Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“Or…” I mime a stroking motion with my right hand lightly clenched at hip level; she knows well enough what I mean.

“No!” she exclaims, quite shocked. “Good God, no.”

“Well, you have to do that,” I tell her frankly. “And let him see you, leave the candles burning. Get out of bed and undress.” I make a little gesture to indicate how she should let her shift slide off her shoulders, slither down over her breasts. I turn away from her and look over my shoulder with a little smile; slowly I bend over, still smiling over my shoulder. No man can resist that, I know.

“Stop,” she says. “Not good.”

“Very good,” I say firmly. “Must be done. Must have baby.”

She turns her face one way and the other, like a poor trapped animal. “Must have baby,” she repeats.

I mime for her the opening of a shift, I stroke my hand down from my breasts to my fanny. I close my eyes and sigh as if in the grip of tremendous pleasure. “Like this. Do this. Let him watch.”

She looks at me with her serious face very grave. “I cannot,” she says quietly. “Katherine, I cannot do anything like that.”

“Why not? If it would help? If it would help the king?”

“Too French,” she says sadly. “Too French.”

This great court is on the move, from the palace at Whitehall to another of the king’s houses, called Hampton Court. No one has described it to me, but I am expecting to see a good-sized farmhouse in the country. In truth, I am hoping for a smaller house where we can live more simply. The palace of Whitehall is like a little town inside the city of London, and twice a day, at least, if I were not guided by my ladies, I should get lost. The noise is constant, of people coming and going, striking deals, having arguments, musicians practicing, tradesmen offering their goods, even pedlars come to sell things to the housemaids. It is like a village filled with people who have no real work to do but gossip and spread rumors and cause trouble.

All the great tapestries, carpets, musical instruments, treasures, plate, glasses, and beds are packed on a train of wagons, on the day of our departure, as if a city were on the move. All the horses are saddled, and the falcons settled in their special wagons, standing on their posts with wickerwork screens around them, their hooded heads turning eagerly, this way and that, the pretty feathers at the top of the hood bobbing like a knight’s jousting crest. I watch them and think that I am as blind and as powerless as them. We have both been born to be free, to go where we want, and here we both are, captives of the king’s pleasure, waiting for his command.

The dogs are whipped in by their huntsmen, they spill around the courtyards, yelping and tumbling over in their excitement. All the great families pack their own goods, order their own servants, prepare their own horses and luggage train and we fall into procession, early in the morning like a small army, to ride out through the gates of Whitehall and along the river, to Hampton Court.

For once, God be praised, the king is merry, in high spirits. He says he will ride with me and my ladies and he can tell me about the countryside as we go by. I do not have to go in a litter as I did when I first came to England; I am now allowed to ride, and I have a new gown for riding in with a long skirt that drapes down either side of the saddle. I am not a skilled rider, for I was never properly taught. My brother let Amelia and me ride only the safest fat horses in his small stable, but the king has been kind to me and given me a horse of my own, a gentle mare with steady paces. When I touch her with my heel, she will go forward into a canter, but when fear makes me jerk on the reins, she goes back into a courteous walk. I love her for this obedience, as she helps me hide my fear in this fearless court.

It is a court that loves riding and hunting and galloping out. I should look like a fool if it were not for little Katherine Howard, who can ride only a little better than me, and so with her to keep me company the king goes along slowly between the two of us, and tells us both to tighten our reins and sit up straighter, and praises our courage and progress.

He is so kind and pleasant that I stop fearing that he will think me a coward and I start to ride with more confidence, and to look about me, and to enjoy myself.

