Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“Exactly,” she says. “That is why it is such a clever lie. Because it is all but true. Half the court is saying it behind their hands; Agnes Restwold says it to your face. If you ever thought for a moment about anything but yourself and your looks and your jewels, you would indeed be anxious and distressed. And, best of all, if you go to him and you behave anxiously and distressed, then he will feel that two women have been fighting over him and will regain confidence in his own charm again. If you do it well, it might get him back into your bed before Lent.”

I hesitate. “I want him to be happy, of course,” I say carefully. “But if he does not come to my bed before Lent, then it does not much matter…”

“It does matter. This is not about your pleasure or even his,” she says gravely. “He has to get a son on you. You seem to keep forgetting it is not about dancing or music or even jewels or land. You do not earn your place as queen by being the woman he dotes on; you earn your place as queen by being the mother of his son. Until you give him a son, I don’t think he will even have you crowned.”

“I must be crowned,” I protest.

“Then you must get him into your bed to give you a child,” she says. “Anything else is too dangerous even to think about.”

“I’ll go.” I sigh a great hard-done-by sigh, so she can see that I am not frightened by her threats, but on the contrary I am wearily going to do my duty. “I’ll go and tell him I am unhappy.”

By luck, when I get there, the outer presence chamber is unusually empty, so many people have gone home. So Thomas Culpepper is almost alone, playing at dice, right hand against left, in the window seat.

“Are you winning?” I ask him, trying to speak lightly.

He leaps to his feet as he sees me, and bows.

“I always win, Your Grace,” he says. His smile makes my heart skip a beat. It really does, it truly does; when he tosses his head like that and smiles, I can hear my heart go thud-thud.

“That is not a great skill if you are playing alone,” I say aloud; and to myself I say, And that’s not very witty.

“I win at dice and I win at cards, but I am hopeless at love,” he says very quietly.

I glance behind me; Katherine Tylney has stopped to talk to the Duke of Hertford’s kinsman and is not listening, for once. Catherine Carey is at a discreet distance, looking out of the window.

“You are in love?” I ask.

“You must know it,” he says in a whisper.

I hardly dare think. He must mean me; he must be about to declare his love for me. But I swear if he is talking about someone else I shall just die. I can’t bear him to want someone else. But I keep my voice light.

“Why should I know it?”

“You must know who I love,” he says. “You, of all people in the world.”

This conversation is so delicious I can feel my toes curling up inside my new slippers. I feel hot; I am certain I am blushing and he will be able to see.

“Must I?”

“The king will see you now,” announces the idiot Dr. Butt, and I jump and start away from Thomas Culpepper, for I had utterly forgotten that I was there to see the king and to make him love me again. “I’ll come in a minute,” I say over my shoulder.

Thomas gives a little snort of laughter, and I have to clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself giggling, too. “No, you must go,” he reminds me quietly. “You can’t keep the king waiting. I’ll be here when you come out.”

“Of course I am going at once,” I say, remembering that I have to seem upset at the king’s neglect, and I turn away from him in a hurry and dash into the king’s room, where he is lying on his bed like a great ship stranded in dry dock, his leg stuck up into the air on embroidered cushions and his big round face all wan and self-pitiful. I walk slowly toward his big bed and try to look anxious for his love.

The king is sliding into some kind of melancholy; he insists on being alone, shut away like some old dying smelly dog, and Katherine’s attempts to make him turn to her are doomed since she cannot sustain an interest in anyone but herself for more than half a day. She has gone to his room again, but this time he would not even let her in; instead of showing concern, she tossed her pretty head and said that if he would not let her in, she would not visit again.

But she lingered long enough to meet Thomas Culpepper, and he took her walking in the garden. I sent Catherine Carey after her with a shawl and another well-behaved maid to give them the appearance of decorum, but from the way the queen was holding his arm, and chattering and laughing, anybody could see that she was happy in his company and had forgotten all about her husband lying in silence in a darkened room.

My lord duke gives me a long, hard look at dinner but says nothing, and I know that he expects me to get our little bitch serviced and in pup. A son would raise the king from his melancholy and secure the crown for the Howard family forever. We have to do it this time. We have to manage it. No other family in the world has had two attempts at such a prize. We cannot fail twice.

In her pique Katherine summons musicians to the ladies’ chamber and dances with her women and the people of her household. It isn’t very merry, and two of the wilder girls, Joan and Agnes, run down to the dining hall and invite some men from the court. When I see they have done this, I send a page for Thomas Culpepper to see if he will be fool enough to come. He is.

I see her face as he comes into the room, the rise of her color, and then how quickly she turns away and speaks to little Catherine Carey at her side. Plainly, she is quite besotted with him, and for a moment I remember that she is not just a pawn in our game, but a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. To see little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman. It would be very endearing if she were not Queen of England and a Howard with work to do.

Thomas Culpepper joins the set of dancers and places himself so that he will partner the queen when the couples pair off. She looks down at the ground to hide her smile of pleasure and to affect modesty, but when the dance brings them together and she takes his hand, her eyes come up to him and they gaze at each other with absolute longing.

