The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  The king was in his private gallery, overlooking the chapel, hearing matins as we filed past to the queen’s adjoining room. Straining my ears I could just hear the mutter of the clerk putting papers before the king for him to glance at and sign as he watched the priest in the chapel below go through the familiar motions of the Mass. The king always did his business at the same time as hearing the morning service, he followed his father in this tradition, and there were many who thought the work was hallowed. There were others, my uncle among them, who thought that it showed that the king was in a hurry to get the work out of the way and that he only ever gave it half his mind.

  I kneeled on the cushion in the queen’s private room, looking at the ivory gleam of my gown as it shimmered, hinting at the contours of my thighs. I could still feel the warmth of him in the tenderness between my legs, I could still taste him on my lips. Despite the bath which Anne had insisted that I took, I still fancied that I could smell the sweat from his chest on my face and in my hair. When I closed my eyes it was not in prayer, but in a reverie of sensuality.

  The queen was kneeling beside me, her face grave, her head erect under the heavy gable hood. Her gown was open a little at the neck so that she might slide her finger inside and touch the hair shirt that she always wore next to her skin. Her sober face was drawn and tired, her head bowed over her rosary, the old slack skin on her chin and cheeks looking weary and pouched under her tightly closed eyes.

  The Mass went on interminably. I envied Henry the distraction of the state papers. The queen’s attention never wavered, her fingers were never idle on her beads, her eyes were always closed in prayer. Only when the service ended and the priest wiped the chalices in the white cloths and took them away did she give a lingering sigh, as if she had heard something that none of us had ears for. She turned and smiled on all of us, all her ladies, even me.

  “And now let us go to break our fast,” she said pleasantly. “Perhaps the king will eat with us.”

  As we filed past his door, I felt myself dawdle, I could not believe that he would let me go by without a word. As if he sensed my desire, my brother George flung open the door at the exact moment that I was lingering and said loudly: “A good morning to you, my sister.”

  In the room behind him Henry looked up quickly from his work and saw me, framed in the doorway, in the cream gown that Anne had chosen for me, with my cream headdress pulling my rich hair off my young face. He gave a little sigh of desire at the sight of me and I felt my color rise, and my smile warm my face.

  “Good day, sire. And good day to you, my brother,” I said softly, while my eyes never left Henry’s face.

  Henry rose to his feet and stretched out his hand as if to draw me in. He checked himself with a glance at his clerk.

  “I’ll take my breakfast with you,” he said. “Tell the queen I will come along in a few moments. Just as soon as I have finished these…these…” His vague gesture indicated that he had no idea what the papers were.

  He came across the room, like a dazed trout swimming toward a poacher’s bright lantern. “And you, this morning, are you well?” he said quietly, for my ears only.

  “I am.” I shot a quick, mischievous glance up at his intent face. “A little weary.”

  His eyes danced at the admission. “Did you not sleep well, sweeting?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “Was the bed not to your liking?”

  I stumbled, I was never as skilled as Anne at this sort of word-play. In the end I said nothing but what was simply true. “Sire, I liked it very well.”

  “Would you sleep there again?”

  In a delicious moment I found the right response. “Oh sire. I was hoping I would not sleep there again very soon.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, he snatched up my hand and, turning it over, pressed a kiss into the palm. “My lady, you have only to command me,” he promised. “I am your servant in every way.”

  I bowed my head to watch his mouth press my hand, I could not take my eyes from his face. He raised his head and we looked at each other, a long mutual look of desire.

  “I should go,” I said. “The queen will wonder where I am.”

  “I shall follow you,” he said. “Believe it.”

  I shot him a quick smile then I turned and ran down the gallery after the queen’s ladies. I could hear my heels going tap tap tap on the stones beneath the rushes, I could hear the rustle of my silk gown. I could sense, in every part of my alert body, that I was young and lovely and beloved. Beloved by the King of England himself.

