The Other Boleyn Girl

  She looked very small as she walked along the inner wall from the Beauchamp Tower to the gateway. But she walked like a Boleyn girl, as if she owned the place, with her head up, looking around her, a pleasant smile to one of the passing guards and then a bright beam to me through the grill as they unlocked the door within the wooden gate and let her slip out.

  I wrapped her in my arms. “My love.”

  She hugged me back and then sprang toward Henry. “Hen!”

  “Cat!”

  They looked at each other with mutual delight. “Grown,” she said.

  “Fatter,” he replied.

  William smiled at me over their heads. “D’you think they ever use whole sentences?”

  “Catherine, I wrote to Anne to ask her to release you,” I said hastily. “I want you to come away.”

  At once she was grave. “I can’t. She is in such distress. You’ve never seen her like this. I can’t just leave her. And the other ladies around her are useless, two of them don’t know what they’re doing and the other two are my Aunt Boleyn and Aunt Shelton and they sit in a corner all the time and mutter behind their hands. I can’t leave her with them.”

  “What does she do all day?” Henry asked.

  Catherine flushed. “She cries, and prays. That’s why I can’t leave her. I just couldn’t go. It would be like leaving a baby. She can’t care for herself.”

  “Are you well fed?” I asked hopelessly. “Where d’you sleep?”

  “I sleep with her,” Catherine said. “But she hardly sleeps at all. And we could eat as well as we did at court. It’s all right, Mother. And it’s not for long.”

  “How d’you know?”

  The captain of the guard leaned forward and said quietly to William, “Have a care, Sir William.”

  William looked at me. “We gave an undertaking that we would not discuss the matter with Catherine. This is just for us to see her and know that she is well.”

  I took a breath. “Very well. But Catherine, if this goes on for more than a week you will have to come away.”

  “I’ll do as you say,” she said sweetly.

  “Do you need anything? Shall I bring you anything tomorrow?”

  “Some clean linen,” she said. “And the queen needs another gown or two. Can you get them for her from Greenwich?”

  “Yes,” I said, resigned. It seemed that all my life I had been running errands for Anne and even now, at this great crisis in our affairs, I was still at her beck and call.

  William looked at the captain of the guard. “Is that well with you, Captain? That my wife brings some linen and gowns for the ladies?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. He tipped his hat to me. “Of course.”

  I smiled grimly. No one had imprisoned a queen with no evidence and no charge before. It was difficult to know which was the safe side.

  I held Catherine to me once more and felt her smooth hair at the front of her hood just under my chin. I pressed a kiss on her forehead and smelled the scent of her young warm skin. I could hardly bear to let her go but she slipped through the gate and went back down the stone-paved path under the great shadow of the tower and paused and waved, and was gone.

  William raised his hand as she went and then turned back to me. “One thing the Boleyns have never lacked is absolute folly-driven courage,” he said. “If you were horses I’d have no other breed because you’d jump anything. But as women you are insanely difficult to live with.”

  May 1536

  I TOOK A BOAT DOWNRIVER TO GREENWICH TO FETCH THE queen’s gowns and Catherine’s extra linen, leaving William, Henry and the baby behind at the lodgings near the Tower. William was uneasy at my going without him and I was fearful too, it felt like going back into danger, returning to Greenwich Palace; but I preferred to go alone and to know that my son—that precious and rare commodity, a son of the king—was out of sight of the court. I promised to be no longer than a couple of hours and to stop for nothing.

  It was an easy matter to get into my rooms but the queen’s apartments were sealed on the word of the Privy Council. I thought of finding my uncle and asking him for Anne’s gowns and linen and then I concluded that it was not worth drawing attention to another Boleyn girl when the first one was in the Tower for unnamed crimes. I bundled up some gowns of my own for her and was slipping from the room just as Madge Shelton came by. “Good God, I thought you were arrested,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Why is anyone arrested? You were gone. Of course I thought you were in the Tower. Did they let you go after questioning?”

  “I’ve never been arrested at all,” I said patiently. “I went to London to be with Catherine. She went with Anne as her maid in waiting. She’s in the Tower with her still. I just came back for some linen.”

  Madge dropped into a window seat and burst into tears.

  I threw a swift glance down the gallery and shifted my bundle from one arm to another. “Madge, I have to go. What’s the matter?”

  “Dear God, I thought you were arrested and they would come for me next.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like being torn apart in the bear pit,” she said. “They questioned me all morning until I could not tell you what I had seen and heard. They twisted my words around and around and made it sound as if we were a bunch of whores in the whorehouse. I never did anything very wrong. Neither did you. But they have to know everything about everything. They have to know times and places and I felt so ashamed of everything!”

  I paused for a moment, picking over the bones of this. “The Privy Council questioned you?”

  “Everyone. All the queen’s ladies, the maids, even the servants. Everyone who had ever danced in her rooms. They’d have questioned Purkoy the dog if he hadn’t been dead!”

