The Other Boleyn Girl

  I caught his hand as he was about to go. “Wait, George, I wanted to ask you something.”

  He turned back. “What?”

  I tugged at his hand to make him lean down to me so that I could whisper in his ear. “Do you think that he loves me?”

  “Oh,” he said, straightening up. “Oh, love.”

  “Well, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Whatever does it mean? We write poems about it all day and sing songs about it all night but if there is such a thing in real life I’m damned if I know.”

  “Oh George!”

  “He wants you, I can tell you that. He’s prepared to go through a degree of trouble to have you. If that means love to you then yes, he loves you.”

  “That’s enough for me,” I said with quiet satisfaction. “Wants me, and is prepared to go through a degree of trouble. That sounds like love to me.”

  My handsome brother bowed. “If you say so, Mary. If that is good enough for you.” He straightened up and immediately stepped back. “Your Majesty.”

  The king stood before me. “George, I cannot allow you to spend the evening talking to your sister, you are the envy of the court.”

  “I am,” George said with all his courtier charm. “Two beautiful sisters and not a care in the world.”

  “I thought we should have some dancing,” the king said. “Will you lead out Mistress Boleyn and I will take care of Mistress Carey, here?”

  “I should be delighted,” George said. Without looking around for her, he snapped his fingers and, alert as ever, Anne appeared at his side.

  “We’re to dance,” he said shortly.

  The king waved his hand and the musicians struck up a quick country dance so we arranged ourselves in a ring of eight people and started the flowing steps first one way then the other. At the opposite side of the circle I saw George’s familiar beloved face and, beside him, Anne’s smooth smile. She looked as she did when she was studying a new book. She was reading the king’s mood as carefully as she might look at a psalter. She was looking from him to me as if to measure the urgency of his desire. And, while never turning her head, she was checking the mood of the queen, trying to get an idea of what she had seen or what she felt.

  I smiled to myself. Anne had met her match in the queen, I thought. No one could penetrate beneath the veneer of the daughter of Spain. Anne was a courtier beyond all others but she had been born a commoner. Queen Katherine had been born a princess. From the moment she could talk she had been taught to guard her tongue. From the moment she could walk she had been taught to step carefully and speak kindly to both rich and poor, for you never knew when you might need both rich and poor. Queen Katherine had been a player in a highly competitive, highly wealthy court before Anne had even been born.

  Anne might look around all she liked to see how the queen was bearing up under the sight of me, close to the king, our gazes locked on each other, desire very hot between us. Anne might look; but the queen never betrayed any emotion more than polite interest. She clapped at the end of the dances and once or twice cried out congratulations. And then suddenly the dance ended, and Henry and I were left stranded without musicians playing, without other dancers encircling us and hiding us. We were left alone, exposed, still handclasped with his eyes on my face and me looking up at him in silence, locked together as if we might stay that way forever.

  “Bravo,” said the queen, her voice completely steady and confident. “Very pretty.”

  “He’ll send for you,” Anne said that night as we undressed in the room. She shook out her dress and laid it carefully in the chest at the foot of the bed, her hood at the other end, her shoes carefully set side by side under the bed. She pulled on her night shift and sat before the mirror to brush her hair.

  She handed the brush to me and she closed her eyes as I set about the long strokes from head to waist.

  “Perhaps tonight, perhaps during the day tomorrow. You’ll go.”

  “Of course I’ll go,” I said.

  “Well, remember who you are,” Anne warned. “Don’t let him just have you in a doorway or somewhere hidden and hurried. Insist on proper rooms, insist on a proper bed.”

  “I’ll see,” I said.

  “It’s important,” she cautioned me. “If he thinks he can take you like a slut then he’ll have you and forget you. If anything, I think you should hold out a little longer. If he thinks you’re too easy he’ll not have you more than once or twice.”

  I took her soft hanks of hair in my hand and plaited them.

  “Ow,” she complained. “You’re pulling.”

  “Well, you’re nagging,” I said. “Leave me to do it my way, Anne. I’ve not done so badly so far.”

  “Oh that.” She shrugged her white shoulders and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. “Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.”

  The knock at the door startled us both. Anne’s dark eyes flew to the mirror, to my reflected image looking blankly back at her.

  “Not the king?”

  I was already opening the door.

  George was standing there, in the red suede doublet he had worn at dinner, the white fine linen shirt gleaming through the slashings, the red cap embroidered with pearls on his dark head.

  “Vivat! Vivat Marianne!” He came quickly in and closed the door behind him. “He asked me to invite you to take a glass of wine with him. I’m to apologize for the lateness of the hour, the Venetian ambassador has only just left. They talked of nothing but war with France and now he is filled with passion for England, Henry and St. George. I’m to assure you that you’re free to make your choice. You can take a glass of wine and come back to your own bed. You’re to be your own mistress.”

  “Any offer?” Anne asked.

  George raised a supercilious eyebrow. “Show a little elegance,” he reprimanded her. “He’s not buying her outright. He’s inviting her for a glass of wine. We’ll fix the price later on.”

  I put my hand to my head. “My hood!” I exclaimed. “Anne, quick! Plait up my hair.”

