The Other Boleyn Girl

  “Do you?” I said, surprised. “I was thinking that this is the worst night of my life. I was wishing that it had never started and that I might wake up in a moment and it could all have been a dream.”

  George’s smile was dark. “That’s because you don’t fear tomorrow,” he said. “If you feared tomorrow as much as we do, you would wish that the night would go on forever.”

  However they wished, it grew steadily lighter, and we heard the servants stirring in the great hall and then a maid clanking up the stairs with a bucket of kindling to light the fire in the queen’s bedroom, followed by another with brushes and cloths to wipe the tables for the start of another new day.

  Anne rose up from the hearthrug, her face bleak, her cheeks smeared with ash as if she had been mourning in church on Ash Wednesday.

  “Have a bath,” George said encouragingly to her. “It’s so early. Send them for your bath and have a hot bath and wash your hair. You’ll feel so much better after.”

  She smiled at the banality of the suggestion and then she nodded.

  George leaned forward and kissed her. “I’ll see you at matins,” he said, and he went from the room.

  It was the last time we saw my brother as a free man.

  George was not at matins. Anne and I, rosy from our bath and feeling more confident, looked for him but he was not there. Sir Francis did not know where he was, nor Sir William Brereton. Henry Norris had still not returned from London. There was no news of what charge was laid against Mark Smeaton. The weight of fear came down on us again, like the low bellies of the clouds which rested on the palace roofs.

  I sent a message to my baby’s wet nurse to wait for my coming, we would try to leave within the next hour.

  There was a tennis match and Anne had promised to award the prize, a gold coin on a gold chain. She went to the courts and sat under the awning, her head moving, with all the discipline of a dancer, to the left and to the right, her head following the ball but her eyes sightless.

  I was standing behind her, waiting for the lad from the stables to come and tell me that the horse was ready, Catherine was at my side, waiting only for my word to run and change into her riding gown, when the gate to the royal enclosure opened behind me and two soldiers of the guard came in with an officer. The moment that I saw them I had the sense of something profound and dreadful happening. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. Mutely, I touched Anne’s shoulder. She turned and looked up at me, and then beyond me to the hard faces of the men.

  They did not bow as they should have done. It was that which confirmed our fear. That, and the screaming of a seagull which suddenly flew low over the court and shrieked like an injured girl.

  “The Privy Council commands your presence, Your Majesty,” the captain said shortly.

  Anne said, “Oh,” and rose up. She looked at Catherine and she looked at me. She looked around at all her ladies and suddenly their eyes were everywhere but looking at her. They were quite fascinated by the tennis. They had learned Anne’s trick, their heads went left, right, while their eyes saw nothing and their ears were on the prick and their hearts were pounding in case she commanded them to go with her.

  “I must have my companions,” Anne said flatly. Not one of the little vixens looked around. “Some lady must come with me.” Her eyes fell on Catherine.

  “No,” I said suddenly, seeing what she would do. “No, Anne. No. I beg you.”

  “I can take a companion?” she asked the captain.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I shall take my maid in waiting, Catherine,” she said simply, and then she went quietly out of the gate which the soldier held open for her. Catherine shot one bewildered glance at me and then fell into step behind her queen.

  “Catherine!” I said sharply.

  She looked back at me, she did not know, poor little girl, what she should do.

  “Come along,” Anne said in her dead calm voice, and Catherine gave me a little smile.

  “Be of good cheer,” she said suddenly, oddly; as if she were acting a part in a play. Then she turned and followed the queen with all the composure of a princess.

  I was too stunned to do anything but watch them go, but the minute they were out of sight I picked up my skirts and fled up the path to the palace to find George, or my father, anyone who might help Anne, and who would get Catherine away from her, safely back to me, and on the road to Rochford.

  I ran into the hall and a man caught me as I headed for the stairs, I pushed him away and then I realized it was the one man in the whole world that I wanted. “William!”

  “Love, my love. You know, then?”

  “Oh my God, William. They have taken Catherine! They have taken my girl!”

  “Arrested Catherine? On what charge?”

  “No! She is with Anne. As maid in waiting. And Anne is ordered to the Privy Council.”

  “In London?”

  “No, meeting here.”

  He released me at once, swore briefly, took half a dozen steps in a small circle and then came back to me and caught up my hands. “We’ll just have to wait then, until she comes out.” He scanned my face. “Don’t look like that, Catherine is a little lass. They’re questioning the queen, not her. They probably won’t even speak to her, and if they do she has nothing to hide.”

  I took a shuddering breath and nodded. “No. She has nothing to hide. She has seen nothing that is not common knowledge. And they would only question her. She is gentry. They wouldn’t do anything worse. Where is Henry?”

  “Safe. I left him at our lodgings with the wet nurse and the baby. I thought you were running because of your brother.”

  “What about him?” I said suddenly, my heart hammering again. “What about George?”

  “They’ve arrested him.”

  “With Anne?” I said. “To answer to the Privy Council?”

  William’s face was dark. “No,” he said. “They have taken him to the Tower. Henry Norris is there already, the king himself rode with him into the Tower yesterday. And Mark Smeaton—you remember the singer?—he is there too.”

