Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“What d’you think?” he asks Lady Rochford over my head.

“Uncle, I am innocent,” I say, but no one pays any attention to me.

“Possible,” she says.

“I’d say certain,” he returns.

They both look at me as if I were a cygnet for the carving.

“Katherine, you have taken the king’s eye,” my uncle says.

“I have done nothing,” I squeak. “Uncle, I swear I am innocent.” I give a little gasp when I hear myself. I am thinking of Anne Boleyn, who said those very words to him and found no mercy. “Please…” I whisper. “Please, I beg you… Truly I have done nothing…”

“Keep your voice down,” says Lady Rochford, glancing around, but nobody is paying us any attention, nobody is going to call me away.

“You have taken his fancy; now you have to take his heart,” he goes on, as if I had said nothing. “You have done beautifully so far; but he is a man of a certain age and he doesn’t want a little slut on his knee. He likes to fall in love; he likes the pursuit better than the capture. He wants to think he is courting a girl of unblemished reputation.”

“I am! Truly, I am! Unblemished!”

“You have to lead him on and bring him on and yet forever draw back.”

I wait, I have no idea what he wants of me.

“In short he is not just to lust for you; he has to fall in love with you.”

“But why?” I ask. “So that he gets me a good husband?”

My uncle leans forward, his mouth to my ear. “Listen, fool. So that he makes you his wife, his own wife, the next Queen of England.”

My exclamation of surprise is silenced by Lady Rochford, who pinches the back of my hand sharply. “Ow!”

“Listen to your uncle,” she says. “And keep your voice down.”

“But he is married to the queen,” I mutter.

“He can still fall in love with you,” my uncle says. “Stranger things have happened. And he has to know that you are a virgin untouched, a little rose, that you are a good enough girl to be Queen of England.”

I glance back toward the woman who already is the Queen of England. She is smiling down at the Lady Elizabeth, who is doing a little hopping dance in time to the music. The king is tapping his good foot in time to the beat. Even Princess Mary looks happy.

“Perhaps not this year, perhaps not next,” my uncle says. “But you must keep the king interested, and you must lead him into honorable love. Anne Boleyn led him on and held him off, and kept him coming on for six years, and she started when he was in love with his wife. This is not the work of a day. This is a masterpiece; it will be your life’s work. You are not to give him the least idea that he could make you his mistress. He has to honor you, Katherine, as if you were a young lady fit only for marriage. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He is king. Doesn’t he know everybody’s thoughts anyway? Doesn’t God tell him?”

“God help us, the girl is an idiot,” my uncle mutters. “Katherine, he is a man like any other, only now, in his old age, more suspicious and more vindictive than most. He has enjoyed an easier life than most; he has been idle for all his days. He has had kindness everywhere he has ever gone, no one has said no to him since he got rid of Katherine of Aragon. He is used to having his own way in everything. This is the man you have to delight, a man brought up to indulgence. You have to make him think you are special; he is surrounded by women who pretend to adore him. You have to do something special. You have to make him aroused and yet keep his hands off you. This is what I am asking you to do. You can have new gowns and Lady Rochford’s help, but this is what I want. Can you do it?”

“I can try,” I say doubtfully. “But what happens then? When he is in love and aroused but trusting? What happens then? I can hardly tell him that I am hoping to be queen while I serve the queen.”

“You leave that to me,” he says. “You do your part, and I will do mine. But you have to do your part. Just as you are: but a little more, a little more warmly. I want you to bring him on.”

I hesitate. I am longing to say yes, I am longing for the gifts that will come my way and the fuss that everyone will make of me if I am seen to take the king’s eye. But Anne Boleyn, my cousin, this man’s niece, must have felt that, too. He may have given her the very same advice, and look where it got her. I don’t know how much of a part he played in helping her to the throne, nor whether he helped her onto the scaffold. I don’t know if he will take better care of me than he did of her. “What if I can’t do it?” I ask. “What if something goes wrong?”

He smiles down at me. “Are you telling me that you doubt for a moment that you can make any man fall in love with you?”

I try to keep my face grave, but my own vanity is too much for me and I smile back at him. “Not really,” I say.

