Beloved, beloved, I have done it. I sent the coat of the Scots king to Henry and I made sure to emphasise that it is his victory, not mine. But it is yours. It is yours because when I came to you and to your country, my mind filled with fears about the Moors, it was you who taught me that the danger here was the Scots. Then life taught me a harder lesson, beloved: it is better to forgive an enemy than destroy him. If we had Moorish physicians, astronomers, mathematicians in this country we would be the better for it. The time may come when we also need the courage and the skills of the Scots. Perhaps my offer of peace will mean that they will forgive us for the battle of Flodden.
I have everything I ever wanted – except you. I have won a victory for this kingdom that will keep it safe for a generation. I have conceived a child and I feel certain that this baby will live. If he is a boy I shall call him Arthur for you. If she is a girl, I shall call her Mary. I am Queen of England, I have the love of the people and Henry will make a good husband and a good man.
I sit back on my heels and close my eyes so the tears should not run down my cheeks. ‘The only thing I lack is you, beloved. Always you. Always you.’
‘Your Grace, are you unwell?’ The quiet voice of the nun recalls me and I open my eyes. My legs are stiff from kneeling so long. ‘We did not want to disturb you, but it has been some hours.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I say. I try to smile at her. ‘I shall come in a moment. Leave me now.’
I turn back to my dream of Arthur but he is gone. ‘Wait for me in the garden,’ I whisper. ‘I will come to you. I will come one day soon. In the garden, when my work here is done.’
Blackfriars Hall
The Papal Legate sitting as a court to hear the
King’s Great Matter, June 1529
Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid, meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what bank they wash against.
I once said, ‘I love you, I will love you forever,’ to a young man in the night. I once said, ‘I promise.’ That promise, made twenty-seven years ago to satisfy a dying boy, to fulfil the will of God, to satisfy my mother and – to tell truth – my own ambition, that word comes back to me like ripples washing to the rim of a marble basin and then eddying back again to the centre.
I knew I would have to answer for my lies before God. I never thought that I would have to answer to the world. I never thought that the world could interrogate me for something that I had promised for love, something whispered in secret. And so, in my pride, I never have answered for it. Instead, I held to it.
And so, I believe, would any woman in my position.
Henry’s new lover, Elizabeth Boleyn’s girl, my maid-in-waiting, turns out to be the one that I knew I had to fear: the one who has an ambition that is even greater than mine. Indeed, she is even more greedy than the king. She has an ambition greater than any I have ever seen before in a man or a woman. She does not desire Henry as a man – I have seen his lovers come and go and I have learned to read them like an easy story book. This one desires not my husband, but my throne. She has had much work to find her way to it, but she is persistent and determined. I think I knew, from the moment that she had his ear, his secrets, and his confidence, that in time she would find her way – like a weasel smelling blood through a coney warren – to my lie. And when she found it, she would feast on it.
The usher calls out, ‘Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, come into court’; and there is a token silence, for they expect no answer. There are no lawyers waiting to help me there, I have prepared no defence. I have made it clear that I do not recognise the court. They expect to go on without me. Indeed, the usher is just about to call the next witness…
But I answer.
My men throw open the double doors of the hall that I know so well and I walk in, my head up, as fearless as I have been all my life. The regal canopy is in gold, over at the far end of the hall with my husband, my false, lying, betraying, unfaithful husband in his ill-fitting crown on his throne sitting beneath it.
On a stage below him are the two cardinals, also canopied with cloth of gold, seated in golden chairs with golden cushions. That betraying slave Wolsey, red-faced in his red cardinal’s robe, failing to meet my eye, as well he might; and that false friend Campeggio. Their three faces, the king and his two procurers, are mirrors of utter dismay.
They thought they had so distressed and confused me, separated me from my friends and destroyed me, that I would not come. They thought I would sink into despair like my mother, or into madness like my sister. They are gambling on the fact that they have frightened me and threatened me and taken my child from me and done everything they can do to break my heart. They never dreamed that I have the courage to stalk in before them, and stand before them, shaking with righteousness, to face them all.
Fools, they forget who I am. They are advised by that Boleyn girl who has never seen me in armour, driven on by her who never knew my mother, did not know my father. She knows me as Katherine, the old Queen of England, devout, plump, dull. She has no idea that inside, I am still Catalina, the young Infanta of Spain. I am a princess born and trained to fight. I am a woman who has fought for every single thing I hold, and I will fight, and I will hold, and I will win.
They did not foresee what I would do to protect myself, and my daughter’s inheritance. She is Mary, my Mary, named by Arthur: my beloved daughter, Mary. Would I let her be put aside for some bastard got on a Boleyn?
That is their first mistake.
I ignore the cardinals completely. I ignore the clerks on the benches before them, the scribes with their long rolls of parchment making the official record of this travesty. I ignore the court, the city, even the people who whisper my name with loving voices. Instead, I look at no-one but Henry.
