Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

This foreshadows Katherine’s fate. I know it, and I am on my knees for her every day. If the men accused of loving her are to be killed in the cruelest way that England can devise, then the chances of her being forgiven and released are slight indeed. I am afraid she will spend the rest of her life in the Tower. Dear God, she is only sixteen now. Do they not think that two years ago she was too young to judge? Did her own uncle not think that a girl of fourteen is not likely to resist temptation when she is constantly encouraged to indulge her whims in everything? I don’t even consider what Henry thought; Henry is a madman. He thought of nothing but his own pleasure in her, and his own belief that she adored him. That is what she will pay for: for disappointing the vain dreams of a madman. As I did.

When I turned away from him in disgust at Rochester, he hated me for it, and he punished me for it as soon as he could, calling me ugly and fat with slack breasts and belly, no virgin, full of noisome airs, stinking, in fact. When Kitty chooses a young handsome man over his bloated, rotting body, he calls her a scandal and a whore. He punishes me with shame and exile from the court, and then takes pleasure in showing his generosity. I don’t think she will get off so lightly.

I am on my knees in my privy chamber at my prie-dieu when I hear the door behind me open quietly. I am so afraid of my shadow in these dangerous days that I spin around. It is Lotte, my lady secretary, and her face is white.

“What is it?” I am on my feet at once. Stumbling as my heel catches the hem of my gown, I nearly fall and have to catch onto the little altar to save myself. The cross wobbles and crashes down to the floor.

“They have arrested your maid Frances, and they have taken your squire Richard Taverner, too.”

I gasp in terror, and then I wait until I can breathe out again. She mistakes my blank face for incomprehension, and she repeats the awful thing she has just said in German: “They have arrested your lady-in-waiting Frances, and they have taken Richard Taverner, too.”

“On what charges?” I whisper.

“They don’t say. The inquisitors are in the house now. We are all to be questioned.”

“They must have said something.”

“Just that we are all to be questioned. Even you.”

I am icy with fear. “Quick,” I say. “Go to the stables at once and get a boy to take a boat downriver to Dr. Harst in London. Tell him that I am in grave danger. Go at once. Go by the garden stairs, and make sure no one sees you.”

She nods and goes to the little private door to the garden as the other door to my presence chamber is thrown open and five men walk in.

“Stop right there,” one of them orders, seeing the open door. Lotte stops; she does not even look toward me.

“I was just going to the garden,” she says in English. “I need to take the air. I am unwell.”

“You are under arrest,” he replies.

I step forward. “On what grounds? What is alleged against her?”

The senior man, one I don’t know, steps toward me and bows slightly. “Lady Anne,” he says. “There are reports circulating in London that there has been grave wrongdoing in your household. The king has commanded that we investigate. Anyone attempting to hide anything or failing to assist our investigation will be regarded as an enemy to the king, and guilty of treason.”

“We are all good subjects of our lord the king,” I say quickly. I can hear the fear in my own voice. He will hear it, too. “But there is no wrongdoing in my household; I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”

He nods. Presumably Kitty Howard said the same; as did Culpepper and Dereham.

“These are trying times, and we have to root out sin,” he says simply. “If you please, you will stay in this room, with this lady as companion if you wish, while we question your household. Then we will come to speak with you.”

“My ambassador should be informed,” I say. “I am not to be treated as an ordinary woman. My ambassador will need to know of your inquiry.”

The man gives me a smile. “He is being questioned at his house right now,” he says. “Or rather, I should say, at the inn where he stays. If I had not known that he was an ambassador for a great duke, I should have thought him an unsuccessful merchant. He does not keep a great estate, does he?”

I flush with embarrassment. This again is my brother’s doing. Dr. Harst has never had a proper fee; he has never had a proper establishment. Now I am being taunted for my brother’s meanness.

“You may question whom you like,” I say as bravely as I can. “I have nothing to hide. I live as the king bid me when we made our agreement. I live on my own; I entertain no more than is right and proper; my rents are collected and my bills are paid. As far as I can tell my servants are under good and sober discipline, and we attend church and pray according to the king’s rule.”

“Then you have nothing to fear,” he says. He looks at my white face and smiles. “Please, do not be fearful. Only the guilty should show fear.”

I crack my lips into a smile, and I go to my chair and sit down. His eye turns to the fallen crucifix and the cloth pulled down from the prie-dieu, and he raises an eyebrow, shocked.

“You have thrown down the cross of Our Lord?” he whispers in horror.

“I had an accident.” Even to myself it sounds feeble. “Pick it up, Lotte.”

He exchanges a glance with one of the other men as if this is evidence to be noted, then he goes from the room.

Let me see, what do I have now?

I have my six gowns still, and my six hoods. I have two rooms with a view over the garden, which runs down to the river where I can now walk if I wish; but I don’t wish as it is freezing cold and rains all the time. I have a handsome fireplace of stone, and a good store of wood is kept in for me as the walls are cold and when the wind blows from the east it is damp. I pity the nuns who had to live here for all their lives, and I pray God that I shall be released soon. I have a copy of the Bible and the prayer book. I have a crucifix (very plain, no jewels) and a kneeler. I have the reluctant attendance of a pair of maids to help me dress and Lady Baynton and two others to sit with me in the afternoon. None of them are very merry.

