The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Greenwich Palace,
January 3, 1540

“My lord duke,” I say, bowing very low.

We are in the Howard apartments at Greenwich Palace, a series of beautiful rooms opening the one into another, almost as spacious and beautiful as the queen’s own rooms. I stayed here once with George, when we were newly wed, and I remember the view over the river, and the light at dawn when I woke, so much in love, and I heard the sound of swans flying overhead going down to the river on their huge creaking wings.

“Ah, Lady Rochford,” says my lord duke, his lined face amiable. “I have need of you.”

I wait.

“You are friendly with the Lady Anne; you are on good terms?”

“As far as I can be,” I say cautiously. “She speaks little English as yet, but I have made a great effort to talk to her, and I think she likes me.”

“Would she confide in you?”

“She would speak to her Cleves companions first, I think. But she sometimes asks me things about England. She trusts me, I think.”

He turns to the window and taps his thumbnail against his yellow teeth. His sallow face is creased in thought.

“There is a difficulty,” he says slowly.

I wait.

“As you heard, they have indeed sent her without the proper documents,” he says. “She was betrothed when she was a child to Francis of Lorraine, and the king needs to see that this engagement was canceled and put aside before he goes any further.”

“She is not free to marry?” I demand, astounded. “When the contracts have been signed and she has come all this way and been greeted by the king as his bride? When the City of London has welcomed her as their new queen?”

“It is possible,” he says evasively.

It is absolutely impossible, but it is not my place to say so. “Who says that she may not be free to marry?”

“The king fears to proceed. His conscience is uneasy.”

I pause, I cannot think fast enough to make sense of this. This is a king who married his own brother’s wife, and then put her aside because he said the lifelong marriage was invalid. This is a king who put Anne Boleyn’s head on the block as a matter of his own judgment under the exclusive guidance of God. Clearly, this is not a king who would be deterred from marrying a woman just because some German ambassador did not have the right piece of paper to hand. Then I remember the moment when she pushed him aside, and his face as he stepped back from her at Rochester.

“It is true then. He doesn’t like her. He can’t forgive her for her treatment of him at Rochester. He will find a way to get out of the marriage. He is going to claim precontract again.” One glance at the duke’s dark face tells me that I have guessed right, and I could almost laugh aloud at this new twist in the play that is King Henry’s comedy. “He doesn’t like her, and he is going to send her home.”

“If she confessed that she was precontracted, she could go home again, without dishonor, and the king would be free,” the duke says quietly.

“But she likes him,” I say. “At any rate, she likes him enough. And she can’t go home again. No woman of any sense would go home again. Go back to be spoiled goods in Cleves when you could be Queen of England? She would never want that. Who would marry her if he refuses her? Who could marry her if he declares her precontracted? Her life would be over.”

“She could clear herself of the precontract,” he says reasonably.

“Is there one?”

He shrugs. “Almost certainly not.”

I think for a moment. “Then how can she be released from something that does not exist?”

He smiles. “That is a matter for the Germans. She can be sent home against her will, if she does not cooperate.”

“Not even the king can abduct her and fling her out of the kingdom.”

“If she could be entrapped into saying that there was a precontract.” His voice is like a whisper of silk. “If it came from her own mouth that she is not free to marry…”

I nod. I begin to see the favor he would have of me.

“The king would be most grateful to the man who could tell him that he had a confession from her. And the woman who brought such a confession about would be most high in his favor. And in mine.”

“I am yours to command,” I say to give myself time to think. “But I cannot make her lie. If she knows she is free to marry, then she would be mad to say otherwise. And if I claim that she has said otherwise, she has only to deny it. Then it is her word against mine, and we are back to the truth again.” I pause as a fear occurs to me. “My lord, I take it that there is no possibility of an accusation?”

“What sort of accusation?”

“Of some crime?” I say nervously.

“Do you mean she might be charged with treason?”

I nod. I will not say the word myself. I wish that I could never hear the word again. It leads to the Tower Green and the executioner’s block. It took the love of my life from me. It ended the life we lived forever.

“How could it be treason?” he asks me, as if we do not live in a dangerous world where everything can be treason.

“The law has changed so much, and being innocent is no defense anymore.”

Abruptly he shakes his head. “There’s no possibility of him accusing her, anyway. The King of France is entertaining the Holy Roman Emperor in Paris at this very moment. They could be planning a joint attack on us even as we speak. We can do nothing that might upset Cleves. We have to have an alliance with the Protestant princes, or we risk standing alone to face a Spain and France that have united against us. If the English Papists rise again as they did before we will be finished. She has to confess herself betrothed to another and go home by her own free will so that we lose the girl and keep the alliance. Or if someone were to trap her into making a confession, that would be good enough. But if she persists in saying that she is free to marry and if she insists upon marriage, then the king will have to do it. We cannot offend her brother.”

“Whether the king likes it or not?”

“Though he hates it, though he hates the man who contrived it, and even though he hates her.”

I pause for a moment. “If he hates her and yet marries her, he will find some way to be rid of her later.” I am thinking aloud.

The duke says nothing, but his eyelids hood his dark eyes. “Oh, who can foretell the future?”

“She will be in the greatest of danger every day of her life,” I predict. “If the king wants rid of her, he will soon think that it is God’s will that he is rid of her.”

“That is generally the way that God’s will seems to be manifest,” the duke says with a wolfish grin.

“Then he will find her guilty of some offense,” I say. I will not say the word treason.

“If you care for her at all, you will persuade her to go now,” the duke says quietly.

I walk slowly back to the queen’s rooms. She will not be advised by me, in preference to her ambassadors; and I am not free to tell her what I truly think. But if I had been her true friend, I would have told her that Henry is not a man to take as a husband if he hates you before the wedding day. His malice toward women who cross him is fatal. Who would know better than me?