The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  And lastly, this business with Henry Fitzroy, the king’s own son: one day to be legitimized and proclaimed the Prince of Wales, the next day dead of a mystery illness and my own lord told to bury him at midnight? His portraits destroyed, and all mention of him forbidden? What sort of a man is it who can see his son die and be buried without saying a word? What sort of a father can tell his two little girls that they are no children of his? What sort of a man can send his friends and his wife to the gallows and dance when their deaths are reported to him? What kind of a man is this, to whom we have given absolute power over our lives and souls?

  And perhaps even worse than all of this: the good priests hanged from their own church beams, the devout men walking to the stake to be burned, their eyes down, their thoughts on heaven, the uprisings in the North and the East, and the king swearing that the rebels could trust him, that he would be advised by them, and then the dreadful betrayal that put the trusting fools on gallows in their thousands around the country, that made my lord Norfolk the butcher of his countrymen. This king has killed thousands, this king goes on killing thousands of his own people. The world outside England says he has run mad and waits for our rebellion. But like frightened dogs in the bear pit we dare do no more than watch him and snarl.

  He is merry now, anyway, despite the new queen’s failure to arrive. I have yet to be presented to him, but they tell me he will greet me and all her ladies kindly. He is at dinner when I steal into his rooms to see the new queen’s portrait, which he keeps in his presence chamber. The room is empty; the portrait is on an easel lit by big square candles. She is a sweet-looking thing, it must be said. She has an honest face, a straight gaze from lovely eyes. I understand at once what he likes in her. She has no allure; there is no sensuality in her face. She does not look flirtatious or dangerous or sinful. She has no polish, she has no sophistication. She looks younger than her twenty-four years. I could even say she looks a little simple to my critical gaze. She will not be a queen as Anne was a queen; that is a certainty. This is not a woman who will turn court and country upside down to dance to a new tune. This is not a woman who will turn men half mad with desire and demand that they write of love in poetry. And, of course, this is exactly what he wants now – never again to love a woman like Anne.

  Anne has spoiled him for a challenge, perhaps forever. She set a fire under his court, and in the end everything was burned up. He is like a man whose very eyebrows have been scorched, and I am the woman whose house is ashes. He does not want ever again to marry a desirable mistress. I never again want to smell smoke. He wants a wife at his side who is as steady as an ox at the plow, and then he can seek flirtation and danger and allure elsewhere.

  “A pretty picture,” a man says behind me, and I turn to see the dark hair and long, sallow face of my uncle, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, the greatest man in the kingdom after the king himself.

  I sweep him a deep curtsy. “It is indeed, sir,” I say.

  He nods, his dark eyes steady. “Do you think it will prove to be a good likeness?”

  “We’ll know soon enough, my lord.”

  “You can thank me for getting you a post in her household,” he says casually. “It was my doing. I took it as a personal matter.”

  “I do thank you very much. I am in your debt for my life itself. You know, you have only ever to command me.”

  He nods. He has never shown me kindness, except the once, one great favor: pulling me from the fire that burned down the court. He is a gruff man of few words. They say he really loved only one woman and that was Katherine of Aragon, and he watched her thrust down to poverty, neglect, and death, in order to put his own niece in her place. So his affections are of little value, anyway.

  “You will tell me how things go on in her rooms,” he says, nodding at the portrait. “As you always have done.” He holds out his arm to me; he is giving me the honor of leading me into dinner. I curtsy again, he likes a show of deference, and I put my hand lightly on his arm. “I shall want to know if she pleases the king, when she conceives, who she sees, how she behaves, and if she brings in any Lutheran preachers. That sort of thing. You know.”

  I know. We walk to the door together.

  “I expect her to try to lead him in the matter of religion,” he says. “We can’t have that. We can’t have him turning any further to reform; the country won’t tolerate it. You must look at her books and see if she is reading any forbidden writing. And watch her ladies to see if they are spying on us, if they report to Cleves. If any of them express any heresy I want to know at once. You know what you have to do.”

  I do. There is not a member of this wide-ranging family who does not know his or her task. We all work to maintain the power and wealth of the Howards, and we stand together.

  I can hear the roar of the feasting court from the hall as we walk toward it, serving men with great jugs of wine and platters of meat marching in line to serve the hundreds of people who dine every day with the king. In the gallery above are the people who have come to watch, to see the great monster that is the inner court of the noblest people, a beast with a hundred mouths and a million schemes, and two hundred eyes watching the king as the only source of all wealth, all power, and all favor.

  “You will find him changed,” the duke says very softly, his mouth to my ear. “We all find him hard to please.”

  I think of the spoiled boy who could be distracted in a moment with a joke or a bet or a challenge. “He was always flighty.”

  “He’s worse than that now,” my lord says. “His temper shifts without warning, he is violent; he will lash out against Cromwell and hit him in the face. He can turn in a moment. He can take a rage that turns him scarlet. Something that pleases him in the morning can anger him at dinner. You should be warned.”