I think that is all I have now.

What makes it worse is that it is Christmastime, and I so love Christmas. Last year I was dancing with Queen Anne at court, and the king was smiling at me. I had my pendant with the twenty-six table diamonds and my rope of pearls and Queen Anne had brought me my horse with violet velvet trappings. I danced with Thomas every evening, and Henry said we were the prettiest couple in all of the world. Thomas held my hand at midnight on Christmas Eve, and when he gave me a kiss on the cheek, he whispered in my ear: “You are beautiful.”

I can still hear it, I can still hear his whisper: “You are beautiful.” Now he is dead; they cut his sweet head from his body. I may be still beautiful, but I have not even a looking glass to comfort me with that.

It may be a stupid thing to say, but more than anything else I am so surprised how much things have changed in such a short time. The Christmas feast when I was newly married and the most beautiful queen in the world was only last year, just this time last year, and now here am I in the worst state that I have ever known, and perhaps the worst state that anyone could be in. I think now that I am learning great wisdom that comes from suffering. I have been a very foolish girl, but now I am grown to a woman. Indeed, I think I would be a good woman if I had a chance to be queen again. I really think I would be a good queen this time. And since my love, Thomas, is dead, I expect I would be faithful to the king.

When I think of Thomas dying for my sake, I can hardly bear it. When I think he is no longer here, he is just gone, I cannot understand it. I never thought of death before; I never realized that it is so very, very final. I cannot believe that I will never see him again in this world. It quite makes me believe in heaven, and I hope I will meet him there, and we will be in love again; only this time I won’t be married.

I am sure that when they release me everyone will see that I am a better person now. I have not been tried as poor Thomas was tried, or tortured as they tortured him. But I have still suffered, in my own foolish way. I have suffered thinking about him, and about the love we had, which has cost him his life. I have suffered thinking of his trying to keep our secret and fearing for me. And I miss him. I am still in love with him even though he is not in the world and cannot be in love with me. I am still in love with him even if he is dead, and I miss him like any young woman would miss her lover in the first few months of their love affair. I keep hoping to see him and then remembering that I will never see him again. This is more painful than I had thought possible.

Anyway, the only good thing to come out of this is that now there is no one to give evidence against me since Thomas and Francis are both dead. They were the only ones who knew what took place, and they cannot bear witness against me. This must mean that the king intends to release me. Perhaps in the New Year he will release me, and I shall have to go and live somewhere terribly dreary. Or perhaps the king will forgive me now that Thomas is dead, and he will let me be his sister like Queen Anne, and then at least I could come to court for the summer and for the Christmas feast. Maybe next Christmas I shall be happy again. Maybe I shall have wonderful presents next year, and I shall look back on this sorrowful Christmas and laugh at myself for being so silly as to think my life was over.

The days are terribly long, even though it gets light so late and dark so early. I am glad that I am being ennobled by suffering because otherwise it would seem such a waste of time. I am throwing away my youth in this dull place. I will be seventeen next birthday, practically an old woman. It is shocking that I should have to wait for week after week in this place, as my youth drags away. I have kept a little counter of the days on the wall by the window and when I look at the scratched marks they seem to march onward forever. Some days I miss a day and don’t put it on, so that the time does not seem so long. But that makes the count wrong, which is a nuisance. It is so stupid not to be able even to keep count of the days. But I’m not sure that I really want to know. What if he keeps me here for years? No, that can’t happen. I expect the king will spend Christmas at Whitehall, and after Twelfth Night he will order them to release me. But I won’t even know when that is, because I have muddled up my own counting. Sometimes I think my grandmother was right and I am a fool, and that is very dispiriting.

I am afraid the king will still be very displeased with me, though I am sure he will not blame me for everything as Archbishop Cranmer seems to do. But when I see him, I am sure he will forgive me. He is like the duchess’s old steward, who would tell us all that we should be punished for some naughtiness like jumping in the hay or breaking the boughs of the apple trees, and he would beat one or two of the boys. But when it came to me, and I would look up at him with tears in my eyes, he would pat my cheek and tell me that I must not cry, that it was all the fault of the older children. I expect the king will be like that when I actually get to see him. Surely, since he knows everything, he knows that I was always a silly girl and always very easily led astray? And surely, in his wisdom, he will understand that I fell in love and couldn’t help myself? Someone as old as he is must understand that a girl can fall in love and quite forget right and wrong? A girl can fall in love and think of nothing but when she can next see the boy she loves. And now that poor Thomas has been taken from me and I will never see him again, surely I have been punished enough?

And so we wait.

The king must be minded to forgive the whore his queen, since he waits for so long. And if he forgives her, he forgives me, and I escape the axe again.

Ha-ha! What a joke my life has become that I should end up here in the Tower where my husband was kept, awaiting the fate that met him, when I could have walked away from court and the court life, when I could have been safe and snug in Norfolk. I had escaped once, escaped with my title and a pension. Why ever did I rush to come back?

I did truly think I would set him free. I did think that if I confessed everything on his behalf, then they would see that she was a witch, as they called her, and an adulteress, as they called her, and they would see he was ensnared and enslaved and they would release him to be with me, and I should have taken him home to our house, Rochford Hall, and made him well again, and we could have had our children and we could have been happy.