  He came to breakfast and smiled as he took his seat. The queen’s pale eyes took in the rosy color of my face, the rich gleam of my cream gown, and looked away. She called for some musicians to play for us while we ate, and for the queen’s master of the horse to attend us.

  “Will you go hunting today, sire?” she asked him pleasantly.

  “Yes, indeed. Would any of your ladies care to follow the hunt?” the king invited.

  “I am sure they would,” she said with her usual pleasant tone. “Mademoiselle Boleyn, Mistress Parker, Mistress Carey? I know you three for keen riders. Would you like to ride with the king today?”

  Jane Parker shot a swift malicious gleam at me for being named third. She does not know, I thought, inwardly hugging myself. She can triumph all she likes because she does not know.

  “We would be enchanted to ride with the king,” Anne said smoothly. “All three of us.”

  In the great courtyard before the stables the king mounted his big hunter while one of the grooms lifted me up into the saddle of the horse he had given me. I hooked my leg firmly around the pommel and arranged my gown to fall becomingly to the ground. Anne scrutinized me, without missing the tiniest detail, as she always did, and I was pleased when her head, capped with the neatest of French hunting hats with a dainty plume, gave a small approving nod. She called to the groom to lift her up into the saddle and she brought her hunter up beside mine and held him steady while she leaned over.

  “If he wants to take you off into the woods and have you, you’re to say no,” she whispered. “Try to remember that you are a Howard girl. You’re not a complete slut.”

  “If he wants me…”

  “If he wants you, he’ll wait.”

  The huntsman blew his horn and every horse in the courtyard stiffened with excitement. Henry grinned across at me like an excited boy and I beamed back. My mare, Jesmond, was like a coiled spring, and when the master of the hunt led the way over the drawbridge we trotted quickly after him, the hounds like a sea of brindle and white around the horses’ hooves. It was a bright day but not too hot, a cool wind moved the grass of the meadow as we trotted away from the town, the haymakers leaned on their scythes and watched us pass, doffing their caps as they saw the bright colors of the aristocratic riders, and then dropping to their knees as they saw the king’s standard.

  I glanced back at the castle. A casement window in the queen’s apartments stood open and I saw her dark hood and her pale face looking out after us. She would meet us for dinner and she would smile at Henry and smile at me as if she had not seen us, riding side by side, out for a day’s sport together.

  The yelping of the hounds suddenly changed in tone and then they fell silent. The huntsman blew his horn, the long loud blast which meant that the hounds had taken a scent.

  “Hulloa!” Henry shouted, spurring his horse forward.

  “There!” I cried. At the end of the avenue of trees opening before us I saw the outline of a large stag, his antlers held flat on his back as he crashed away from the hunt. At once the hounds streamed out behind him, almost silent except for the occasional bark of excitement. They plunged into the undergrowth and we pulled up the horses and waited. The huntsmen trotted anxiously away from the hunt, criss-crossing the forest by the little rides, hoping to spot the deer break away. Then one of them suddenly stood high in his stirrups and blew a loud note on his horn. My horse reared with excitement at t
he sound and spun round toward him. I clung gracelessly to the pommel and to a handful of mane, caring nothing how I looked as long as I did not tumble off backward into the mud.

