Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

I doubt very much that the French king who built Fontainebleau or the Moors who built the Alhambra would agree, but since I have not seen either palace I won’t correct him. “Did you build it, Your Grace?” I ask.

As soon as I speak I discover that it is once again the wrong thing to say. I thought it would encourage him to tell me about the planning and building of it, but his expression, which was so smiling and handsome, suddenly darkens. Little Katherine quickly answers.

“It was built for the king,” she says. “By an advisor who proved to be a false counselor. The only good thing he did was make a palace fit for His Majesty. Or at least, that’s what my grandmother told me.”

His face lightens, and he laughs aloud. “You speak truly, Mistress Howard, indeed, though you must have been a child when Wolsey betrayed me. He was a false counselor, and the house that he built and gave to me is a fine one.” He turns to me. “It is mine now,” he says less warmly. “That is all you need to know. And it is the finest house in the world.”

I nod and ride forward. How many men have offended this king, in the long years of his rule? He drops back for a moment and speaks to his Master of Horse, who is riding beside the young man Thomas Culpepper, talking and laughing together.

The riders ahead of us turn from the road, and I see the great gateway before us. I am stunned at the sight of it. It really is a tremendous palace, of beautiful scarlet brick, the most expensive of all building materials, with arches and quoins of shining white stone. I had no idea that it was so great and fine. We ride through the huge stone gate and down the sweeping road toward it, under the entry gate, and our horses’ hooves sound like thunder on the cobbles of the great inner yard. Inside is a great court, and the servants coming out of the house fling open the huge double doors so that I can see the hall beyond. They line up, like a guard of honor, in the liveries of the royal Tudor house, according to their rank, row on row of men and women dedicated to our service. This is a house for hundreds of people, a massive place built for the pleasure of the court. Again, I am overwhelmed, the wealth of this country too much for me.

“What happened to the man who built the house?” I ask Katherine as we dismount in the great courtyard, amid the noise of the court, the seagulls calling on the river beyond the house, the rooks cawing on the turrets. “What happened to the counselor who offended the king?”

“That was Cardinal Wolsey,” she says quietly. “He was found guilty of acting against the king, and he died.”

“He died, too?” I ask. I find I dare not ask what blow felled the builder of this kingly house.

“Yes, died and disgraced,” she says shortly. “The king turned on him. Sometimes he does, you know.”

I am back in my old rooms at Hampton Court, and sometimes, when I go from the garden to the queen’s rooms, it is as if time has stood still and I am still a bride with everything to hope for, my sister-in-law is on the throne of England, expecting her first child, my husband has just been given the title of Lord Rochford, and my nephew will be the next King of England.

Sometimes, when I pause by one of the wide-paned windows and look down to the garden running down to the river, I think I might almost see Anne and George walking down the graveled paths, her hand tucked in his, their heads close together. I think I might watch them again, as I used constantly to watch them then, and see his little gestures of affection, his hand in the small of her aching back, her head brushing his shoulder. When she was with child, she used to cling to him for comfort, and he was always tender with her, the sister who might be carrying the next King of England in her belly. But when I was big with my child, it was during our last months together, and he never took my hand or felt any sympathy for my fatigue. He never put his hand on my swelling belly to feel the baby move; he never put my hand in his arm and encouraged me to lean on him. There was so much that we never did together that I miss now. If we had been happily married, I could not be more filled with regret at the loss of him. We had so much left unfinished and unsaid between the two of us, and it will never be said or finished now. When he was dead, I sent his son away. He is being raised by friends of the Howards, and he will enter the church, I have no ambition for him. I lost the great Boleyn inheritance that I was amassing for him, and there is no credit to be had from his family name – only shame. When I lost the two of them, Anne and George, I lost everything.

