Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

I seek out the duke before the barge takes us back to Richmond.

“They do realize that she doesn’t talk like this?” I say. “The conversation that we have all sworn took place could never have happened? Anyone who has been in the queen’s rooms would know this at once for a lie. In real life we muddle along with the few words that she knows, and we repeat things half a dozen times before we all understand each other. And anyone who knows her would know that she would never ever speak of this with all of us together. She is far too modest.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says grandly. “They needed a statement to say that she is a virgin, as she ever was. Nothing more.”

For the first time in weeks, I think that they might spare her. “Is he just putting her aside?” I ask. I hardly dare to hope. “Is he not accusing her of unmanning him?”

“He will be rid of her,” he says. “Your statement today will serve to show her as a most deceptive and cunning witch.”

I gasp. “How have I incriminated her as a witch?”

“You have written that she knows he is unmanned, and even in her chamber with her own women she has pretended that she knows nothing about what passes between a man and wife. As you say yourself, who could believe her claim? Whoever speaks like that? What woman put into a king’s bed would know so little? What woman in the world is that ignorant? Clearly she must be lying, so clearly she is hiding a conspiracy. Clearly she is a witch.”

“But… but… I thought this statement was supposed to show her as innocent?” I stammer. “A virgin with no knowledge?”

“Exactly,” he says. The duke allows himself a dark gleam of a smile. “That is the beauty of it. You, all three of you highly regarded ladies of her chamber, have sworn to a statement that shows her either as innocent as the Virgin Mary, or as deeply cunning as the witch Hecate. It can be used either way, exactly as the king requires. You have done a good day’s work, Jane Boleyn. I am pleased with you.”

I go to the barge saying nothing more; there is nothing I can say. He guided me once before and perhaps I should have listened to my husband, George, and not to his uncle. If George were here with me now, perhaps he would advise me to go quietly to the queen and tell her to run away. Perhaps he would say that love and loyalty are more important than making one’s way at court. Perhaps he would say that it is more important to keep faith with those whom one loves than please the king. But George is not with me now. He will never now tell me that he believes in love. I have to live without him; for the rest of my life I will have to live without him.

We go back to Richmond. The tide is with us, and I wish the barge would go more slowly and not rush us home to the palace where she will be watching for the barge and looking so very pale.

“What have we done?” asks Catherine Edgecombe dolefully. She is looking toward the beautiful towers of Richmond Palace, knowing that we will have to face Queen Anne, that her honest gaze will go from one of us to the other, and that she will know that we have been gone all day on our jaunt to London to give evidence against her.

“We have done what we had to do. We may have saved her life,” I say stubbornly.

“Like you saved your sister-in-law? Like you saved your husband?” she asks me, sharp with malice.

I turn my head away from her. “I never speak of it,” I say. “I never even think of it.”

It is the second day of the inquiry to conclude whether my marriage to the king is legal or not. If I were not so low in my spirits, I would laugh at them sitting down in solemn convocation to sift the evidence they have themselves fabricated. We must all know what the result will be. The king has not called the churchmen, who take his pay and serve in his own church, who are all that is left now that the faithful are hanging on scaffolds all around the walls of York, for them to tell him that he is inspired by nothing but lust for a pretty face, and that he should go down on his knees for forgiveness of his sins and acknowledge his marriage to me. They will oblige their master and deliver a verdict that I was precontracted, that I was never free to marry, that our marriage is therefore annulled. I have to remember that this is an escape for me, it could have been so much worse. If he had decided to put me aside for misconduct, they would still have heard evidence, they would still have found against me.

I see an unmarked barge coming up to the great pier, and I see the king’s messenger, Richard Beard, leap ashore before the ropes are even tied. Lightly he comes up the pier, looks toward the palace, and sees me. He raises his hand and comes briskly over the lawns toward me. He is a busy man; he has to hurry. Slowly, I go to meet him. I know that this is the end for my hopes of being a good queen for this country, a good stepmother to my children, a good wife to a bad husband.