We leave the city by winding roads, so narrow that we can only go two abreast, and all the people of the city are leaning out of the overhanging windows to see us go by, the children shouting and running alongside our train. On the broad highways we take up both sides of the road, and the market vendors in the central section shout blessings and pull off their caps as we ride by. The place is rich with life, a cacophony of noise from people shouting their wares and the thunderous rumble of cart wheels on cobblestones. The city stinks with its own special smell of manure from the thousands of animals kept in the alleys, the offal of butchers’ shops and fishmongers, the reek of the leather tanning, and the constant drift of smoke. Every now and then there is a great house, set among the squalor, indifferent to the beggars at its doors. High walls shield it from the street, and I can just see the tops of great trees in the enclosed gardens. The noblemen of London build their great houses next to hovels and rent their doorways to pedlars. It is so loud and so confusing that it makes me dizzy, and I am glad to rattle through the great gates and find myself outside the city wall.

The king shows me the old moats that have been dug in the past to defend London from invaders.

“No men come now?” I ask him.

“There is no trusting any man,” he says grimly. “The men would come from the North and the East if they had not felt the hammer of my anger already, and the Scots would come if they thought they could. But my nephew King James fears me, as well he should, and the Yorkshire rabble have been taught a lesson they will not forget. Half of them are in mourning for the other half who are dead.”

I say no more for fear of spoiling his happy mood; Katherine’s horse stumbles, and she gives a little gasp and clutches the horse’s mane. The king laughs at her and calls her a coward. Their talk leaves me free to look about me.

Beyond the city walls are bigger houses set back from the road with little gardens before them or close-planted little fields. Everyone has a pig in their field, and some people have cows or goats as well as hens in their gardens. It is a rich country; I can see it in the faces of the people who have the shining round cheeks and the smiles of the well fed. Another mile from the city and we come into countryside of open fields and little hedgerows and neat farms and sometimes little villages and hamlets. At every crossroads there is a shrine that has been destroyed, sometimes a statue of the mother of Christ stands with her head casually knocked off and still a little fresh posy of flowers at her feet; not all the English are convinced by the changes in the law. In every other village a small monastery or abbey is being remodeled or broken down. It is extraordinary to see the change that this king has made to the face of his country in a matter of years. It is as if oak trees had been suddenly banned and every great sheltering and beautiful tree had been savagely felled overnight. The king has plucked the heart out of his country, and it is too soon to see how it will live and breathe without the holy houses and the holy life that have guided it forever.

The king breaks off from his conversation with Katherine Howard and says to me: “I have a great country.”

I am not such a fool to comment that he has destroyed or stolen one of its greatest treasures.

“Good farms,” I say,“and…” I stop for I do not know the English word for the beasts. I point to them.

“Sheep,” he says. “This is the wealth of this country. We supply the wool to the world. There is not a coat made in Christendom that is not woven with English wool.”

This is not quite true, for in Cleves we shear our own sheep and weave our own wool, but I know that the English wool trade is very great, and besides, I don’t want to correct him.

“Grandmama has our flock on the South Downs,” Katherine pipes up. “And the meat is so good, sire. I will ask her to send you some.”

“Will you, pretty girl?” he asks her. “And shall you cook it for me?”

She laughs. “I could try, sir.”

“Now confess, you cannot dress a joint or make a sauce. I doubt you have ever been so much as inside a kitchen.”

“If Your Grace wants me to cook for you, then I will learn,” she says. “But I admit you might eat better with your own cooks.”

“I am quite sure of it,” he says. “And a pretty girl like you does not need to cook. I am sure you have other ways to enchant your husband.”

Their speech is too quick for me to quite follow, but I am glad that my husband is merry and that Katherine has the way of managing him. She chatters to him like a little girl, and he finds her amusing, as an old man might pet a favored granddaughter.

I let them talk together, and go on looking around me. Our road now runs beside the wide, fast-flowing river, which is busy with boatmen, barges of the noble families, wherry boats, barges of trade traveling laden into London, and fishermen with rods out for the good river fish. The water meadows, still wet with the winter floods, are lush and shiny with pools of standing water. A great heron lifts up slowly from a mere as we go past and flaps his great wings and flies west before us, tucking his long legs up.

“Is Hampton Court a little house?” I ask.

The king spurs his horse forward to talk to me. “A great house,” he says. “The most beautiful house in the world.”