Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1

by Philippa Gregory

  The windows, which were once made of coloured glass to show beautiful stories, have been smashed so carelessly that the stone is broken and the tracery of stonework is all crushed. If a naughty boy did such a thing to windows he would be whipped. High in the vaulting roof were little angels and, I think, a frieze of saints, which has been knocked out by some fool with a hammer who cared for nothing. It is foolish, I know, to grieve for things of stone; but the men who did this godly work did not do it in a godly way. They could have taken the statues down and made good the walls after. But instead, they just knocked off the heads, and left the little angel bodies headless. How this serves the will of God, I cannot know.

  I am a daughter of Cleves and we have turned against papacy and rightly; but I have not seen this sort of stupidity before. I can’t think why men would believe that it is a better world where something beautiful is destroyed and something broken left in its place. Then they take me to my rooms, which clearly once belonged to the prior. They have been replastered and repainted and still smell of new limewash. And here I start to realise the real reason for religious reform in this country. This beautiful building, and the lands on which it stands, the great farms which pay it rent and the flocks of sheep which bear its wool, once all belonged to the church and to the Pope. The church was the greatest landowner in England. Now all that wealth belongs to the king. For the first time I realise that this is not just a matter of the worship of God. Perhaps it is nothing to do with God. There is the greed of man here too.

  There is vanity as well, perhaps. For Thomas à Becket was a saint who defied a tyrant King of England. His body lay in the crypt of this most lavish cathedral, encased in gold and jewels, and the king himself – who ordered the throwing down of this shrine – used to come here to pray for help. But now the king needs no help, and rebels are hanged in this country, and the wealth and beauty must all belong to the king. My brother would say that this is a good thing and that a country cannot have two masters.

  I am wearily changing my gown for dinner when I hear another roar of guns and although it is pitch black and nearly midnight Jane Boleyn comes smiling to tell me that there are hundreds of people in the great hall come to welcome me to Canterbury.

  ‘Many gentlemen?’ I ask her in my stilted English.

  She smiles at once, she knows that I am dreading a long line of introductions.

  ‘They just want to see you,’ she says clearly, pointing to her eyes. ‘You just have to wave.’ She shows me a wave and I giggle at the masque that we play to each other while I learn her language.

  I point to the window. ‘Good land,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘Abbey land, God’s land.’

  ‘Now the king’s?’

  She has a wry smile. ‘The king is now head of the church, you understand? All the wealth –’ she hesitates ‘– the spiritual wealth of the church is now his.’

  ‘And the people are glad?’ I ask. I am so frustrated by being unable to speak fluently. ‘The bad priests are gone?’

  She glances towards the door as if she would be sure that we cannot be overheard. ‘The people are not glad,’ she says. ‘The people loved the shrines and the saints, they don’t know why the candles are being taken away. They don’t know why they cannot pray for help. But you should not speak of this to anyone but me. It is the king’s will that the church should be destroyed.’

  I nod. ‘He is a Protestant?’ I ask.

  Her quick smile makes her eyes sparkle. ‘Oh, no!’ she says. ‘He is whatever he wishes to be. He destroyed the church so that he could marry my sister-in-law; she believed in a reformed church and the king believed with her. Then he destroyed her. He has turned the church almost back to being Catholic, the Mass is almost completely restored – but he will never give back the wealth. Who knows what he will do next? What will he believe next?’

  I understand only a little of this so I turn away from her and look out of the window at the driving rain and the pitch darkness. The thought of a king who can determine not only what life his people lead but even the nature of the God they worship makes me shiver. This is a king who has thrown down the shrine of one of the greatest saints in Christendom, this is a king who has turned the great monasteries of his country into private houses. My brother was quite wrong to command me to lead this king into right-thinking. This is a king who will have his own way, and I daresay nobody can stop or turn him.

  ‘We should go to dinner,’ Jane Boleyn says gently to me. ‘Do not speak of these things to anyone.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and with her just one pace behind me I open my privy chamber door to the crowds of people waiting for me in my presence chamber and I face the sea of unknown smiling faces once more.

  I am so delighted to be out of the rain and out of the darkness that I take a large glass of wine and eat heartily at dinner, even though I sit alone under a canopy and I am served by men who kneel to offer dishes to me. There are hundreds of people dining in the hall and hundreds more who peer in at the windows and doorways to see me as if I were some strange animal.

  I will grow accustomed to this, I know that I have to; and I will. There is no point being a Queen of England and being embarrassed by servants. This stolen abbey is not even one of the great palaces of the land and yet I have never seen a place so wealthy with gildings and paintings and tapestries. I ask the archbishop if this is his own palace and he smiles and says his own house is nearby. This is a country of such great riches that it is almost unimaginable.

  I do not get to my bed till the early hours of the morning and then we rise again, early, to travel on. But however early we start it still takes us forever to leave as every day there are more people coming with us. The archbishop and all his train, truly hundreds of them, are now travelling with me, and this day I am joined by more great lords who escort me into Rochester. The people line the streets to greet me and everywhere I go I smile and wave.

