Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

For I am not mad. I may be very stupid, and I may be very ignorant (though I am learning French, voilà!) but at least I don’t think that if you stand in front of the archbishop and say “I do,” then that doesn’t count six months later. But I do see that I live in a world that is ruled by a madman and governed by his whims. Also, he is the king and head of the church, and God speaks to him directly, so if he says that something is the case, then who is going to say no to him?

Not I, at any rate. I may have my thoughts (however stupid I am assured they are), I may have my stupid thoughts in – what did she say? – “a head that can hold only one nonsensical idea at a time”; but I know that the king is mad, and the world is mad. The queen is now to be his sister, and I am to be his wife and the new queen. I am to be Queen of England. I, Kitty Howard, am to marry the King of England and to be his queen. Voilà indeed.

I cannot believe it is true. And I wish someone had thought of this: what real gain is there in it for me? For I have thought about this now. What should prevent him waking up one morning and saying that I, too, was precontracted and that our royal marriage is not valid? Or that I am unfaithful, and he had better behead me? What should prevent him taking a fancy to a stupid, pretty maid-in-waiting of mine, and putting me to one side for her?

Exactly! I don’t think this has occurred to anyone but me. Exactly. Nothing can prevent him. And those people like my grandmother, who are so free with their insults and their slaps, who say that it is a tremendous honor and a fine step up for a ninny like me, might well consider that a fool can be jumped up, but a fool can also be thrown down; and who is going to catch me then?

I have written to say that I agree with the findings of the inquiry, and they have all witnessed it, one after another, the great men who came here to argue with me, the ladies whom I had called my friends when I was Queen of England and they were desperate to serve in my court. I have admitted that I was precontracted, and not free to marry. I have even apologized for this.

This is a dark night for me in England. The darkest night I have ever faced. I am not to be queen. I can stay in England at the king’s unreliable favor, while he marries the little girl who was my maid-in-waiting, or I can go home penniless to live with my brother, whose spite and negligence have brought me to this. I am very much alone tonight.

This is the most beautiful palace in the kingdom, overlooking the river in its own great park. It was built by the king’s father as a great show palace in a peaceful, beautiful country. This wonderful place is to be part of the payment the king offers to be rid of me. And I am to have the Boleyn inheritance, their family house: the pretty castle of Hever. No one but me seems to find this amusing: that Henry should bribe me with the other Queen Anne’s childhood home, which he owns only because he beheaded her. Also, I can have a generous allowance. I shall be the first lady of the kingdom, second only to the new queen, and regarded as the king’s sister. We shall all be friends. How happy we shall be.

I don’t know how I shall live here. To tell the truth, I cannot imagine how my life will be after tonight, this dark night. I cannot go home to my brother; I should be shamed as a whipped dog if I were to go home to him and say that the King of England has put me aside, calling in archbishops to get his freedom from me, preferring a pretty girl, my own maid-in-waiting, to me. I cannot go home and say this. I cannot go home and face this shame. What they would say to me, how I would live as spoiled goods at my brother’s court, I cannot imagine. It is not possible.

So I shall have to stay here. There is no refuge for me anywhere else. I cannot go to France or to Spain or even to a house of my own somewhere in Germany. I have no money to buy such a place. If I leave England, I will have no rich allowance; they will pay me no rents. My lands will be given to someone else. The king insists that I live on his generosity in his kingdom. I cannot hope for another husband to offer me a home either. No man will marry me knowing that I have lain under the king’s heavy laborings for night after night and that he could not bring himself to do it. No man will find me desirable knowing that the king’s manhood shriveled at the sight of me. The king has volunteered to his friends that he was repelled by my fat belly and by my slack breasts and by the smell of me. I am shamed to the ground by this. Besides, since every churchman in England has agreed that I was bound to marry the son of the Duke of Lorraine, that will be an obstacle to any marriage I might want in the future. I will have to face a single life, without lover, or husband, or companion. I will have to face a lonely life, without family. I will never have a child of my own, I will never have a son to come after me, I will never have my own daughter to love. I will have to be a nun without a convent, a widow with no memories, a wife of six months, and a virgin. I will have to face life in exile. I will never see Cleves again. I will never see my mother again.

