The Boleyn Inheritance

by Philippa Gregory

  This is a bloodletting again, a scatter of charges against those the king wants out of his sight. Last time Henry sought vengeance, the long days of his hatred took my husband, four others, and the Queen of England. Who can doubt but that Henry is about to do it again? But who can know whom he will take?

  The only sound in the queen’s rooms is the little patter of a dozen needles piercing rough cloth, and the whisper of the thread being pulled through. All the laughter and music and gaming that used to fill the arched room has been silenced. None of us dares to speak. The queen was always guarded, careful in her speech. Now, in these fearful days, she is more than discreet, she is struck dumb, in a state of silent terror.

  I have seen a queen in fear of her life before; I know what it is like to be at the queen’s court when we are all waiting for something to happen. I know how the queen’s ladies glance furtively, when they know in their hearts that the queen will be taken away, and who knows where else the blame will fall?

  There are several empty seats in the queen’s rooms. Katherine Howard has gone, and the rooms are a quieter, duller place without her. Lady Lisle is partly in hiding, partly seeking out the few friends who dare to acknowledge her, sick with crying. Lady Southampton has made an excuse to go away. I think that she fears her husband will be caught in the trap that is being set to catch the queen. Southampton was another friend of the queen’s when she first came to England. Anne Bassett has managed to be ill since the arrest of her father and has gone to her kinswoman. Catherine Carey has been taken from court, without a word of notice, by her mother, who knows all about the fall of queens. Mary Norris has been summoned away by her mother, who will also find these events too familiar. All of those who promised the queen their unending, undying friendship are now terrified that she will claim it and they will go down with her fall. All her ladies are afraid that they may be caught in the trap that is being primed to catch the queen.

  All of us, that is, except those who already know that they are not the victims but the trap itself. The king’s agents at the court of the queen are Lady Rutland, Catherine Edgecombe, and me. When she is arrested, we three will give evidence against her. Thus will we be safe. At least we three will be safe.

  I have not yet been told what evidence I shall give, just that I will be required to swear to a written statement. I am beyond caring. I asked the duke my uncle if I might be spared, and he says that on the contrary I should be glad that the king should put his faith in me again. I think I can say or do no more. I shall give myself up to these times; I shall bob along like a bit of driftwood on the tide of the king’s whim. I shall try to keep my own head above the water and pity those who drown beside me. And, if I am honest, I may keep my own head up by pushing another down and snatching at their air. In a shipwreck, it is every drowning man for himself.

  There is a thunderous knock at the door, and a girl screams. We all jump to our feet, certain the soldiers are at the door; we are waiting for the word of our arrest. I look quickly at the queen, and she is white, whiter than salt, I have never seen a woman blanch so pale except in death. Her lips are actually blue with fear.

  The door opens. It is my uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, looking long-faced and cadaverous with his black hat on his head like a hanging judge.

  “Your Grace,” he says, and comes in and bows low to her.

  She sways like a silver birch tree. I go to her side and take her arm to keep her steady. I feel her shudder at my touch, and I realize that she thinks I am arresting her, holding her while my uncle pronounces sentence.

  “It’s all right,” I whisper; but of course I do not know that it is all right. For all I know there are half a dozen of the royal guard standing out of sight in the corridor.

  She holds her head high, and she raises herself up to her full height. “Goot evening,” she says in her funny way. “My lord duke.”

  “I am come from the Privy Council,” he says, as smooth as funeral silk. “I regret to say that the plague has broken out in the city.”

  She frowns slightly, trying to follow the words; these are not what she was expecting. The ladies stir; we all know there is no plague.

  “The king is anxious for your safety,” he says slowly. “He commands you to move to Richmond Palace.”

  I feel her sway. “He comes also?”

  “No.”

  So everyone will know that she has been sent away. If there was plague in the city, then King Henry would be the last man in the world to be boating up and down on the Thames tra-la-la-la-ing with his lute and a new love song all the way to the Lambeth horse ferry. If there were sickness in the evening mists curling off the river, then Henry would be away to the New Forest, or to Essex. He has an utter terror of illness. The prince would be dispatched to Wales; the king would be long gone.

  So anyone who knows the king knows that this report of plague is a lie, and that the truth must be that this is the start of the queen’s ordeal. First, house arrest, while the inquiry goes on, then a charge, then a court hearing, then judgment, the sentence, and death. Thus it was for Queen Katherine, for Queen Anne Boleyn, so it will be for Queen Anne of Cleves.

  “I will see him before I leave?” she asks, poor little thing, her voice is trembling.

  “His Grace bade me come to tell you to leave tomorrow morning. He will visit you, without doubt, at Richmond Palace.”

  She staggers, and her legs buckle beneath her; if I were not holding her up, she would fall. The duke nods at me, as if commending a job well done, then he steps back and bows, and takes himself from the room as if he were not Death himself, come for the bride.

