bowed my head. “I won’t be reproached.”

  He shrugged. “You will bear whatever treatment I give you. You are my wife, are you not?”

  “Yes.”

 
“Unless you too would like an annulment, since marriage seems to be out of fashion? You could be enclosed in a nunnery if you wish?”

  “No.”

  “Then go to my bed,” he said simply. “I shall be up in a minute.”

  I froze at that. I had not thought of it. He looked at me over the top of his cup of wine. “What?”

  “Can we wait till we get to Norfolk?”

  “No,” he said.

  I undressed slowly, wondering at my own reluctance. I had bedded with the king a dozen times when I felt no desire at all but merely followed his wishes and satisfied him. Every time in this last year when I knew that he desired Anne, I had forced myself to hold him and whisper “sweetheart” and known myself to be a whore—and the man a fool not to know the false coin from the real.

  So I was no thirteen-year-old virgin as I had been when I had first been put to bed with this man to consummate the marriage. But I was not yet a woman of such cynicism that I could prepare without dread for bed with a man who seemed half-enemy. William had a score to settle with me, and I was afraid of him.

  He took his time. I climbed slowly into bed and feigned sleep when the door opened and he came in. I heard him moving around the room, stripping naked and getting into bed beside me. I felt the weight of the covers lift as he pulled them up around his bare shoulders.

  “Not asleep then?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  In the darkness his hands came out for me and found my face, stroked my neck to my shoulders, and thence to my waist. I was wearing my linen shift but I could feel the coldness of his hands through the fine cloth. I heard his breathing come a little faster. He pulled me toward him and I yielded, and spread myself ready for him as I always did for Henry. For a moment I checked, thinking that I did not know what to do for any man but Henry.

  “You’re not willing?” he asked.

  “Of course I am willing. I am your wife,” I said levelly.

  I feared he might trap me into a refusal which would allow him to put me aside; but his little sigh of disappointment showed me that he was genuinely hoping for a warmer response. “We’ll sleep then.”

  I was so relieved that I dared not say a word in case he changed his mind. I lay perfectly still until he turned his back on me, pulled the covers up over his shoulders, thumped his head down on the pillows and was quiet. Then, and only then, did I let my belly unknot and wiped the insincere Howard smile from my face. I let myself drift into sleep. I had survived another night, I was still at Hever, the Howards had everything to play for. Anything might happen tomorrow.

  We were woken by a knocking on the door. I was up and out of bed before William could wake and catch my hand. I opened the door and said sharply: “Hush. My lord is sleeping,” as if that were my only concern and not that I was determined to get out of his bed as quickly as possible.

  “Urgent message from Mistress Anne,” the servant said and offered me a letter.

  I dearly wanted to throw on a cloak and read it far away from William but he was awake and sitting up. “Our dear sister,” he said with a mocking smile. “And what does she say?”

  I had no choice but to open the letter before him and hope to God that Anne was thinking of someone else for once in her selfish life.

  Sister,

  The king and I bid you and your husband come to meet us at Richmond where we will all be merry.

  Anne

  William held out his hand for the letter. I handed it over.

  “She guessed I was coming for you when I left court,” he observed. I said nothing. “And so hip-hop, with one bound you are free of me,” he said bitterly. “And we are back where we were.”

  He had spoken my very thought but behind the hardness of his tone I saw his hurt. Cuckold’s horns are not a comfortable headdress and he had been wearing them now for five years. Slowly I went to the bed. I put out my hand to him. “I am your wedded wife,” I said gently. “And I never forgot it, though our lives took us far apart. If we ever have to be married in very truth, William, you will find me a good wife to you.”

  He looked up at me. “Is this a Howard speaking who fears the turning of the tide and thinks that life as Lady Carey would be a safer bet than being the other Boleyn girl when the first Boleyn girl is ruined?”

  His guess was so precise that I had to turn my head rather than risk him seeing the truth in my eyes. “Oh, William,” I said reproachfully.

  He drew me down to him and turned my face toward him with his finger under my chin. “Dearest wife,” he said sarcastically.

  I closed my eyes rather than meet his scrutiny and then, to my surprise, felt the warmth of his face and tender, gentle little kisses on my lips. I felt desire well up in me like a long-forgotten spring. I put my hands around his neck and pulled him a little closer.