  “And what do they ask?”

  “Who was bedding who, who was promising what? Who was giving gifts? Who was missing at matins? Everything. Who was in love with the queen, who wrote her poems? Whose songs she sang? Who did she favor? Everything.”

  “And what does everyone answer?” I asked.

  “Oh we all say nothing at first,” Madge said spiritedly. “Of course. We all keep our secrets and try to keep those of others. But they know one thing from one person and one from another and in the end they turn you round and catch you out and ask you things you don’t know and things you do, and all the time Uncle Howard looks at you as if you are an utter whore, and the Duke of Suffolk is so kind that you explain things to him, and then you find you have said everything you meant to keep secret.”

  She finished on a great wail of tears, and mopped her eyes on a scrap of lace. Suddenly she looked up. “You go! Because if they see you they’ll have you in for questioning and the one thing they go on and on about is George and you and the queen and where were you all one night, and what were you doing another night.”

  I nodded and walked away from her at once. In a moment I heard her pattering after me. “If you see Henry Norris will you tell him that I did my very best to say nothing?” she said, as pitiful as a schoolboy hoping not to tell tales. “They trapped me into saying that the queen and I once gambled for a kiss from him, but I never said more than that. No more than that they would have got from Jane.”

  Not even the name of George’s poisonous wife made me check, I was in such a hurry to get out of the place. Instead I grabbed Madge Shelton’s hand and dragged her along with me as I ran down the stairs and out through the door. “Jane Parker?”

  “She was in there the longest, and she wrote out a statement and she signed it too. It was after she had spoken to them that we all had to go in again and they were asking about George. Nothing but George and the queen and how much they drank together and how often you and he were alone with her, and whether you left them alone.”

  “Jane will have traduced him,” I said flatly.

  “She was bragging of it,” Madge said. “And that Seymour thing left court yesterday to stay with the Carews in Surrey, compl
aining of the heat while the rest of us have our lives picked over and everything torn apart.” Madge ended on a little sob, and I stopped and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “Can I come with you?” she asked forlornly.

  “No,” I said. “Go to the duchess at Lambeth, she’ll look after you. And don’t say that you saw me.”

  “I’ll try not to,” she said fairly. “But you don’t know what it’s like when they turn you round and around and ask you everything, over and over again.”

  I nodded and left her, standing at the head of the stone steps: a pretty girl who had come to the most beautiful and elegant court in Europe, and seduced the king himself; and who had now seen the world turn around and the court turn dark and the king turn suspicious and learned that no woman, however flighty or pretty or high-spirited, could think herself safe.

  I took the linen to Catherine that night and told her that I could not get the gowns for the queen. I did not tell her why, I did not want to draw any attention to myself nor to our little haven in the lodgings hidden behind the Minories. I did not tell her the other news I had heard from the boatman as he rowed me back to London: that Sir Thomas Wyatt, Anne’s old flame who had vied with the king for her attention all those years ago when we had all been doing nothing but playing at love, was arrested and Sir Richard Page, another of our circle, was arrested too.

  “They’ll come for me soon,” I said to William, sitting over the fire in our little lodging. “They are picking up everyone who is close to her.”

  “You had better stop seeing Catherine every day,” he said. “I’ll go, or we can send a maid. You can follow behind, find a place by the river where you can see her so that you know that she is well.”

  The next day we changed our lodgings, and this time we gave a false name. Henry went to the Tower in place of us, dressed like a stable lad delivering Catherine’s linen or books for her. He dodged through the crowd to get to the gate, and dodged home after, certain that no one had followed him. If my uncle had ever understood that a woman can love a girl child, he would have watched Catherine and she would have led him to me. But he never knew that, of course. Few of the Howards ever realized that girls were anything more than counters to play in the marriage game.

  And he had other things to do. We realized in the middle of the month that he had been busy indeed when the charges were published. William brought the news home from the bakery where he had been buying our dinner, and waited until I had eaten before he told me.

  “My love,” he said gently. “I don’t know how to prepare you for this news.”

  I took one look at his grave face and pushed my plate away. “Just tell me quickly.”

  “They have tried and found guilty: Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and the lad Mark Smeaton for adultery with the queen your sister.”

  For a moment I could not hear him. I could hear the words but it was as if they were coming from a long way away and muffled. Then William pulled back my chair from the table and thrust my head down and the dreamy feeling passed and I could see the floorboards beneath my boots and I struggled against him. “Let me up, I’m not fainting.”

  He released me at once but kneeled at my feet so that he could look into my face. “I am afraid you must pray for the soul of your brother. They are certain to find against him.”

  “He was not tried with the others?”

  “No. They were tried in the common court. He and Anne will have to face the peers.”

  “Then there will be some excuse. They will have made some arrangement.”

  William looked doubtful.

  I leaped up from my seat. “I must go to court,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been skulking here in hiding like a fool. I shall go and tell them that this is wrong. Before it goes any further. If these are found guilty then I must get to court in time to testify that George is innocent, Anne too.”