  I lower the queen into her chair and send one of the girls for a glass of water, and another running to the cellarer for a glass of brandy. When they come back, I make her drink from one glass and then the other, and she lifts up her head and looks at me.

  “I must see my ambassador,” she says huskily.

  I nod; she can see him if she likes, but there will be nothing he can do to save her. I send one of the pages to find Dr. Harst. He will be dining in the hall; he finds his way in every mealtime to one of the tables at the back. The Duke of Cleves has not paid him enough to set up his own house like a proper ambassador; the poor man has to scrounge like a mouse at the royal board.

  He comes in at a run and recoils when he sees her, seated in her chair, doubled over, as if she has been knifed in the heart.

  “Leave us,” she says.

  I drift to the end of the room, but I don’t go right outside. I stand as if I am guarding the door from the others coming in. I dare not leave her alone, even if I won’t understand what is being said. I cannot risk her giving him her jewels and the two of them slipping away through the private door to the garden and the path to the river, even though I know there are sentries on the piers.

  They mutter in their own language, and I see him shake his head. She is crying, trying to tell him something, and he pats her hand, and pats her elbow, and does everything but pat her head like a whipper-in might soothe a fretting bitch. I lean back against the door. This is not the man who can overthrow our plans. This man is not going to rescue her; we need not fear him. This man will still be desperately worrying about what he can do to save her as she climbs the scaffold. If she is counting on him for help, then she is as good as dead already.

  Anne, Richmond Palace,

  July 1540

  I think the waiting is the worst, and now waiting is all I do. Waiting to hear what charge they will frame against me, waiting for my arrest, and racking my brains for what defense I can make. Dr. Harst and I are agreed that I must leave the country, even if it means losing my claim to the throne, breaking the contract of marriage, and wrecking the alliance with Cleves. Even if it means that England will join with France in a war against Spain. To my horror, my failure to succeed in this country may mean that England is free to go to war in Europe. The one thing I hoped to bring to this country was peace and safety, but my failure with the king may
send them to war. And I cannot prevent it.

  Dr. Harst believes that my friend Lord Lisle and my sponsor Thomas Cromwell are certain to die, and that I will be next. There is nothing now I can do to save England from this outbreak of tyranny. All I can do for myself is try to save my own skin. There is no predicting the charge and no guarding against it. There will be no formal accusation in a courtroom; there will be no judges and no jury. There will be no chance to defend myself from whatever charge they have invented. Lord Lisle and Lord Cromwell will die under a Bill of Attainder; all it requires is the signature of the king. The king, who believes he is guided by God, has become a god with the full power of life and death. There can be no doubt that he is planning my death, too.

  I hesitate; like a fool I wait for a few days, hoping that it is not as bad as it seems. I think that the king might be well advised by men who can see reason. I pray that God might speak to him in words of common sense and not reassure him that his own desires should be paramount. I hope that I might hear from my mother, to tell me what I should do. I even hope against hope for a message from my brother saying that he will not let them try me, that he will prevent my execution, that he is sending an escort to bring me home. Then, on the very day that Dr. Harst said he would come with six horses and I should be ready to leave, he comes to me, without horses, his face very grave, and says that the ports are closed. The king is letting no one in or out of the country. No ships are allowed to sail at all. Even if we could get to the coast – and to run away would be a confession of guilt – we would not be able to sail. I am imprisoned in my new country. There is no way of getting home.

  Like a fool I had thought that my difficulty would be getting past the guards at my door, getting horses, getting away from the palace without someone raising a hue and cry and coming after us. But no, the king is all-seeing, like the god he thinks he is. Getting away from the palace would have been hard enough, but now we cannot take a ship for home. I am marooned on this island. The king holds me captive.

  Dr. Harst thinks this means that they will come for me at once. The king has closed the whole country so that he can have me tried, found guilty, and beheaded before my own family can even hear of my arrest. No one in Europe can protest or cry shame! No one in Europe will even know until it is over and I am dead. I believe this to be true. It must be within a few days, perhaps even tomorrow.

  I cannot sleep. I spend the night at the window watching for the first light of dawn. I think this will be my last night on earth, and I regret more than anything else that I have wasted my life. I spent all my time obeying my father and then my brother; I squandered these last months in trying to please the king; I did not treasure the little spark that is me, uniquely me. Instead, I put my will and my thoughts beneath the will of the men who command me. If I had been the gyrfalcon that my father called me, I would have flown high, and nested in lonely, cold places, and ridden the free wind. Instead, I have been like a bird in a mews, always tied and sometimes hooded. Never free and sometimes blind.

  As God is my witness, if I live through this night, through this week, I shall try to be true to myself in the future. If God spares me I shall try to honor him by being me, myself; not by being a sister or a daughter or a wife. This is an easy promise to make for I don’t think I will be held to it. I don’t think God will save me, I don’t think Henry will spare me. I don’t think I will have any life beyond next week.

