The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “Walk with me in the gardens before dinner,” my husband said quietly in my ear.

  At once I was alert. “Why?”

  He laughed at me. “Oh, you Howards! Because I like your company, because I ask it of you. Because we are man and wife and we may live as man and wife any day now.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I don’t forget it.”

  “Perhaps you will learn to anticipate it with pleasure?”

  “Perhaps,” I said sweetly.

  He looked out over the river where the afternoon sun was sparkling on the water. The boats of the noblemen all manned by their liveried rowers were drawn up under the starter’s orders. They made a colorful sight with the oars held high like trumpets, waiting for the command to start. They all looked toward the king, who took a scarlet silk kerchief and gave it to Anne. She stepped up to the edge of the royal barge and held it high over her head. For a moment she held the pose, well aware that all eyes were on her. From where I was sitting with William we could see her in profile, her head flung back, her hood well back from her face, her pale skin flushing with pleasure, her dark green gown tight around her breasts and slim waist. She was the very essence of desire. She dropped the red kerchief and the boats leaped forward under the thrust of the oars. She did not go back to her seat at the king’s side, she had a moment where she forgot to play the queen. She leaned over the rail so that she could see as the Howard boat pulled ahead of the Seymours.

  “Come on, Howards!” she suddenly shouted. “Come on!”

  As if they heard her call above all the other shouting from the riverbank the rowers quickened their stroke and the boat surged forward, paused, and surged forward again to a quicker tempo than the Seymours’. I was on my feet now, everybody was cheering, the royal barge dipped precariously as the whole court forgot its dignity and crowded onto one side and yelled for their favorite house. The king himself, laughing like a boy again with his arm around Anne’s waist, was watching, careful not to shout for one lord or another, but clearly willing the Howards to win since that would delight the girl in his arms.

  They went faster, the oars a blur of splashing water and light, and at the line they were unquestionably half a length before the Seymours. There was a great drum roll and a blast of trumpets to tell the Seymours that it was all over for them, that we had won the boat race, that we had won the race to be the first family in the kingdom, and that it was our girl in the arms of the king with her eye on the throne of England.

  Cardinal Wolsey came home, not in triumph with an annulment in his pocket, but in disgrace, and found that he could not even talk to Henry alone. The man who had managed every single thing from the amount of wine served at banquets to the terms of the peace with France and Spain found that he had to make his report before Anne and Henry, side by side, as if they were joint monarchs. The girl he had scolded for unchastity and for aiming too high sat at the right hand of the King of England and looked at him with narrowed eyes as if she were not very impressed with what he had to say.

  The cardinal was too old and wily a courtier to let any surprize show on his face. He bowed very pleasantly to Anne and made his report. Anne smiled very equably and listened, leaned forward, whispered a little poison in Henry’s ear, and listened some more.

  “Idiot!” she stormed in our little room. I was sitting on the bed, my feet drawn out of the way. She was on her track running from window to bedpost like one of the lions in the Tower, I thought idly that she would leave a mark on the polished floorboards and we could show it to those who like relics and signs. We could call it “Anne’s Martyrdom to Time.”

  “He’s a fool, and we have got nowhere!”

  “What does he say?”

  “That it is a serious matter to put aside the aunt of the man who holds the Pope and half of Europe in his grasp, and that, God willing, Charles of Spain will be defeated by Italy and France together when they go to war, and that England should promise support but not risk a man nor loose an arrow.”

  “We wait?”

  She threw her hands above her head and screamed. “We wait? No! You can wait! The cardinal can wait! Henry can wait! But I have to dance on the spot, I have to be seen to make progress while actually making none. I have to retain the illusion of things happening, I have to make Henry feel more and more intensely loved, I have to give him the belief that things are getting better and better because he is a king and all his life everyone has told him that he shall have the very best. He has been promised cream and gold and honey, I cannot give him ‘wait.’ How am I to keep going? How am I to do it?”

  I wished that George was here. “You’ll manage,” I said. “You’ll go on as you have been going. You’ve done wonderfully well, Anne.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I will be old and exhausted before this is done.”

  Gently I took her and turned her toward her grand Venetian glass mirror. “Look,” I said.

  Anne could always be comforted by the sight of her own beauty. She paused and took a breath.

  “And you’re brilliant as well,” I reminded her. “He is always saying that you have the sharpest mind in the kingdom and if you were a man he would have you for cardinal.”

  She smiled a little sharp feral smile. “That must please Wolsey.”

  I smiled back, my face next to hers in the mirror, the two of us, as ever, a contrast in looks, in coloring, in expression. “I’m sure,” I said. “But there’s nothing Wolsey can do.”

  “He doesn’t even see the king without an appointment now,” she gloated. “I’ve seen to that. They don’t wander off together for their friendly little talks as they used to. Nothing is decided without me being there. He cannot come to the palace for a meeting with the king without notifying the king and notifying me. He is pushed out of power and I am inside it.”

  “You’ve done wonderfully well,” I said, the words sickening me as they soothed her. “And you have years and years ahead of you, Anne.”

