Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“She writes to remind you of this gentleman, Francis Dereham, who served in her household when you were there.”

I have to admire the mask of her face, which is now absolutely without expression, given that she knows what Francis was to me and I to him, for I told her all about him when I was nothing more than a maid-in-waiting and she a far grander lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. And, now I come to think of it, since half my ladies-in-waiting were my friends and companions in those days, too, they all know that Francis and I, facing each other so politely, used to be naked bedmates on every night he could sneak into the girls’ bedchamber. Agnes Restwold gives a smothered little giggle, and I shoot her a look that tells her to keep her stupid mouth shut. Joan Bulmer, who had him before I did, is utterly transfixed.

“Oh, yes,” I say, taking my cue from Lady Rochford, and I turn and smile at Francis as if we were long-standing acquaintances. I can feel Thomas Culpepper’s eyes flicking on me and around at the others, and I think that I’m going to have to explain this to him later, and he won’t like it.

“She recommends him to your service and asks you to take him as a private secretary.”

“Yes,” I say; I can’t think what to do. “Of course.”

I turn to Francis. “My lady grandmother recommends you to me.” I really cannot think why she would interest herself in putting him into my household. And I can’t understand why she would put him in a position so close to me, when she herself boxed my ears and called me a lustful slut for letting him into the bedchamber when I was a girl in her household. “You are indebted to her.”

“I am,” he says.

I lean toward Lady Rochford. “Appoint him,” she says briefly in my ear. “Your grandmother says so.”

“So to oblige my grandmother, I am pleased to welcome you to my court,” I finish.

He rises to his feet. He is such a handsome young man. I really cannot blame myself for loving him when I was a girl. He turns his head and smiles at me as if he were shy of me now. “I thank you, Your Grace,” he says. “I will serve you loyally. Heart and soul.”

I give him my hand to kiss and when he comes close I can smell the scent of his skin, that familiar, sexy smell that I once knew so well. That was the scent of my first lover; he meant everything to me. Why, I kept his shirt under my pillow so that I could bury my face in it when I went to sleep and dream of him. I adored Francis Dereham then; I only wish to God I didn’t have to meet him again now.

He bends over my hand, and his lips on my fingertips are as soft and as yielding as I remember them on my mouth. I lean forward. “You will have to be very discreet in my service,” I say. “I am the queen now, and there must be no gossip about me – not about now, and not about the old days.”

“I am yours heart and soul,” he says, and I feel that disloyal, betraying, irresistible flicker of desire. He loves me still, he must love me still, otherwise why would he come to serve me? And though we parted on bad terms, I remember his touch and the utter breathtaking excitement of his kisses, and the slide of his naked thigh between mine when he first came to my bed, and the insistent pressing of his lust, which was never resisted.

“Take heed what words you speak,” I say, and he smiles at me as if he knows as well as I do what I am thinking.

“Take heed what you remember,” he says.

The two young men, and half a dozen others, each of them with good reason to believe that he is the queen’s favorite, circle her every day and the court has all the tension of a whorehouse before a brawl. The queen, excited by the attention she gets at every corner, at every hunt and breakfast and masque, is like a child who has stayed up too late; she is feverish with arousal. On the one hand she has Thomas Culpepper, holding her when she dismounts from her horse, at her side for dancing, whispering in her ear when she plays cards, first to greet her in the morning and last to leave her rooms at night. On the other she has young Dereham, appointed to wait for her orders, at her right hand with his little writing desk, as if she ever dictated a letter to anyone, constantly whispering to her, stepping forward to advise, ever present where he need not be. And then, how many others? A dozen? Twenty? Not even Anne Boleyn at her most capricious had so many young men circling her, like dogs slavering at a butcher’s door. But Anne, even at her most flirtatious, never appeared to be a girl who might bestow her favors for a smile, who might be seduced by a song, by a poem, by a word. The whole court begins to see that the queen’s joy, which has made the king so happy, is not that of an innocent girl whom he so fondly believes adores only him, it is that of a flirt who revels in constant male attention.

Of course there is trouble; there is almost a fight. One of the senior men at court tells Dereham that he should have risen from the dinner table and gone, since he is not of the queen’s council and only they are sitting over their wine. Dereham, loose-mouthed, says that he was in the queen’s council long before the rest of us knew her, and will be familiar with her long after the rest of us are dismissed. Of course: uproar. The terror is that it might get to the king’s ears, and so Dereham is summoned to the queen’s rooms and she sees him, with me standing by.

“I cannot have you causing trouble in my household,” she says stiffly to him.

He bows, but his eyes are bright with confidence. “I meant to cause no trouble; I am yours: heart and soul.”

“It is all very well to say that,” she says irritably. “But I don’t want people asking what I was to you, and you were to me.”

“We were in love,” he maintains staunchly.

“This should never be said,” I interpose. “She is the queen. Her previous life must be as if it had never been.”

He looks at her, ignoring me. “I will never deny it.”

“It is over,” she says determinedly; I am proud of her. “And I will not have gossip about the past, Francis. I cannot have people talking about me. I shall have to send you away if you cannot keep silent.”

He pauses for a moment. “We were husband and wife before God,” he says quietly. “You cannot deny that.”

