The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  The messenger tapped on the doorway and cautiously put his head inside the door. I leaped to my feet and would have slammed the door in his face for impertinence, but the queen put her hand on my sleeve.

  “Any reply?” he asked. He did not even call her “Your Majesty.”

  “Go where I may, I remain his wife, and I will pray for him,” she said steadily. She rose to her feet. “Tell the king that I wish him well on his journey, that I am sorry not to have said goodbye to him, if he had told me he was leaving so soon I should have made sure that he did not leave without his wife’s blessing. And ask him to send a message to tell me that he is in good health.”

  The messenger nodded, shot a quick apologetic look at me, and got himself out of the room. We waited.

  The queen and I went to the window. We could see the man on his horse ride the length of the baggage train which was still winding down the river road. He vanished from sight. Anne and Henry, perhaps handclasped, perhaps singing together, would be far ahead on the road to Woodstock.

  “I never thought it would end like this,” she said in a small voice. “I never thought he would be able to leave me without saying good-bye.”

  It was a fine summer for the children and for me. Henry was five and his sister seven years old and I decided that they should each have a pony of their own; but nowhere in the county could I find a pair of good ponies small enough and docile enough for us. I had mentioned this plan to William Stafford as we rode to Hever and so I was not wholly surprised when I saw him returning, uninvited, a week later, riding up the lane with a small fat pony on either side of his rangy hunter.

  The children and I had been walking in the meadows before the moat. I waved to him and he turned off the lane and rode along the side of the moat toward us. As soon as Henry and Catherine saw the ponies they were leaping with excitement.

  “Wait,” I cautioned them. “Wait and see. We don’t know that they’ll be any good. We don’t know that we want to buy them.”

  “You’re right to be cautious. I’m such a huckster,” William Stafford said, sliding from his saddle and dropping to the ground. He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips.

  “Wherever did you find them?”

  Catherine had the rope of the little gray pony and was petting its nose. Henry was behind my skirt, eyeing the chestnut with a mixture of intense excitement and fear.

  “Oh you know, on the doorstep,” he said idly. “I can send them back if you don’t like them.”

  At once there was a wail of protest from Henry, still behind my skirts. “Don’t send them back!”

  William Stafford dropped to one knee to be on a level with Henry’s bright face. “Come out, lad,” he said kindly. “You’ll never make a horseman hiding behind your mother.”

  “Does he bite?”

  “You have to feed him with your hand flat,” William explained. “Then he can’t bite.” He flattened Henry’s hand and showed him how a horse crops.

  “Does he gallop?” Catherine asked. “Gallop like mother’s horse?”

  “He can’t go as fast, but he does gallop,” William answered. “And he can jump.”

  “Can I jump with him?” Henry’s eyes were like trenchers.

  William straightened up and smiled at me. “You have to learn to sit on him first, walk, trot and canter. Then you can go on to jousting and jumping.”

  “Will you teach me?” Catherine demanded. “You will, won’t you? Stay here with us all the summer and teach us how to ride?”

  William’s smile was shamelessly triumphant. “Well I should like to, of course. If your mother says that I may.”

  At once the two children turned to me. “Say yes!” Catherine begged.

  “Please!” Henry urged me.

  “But I can teach you to ride,” I protested.

  “Not to joust!” Henry exclaimed. “And you ride sideways. I need to ride straight. Don’t I, sir? I need to ride straight because I’m a boy and I’m going to be a man.”

  William looked at me over the top of my son’s bobbing head. “What d’you say, Lady Carey? Can I stay for the summer and teach your son to ride straight?”

  I did not let him see my amusement. “Oh very well. You can tell them in the house to prepare a room if you like.”

  Every morning William Stafford and I would walk for hours with the children seated on their little ponies walking beside us. After dinner we would put the ponies on long lunge reins and let them walk, trot and then canter in a circle while the two children clung on like a pair of little burrs.

  William was unendingly patient with them. He made sure that every day they learned a little more, and I suspected that he also made sure that they did not learn too fast. He wanted them to ride on their own by the end of the summer, but not before.

  “D’you have no home of your own to go to?” I asked unkindly as we walked back to the castle one evening, each of us leading a pony. The sun was sinking behind the turrets and it looked like a little fairytale palace with the windows winking with rosy light and the sky all pale and cloud-striped behind it.

  “My father lives in Northampton.”

  “Are you his only son?” I asked.

  He smiled at that key question. “No, I am a second son: good for nothing, milady. But I am going to buy a little farm if I can, in Essex. I have a mind to be a landowner of a small farm.”

  “Where will you find the money?” I asked curiously. “You can’t do very well from my uncle’s service.”

  “I served on a ship and took a little prize money a few years ago. I have enough to start. And then I shall find a woman who would like to live in a pretty house amid her own fields and know that nothing—not the power of princes nor the malice of queens—can touch her.”

  “Queens and princes can always touch you,” I said. “Else they would not be queens and princes.”

  “Yes, but you can be so small as to be of no interest to them,” he said. “Our danger would be your son. While they see him as the heir to the throne then we would never be out of their sights.”