  My lips were too numb to frame any words. “But what is the charge? And why question the queen here?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody knows.”

  We waited until noon for any further news. I hovered in the hall outside the chamber where the Privy Council were questioning the queen but I was not allowed into the antechamber for fear that I might listen at the door.

  “I don’t want to listen, I just want to see my daughter,” I explained to the sentry. He nodded and said nothing, but gestured me back from the threshold.

  A little after noon the door opened and a pageboy slipped out and whispered to the sentry. “You have to go,” the sentry said to me. “My orders are to clear the way.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “You have to go,” he said stubbornly. He gave a shout down the stairs to the great hall and an answering shout came ringing up. They gently pushed me to one side, away from the Privy Council door, away from the stairs, away from the hall, away from the garden door, and then out of the very garden itself. All the other courtiers encountered on the way were thrust to one side too. We all went as we were bid; it was as if we had not recognized how powerful the king was before that moment.

  I realized that they had cleared a way from the Privy Council room to the river stairs. I ran to the landing stage where the common people disembarked when they came to the palace. There were no guards on the common landing stage, no one to stop me standing at the very end of it, straining my eyes to see toward the Greenwich Palace stairs.

  I saw them clearly: Anne in her blue gown that she had worn to watch the tennis, Catherine a pace behind her in her yellow gown. I was pleased to see that she had her cloak with her, in case it was cold on the river, then I shook my head at the folly of worrying if she would catch cold when I did not know where they were taking her. I watched them intently, as if by watching I could protect h
er. They went in the king’s barge, not the queen’s ship, and the roll of the drum for the rowers sounded to me as ominous and as doleful as the roll of drums when the executioner raises his axe.

  “Where are you going?” I shouted as loudly as I could, unable to contain my fear any longer.

  Anne did not hear me but I saw the white shape of Catherine’s face as she turned toward my voice, and looked all around for me in the palace garden.

  “Here! Here!” I shouted more loudly and I waved to her. She looked toward me and she raised her hand in a tiny gesture, and then followed Anne on board the king’s barge.

  The soldiers pushed off in one smooth motion the moment that they had them on board. The lurch of the boat threw them both into their seats and there was a moment when I lost sight of her. Then I saw her again. She was seated on a little chair, next to Anne, and she was looking out over the water toward me. The oarsmen took the barge into the middle of the river and rowed easily with the inflowing tide.

  I did not try to call again, I knew that the rowers’ drum would drown out my voice, and I did not want to frighten Catherine, hearing her mother crying out for her. I stood very still and I raised my hand to her so that she could see that I knew where she was, and I knew where she was going, and I would come for her as soon as ever I could.

  I sensed but did not look round as William came behind me and raised his hand to our daughter as well. “Where d’you think they’re taking them?” he asked, as if he did not know the answer as well as me.

  “You know where,” I said. “Why ask me? To the worst place we can think of. To the Tower.”

  William and I did not delay. We went straight to our room and threw a few clothes into a bag and then hurried to the stables. Henry was waiting with the horses, and he had a quick hug and a bright smile for me before William threw me up into the saddle and mounted his own horse. We took Catherine’s horse with us, newly shod. Henry led her alongside his own hunter while William led the wet nurse’s broad-backed cob. She was waiting for us and we had her up in the saddle and the baby strapped safely at her breast and then we went quietly out of the palace and up the road to London without telling anyone where we were going nor how long we would be gone.

  William took rooms for us behind the Minories, away from the riverside. I could see the Beauchamp Tower where Anne and my daughter were imprisoned. My brother and the other men were somewhere nearby. It was the tower where Anne had spent the night before her coronation. I wondered if she remembered now the great gown that she wore and the silence of the City which warned her then that she would never be a beloved queen.

  William ordered the woman of the house to make a dinner for us and went out to gather news. He came back in time to eat and when the woman had served dinner and got herself out of the room he told me what he knew. The inns around the Tower were all buzzing with the news that the queen had been taken up, and the word was that her charge was adultery and witchcraft and no one knew what else.

  I nodded. This sealed Anne’s fate. Henry was using the power of gossip, the voice of the mob, to pave the way to an annulment of the marriage, and a new queen. Already in the taverns they were saying that the king was in love again and this time with a beautiful and innocent girl, an English girl from Wiltshire, God bless her, and as devout and sweet as Anne had been over-educated and French-influenced. From somewhere, someone had gathered the certainty that Jane Seymour was a friend to Princess Mary. She had served Queen Katherine well. She prayed in the old ways, she did not read disputatious books nor argue with men who knew better. Her family were not grasping lords but honest honorable men. And it was a fertile family. There could be no doubt but Jane Seymour would have sons where Katherine and Anne had both failed.

  “And my brother?”

  William shook his head. “No news.”

  I closed my eyes. I could not imagine a world where George was not free to come and go as he pleased. Who could accuse George? Who could blame him for anything, so sweet and so feckless?

  “And who is waiting on Anne?” I asked.

  “Your aunt, Madge Shelton’s mother, and a pair of other ladies.”