  As it grows light and then golden with the morning sun of summertime, I stay at my seat at the window, and they bring me a cup of small ale and a slice of bread and butter as I watch the river for the flutter of the standard and the steady dip and sweep of oars, for the coming of the royal barge to take me to the Tower. Any beat of a drum, drifting over the water to keep the rowers in time, and I can hear my heart echoing its thudding in my ears, thinking that it is them, come for me today. Funny then that when they finally come, not until midafternoon, it is not a troop but only a single man, Richard Beard, who arrives without warning in a little wherry, when I am walking in the garden, my hands cold in my pockets and my feet clumsy with fear. He finds me in the privy garden when I am walking among the roses, bending my head down to the blooms but unable to smell the perfume of the full-blown flowers. From a distance I must look to him like a happy woman, a young queen in a garden of roses. Only as he comes close does he see the whiteness of my blank face.

  “Your Grace,” he says, and bows low, as if to a queen.

  I nod.

  “I have brought a letter from the king.” He offers me the letter.

  I take it, but I do not break the seal. “What does it say?” I ask.

  He does not pretend that it is a private matter. “It is to tell you that after months of doubt the king has decided to examine his marriage to you. He fears that it is not valid because you were already contracted to marry. There is to be an inquiry.”

  “He says we are not married?” I ask.

  “He fears that you were not married,” he corrects me gently.

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I say stupidly. “I don’t understand.”

  They all come then: half the Privy Council arrive with their entourage and servants; they all come to tell me that I must agree to an inquiry. I don’t agree. I won’t agree. They are all to stay the night here with me at Richmond Palace. I won’t dine with them; I shall not agree. I shall never agree.

  In the morning they tell me that three of my ladies are to be summoned to appear before the inquiry. They refuse to tell me what they will be asked; they will not even tell me who will be made to go and testify against me. I ask them for copies of the documents that are to be the evidence laid before the inquiry, and they refuse to let me see anything. Dr. Harst complains of this treatment and writes to my brother, but we know that the letters will never get through until it is too late; the ports are sealed and there is no news leaving England at all. We are alone. I am alone. Dr. Harst tells me that before her trial, there was an inquiry into Anne Boleyn’s conduct. An inquiry: just as they will make into my conduct. The ladies of her chamber were questioned as to what she had said and done, just as mine will be. The evidence from that inquiry was used at her trial. The sentence was passed against her, and the king married Jane Seymour, her maid-in-waiting, within the month. They will not even hold a trial for me, it will be done on the king’s signature: nothing more. Am I really going to die so that the king can marry little Kitty Howard? Can it really be possible that I am to die so that this old man can marry a girl whom he could bed for little more than the price of a gown?

  Jane Boleyn, Westminster Palace,

  July 7, 1540

  We come into the city of London by royal barge from Richmond; it is all done very fine for us, the king is sparing no trouble to make sure we are comfortable. There are three of us, Lady Rutland, Catherine Edgecombe, and myself: three little Judases come to do our duty. With us, as escort, is Lord Southampton, who must feel he has some ground to regain with the king since he welcomed Anne of Cleves into England and said that she was pretty and merry and queenly. With him are Lord Audley and the Duke of Suffolk, eager to play their parts and curry favor. They will give their evidence against her to the inquiry after we have given ours.

  Catherine Edgecombe is nervous. She says she does not know what she is to say, she is afraid of one of the churchmen cross-questioning her and trapping her into saying the wrong thing; heavens, even the truth might slip out if she were to be harried – how dreadful would that be! But I am as much at ease as a bitter old fishwife gutting mackerel. “You won’t even see them,” I predict. “You won’t be cross-questioned. Who would challenge your lies? It’s not as if there will be anyone wanting the truth; it’s not as if there will be anyone speaking in her defense. I imagine you won’t even have to speak. It will all be drawn up for us, we’ll just have to sign it.”

  “But what if it says… what if they name her as a…” She breaks off and looks downriver. She is too afraid even to sa
y the word witch.

  “Why would you even read it?” I ask. “What does it matter what it says above your signature? You agreed to sign it, didn’t you? You didn’t agree to read it.”

  “But I would not have her harmed by my evidence,” she says, the ninny.

  I raise my eyebrows, but I say nothing. I don’t need to. We all know that we have set out in the king’s barge, on a lovely summer day, to be rowed up the river to destroy a young woman who has done nothing wrong.

  “Did you just sign something? When you? Before?” she asks tentatively.

  “No,” I say. There is a salt taste of bile in my mouth so strong that I want to spit over the side into the green, swift water. “No. It was not done as well as this for Anne and my husband. See how we are improving in these ceremonies? Then, I had to go into court before them all and swear on the Bible and give my evidence. I had to face the court and say what I had to say against my own husband and his sister. I had to face him and say it.”

  She gives a little shudder. “That must have been dreadful.”

  “It was,” I say shortly.

  “You must have feared the worst.”

  “I knew that my life would be saved,” I say crudely. “And I imagine that is why you are here today, as I am, as is Lady Rutland. If Anne of Cleves is found guilty and dies, then at least we will not die with her.”