Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

The clerk’s pen is poised; I can feel the words in my dry mouth. It is over. She is ruined, he is a dead man, I am on the brink of betrayal: again.

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk has been questioned on her sickbed as to the behavior of her granddaughter. She will be tried for letting the girl go to the king without warning him that she was no virgin. This is now called treason. She will be accused of treason because her granddaughter took a lover. If she is found guilty, that will be another old lady’s head on Henry’s block.

Dereham is accused with Culpepper of presumptive treason. The cause is that they both had intercourse with the queen. Dereham is accused even though there is no evidence against him and most believe that he laid with her long before she was queen, before even I was queen. Nonetheless, this is to be called treason. The king has named Katherine Howard as a “common harlot” – oh, Kitty, that anyone should speak like that of you! Both young men plead guilty to presumptive treason in the hopes of forgiveness. Both deny having lain with the queen. Their judge – unbelievable though it is to anyone but a subject of King Henry’s – is the Duke of Norfolk, who knows more of this than any man can say. His Grace the duke has returned from the country to hear the evidence of his niece Katherine promising to marry Dereham, admitting him to her bedroom and to her bed. He has heard the evidence of Dereham coming into her household when she was queen, and that is apparently enough to prove the young couple guilty. For why, the inquisitors indignantly demand, would Dereham come to work for the queen if not to seduce her? The idea that he would hope to profit from her success as all the rest of them have done, her uncle among them, is not mentioned.

Culpepper started by denying everything, but once the queen’s ladies had given their statements, Lady Rochford among them, he could see that he was finished and he is now pleading guilty. Both young men are to be half hanged and then their bellies slit open, their guts pulled out, and then butchered as they bleed to death, for the crime of loving the pretty girl who married the king.

This foreshadows Katherine’s fate. I know it, and I am on my knees for her every day. If the men accused of loving her are to be killed in the cruelest way that England can devise, then the chances of her being forgiven and released are slight indeed. I am afraid she will spend the rest of her life in the Tower. Dear God, she is only sixteen now. Do they not think that two years ago she was too young to judge? Did her own uncle not think that a girl of fourteen is not likely to resist temptation when she is constantly encouraged to indulge her whims in everything? I don’t even consider what Henry thought; Henry is a madman. He thought of nothing but his own pleasure in her, and his own belief that she adored him. That is what she will pay for: for disappointing the vain dreams of a madman. As I did.

When I turned away from him in disgust at Rochester, he hated me for it, and he punished me for it as soon as he could, calling me ugly and fat with slack breasts and belly, no virgin, full of noisome airs, stinking, in fact. When Kitty chooses a young handsome man over his bloated, rotting body, he calls her a scandal and a whore. He punishes me with shame and exile from the court, and then takes pleasure in showing his generosity. I don’t think she will get off so lightly.

I am on my knees in my privy chamber at my prie-dieu when I hear the door behind me open quietly. I am so afraid of my shadow in these dangerous days that I spin around. It is Lotte, my lady secretary, and her face is white.

“What is it?” I am on my feet at once. Stumbling as my heel catches the hem of my gown, I nearly fall and have to catch onto the little altar to save myself. The cross wobbles and crashes down to the floor.

“They have arrested your maid Frances, and they have taken your squire Richard Taverner, too.”

I gasp in terror, and then I wait until I can breathe out again. She mistakes my blank face for incomprehension, and she repeats the awful thing she has just said in German: “They have arrested your lady-in-waiting Frances, and they have taken Richard Taverner, too.”

“On what charges?” I whisper.

“They don’t say. The inquisitors are in the house now. We are all to be questioned.”

“They must have said something.”

“Just that we are all to be questioned. Even you.”

I am icy with fear. “Quick,” I say. “Go to the stables at once and get a boy to take a boat downriver to Dr. Harst in London. Tell him that I am in grave danger. Go at once. Go by the garden stairs, and make sure no one sees you.”

She nods and goes to the little private door to the garden as the other door to my presence chamber is thrown open and five men walk in.

“Stop right there,” one of them orders, seeing the open door. Lotte stops; she does not even look toward me.

