The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  “Must I?”

  “The king will see you now,” announces the idiot Dr. Butt, and I jump and start away from Thomas Culpepper, for I had utterly forgotten that I was there to see the king and to make him love me again. “I’ll come in a minute,” I say over my shoulder.

  Thomas gives a little snort of laughter, and I have to clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself giggling, too. “No, you must go,” he reminds me quietly. “You can’t keep the king waiting. I’ll be here when you come out.”

  “Of course I am going at once,” I say, remembering that I have to seem upset at the king’s neglect, and I turn away from him in a hurry and dash into the king’s room, where he is lying on his bed like a great ship stranded in dry dock, his leg stuck up into the air on embroidered cushions and his big round face all wan and self-pitiful. I walk slowly toward his big bed and try to look anxious for his love.

  Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,

  March 1541

  The king is sliding into some kind of melancholy; he insists on being alone, shut away like some old dying smelly dog, and Katherine’s attempts to make him turn to her are doomed since she cannot sustain an interest in anyone but herself for more than half a day. She has gone to his room again, but this time he would not even let her in; instead of showing concern, she tossed her pretty head and said that if he would not let her in, she would not visit again.

  But she lingered long enough to meet Thomas Culpepper, and he took her walking in the garden. I sent Catherine Carey after her with a shawl and another well-behaved maid to give them the appearance of decorum, but from the way the queen was holding his arm, and chattering and laughing, anybody could see that she was happy in his company and had forgotten all about her husband lying in silence in a darkened room.

  My lord duke gives me a long, hard look at dinner but says nothing, and I know that he expects me to get our little bitch serviced and in pup. A son would raise the king from his melancholy and secure the crown for the Howard family forever. We have to do it this time. We have to manage it. No other family in the world has had two attempts at such a prize. We cannot fail twice.

  In her pique Katherine summons musicians to the ladies’ chamber and dances with her women and the people of her household. It isn’t very merry, and two of the wilder girls, Joan and Agnes, run down to the dining hall and invite some men from the court. When I see they have done this, I send a page for Thomas Culpepper to see if he will be fool enough to come. He is.

  I see her face as he comes into the room, the rise of her color, and then how quickly she turns away and speaks to little Catherine Carey at her side. Plainly, she is quite besotted with him, and for a moment I remember that she is not just a pawn in our game, but a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. To see little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman. It would be very endearing if she were not Queen of England and a Howard with work to do.

  Thomas Culpepper joins the set of dancers and places himself so that he will partner the queen when the couples pair off. She looks down at the ground to hide her smile of pleasure and to affect modesty, but when the dance brings them together and she takes his hand, her eyes come up to him and they gaze at each other with absolute longing.

  I glance round; nobody else seems to have noticed, and, indeed, half the queen’s ladies are making sheep’s eyes at one young man or another. I glance across at Lady Rutland and raise my eyebrows; she nods and goes to the queen and speaks quietly in her ear. Katherine scowls like a disappointed child, then turns to the musicians. “This must be the last dance,” she says sulkily. But she turns and her hand goes out, almost without her volition, to Thomas Culpepper.

  Katherine, Hampton Court,

  March 1541

  Every day I see him, and every day we are a little bolder with each other. The king still has not come out from his rooms, and his circle of physicians and doctors and the old men who advise him hardly ever come to my rooms, so it is as if we are free in these days – just us young people together. The court is quiet with no dancing and no entertainment, since it is Lent. I cannot even have dancing privately in my rooms anymore. We cannot hunt, or boat on the river, or play games, or do anything amusing. But we are allowed to walk in the gardens, or by the river after Mass, and when I am walking, Thomas Culpepper walks beside me, and I would rather walk with him than dance dressed in my best with a prince.

  “Are you cold?” he says.

  Hardly, I am buried in my sables, but I look up at him and say: “A little.”

  “Let me warm your hand,” he says, and tucks it under his arm so that it is pressed against his jacket. I have such a longing to open the front of his jacket and put both my hands inside. His belly would be smooth and hard, I think. His chest may be covered with light hair. I don’t know; it is so thrilling that I don’t know. I know the scent of him, at least, I can recognize it now. He has a warm smell, like good-quality candles. It burns me up.

  “Is that better?” he asks, pressing my hand to his side.

  “Much better,” I say.

  We are walking beside the river, and a boatman goes past and shouts something at the two of us. With only a handful of ladies and courtiers before and behind us, nobody knows that I am the queen.

  “I wish we were just a boy and a girl walking out together.”

  “Do you wish you were not queen?”

  “No, I like being queen – and of course I love His Majesty the king with all my heart and soul – but if we were just a girl and a boy we could be strolling to an inn for some dinner and dancing, and that would be fun.”

  “If we were a girl and a boy I would take you to a special house I know,” he says.

  “Would you? Why?” I can hear the entranced giggle in my own voice, but I cannot help myself.

