Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

The windows, which were once made of colored 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 realize the real reason for religious reform in this country. This beautiful building, and the lands on which it stands, the great farms that pay it rent and the flocks of sheep that 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 realize 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 toward 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 he will 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 traveling 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 anymore.

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 anymore, and I fear that she was indeed thinking that my dress is very odd and that I am ugly.

“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 realizes 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 criticize 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 curtsy 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.