  He moved quicker than I, and was blocking the door before I was even two paces toward it.

  “I knew you would say that and you shall not go.”

  “William, this is my brother and my sister in the greatest of dangers. I have to save them.”

  “No. Because if you raise your head one inch they will have it off as well as theirs. Who d’you think is hearing the evidence against these men? Who will be president of the court against your brother? Your own uncle! Does he use his influence to save him? Does your father? No. Because they know that Anne has taught the king to be a tyrant and now he is run mad and they cannot prevent his tyranny.”

  “I have to defend him,” I said, pushing against his chest. “This is George, my beloved George. D’you think I want to go to my grave knowing that at the moment of his trial he looked around and saw no one lift a finger for him? If it is the death of me, I shall go to him.”

  Suddenly, William stepped aside. “Go then,” he said. “Kiss our baby good-bye before you go, and Henry. I shall tell Catherine that you left your blessing for her. And kiss me farewell. For if you go into that courtroom you will never come out alive. I should think it a certainty that you will be taken up for witchcraft at the very least.”

  “For doing what, for God’s sake?” I exclaimed. “What d’you think I have done? What d’you think any of us have done?”

  “Anne is to be charged with seducing the king with sorcery. Your brother is said to have helped her. That is why their trials are to be done separately. Forgive me that I didn’t tell you it all at once. It’s not the sort of news I like to bring to my wife with her dinner. They are accused of being lovers, and of summoning the devil. They’re being tried separately not because they will be excused, but because their crimes are too great to be heard in one sitting.”

  I gasped and staggered against him. William caught me, and finished what he had to tell me.

  “Together they are charged with undoing the king, making him impotent with spells, perhaps with poison. Together they are accused of being lovers and making the baby which was born a monster. Some of this is going to stick, say what you will. You have been party to many late nights in Anne’s room. You taught her how to seduce the king, after you had been his lover for years. You found a wise woman for her, you brought a witch into the palace itself. Didn’t you? You took out dead babies. I buried one. And there’s more than that—more than even I know about. Isn’t there? Boleyn secrets that you have not told even me?”

  As I turned away, he nodded his head. “I thought so. Did she take spells and potions to help her conceive?” He looked at me and I nodded again. “She poisoned Bishop Fisher, poor sainted man, and she has the deaths of three innocent men on her conscience for that. She poisoned Cardinal Wolsey and Queen Katherine…”

  “You don’t know that for sure!” I exclaimed.

  He looked hard at me. “You are her own sister and you cannot offer a better defense than that? That you don’t know for sure how many she has killed?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “She is certainly guilty of dabbling in witchcraft, she is certainly guilty of seducing the king with bawdy behavior. She is certainly guilty of threatening the queen, the bishop and the cardinal. You cannot defend her, Mary. She is guilty of at least half of the charge.”

  “But George…” I whispered.

  “George went with her in everything she did,” William said. “And he sinned on his own account. If Sir Francis and the others were to ever confess of what they did with Smeaton and the others they would be hanged for buggery, let alone anything else.”

  “He is my brother,” I said. “I cannot desert him.”

  “You can go to your own death,” William said. “Or you can survive this, bring up your children, and guard Anne’s little girl who will be shamed and bastardized and motherless by the end of this week. You can wait out this reign and see what comes next. See what the future holds for the Princess Elizabeth, defend our son Henry against those who will want to set him up as the king’s heir or even worse—flaunt him as a pretender.
You owe it to your children to protect them. Anne and George have made their own choices. But the Princess Elizabeth and Catherine and Henry have their choices to make in the future. You should be there to help them.”

  My hands, which had been in fists against his chest, dropped to my side. “All right,” I said dully. “I will let them go to their trial without me. I will not go into court to defend him. But I will go and find my uncle and ask him if something cannot be done to save them.”

  I expected him to refuse me this too, but he hesitated. “Are you sure that he won’t have you taken up with them? He has just sat in trial over three men he knew from their boyhood and sent them to be hanged, castrated and quartered. This is not a man in a merciful mood.”

  I nodded, thinking hard. “Very well. I’ll go to my father first.”

  To my relief, William nodded. “I’ll take you,” he said.

  I threw on a cloak over my gown and called to the wet nurse to mind the baby and to keep Henry by her for we were going out for a visit and would only be a little while, and then William and I went from the little lodging house.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “At your uncle’s house,” William said. “Half the court is still at Greenwich but the king keeps to his rooms, he is said to be deeply grieved, but some say that he slips out every night to see Jane Seymour.”

  “What happened to Sir Thomas and Sir Richard who were taken up with the others?” I asked.

  William shrugged. “Who knows? No evidence against them, or special pleading, or some kind of favor. Who ever knows when a tyrant runs mad? They are excused; but a little lad like Mark who only ever knew one thing and that was to play the lute is racked until he cries for his mother, and tells them anything they ask him.”