The Boleyn Inheritance

by Philippa Gregory

  Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,

  Christmas 1540

  The king has turned against his wife’s family, against his own niece, and everyone stays quiet, keeps their heads low, and hopes that his disfavor will not turn on them. Charles Howard, warned in advance by someone braver than the rest of us, has skipped downriver in a little fishing boat, begged a place on a coaster, and sailed for France. He will join the growing number of exiles who cannot live in Henry’s England: Papists, reformers, men and women caught in the new treason laws, and men and women whose crime is nothing more than to be kin to someone the king has named as a traitor. The greater their numbers grow, the more suspicious and fearful is this king. His own father took England with a handful of disaffected men, in exile from King Richard. He knows, none better, that tyranny is hated, and that enough exiles, enough pretenders, can overthrow the throne.

  So Charles is safe away in France, waiting for the king to die. In some ways his life is better than ours. He is exiled from his home and his family, but he is free; we are here but scarcely dare to breathe. Lady Margaret is back in her old prison of Syon Abbey. She cried very bitterly when she knew the king was imprisoning her again. She says she has three rooms to walk in, and a corner view of the river. She says she is only twenty-one and the days are dreary for her. She says the days pass very slowly and the nights go on forever. She says all she wants is to be allowed to love a good man, to marry him, and to be happy.

  We all know that the king will never allow this. Happiness has become the scarcest commodity of all in the kingdom this winter. No one shall be happy but him.

  Katherine, Hampton Court,

  Christmas 1540

  Now, let me see, what do I have now?

  I have the Seymour inheritance, yes, all of it. All the castles, lordships, and manors that were given to Jane Seymour are now given to me. Imagine how furious the Seymours are? One moment they are the greatest landholders in England; next, up jump I, and all of Jane’s lands are mine.

  I have most of the lands that belonged to Thomas Cromwell, now executed for treason, which is good riddance to bad rubbish, my uncle tells me. My uncle tells me that although he was a commoner, Thomas Cromwell kept his lands in very good heart and I can expect a handsome revenue from them. Me! A handsome revenue! As though I ever knew what a plow was for! I even have tenants, think of that!

  I am to have the lands from Lord Hungerford, who was condemned to death for witchcraft and buggery, and the lands of Lord Hugh, the Abbot of Reading. As usual with the king, it is not very pleasant to have lands that were owned by people now dead, and some of them dead to oblige me. But as Lady Rochford pointed out, and I do remember (though some people say that nothing stays in my head for longer than a moment), everything comes from dead people and there is no point in being too squeamish.

  This is no doubt true, and yet I cannot help but think that she, for one, seems to inherit the goods of dead men with good cheer. She relishes her Boleyn inheritance of a title and wishes she had the house to go with it. I am sure if I were a widow I would be much more sad and reflective than she is, but she hardly mentions her husband at all. Not once. If ever I say to her, “Is it not odd being in my rooms that were your sister-in-law’s?” she looks at me almost sternly and says, “Hush.” Now, is it likely that I would chatter all over the court that I am the second Howard girl to wear the crown? Of course not. But I would have thought that a widow would welcome a little thoughtful reflection on those she had lost. Especially if it is done sensitively, as I do it.

  Not me, obviously, should I ever be widowed, for my case would be very different. No one could expect me to be very sad. Since my husband is so very much older than me, it is only natural for him to die soon, and then I shall be free to make my own life. Obviously, I should never be so impolite as to remark upon this, for one of the things I quickly learned as a courtier is that the king never needs a true portrait of himself, however he might demand true likenesses of others, like poor Queen Anne. He never wants to be reminded that he is old, and he never wants to be told that he looks tired or that his limp is worse or his wound is stinking. Part of my task as his wife is to pretend that he is the same age as me, and is not up and dancing with the rest of us only because he prefers to sit and watch me. I never ever do anything, not by word or deed, to suggest that I am aware that he is old enough to be my father, and an injured, fat, weak, costive old father at that.