I know Henry, I know him better than anyone else in the world does. I know him better than his current favourite ever will, for I have seen him, man and boy. I studied him when he was a boy, when he was a child of ten who came to meet me and tried to persuade me to give him a Barbary stallion. I knew him then as a boy who could be won with fair words and gifts. I knew him through the eyes of his brother, who said – and rightly – that he was a child who had been spoiled by too much indulgence and would be a spoilt man, and a danger to us all. I knew him as a youth, and I won my throne by pandering to his vanity. I was the greatest prize he could desire and I let him win me. I knew him as a man as vain and greedy as a peacock when I gave to him the credit for my war: the greatest victory ever won by England.
At Arthur’s request I told the greatest lie a woman has ever told, and I will tell it to the very grave. I am an Infanta of Spain, I do not give a promise and fail to keep it. Arthur, my beloved, asked me for an oath on his deathbed and I gave it to him. He asked me to say that we had never been lovers and he commanded me to marry his brother and be queen. I did everything I promised him, I was constant to my promise. Nothing in these years has shaken my faith that it is God’s will that I should be Queen of England, and that I shall be Queen of England until I die. No-one could have saved England from the Scots but me – Henry was too young and too inexperienced to take an army into the field. He would have offered a duel, he would have chanced some forlorn hope, he would have lost the battle and died at Flodden and his sister Margaret would have been Queen of England in my place.
It did not happen because I did not allow it to happen. It was my mother’s wish and God’s will that I should be Queen of England, and I will be Queen of England until I die.
I do not regret the lie. I held to it, and I made everyone else hold to it, whatever doubts they may have had. As Henry learned more of women, as Henry learned more of me, he knew, as surely he had known on our wedding night, that it was a lie, I was no virgin for him. But in all our twenty years of marriage together, he found the courage to challenge me only once, at the very beginning; and I walk into the court on the great gamble that he will never have the courage to
challenge me again, not even now.
I walk into court with my entire case staked on his weakness. I believe that when I stand before him, and he is forced to meet my eyes, he will not dare to say that I was no virgin when I came to him, that I was Arthur’s wife and Arthur’s lover before I was ever his. His vanity will not allow him to say that I loved Arthur with a true passion and he loved me. That in truth, I will live and die as Arthur’s wife and Arthur’s lover, and thus Henry’s marriage to me can be rightfully dissolved.
I don’t think he has the courage that I have. I think if I stand straight and tell the great lie again, he will not dare to stand straight and tell the truth.
‘Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, come into court,’ the usher repeats stupidly, as the echo of the doors banging behind me reverberates in the shocked courtroom, and everyone can see that I am already in court, standing like a stocky fighter before the throne.
It is me they call for, by this title. It was my dying husband’s hope, my mother’s wish and God’s will that I should be Queen of England; and for them and for the country, I will be Queen of England until I die.
‘Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, come into court!’
This is me. This is my moment. This is my battle cry.
I step forwards.
Author’s Note
This has been one of the most fascinating and most moving novels to write, from the discovery of the life of the young Katherine, to the great question of the lie that she told and maintained all her life.
That it was a lie is, I think, the most likely explanation. I believe that her marriage to Arthur was consummated. Certainly, everyone thought so at the time; it was only Dona Elvira’s insistence after Katherine had been widowed, and Katherine’s own insistence at the time of her separation from Henry that put the consummation into doubt. Later historians, admiring Katherine and accepting her word against Henry’s, put the lie into the historical record where it stays today.
The lie was the starting place of the novel but the surprise in the research was the background of Catalina of Spain. I enjoyed a wonderful research trip to Granada to discover more about the Spain of Isabella and Ferdinand, and came home with an abiding respect both for their courage and for the culture they swore to overthrow: the rich tolerant and beautiful land of the Moslems of Spain, el Andalus. I have tried to give these almost forgotten Europeans a voice in this book, and to give us today, as we struggle with some of the same questions, an idea of the conviviencia – a land where Jews, Moslems and Christians managed to live side by side in respect and peace as ‘People of the Book’.
A note on the songs
‘Alas, Alhama!’, ‘Riders gallop through the Elvira gate…’ and ‘There was crying in Granada…’ are traditional songs, quoted by Francesca Claremount in Catherine of Aragon (see book list below).
‘A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa’, is by Abd al Rahman, translated by D. F. Ruggles and quoted in Menocal, The Ornament of the World (see book list below).