“I was just going to the garden,” she says in English. “I need to take the air. I am unwell.”

“You are under arrest,” he replies.

I step forward. “On what grounds? What is alleged against her?”

The senior man, one I don’t know, steps toward me and bows slightly. “Lady Anne,” he says. “There are reports circulating in London that there has been grave wrongdoing in your household. The king has commanded that we investigate. Anyone attempting to hide anything or failing to assist our investigation will be regarded as an enemy to the king, and guilty of treason.”

“We are all good subjects of our lord the king,” I say quickly. I can hear the fear in my own voice. He will hear it, too. “But there is no wrongdoing in my household; I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”

He nods. Presumably Kitty Howard said the same; as did Culpepper and Dereham.

“These are trying times, and we have to root out sin,” he says simply. “If you please, you will stay in this room, with this lady as companion if you wish, while we question your household. Then we will come to speak with you.”

“My ambassador should be informed,” I say. “I am not to be treated as an ordinary woman. My ambassador will need to know of your inquiry.”

The man gives me a smile. “He is being questioned at his house right now,” he says. “Or rather, I should say, at the inn where he stays. If I had not known that he was an ambassador for a great duke, I should have thought him an unsuccessful merchant. He does not keep a great estate, does he?”

I flush with embarrassment. This again is my brother’s doing. Dr. Harst has never had a proper fee; he has never had a proper establishment. Now I am being taunted for my brother’s meanness.

“You may question whom you like,” I say as bravely as I can. “I have nothing to hide. I live as the king bid me when we made our agreement. I live on my own; I entertain no more than is right and proper; my rents are collected and my bills are paid. As far as I can tell my servants are under good and sober discipline, and we attend church and pray according to the king’s rule.”

“Then you have nothing to fear,” he says. He looks at my white face and smiles. “Please, do not be fearful. Only the guilty should show fear.”

I crack my lips into a smile, and I go to my chair and sit down. His eye turns to the fallen crucifix and the cloth pulled down from the prie-dieu, and he raises an eyebrow, shocked.

“You have thrown down the cross of Our Lord?” he whispers in horror.

“I had an accident.” Even to myself it sounds feeble. “Pick it up, Lotte.”

He exchanges a glance with one of the other men as if this is evidence to be noted, then he goes from the room.

Let me see, what do I have now?

I have my six gowns still, and my six hoods. I have two rooms with a view over the garden, which runs down to the river where I can now walk if I wish; but I don’t wish as it is freezing cold and rains all the time. I have a handsome fireplace of stone, and a good store of wood is kept in for me as the walls are cold and when the wind blows from the east it is damp. I pity the nuns who had to live here for all their lives, and I pray God that I shall be released soon. I have a copy of the Bible and the prayer book. I have a crucifix (very plain, no jewels) and a kneeler. I have the reluctant attendance of a pair of maids to help me dress and Lady Baynton and two others to sit with me in the afternoon. None of them are very merry.

I think that is all I have now.

What makes it worse is that it is Christmastime, and I so love Christmas. Last year I was dancing with Queen Anne at court, and the king was smiling at me. I had my pendant with the twenty-six table diamonds and my rope of pearls and Queen Anne had brought me my horse with violet velvet trappings. I danced with Thomas every evening, and Henry said we were the prettiest couple in all of the world. Thomas held my hand at midnight on Christmas Eve, and when he gave me a kiss on the cheek, he whispered in my ear: “You are beautiful.”

I can still hear it, I can still hear his whisper: “You are beautiful.” Now he is dead; they cut his sweet head from his body. I may be still beautiful, but I have not even a looking glass to comfort me with that.

It may be a stupid thing to say, but more than anything else I am so surprised how much things have changed in such a short time. The Christmas feast when I was newly married and the most beautiful queen in the world was only last year, just this time last year, and now here am I in the worst state that I have ever known, and perhaps the worst state that anyone could be in. I think now that I am learning great wisdom that comes from suffering. I have been a very foolish girl, but now I am grown to a woman. Indeed, I think I would be a good woman if I had a chance to be queen again. I really think I would be a good queen this time. And since my love, Thomas, is dead, I expect I would be faithful to the king.