  And I cannot help it if his daughter is older than me, and stricter than me, and better educated than me. She has arrived at court for the Christmas feast like an old ghost reminding everyone of her mother. I don’t even complain of her, because I don’t have to. Her very presence beside me, so serious, so much more grown-up, more like a mother to me than I could ever be to her, is enough to irritate the king. And he takes his irritation out on her, I am glad to say. It’s enough to make a cat laugh. I have to do nothing. She makes him feel old, and I make him feel young. So he dislikes her, and he adores me.

  And though it is a certainty that he will die soon, I should be very sad for him if it were to be at once, say this year. But when it does happen, say next year, I would be Queen Regent and would care for my stepson, Prince Edward. It would be very merry, I think. To be Queen Regent would be the best thing in all the world. For I would have all the pleasures and wealth of a queen but no old king to worry about. Indeed, everyone would have to worry about me, and the greatest joke would be that in fifty years from now I could insist that they all behave as if I was not old and not tired but, on the contrary, as beautiful every morning as I am today.

  The thought of his dying is something I never mention, not even in my prayers, for, amazingly, it is treason even to suggest that the king might die. Isn’t he ridiculous? Fancy making it illegal to say something that is so obviously true! In any case, I take no chances with treason, and so never wish for his death and never even pray for it. But sometimes, when I am dancing with Thomas Culpepper and his hand is on my waist and I can feel his warm breath on my neck, I think that if the king were to die here and now, I might have a young husband, I might know the touch of a young man again, the scent of fresh sweat in bed, the feel of a hard young body, the thrill of a kiss from a clean mouth. Sometimes, when Thomas catches me in a move in the dance and I feel him grip my waist, I ache for the touch of him. Whenever I think like this, I whisper to him that I am tired, and I turn away from him and ignore the slight pressure of his fingers. I then go and sit down beside the king. Lady Margaret is a prisoner in Syon Abbey for loving a man against the king’s will. There is no point in thinking like this. It is not very merry to think like this.

  Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,

  Christmas 1540

  This is to be Katherine’s Christmas, the happiest Christmas she has ever had. Her household is re-formed around her; she is served by the greatest ladies of the land and befriended by the worst girls who ever romped in a dormitory. She has her lands in her own right; she has retainers by the thousand; she has jewels that would be the envy of the Moors; now she has to have the happiest Christmas of her life, and we are ordered to make it so.

  The king is rested and revived, excited at the thought of a dazzling celebration to show the world that he is the ardent husband of a young and pretty wife. The brief scandal of his niece’s love affair is forgotten; she is locked up in Syon Abbey, and her lover is run away. Kitty Howard has blamed everybody but herself for the laxity of her rooms, and all is forgiven. Nothing shall spoil this first Christmas for the newlyweds.

  But straightaway there is a little pout on the pretty face. Princess Mary comes to court as she is bidden and bends the knee to her new stepmother, but she does not come up smiling. Princess Mary is clearly not impressed by a girl nine years her junior, and she cannot seem to form her mouth to say the word Mother to a silly, vain child, when that beloved title once belonged to the finest queen in Europe. Princess Mary, who has always been a girl of high scholarly ability and seriousness, a child o
f the church, a child of Spain, cannot stomach a girl younger than her, perched on her mother’s throne like a tiny cuckoo chick and jumping down to dance the moment anyone asks her. Princess Mary first met Kitty Howard last spring when she was the vainest, silliest girl in service to the queen. How to believe that this little imp is now the queen herself? If it were the Feast of Misrule, Princess Mary would laugh. But this stunted version of royalty is not funny when it is played out every day. She does not laugh.

  The court is grown merry, as some say, or wild, as others say. I say that if you put a young fool in command of her own household and bid her to please herself, you will see an explosion of flirtation, adultery, posturing, misbehavior, drunkenness, dishonesty, and downright lechery. And so we see. Princess Mary walks among us like a woman of judgment through a market of fools. She sees nothing that she can like.