  The stag broke away and was racing for his life across the rough empty ground at the edge of the woods that led to the watermeadows and the river. At once the dogs poured after him and the horses after them in a breakneck race. The hooves pounded all around me, I had my eyes squinted, half-shut, as divots of mud flew up into my face, I crouched low over Jesmond’s neck, urging her onward. I felt my hat tear from my head and tumble away, then there was a hedge before me, white with summer blossom. I felt Jesmond’s powerful hindquarters bunch up beneath me and with one great leap she cleared it, hit the ground on the far side, recovered and was pounding into her fastest gallop again. The king was ahead of me, his attention fixed on the stag which was gaining on us. I could feel the ripple of my hair as it shook out from the pins and I laughed recklessly to feel the wind in my face. Jesmond’s ears went back to hear me laugh and then forward as we came to another hedge with a nasty little ditch before it. She saw it as I did and checked only for a moment and then made a mighty cat-jump: all four feet off the ground at once in order to clear it. I could smell the perfume of crushed honeysuckle as her hooves clipped the top of the hedge, then we were on and on, even faster. Ahead of me the little brown dot that was the stag plunged into the river and started to swim strongly for the other side. The master of the hunt desperately blew for the hounds not to follow the beast into the water but to come back to him and to run down the bank to keep pace with the quarry to bait it as it came to shore. But they were too excited to listen. The whippers-in surged forward but half the pack were after the deer in the river, some of them swept away by the fast current, all of them powerless in the deep water. Henry pulled up his horse and watched the chaos develop.

  I was afraid that it would make him angry but he threw back his head and laughed as if he delighted in the stag’s cunning.

  “Go then!” he shouted after him. “I can eat venison here without cooking you! I have a larder of venison!”

  Everyone around us laughed as if he had made a wonderful jest and I realized that everyone had been afraid that the failure of the hunt would turn his mood sour. Looking from one bright delighted face to another I thought for one illuminating moment what fools we were to make this one man’s temper the very center of our lives. But then he smiled toward me and I knew that for me at least, there was no choice.

  He took in my mud-splashed face and my tumbling tangled hair. “You look like a maid for country matters,” he said, and anyone could have heard the desire in his voice.

  I pulled off my glove and put my hand to my head, ineffectually twisting a knot of hair and tucking it back. I gave him a little sideways smile which acknowledged his bawdiness and yet refused to answer it.

  “Oh shush,” I ordered softly. Behind his intent face I saw Jane Parker suddenly gulp as if she had swallowed a horse fly and I saw that she had realized at last that she had better mind her manners around us Boleyns.

  Henry dropped from his horse, threw the reins to his groom and came to my horse’s head. “Will you come down to me?” he asked, his voice warm and inviting.

  I unhooked my knee and let myself slide down the side of my horse and into his arms. He caught me easily and set me on my feet but he did not release me. Before the whole court he kissed me on one cheek and then another. “You are the Queen of the Hunt.”

  “We should crown her with flowers,” Anne suggested.

  “Yes!” Henry was pleased with the thought and within moments half the court was plaiting honeysuckle garlands and I had a crown of haunting honey perfume to put on my tumbled golden-brown hair.

  The wagons came up with the things for dinner and they put up a little tent for fifty diners, the king’s favorites, and chairs and benches for the rest, and when the queen arrived, ambling on her steady palfrey, she saw me seated at the king’s left hand and crowned with summer flowers.

  Next month and England was finally at war with France, a war declared and formal, and Charles, the Emperor of Spain, aimed his army like a lance at the heart of France while the English army in alliance with him marched out of the English fort of Calais, and headed south down the road to Paris.

  The court lingered near the City, anxious for news, but then the summertime plague came to London and Henry, always fearful of illness, ruled that the summer progress should start at once. We fled rather than moved to Hampton Court. The king ordered that all the food should be brought from the surrounding country, nothing could come from London. He forbade merchants and traders and artisans to follow the court from the unhealthy stews of the capital. The clean palace on the fresh water must be kept safe from illness.

  The news from France was good, and the news from the City was bad. Cardinal Wolsey organized the court to go south and then west, staying at the great houses of the great men, entertained with masques and dinners and hunting and picnics and jousts, and Henry went like a boy, easily diverted by the passing scene. Every courtier living on the route had to play host to the king as if it were his greatest joy instead of his most dreaded expense. The queen traveled with the king, riding by his side through the pretty countryside, sometimes traveling in a litter if she were tired, and though I might be sent for during the night, he was attentive and loving to her during the day. Her nephew was the English army’s only ally in Europe, the friendship of her family meant victory to an English army. But Queen Katherine was more to her husband than an ally in wartime. However much I might please Henry, he was still her boy—her lovely indulged spoilt golden boy. He might summon me or any other girl to his room, without disturbing the constant steady affection between them which had sprung from her ability, long ago, to love this man who was more foolish, more selfish, and less of a prince than she was a princess.