  “It has a private dining room and a very good cook. I would give you the finest of dinners, and then I would court you,” he says.

  I give a little gasp of pretend shock. “Master Culpepper!”

  “I would not stop till I had a kiss,” he says outrageously. “And then I would go on.”

  “My grandmother would box your ears,” I threaten him.

  “It would be worth it.” He smiles, and I can feel my heart thudding. I want to laugh out loud for the sheer joy of him.

  “Perhaps I would kiss you back,” I whisper.

  “I am quite sure you would,” he says, and ignores my delighted gasp. “I have never in all my life kissed a girl and not had her kiss me back. I am quite sure you would kiss me, and I think you would say, ‘Oh, Thomas!’”

  “Then you are very sure of yourself indeed, Master Culpepper.”

  “Call me Thomas.”

  “I will not!”

  “Call me Thomas when we are alone like this.”

  “Oh, Thomas!”

  “There you are, you said it, and I have not even kissed you yet.”

  “You must not talk to me of kissing when anyone else is near.”

  “I know that. I should never let any danger come to you. I shall guard you as my life itself.”

  “The king knows everything,” I warn him. “Everything we say, perhaps even everything we think. He has spies everywhere, and he knows what is in people’s very hearts.”

  “My love is hidden deep,” he says.

  “Your love?” I can hardly breathe for this.

  “My love,” he repeats.

  Lady Rochford comes up beside me. “We have to go in,” she says. “It is going to rain.”

  At once Thomas Culpepper turns around and leads me back toward the palace. “I don’t want to go in,” I say stubbornly.

  “Go in, and say you want to change your gown, and then slip down the garden stairs from your privy chamber. I will wait for you in the doorway,” he says very quietly.

  “You didn’t meet me last time we agreed.”

  He chuckl
es. “You must forgive me for that; it was months ago. I shall meet you without fail this time. There is something very special that I want to do.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I want to see if I can make you say, ‘Oh, Thomas,’ again.”

  Anne, Richmond Palace,

  March 1541

  Ambassador Harst has come to tell me the news from court. He has placed a young man as a servant in the king’s rooms, and the boy says that the physicians attend the king every day and are struggling to keep the wound open so that the poison can drain from his leg. They are putting pellets of gold into the wound so that it cannot close, and they are tying the edges back with string. They are pulling at the poor man’s living flesh as if they were making a pudding.

  “He must be in agony,” I say.

  Dr. Harst nods. “And he is in despair,” he says. “He thinks he will never recover. He thinks his time is done, and he is sick with fear at leaving Prince Edward without a safe guardian. The Privy Council are thinking that they will have to form a regency.”

  “Who will he trust to guard the prince in his minority?”

  “He trusts nobody, and the prince’s family, the Seymours, are declared enemies of the queen’s family, the Howards. There is no doubt that they will tear the country apart between them. The Tudor peace will end as it began, in a war for the kingdom between the great families. The king fears for the people’s faith as well. The Howards are determined on the old religion and will take the country back to Rome, but Cranmer has the church behind him and will fight for reform.”

  I nibble my finger, thinking. “Does the king still fear there is a plot to overthrow him?”

  “There is news of a new uprising in the North, in support of the old religion. The king fears that the men will come out again, that it will spread. He believes there are Papists everywhere calling for a rebellion against him.”

  “None of this endangers me? He will not turn against me?”

  His tired face folds downward into a grimace. “He might. He fears the Lutherans as well.”

  “But everybody knows I am a practicing member of the king’s church!” I protest. “I do everything to show that I conform to the king’s instructions.”

  “You were brought in as a Protestant princess,” he says. “And the man who brought you in paid with his life. I am fearful.”

  “What can we do?” I ask.

  “I shall keep watch on the king,” he says. “While he acts against the Papists we are safe enough, but if he turns against the reformers, we should make sure that we can get home, if we need to.”

  I give a little shudder, thinking of the mad tyranny of my brother as opposed to the mad tyranny of this king. “I have no home there.”

  “You may have no home here.”

  “The king has promised me my safety,” I say.

  “He promised you the throne,” the ambassador says wryly. “And who sits there now?”

  “I don’t envy her.” I am thinking of her husband brooding on his wrongs, trapped in his bed by his suppurating wound, counting his enemies and allocating blame, while his fever burns and his sense of injustice grows more mad.

  “I should think no woman in the world would envy her,” the ambassador replies.

  Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,

  April 1541

  “What actually happened to Anne Boleyn?” the child queen horrifies me by asking as we walk back from Mass early one morning in April. The king was, as usual, absent from the royal box, and for once she was not peering over the edge of the box to see Culpepper. She even closed her eyes during the prayers as if praying, and she seemed thoughtful. Now this.

  “She was accused of treason,” I say coolly. “Surely, you know that?”

  “Yes, but why? Exactly why? What happened?”

  “You should ask your grandmother, or the duke,” I say.

  “Weren’t you there?”