  I nod. “They serve him on bended knee now.” I notice the new fashion.

  He gives a short laugh. “And they call him ‘Majesty,’” he says. “‘Your Grace’ was good enough for the Plantaganets themselves, but not enough for this king. He has to be ‘Majesty’ as if he were a god.”

  “People do this?” I ask curiously. “This extreme honor?”

  “You will do it yourself,” he tells me. “Henry will be as a god if he wishes; there is no one who dares to deny him.”

  “The lords?” I query, thinking of the pride of the great men of the kingdom who hailed this man’s father as an equal, whose loyalty gave him his throne.

  “You will see,” my lord says grimly. “They have changed the laws of treason so that even to think of opposition is a capital offense. Nobody dares argue against him; there would be a knock on the door at midnight and a trip to the Tower for questioning and your wife a widow without even a trial.”

  I look to the high table where the king is seated, a massive spreading bulk on his throne. He is cramming food into his mouth as we watch him, both hands up to his face; he is fatter than any man I have ever seen in my life before, his shoulders gross, his neck like an ox, his features dissolving into the moon-shaped vat of his face, fingers like swollen puddings.

  “My God, he has blown up like a monster!” I exclaim. “What has become of him? Is he sick? I would not have known him. God knows he is not the prince he was.”

  “He is a danger,” my lord says, his voice no more than a breath. “To himself in his indulgences, and to others in his temper. Be warned.”

  I am shaken more than I show when I go to the table for the queen’s ladies. They make a space for me and greet me by name, many of them calling me cousin. I feel the king’s little piggy eyes on me, and I sweep him a deep curtsy before I sit down on my stool. Nobody else pays any attention to the beast that the prince has become; it is like a fairy tale, and we are all blinded by an enchantment not to see the ruin of the man in this pig of a king.

  I settle to my dinner and serve myself from the common platter. The best wine is poured into my cup. I look around the court. This is my home. I have known most of these people
for all of my life, and thanks to the duke’s care in marrying all the Howard children to his own advantage, I am related to most of them. Like most of them, I have served one queen after another. Like most of them, I have followed my royal mistress in the fashion of hoods: gable hood, French hood, English hood; and in the fashion of praying: papist, reformist, English Catholic. I have stumbled in Spanish and I have chattered in French, and I have sat in thoughtful silence and sewed shirts for the poor. There is not much about the Queens of England that I have not known, that I have not seen. And soon I shall see the next one and know all about her: her secrets, her hopes, and her faults. I shall watch her and I shall make my reports to my lord duke. And perhaps, even in a court grown fearful under a king who is swelling into a tyrant, even without my husband, and even without Anne, I shall learn to be happy again.

  Katherine, Norfolk House, Lambeth,

  December 1539

  And what shall I get for Christmas? I know I am to have an embroidered purse from my friend Agnes Restwold, a hand-copied page from a prayer book from Mary Lascelles (I’m so thrilled at the prospect of this I can hardly breathe), and two handkerchiefs from my grandmother. So far, so very dull indeed. But my dearest Francis is going to give me a shift of the best embroidered linen, and I have woven him, with my own hands, and it has taken me days, an armband of my favorite colors. I am very pleased that he should love me so, and of course I love him, too, but he has not bought me a ring as he promised, and he is sticking to his plan to go to Ireland to seek his fortune in the very next month, and then I shall be left all alone, and what is the point of that?

  The court is at Greenwich for Christmas. I hoped it would be at Whitehall, and then I might at least have gone to see the king eat his dinner. My uncle the duke is there, but he does not summon us; and although my grandmother went to dine, she did not take me with her. Sometimes I think that nothing will ever happen for me. Nothing will ever happen at all, and I will live and die an old spinster in my grandmother’s service. I shall be fifteen next birthday, and clearly no one has given a single thought to my future. Who ever cares for me? My mother is dead, and my father barely remembers my name. It is terribly sad. Mary Lumleigh is to be married next year; they are drawing up the contract now, and she makes much of herself and queens it over me, as though I cared for her and for her pimply betrothed. I should not want such a match if it were offered to me with a fortune attached, and so I told her, and so we have quarreled and the lace collar she was going to give me for Christmas will be given to someone else, and I do not care about that either.

  The queen should be in London by now, but she has been so stupidly slow that she is delayed, so all my hopes of her great entry into London and a wonderful wedding have been put off, too. It is as if the very fates themselves work to make me unhappy. I am doomed. All I want is a little dancing! Anyone would think that a girl of nearly fifteen, or at any rate fifteen next year, could go dancing once before she dies!