I glance round; nobody else seems to have noticed, and, indeed, half the queen’s ladies are making sheep’s eyes at one young man or another. I glance across at Lady Rutland and raise my eyebrows; she nods and goes to the queen and speaks quietly in her ear. Katherine scowls like a disappointed child, then turns to the musicians. “This must be the last dance,” she says sulkily. But she turns and her hand goes out, almost without her volition, to Thomas Culpepper.

Every day I see him, and every day we are a little bolder with each other. The king still has not come out from his rooms, and his circle of physicians and doctors and the old men who advise him hardly ever come to my rooms, so it is as if we are free in these days – just us young people together. The court is quiet with no dancing and no entertainment, since it is Lent. I cannot even have dancing privately in my rooms anymore. We cannot hunt, or boat on the river, or play games, or do anything amusing. But we are allowed to walk in the gardens, or by the river after Mass, and when I am walking, Thomas Culpepper walks beside me, and I would rather walk with him than dance dressed in my best with a prince.

“Are you cold?” he says.

Hardly, I am buried in my sables, but I look up at him and say: “A little.”

“Let me warm your hand,” he says, and tucks it under his arm so that it is pressed against his jacket. I have such a longing to open the front of his jacket and put both my hands inside. His belly would be smooth and hard, I think. His chest may be covered with light hair. I don’t know; it is so thrilling that I don’t know. I know the scent of him, at least, I can recognize it now. He has a warm smell, like good-quality candles. It burns me up.

“Is that better?” he asks, pressing my hand to his side.

“Much better,” I say.

We are walking beside the river, and a boatman goes past and shouts something at the two of us. With only a handful of ladies and courtiers before and behind us, nobody knows that I am the queen.

“I wish we were just a boy and a girl walking out together.”

“Do you wish you were not queen?”

“No, I like being queen – and of course I love His Majesty the king with all my heart and soul – but if we were just a girl and a boy we could be strolling to an inn for some dinner and dancing, and that would be fun.”

“If we were a girl and a boy I would take you to a special house I know,” he says.

“Would you? Why?” I can hear the entranced giggle in my own voice, but I cannot help myself.

“It has a private dining room and a very good cook. I would give you the finest of dinners, and then I would court you,” he says.

I give a little gasp of pretend shock. “Master Culpepper!”

“I would not stop till I had a kiss,” he says outrageously. “And then I would go on.”

“My grandmother would box your ears,” I threaten him.

“It would be worth it.” He smiles, and I can feel my heart thudding. I want to laugh out loud for the sheer joy of him.

“Perhaps I would kiss you back,” I whisper.

“I am quite sure you would,” he says, and ignores my delighted gasp. “I have never in all my life kissed a girl and not had her kiss me back. I am quite sure you would kiss me, and I think you would say, ‘Oh, Thomas!’”

“Then you are very sure of yourself indeed, Master Culpepper.”

“Call me Thomas.”

“I will not!”

“Call me Thomas when we are alone like this.”

“Oh, Thomas!”

“There you are, you said it, and I have not even kissed you yet.”

“You must not talk to me of kissing when anyone else is near.”

“I know that. I should never let any danger come to you. I shall guard you as my life itself.”

“The king knows everything,” I warn him. “Everything we say, perhaps even everything we think. He has spies everywhere, and he knows what is in people’s very hearts.”

“My love is hidden deep,” he says.

“Your love?” I can hardly breathe for this.

“My love,” he repeats.

Lady Rochford comes up beside me. “We have to go in,” she says. “It is going to rain.”

At once Thomas Culpepper turns around and leads me back toward the palace. “I don’t want to go in,” I say stubbornly.

“Go in, and say you want to change your gown, and then slip down the garden stairs from your privy chamber. I will wait for you in the doorway,” he says very quietly.

“You didn’t meet me last time we agreed.”

He chuckles. “You must forgive me for that; it was months ago. I shall meet you without fail this time. There is something very special that I want to do.”

“And what is that?”

“I want to see if I can make you say, ‘Oh, Thomas,’ again.”

Ambassador Harst has come to tell me the news from court. He has placed a young man as a servant in the king’s rooms, and the boy says that the physicians attend the king every day and are struggling to keep the wound open so that the poison can drain from his leg. They are putting pellets of gold into the wound so that it cannot close, and they are tying the edges back with string. They are pulling at the poor man’s living flesh as if they were making a pudding.

“He must be in agony,” I say.

Dr. Harst nods. “And he is in despair,” he says. “He thinks he will never recover. He thinks his time is done, and he is sick with fear at leaving Prince Edward without a safe guardian. The Privy Council are thinking that they will have to form a regency.”

“Who will he trust to guard the prince in his minority?”

“He trusts nobody, and the prince’s family, the Seymours, are declared enemies of the queen’s family, the Howards. There is no doubt that they will tear the country apart between them. The Tudor peace will end as it began, in a war for the kingdom between the great families. The king fears for the people’s faith as well. The Howards are determined on the old religion and will take the country back to Rome, but Cranmer has the church behind him and will fight for reform.”

I nibble my finger, thinking. “Does the king still fear there is a plot to overthrow him?”