The following books have been most helpful in my research into the history of this story:
Bindoff, S. T., Pelican History of England: Tudor England, Penguin, 1993
Bruce, Marie Louise, Anne Boleyn, Collins, 1972
Chejne, Anwar G., Islam and the West: The Moriscos – A Cultural and Social History, State University of New York Press, 1983
Claremont, Francesca, Catherine of Aragon, Robert Hale, 1939
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual Religion and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, OUP, 1977
Darby, H. C., A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, CUP, 1976
Dixon, William Hepworth, History of Two Queens, vol. 2, London, 1873
Elton, G. R., England under the Tudors, Methuen, 1955
Fernandez-Arnesto, Felipe, Ferdinand and Isabella, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975
Fletcher, Anthony, Tudor Rebellions, Longman, 1968
Goodwin, Jason, Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire, Vintage, 1989
Guy, John, Tudor England, OUP, 1988
Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, Sutton, 1997
Loades, David, The Tudor Court, Batsford, 1986
Loades, David, Henry VIII and His Queens, Sutton, 2000
Lloyd, David, Arthur Prince of Wales, Fabric Trust for St Laurence, Ludlow, 2002
Mackie, J. D., Oxford History of England: The Earlier Tudors, OUP, 1952
Mattingley, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon, Jonathan Cape, 1942
Menocal, The Ornament of the World, Little, Brown, 2002
Mumby, Frank Arthur, The Youth of Henry VIII, Constable, 1913
Núñez, J. Agustín, (ed.), Muslim and Christian Granada, Edilux SL, 2004
Paul, E. John, Catherine of Aragon and Her Friends, Burns & Drates, 1966
Plowden, Alison, The House of Tudor, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976
Plowden, Alison, Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners, Sutton, 1998
Randall, Keith, Henry VIII and the Reformation in England, Hodder, 1993
Robinson, John Martin, The Dukes of Norfolk, OUP, 1982
Scarisbrick, J. J., Yale English Monarchs: Henry VIII, YUP, 1997
Scott, S. P., The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, vol. 1, Ams Pr, 1974
Starkey, David, Henry VIII: A European Court in England, Collins & Brown, 1991
Starkey, David, The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics, G. Philip, 1985
Starkey, David, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, Vintage, 2003
Tillyard, E. M. W., The Elizabethan World Picture, Pimlico, 1943
Turner, Robert, Elizabethan Magic, Element, 1989
Walsh, William Thomas, Isabella of Spain, Sheed & Ward, 1935
Warnicke, Retha M., The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, CUP, 1991
Weir, Alison, Henry VIII: King and Court, Pimlico, 2002
Weir, Alison, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Pimlico, 1997
Youings, Joyce, Sixteenth-Century England, Penguin, 1991
PHILIPPA GREGORY
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
Dedication
For Anthony
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Spring 1521
Spring 1522
Summer 1522
Winter 1522
Spring 1523
Summer 1523
Winter 1523
Spring 1524
Summer 1524
Winter 1524
Spring 1525
Autumn 1525
Spring 1526
Summer 1526
Autumn 1526
Winter 1526
Spring 1527
Summer 1527
Autumn 1527
Winter 1527
Summer 1528
Autumn 1528
Spring 1529
Summer 1529
Autumn 1529
Christmas 1529
Summer 1530
Autumn 1530
Christmas 1530
Spring 1531
Summer 1531
Autumn 1531
Spring 1532
Summer 1532
Autumn 1532
Winter 1532
Spring 1533
Summer 1533
Autumn 1533
Winter 1533
Spring 1534
Summer 1534
Winter 1534
Spring 1535
Summer 1535
Autumn 1535
Winter 1535
Spring 1536
May 1536
Author's Note
Spring 1521
I could hear a roll of muffled drums. But I could see nothing but the lacing on the bodice of the lady standing in front of me, blocking my view of the scaffold. I had been at this court for more than a year and attended hundreds of festivities; but never before one like this.
By stepping to one side a little and craning my neck,
I could see the condemned man, accompanied by his priest, walk slowly from the Tower towards the green where the wooden platform was waiting, the block of wood placed centre stage, the executioner dressed all ready for work in his shirtsleeves with a black hood over his head. It looked more like a masque than a real event, and I watched it as if it were a court entertainment. The king, seated on his throne, looked distracted, as if he was running through his speech of forgiveness in his head. Behind him stood my husband of one year, William Carey, my brother, George, and my father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, all looking grave. I wriggled my toes inside my silk slippers and wished the king would hurry up and grant clemency so that we could all go to breakfast. I was only thirteen years old, I was always hungry.
The Duke of Buckinghamshire, far away on the scaffold, put off his thick coat. He was close enough kin for me to call him uncle. He had come to my wedding and given me a gilt bracelet. My father told me that he had offended the king a dozen ways: he had royal blood in his veins and he kept too large a retinue of armed men for the comfort of a king not yet wholly secure on his throne; worst of all he was supposed to have said that the king had no son and heir now, could get no son and heir, and that he would likely die without a son to succeed him to the throne.
Such a thought must not be said out loud. The king, the court, the whole country knew that a boy must be born to the queen, and born soon. To suggest otherwise was to take the first step on the path that led to the wooden steps of the scaffold which the duke, my uncle, now climbed, firmly and without fear. A good courtier never refers to any unpalatable truths. The life of a court should always be merry.
Uncle Stafford came to the front of the stage to say his final words. I was too far from him to hear, and in any case I was watching the king, waiting for his cue to step forward and offer the royal pardon. This man standing on the scaffold, in the sunlight of the early morning, had been the king’s partner at tennis, his rival on the jousting field, his friend at a hundred bouts of drinking and gambling, they had been comrades since the king was a boy. The king was teaching him a lesson, a powerful public lesson, and then he would forgive him and we could all go to breakfast.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Page 47