The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Rochester, 31 December 1539

I am the only person to see him come in. I don’t like bull-baiting, or bears, or cockfighting, or anything like that, I think it’s just downright nasty – and so I am standing a little back from the windows. And I am looking round, actually, I am looking at a young man that I had seen earlier, such a handsome young man with a cheeky smile, when I see the six of them come in, old men, they must all be thirty at the least, and the big old king at the front, and they are all wearing the same sort of cape, like a masquing costume, so I guess at once that it is him, and that he has come in disguise like a knight errant, silly old fool, and that he will greet her and she will pretend not to know him, and then there will be dancing. Really, I am delighted to see him because this makes it a certainty that there will be dancing and so I am wondering how I can encourage the handsome young man to be near me in the dance.

When he kisses her it all goes terribly wrong. I can see at once that she has no idea who he is, someone should have warned her. She thinks he is just some drunk old man who has staggered in to kiss her for a wager, and of course she is shocked, and of course quite repelled, because when he is in a cheap cloak and not surrounded by the greatest court in the world he does not look at all like a king. In truth, when he is in a cheap cloak and with his companions, also dressed poorly, he looks like some common merchant, with a waddling walk and a red nose, who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to go to court and see his betters. He looks like the sort of man my uncle would not acknowledge if he called out in the street. A fat old man, a vulgar old man, like a drunk sheep farmer on market day. His face is terribly bloated, like a great round dish of dripping, his hair is thinning and grey, he is monstrously fat, and he has an old injury in his leg that makes him so lame that he rolls in his walk like a sailor. Without his crown he is not handsome, he looks like anybody’s fat old grandfather.

He falls back, she stands on her dignity, rubbing her mouth to take the smell of his breath away, and then – it is so awful I could almost scream with shock – she turns her head and spits out the taste of him. ‘Leave me,’ she says and turns her back on him.

There is utter, dreadful silence, nobody says a word, and suddenly I know, as if my own cousin Anne Boleyn is at my side telling me, what I should do. I am not even thinking of the dancing and the young man, for once I am not even thinking of myself, and that almost never happens. I just think, in a flash, that if I pretend not to know him, then he can go on not knowing himself, and the whole sorry masque of this silly old man and his gross vanity will not tumble about our ears. I just feel sorry for him, to tell the truth. I just think that I can spare him this awful embarrassment of bouncing up to a woman and having her slap him down like a smelly old hound. If anyone else had said anything then I would have stayed silent. But nobody says anything and the silence goes on and on, unbearably, and he stumbles back, he almost falls back into me, and his face is all crumpled and confused and I am so sorry for him, poor humbled old fool, that I say, I coo: ‘Ooh! Forgive me, sir! But I am new to court myself, a stranger like you. May I ask – who are you?’

Jane Boleyn, Rochester, 31 December 1539

Lady Browne is ordering the maids to their beds in a bellow as if she were a Yeoman of the Guard. They are over-excited and Katherine Howard among them is the centre of it all, as wild as any of them, a true Queen of the May. How she spoke to the king, how she peeped up at him from under her eyelashes, how she begged him, as a handsome stranger, new-come to court, to ask the Lady Anne for dancing, is being mimicked and re-enacted till they are drunk with their own laughter.

Lady Browne is not laughing, her face is like thunder, so I hustle the girls into bed and tell them that they are all very foolish and that they would do better to copy their lady, the Lady Anne, and show proper dignity, than mimic Katherine Howard’s free and forward ways. They slip into their beds two by two like pretty angels and we blow out the candle and leave them in the darkness and lock the door. We have hardly turned away before we hear them whispering, but no power on earth can make girls behave well; and we do not even try.

‘Are you troubled, Lady Browne?’ I ask considerately.

She hesitates, she is longing to confide in someone, and I am here at her side, and known to be discreet.

‘This is a bad business,’ she says heavily. ‘Oh, it all passed off pleasantly enough in the end, with the dancing and the singing and Lady Anne recovered quickly enough as soon as you had explained to her; but this is a bad, bad business.’

‘The king?’ I suggest.

She nods and folds her lips over as if she would stop herself saying more.

‘I am weary,’ I say. ‘Shall we take a glass of warm ale together before we go to our beds? Sir Anthony is staying here tonight, is he not?’