This is a hard sentence for me. I am a young woman of only twenty-five. I have done nothing wrong. And yet I shall be alone forever: undesirable, lonely, and in exile. Truly, when a king is a god to himself and follows his own desires, the suffering falls on others.

It is done. It took all of six days. Six days. The king has rid himself of his queen, his lawfully wedded queen, so that he can now marry me. My grandmother says I should prepare myself for the greatest position in the land and consider what ladies I shall choose to serve me, and who I shall favor with the places and fees at my disposal. Clearly, my Howard relations must come first. My uncle says that I must remember to take his advice in all things and not be a stupid jade like my cousin Anne. And I must remember what happened to her! As if I am likely to forget.

I have looked sideways under my eyelashes at the king, and smiled at him, curtsied bending forward so that he could see my breasts, and worn my hood back so he could see my face. Now everything has gone faster than I could have imagined, everything is happening too fast. Everything is happening whether I want it or not.

I am to be married to King Henry of England. Queen Anne has been put aside. Nothing can save her, nothing can stop the king, nothing can save me – oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I should have said: nothing can prevent my happiness. That is what I meant to say. Nothing can prevent my happiness. He calls me his rose. He calls me his rose without a thorn. Whenever he says it, I think it is just the sort of pet name that a man might give to his daughter. Not a lover’s name. Not a lover’s name at all.

And so it is over. Unbelievably, it is over. I have put my name to the agreement that says I was precontracted and not free to marry. I have agreed that my marriage should be annulled, and suddenly it is no more. Just like that. This is what it is to be married to the voice of God when He speaks against you. God warns Henry that I am precontracted. Henry warns his council. Then the marriage is no more, though he swore to be my husband and came to my bed and tried – how hard did he try! – to consummate the marriage. But it turns out it was God preventing his success (not witchcraft but the hand of God), and so Henry says it will not be.

I write to my brother at the king’s command and tell him that I am no longer married and that I have consented to my change of state. Then, the king is not satisfied by my letter, and I am ordered to write it again. If he wants, I will write it a dozen times. If my brother had protected me as he should have done, as my father would have wanted him to do, this could never have happened. But he is a spiteful man and a poor kinsman; he is a bad brother to me, and I have been unprotected since the death of my father. My brother’s ambition made him use me, his spite let me fall. He would not have let his horse go to such a buyer as Henry of England, and be broken so.

The king has commanded me to return his wedding ring to him. I obey him in this as I do in all things. I write a letter to go with it. I tell him that here is the ring he gave to me and that I hope he will have it broken into pieces for it is a thing that has no force or value. He will not hear my anger and my disappointment in these words, for he does not know me or think of me. But I am both angry and disappointed, and he can have his wedding ring and his wedding vows and his belief that God speaks to him, for they are all part of the same thing: a chimera, a thing that has no force or value.

And so it is over.

And so it begins for little Kitty Howard.

I wish her joy of him. I wish him joy of her. A more ill-matched, ill-conceived, ill-starred marriage could hardly be imagined. I cannot envy her. From the bottom of my heart, even tonight, when I have so much to complain of, when I have so much to blame her for: even now I do not envy her. I can only fear for her, poor child, poor, silly child.

I may have been alone, without friends, before the indifference of the king, but God knows the same will be true of her. I was poor and humble when he chose me, and the same is true of her. I was part of a faction of his court (though I did not know it), and the same is even more true of her. When another pretty girl comes to court and takes his eye, how shall she make him cleave to her? (And be very sure they will send their pretty girls by the dozen.) When the king’s health fails him and he cannot get a child on her, will he tell her that it is the failing of an old man and ask her forgiveness? No, he will not. And when he blames her, who will defend her? When Lady Rochford asks her, who can she call on as a friend?, what will she answer? Who will be Katherine Howard’s friend and protector when the king turns against her?