  I wish I could remember everyone’s name, but every time we stop anywhere some richly dressed man comes up and bows before me, and Lady Lisle, or Lady Southampton, or one of the other ladies whispers something in my ear, and I smile and extend my hand, and try to fix a fresh set of names into my mind. And they all look the same anyway: all dressed in rich velvet and wearing gold chains and with pearls or jewels in their hats. And there are dozens of them, hundreds of them, half of England has come to pay their compliments to me, and I cannot tell one man from another any more.

  We dine in a great hall with much ceremony and Lady Browne, who is to be in charge of my maids in waiting, is presented to me. She introduces my maids by name and I smile at the unending line of Katherines and Marys and Elizabeths and Annes and Bessies and Madges, all of them pert and pretty under tiny hoods that show their hair in a way that my brother would blame as immodest, all of them dainty in little slippers, and all of them stare at me as if I were a wild white falcon landed in a chicken coop. Lady Browne especially stares me out of countenance, and I beckon Lotte and ask her to tell Lady Browne in English that I hope she will advise me about my dress and English fashions when we get to London. When she gives her my message, Lady Browne flushes and turns away and does not stare any more, and I fear that she was indeed thinking that my dress is very odd and that I am ugly.

  Jane Boleyn, Rochester, December 1539

  ‘Advise her about her dress!’ Lady Browne hisses at me, as if it is my fault that the new Queen of England looks so outlandish. ‘Jane Boleyn, tell me! Could she not have changed her dress in Calais?’

  ‘Who could have advised her?’ I ask reasonably. ‘All her ladies dress the same, after all.’

  ‘Lord Lisle could have advised her. He could have warned her that she couldn’t come to England looking like a friar in fustian. How can I be expected to keep her maids in order when they are laughing their heads off at her? I nearly had to smack Katherine Howard. That child has been one day in royal service and already she is mimicking the queen’s walk and, what is worse, she has her to
the life.’

  ‘Maids are always naughty. You will command them.’

  ‘There is no time for dressmakers until she gets to London. She will have to go on as she has begun, even if she looks like a parcel. What is she doing now?’

  ‘She is resting,’ I say guardedly. ‘I thought I would leave her in peace for a moment.’

  ‘She is to be Queen of England,’ her ladyship snaps. ‘That is not a peaceful life for any woman.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Should we say anything to the king? Shall I speak to my husband?’ Lady Browne asks me, her voice very low. ‘Should we not tell Secretary Cromwell that we have … reservations? Will you say anything to the duke?’

  I think quickly. I swear that I am not going to be the first to speak against this queen. ‘Perhaps you should speak to Sir Anthony,’ I say. ‘Privately, as his wife.’

  ‘Shall I tell him that we are agreed? Surely my lord Southampton realises that she is not fit to be queen. She is so graceless! And all but mute!’

  ‘I have no opinion, myself,’ I say rapidly.

  She laughs at once. ‘Oh, Jane Boleyn, you always have an opinion; not much ever escapes you.’

  ‘Perhaps. But if the king has chosen her because she brings with her the Protestant alliance, if my lord Cromwell has chosen her because it makes us safe against Spain and France, then perhaps the fact that her hood is the size of a house will not matter to him. She can always change her hood. And I would not want to be the one to suggest to the king that the woman he has solemnly and unbreakably betrothed is not fit to be queen.’

  That stops her in her tracks. ‘You think I would be mistaken to criticise her?’

  I think of the white-faced girl who peeped out of the closet in Calais, too shy and too frightened to sit in a room with her own court, and I find that I want to defend her against this unkindness. ‘Well, I have no criticism to make of her,’ I say. ‘I am her lady in waiting. I may advise her as to her gowns or her hair if she asks me; but I would not have one word to say against her.’

  ‘Or at any rate, not yet,’ Lady Browne amends coldly. ‘Until you see an advantage for yourself.’

  I let it pass for just as I am about to answer the door opens and the guard announces:‘Mistress Catherine Carey, the queen’s maid in waiting.’

  It is her. My niece. I have to face the child at last. I find a smile and I hold out my hands to her. ‘Little Catherine!’ I exclaim. ‘How you have grown!’

  She takes my hands but she does not turn up her face to kiss my cheek. She looks at me quietly, as if she is taking the measure of me. The last time I saw her was when she stood behind her Aunt Anne the queen on the scaffold, and held her cloak as the queen put her head on the block. The last time she saw me was outside the courtroom when they called my name to go in to give evidence. I remember how she looked at me then: curiously. She looked at me so curiously, as if she had never seen such a woman before.

  ‘Are you cold? How was your journey? Will you have some wine?’ I am drawing her to the fire and she comes, but she is not eager. ‘This is Lady Browne,’ I say. Her curtsey is good, she is graceful. She has been well taught.

  ‘And how is your mother? And your father?’

  ‘They are well.’ Her voice is clear with just a hint of the country in her speech. ‘My mother sent you a letter.’

  She brings it out of her pocket and hands it to me. I take it over to the light of the large square candle that we use in the royal household and break the seal.

