The Other Boleyn Girl

  William got down from his horse and hugged Henry and then turned to Catherine. “I feel I should kiss your hand,” he said.

  She laughed and jumped into his embrace. “I was so glad when I was told that you were married,” she said. “Am I to call you Father now?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly, as if there had never been any doubt about the matter at all. “Except when you call me sire.”

  She giggled. “And the baby?”

  I went to the wet nurse on her mule and took the baby from her arms. “Here she is,” I said. “Your new sister.”

  Catherine cooed and took her at once. Henry leaned over her shoulder to pull back the fold of the sheet and look into the tiny face. “So small,” he said.

  “She’s grown so much,” I said. “When she was born she was tiny.”

  “Does she cry a lot?” Henry asked.

  I smiled. “Not too much. Not like you. You were a real bawler.”

  He grinned at once, a boyish smile. “Was I really?”

  “Dreadful.”

  “Still does,” Catherine said with the immediate disrespect of an older sister.

  “Do not,” he retorted. “Anyway, Mother, and, er, Father, would you come inside? There’s dinner ready for you soon. We didn’t know what time you would be here.”

  William turned toward the house and dropped his arm over Henry’s shoulders. “And tell me about your studies,” he invited. “I’m told you’re working with the Cistercian scholars. Are they teaching you Greek as well as Latin?”

  Catherine hung back. “Can I carry her in?”

  “You can keep her all the day.” I smiled at her. “Her nurse will be glad of the rest.”

  “And will she wake up soon?” she asked, peering again into the little bundle.

  “Yes,” I reassured her. “And then you shall see her eyes. They are the darkest blue. Very beautiful. And perhaps she’ll smile for you.”

  Autumn 1535

  I RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER FROM ANNE, IN THE AUTUMN:

  Dear Sister,

  We are hunting and hawking and the game is good. The king is riding well and has bought a new hunter at a knockdown price. We had the great pleasure of staying with the Seymours at Wulfhall, and Jane was very much in evidence as the daughter of the house. You could break your teeth on her politeness. She walked with the king in the gardens and pointed out the herbs that she uses for cures for the poor, she showed him her needlework and her pet doves. She has fish in the moat which come up to be fed. She likes to supervise the cooking of her father’s dinner herself, believing as she does that it is a woman’s task to be a handmaiden to men. Altogether charming beyond belief. The king mooned around her like a schoolboy. As you can imagine, I was less enchanted, but I smiled with-all, knowing that I am carrying the Ace of Trumps—not up my sleeve but in my belly.

  Please God that this time all is well. Please God. I am writing to you from Winchester and we go on to Windsor where I expect you to meet me. I shall want you by me for all my time. The baby should be born next summer and we will all be safe again. Tell no one—not even William. It must be a secret until as late as possible in case of any mishap. Only George knows, and now you. I will not tell the king until I am past my third month. I have good reason this time to think that the baby will be strong. Pray for me.

  Anne

  I put my hand in my pocket and felt for my rosary, and told the beads through my fingers, praying, praying with all the passion I had, that this time Anne’s pregnancy would go full term and she would have a boy. I did not think any of us would survive another miscarriage; the secret would creep out, our luck could not survive another disaster, or Anne herself might simply slip over the small step from utterly determined unswerving ambition, into madness.

  I was watching my maid pack my dresses into my traveling chest for our return to the court at Windsor when Catherine tapped on my door and came into my room.

  I smiled and she came and sat beside me, looking down at the buckles on her shoes, clearly struggling to say something.

  “What is it?” I asked her. “Tell it, Cat, you look ready to choke on it.”

  At once her head came up. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Ask it.”

  “I know that Henry is to stay with the Cistercians with the other boys until the queen orders him to court.”

  “Yes.” I gritted my teeth.

  “I wondered if I might come to court with you? I am nearly twelve.”

  “You’re eleven.”

  “That’s nearly twelve. How old were you when you left here?”

  I made a little grimace. “I was four. That was something I’d always wanted to spare you. I cried every night until I was five.”

  “But I am nearly twelve now.”

  I smiled at her insistence. “You’re right. You should come to court. And I’ll be there to watch over you. Anne might find a place for you as one of her maids in waiting, and William can watch for you as well.”

  I was thinking of the increasing lechery of the court, of how a new Boleyn girl would be the center of attention, and how my daughter’s delicate prettiness seemed to me so much safer in the countryside than at Henry’s palaces. “I suppose it has to happen,” I said. “But we will need Uncle Howard’s permission. If he says yes, then you can come to court with William and me next week.”

  Her face lit up. She clapped her hands. “Shall I have new gowns?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And may I have a new horse? I shall have to go hunting, shan’t I?”

  I ticked the things off on my fingers. “Four new gowns, a new horse. Anything else?”

  “Hoods and a cape. My old one is too small. I’ve outgrown it.”

  “Hoods. Cape.”

  “That’s all,” she said breathlessly.

  “I think we can manage that,” I said. “But you remember, Miss Catherine. The court is not always a good place for a young maid, especially a pretty young maid. I shall expect you to do as you are told and if there are any flirtations or letters passed then you are to tell me. I won’t have you going to court and getting your heart broken.”

