The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “D’you miss your husband?” he asked curiously.

  “A little.” I wondered how much Stafford knew of my marriage that had hardly been a marriage at all. “We were not much together.” That was about as honest and as tactful as I could manage, and his small judicial nod did not tell me whether he had understood me or not.

  “I meant now,” he said, showing me that he was cleverer than I had allowed. “Now that you no longer have the favor of the king. Now would be the time that you would expect to have another child with your husband, isn’t it? And start again?”

  I hesitated. “I suppose so.” I was reluctant to discuss my future with someone who was only a gentleman in my uncle’s train, ten a penny if truth were told, little more than a common adventurer if one was to be unkind.

  “But it’s not a very comfortable situation for a woman like you, a young woman of twenty-two with two young children. You’ve your whole life ahead of you and yet your future is tied to your sister’s. You are in her shadow. You, who were once the favorite of everyone.”

  It was such a bleak and accurate summary of my life that I rather choked at the vista he opened up for me. “That’s how it is for women,” I said, stung into honesty. “It’s not what one would choose—I grant you that. But women are the very toys of fortune. If my husband had lived then he would have been granted great honors. My brother is Lord George, my father an earl, and I would have shared in his prosperity. But as it is I am still a Boleyn girl and a Howard, I’m not penniless. I have prospects.”

  “You’re an adventurer,” he said. “Like me. Or, at any rate, you could be. While your family is so fixed on Anne, and her future is so unreliable, you could make your own future. You could make your own choice. They have forgotten to manage you for a moment. In this moment you might be free.”

  I turned my attention to him. “Is that why you are unmarried? So that you can be free?”

  He smiled at me, a gleam of white teeth in his brown face. “Oh yes,” he said. “I owe no man a living, I owe no woman a duty. I am your uncle’s man, I wear his livery, but I don’t see myself as his serf. I’m a freeborn Englishman, I go my own way.”

  “You’re a man,” I said. “It’s different for a woman.”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “Unless she was to marry me. Then we could make our own way together.”

  I laughed quietly, and gathered little Henry closer to me. “You would make your own way on precious little money if you married to disoblige your lord, and without the blessing of her parents.”

  Stafford was not at all put out. “There are worse beginnings than that. I think I’d rather have a woman who loved me stake her life on my ability to care for her, than have her father bind me up with a dowry and a contract.”

  “And what would she get?”

  He looked me straight in the face. “My love.”

  “And this is worth a breach with her family? With your lord? With her family’s kin?”

  He glanced away to where the swallows were building their little mud-cups of nests under the turrets of the castle. “I should like a woman who was free as a bird. I should like a woman who came to me for love, and who wanted me for love, and cared for nothing more than me.”

  “You would have a fool as a wife,” I said sharply.

  He turned back to me and smiled. “Just as well that I have never yet met a woman I wanted,” he said. “So there are no fools rather than two.”

  I nodded. It seemed to me that I had triumphed in the exchange but that it was somehow unresolved. “I hope to remain unmarried for a while,” I said. Even to my own ears I sounded uncertain.

  “I hope you do too,” he said oddly. “I bid you farewell, Lady Carey.” He bowed and was about to go. “And I think that you will find that your boy is still your little boy whether he is in breeches or short clothes,” he said gently. “I loved my mother till the day she died, God bless her, and I was always her little boy—however big and disagreeable I became.”

  I should not have worried about the loss of Henry’s curls. When they were shorn, I could see once more the exquisite rounded shape of his head, the tender vulnerable neck. He no longer looked like a baby, he looked like the smallest most engaging little boy. I liked to cup his head in the palm of my hand and feel the warmth of him. In his adult clothes he looked every inch a prince and, despite myself, I started to think that he might one day sit on the throne of England. He was the king’s son, he was adopted by the woman who might well one day take the title of Queen of England—but more than any of this, he was the most golden princely boy I had ever seen. He stood like his father, hands on hips, as if he owned the world. He was the sweetest-tempered boy that any mother has ever called to her and seen come running through a meadow, following her voice as trustingly as a hawk to the whistle. He was a golden child this summer and when I saw the boy he was, and the young man that he might become, I did not grieve any more for the baby he had been.

  But I did learn that I wanted another child. The beauty of him as a boy meant that I had lost my baby and I thought of how it would be to have a baby that was not another pawn in the great game of the throne, but wanted for itself alone. How it would be to have a baby with a man who loved me and who looked forward to the child we might have together. That thought took me back to court in a very quiet and sombre mood.

  William Stafford came to escort me to Richmond Palace and insisted that we leave early in the morning so that the horses could rest at midday. I kissed my children goodbye and came out into the stable yard where Stafford lifted me up into the saddle. I was crying at leaving them and, to my embarrassment, one of my tears fell on his upturned face. He brushed it with a fingertip but instead of wiping his hand on his breeches he put his finger to his lips and licked it.

  “What are you doing?”

  At once he looked guilty. “You shouldn’t have dropped a tear on me.”

  “You shouldn’t have licked it,” I burst out in reply.