  Jane,

  So starts Mary Boleyn, without a word of a title as if I did not hold the very name of her house in my name, as if I were not Lady Rochford while she lives at Rochford Hall. As if she did not have my inheritance and my house while I have hers, which is nothing.

  Long ago I chose the love of my husband over the vanity and danger of the court, and we perhaps would all have been happier if you and my sister had done the same – God have mercy on her soul. I have no desire to return to court but I wish you and the new Queen Anne better fortune than before, and I hope that your ambitions bring you the happiness you seek, and not what some might think you deserve.

  My uncle has commanded the attendance of my daughter Catherine at court and in obedience to him, she will arrive for the New Year. It is my instruction to her that she obeys only the king and her uncle, that she is guided only by my advice and her own good conscience. I have told her that, at the end, you were no friend to my sister nor my brother and advised her to treat you with the respect you deserve.

  Mary Stafford

  I am shaking after I have read this note and I re-read it again as if it might be different the second time. The respect I deserve? The respect I deserve? What did I do but lie and deceive to save the two of them till the very last moment, and then what did I do but protect the family from the disaster that they brought down on us? What could I do more? What should I have done differently? I obeyed the duke my uncle as I was bound to do, I did as he commanded me, and my deserts are these: that I am his faithful kinswoman and honoured as such.

  Who is she to call me a woman who might have been a good wife? I loved my husband with every inch of my soul and being and I would have been everything to him if it were not for her and her sister and the net they made for him that he could not break, and that I could not break for him. Would he not be alive today if he had not gone down with his sister’s disgrace? Would he not be my husband and the father of our son today, if he had not been named with Anne and beheaded with Anne? And what did Mary do to save him? What did she ever do but suit herself?

  I could scream with sheer rage and despair that she should set these thoughts running again in my head. That she should doubt my love of George, that she should reproach me! I am lost for words at the malice of her letter, at the veiled accusation. What else could I have done? I want to shout into her face. You were there, you were hardly the saviour of George and Anne. What else could any of us have done?

  But she was always like this, she and her sister; they always had a way to make me feel that they saw better, understood better, considered better. From the moment that I married George I was aware that his sisters were supposed to be finer young women than I: one the king’s lover and then the other. One, in the end, the king’s wife and Queen of England. They were born for greatness! The Boleyn Sisters! And I was only ever a sister-in-law. Well, so be it. I have not got where I am today, I have not borne witness and sworn oaths to be reprimanded by a woman who ran away at the first sign of danger and married a man to hide in the country and pray Protestant prayers that good times would come.

  Catherine, her daughter, looks at me curiously. ‘Did she show you this?’ I ask, my voice shaking. Lady Browne looks at me, avidly inquisitive.

  ‘No,’ Catherine says.

  I put it into the fire, as if it were evidence against me. The three of us watch it burn to grey ash. ‘I will reply later,’ I say. ‘It was not at all important. For now, I will go and see that they have prepared your room.’

  It is an excuse to get away from the two of them and the soft ash from the notepaper in the fire. I go quickly out and I call the maids and scold them for inattention, and then I go quietly to my own room and lean my hot forehead against the cool, thick glass. I shall ignore this slander, I shall ignore this insult, I shall ignore this enmity. Whatever its cause. I live in the heart of the court. I serve my king and my family. In time they shall all acknowledge me as the finest of the family, the Boleyn girl who served king and family to the end, never shrinking, never faltering, even if the king has grown fat and dangerous, and the family are all dead but me.

  Katherine, Rochester, New Year’s Eve 1539

  Now let me see, what do I have? What do I have now I am practically a grown-up lady at court?

  I have three new gowns, which is good, but it is hardly a vast wardrobe for a girl who expects to be much observed and much commented on. I have three new hoods to match, which are very pretty but none of them
are trimmed with anything more than gold lace and I see that many of the ladies of court have pearls and even precious stones on their hoods. I have some good gloves and a new cloak and a muff and a couple of lace collars, but I cannot say that I am overly indulged in my choice or quantity of clothes. And what is the point of being at court if I do not have a great deal of pretty things to wear?

  For all my great hopes of court life, it is not proving to be very merry. We came down by boat from Gravesend in the worst weather I have ever seen, driving rain and terrible wind so my hood was all blown about and my hair a mess, and my new velvet cape got wet and I am sure it will be water-marked. The queen-to-be greeted us with a face as blank as a fish. They may say she is tired but she seems just amazed by everything, like some peasant come to town for the first time, she stares astounded at the commonest of sights. When people cheer for her she smiles and waves like a child at a travelling fair, but when she is called upon to greet a lord come to her court, she forever looks around for one of her Cleves companions and mutters to them in their stupid language, puts out her hand as if she was serving a joint of meat and says nothing in English at all.

  When I was presented to her she barely looked at me, she looked at all of us new girls as if she did not know what we were doing in her chamber, nor what she should do with us. I thought she might at least ask for music and I have a song note-perfect and ready to sing but, absurdly, she said that she must pray and she went off and shut herself in her closet. My cousin Jane Boleyn says that she does that when she wants to be alone, and that it is a sign not of piety, but of her shyness, and that we must be kind to her and merry with her and she will soon learn our language and be less simple.