She makes a little gesture with her hand. “I don’t know,” she says helplessly. “At any rate, it is over now. You can have a place at court only if you never speak of it. Can’t he, Lady Rochford?”

“Can you keep your mouth shut?” I ask. “Never mind all this never denying it nonsense. You can stay if you can keep your mouth shut. If you are a braggart, you will have to go.”

He looks at me without warmth; there is no love between us. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he says.

It has been a good summer for me, my first as a free woman in England. The farms attached to my palace are in good heart, and I have ridden out and watched the crops ripen, and in the orchards the trees are growing heavy with fruit. This is a rich country; we have built great stacks of hay to feed the animals through the winter, and in the barns we are piling up great mountains of grain to go to the miller for flour. If the country was ruled by a man who wanted peace, and who would share the wealth, then it would be a peaceful and prosperous land.

The king’s hatred of both Papists and Protestants sours the life of his country. In the church when they raise the Host, even the smallest children are trained to keep their eyes on it, and bob their heads and cross themselves by rote, and are threatened by their parents that if they do not do as the king demands, then they will be taken away and burned. There is no understanding of the sanctity of the act among the poor people; they just know that it is the king’s desire now that they should bob and bow and bless themselves, just as before they had to hear the Mass in English, not Latin, and they had a Bible put in the church for anyone to read, and now it has been taken away again. The king commands the church just as the king commands more and more unjust taxation: because he can, because no one can dare to stop him, because now it is treason even to question him.

There are quiet murmurs that the rebellion in the North was led by brave men, courageous men who thought that they could fight for their God against the king. But the older men of the little town point out that they are all dead now, and the king’s progress to the North this year is to march over their graves and insult their widows.

I don’t interfere with anything that anyone says; if there is anything spoken in my hearing that could amount to treason, I go quickly away and make sure that I tell one of my ladies or one of my household that something was said, but I did not understand it. I hide in my stupidity; I think it will be my salvation. I put on my dull, uncomprehending face and trust that my reputation for ugliness and stolidity will save me. In general, people say nothing before me but treat me with a sort of puzzled kindness, as if I have survived some terrible illness and should still be treated with care. In a way, I have. I am the first woman to survive marriage with the king. That is a more remarkable feat than surviving the plague. The plague will go through a town, and in the worst summer, in the poorest areas, perhaps one in ten women will die. But of the king’s four wives only one has emerged with her health intact: me.

Dr. Harst’s spy reports that the king’s spirits are much improved and his temper lifted by his travels north. The man was not ordered to go with the court but has stayed behind to clean the king’s rooms in the general sweetening of Hampton Court Palace. So I cannot know how their progress is going. I had a brief letter from Lady Rochford, and she told me that the king’s health is better and that he and Katherine are merry. If that poor child does not conceive a baby soon, I do not think she will be merry for much longer.

I write also to the Princess Mary. She is much relieved that the question of her marriage to a French prince has been utterly put to one side as Spain and France are to go to war and King Henry will side with Spain. His great fear is of an invasion from France, and some of the hated taxation is being well spent on forts all along the south coast. From Princess Mary’s point of view, only one thing matters: if her father is aligned with Spain, then she will not be married off to a French prince. She is such a passionate daughter of her Spanish mother that I think she would rather live and die a virgin than be married to a Frenchman. She hopes the king will allow me to visit her before autumn. When he returns from his progress, I shall write to the king and ask him if I may invite the Princess Mary to stay with me. I should like to spend time with her. She laughs at me and calls us the royal spinsters, and so we are. Two women who are of no use. Nobody knows whether I am a duchess or a queen or a nothing. Nobody knows if she is a princess or a bastard. The royal spinsters. I wonder what will become of us?

Well, it is as I could have predicted, an utter disappointment. King James of Scotland is not coming, and there is to be no jousting and no rival courts. I am queen only of the little English court, and nothing special is happening at all. I shall not see my darling Thomas joust, and he will not see me in the royal box with my new curtains. The king swears that James is too afraid to show his face this far south of the border; if that is true, then it can be only because he does not trust the king’s own honorable word of truce. And though nobody dare say it, he is quite right to be cautious. For the king promised to the leaders of the northern revolt a truce and his friendship, and all manner of changes that they wanted; he swore it on his royal name. And then, when they trusted him, he caught them and hanged them. Their dead heads are still stuck on the walls all around York, and I must say it is most disagreeable. I remark to Henry that perhaps James fears being hanged, too, and he laughs a lot and says that I am a clever little kitten and that James might well be afraid. But actually, I don’t think it’s very good if people can’t trust you. Because if James had been able to trust the king’s word, then he would have come and we would all have had a merry time.

Also, this is a very fine house and newly done for us, and yet I can’t help but notice that it was a beautiful abbey before it was the King’s Manor, and I should think that since the people of York are great sympathizers for the old faith (if not secret Papists) that they would very much resent our dancing about where the monks used to pray. I don’t say this of course; I am not quite an idiot. But I can imagine how I might feel if I had come here for help and prayer and now find the place quite changed, with a great fat greedy king sitting in the middle of it all calling for his dinner.