  She shook her head. “Go as you are,” she said. “With your hair down around your shoulders. You look like a virgin on your wedding day. I’m right, aren’t I, George? That’s what he wants.”

  He nodded. “She’s lovely like that. Loosen her bodice a bit.”

  “She’s supposed to be a lady.”

  “Just a bit,” he suggested. “A man likes a glimpse of what he’s buying.”

  Anne untied the laces at the back of my bodice until the boned stomacher was a little looser. She tugged it down at the waist so it sat lower and more invitingly. George nodded. “Perfect.”

  She stepped back and looked at me as critically as my father had looked at the mare he had sent to the stallion. “Anything else?”

  George shook his head.

  “She’d better wash,” Anne suddenly decided. “Under her arms and her cunny at least.”

  I would have appealed to George. But he was nodding, as intent as a farmer. “Yes, you should. He has a horror of anything rank.”

  “Go on.” Anne gestured to the jug and ewer.

  “You two go out,” I said.

  George turned for the door. “We’ll wait outside.”

  “And your bum,” Anne said as he closed the door. “Don’t skimp on it, Mary. You’ve got to be clean all over.”

  The closing door cut off my response which was not that of a young lady. I washed myself briskly in cold water and rubbed myself dry. I took some of Anne’s flower water and patted it on my neck and hair and on the tops of my legs. Then I opened the door.

  “Are you clean?” Anne asked sharply.

  I nodded.

  She looked at me anxiously. “Go on then. And you can resist for a bit, you know. Show a little doubt. Don’t just fall into his arms.”

  I turned my face away from her. She seemed to me quite unbearably crass about the whole matter.

  “The girl can have a bit of pleasure,” George said gently
.

  Anne rounded on him. “Not in his bed,” she said sharply. “She’s not there for her pleasure but for his.”

  I didn’t even hear her. All I could hear was the thud of my heart pounding in my ears and my knowledge that he had sent for me, that I would be with him soon.

  “Come on,” I said to George. “Let’s go.”

  Anne turned to go back into the room. “I’ll wait up for you,” she said.

  I hesitated. “I might not come back tonight.”

  She nodded. “I hope you don’t. But I’ll wait up for you anyway. I’ll sit by the fire and watch the dawn come in.”

  I thought for a moment about her keeping a vigil for me in her spinster bedroom while I was snug and loved in the King of England’s bed. “My God, you must wish it was you,” I said with sudden acute delight.

  She did not flinch from it. “Of course. He is the king.”

  “And he wants me,” I said, hammering the point home.

  George bowed and offered me his arm and led me down the narrow stairs to the lobby before the great hall. We went through it like a pair of interlinked ghosts. No one saw us pass. There were a couple of the scullions sleeping in the ashes of the fire and half a dozen men dozing head-down on tables around the room.

  We went past the top table and through the doors where the king’s private rooms began. There was a set of broad stairs richly hung with a beautiful tapestry, the colors drained from the bright silks by the moonlight. There were two men at arms before the presence chamber and they stood aside to let me pass when they saw me with my golden hair let down and the confident smile on my face.

  The presence chamber behind the double doors was a surprise to me. I had only ever seen it crowded with people. This was where everyone came to have sight of the king. Petitioners would bribe senior members of the court to allow them to stand here in case the king noticed them and asked them how they did, and what they wanted of him. I had never seen this big vaulted room other than packed with people in their most handsome clothes, desperate for the king’s attention. Now it was silent, shadowy. George pressed his hand on my cold fingertips.

  Ahead of us were the doors to the king’s private chambers. Two men at arms stood with pikes crossed. “His Majesty commands our presence,” George said briefly.

  There was a short chime as the pikes clashed, the two men presented arms, bowed, and swung the double doors open.

  The king was seated before the fire, wrapped in a warm robe of velvet trimmed with fur. As he heard the door open he leaped to his feet.

  I dropped into a deep curtsy. “You sent for me, Majesty.”

  He could not take his eyes from my face. “I did. And I thank you for coming. I wanted to see…I wanted to talk…I wanted to take a little…” He broke off finally. “I wanted you.”

  I stepped a little closer. He would smell Anne’s perfume from that distance, I thought. I tossed my head and felt the weight of my hair shift. I saw his eyes go from my face to my hair and back again. Behind me, I heard the door closing as George went out without a word. Henry did not even see him go.

  “I am honored, Your Majesty,” I murmured.

  He shook his head, not in impatience, but as the gesture of a man who cannot waste time on play. “I want you,” he said again, flatly, as if that were all that a woman would need to know. “I want you, Mary Boleyn.”

  I took a small step closer to him. I leaned toward him. I felt the warmth of his breath and then the touch of his lips on my hair. I did not move forward or back.

  “Mary,” he whispered and his voice was choked with his desire.

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Please call me Henry. I want to hear my name on your lips.”

  “Henry.”

  “D’you want me?” he whispered. “I mean as a man? If I were a farmer on your father’s estate, would you want me then?” He put his hand under my chin to lift up my face so that he could look into my eyes. I met his bright blue gaze. Carefully, delicately, I put my hand to his face and felt the softness of his curling beard under my palm. At once he closed his eyes at my touch and then turned his face and kissed my hand where it cupped his chin.