  “Oh no!” She was dancing round the room like a court jester. “No. I shall do everything you say, you shall just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Besides, I shouldn’t think anyone would even notice me.”

  Her skirt swirled around her slim body as her brown hair swung out. I smiled at her. “Oh they’ll notice you,” I said wryly. “They’ll notice you, my daughter.”

  Winter 1536

  I ENJOYED THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS MORE THAN I ever had done before. Anne was with child and glowing with health and confidence, William was at my side, my recognized husband. I had a baby in the cradle and a young beautiful daughter at court. For the Christmas holidays Anne said that I might have her ward Henry at court with us as well. When I sat down to my dinner on twelfth night it was to see my sister on the throne of England and my family around the hall at the best of the tables.

  “You look merry,” William said as he took his place opposite me for the dance.

  “I am,” I said. “At last it seems that the Boleyns are where they want to be and we can enjoy it.”

  He glanced up to where Anne was starting to lead out the ladies in the complicated configuration of the dance. “Is she with child?” he asked very quietly.

  “Yes,” I whispered back. “How could you tell?”

  “By her eyes,” he said. “And it’s the only time that she can bring herself to be civil to Jane Seymour.”

  I giggled at that and looked across the ring of dancers to where Jane, palely virginal in a creamy yellow gown, was waiting, eyes downcast, for her turn to dance. When she stepped forward into the center of the circle the king watched her as if he would devour her on the spot like a marchpane-iced pudding.

  “She is the most angelic woman,” William commented.

  “She’s a blanched snake,” I said stoutly. “And you can take that lo
ok off your face, because I won’t stand for it.”

  “Anne stands for it,” William said provocatively.

  “He has no permission, believe me.”

  “One day she’ll overreach herself,” William declared. “One day he’ll be tired of tantrums and a woman like Jane Seymour will seem like a pleasant rest.”

  I shook my head. “She’d bore him to tears in a sennight,” I said. “He’s the king. He likes the hunt and the joust and entertainment. Only a Howard girl can do all of that. Just look at us.”

  William looked from Anne, to Madge Shelton, to me and finally to Catherine Carey, my pretty daughter, who sat watching the dancers with the turn of her head the exact mirror image of Anne’s own coquettish gesture.

  William smiled. “What a wise man I was to pick the flower of the crop,” he said. “The best of the Boleyn girls.”

  I was with Catherine and Anne in the queen’s apartments the next morning. Anne had her ladies sewing the great altar cloth and it reminded me of the work we had all done with Queen Katherine, and the endless stitching of the blue sky which seemed to stretch on and on forever while her fate was being decided. Catherine as the newest and most lowly maid in waiting was allowed only to hem all round the great rectangle of cloth while the other ladies knelt on the floor or pulled up their stools to work on the central body of the pattern. Their gossip was like the cooing of summertime doves, only Jane Parker’s voice rang discordantly among them. Anne was holding a needle in her hand but was leaning back to listen to the musicians play. I was disinclined to work altogether. I sat in the windowseat and looked out at the cold garden.

  There was a loud knocking on the door and it was flung open. My uncle walked in and looked around for Anne. She rose to her feet.

  “What is it?” she asked unceremonially.

  “The queen is dead,” he said. It was a measure of his shock that he forgot that she must be called Princess Dowager.

  “Dead?”

  He nodded.

  Anne flushed red and a beaming smile slowly spread over her face. “Thank God,” she said simply. “It’s all over then.”

  “God bless her and take her into His Grace,” Jane Seymour whispered.

  Anne’s dark eyes flashed with temper. “And God bless you, Mistress Seymour, if you forget that this Princess Dowager is the woman who defied the king her brother-in-law, trapped him into a false marriage and brought him much distress and pain.”

  Jane faced her without flinching. “I served her as we both did,” she said gently. “And she was a very kind woman and a good mistress. Of course I say: ‘God bless her.’ With your leave I will go and say a prayer for her.”

  Anne looked as if she would very much like to refuse Jane permission to go, but she saw the avid glance of George’s wife and remembered that any cat fight would be reported and enlarged on to the court within hours.

  “Of course,” she said sweetly. “Would anyone else like to go to Mass to pray with Jane while I go to celebrate with the king?”

  The choice was not a hard one to make. Jane Seymour went alone, and the rest of us went through the great hall and up to the king’s apartment.

  He greeted Anne with a roar of joy, swept her up and kissed her. You would think he had never been Sir Loyal Heart to his Queen Katherine. You would think it had been his worst enemy who had died and not a woman who had loved him faithfully for twenty-seven years and died with a blessing for him on her lips. He summoned the master of the revels and ordered a feast to be prepared in a hurry, there would be an entertainment and dancing. The court of England was to make merry because one woman who had done nothing wrong had died alone, far from her daughter, and abandoned by her husband. Anne and Henry would wear yellow: the most joyful and sunny of colors. It was the color of royal mourning in Spain so it was a great jest on the Spanish ambassador who would have to report the ambiguous insult to his master, the Spanish emperor.