‘God knows he won’t join me in my rooms for hours,’ she says unguardedly. ‘I doubt if any of the king’s circle will sleep tonight.’

‘Oh?’ I say. I lead the way into the presence chamber. The other ladies have gone to bed, the fire is burning low, but there is a jug of ale set at the fireside and half a dozen tankards. I pour us both a drink. ‘Trouble?’

She sits in her chair and leans forwards to whisper. ‘My lord husband tells me that the king swears that he will not marry her.’

‘No!’

‘He does. He does. He swears it. He says that he cannot like her.’

She takes a long draw on the ale and looks at me over the top of the mug.

‘Lady Browne, you must have this wrong …’

‘I have it from my husband this very night. The king seized him by the collar, almost by the throat, as soon as we retired, and said that the moment he saw Lady Anne, he had been struck with consternation, and that he saw nothing in her that he had been told.’

‘He said that?’

‘Those very words.’

‘But he seemed so happy as we left?’

‘He was as truly happy just as Katherine Howard was truly ignorant of his identity. He is as much a happy bridegroom as she is an innocent child. We are all actors here, but the king will not play the part of eager bridegroom.’

‘He has to, they are betrothed and the contract signed.’

‘He does not like her, he says. He cannot like her, he says, and he is blaming the men who made this marriage for him.’

I have to get this news to the duke, he has to be warned before the king gets back to London.

‘Blaming the men who made the marriage?’

‘And those who brought her to him. He is furious.’

‘He will blame Thomas Cromwell,’ I predict quietly.

‘Indeed.’

‘But what of the Lady Anne? Surely, he cannot refuse her?’

‘There is some talk of an impediment,’ she says. ‘And that is why Sir Anthony and none of the others will have any sleep tonight. The Cleves lords should have brought a copy of an agreement to say that some old previous contract to marry has been withdrawn. Since they don’t have it, perhaps there may be grounds to argue that the marriage cannot go ahead, it is not valid.’

‘Not again,’ I say, unguarded for a moment. ‘Not the same objection that he put against Queen Katherine! We will all look like fools!’

She nods. ‘Yes, the same. But better for her that an impediment is declared now and she is sent safely home, than she stays and marries an enemy. You know the king, he will never forgive her for spitting out his kiss.’

I say nothing. These are dangerous speculations.

‘Her brother must be a fool,’ I say. ‘She has come a long way if he has not secured her safety.’

‘I would not be in her shoes tonight,’ Lady Browne says. ‘You know I never thought she would please the king, and I told my husband so. But he knew best, the alliance with Cleves is vital, he tells me, we have to be protected from France and Spain, we have to be protected against the Papist powers. There are Papists who would march against us from every corner of Europe, there are Papists who would kill the king in his own bed, here in England. We have to strengthen the reformers. Her brother is a leader of the Protestant dukes and princes, that is where our future lies. I say: “Yes, my lord; but the king will not like her. Mark my words: he will not like her.” And then the king comes in, all ready for courtship, and she pushes him away from her as if he was a drunk tradesman.’

‘He did not look kingly at that moment.’ I will not say more than this cautious judgement.

‘He was not at his best,’ she says, as careful as I. Between us is the unsayable fact that our handsome prince has grown into a gross, ugly man, an old, ugly man; and for the first time we have all seen it.

‘I must go to my bed,’ she says, putting down her cup. She cannot bear even to think of the decay of the prince we have adored.

‘I too.’

I let her go to her room and I wait till I hear her door close, then I quietly go to the great hall where, drinking heavily, and clearly nearly dead drunk, is a man in Howard livery. I crook my finger at him and he rises up quietly and leaves the others.

‘Go to my lord duke,’ I say to him quietly, my mouth to his ear. ‘Go at once and get to him before he sees the king.’

He nods, he understands at once. ‘Tell him, and tell him only, that the king does not like the Lady Anne, that he will try to declare that the marriage contract is invalid, and that he is blaming those who made this marriage and will blame anyone who insists on it.’

The man nods again. I think hard, in case there is anything I should add.

‘That’s all.’ I need not remind one of the most skilled and unscrupulous men in England that our rival Thomas Cromwell was the architect and inspiration for this match. That this is our great chance to bring down Cromwell, as we brought down Wolsey before him. That if Cromwell is down then the king will need an advisor and who better than his commander in chief? Norfolk.