  He didn’t answer, nor did he move away immediately. Then he said: “To horse,” and turned from me and swung into his own saddle. The little cavalcade moved out of the courtyard of the castle and I waved at my boy and my girl, kneeling up at their bedroom window to see me go.

  We rode over the drawbridge with our horses’ hooves sounding like thunder on the hollow wooden boards, and down the long sweeping road to the end of the park. William Stafford edged his horse forward beside mine.

  “Don’t cry,” he said abruptly.

  I glanced sideways at him and wished he would go and ride with his men. “I’m not.”

  “You are,” he contradicted me. “And I cannot escort a weeping woman all the way to London.”

  “I’m not a weeping woman,” I said with some irritation. “But I hate to leave my children and know that I will not see them again for another year. A whole year! I should think I might be allowed to feel a little sad at leaving them.”

  “No,” he said staunchly. “And I’ll tell you why. You told me very clearly that a woman has to do as her family bids her. Your family has bidden you to live apart from your children, even to give your son into your sister’s keeping. To fight them and to take your children back makes better sense than to weep. If you choose to be a Boleyn and a Howard then you might as well be happy in your obedience.”

  “I’d like to ride alone,” I said coldly.

  At once he spurred his horse forward and ordered the men at the front of the escort to fall back. They all went back six paces behind me and I rode in silence and in loneliness all the way up the long road to London, just as I had ordered.

  Autumn 1530

  THE COURT WAS AT RICHMOND AND ANNE WAS ALL SMILES after a happy summer in the country with Henry. They had hunted every day and he had given her gift after gift, a new saddle for her hunter and a new set of bow and arrows. He had ordered his saddler to make a beautiful pillion saddle so that she could sit behind him, her arms around his waist, her head against his shoulder so that th
ey could whisper together as they rode. Everywhere they went they were told that the country was admiring them, favoring their plans. Everywhere they were greeted with loyal addresses, poems, masques and tableaux. Every house welcomed them with a shower of petals and freshly strewn herbs beneath their feet. Anne and Henry were assured over and over again that they were a golden couple with a certain future. Nothing could possibly go wrong for them.

  My father, home from France, decided to say nothing to disturb this picture. “If they’re happy together then thank God for it,” he remarked to my uncle. We were watching Anne at the archery butts on the terrace above the river. She was a skilful archer, she looked as if she might take the prize. Only one other lady, Lady Elizabeth Ferrers, looked as if she might out-shoot my sister.

  “It’s a pleasant change,” my uncle said sourly. “She has the temper of a stable cat, your daughter.”

  My father chuckled comfortably. “She takes after her mother,” he said. “All the Howard girls jump one way or another as soon as you look at them. You must have had some fights with your sister when you were children.”

  Uncle Howard looked cool and did not encourage the intimate note. “A woman should know her place,” he said icily.

  Father exchanged a quick look with me. The regular episodes of uproar in the Howard household were well-known. It was hardly surprising. Uncle Howard had openly kept a mistress from the moment that his wife had given him his sons. My aunt swore that she had been nothing more than the laundry woman to the nursery and that to this day the two of them could only couple if they were lying on dirty sheets. The hatred between her and her husband was a constant feature of court, and it was as good as a play to see him lead her in on state occasions when they had to keep up the semblance of unity and appear in public together. He held the very tips of her fingertips, and she turned her head away from him as if he smelled of unwashed hose and dirty ruffs.

  “We’re not all blessed with your happy touch with women,” my father said.

  My uncle shot one surprised look at him. He had been head of the family for so long that he was used to deference. But my father was an earl in his own right now, and his daughter, who at that very moment loosed an arrow and saw it fly straight to the heart of the target, could be queen.

  Anne turned, smiling from her shot, and Henry, unable to keep from her, leaped to his feet out of the chair and hurried down to the butts and kissed her on the mouth, before all the court. Everyone smiled and applauded, Lady Elizabeth concealed as well as she could any sense of pique that she had lost to the favorite, and received a small jewel from the king while Anne took a little headdress shaped like a golden crown.

  “A crown,” my father said, watching the king hold it out to her.

  In an intimate, confident gesture Anne pulled off her hood and stood before us all with her dark hair tumbling back from her forehead in thick glossy ringlets. Henry stepped forward and put the crown on her head. There was a pause of absolute silence.

  The tension was broken by the king’s Fool. He danced behind the king and peeped around him at Anne. “Oh Mistress Anne!” he called. “You aimed for the eye of the bull, but you hit very true at another part. The bull’s b…”

  Henry rounded on him with a roar of laughter and aimed a cuff which the Fool dodged. The court exploded in laughter and Anne, beautifully blushing, the little archery crown glinting on her black hair, shook her head at the Fool, wagged her finger at him, and then turned her face in confusion to Henry’s shoulder.

  I was sharing a bedroom with Anne in the second best rooms that Richmond Palace could offer. They were not the queen’s apartments, but they were the next best. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that Anne might commandeer a set of rooms and furnish them as richly as the queen, almost as richly as the king, but she was not yet allowed to live in the queen’s own rooms, even though the queen was never there. New protocols had to be invented all the time in this court which was not like any other before.