We are riding to London, to the palace of Westminster for the opening of parliament. But this riding back to London is not the same as when we were riding out. Something has happened. I feel as if I am an old hound, the pack leader, who can lift her grizzled head and smell the change in the wind. When we rode out, the king was between the queen and young Kitty Howard, and anyone looking at them would have seen him distribute his smiles between his wife and her friend. Now, to me, perhaps only to me, the scene is quite different. Once again the king rides between the queen and her little favorite but this time his head is turned, all the time, to his left. It’s as if his round face has swiveled on the fleshy neck and got stuck. Katherine holds his attention like a dancing mayfly holds the attention of the fat, gaping carp. The king is goggling at Katherine Howard as if he cannot take his eyes from her; and the queen, on his right, and even the Princess Mary on her other side, cannot divert him, cannot distract him, can do nothing but provide a shield for his infatuation.

I have seen this before – my God – so many times. I have been at Henry’s court since I was a maid and Henry was a boy, and I know him: a boy in love, a man in love, and now an old fool in love. I saw him run after Bessie Blount, after Mary Boleyn, after her sister Anne, after Madge Shelton, after Jane Seymour, after Anne Bassett, and now this: this pretty child. I know how Henry looks when he is besotted: a bull, ready to be led by the nose. He is at this point now. If we Howards want him, we have him. He is caught.

The queen reins back to speak with me, and leaves Katherine Howard, Catherine Carey, Princess Mary, and the king riding together before us. They barely turn their heads to see that she has gone. She is becoming a cipher, a person of no significance.

“The king likes Kitty Howard,” she observes to me.

“And Lady Anne Bassett,” I say equably. “Young people make him merry. You have enjoyed the company of the Princess Mary, I think.”

“No,” she says shortly; there is no diverting her. “He likes Katherine.”

“No more than any other,” I persist. “Mary Norris is a favorite.”

“Lady Rochford, be my friend: what am I to do?” she asks me simply.

“Do? Your Grace?”

“If he has a girl…” She breaks off to find the right word. “A whore.”

“A lover,” I correct her rapidly. “Whore is a very bad word, Your Grace.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Ach, so? Lover.”

“If he takes a lover, you must pay no attention.”

She nods. “This is what Queen Jane do?”

“Yes indeed, Your Grace. She did not notice.”

She is silent for a second. “They do not think her a fool for this?”

“They thought her queenly,” I say. “A queen does not complain of her husband the king.”

“That is what Queen Anne do?”

I hesitate. “No. Queen Anne was very angry; she made much noise.” God spare us ever again from the storm that broke over our heads on the day that Anne found Jane Seymour squirming and giggling on the king’s lap. “The king was then angry with her. And…”

“And?”

“It is dangerous to anger the king. Even if you are queen.”

She is silent at this; it has not taken her long to learn that the court is a death trap for the unwary.

“Who was the king’s lover then? When Queen Anne made much noise?”

This is rather awkward to tell the king’s new wife. “He was courting Lady Jane Seymour, who became queen.”

She nods. I have learned that when she looks most stolid and stupid, it is then that she is thinking the most furiously.

“And Queen Katherine of Aragon? She makes a noise?”

I am on firmer ground here. “She never once complained to the king. She always greeted him with a smile, whatever she had heard, whatever she feared. She was always a most courteous wife and queen.”

“But he took a lover? Just the same? With such a queen at his side? Her, a princess whom he had married for love?”

“Yes.”

“And was that lover Lady Anne Boleyn?”

I nod.

“A lady-in-waiting? Her own lady-in-waiting?”

I nod again at the remorseless march of her logic.

“So both his two queens were ladies-in-waiting? He see them in the queen’s rooms? He meet them there.”

“That is so,” I say.

“He meet them while the queen watches. He dance with them in her rooms. He agree that they should meet later?”

I cannot deny it. “Er, yes.”

She looks ahead to where Katherine Howard is riding close to the king and watches as he leans over and puts his hand on hers, as if to correct how she is holding the reins. Katherine looks up at him as if his touch is an honor she can hardly bear. She leans slightly toward him, yearning; we both hear her breathless little giggle.

“Like that,” she says flatly.

I can think of nothing to say.

“I see,” says the queen. “I understand now. And a wise woman say nothing?”