The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “You are better now?” he asked me in an undertone.

  “Never better in all my life, sire.”

  “I am riding out tomorrow,” he said. “Would you care to come with me?”

  “If Her Majesty can spare me,” I said, determined not to risk the queen’s displeasure.

  “I will ask the queen to release you for the morning. I shall tell her that you need the fresh air.”

  I smiled. “What a fine physician you would make, Your Majesty. If you can make a diagnosis and provide the cure all in the space of a day.”

  “You must be an obedient patient and do whatever I advise,” he warned me.

  “I will.” I looked down at my fingers. I could feel his gaze on me. I was soaring, higher than I could have dreamed.

  “I may order you to bed for days at a time,” he said, his voice very low.

  I snatched a quick look at his intense gaze on my face and felt myself blush and heard myself stammer into silence. The music abruptly stopped. “Do play again!” my mother said. Queen Katherine looked around for the king and saw him seated with me. “Shall we dance?” she asked.

  It was a royal command. Anne and Henry Percy took their places in a set, the musicians started to play. I rose to my feet and Henry went to sit beside his wife and watch us. George was my partner.

  “Head up,” he snapped as he took my hand. “You look hang-dog.”

  “She’s watching me,” I whispered back.

  “Course she is. More to the point he’s watching you. And most important of all, Father and Uncle Howard are watching you, and they expect you to carry yourself as a young woman on the rise. Up you go, Mistress Carey, and all of us go up with you.”

  I raised my head at that and I smiled at my brother as if I were carefree. I danced as gracefully as I could, I dipped and turned and twirled under his careful hand. And when I looked up at the king and the queen they were both watching me.

  They held a family conference at my uncle Howard’s great house in London. We met in his library where the dark bound books muffled the noise from the streets. Two men in our Howard livery were stationed outside the door to prevent any interruptions, and to ensure that no one stopped and eavesdropped. We were to discuss family business, family secrets. No one but a Howard could come near.

  I was the very cause and subject of the meeting. I was the hub around which these events would turn. I was the Boleyn pawn that must be played to advantage. Everything was concentrated on me. I felt my very wrists throb with a sense of my own importance, and a contradictory flutter of anxiety that I would fail them.

  “Is she fertile?” Uncle Howard asked my mother.

  “Her courses are regular enough and she’s a healthy girl.”

  My uncle nodded. “If the king has her, and she conceives his bastard, then we have much to play for.” I noticed with a sort of terrified concentration that the fur on the hem of his sleeves brushed against the wood of the table, the richness of his coat took on a luster from the light of the flames of the fire behind him. “She can’t sleep in Carey’s bed any more. The marriage has to be put aside while the king favors her.”

  I gave a little gasp. I could not think who would say such a thing to my husband. And besides, we had sworn that we would stay together, that marriage was for the making of children, that God had put us together and no man could put us apart.

  “I don’t…” I started.

  Anne tweaked at my gown. “Hush,” she hissed. The seed pearls on her French hood winked at me like bright-eyed conspirators.

  “I’ll speak to Carey,” my father said.

  George took my hand. “If you conceive a child the king has to know that it is his and none other’s.”

  “I can’t be his mistress,” I whispered back.

  “No choice.” He shook his head.

  “I can’t do it,” I said out loud. I gripped tightly on my brother’s comforting clasp and looked down the long dark wood table to my uncle, as sharp as a falcon with black eyes that missed nothing. “Sir, I am sorry, but I love the queen. She’s a great lady and I can’t betray her. I promised before God to cleave only to my husband, and surely I shouldn’t betray him? I know the king is the king; but you can’t want me to? Surely? Sir, I can’t do it.”

  He did not answer me. Such was his power that he did not even consider replying. “What am I supposed to do with this delicate conscience?” he asked the air above the table.

  “Leave it to me,” Anne said simply. “I can explain things to Mary.”

  “You’re a little young for the task of tutor.”

  She met his look with her quiet confidence. “I was reared in the most fashionable court in the world,” she said. “And I was not idle. I watched everything. I learned all there was to see. I know what is needed here, and I can teach Mary how to behave.”

  He hesitated for a moment. “You had better not have studied flirtation too closely, Miss Anne.”

  Her serenity was that of a nun. “Of course not.”

  I felt my shoulder lift, as if I would shrug her away. “I don’t see why I should do what Anne says.”

  I had disappeared, though this whole meeting was supposed to be about me. Anne had stolen their attention. “Well, I shall trust you to coach your sister. George, you too. You know how the king is with women, keep Mary in his sight.”

  They nodded. There was a brief silence.

  “I’ll speak with Carey’s father,” my father volunteered. “William will be expecting it. He’s no fool.”

  My uncle glanced down the table to Anne and George where they stood either side of me, more like jailers than friends. “You help your sister,” he ordered them. “Whatever she needs to ensnare the king, you give her. Whatever arts she needs, whatever goods she should have, whatever skills she lacks, you get them for her. We are looking to the two of you to get her into his bed. Don’t forget it. There will be great rewards. But if you fail, there will be nothing for us at all. Remember it.”

