Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“How is anybody to know what the hell is in the king’s mind when he is by turns as cunning as a crow and as mad as a hare?”

I shake my head in silence. That he should name the king in the same breath as madness is as good as treason. I will not repeat it even here, safe in Howard rooms.

“At any rate, you are sure that he still likes Katherine?” the duke says more quietly.

“Hotly. There is no doubt in my mind.”

“Well, tell her to keep him at arm’s length. We gain nothing if she becomes his whore but he stays married to the queen.”

“There can be no doubt-”

“I doubt everything,” he says flatly. “And if he beds her and then beds the queen and gets a son on her and thanks Cromwell for the addition to his nursery, then we are ruined, along with the little slut.”

“He will not bed the queen,” I say, returning to my only certainty.

“You don’t know anything,” he says rudely. “All you know is what can be gleaned from keyholes and privy chamber whispers, out of the chamber sweepings and the midden. You know everything that can be found in the dirt of life; you know nothing of policy. I tell you, he is rewarding Cromwell with rank beyond his dreams for bringing him the Cleves queen; and your plans and my plans are all thrown down. And you are a fool.”

There is nothing I can say to this, so I wait for him to tell me to leave, but he turns to the window and pauses, looking out and gnawing his thumbnail. After a little while a page comes to tell him that he is required at the House of Lords, and he goes out without another word to me. I curtsy, but I don’t think he even sees me.

When he is gone, I should go, too, but I do not leave. I walk around his room. When the room is quiet and no one comes to the door, I draw back the chair. Then I sit behind his table in his big carved chair with the crest of the Howards, hard and uncomfortable behind my head. I wonder what it would have been like if George had lived and his uncle had died and George had been the great man of this family; I might have sat here, beside him, in my own right. We might have had matching chairs at this great table, and hatched our own plans, our own schemes. We might have made a great house of our own and raised our own children in it. We would have been brother and sister-in-law to the queen, our children would have been cousins to the next king. George would have been a duke for sure; I would have been a duchess. We would have been wealthy, the greatest family in the kingdom. We might have grown old together. He would have prized me for my advice and my fierce loyalty; I would have loved him for his passion and his good looks and his wit. He would have turned to me; in the end he would surely have turned to me. He would have tired of Anne and her temper. He would have learned that a steady love, a faithful love, a wife’s love is the best.

But George died, and so did Anne – both of them dead before they could learn to value me. And all that is left of the three of us is me, the only survivor, wishing for the Boleyn inheritance, perching in the Howard chair, dreaming that they are still alive and that there is greatness before us, instead of loneliness and old age, petty plots and disgrace and death.

I am on my way to the queen’s rooms just before dinner when I feel a gentle hand on my sleeve. I think at once that it is John Beresby or Tom Culpepper, and I turn with a laugh, to tell him to let me go. When I see that it is the king, I swoop into a curtsy.

He says, “You know me then,” and I see that he is wearing a big hat and a big cape and thinks himself quite unrecognizable. I don’t say: you are the fattest man at court, of course I know you. You must be the only man who is six feet tall and more than four feet round. You are the only man who stinks like moldy meat. I say: “Your Grace, oh, Your Grace, I think I would know you at any time, anywhere.”

He steps forward, out of the shadows, and there is no one else with him, which is extraordinary. Usually he has half a dozen men with him wherever he is, whatever he is doing. “How do you know me?” he asks.

I have a little trick now, which is, whenever he speaks to me like this, I imagine it is Thomas Culpepper, the utterly delicious Thomas Culpepper, and I think how I would answer him to enchant him. I smile as I would for Thomas, and I say the words I would use to him to the king. So I say easily: “Your Grace, I dare not tell you,” thinking: Thomas, I dare not tell you.

And he says: “Tell me.”

And I say: “I cannot.”

And he says: “Tell me, pretty Katherine.”

This could go on all day, so I change the tune and say: “I feel so ashamed.”

And he says: “There’s no need to feel ashamed, sweetheart. Tell me how you know me.”

And I say, thinking of Thomas: “It is a scent, Your Grace. It is a scent like a perfume, a goodly smell that I love, like a flower like jasmine or roses. And then there is a deeper smell, like the sweat of a good horse when it is hot from hunting, then there is a smell like leather, and then a sort of tang like the sea.”

“I smell like this?” he asks, and there is wonder in his voice, and I realize, with a little shock, that of course this will hit home since in truth he smells of pus from his leg, poor man, and often of farting since he is so costive, and this stink goes with him everywhere so that he has to carry a pomader all the time to block it out from his own nose, but he must know that to everyone he smells of decay.

“You do to me,” I say faithfully, thinking hard of Thomas Culpepper and the clean smell of his brown curly hair. “There is a scent of jasmine and sweat and leather and salt.” I look down and lick my lips, just lightly, nothing bawdy. “I always know you by this.”

He takes me by the hand and he draws me to him. “Sweet maid,” he breathes. “Oh God, sweet maid.”

I give a little gasp as if I am afraid, but I look up at him as if I would be kissed. This is rather nasty, really. He is awfully like my step-grandmother’s steward at Horsham – very old. Old enough to be my grandfather almost, and his mouth is trembling and his eyes are wet. I admire him because he is the king, of course. He is the greatest man in the world, and I love him as my king. And my uncle has made clear that there are new dresses involved if I can lead him on. But it is not very nice when he holds me round the waist and puts his mouth wetly on my neck, and I can feel his spittle cold on my skin.