  I could not force a smile to my face at the sight of Henry and Anne glowing with triumph. I turned away and made for the door. A finger slid against my elbow stopped me. I turned and my uncle was beside me.

  “You stay,” he whispered quietly.

  “This is a disgrace.”

  “Yes. Perhaps. But you stay.”

  I would have pulled away but his grip was firm. “She was your sister’s enemy and thus ours. She nearly brought us all down. She nearly won.”

  “Because she was right,” I whispered back. “And we all knew it.”

  His smile was genuine. He was truly amused by my indignation. “Right or not, she’s dead now, and your sister is queen without anyone to gainsay her. Spain won’t invade, the Pope will lift the excommunication. Hers might have been a just cause; but it dies with her. All we need is for Anne to have a son and we have it all. So you stay and look happy.”

  Obediently, I stood beside him as Henry and Anne drew into the bay of a window and talked together. There was something about their heads, so close together, and the rapid ripple of their talk which signaled to everyone that these were the greatest conspirators in the land. I thought that if Jane Seymour had seen them now she would have known that she could never penetrate that unity. When Henry wanted a mind as quick and as unscrupulous as his, it would always be Anne. Jane had gone to pray for the dead queen, Anne would dance on her grave.

  The court, left to its own amusements, formed into little knots and couples, to chatter about the death of the queen. William, looking across the room and seeing me standing beside my uncle, my face sulky, came toward me to claim me.

  “She’s to stay here,” my uncle said. “No wandering off.”

  “She’s to follow her own desires,” William said. “I won’t have her ordered.”

  My uncle lifted his eyebrows. “An unusual wife.”

  “One who suits me,” William said. He turned to me. “Did you want to stay or leave?”

  “I’ll stay now,” I compromised. “But I won’t dance. It’s an insult to her memory, and I won’t be part of it.”

  Jane Parker appeared at William’s elbow. “They’re saying she was poisoned,” she said. “The Dowager Princess. They’re saying she died suddenly in great pain, it was something slipped into her food. Who d’you think would have done such a thing?”

  Studiously the three of us did not glance toward the royal couple: the two people in all the world who would have benefited most from the death of Katherine.

  “It’s a scandalous lie. I wouldn’t repeat it, if I were you,” my uncle counseled her.

  “It’s all around the court already,” she defended herself. “Everyone is asking, if she was poisoned, who did it?”

  “Then answer them all that she was not poisoned but died of an excess of spleen,” my uncle replied. “Just as a woman can die of an excess of slander, I should think. Especially if she slanders a powerful family.”

  “This is my family,” Jane reminded him.

  “I keep forgetting,” he returned. “You are so seldom at George’s side, you are so seldom working for our benefit that sometimes I forget altogether that you are kin.”

  She held his look for a moment only and then her eyes dropped. “I would be more with George if he was not always with his sister,” she said quietly.

  “Mary?” My uncle deliberately misunderstood her.

  Her head came up. “The queen. They are inseparable.”

  “Because he knows that the queen must be served and the family must be served. You too should be at her beck and call. You should be at his beck and call.”

  “I don’t think he wants any woman at his beck and call,” she said mutinously. “If it is not the queen it is no woman at all for him. He is either with her or with Sir Francis.”

  I froze. I did not dare look at William.

  “It is your duty to be at his side whether he commands it or not,” my uncle said flatly.

  For a moment I thought she would retort, but then she smiled her sly smile and slid away.

  Anne summon
ed me to her privy room in the hour before the dinner. She noticed at once that I was not dressed in yellow for the feast. “You’d better hurry,” she said.

  “I’m not coming.”

  For a moment I thought she might challenge me, but she chose to avoid a quarrel. “Oh very well,” she said. “But tell everyone that you are sick. I don’t want anyone asking questions.”

  She glanced at herself in the mirror. “Can you tell?” she asked. “I am fatter with this one than the others. It means the baby is growing better, doesn’t it? He’s strong?”

  “Yes,” I said to reassure her. “And you’re looking well.”

  She seated herself before her mirror. “Brush my hair. Nobody does it like you.”

  I took off her yellow hood and pulled the thick glossy hair back off her shoulders. She had two brushes made of silver and I used one and then the other, as if I were grooming a horse. Anne tipped back her head and gave herself up to the idle pleasure. “He should be strong,” she said. “No one knows what went into the making of this baby, Mary. No one will ever know.”

  I felt my hands suddenly heavy and unskilled. I was thinking of the witches she might have consulted, of spells she might have undertaken.

  “He should be a great prince for England,” she said quietly. “For I went on a journey to the very gates of hell to get him. You will never know.”

  “Don’t tell me then,” I said, coward-like.

  She laughed shortly. “Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister. But I have dared things for my country that you could only dream of.”

  I forced myself to brush her hair again. “I’m sure,” I said soothingly.

  She was quiet for a moment, then suddenly, she opened her eyes. “I felt it,” she said in a tone of quiet wonderment. “Mary, I suddenly felt it.”

  “Felt what?”

  “Just then, I felt it. I felt the baby. It moved.”