‘Go at once, and get to the duke before he sees the king,’ I say again. ‘Our lord must not meet the king without warning.’

The man bows, he leaves the room at once, without saying goodbye to his drinking companions. By his swift stride he is clearly completely sober.

I go to my own room. My bedfellow for tonight, one of the other ladies in waiting, is already asleep, her arm outflung to my side of the bed. Gently, I lift it and slide in between the warm sheets. I don’t sleep at once, I lie in the silence and listen to her breathing beside me. I am thinking about the poor young woman Lady Anne and the innocence of her face and the directness of her gaze. I am wondering if Lady Browne could possibly be right and this young woman could be in danger of her life simply by being the wife that the king does not want.

Surely not. Lady Browne is exaggerating for certain. This young woman is the daughter of a German duke, she has a powerful brother who will protect her. The king needs her alliance. But then I remember that this brother let her come to England without the one piece of paper which would secure her marriage, and I wonder that he should be so careless with her, to send her such a long way into such a bear pit with no protector.

Anne, on the road to Dartford, 1 January, 1540

Nothing could be worse, I feel such a fool. I am so glad to be travelling today, seated uncomfortably in the rolling litter, but at least alone. At least I don’t have to face any sympathetic, secretly laughing faces, all buzzing with the disaster of my first meeting with the king.

But truly, how should I be blamed? He has a portrait of me, Hans Holbein himself humbled me to the ground with his unsmiling stare, so that the king had my portrait to scrutinise and criticise and study, he has a very good idea of who I am. But I have no picture of him except the picture in my mind that everyone has: of the young prince who came to his throne a golden youth of eighteen, the handsomest prince in the world. I knew well enough that he is all but fifty now. I knew that I was not marrying a handsome boy, not even a handsome prince. I knew I was marrying a king in his prime, even an ageing man. But I did not know what he was like. I had seen no new portrait of him to consider. And I was not expecting … that.

Not that he is so bad, perhaps. I can see the man he once was. He has broad shoulders, handsome in a man at any age. He still rides, they tell me, he still hunts except when some wound in his leg is troubling him, he is still active. He runs his country himself, he has not handed over power to more vigorous advisors, he has all his wits about him, as far as one can tell. But he has small, piggy eyes and a small, spoiled mouth, in a great ball of a moon face swelling with fat. His teeth must be very bad, for his breath is very foul. When he grabbed me and kissed me the stink of him was truly awful. When he fell back from me he looked like a spoiled child, ready to cry. But, I must be fair, that was a bad moment for both of us. I daresay, as I thrust him away from me, that I did not appear at my best either.

I wish to God I had not spat.

This is a bad beginning. A bad and undignified beginning. Really, he should not have come on me unprepared and without warning. All very well for them to tell me now that he loves disguising and masquing and pretending to be an ordinary man so that people can discover him with delight. They never told me this before. On the contrary, every day it has been dinned into my head that the English court is formal, that things must be done in a certain way, than I have to learn orders of precedence, that I must never be faulted by calling a junior member of a family to my side before a senior member, that these things matter to the English more than life itself. Every day before I left Cleves, my mother reminded me that the Queen of England must be above reproach, must be a woman of utter royal dignity and coldness, must never be familiar, must never be light, must never be overly-friendly. Every day she told me that the life of a Queen of England depends on her unblemished reputation. She threatened me with the same fate as Anne Boleyn if I was loose and warm and amorous like her.

So why should I ever dream that some fat old drunk would come up and kiss me? How would I ever dream that I am supposed to let an ugly old man kiss me without introduction or warning?

Still, I wish to God that I had not spat out the foul taste of him.

Anyway, perhaps it is not so bad. This morning he has sent me a present, a gift of rich sables, very expensive and very high quality. Little Katherine Howard, who is so sweet that she mistook the king for a stranger and greeted him kindly, has had a brooch of gold from him. Sir Anthony Browne brought the gifts this morning with a pretty speech, and told me that the king has gone ahead to prepare for our official meeting, which will happen at a place called Blackheath, outside the City of London. My ladies say that there will be no surprises between now and then, so I need not be on my guard. They say that this disguising is a favourite game of the king’s and once we are married I must be prepared for him to come wearing a false beard or a big hat and ask me to dance, and we will all pretend not to know him. I smile and say how charming, though in truth I am thinking: how odd, and how childlike, and really, how very vain of him, how foolishly vain to hope that people will fall in love with him on sight as a common man, when he looks as he does now. Perhaps when he was young and handsome he could go about in disguise and people would welcome him for his good looks and charm; but surely, for many years now, many years, people must have only pretended to admire him? But I don’t speak my thoughts. It is better that I say nothing now, having spoiled the game once already.

