Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“You knew that was a lie.” He shakes me like a terrier shakes a rat. “You knew, you liar. You never took the stand to save him. You took the stand to save your title and your fortune; you called it your inheritance, the Boleyn inheritance. You knew that if you turned evidence against your own husband, then the king would leave you with your title and your lands. That’s all you wanted in the end. That’s all you cared for. You sent that young man and that beauty, his sister, to the gallows so that you could save your own yellow skin and your paltry title. You sent them to their deaths, a savage death, for being beautiful and merry and happy in each other’s company and for excluding you. You are a byword for malice, jealousy, and twisted lust. D’you think any man would trust you with a title again? D’you think any man would risk calling you wife? After that?”

“I was going to save him.” I bare my teeth at the two of us in the mirror. “I accused him so that he could confess and be pardoned. I would have saved him.”

“You are a killer worse than the king,” he says brutally, and throws me to one side. I rebound off the wall and grab at the tapestry to steady myself. “You testified against your own sister-in-law and husband; you stood by the sickbed while Jane Seymour died; you testified against Anne of Cleves and would have seen her beheaded. Now, without a doubt, you will see another cousin go to the gallows, and I confidently expect you to bear witness against her.”

“I loved him,” I say stubbornly, going to the only charge that I cannot bear to hear. “You shall not deny that I loved George. I loved him with all my heart.”

“Then you are worse than a liar and a false friend,” he says coldly. “For your love brought the man you love to a most pitiable death. Your love is worse than hatred. Dozens hated George Boleyn, but it was your loving word that took him to his death. Don’t you see how evil you are?”

“If he had stood by me, if he had cleaved to me, I would have saved him,” I cry out from my own pain. “If he had loved me as he loved her, if he had let me into his life, if I had been as dear to him as she was-”

“He would never have stood by you,” the duke says with contempt like poison in his voice. “He would never have loved you. Your father bought him for you with a fortune, but nobody and no fortune could make you lovable. George despised you, and Anne and Mary laughed at you. That’s why you accused them; none of this high-flying, self-sacrificing lie has a shred of truth. You accused them, because if you could not have George, you would rather have seen him dead than loving his sister.”

“She came between us,” I gasp.

“His hounds came between you. His horses. He loved the horses in his stable, he loved his hawks in his mews more than he loved you. And you would have killed every one of them – horse, hound, and hawk – from sheer jealousy. You are an evil woman, Jane, and I have used you as I would use a piece of filth. But now I am finished with that foolish girl Katherine, and I am finished with you. You can advise her to save herself as best she can. You can bear witness for her, you can bear witness against her. I don’t care for either of you.”

I feel the wall behind me, and I push myself forward to glare into his face. “You will not treat me so,” I say. “I am no piece of filth; I am your ally. If you turn against me, you will regret it. I know all the secrets. Enough to send her to the gallows, enough to send you there, too. I will destroy her, and you with her.” I am panting now, flushed with rage. “I will bring her to the scaffold and every Howard with her. Even if I die myself this time!”

He laughs again, but now he is quiet, his anger spent. “She is a lost cause,” he says. “The king has finished with her. I have finished with her. I can save myself, and I will. You will go down with the slut. You cannot get off twice.”

“I shall tell the archbishop about Culpepper,” I threaten. “I shall tell him that you meant them to be lovers. That you told me to throw them together.”

“You can say what you like,” he replies easily. “You will have no proof. There is only one person who was seen carrying messages and letting him into her rooms. That would be you. Everything you say to incriminate me will point to your guilt. You will die for it, and God knows, I don’t care one way or another.”

I scream then, I scream and fall to my knees and clasp him around the legs. “Don’t say that! I have served you, I have served you for years; I have been your most faithful servant, and I have had next to no reward. Get me out of here, and she can die and Culpepper can die, but I shall be safe with you.”

Slowly the duke leans down and detaches my hands as if I were some kind of sticky weed that has tangled unpleasantly around his legs. “No, no,” he says, as if he has lost all interest in the conversation. “No. She cannot be saved, and I wouldn’t lift a finger to save you. The world will be a better place when you are dead, Jane Boleyn. You will not be missed.”

“I am yours.” I look up at him, but I dare not grab him again, and so he walks away from me, to tap on the door to the outside world, where the sentries, who used to stand on the outside to keep everyone out, are now keeping us locked in. “I am yours,” I shout. “Heart and soul. I love you.”

“I don’t want you,” he remarks. “Nobody wants you. And the last man you promised to love died because of your testament. You are a foul thing, Jane Boleyn; the axeman can finish what the devil has started, for all I care.” He pauses with his hand on the door, as a thought strikes him. “I should think you will be beheaded on Tower Green, where they killed Anne,” he says. “There’s an irony for you. I should think she and her brother are laughing in hell, waiting for you.”

They have moved Kitty Howard to Syon Abbey, and she is kept as a prisoner, with only a few of her ladies. They have arrested two young men from her grandmother’s household, and they will be tortured until they confess what they know; then they will be tortured until they confess what they are required to say. Her ladies who were in her confidence are taken to the Tower for questioning, too. His Grace the king has returned from his private musing at Oatlands Palace and has come back to Hampton Court. He is said to be very quiet, very grieved, but not angry. We must thank God that he is not angry. If he does not fly into one of his vindictive rages, then he might sink into self-pity and banish her. He is going to annul his marriage to the queen on the grounds of her abominable behavior – those are the very words he has put to parliament. Please God that they will agree with him that she is not fit to be queen, and the poor child can be released, and her friends go home.