  I made a face. “No one she likes or trusts. But at least she can release Catherine now. She’s not alone.”

  “I thought you could write. She could have a letter if it was left open. I’ll take it to William Kingston, the constable of the Tower and ask him to give it to her.”

  I ran down the narrow stairs to the lodging-house keeper and asked her for a piece of paper and a pen. She let me use her writing desk and lit a candle for me as I sat by the window for the last of the light.

  Dear Anne,

  I know that you are served by other ladies now so please release Catherine from your service as I need her with me.

  I beg you to let her come away now.

  Mary.

  I dripped some candle wax and put my sealing ring into the puddle of wax to show the “B” for Boleyn. But I left the letter open and gave it to William.

  “Good,” he said, reading it quickly. “I’ll take it straightaway. Nobody can think you mean anything other than you say. I’ll wait for an answer. Perhaps I’ll bring her back with me and we can leave for Rochford tomorrow.”

  I nodded. “I’ll wait up.”

  Henry and I played cards in front of the little fire on a rickety table sitting on two wooden stools. We were playing for far-things and I was winning all of Henry’s pocket money. Then I cheated to let him win a little back, misjudged it, and was bankrupted in earnest. Still William did not come.

  At midnight he came in. “I am sorry to have been so long,” he said to my white face. “I don’t have her.”

  I gave a little moan and at once he reached out to me and pulled me close to him. “I saw her,” he said. “That was why I was so long. I thought you would want me to see her and know that she was well.”

  “Is she distressed?”

  “Very calm,” he said with a smile. “You can go and see her tomorrow yourself at this time, and every day until the queen is released.”

  “But she can’t come away?”

  “The queen wants to keep her and the constable is under instructions to give her whatever she reasonably desires.”

  “Surely…”

  “I tried everything,” William said. “But it is the queen’s right to have attendants, and Catherine is the only one that she actually requested. The others are more or less forced on her. One of them is the constable’s own wife, who is there to spy on everything she says.”

  “And how is Catherine?”

  “You would be proud of her. She sent you her love and said that she would like to stay and serve the queen. She says that Anne is ill and faint and weeping and that she wants to stay with her while she can help.”

  I gave a little gasp, half of love and pride, half of impatience. “She’s a little girl, she shouldn’t even be there!”

  “She is a young woman,” William said. “She is doing her duty as a young woman should. And she’s in no danger. No one is going to ask her anything. Everyone is clear that she is in the Tower as Anne’s companion. No harm will come to her because of it.”

  “And is Anne to be charged?”

  William glanced toward Henry and then decided that he was old enough to know. “It looks as if Anne is to be charged with adultery. D’you know what adultery is, Henry?”

  The boy blushed a little. “Yes, sir. It’s in the Bible.”

  “I believe it is a false charge against your aunt,” William said levelly. “But it is a charge that the Privy Council has chosen to bring against her.”

  At last I was beginning to understand. “And the others arrested too? They’re charged with her?”

  William nodded, tight-lipped. “Yes. Henry Norris and Mark Smeaton are to be charged with her, for being her lovers.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I said flatly.

  William nodded.

  “And my brother is taken for questioning?”
r />   “Yes,” he said.

  Something in his tone of voice alerted me. “They’re not putting him on the rack?” I asked. “They’re not hurting him?”

  “Oh no,” William assured me. “They won’t forget he’s gentry. They’ll keep him in the Tower while they question her and the others.”

  “But what are they charging him with?”

  William hesitated, a glance to my son. “He’s charged with the other men.”

  For a moment I did not understand him. Then I said the word: “Adultery?”

  He nodded.

  I was silent. My first thought was to cry out and deny it, but then I remembered Anne’s absolute need for a son, and her certainty that the king could not give her a healthy baby. I remembered her leaning back against George and telling him that the church could not be relied upon to rule on what was and what was not sin. And him telling her that he could have been excommunicated ten times before breakfast—and she had laughed. I did not know what Anne might have done in her desperation. I did not know what George might have dared in his recklessness. I turned my thoughts away from the two of them, as I had done before. “What shall we do?” I asked.

  William put his arm around my son and smiled down at him. Henry was up to his step-father’s shoulder now, he looked at him trustingly.

  “We’ll wait,” William said. “As soon as this mess is sorted out we’ll have Catherine away and we’ll go home to Rochford. And then we’ll keep our heads down for a bit. Because whether Anne is set aside and allowed to live in a nunnery, or exiled, I think the Boleyns have had their moment. It’s time to go back to making cheese for you, my love.”

  The next day there was nothing to do but wait. I let the wet nurse go away for the day and encouraged William and Henry to stroll about the town and take their dinner in an ale house while I stayed home and played with the baby. In the afternoon I took her for a little walk down to the river’s edge and felt the wind from the sea blowing against our faces. I unswaddled her when I got her home and gave her a cool bath, rumpling her sweet rosy body in a linen sheet and patting her dry, and then let her kick, free of her swaddling bands for a while. I bound her up in fresh bands in time for the others coming in for their dinner and then I left her with the nurse while William and Henry and I went down to the great gate of the Tower and asked if Catherine might come out to see us.