The girl who saved the day by greeting him so politely, little Katherine Howard, is one of my new maids in waiting. I call her to me in the bustle of departing this morning, and I thank her, as best I can manage in English, for her help.

She dips a little curtsey, and speaks to me in a rattle of English.

‘She says that she is delighted to serve you,’ my translator, Lotte, tells me. ‘And that she has not been to court before, so she did not recognise the king either.’

‘Why then did she speak to a stranger who had come without invitation?’ I ask, puzzled. ‘Surely, she should have ignored him? Such a rude man, pushing his way in?’

Lotte turns this into English, and I see the girl look at me as if there is more that divides us than language, as if we are on different worlds, as if I come from the snows and fly on white wings.

‘Was?’ I ask in German. I spread out my hands to her and raise my eyebrows. ‘What?’

She steps a little closer, she whispers in Lotte’s ear without ever taking her eyes from my face. She is such a pretty little thing, like a doll, and so earnest, that I cannot help smiling.

Lotte turns to me, she is near to laughing. ‘She says that of course she knew it was the king. Who else would be able to get into the chamber past the guards? Who else is so tall and fat? But the game of the court is to pretend not to know him, and to address him only because he is such a handsome stranger. She says she may be only fourteen, and her grandmother says she is a dolt; but already she knows that every man in England loves to be admired, indeed, the older they are the vainer they get, and surely, men are not so different in Cleves?’

I laugh at her, and at myself. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Tell her that men are not so different in Cleves but that this woman of Cleves is clearly a fool and I shall be guided by her in future even if she is only fourteen, whatever her grandmother calls her.’

Katherine, Dartford, 2 January 1540

Utter terror! Oh, God! Horror beyond my worst fears! I shall die of this, I shall. My uncle has come here, all the way from Greenwich, specially to see me, and summoned me to him. What on God’s earth can he want with me? I am certain that my conversation with the king has come to his ears and he thinks the worst of it and will send me home to my grandmother for unmaidenly behaviour. I shall die. If he sends me to Lambeth I shall die of the humiliation. But if he sends me back to Horsham I shall be glad to die of boredom. I shall fling myself into the whatever it is called, the river there – the River Horsh, the River Sham – the duckpond if needs be, and drown, and they will be sorry when I am drowned and lost to all of them.

It must have been like this for my cousin Queen Anne when she knew she was to appear before him accused of adultery and knew he would not take her side. She must have been scared out of her wits, sick with terror, but I swear no worse than I am now. I could die of terror. I may just die of terror before I even see him.

I am to see him in my Lady Rochford’s own room, the disgrace is obviously so bad that it has to be kept among us Howards, and when I go in, she is in the window-seat, so I suppose it is her who has told him all about it. When she smiles at me I scowl at her for a tale-bearing old tabby and I make a horrid face at her to let her know who I thank for my doom.

‘Lord uncle, I beg of you not to send me to Horsham,’ I say, the moment I am through the door.

He looks at me with a scowl. ‘And good day to you, my niece,’ he says icily.

I drop into a curtsey, I could almost fall to my knees. ‘Please, my lord, don’t send me back to Lambeth either,’ I say. ‘I beg of you. The Lady Anne is not displeased with me, she laughed when I told her …’ I break off. I realise, too late, that to tell my uncle that I have told the king’s betrothed wife that although he is fat and old he is also unspeakably vain, is perhaps not the cleverest thing to say. ‘I didn’t tell her anything,’ I correct myself. ‘But she is pleased with me and she says she will take my advice even though my grandmother thinks I am a dolt.’

His sardonic bark of laughter warns me that he agrees with my grandmother’s verdict.

‘Well, not my advice, exactly, sir; but she is pleased with me, and so is the king, for he sent me a gold brooch. Oh, please, uncle, if you let me stay I will never speak out again, I won’t even breathe! Please, I beg of you. I am utterly innocent of everything!’