  “If Anne has a boy of her own she’ll give mine up,” I said. Without realizing it I had followed the train of his thoughts just as I had fallen into step beside him.

  Cunningly he said nothing to alert me. “Better than that, she’ll want him away from the court. He could be with us and we could bring him up as a little country squire. It’s not a bad life for a man. Perhaps the best life there is. I don’t like the court. And these last few years you never know where you are.”

  We reached the drawbridge and in accord helped the children from their saddles. Catherine and Henry ran ahead into the house as William and I led their ponies round to the stable yard. A couple of lads came out to take them from us.

  “Coming to dinner?” I asked casually.

  “Of course,” he said and threw me a little bow and was gone.

  It was only in my room, as I kneeled and prayed that night and found my mind wandering, as it always does, that I realized that I had let him talk to me as if I would be the woman who would want a pretty house amid my own fields, and William Stafford in my married bed.

  Dear Mary,

  We are to come to Richmond for autumn and then Greenwich for winter. The queen will not be under the same roof as the king, ever again. She is to go to Wolsey’s old house, The More in Hertfordshire, and the king is to give her a court of her own there, so she need not complain of being ill-treated.

  You are no longer to be in her service, you will serve me alone.

  The king and I are confident that the Pope is in terror of what the king might do to the church in England. We are certain that he will rule in our favor as soon as the courts reconvene in the autumn. I am preparing myself for an autumn wedding and a coronation soon after. It is all but complete—grudge who will grudge it!

  Uncle has been very cold toward me and the Duke of Suffolk has quite turned against me. Henry sent him away from us this summer and I was glad to have him t
aught a lesson. There are too many people envying me and watching me. I want you at Richmond when I arrive, Mary. You may not go to the que—to Katherine of Aragon at The More. And you may not stay at Hever. I am doing this for your son as much as for myself and you will help me.

  Anne.

  Autumn 1531

  THAT AUTUMN WHEN I RETURNED TO COURT I REALIZED THAT the queen was finally thrown down. Anne had convinced Henry that there was no longer any point in keeping up the appearance of being a good husband. They might as well show their brazen faces to the world and defy anyone to come against them.

  Henry was generous. Katherine of Aragon lived in great state at The More and she entertained visiting ambassadors as if she were still a beloved and honored queen. She had a household of more than two hundred people, fifty of them maids in waiting. They were not the best of the young women: those all flocked to the king’s court and found themselves attached to Anne’s household. Anne and I had a merry day in allocating young women that we disliked to the queen’s court, we got rid of half a dozen Seymours that way, and laughed at the thought of Sir John Seymour’s face when he found out.

  “I wish we could send George’s wife to wait on the queen,” I said. “He would be happier if he came home and found her gone.”

  “I’d rather have her here where I can see her than send her to somewhere that she might cause more trouble. I want no one around the queen but nonentities.”

  “You can’t still fear her. You have all but destroyed her.”

  Anne shook her head. “I’ll not be safe until she is dead,” she said. “Just as she will not be safe until I am dead. It is not just a matter now of a man or a throne, it is as if I am her shadow and she is mine. We are locked together till death. One of us has to win outright and neither of us can be sure that we have won or lost until the other is dead and in the ground.”

  “How could she win?” I demanded. “He won’t even see her.”

  “You don’t know how much people hate me,” Anne whispered, I had to lean close to hear. “When we are on our progress we go from house to house now, and never stop in the villages. People have heard the rumors from London and they no longer see me as a pretty girl who rides beside the king, they see me as the woman who destroyed the happiness of the queen. If we linger in a village then people shout against me.”

  “No!”

  She nodded. “And when the queen came into the City and gave a banquet there was a mob outside Ely Palace and they were all calling out blessings on her and promising her that they would never bow the knee to me.”

  “A handful of sulky servants.”

  “What if it’s more than that?” Anne asked bleakly. “What if the whole country hates me? What d’you think the king feels when he hears them booing and cursing me? D’you think a man like Henry can bear to be cursed when he rides out? A man like Henry, who has been used to praise ever since he was a child?”

  “They’ll get accustomed,” I said. “The priests will preach in the churches that you are his wife, when you give them a son they’ll turn round in a moment, you’ll be the savior of the country.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It all hangs on that, doesn’t it? A son.”

  Anne was right to fear the mob. Just before Christmas we went up the river from Greenwich to dinner with the Trevelyans. It was not an outing of the court. Nobody knew that we were going. The king was dining in private with a couple of ambassadors from France and Anne took a fancy to go into the City. I went with her, with a couple of the king’s gentlemen and a couple of the other ladies. It was cold on the river and we were wrapped up warmly in furs. No one on the banks could even have seen our faces as the boat stopped at the Trevelyans’ stairs and we disembarked.

  But somebody saw us, and somebody recognized Anne, and before we had even started eating there was a servant running into the hall and whispering to Lord Trevelyan that there was a mob coming toward the house. His quick glance at Anne told us all who they were coming for. She rose at once from the table, her face as white as her pearls.