  Anne was sprawled on the ornate bed, careless of creasing her gown.

  “Good summer?” she asked me idly. “Children well?”

  “Yes,” I said shortly. I would never again speak willingly of my son to her. She had forfeited her right to be his aunt when she had laid claim to be his mother.

  “You were watching the archery with Uncle,” she said. “What was he talking about?”

  I thought back. “Nothing. Saying you and the king were happy.”

  “I have told him that I want Wolsey destroyed. He’s turned against me. He’s supporting the queen.”

  “Anne, he lost the Lord Chancellorship, surely that’s enough.”

  “He’s been corresponding with the queen. I want him dead.”

  “But he was your friend.”

  She shook her head. “We both played a part to please the king. Wolsey sent me fish from his trout pond, I sent him little gifts. But I never forgot how he spoke to me about Henry Percy, and he never forgot that I was a Boleyn, an upstart like him. He was jealous of me, and I was jealous of him. We have been enemies from the moment I came home from France. He didn’t even see me. He didn’t even understand what power I have. He still does not understand me. But at his death, he will. I have his house, I will have his life.”

  “He’s an old man. He’s lost all his wealth and his titles that were his great pride and joy. He’s retiring to his see at York. If you want your revenge, you can leave him to rot. That’s revenge enough.”

  Anne shook her head. “Not yet. Not while the king still loves him.”

  “Is the king to love nobody but you? Not even the man who has guarded him and guided him like a father for years?”

  “Yes. He is to love nobody but me.”

  I was surprised. “Have you come to desire him?”

  She laughed in my face. “No. But I would have him see no one and speak to no one but me, and those I could trust. And who can I trust?”

  I shook my head.

  “You—perhaps. George—always. Father—usually. Mother—sometimes. Uncle Howard—if it suits him. Not my aunt, who has gone over to Katherine. Perhaps the Duke of Suffolk but not his wife Mary Tudor who can’t bear to see me rise so high. Anyone else? No. That’s it. Perhaps some men are tender-hearted to me. My cousin Sir Francis Bryan, perhaps Francis Weston from his friendship with George. Sir Thomas Wyatt cares for me still.” She raised one other finger in silence and we both knew that we were thinking of Henry Percy, so far away in Northumberland, determinedly never coming to court, ill with unhappiness, living in the middle of nowhere with the wife he had married under protest. “Ten,” she said quietly. “Ten people who wish me well against a whole world that would be glad to see me fall.”

  “But the cardinal can do nothing against you now. He has lost all his power.”

  “Then this is the very time when he is ripe to be destroyed. Now that he has lost all his power and he is a defeated old man.”

  It was some plot hatched between the Duke of Suffolk and Uncle Howard but it bore Anne’s hallmark. My uncle had evidence of a letter from Wolsey to the Pope and Henry, who had been disposed to recall his old friend to high office, turned once more against him and ordered his arrest.

  The lord that they sent to arrest him was Anne’s choice. It was Anne’s final gesture to the man who had called her a foolish girl and an upstart. Henry Percy of Northumberland went to Wolsey at York and said that he was charged with treason and must travel the long road back to London and stay not in his wonderful palace of Hampton Court which now belonged to the king, not in his beautiful London home of York Place which was now renamed Whitehall and belonged to Anne; instead he was to go, like a traitor, to the Tower and await his trial, as others had gone before him and taken the short walk to the scaffold.

  Henry Percy must have felt a harsh joy to send to Anne the man who had separated them, now sick with exhaustion and despair. It was no fault of Henry Percy’s that Wolsey escaped them all by dying on the road and the only sat
isfaction that Anne could take was that it was the boy she had loved who told the man that had parted them that her vengeance had come at last.

  Christmas 1530

  THE QUEEN MET THE COURT AT GREENWICH FOR CHRISTMAS and Anne held her rival Christmas feast in the dead cardinal’s old palace. It was an open secret that after the king had dined in state with the queen he would quietly slip out, summon the royal barge and be rowed to the stairs at Whitehall where he would eat another supper with Anne. Sometimes he took some chosen courtiers with him, me among them, and then we had a merry night on the river, wrapped up warm against the biting cold wind, with the stars bright above us as we rowed home and sometimes a huge white moon lighting our way.

  I was one of the queen’s ladies again and I was shocked to see the change in her. When she raised her head and smiled for Henry she could no longer summon any joy into her eyes. He had knocked it out of her, perhaps forever. She still had the same quiet dignity, she still had the same confidence in herself as a Princess of Spain and Queen of England, but she would never again have the glow of a woman who knows that her husband adores her.

  One day we were sitting together at the fireside of her apartment, the altar cloth spread from one side of the hearth to the other. I was working on the blue sky which was still unfinished, and she, unusually for her, had left the blue and moved on to another color. I thought that she must be weary indeed if she left a task unfinished. Usually she was a woman who would persist, whatever it cost her.

  “Did you see your children this summer?” she asked.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said. “Catherine is in long dresses now and is learning French and Latin, and Henry’s curls are cut.”

  “Will you send them to the French court?”

  I could not conceal the pang of anxiety. “Not yet at any rate. They’re still so very young.”