  Winter 1527

  WILLIAM AND I SLIPPED INTO A COMFORTABLE ROUTINE WHICH was almost domestic, though it revolved around the wishes of the king and of Anne. I still slept in her bed at night and to all intents and purposes lived with her in the rooms that we shared. To the outer world we were both still the queen’s ladies in waiting, no more and no less than the others.

  But from morning to night Anne was with the king, as close to his side as a newly wed bride, as a chief counselor, as a best friend. She would return to our chamber only to change her gown or lie on the bed and snatch a rest while he was at Mass, or when he wanted to ride out with his gentlemen. Then she would lie in silence, like one who has dropped dead of exhaustion. Her gaze would be blank on the canopy of the bed, her eyes wide open, seeing nothing. She would breathe slowly and steadily as if she were sick. She would not speak at all.

  When she was in this state I learned to leave her alone. She had to find some way to rest from the unending public performance. She had to be unstoppably charming, not just to the king but to everyone who might glance in her direction. One moment of looking less than radiant and a rumor storm would swirl around the court and engulf her, and engulf us all with her.

  When she rose up from her bed and went to the king, William and I would spend time together. We met almost as strangers and he courted me. It was the oddest, simplest and sweetest thing that an estranged husband has ever done for an errant wife. He sent me little posies of flowers, sometimes sprigs of holly leaves and the rose-pink berries of yew. He sent me a little gilt bracelet. He wrote me the prettiest poems praising my gray eyes and my fair hair and asking for my favor as if I were his lady love. When I sent for my horse to ride out with Anne I would find a note tucked into my stirrup leather. When I pulled back my sheets to get into bed with Anne at night I would find a sweetmeat wrapped in gilt paper. He showered me with little gifts and little notes and whenever we were together at a court banquet or at the archery butts, or watching the players on the tennis court, he would lean toward me and
whisper out of the side of his mouth:

  “Come to my room, wife.”

  I would giggle as if I were his new mistress instead of a wife of many years’ standing and I would step back from the crowd, and a few moments later he would slip away, to meet in the confined space of his bedchamber on the west wall of Greenwich Palace. Then he would take me in his arms and say delightfully, promisingly: “We have only a moment, my love, only an hour at the most: so this shall be all for you.”

  He would lie me on the bed, unlace my tight stomacher, caress my breasts, stroke my belly, and pleasure me in every way he could think of until I cried out in joy: “Oh William! Oh my love! You are the best, you are the best, you are the very very best.”

  And at that moment, with the smile of the well-praised man through all the ages, he would let himself pour into me and rest on my shoulder with a shuddering sigh.

  For me it was desire, and only a small part calculation. If Anne should fall, and we Boleyns fall with her, then I would be very glad to have a husband who loved me and who had a handsome manor in Norfolk, a title and wealth. And besides, the children carried his name, and he could order them to his house at a moment’s notice if he so pleased. I would have told the devil himself that he was the best, the very very best, if it kept me with my children.

  Anne was merry at the Christmas feast. She danced as if nothing would stop her from dancing all day and all night. She gambled as if she had a queen’s fortune to lose. She had an understanding with me and with George; we immediately returned the money later, in private. But when she lost to the king her hard-earned money disappeared into the royal purse and was never seen again. And she had to lose to him whenever they played: he hated it when anyone else won.

  He showered her with gifts and with honor, he led her out at every dance. She was the crowned queen in every masque. But still Katherine sat at the head table and smiled on Anne as if the honor was in her gift, as if Anne was her deputy, by her consent. And the Princess Mary, the little thin white-faced princess, sat beside her mother and smiled at Anne as if she were enormously amused at this light-footed pretender to the throne.

  “God, I hate her,” Anne said, as she was getting undressed at night. “She is the very image of them both, the moon-faced thing.”

  I hesitated. There was no point in arguing with Anne. Princess Mary had grown to be a girl of rare prettiness, with a face so filled with character and determination that you could not doubt for a moment that she was her mother’s daughter through and through. When she looked down the hall at Anne and at me it was as if she looked straight through us, as if we were nothing but clear panes of Venetian glass and all she wanted to know was what might be beyond. She did not seem to envy us, nor see us as rivals to her father’s attention or even as a danger to her mother’s place. She saw us as a pair of light women, so insubstantial that the wind might blow us away in a merciful puff.

  She was a witty girl, only eleven years old but capable of making a pun or turning a jest in English, French, Spanish or Latin. Anne was quick and a scholar, but she had not had the teaching of this little princess and she envied her that too. And the girl had all of her mother’s presence. Whether or not Anne ever became queen she had been born and bred to be a snapper-up of privilege and place. Princess Mary had been born to rights that we could only dream of. She had an assurance that neither of us could ever learn. She had a grace that came from absolute confidence in her position in the world. Of course Anne hated her.

  “She’s nothing,” I said comfortingly. “Let me brush your hair.”

  There was a quiet tap at the door and George slid into the room before we could call out “Enter.”