  Was I not there? Was I not there for every agonizing second of it all? “Yes, I was at court,” I say.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  As if it were engraved on my skin with a knife. “Oh, I remember. But I don’t like to talk of it. Why would you seek to know of the past? It means nothing now.”

  “But it’s not as if it were a secret,” she presses me. “There is nothing to be ashamed of, is there?”

  I swallow on a dry throat. “No, nothing. But it cost me my sister-in-law and my husband and our good name.”

  “Why did they execute your husband?”

  “He was accused of treason with her, and the other men.”

  “I thought that the other men were accused of adultery?”

  “It’s the same thing,” I say tersely. “If the queen takes a lover, that is treason to the king. D’you see? Now can we speak of something else?”

  “Then why did they execute her brother, your husband?”

  I grit my teeth. “They were accused of being lovers,” I say grimly. “Now do you see why I don’t want to speak of it? Why no one wants to speak of it? So can we say no more of it?”

  She does not even hear my tone, she is so shocked. “They accused her of taking her brother as a lover?” she demanded. “How could they think she would do such a thing? How could they have evidence of such a thing?”

  “Spies and liars,” I say bitterly. “Be warned. Don’t trust those stupid girls you have gathered round you.”

  “Who accused them?” she asks, still puzzled. “Who could give such evidence?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I am desperate to get away from her, from her determined hunt after these old truths. “It is too long ago, and I cannot remember, and if I could, I would not discuss it.”

  I stride away from her, ignoring royal protocol. I cannot stand the dawning suspicion in her face. “Who could know?” she repeats. But I have gone.

  Katherine, Hampton Court,

  April 1541

  I am much reassured by all that I am learning, and I wish I had thought to ask before. I had always believed that my cousin Queen Anne had been caught with a lover and beheaded for that. Now I find that it was far more complicated than that; she was at the center of a treasonous plot, too long ago for me to understand. I was afraid in case she and I were treading the same road to the same destination; I was afraid that I had inherited her wickedness. But it turns out that there was a great plot, and even my lady Rochford and her husband were tied up in it somehow. It will have been about religion, I daresay, for Anne was a furious Sacramentary, I think, whereas now everyone with any sense is for the old ways. So I think as long as I am very clever and very discreet that I can at least be friends with Thomas Culpepper. I can see him often; he can be my companion and my comforter, and nobody need know or think anything of it. And while he is a loyal servant of the king and I am a good wife, then no harm will be done.

  Cleverly, I call my cousin Catherine Carey to my side and tell her to sort embroidery silks into shades of color for me, as if I am about to start sewing. If she had been longer at court, she would know at once that this is a ruse since I have not touched a needle since I became queen, but she brings a stool and sits at my feet and puts one pink silk beside another, and we look at them together.

  “Has your mother ever told you what happened to her sister, Queen Anne?” I ask quietly.

  She looks up at me. She has hazel eyes, not as dark as the Boleyn shade. “Oh, I was there,” she says simply.

  “You were there!” I exclaim. “But I didn’t know anything about it!”

  She smiles. “You were in the country, weren’t you? We are about the same age. But I was a child at court. My mother was lady-in-waiting to her sister Anne Boleyn, and I was maid-in-waiting.”

  “So what happened?” I am almost choking with curiosity. “Lady Rochford will never tell me a thing! And she gets so cross when I ask.”

  “It is a bad story and not worth the telling,” she says.

  “Not you as well! I will be told, Catherine. She is m
y aunt, too, you know. I have a right to know.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you. But it still won’t make it a good story. The queen was accused of adultery with her own brother, my uncle.” Catherine speaks quietly, as if it is an everyday event. “Also with other men. She was found guilty; he was found guilty; the men were found guilty. The queen and her brother George were both sentenced to death. I went into the Tower with her. I was her maid in the Tower. I was with her when they came for her and she went out to die.”

  I look at this girl, this cousin of mine, my own age, my own family. “You were in the Tower?” I whisper.

  She nods. “As soon as it was over my stepfather came and took me away. My mother swore we would never go back to court.” She smiles and shrugs. “But here I am,” she says cheerfully. “As my stepfather says: where else can a girl go?”

  “You were in the Tower?” I cannot get rid of the thought of it.

  “I heard them build her scaffold,” she says seriously. “I prayed with her. I saw her go out for the last time. It was terrible. It was truly terrible. I don’t like to think of it, even now.” She turns her face away and briefly closes her eyes. “It was terrible,” she repeats. “It is a terrible death to die.”

  “She was guilty of treason,” I whisper.

  “She was found guilty by the king’s court of treason,” she corrects me, but I don’t quite see the difference.

  “So she was guilty.”

  She looks at me again. “Well, anyway, it is a long time ago, and whether she was guilty or not, she was executed at the king’s command, and she died in her faith, and she is dead now.”

  “Then she must have been guilty of treason. The king would not execute an innocent woman.”