  My parting with my husband was curiously painful. I walked into our bedroom as my maid was packing my things to take them to the queen’s rooms. He stood amid the chaos of shoes and gowns thrown on the bed, and cloaks tossed over chairs, and jewel boxes everywhere; and his young face showed his shock.

  “I see you are on the rise, madam.”

  He was a handsome young man, one that any woman might have favored. I thought that if we had not been ordered by our families into this marriage and now out of it that we might have liked each other. “I am sorry,” I said awkwardly. “You know that I have to do what my uncle and my father tell me.”

  “I know that,” he said bluntly. “I have to do what they all order as well.”

  To my relief, Anne appeared in the doorway, her mischievous smile very bright. “How now, William Carey? Well met!” It seemed as if it were her greatest joy to see her brother-in-law amid the mess of my things and the wreckage of his own hopes for a marriage and a son.

  “Anne Boleyn.” He bowed briefly. “Have you come to help your sister onward and upward?”

  “Of course.” She gleamed at him. “As we all should do. None of us will suffer if Mary is favored.”

  She held his gaze for one fearless moment, and it was he who turned away to look out of the window. “I have to go,” he said. “The king bids me to go hunting with him.” He hesitated a moment and then he came across the room to where I stood surrounded by the scatterings of my wardrobe. Gently, he took my hand and kissed it. “I am sorry for you. And I am sorry for me. When you are sent back to me, perhaps a month from now, perhaps a year, I will try to remember this day, and you looking like a child, a little lost among all these clothes. I will try to remember that you were innocent of any plotting; that today at least, you were more a girl than a Boleyn.”

  The queen observed that I was now a single woman, lodged with Anne as my bedfellow in a little room off her chambers, without comment. Her outward manner to me changed not at all. She remained courteous and qui
et-spoken. If she wanted me to do something for her: write a note, sing, take her lap dog from the room, or send a message, she asked me as politely as she had ever done. But she never again asked me to read to her from the Bible, she never asked me to sit at her feet while she sewed, she never blessed me when I went to bed. I was no longer her favorite little maid.

  It was a relief to go to bed at night with Anne. We drew the curtains around us so that we were safe to whisper in the shadowy darkness without being overheard and it was like France in the days of our childhood. Sometimes George would leave the king’s rooms and come to find us, and climb onto the high bed, balance his candle perilously on the bedhead, and bring out his pack of cards or his dice and play with us while the other girls in nearby rooms slept, not knowing that a man was hidden in our chamber.

  They did not lecture me about the role I was to play. Cunningly, they waited for me to come to them and tell them that it was beyond me.

  I said nothing while my clothes were moved from one end of the palace to the other. I said nothing when the whole court packed and moved to the king’s favorite palace, Eltham in Kent, for the spring. I said nothing when my husband rode beside me during the progress and talked to me kindly of the weather and the condition of my horse, which was Jane Parker’s, lent under protest, as her contribution to the family ambition. But when I had George and Anne to myself in the garden at Eltham Palace, I said to George:

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Do what?” he asked unhelpfully. We were supposed to be walking the queen’s dog, which had been carried on the pommel of the saddle for the day’s ride and was thoroughly jolted and sick-looking. “Come on, Flo!” he said encouragingly. “Seek! Seek!”

  “I can’t be with my husband and the king at the same time,” I said. “I can’t laugh with the king when my husband is watching.”

  “Why not?” Anne rolled a ball along the ground for Flo to chase after. The little dog watched it go without interest. “Oh go on, you stupid thing!” Anne exclaimed.

  “Because I feel all wrong.”

  “D’you know better than your mother?” Anne asked bluntly.

  “Of course not!”

  “Better than your father? Your uncle?”

  I shook my head.

  “They are planning a great future for you,” Anne said solemnly. “Any girl in England would die for your chances. You are on the way to becoming the favorite of the king of England, and you are simpering round the garden wondering if you can laugh at his jokes? You’ve got about as much sense as Flo here.” She put the tip of her riding boot under Flo’s unwilling arse and pushed her gently along the path. Flo sat down, as stubborn and as unhappy as me.

  “Gently,” George cautioned her. He took my cold hand and tucked it in the crook of his elbow. “It’s not as bad as you think,” he said. “William was riding with you today to show that he gives his consent, not to make you feel guilty. He knows that the king must have his way. We all know that. William’s happy enough about it. There will be favors for him which you will have been the means of his getting. You’re doing your duty by him by advancing his family. He’s grateful to you. You’re not doing anything wrong.”

  I hesitated. I looked from George’s brown honest eyes to Anne’s averted face. “There’s another thing,” I said, forced to confess.

  “What is it?” George asked. Anne’s eyes followed Flo but I knew that her attention was turned on me.

  “I don’t know how to do it,” I said quietly. “You know, William did it once a week or so, and that in the dark, and quickly done, and I never much liked it. I don’t know what it is I am supposed to do.”

  George gave a little gulp of laughter and put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. “Oh, I’m sorry to laugh. But you have it all wrong. He doesn’t want a woman who knows what to do. There are dozens of them in every bath house in the City. He wants you. It’s you he likes. And he’ll like it if you are a little shy and a little uncertain. That’s all right.”