“Sweet maid,” he says again, and he nuzzles me with a moist kiss, which is like being sucked by a fish.

“Your Grace!” I say breathlessly. “You must let me go.”

“I will never let you go!”

“Your Grace, I am a maid!”

This works wonderfully well; he lets me go a little way and I can step back, and though he takes both my hands, at least I don’t have him breathing down the front of my gown.

“You are a sweet maid, Katherine.”

“I am an honest maid, sire,” I say breathlessly.

He has tight hold of my hands, and he draws me to him. “If I were a free man, would you be my wife?” he asks simply.

I am so surprised by the speed of this that I cannot say a word. I just look at him as if I were a complete milkmaid, and stupid as a dairy cow. “Your wife? Your wife, sire?”

“My marriage is not a true one,” he says quickly; all the time he is pulling me closer, his hand sliding round my waist again. I think that the words are just to dazzle me while he backs me into the corner and gets a hand up my skirt, so I keep moving and he keeps talking. “My marriage is invalid. For several reasons. My wife was precontracted and not free to marry. My conscience warned me of this, and for my soul’s sake I cannot lie with her in a holy union. I know in my deepest heart that she is another man’s wife.”

“Is she?” Surely, he can’t imagine I am fool enough to believe this for a moment.

“I know it, my conscience warns me. God speaks to me. I know it.”

“Does He? Do you?”

“Yes,” he says firmly. “And so I did not fully consent at my wedding. God knew of my doubts then, and I have not lain with her. So the marriage is no marriage, and I will soon be free.”

So he does think me fool enough, because he has fooled himself. Good God, what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard. It is truly amazing.

“But what will happen to her?” I ask.

“What?” His hand, which is creeping up my stomacher to my breast, is halted at the thought.

“What will happen to the queen?” I ask. “If she is no queen anymore?”

“How should I know?” he says, as if it is nothing to do with him. “She should not have come to England if she was not free to marry. She is a promise breaker. She can go home again.”

I don’t think that she will want to go home again, not to that brother of hers, and she has taken a liking to the royal children, and to England. But his hand is pulling urgently on my waist, and he is turning me to face him.

“Katherine,” he says longingly. “Tell me that I can think of you? Or is there another young man? You’re a young woman, surrounded by temptation in a lascivious court, a dirty-minded, lustful court with many bad, filthy-headed boys. I suppose one of them will have taken your fancy? Promised you some fairing for a kiss?”

“No,” I say. “I told you. I don’t like boys. They are all too silly.”

“You don’t like boys?”

“Not at all.”

“So what do you like?” he asks. His voice is lilting with admiration of himself. He knows the reply in this song.

“I daren’t say.” His hand is creeping up from my waist again, in a moment he will be fondling my breast. Oh, Thomas Culpepper, I wish to God this was you.

“Tell me,” he says. “Oh, tell me, pretty Katherine, and I will give you a present for being an honest girl.”

I snatch a quick breath of clean air. “I like you,” I say simply, and one hand clamps – smack – on my breast and the other pulls me toward him, and his mouth comes down on mine, all wet and sucking, and it is really very horrible. But on the other hand I have to wonder what present I get for being an honest girl.

He gives me the estates of two convicted murderers: that is, a couple of houses and some goods, and some money. I can’t believe it. That I should have houses, two houses, and land, and money of my own!

I have never had such wealth in my life, and never any gift so easily earned. I have to acknowledge: it was easily earned. It is not nice to lead on a man who is old enough to be my father, almost old enough to be my grandfather. It is not very nice to have his fat hand rubbing at my breasts and his stinking mouth all over my face. But I must remember that he is the king, and he is a kind old man and a sweet, doting old man, and I can close my eyes most of the time and pretend that it is someone else. Also, it is not very nice to have dead men’s goods, but when I say this to Lady Rochford, she points out that we all have dead men’s goods one way or another – everything is either stolen or inherited – and a woman who hopes to rise in the world can’t afford to be particular.

I thought that I would be crowned as part of the May Day celebrations, but we are already less than a month away and no one has ordered any gowns or planned the order of the coronation, so I begin to think it won’t be this May Day, it can’t be. In the absence of any better advisor I wait until the Princess Mary and I are walking back from the Lady Chapel to the palace, and I ask her what she thinks. I have grown to like her more and more and trust her opinion. Also, because she has been the child and then the exile of this court, she knows better than most what it is to live here and yet know yourself to be an outsider.

At the very word coronation she gives me a quick look of such concern that I cannot take another step. I freeze to the spot and cry: “Oh, what have you heard?”

“Dear Anne, don’t cry,” she says quickly. “I beg your pardon. Queen Anne.”

“I’m not crying.” I show her my shocked face. “I am not.”

At once we both look round to see if anyone is watching us. This is how it is at court, always the glance over your shoulder for the spy; truth told only in whispers. She steps closer to me, and I take her hand and put it through my arm and we walk together.

“It can’t be this May Day because we would have had everything planned and ready by now if he was going to crown you,” she says. “I thought that in Lent, myself. But it’s not so bad. It means nothing. Queen Jane wasn’t crowned either. He would have crowned her if she had lived, once she had given him an heir. He will be waiting for you to tell him that you are with child. He will be waiting for you to have a child and then there will be the christening and then your coronation after that.”