Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

This is a hard sentence for me. I am a young woman of only twenty-five. I have done nothing wrong. And yet I shall be alone forever: undesirable, lonely, and in exile. Truly, when a king is a god to himself and follows his own desires, the suffering falls on others.

It is done. It took all of six days. Six days. The king has rid himself of his queen, his lawfully wedded queen, so that he can now marry me. My grandmother says I should prepare myself for the greatest position in the land and consider what ladies I shall choose to serve me, and who I shall favor with the places and fees at my disposal. Clearly, my Howard relations must come first. My uncle says that I must remember to take his advice in all things and not be a stupid jade like my cousin Anne. And I must remember what happened to her! As if I am likely to forget.

I have looked sideways under my eyelashes at the king, and smiled at him, curtsied bending forward so that he could see my breasts, and worn my hood back so he could see my face. Now everything has gone faster than I could have imagined, everything is happening too fast. Everything is happening whether I want it or not.

I am to be married to King Henry of England. Queen Anne has been put aside. Nothing can save her, nothing can stop the king, nothing can save me – oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I should have said: nothing can prevent my happiness. That is what I meant to say. Nothing can prevent my happiness. He calls me his rose. He calls me his rose without a thorn. Whenever he says it, I think it is just the sort of pet name that a man might give to his daughter. Not a lover’s name. Not a lover’s name at all.

And so it is over. Unbelievably, it is over. I have put my name to the agreement that says I was precontracted and not free to marry. I have agreed that my marriage should be annulled, and suddenly it is no more. Just like that. This is what it is to be married to the voice of God when He speaks against you. God warns Henry that I am precontracted. Henry warns his council. Then the marriage is no more, though he swore to be my husband and came to my bed and tried – how hard did he try! – to consummate the marriage. But it turns out it was God preventing his success (not witchcraft but the hand of God), and so Henry says it will not be.

I write to my brother at the king’s command and tell him that I am no longer married and that I have consented to my change of state. Then, the king is not satisfied by my letter, and I am ordered to write it again. If he wants, I will write it a dozen times. If my brother had protected me as he should have done, as my father would have wanted him to do, this could never have happened. But he is a spiteful man and a poor kinsman; he is a bad brother to me, and I have been unprotected since the death of my father. My brother’s ambition made him use me, his spite let me fall. He would not have let his horse go to such a buyer as Henry of England, and be broken so.

The king has commanded me to return his wedding ring to him. I obey him in this as I do in all things. I write a letter to go with it. I tell him that here is the ring he gave to me and that I hope he will have it broken into pieces for it is a thing that has no force or value. He will not hear my anger and my disappointment in these words, for he does not know me or think of me. But I am both angry and disappointed, and he can have his wedding ring and his wedding vows and his belief that God speaks to him, for they are all part of the same thing: a chimera, a thing that has no force or value.

And so it is over.

And so it begins for little Kitty Howard.

I wish her joy of him. I wish him joy of her. A more ill-matched, ill-conceived, ill-starred marriage could hardly be imagined. I cannot envy her. From the bottom of my heart, even tonight, when I have so much to complain of, when I have so much to blame her for: even now I do not envy her. I can only fear for her, poor child, poor, silly child.

I may have been alone, without friends, before the indifference of the king, but God knows the same will be true of her. I was poor and humble when he chose me, and the same is true of her. I was part of a faction of his court (though I did not know it), and the same is even more true of her. When another pretty girl comes to court and takes his eye, how shall she make him cleave to her? (And be very sure they will send their pretty girls by the dozen.) When the king’s health fails him and he cannot get a child on her, will he tell her that it is the failing of an old man and ask her forgiveness? No, he will not. And when he blames her, who will defend her? When Lady Rochford asks her, who can she call on as a friend?, what will she answer? Who will be Katherine Howard’s friend and protector when the king turns against her?

Well, I must say that it is all well and good to be married, but I have not had half the wedding that she had. There was no great reception for me at Greenwich, and no riding out on a beautiful horse and being greeted by him with all the nobles of England behind him. There was no sailing in barges down the river while the City of London went mad with joy either, so those who think that to marry the king is a very merry thing should note my wedding, which was – to be blunt – a hole-in-the-corner business. There! I’ve said it, and anyone who thinks differently can’t have been here. And actually, that would be most people in the world – for next to no one was here.

I said to Lady Rochford, the day before: “Please find out from the Groom of the Chamber or the Lord Chamberlain or somebody what it is we are to do. Where I am to stand, and what I am to say and what to do.” I wanted to practice. I like to practice if I am going to appear before people and everyone will watch me. I should have been warned by her response.

“Nothing much to practice,” she said dourly. “Your bridegroom is well rehearsed at least. You will just have to repeat the vows. And there will be hardly any audience for you at all.”

And how right she was! There was the Bishop of London officiating (thank you so much, not even a real archbishop for me); there was the king, not even wearing a special waistcoat, in an old coat – isn’t that next to insulting? – there was me in the finest gown that I could order; but what could I do in little more than a fortnight? And not even a crown on my head!