  “I’m in a terror of being seen by my wife,” he said by way of excuse. He waved a bottle of wine at us and three pewter cups. “She’s been dancing and she’s hot tonight. She all but ordered me to our bed. If she saw me come in here she’d be wild.”

  “She’s bound to have seen you.” Anne took a glass of George’s wine. “She misses nothing, that woman.”

  “She should have been a spy. She would have loved to have been a spy specializing in fornication.”

  I giggled and let him pour me a measure of wine. “Wouldn’t take much skill to track you down,” I pointed out. “You’re always in here.”

  “It’s the only place I can be myself.”

  “Not the whorehouse?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t go any more, I’ve lost my taste for it.”

  “Are you in love?” Anne asked cynically.

  To my surprise he glanced away and flushed. “Not I.”

  “What is it, George?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Something and nothing. Something I cannot tell you and nothing I dare to do.”

  “Someone at court?” Anne demanded, intrigued.

  He pulled up a stool before the fire and looked deep into the embers. “If I tell you, then you must swear to tell no one.”

  We nodded, absolutely sisters in our determination to know everything.

  “More than that, you won’t even say anything to each other when I am gone. I don’t want your comments behind my back.”

  This time we hesitated. “Swear to not even talk among ourselves?”

  “Yes, or I say nothing.”

  We hesitated, and then curiosity overcame us. “All right,” said Anne, speaking for us both. “We swear.”

  His young handsome face crumpled and he buried his face into the rich sleeve of his jacket. “I’m in love with a man,” he said simply.

  “Francis Weston,” I said at once.

  His silence told me that I had guessed right.

  Anne’s face was one of stunned horror. “Does he know?”

  He shook his head, still buried among the rich red velvet of his embroidered sleeve.

  “Does anyone else know?”

  Again his brown head shook.

  “Then you must never give any hint of it, never tell anyone,” she ordered him. “This must be the first and last time you speak of it to anyone, even to us. You must cut him out of your heart and mind and never even look at him again.”

  He looked up at her. “I know it’s hopeless.”

  But her advice was not for his benefit. “You endanger me,” she said. “The king’ll never marry me if you bring shame to us.”

  “Is that it?” he demanded, in sudden rage. “Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, married to a snake and in love with a heartbreaker, but only, only, that Mistress Anne Boleyn’s reputation must be without blemish.”

  At once she flew at him, her hands spread like claws, and he caught her wrists before she could rake his face. “Look at me!” she hissed. “Didn’t I give up my only love, didn’t I break my heart? Didn’t you tell me then that it was worth the price?”

  He held her away but she was unstoppable. “Look at Mary! Didn’t we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don’t whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone.”

  George was struggling with her and I gripped her from behind, pulling her off him. Suddenly, the fight went out of her and the three of us stood still, like masquers forming a tableau, me hugging her waist, him holding her wrists, her stretched hands still inches from his face.

  “Good God, what a family we are,” he said wonderingly. “Good God, what have we come to?”

  “It’s where we’re going that matters,” she said harshly.

  George met her gaze and nodded slowly, like a man taking an oath. “Yes,” he sighed. “I won’t forget.”

  “You’ll give up your love,” she stipulated. “And never mention his name again.”

  Again the defeated nod.

  “And you’ll remember that nothing matters more than this, my road to the throne.”

/>   “I’ll remember.”

  I felt myself shudder, and I let go her waist. There was something in that whispered pledge that felt not like a pact with Anne but like a promise to the devil.

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  They both looked at me, the matching brown dark eyes of the Boleyns, the long straight noses, that impertinent quirky little mouth.

  “It’s not worth life itself,” I said, trying to make light of it.

  Neither of them smiled.

  “It is,” Anne said simply.

  Summer 1528

  ANNE DANCED, RODE, SANG, GAMBLED, SAILED ON THE RIVER, went picnicking, walked in the gardens and played in the tableau as if she had no care in the world. She grew whiter and whiter. The shadows under her eyes went darker and darker and she started to use powder to hide the hollows under her eyes. I laced her more and more loosely as she lost weight, and then we had to pad her gown to make her breasts show plump as they used to.

  She met my eyes in the mirror as I was lacing her and she looked every inch the older sister. She looked years older than me.

  “I’m so tired,” she whispered. Even her lips were pale.

  “I warned you,” I said without sympathy.

  “You’d have done the same if you had the wit and the beauty to hold him.”

  I leaned forward so that my face was close to hers and she could see the bloom on my cheeks and my eyes bright, and my color high beside her own drawn fatigue. “I don’t have wit or beauty?” I repeated.

  She turned to the bed. “I’m going to rest,” she said ungraciously. “You can go.”

  I saw her into bed, and then I went out, running down the stone stairs to the gardens outside. It was a wonderful day, the sun was bright and warm and the light was sparkling on the river. The little boats plying across the river wove in and out of the bigger ships waiting for the tide to set sail for the sea. There was a light wind coming upriver and it brought the smell of salt and adventure into the well-kept garden. I saw my husband walking with a couple of men on the lower terrace and I waved at him.