  Of course we will have dancing here for Christmas, but that is not what I mean at all. What is the pleasure in dancing when everyone who sees you has seen you every day for a year before? What’s the pleasure in a feast when every boy in the room is as familiar as the tapestries on the walls? Where’s the joy in having a man’s eyes on you when he is your own man, your own husband, and he would come to your bed whether you dance prettily or not? I try a special turn and curtsy that I have been practicing, and it does me no good at all. Nobody seems to notice except my grandmother, who sees everything, and she calls me out of the line and puts her finger under my chin and says: “Child, there is no need to twinkle around like some slut of an Italian. We all watch you anyway.” By which I am supposed to understand that I should dance not like a lady, like an elegant young lady, with some style; but like a child.

  I curtsy and say nothing. There is no point in arguing with my lady grandmother, she has such a temper she can send me from the room in a moment if I so much as open my mouth. I really do think I am very cruelly treated.

  “And what’s this I hear about you and young Master Dereham?” she suddenly asks. “I thought I had warned you once already?”

  “I don’t know what you hear, Grandmother,” I say cleverly.

  Too clever for her, because she raps my hand with her fan.

  “Don’t forget who you are, Katherine Howard,” she says sharply. “When your uncle sends for you to wait on the queen, I take it you will not want to refuse because of some greensick flirtation?”

  “Wait on the queen?” I go at once to the most important thing.

  “Perhaps,” she says maddeningly. “Perhaps she will have need of a maid-in-waiting if the girl has been gently raised and is not known to be an utter slut.”

  I cannot speak, I am so desperate. “Grandmother… I…”

  “Never mind,” she says and waves me away back to the dancers. I clutch at her sleeve and beg to know more, but she laughs and sends me to dance. As she is watching me, I hop about like a little wooden doll; I am so correct in the steps and so polite in my deportment that you would think I had a crown on my head myself. I dance like a nun, I dance like a vestal virgin, and when I look up to see if she is impressed by my modesty she is laughing at me.

  So that night, when Francis comes to the chamber door, I meet him on the threshold. “You can’t come in,” I say bluntly. “My lady grandmother knows all about us. She warned me for my reputation.”

  He looks shocked. “But my love-”

  “I can’t risk it,” I insist. “She knows far more than we thought. God knows what she has heard or who has told her.”

  “We would not deny each other,” he says.

  “No,” I say uncertainly.

  “If she asks you, you must tell her that we are married in the eyes of God.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “And I shall come to you as your husband now.”

  “You can’t.” Nothing in this world is going to prevent me from being the new queen’s maid-in-waiting. Not even my undying love for Francis.

  He puts his hand around my waist and nibbles at the nape of my neck. “I shall be going to Ireland within days,” he whispers softly. “You will not send me away with my heart breaking.”

  I hesitate. It would be very sad for his heart to break, but I have to be maid-in-waiting to the new queen; there is nothing more important than that.

  “I don’t want your heart to break,” I say. “But I have to take a post in the queen’s household, and who knows what might happen?”

  He lets me go abruptly. “Oh, so you think you’re going to go to court?” he asks crossly. “And flirt with some great lord? Or one of your noble cousins or someone? A Culpepper or a Mowbray or a Neville or someone?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. It is really marvelous how dignified I can be. You would think I was my grandmother. “I cannot discuss my plans with you now.”

  “Kitty!” he cries, torn between anger and lust. “You are my wife; you are my promised wife! You are my own beloved!”

  “I must ask you to withdraw,” I say very grandly, and I close the door in his face and run and take a flying leap onto my bed.

  “What now?” asks Agnes. At the far end of the dormitory they have drawn the curtains around the bed; some boy and some loose girl are lovemaking, and I can hear his eager panting and her sighing.

  “Can’t you be quiet?” I shout down the long room. “It’s really shocking. It is offensive to a young maid such as me. It’s shocking. It really shouldn’t be allowed.”

  Anne, Calais,

  December 1539

  In all this long journey I have started to learn how I shall be when I am queen. The English ladies that my lord the king sent to be with me have spoken English to me every day, and my lord Southampton has been at my side at every town we have entered, and has prompted me and guided me in the most helpful way. They are a most formal and dignified people; everything has to be done by rote, by rule, and I am learning to hide my excitement at th
e greetings, the music, and the crowds who everywhere come out to see me. I don’t want to seem like the country sister of a minor duke, I want to be like a queen, a true Queen of England.

  At every town I have had a welcome of people thronging in the streets, calling out my name, and bringing me posies and gifts. Most towns present me with a loyal address and give me a purse of gold or some valuable jewelry. But my arrival in my first English town, the port of Calais, is dwarfing everything that went before. It is a mighty English castle with a great walled town around it, built to withstand any attack from France, the enemy, just outside the powerfully guarded gates. We enter by the south gate that looks over the road toward the kingdom of France, and we are greeted by an English nobleman, Lord Lisle, and dozens of gentlemen and noblemen, dressed very fine, with a small army of men dressed in red and blue livery.