  “Yes,” I said, caring not at all that it was nonsense. I could not imagine this man as anything but King of England. He could no more deny being king than I could deny being a Howard. “If you were a nobody and I were a nobody I would love you,” I whispered. “If you were a farmer with a field of hops I would love you. If I were a girl who came to pick the hops would you love me?”

  He drew me closer to him, his hands warm on my stomacher. “I would,” he promised. “I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love.”

  His head came down and he kissed me gently at first and then harder, the touch of his lips very warm. Then he led me by the hand toward the canopied bed and lay me down on it and buried his face in the swell of my breasts where they showed above the stomacher that Anne had helpfully loosened for him.

  At dawn I raised myself on my elbow and looked out of the leaded panes of the window to where the sky was growing pale and I knew that Anne would be watching for the sun too. Anne would be watching the light slowly filling the sky and knowing that her sister was the king’s mistress and the most important woman in England, second only to the queen. I wondered what she made of that as she sat in the window seat and listened to the first birds tentatively sounding out their notes. I wondered how she felt, knowing that I was the one the king had chosen, the one who was carrying the ambitions of the family. Knowing that it was me and not her in his bed.

  In truth, I did not have to wonder. She would be feeling that disturbing mixture of emotions that she always summoned from me: admiration and envy, pride and a furious rivalry, a longing to see a beloved sister succeed, and a passionate desire to see a rival fall.

  The king stirred. “Are you awake?” he asked from half-under the covers.

  “Yes,” I said, instantly alert. I wondered if I should offer to leave, but then he emerged head first from the tangle of bedding and his face was smiling.

  “Good morrow, sweetheart,” he said to me. “Are you well this morning?”

  I found I was beaming back at him, reflecting his joy. “I’m very well.”

  “Merry in your heart?”

  “Happier than I have ever been in my life before.”

  “Then come to me,” he said, opening his arms, and I slid down the sheets and into the warm musky-scented embrace, his strong thighs pressing against me, his arms cradling my shoulders, his face burrowing into my neck.

  “Oh Henry,” I said foolishly. “Oh, my love.”

  “Oh I know,” he said engagingly. “Come a little closer.”

  I did not leave him till the sun was fully up and then I was in a hurry to be back in my room before the servants were about.

  Henry himself helped me into my gown, tied the laces at the back of my stomacher, put his own cloak around my shoulders against the chill of the morning. When he opened the door my brother George was lounging in the window seat. When he saw the king, he rose to his feet and bowed, cap in hand, and when he saw me behind the king he gave me a sweet smile.

  “See Mistress Carey back to her room,” the king said. “And then send the groom of the bedchamber in, would you, George? I want to be up early this morning.”

  George bowed again and offered me his arm.

  “And come with me to hear Mass,” the king said at the door. “You can come with me to my private chapel today, George.”

  “I thank you.” George accepted with nonchalant grace the greatest honor that any courtier could receive. The door to the privy chamber closed as I curtsied and then we went quickly through the audience chamber and through the great hall.

  We were too late to avoid the lowest of the servants, the lads employed to keep the fires burning were dragging great logs into the hall. Other boys were sweeping the floor, and the men at arms who had
slept where they had dined were opening their eyes and yawning and cursing the strength of the wine.

  I put the hood of the king’s cloak up over my disheveled hair and we went quickly and quietly through the great hall and up the staircase to the queen’s apartments.

  Anne opened the door at George’s knock and drew us in. She was white-faced with lack of sleep, her eyes red. I took in the delicious sight of my sister on the rack of jealousy.

  “Well?” she asked sharply.

  I glanced at the smooth counterpane on the bed. “You didn’t sleep.”

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “And I hope you slept but little.”

  I turned away from her bawdiness.

  “Come now,” George said to me. “We only want to know that all is well with you, Mary. And Father will have to know and Mother and Uncle Howard. You’d better get used to talking about it. It’s not a private matter.”

  “It’s the most private matter in the world.”

  “Not for you,” Anne said coldly. “So stop looking like a milkmaid in springtime. Did he have you?”

  “Yes,” I said shortly.

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Praise God!” George said. “She’s done it. And I have to go. He asked me to hear Mass with him.” He crossed the room and caught me up into a hard hug. “Well done. We’ll talk later. I have to go now.”

  He banged the door indiscreetly as he left and Anne made a little tutting noise and then turned to the chest which held our clothes.

  “You’d better wear your cream gown,” she said. “No need to look the whore. I’ll get you some hot water. You’ll have to bathe.” She raised her hand to my protests. “Yes, you will. So don’t argue. And wash your hair. You have to be spotless, Mary. Don’t be such a lazy slut. And get out of that gown and hurry, we have to go to Mass with the queen in less than an hour.”

  I obeyed her, as I always did. “But are you happy for me?” I asked as I struggled out of the stomacher and petticoat.

  I saw her face in the mirror, the leap of jealousy veiled by the sweep of her eyelashes. “I am happy for the family,” she said. “I hardly ever think about you.”