  The little pout tells the king that his child bride is discontented, and so he takes his daughter to one side and tells her to mind her manners if she wants a place at court at all. Princess Mary, who has endured worse than this, bites her tongue and bides her time. She says nothing against the girl queen; she merely watches her, as a thoughtful young woman would watch a dirty babbling stream. There is something about Mary’s dark gaze that makes Katherine as insubstantial as a little laughing ghost.

  Little Kitty Howard, alas, does not improve as a result of great position. But nobody, except her adoring husband, ever thought she would. Her uncle the duke keeps a strict eye on her public behavior, and relies on me to watch her in private. More than once he has summoned her to his rooms for a fierce lecture on propriety and the behavior expected of a queen. She breaks down into the penitent tears that are so easy for her. And he, relieved that – unlike Anne – she does not argue, or throw his own behavior back at him, or cite the polite manners of the French court, or laugh in his face, thinks the deed is done. But the very next week there is a romp in the queen’s rooms when the young courtiers chase the girls all around the queen’s chambers, her own bedroom as well, smacking them with pillows, and the queen is in the midst of it all, screaming and dancing on the bed and awarding points in the joust of the pillows. So what is to be done?

  No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on. She is lacking in education and training and even common sense. God knows what the duchess thought she was doing with the young people in her house. She sent Katherine to music lessons – where she was kissed by the music master – but she never taught her to read or write or to reckon accounts. The child has no languages, she cannot read a score – despite the attentions of Henry Manox – she can sing with a thin little voice, she can dance like a whore, she is learning to ride. What else? No, nothing else. That is all.

  She has wit enough to please a man, and some of her late-night foolery in Norfolk House has taught her a handful of whorish tricks. Thank God, she sets herself to please the king, and she succeeds beyond belief. He has taken it into his head that she is a perfect girl. In his eyes she has replaced the daughter he never loved, the virgin bride that his brother had first, the wife he was never sure of. For a man who has two daughters of his own, and who has wedded and bedded five women, he certainly has a lot of dreams unfulfilled. Katherine is to be the one who finally makes him happy, and he does everything to convince himself that she is the girl who can do it.

  The duke summons me to his rooms every week; he leaves nothing to chance with this Howard girl, having lost control of the previous two Boleyns.

  “Is she behaving herself?” he asks curtly.

  I nod. “She is wild with the girls of her chamber, but she says nothing and does nothing to which you could seriously object in public.”

  He sniffs. “Never mind if I object. Is there anything to which the king could object?”

  I pause. Who knows what the king could object to? “She has done nothing to dishonor herself or her high calling,” I say cautiously.

  He glares at me under his fierce eyebrows. “Don’t mince words with me,” he says coldly. “I don’t keep you here for you to tell me riddles. Is she doing anything that would cause me concern?”

  “She has a fancy for one of the king’s chamber,” I say. “Nothing has happened beyond their making cow’s eyes at each other.”

  He scowls. “Has the king seen?”

  “No. It’s Thomas Culpepper, one of his favorites. He is blinded by his affection for them both. He orders them to dance together; he says they make a perfect pair.”

  “I’ve seen them.” He nods. “It’s bound to happen. Watch her, and make sure she is never alone with him. But a girl of fifteen is going to fall in love, and never with a husband of forty-nine. We will have to watch her for years. Anything else?”

  I hesitate. “She is greedy,” I say frankly. “Every time the king comes to dinner she asks him for something. He hates that. Everyone knows he hates that. He doesn’t hate it in her, yet. But how long can she go on asking him for a place for this or that cousin, or this or that friend? Or asking for a gift?”

  The duke makes a minute mark on the paper before him. “I agree,” he says. “She shall get the ambassadorship to France for William, and then I shall tell her to ask for no more. Anything else?”