He gave me some very good jewels. I sent for the goldsmith to value them at once, and they are indeed very fine, though some of them I know for a fact were brought by Katherine of Aragon from Spain, and who wants jewels that belonged to a friend of your grandmother? I have no doubt that there will be sables as good as Queen Anne’s to follow, and already I have commanded the dressmakers to make me new gowns. And there will be gifts from everyone in the world, as soon as everyone knows, as soon as everyone is told.

But there is no denying that it was not as great a wedding as I had expected, and it was not a patch on hers. I thought we would have planned it for months, and there would be processions and my important entry into London, and I should have spent my first night in the Tower and then processed to Westminster Abbey through streets that were swathed in cloth of gold, with people singing songs about me. “Fair Katherine,” I thought they would sing. “Rose of England.”

But no, instead there is a mere bishop, there is the king, there is me in a bewitching gown of gray-green silk that shifts colors as I move, and a new hood, and his pearls at least, and there is my uncle and grandmother as witnesses, and a couple of men from his court, and then we go to dine; and then… and then!… It is unbelievable! Nobody talks of anything but the beheading of Thomas Cromwell.

At a wedding breakfast! Is that what a bride wants to hear on her wedding day? There are no healths drunk and no speeches made to me, and scarcely any celebration. Nobody pays me any compliments at all; there is no dancing and no flirtation and no flattery. They can talk of nothing else but Thomas Cromwell because he has been beheaded today. On my wedding day! Is this how the king celebrates his wedding? With the death of his chief advisor and best friend? It’s not a very nice gift for a girl on her wedding day, is it? It’s not as if I am whoever she is in the Bible who wanted someone’s head for a wedding gift. All I really wanted for a wedding gift were sables, not the news that the king’s advisor has been beheaded, calling for mercy.

But it is all the old people talk about. No one consults my feelings at all; they are utterly delighted with it, of course, and so they talk over the top of me, as if I were a child instead of the new Queen of England, and they talk about the alliance with France and say that King Francis will help us with the Pope. And nobody asks me for my opinion at all.

The king grips my hand beneath the shield of the table and leans toward me and whispers, “I cannot wait for tonight, my rose, my finest jewel,” which is hardly very inspiring when I think that Thomas Culpepper had to help him to his seat, and will no doubt have to heave him into my bed.

In short, I am the happiest woman in the world, praise God. But just a little discontented tonight.

And I am out of my usual ways. At this time of night when I was in the queen’s chamber, we would all be getting ready to dine in the hall, and we would be looking one another over and teasing each other if anyone had done their hair very well, or was dressed very fine. Someone would always accuse me of trying to attract one boy or another, and I would always blush and say, “No! Not at all!” as if I were shocked at the thought of it. And the queen would come out of her bedroom and laugh at us all, and then she would lead us into the hall and it would all be very merry. Half the time there would be a young man with an eye to me. In the last few weeks there has been Thomas Culpepper always smiling at me, and all the girls around me would nudge me and tell me to look for my honor. Of course he does not even look at me now; obviously there is no amusement for a queen, and you would think I was as old as my husband.

It was more than merry; it was busy and gay and young. There was always a crowd of us, all together, all happy and sharing a jest. And if the jest wore a little sour from time to time, with jealousy or malice, then there was always another person to complain to, and a little group to form, and a little quarrel to run. I like being in a gang of girls; I like the maidens’ chamber; I like being one of the queen’s ladies and all of us being together.

It is all very well being Queen of England, but I have no friends. It just seems to be me, and these old people: Grandmother, my uncle, the king, and his old men of the Privy Council. The young men in the king’s service don’t even smile at me now; you would think they didn’t even like me. Thomas Culpepper bows his head when I come near him and doesn’t meet my eyes. And the old people talk among themselves about the things that interest old people: the weather, the bad end of Thomas Cromwell, his estates and money, the state of the church and the danger of Papists and heretics, the danger of the men of the North who still long for their monasteries. And I sit here like a well-behaved daughter, like a well-behaved granddaughter actually, and it is all I can do not to yawn.

I turn my head one way to appear as if I am listening to my uncle, and then I turn the other to the king. I don’t hear any of them, to tell truth. It is all buzz, buzz above me, and there are no musicians and no dancing and nothing to amuse me but the conversation of my husband, and what bride ever wanted that?

Then Henry says, very soft and sweet, that it is time for us to retire, and thank God Lady Rochford comes in and takes me away from the rest of them, and she has a new and beautiful nightshift for me with a matching cape to go over the top, and I change my gown in the queen’s own dressing room because I am queen now.

“God save you, Your Grace,” she says. “But you have risen very high indeed.”

“I have, Lady Rochford,” I say, most solemnly. “And I shall keep you by me if you advise me and help me in the future as you have done in the past.”

“Your uncle has commanded me to do just that,” she says. “I am to be head of your privy chamber.”

“I shall appoint my own ladies,” I say, very haughty.

“No, you won’t,” she says pleasantly. “Your uncle has already made the chief appointments.”