  Winter 1522

  THE KING KEPT HIS COURT AT GREENWICH FOR CHRISTMAS and for twelve days and nights there was nothing but the most extravagant and beautiful parties and feastings. There was a Christmas master of the revels—Sir William Armitage—and it was his task to dream up something new for every day. His daily program followed a delightful pattern of something for us to do out of doors in the morning—a boat race to watch, jousting, or an archery competition, bear baiting, a dog fight, a cocking match, or a traveling show with tumblers and fire-eaters, followed by a great dinner in the hall with fine wine and ale and small beer and every day some enchanting pudding made of sculpted marchpane as fine as a piece of art. In the afternoon there would be a diversion: a play or a talk, some dancing or a masque. We all had parts to play, we all had costumes to wear, we all had to be as merry as we could be, for the king was always laughing this winter and the queen never stopped smiling.

  The inconclusive campaign against France had ended with the cold weather, but everyone knew that come the spring there would be another series of battles and England and Spain would jointly venture against their enemy. The King of England and the queen from Spain were united in every sense of the word that Christmas season, and once a week without fail they dined privately together and he slept in her bed that night.

  But every other night, also without fail, George would come to the room I shared with Anne and tap on the door and say: “He wants you,” and I would go to my love, to my king, at the run.

  I never stayed for the whole night. There were foreign ambassadors from all over Europe bidden to Greenwich for Christmas and Henry would not show such a snub to the queen before them. The Spanish ambassador in particular was a stickler for etiquette and he was a close friend to the queen. Knowing the part I played at court, he did not like me; and I would not have enjoyed bumping into him coming out of the king’s private rooms all flushed and disheveled. Better by far that I should slip from the king’s warm bed and hurry back to my chamber with George yawning at my side, hours before the ambassador arrived to hear Mass.

  Anne was always up and waiting for
me, with ale ready mulled and the fire banked in to warm our chamber. I would jump into bed and she would throw a woollen wrap around my shoulders and sit beside me and comb out the tangles from my hair while George put another log on the fire and sipped at his own cup.

  “It’s weary work, this,” he said. “I fall asleep most afternoons. I cannot keep my eyes open.”

  “Anne puts me to bed after my dinner as if I were a child,” I said resentfully.

  “What d’you want?” Anne asked. “To be as haggard as the queen?”

  “She’s not looking too bonny,” George agreed. “Is she ill?”

  “Just old age, I think,” Anne said uncaringly. “And the effort of appearing happy all the time. She must be exhausted. Henry takes a lot of pleasing, doesn’t he?”

  “No,” I said smugly, and the three of us laughed.

  “Has he said if he is giving you a special gift for Christmas?” Anne asked. “Or George? Or any of us?”

  I shook my head. “He hasn’t said.”

  “Uncle Howard sent a gold chalice wrought with our arms for you to give to him,” Anne said. “It’s safe in the cupboard. It’s worth a fortune. I only hope we see some return on it.”

  I nodded drowsily. “He has promised me a surprise.” At once the two of them were alert. “He wants to take me to the shipyard tomorrow.”

  Anne made a grimace of disdain. “I thought you meant a gift. Are we all to go? The whole court?”

  “Just a small party.” I closed my eyes and started to drift off into sleep. I heard Anne get up from the bed and move about the room, unpacking my clothes from the chest and laying them out for the morning.

  “You must wear your red,” she said. “And you can borrow my red cape trimmed with swansdown. It’ll be cold on the river.”

  “Thank you, Anne.”

  “Oh, don’t think I’m doing it for you. I am doing this for the advancement of the family. None of this is for you, as yourself.”