My lord the Duke of Norfolk is returned from his mission to France and closets himself with the king for hours. He is in the highest of favor, anyone can see that he has brought the king good news from Paris. If I could not see the rise of our family in the swagger of our men, in our ally Archbishop Gardiner’s added air of authority, in the appearance of rosaries and crucifixes at belts and throats, I would see it in the decline of the party of reform: Thomas Cromwell’s ill-concealed bad temper, the quiet thoughtfulness of Archbishop Cranmer, the way they seek to see the king and cannot get an interview with him. If I read the signs correctly, then our party, the Howards and the Papists, are in the ascendant once more. We have our faith, we have our traditions, and we have the girl who is taking the king’s eye. Thomas Cromwell has sucked the church dry, he has no more wealth to offer the king, and his girl, the queen, may learn English but cannot learn how to flirt. If I were an undecided courtier, I would find a way to befriend the Duke of Norfolk and join his side.

He summons me to his rooms. I go to him down the familiar corridors, the smell of lavender and rosemary around my feet from the strewing herbs, the light from the river falling through the great windows ahead of me, and it is as if their ghosts are running just ahead of me, down the paneled gallery, as if her skirt has just flicked out of sight around the corner, as if I can hear my husband’s easy laughter still on the sunlit air. If I went a little faster, I would catch them – and so even now, it is just as it always was. I always felt that if only I could go a little faster, I would catch them and learn the secrets they shared.

I hurry despite myself, but when I round the corner, the paneled corridor is empty but for the Howard guards at the door, and they have seen no ghosts. I have lost the two of them, as I always did. They are too fast for me in death as they were in life. They didn’t wait for me; they never wanted me with them. The guards knock and swing open the door for me, and I go in.

“How is the queen?” the duke asks abruptly from his seat behind a table, and I have to remember that it is a new queen and not our beloved, infuriating Anne.

“She is in good spirits and good looks,” I say. But she will never be the beauty that our girl was.

“Has he had her?”

This is crude, but I assume he is tired from his journey and has no time for the courtesies.

“He has not. As far as I can tell, he is still incapable.”

There is a long pause while he rises from his chair and goes to the window to look out. I think of when we stood here before, when he asked me about Anne and George, when he looked out of the window to see them walking on the graveled paths down to the river. I wonder if he can see them still, even now, as I can. He asked me then if I envied her, if I would be prepared to act against her. He said I might save my husband by putting her at risk. He asked me if I loved George more than her. He asked me if I would mind very much if she were dead.

His next question breaks into the memories that I wish I could forget. “Do you think he might have been…” He pauses. “Ill wished?”

Ill wished? I can hardly believe what I am hearing. Is the duke seriously suggesting that the king is impotent with his wife as a result of a curse, or a spell, or an ill wishing? Of course the law of the land says that impotence in a healthy man can be caused only by the action of a witch; but in real life everyone knows that illness or old age can render a man feeble, and the king is grossly fat, almost paralyzed with pain, and sick as a dog in both body and soul. Ill wishing? The last time the king claimed to be a victim of ill wishing, the woman he accused was my sister-in-law Anne, who went to the block, guilty of witchcraft, the evidence being the king’s impotence with her and her lust with other men.

“You cannot think that the queen-” I break off. “No one could think that this queen… that yet another queen…” The suggestion is so preposterous and so fraught with danger I cannot even put it into words. “The country would not stand… nobody would believe it… not again-” I break off. “He can’t go on doing this…”

“I am thinking nothing. But if he is unmanned, then someone must be ill wishing him. Who could it be, if not her?”

I am silent. If the duke is collecting evidence of the queen ill wishing her husband, then she is a dead woman.

“He has no desire for the queen at the moment,” I begin. “But surely it is nothing worse than that? Desire may come. After all, he is not a young man; he is not a well man.”

He nods. I am trying to judge what he wants to hear. “And he has desire for others,” I go on.

“Ah, this proves the accusation,” he says slickly. “It could be that he has been ill wished only when he lies with the queen, so that he cannot be a man with her, so he cannot give England a son and heir.”

“If you say so,” I agree. Pointless to say that it is far more likely that since he is old and often ill, he has not the lust that he used to have; and only a little slut like Katherine Howard with her tricks and her charm can arouse him.