  “You’d better go,” his lordship said ungallantly. “I cannot promise your safety here.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “You can close your gates.”

  “For Christ’s sake, there are thousands of them!” His voice was sharp with fear. Now we were all on our feet. “This isn’t a gang of apprentice lads, it’s a mob coming, they are swearing to hang you from the rafters. You had better get to your boat and go back to Greenwich, Lady Anne.”

  She hesitated for a moment, hearing his determination to get her away from his home.

  “Is the boat ready?”

  Someone ran from the hall shouting for the boatmen.

  “Surely we can beat them off!” Francis Weston said. “How many men have you got here, Trevelyan? We can take them on, teach them a lesson, and then have our dinner.”

  “I have three hundred men,” his lordship started.

  “Well then—let’s arm them and…”

  “The mob is eight thousand, and growing as they pass through every street.”

  There was a stunned silence. “Eight thousand?” Anne whispered. “Eight thousand people marching against me in the streets of London?”

  “Quickly,” Lady Trevelyan said. “For God’s sake, get to your boat.”

  Anne snatched her cape from the woman and I grabbed another, it wasn’t even mine. The ladies who had come with us were crying with fear. One of them ran away upstairs, she was afraid to be on the river in case they came after us on the dark waters. Anne raced out of the house and through the black garden. She flung herself into the boat and I was right behind her. Francis and William were with us, the rest threw the mooring ropes into the boat and pushed it off. They wouldn’t even come with us.

  “Get your heads down and keep covered,” one of them shouted.

  “And take the royal standard down.”

  It was a shameful moment. One of the boatmen snatched out his knife and cut the ropes holding the royal standard for fear that the people of England should see their own king’s flag. He fumbled with it and then it slipped from his hand and fell overboard. I watched it turn in the water and sink down.

  “Never mind that! Row!” Anne shouted, her face veiled in her furs.

  I ducked down beside her and we clung together. I could feel her trembling.

  We saw the mob as we pulled out into the swirling current. They had lit torches and we could see the bobbing flares reflected in the dark river. The string of lights seemed to go on for ever. Over the water we could hear them shouting curses on my sister. At each violent shout there was a roar of approval, a roar of naked hatred. Anne shrank lower in the boat, held onto me yet more tightly and shook with fear.

  The boatmen rowed like men possessed, they knew that none of us would survive an attack on the boat in this weather. If the mob even knew that we were out on the dark water they would heave up cobblestones and throw them, they would chase down the banks to get to us, they would find boats to commandeer and they would be after us.

  “Row faster!” Anne hissed.

  We made ragged progress, too afraid to beat a drum or shout the rhythm. We wanted to slip past the mob, shielded by the darkness. I peered over the edge of the boat and saw the lights pause, hesitate, as if they were looking out into the darkness, as if they could sense with the preternatural awareness of a savage beast that the woman they wanted was muffling her sobs of terror into her furs only yards away from them.

  Then the procession went on, to the Trevelyans’ house. It wound along the curve of the river, the torches stretching for what seemed like miles. Anne sat up and pushed back her hood. Her face was aghast.

  “D’you think he’ll protect me against that?” she demanded fiercely. “Against the Pope—yes—especially when it means that he gets the tithes of the church into his own keeping. Against the queen—yes—especially when it means that he gets a son and heir. But against his own people, if they come for me with torches and ropes
in the night? D’you think he’ll stand by me then?”

  It was a quiet Christmas at Greenwich that year. The queen sent the king a beautiful cup of gold and he sent it back to her with a cold-hearted message. We felt her absence all the time. It was like a home when a beloved mother is missing. It was not that she had been sparkling or brilliant or provocative as Anne always, wearisomely, was—it was just that she had always been there. Her reign had gone on for so long that there were very few people who could remember the English court without her.

  Anne was determinedly bright and enchanting and active. She danced and she sang, she gave the king a set of darts in Biscayan fashion and he gave her a room full of the most expensive fabrics for her gowns. He gave her the key to the room and watched her as she went in and exclaimed in delight at the rich swathes of color swagged from one golden pole to another. He showered gifts on her, on all of us Howards. He gave me a beautiful shirt with a collar of blackwork. But still, it was more like a wake than Christmas. Everyone missed the steadying presence of the queen and wondered what she was doing at the lovely house which had belonged to the cardinal, who had been her enemy till the very last when he had finally found the courage to acknowledge that she was in the right.

  Nothing could lift people’s spirits, though Anne wore herself to a shadow trying to be merry. At night she would lie beside me in the bed and even in her sleep I would hear her muttering, like a woman quite insane.

  I lit the candle one night and held it up to see her. Her eyes were closed, dark eyelashes sweeping her white cheeks. Her hair was tied back under a nightcap as bleached as her skin. The shadows under her eyes were violet as pansies, she looked frail. And all the time her bloodless lips, parted in a smile, were muttering introductions, jests, quick quips. Every now and again she would turn her head restlessly on the pillow, that enchanting turn of her head that she did so well, and she would laugh, a horrid breathy sound from a woman so driven that even in her deepest dreams she was trying to make a celebration come alive.