  “I made a bad beginning last night,” he said gently. “So not now, and not here. But perhaps somewhere soon, don’t you think, little wife?”

  I smiled up at him, hiding my relief at not being taken to Norfolk. “Somewhere soon,” I agreed. “Whenever you wish, William.”

  Autumn 1527

  ANNE AT RICHMOND WAS QUEEN IN ALL BUT NAME. SHE HAD new apartments, which were adjacent to the king’s, she had ladies in waiting, she had a dozen new gowns, she had jewels, she had a couple of hunters to ride out with the king, she sat with him when his counselors discussed the matters of the country with him, she had her own chair at his side. Only in the great hall when the true queen came in to dinner was Anne demoted to a table on the floor of the hall while Katherine sat down to dinner in her majesty.

  I was to sleep in Anne’s apartments, partly to give her countenance so that no one might think that the king’s constant companionship meant that they were lovers, but in truth, to help her keep him at arm’s length. He was desperate to have her, arguing that since they were betrothed they might bed. Anne played every trick she could summon. She protested her virginity and said that she would never forgive herself if she gave away her maidenhead before marriage, though God knew how much she desired him. She said that she would never forgive herself if she did not come before him on their wedding night a maid untouched—though God knew how much she desired him. She said that if he loved her as much as he said he did he would love the holy purity of her soul—though God knew la la la—and she said that she was afraid, that she both yearned for and shrank from him, that she needed time.

  “How long can it take?” she snarled at George and me. “For God’s sake! For some damn clerk to ride to Rome, get a paper signed and ride back? How long can it take?”

  We were tucked away in our bedroom at the back of her privy chamber, the only private place in the whole of the palace. Everywhere else we were on unending public show. Everyone watched Anne for the slightest clue that the king was losing interest, or that he had finally had her. She was scanned by a hundred eyes for any sign of either desertion or pregnancy. George and I felt like her bodyguard some days, on other days like today we felt like jailers. She was prowling up and down in the small space, swishing between bed and window, unable to stop moving, unable to stop muttering.

  George caught her hands and brought her to a standstill. One glance over her head warned me to grab her from behind if she went into one of her rages.

  “Anne, be calm. We have to go out and watch the boatmen race at any moment. You have to be calm.”

  She quivered in his grip and then the anger went out of her and her shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said steadily. “But this could go on for a long while yet, Anne. You’re playing for the greatest prize in the world. You have to prepare yourself for a long game of skill.”

  “If she would only die!” she suddenly flared up.

  George’s glance went at once to the solid wooden door. “Hush. She might,” he said. “Or Wolsey might have pulled it off. He could be sailing up the river right now, and you could be wed tomorrow and in the king’s bed tomorrow ni
ght and pregnant the next morning. Be at peace, Anne. Everything rests on you keeping your looks.”

  “And your temper,” I supplemented quietly.

  “You dare advise me?”

  “He won’t stand for tantrums,” I warned her. “He’s spent all his married life with Katherine and she never raised so much as an eyebrow at him, let alone her voice. He’ll let you go far because he’s mad for you. But he won’t stand for one of your scenes.”

  She looked as if she might flare up again, but then she nodded as she acknowledged the sense of it. “Yes, I know. That’s why I need you two.”

  We both stepped a little closer to her, George still grasping her hands, and I put my hands on her hips and held her tightly.

  “I know,” George said. “We’re in this together. This is for all of us: Boleyns and Howards. We all rise or fall on this. We’re all waiting and playing the long game. You have to lead the charge, Anne. But we’re all behind you.”

  She nodded and turned to the new large mirror mounted on the wall, reflecting the light from the gardens and the river outside. She pushed back her hood, she straightened the pearl necklace. She turned her head and looked sideways at her reflection and tried that mischievous, promising smile. “I’m ready,” she said.

  We made way for her as if she were queen already. As she went out of the door with her head held high George and I exchanged a swift look of players who have pushed the principal on stage, and we followed behind her.

  My husband was on the royal barge to watch the boatmen race and he smiled at me and made a place beside him on the bench. George joined the young men of the court, Francis Weston among them. I glanced to see that Anne was seated beside the king. By the flighty turn of her head and her sideways glance at him I could see that she was in full control of herself and of him, once more.