Silently, I hold out my hand for the letter he carries for me. Silently, he gives it to me. This is the end of my girlhood. This is the end of my ambitions. This is the end of my dream. This is the end of my reign. Perhaps it is the end of my life.

Who would have thought she would take it so hard? She has been crying like a brokenhearted girl, her useless ambassador patting her hands and muttering to her in German like some old dark-feathered hen, that ninny Richard Beard standing on his dignity but looking like a schoolboy, agonizingly embarrassed. They start on the terrace, where Richard Beard gives her the letter, then they bring her into her room when her legs give way beneath her, and they send for me as she cries herself into a screaming fit.

I bathe her face with rose water, and then give her a glass of brandy to sip. That steadies her for a moment, and she looks up at me, her eyes as red-rimmed as those of a little white rabbit.

“He denies the marriage,” she says brokenly. “Oh, Jane, he denies me. He had me painted by Master Holbein himself. He chose me, he asked for me to come, he sent his councillors for me, he brought me to his court. He excused the dowry, he married me, he bedded me, now he denies me.”

“What does he want you to do?” I ask urgently. I want to know if Richard Beard has a guard of soldiers coming behind him, if they are going to take her away tonight.

“He wants me to agree to the verdict,” she says. “He promises me a…” She breaks into tears on the word settlement. These are hard words for a young wife to hear. “He promises fair terms if I cause no trouble.”

I look at the ambassador, who is puffed up like a cockerel at the insult, and then I look at Richard Beard.

“What would you advise the queen?” Beard asks me. He is no fool; he knows who pays my hire. I will sing to Henry’s tune, in four-part harmony if need be, he can be sure of that.

“Your Grace,” I say gently. “There is nothing that can be done except to accept the will of the king and the ruling of his council.”

She looks at me trustingly. “How can I?” she asks. “He wants me to say that I was married before I married him, so we were not married. These are lies.”

“Your Grace.” I bend very low to her and I whisper, so that only she can hear. “The evidence about Queen Anne Boleyn went from an inquiry, just like this one, to the courtroom and then to the scaffold. The evidence about Queen Katherine of Aragon began with an inquiry just like this one, took six years to hear, and in the end she was alone and penniless and died in exile from her friends and from her daughter. The king is a hard enemy. If he offers you any terms, any terms at all, you should take them.”

“But-”

“If you do not release him, he will be rid of you anyway.”

“How can he?” she demands.

I look at her. “You know.”

She dares me to say it. “What will he do?”

“He will kill you,” I say simply.

Richard Beard moves away so that he can deny he ever heard this. The ambassador glares at me, uncomprehending.

“You know this,” I say.

In silence, she nods.

“Who is your friend in England?” I ask her. “Who will defend you?”

I see the fight go out of her. “I have none.”

“Can you get a message to your brother? Will he save you?” I know he will not.

“I am innocent,” she whispers.

“Even so.”

I cannot, I cannot believe it: but it is so. My grandmother has just told me, and she has just had it from my uncle Norfolk, and he was there, and so he knows. They have done it. They have examined all the evidence and announced that the king’s marriage to Queen Anne of Cleves was never valid and that they are both free to marry someone else, as if they had never been married to each other at all.

I am amazed. All that wedding, and the gown, and the beautiful jewels and gifts, and us all carrying the train and the wedding breakfast and the archbishop… none of it counted. How can that be? The sables! They didn’t count either. This is what it is to be king. He wakes up in the morning and decides he is to marry and he does. Then he wakes up the morning after and decides he doesn’t like her, and voilà! (this is French, it means something like: gracious, look at that!), voilà! He is not married. The marriage was never valid, and they are now to be seen as brother and sister. Brother and sister!

Only a king could do such a thing. If it were done by an ordinary person, you would think him a madman. But since he is king nobody can say that this is madness, and not even the queen (or whatever she happens to be now) can say this is madness. We all say: “Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” and he comes to dinner with my grandmother and me tonight and he will propose to marry me and I will say: “Oh, yes, Your Majesty, thank you very much,” and never, never say that this is mad, and the work of a madman, and the world itself is mad that it does not turn on him.