  “Hulloah!” came a shout from behind us. “The Three Boleyns!”

  We turned and there was the king on the upper terrace, still dressed in his traveling cloak with his hat rakishly set on his head.

  “Here we go.” George swept a low bow. Anne and I sank down into our curtsies together.

  “Are you not tired from your ride?” the king asked. The question was general but he was looking at me.

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s a pretty little mare you were riding, but too short in the back. I shall give you a new horse,” he said.

  “Your Majesty is very kind,” I said. “She’s a borrowed horse. I should be glad to have a horse of my own.”

  “You shall pick out your choice in the stables,” he said. “Come, we can go and look now.”

  He held out his arm to me and I put my fingers gently on the rich cloth of his sleeve.

  “I can hardly feel you.” He put his hand on my own and pressed it tighter. “There. I want to know that I have you, Mistress Carey.” His eyes were very blue and bright, he took in the top of my French hood and then my golden-brown hair, smoothed back under the hood, and then my face. “I do want to know that I have you.”

  I felt my mouth go dry and I smiled, despite the breathless feeling that was something between fear and desire. “I am happy to be with you.”

  “Are you?” he asked, suddenly intent. “Are you really? I want no false coin from you. There are many who would urge you to be with me. I want you to come of your own free will.”

  “Oh Your Majesty! As if I did not dance with you at Cardinal Wolsey’s revels without even knowing that it was you!”

  He was pleased with the recollection. “Oh yes! And you all but fainted when I unmasked and you discovered me. Who did you think it was?”

  “I didn’t think. I know it was foolish of me. I thought you were perhaps a stranger in court, a new and handsome stranger, and I was so pleased to be dancing with you.”

  He laughed. “Oh Mistress Carey, such a sweet face and such naughty thoughts! You hoped that a handsome stranger had come to court and chose to dance with you?”

  “I don’t mean to be naughty.” I was afraid for a moment that it was too sugary even for his taste. “I just forgot how I should behave when you asked me to dance. I am sure I would never do anything wrong. There was just a moment when I—”

  “When you?”

  “When I forgot,” I said softly.

  We reached the stone archway which led into the stables. The king paused in the shelter of the arch and turned me toward him. I could feel myself alive in every part of my body, from my riding boots, slippery on the cobblestones, to my upward glance at his face.

  “Would you forget again?”

  I hesitated, and then Anne stepped forward and said lightly: “What horse does Your Majesty have in mind for my sister? I think you’ll find she’s a good horsewoman.”

  He led the way into the stables, releasing me for a moment. George and he looked at one horse and then another. Anne came to my side.

  “You have to keep him coming forward,” she said. “Keep him coming forward but never let him think that you come forward yourself. He wants to feel that he is pursuing you, not that you are entrapping him. When he gives you the choice of coming forward or running away, like then—you must always run away.”

  The king turned and smiled at me as George told a stable boy to lead a handsome bay horse from the stall. “But don’t run too fast,” my sister warned. “Remember he has to catch you.”

  I danced with the king that evening before the whole of the court, and the next day I rode my new horse at his side when we went hunting. The queen, seated at the high table, watched us dance together, and when we rode out she waved farewell to him from the great door of the palace. Everyone knew that he was courting me, everyone knew that I would consent when I was ordered to do so. The only person who did not know this was the king. He thought that the pace of the cou
rtship was determined by his desire.

  The first rent day came a few weeks later in April when my father was appointed treasurer of the king’s household, a post which brought him access to the king’s daily wealth which he could peculate as he thought best. My father met me as we went in to dinner, and took me from the queen’s train for a quiet word as Her Majesty went to her place at the top table.

  “Your uncle and I are pleased with you,” he said briefly. “Be guided by your brother and sister, they tell me that you are doing well.”

  I bobbed a little curtsy.

  “This is just the start for us,” he reminded me. “You’ve got to have him and hold him, remember.”

  I flinched a little from the words of the wedding mass. “I know,” I said. “I don’t forget.”

  “Has he done anything yet?”

  I glanced toward the great hall where the king and the queen were taking their place. The trumpeters were in position to announce the arrival of the procession of servers from the kitchen.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Just eyes and words.”

  “And you reply?”

  “With smiles.” I did not tell my father that I was half-delirious with pleasure at being courted by the most powerful man in the kingdom. It was not hard to follow my sister’s advice and smile and smile at him. It was not hard to blush and feel that I wanted to run away and at the same time wanted to draw closer.

  My father nodded. “Good enough. You may go to your place.”

  I curtsied again and hurried into the hall just ahead of the servers. The queen looked at me a little sharply, as if she might reprimand me, but then she glanced sideways and caught sight of her husband’s face. His expression was fixed, his gaze locked onto me, as I made my way up the hall and took my place among the ladies in waiting. It was an odd expression, intent, as if for a moment he could see nothing and hear nothing, as if the whole of the great hall had melted away for him and all he could see was me in my blue gown with my blue hood and my fair hair smoothed away off my face, and a smile trembling on my lips as I felt his desire. The queen took in the heat of his look, pressed her lips together, smiled her thin smile, and looked away.