He laughs again.

‘I am,’ I say. ‘Please, uncle, don’t turn your face from me, please trust me. I shall be a good girl, I shall make you proud of me, I shall try to be a perfect …’

‘Oh, hush, I am pleased with you,’ he says.

‘I will do anything …’

‘I said, I am pleased with you.’

I look up. ‘You are?’

‘You seem to have behaved delightfully. The king danced with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And talked with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And seemed much taken with you?’

I have to think for a minute. I would not have called him exactly ‘taken’. He was not like a young man whose eyes drift down from my face to peek at my breasts while he is talking to me, or who blushes when I smile at him. And besides, the king almost fell back into me when Lady Anne rebuffed him. He was still shocked. He would have spoken to anyone to hide his hurt and embarrassment.

‘He did talk to me,’ I repeat helplessly.

‘I am very pleased that he honoured you with his attention,’ my uncle says. He is speaking slowly as if he is a schoolmaster, and I should be understanding something.

‘Oh.’

‘Very pleased.’

I glance across at Lady Rochford to see if this is making any sense for her. She gives me a slight smile and a nod.

‘He sent me a brooch,’ I remind him.

He looks at me sharply. ‘Valuable?’

I make a little face. ‘Nothing to the sables that he sent Lady Anne.’

‘I should hope not. But it was of gold?’

‘Yes, and pretty.’

He turns to Lady Rochford. ‘Is it?’

‘Yes,’ she says. They exchange a small smile, as if they understand each other well.

‘Should His Majesty honour you by speaking with you again, you will endeavour to be very charming and pleasing.’

‘Yes, my lord uncle.’

‘From such little attentions do great favours flow. The king is not pleased with the Lady Anne.’

‘He sent her sables,’ I remind him. ‘Very good ones.’

‘I know. But that is not the point.’

It seems the point to me, but very cleverly I don’t correct him but stand still and wait.

‘He will see you daily,’ my uncle says. ‘And you may continue to please him. Then perhaps he will send you sables. Do you understand?’

This, about the sables, I do understand. ‘Yes.’

‘So if you want presents, and my approval, you will do your best to behave charmingly and pleasantly to the king. Lady Rochford here will advise you.’

She nods at me.

‘Lady Rochford is a most skilled and wise courtier,’ my uncle goes on. ‘There can be few people who have seen more of the king throughout his life. Lady Rochford will tell you how you are to go on. It is our hope and our intention that the king will favour you, that he will, in short, fall in love with you.’

‘Me?’

They both nod. Are they quite mad? He is an old old man, he must have given up all thoughts of love years ago. He has a daughter Princess Mary, far older than me, nearly old enough to be my mother. He is ugly, his teeth are rotten and his limp makes him waddle like a fat old goose. A man like this must have put all thoughts of love out of his head years ago. He might think of me as a granddaughter but not in any other way.

‘But he is marrying Lady Anne,’ I point out.

‘Even so.’

‘He is too old to fall in love.’

My uncle shoots such a scowl at me that I give a little squeak of terror.

‘Fool,’ he says shortly.

I hesitate for a moment. Can they really mean that they want this old king to be my lover? Should I say something about my virginity and my spotless reputation, which in Lambeth seemed to matter so very much?

‘My reputation?’ I whisper.

Again my uncle laughs. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he says.

I look towards Lady Rochford, who was supposed to be my chaperone in a lewd court and watch my behaviour and guard my precious honour.

‘I can explain it all to you later,’ she says.

I take it then that I should say nothing. ‘Yes, my lord,’ I say very sweetly.

‘You are a pretty girl,’ he says. ‘I have given Lady Rochford money for you to have a new gown.’

‘Oh, thank you!’

He smiles at my sudden enthusiasm. He turns to Lady Rochford. ‘And I will leave a manservant with you. He can serve you and run errands. It seems that it may become worth my while to keep a man with you. Who would have thought it? Anyway, keep me informed as to how things go on here.’

She rises from her seat and curtseys. He goes out without another word. The two of us are left alone.

‘What does he want?’ I ask, utterly bewildered.

She looks at me as if she were measuring me for a gown, she looks me up and down. ‘Never mind for now,’ she says kindly. ‘He is pleased with you, that’s the main thing.’