She could go to France; she would be a delight to that court, who would find her vanity and her prettiness a pleasure to watch. Or perhaps she could be persuaded to live in the country as I do, and call herself another sister to the king. She might even come to live with me, and we could be friends as we used to be in the old days when I was the queen he did not want, and she was the maid he did. She could be sent away to a thousand different places where she could do the king no harm and where her folly might make people laugh, and where she might grow into a sensible woman. Surely, everyone agrees that she cannot be executed. She is simply too young to be executed. This is not an Anne Boleyn, who schemed and contrived her way to the throne over six years of striving, and was then thrown down by her own ambition. This is a girl with no more judgment than one of her kittens. Nobody could be so harsh as to send a child like this to the block. Thank God, the king is sad and not angry. Please God, the parliament will advise him that the marriage can be annulled, and pray heaven that Archbishop Cranmer is satisfied with the disgrace of the queen on the basis of her childhood amours, and does not start to investigate her follies since her marriage.

I don’t know what goes on at court these days, but I saw her at Christmas and the New Year, and I thought then that she was ready for a lover, and hoping for love. And how could she stop herself? She is a girl coming into womanhood with a man old enough to be her father as her husband, a sickly man, an impotent man, perhaps even a madman. Even a sensible young woman in those circumstances would turn for friendship and comfort to one of the young men who gather round her. And Katherine is a flirt.

Dr. Harst comes riding out from London to see me, and the moment that he arrives, he sends my ladies away so that we can talk alone. I know from this that it is grave news from the court.

“What news of the queen?” I ask him as soon as they have gone from the room and we are seated, side by side, like conspirators before the fire.

“She is still being questioned,” he says. “If there is any more to be had, they will get it out of her. She is kept close in her apartments at Syon; she is allowed to see no one. She is not even allowed out to walk in the garden. Her uncle has abandoned her, and she has no friends. Four of her ladies are locked up with her; they would leave if they could. Her closest friends are under arrest and being questioned in the Tower. They say she cries all the time and begs them to forgive her. She is too distressed to eat or sleep. She is said to be starving herself to death.”

“God help her, poor little Kitty,” I say. “God help her. But surely they have evidence for the annulment of her marriage to the king? He has enough to divorce her and let her go?”

“No, now they are seeking evidence for worse,” he says shortly.

We are both silent. We both know what he means by that, and we both fear that there may be worse to discover.

“I have come to see you for something even more grave than this,” he says.

“Good God, what worse could there be?”

“I hear that the king is thinking of taking you back as his wife.”

For a moment I am so stunned that I cannot say anything, then I grip the carved arms of my chair and watch my fingertips go white. “You cannot mean this.”

“I do. King Francis of France is keen that the two of you shall remarry and that your brother and the king join with him in a war against Spain.”

“The king wants another alliance with my brother?”

“Against Spain.”

“They can do that without me! They can make an alliance without me!”

“The King of France and your brother want you restored, and the king wants to rid himself of the memory of Katherine. It is to be just as it was. It is to be as if she never existed. As if you have just arrived in England, and everything can go as planned.”

“He is Henry of England, but not even he can turn back the clock!” I cry out, and I push myself up from my chair and stride across the room. “I won’t do it. I daren’t do it. He will have me killed within a year. He is a wife killer. He takes a woman and destroys her. It has become his habit. This will be my death!”

“If he were to deal with you honorably-”

“Dr. Harst, I have escaped him once; I am the only wife of his to come out from the marriage alive! I can’t go back to put my head on the block.”

“I am advised that he would offer you guarantees-”

“This is Henry of England!” I round on the ambassador. “This is a man who has been the death of three wives and is now building the scaffold for a fourth! There are no guarantees. He is a murderer. If you put me in his bed, I am a dead woman.”

“He will divorce Queen Katherine, I am certain of it. He has laid it before parliament. They know that she was no virgin when she married him. The news of her scandalous behavior has been released to the ambassadors at the European courts for them to announce. She is publicly named as a whore. He will put her aside. He will not kill her.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“There is no reason for him to kill her,” he says gently. “You are overwrought; you are not thinking clearly. She married him under false pretenses; that is a sin, and she is wrong. He has announced that. But since they were not married, she has not cuckolded him; he has no reason to do anything other than let her go.”

“Then why is he seeking more evidence against her?” I ask. “Since he has enough against her to name her as a whore, since he has enough against her to bring her into shame and divorce her? Why does he need more evidence?”

“To punish the men,” he replies.

Our eyes meet; neither of us knows what we dare to believe.

“I fear him,” I say miserably.

“And so you should; he is a fearsome king. But he divorced you, and he kept his word to you. He made a fair settlement on you, and he has kept you in peace and prosperity. Perhaps he will divorce her and make a settlement on her; perhaps this is his way now. Then he may want to marry you again.”