  “The girls she has put in her chamber,” I say. “The girls from Norfolk House and Horsham.”

  “Yes?”

  “They misbehave with her,” I say bluntly. “And I cannot manage them. They are silly girls. There is always an affair going on with one young man or another; there is always one of them sneaking out or trying to sneak him in.”

  “Sneak him in?” he demands, suddenly alert.

  “Yes,” I say. “No harm can be done to the queen’s reputation when the king sleeps in her bed. But say that he is weary or sick and he misses a night, and her enemies find that a young man is creeping up the back stairs. Who is to say that he is coming to see Agnes Restwold and not the queen herself?”

  “She has her enemies,” he says thoughtfully. “There is not a reformist nor a Lutheran in the kingdom who would not be glad to see her disgraced. Already they are whispering against her.”

  “You would know more than I.”

  “And there are all our enemies. Every family in England would be glad to see her fall and us dragged down with her. It was ever thus. I would have given anything to see Jane Seymour shamed by a scandal. The king always fills his household with the friends of his wives. Now we are in the ascendancy again, and our enemies are gathering.”

  “If we did not insist on having everything…”

  “I shall have the Lord Lieutenancy of the North, cost me what it will,” he growls irritably.

  “Yes, but after that?”

  “Do you not see?” He suddenly rounds on me. “The king is a man for favorites and for adversaries. When he has a Spanish wife, we go to war with France. When he is married to a Boleyn, he destroys the monasteries and the Pope with them. When he is married to a Seymour, we Howards have to creep about and snatch up the crumbs under the table. When he has the Cleves woman, we are all in thrall to Thomas Cromwell, who made the match. Now it is our time again. Our girl is on the throne of England; everything that can be lifted is ours to carry away.”

  “But if everyone is our enemy?” I suggest. “If our greed makes us enemies of everyone else?”

  He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. “Everyone is always our enemy,” he says. “But right now, we are winning.”

  Anne, Hampton Court,

  Christmas 1540

  “If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.” This has become my motto, and as the barge comes upriver from Richmond, with the men on the wherries and the fishermen in their little boats doffing their caps when they see my standard and shouting out, “God bless Queen Anne!” and sometimes other less polite encouragements, such as “I’d have kept yer, dearie!” and “Try a Thames-man, why don’t yer?” and worse than that, I smile and wave, repeating to mys
elf again: “If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.”

  The king cannot behave with grace; his selfishness and folly in this matter are too plain for everyone to see. The ambassadors of Spain and France must have laughed until they were sick over the excess of his wild vanity. Little Kitty Howard (Queen Katherine, I must, I will, remember to call her queen) cannot be expected to behave with grace. I might as well ask a puppy to be graceful. If he does not put her aside within the year, if she does not die in childbirth, then she may learn the grace of a queen… perhaps. But she doesn’t have it now. In truth, she wasn’t even a very good maid-in-waiting. Her manners were not fit for the queen’s rooms then; how will she ever suit the throne?

  It has to be me who shows a little grace, if the three of us are not to become a laughingstock of the entire country. I will have to enter my old rooms at this, my favorite palace, as an honored guest. I will have to bend the knee to the girl who now sits in my chair, I will have to address her as Queen Katherine without laughing, or crying, either. I will have to be, as the king has said I may be, his sister and his dearest friend.

  That this gives me no protection from arrest and accusation at the whim of the king is as obvious to me as anyone else. He has arrested his own niece and imprisoned her in the old abbey of Syon. Clearly, kinship with the king gives no immunity from fear; friendship with the king gives no safety, as the man who built this very palace, Thomas Wolsey, could prove. But I, rowed steadily upriver, dressed in my best, looking a hundred times happier since the denial of my marriage, can perhaps survive these dangerous times, endure this dangerous proximity, and make a life for myself as a single woman in Henry’s kingdom, which I plainly could not do as a wife.