The Boleyn Inheritance

Anne, Greenwich Palace,
January 6, 1540

So it is done. I am Queen of England. I am a wife. I sit on the right hand of my husband the king at the wedding feast and I smile down the hall so that everyone, my ladies, the lords at their tables, the common people in the gallery, everyone can see that I am happy to be their queen and that I will be a good queen and a merry wife.

Archbishop Cranmer performed the service according to the rites of the Holy Catholic Church in England, so I feel a little uneasy in my conscience. This is not bringing the country closer to the reformed religion as I promised my brother and my mother that I would do. My advisor, the Count Overstein, stands beside me, and when there is a break in the dinner, I remark quietly to him that I hope he and the lords of Cleves are not disappointed at my failure to lead the king to reform.

He says that I will be allowed to practice my faith as I wish, in private, but the king does not want to be troubled with matters of theology on his wedding day. He says that the king seems firm in keeping the church that he has made, which is Catholic but denies the leadership of the Pope. The king is as opposed to reformers as he is to fervent Papists.

“But surely we could have found a form of words that could have suited both of us?” I remark. “My brother was anxious that I should support the reform of the church in England.”

He makes a grimace. “The reform of the church is not as we understood it,” he says, and from the closed line of his mouth I take it that he wants to say no more.

“Certainly, it seems to have been a profitable process,” I remark tentatively, thinking of the great houses that we stayed in on the way from Deal, which were clearly former monasteries, or abbeys, and the medicine gardens around them being dug over for flowers, and the farms that fed the poor but are now being converted into park-land for hunting.

“When we were at home, we thought it was a godly process,” he says shortly. “We did not realize it was drenched in blood.”

“I cannot believe that to tear down the shrines where simple people liked to say their prayers can lead them closer to God,” I say. “And what is the profit in forbidding them from lighting candles to remember their loved ones?”

“Earthly profit as well as spiritual,” he says. “The church’s tithes are not lifted; they are just paid to the king. But it is not for us to remark on how the country of England chooses to say its prayers.”

“My brother-”

“Your brother would have done better to look to his own record keeping,” he says, in sudden irritation.

“What?”

“He should have sent the letter that released you from your promise to marry the Duke of Lorraine’s son.”

“It didn’t matter that much, did it?” I ask. “The king has said nothing of it to me.”

“We had to swear that we knew of its existence, and then we had to swear that it would be sent within three months, and then we had to swear that we ourselves would be hostage for it. If your brother does not find it and send it, God knows what will happen to us.”

I am aghast. “They cannot hold you to ransom for my brother’s record keeping? They cannot really think that there was an impediment?”

He shakes his head. “They know full well that you are free to marry and that the marriage is valid. But for some reason known only to themselves, they choose to throw a doubt over it all, and your brother’s error in letting us come without it has allowed that doubt. And we have been most cruelly embarrassed.”

I turn my eyes down. My brother’s resentment of me goes against his own interests, goes against the interests of his own country, even against the interests of his own religion. I can feel my temper rise at the thought of his jeopardizing my very marriage from his jealousy and spite. He is such a fool; he is such a wicked fool. “He is careless,” is all that I say, but I hear my voice shake.

“This is not a king to be careless with,” the count warns.

I nod. I am very conscious of the king sitting in silence on my left. He cannot understand German, but I do not want him to look at me and see me anything other than happy.

“I am sure I shall be very content,” I say, smiling, and the count bows and goes back to his place.

The entertainment is finished, and the archbishop rises from his place at the table. My councillors have prepared me for this moment, and when the king rises to his feet, I know that I have to get up, too. The two of us follow my lord Cranmer to the king’s great chamber and stand in the doorway while the archbishop walks around the room, swinging the censer and sprinkling the bed with holy water. This really is most superstitious and outlandish. I don’t know what my mother would say, but I know she would not like it.

Then the archbishop closes his eyes and starts to pray. Beside me, Count Overstein whispers a rapid translation. “He prays for the two of you to sleep well and not be troubled with demonic dreams.” I make sure that my expression is one of interest and devotion. But I can hardly keep my face straight. Are these the people who have closed down shrines to stop people praying for miracles, and yet here in a palace they have to pray for protection against dreams of demons? What sense can one make of them?

“He prays that you will not suffer from infertility, nor the king from impotence; he prays that the power of Satan will not unman the king nor unwoman you.”

“Amen,” I say promptly, as if anyone could believe this nonsense. Then I turn to my ladies, and they escort me from the room to my own chamber, where I will change into my nightgown.

When I come back, the king is standing with his court beside the great bed, and the archbishop is still praying. The king is in his nightshirt with a great handsome cloak lined with fur thrown over his shoulders. He has laid aside his hose, and I can see the bulky bandage on his leg, where he has an open wound. The bandage is clean and fresh, thank God, but even so the smell of the wound seeps into the bedchamber to mingle, sickeningly, with the smell of incense. The prayers seem to have been going on while we both changed our clothes. Really, you would have thought that we were safe from demonic dreams and impotence by now. My ladies step forward and slip my cloak from my shoulders. I am dressed only in my nightshift before the whole court, and I am so mortified and embarrassed that I could almost wish myself back at Cleves.

Lady Rochford quickly lifts the covers from the bed to shield me from their inquisitive stares and I slip between them and sit up with my back against the pillows. On the other side of the bed a young man, Thomas Culpepper, kneels for Henry to lean on his shoulder and another man takes the king’s elbow to push him upward. King Henry grunts like a weary carthorse as he hauls himself into bed. The bed dips at his great weight, and I have to make an ungainly little wriggle and grab the side to stop myself rolling over toward him.

The archbishop raises his hands above his head for a final blessing, and I look straight ahead. Katherine Howard’s bright face catches my eye; she has her hands pressed together, held against her lips as if devoutly praying, but she is clearly struggling not to giggle. I pretend I have not seen her, for fear that she should set me laughing, too, and when the archbishop completes his prayers I say: “Amen.”

They all go then, thank God. There is no suggestion that they should watch the marriage being consummated, but I know that they will need to see the sheets in the morning and know that it has been done. This is the nature of the royal marriage. That, and marrying a man old enough to be your father, a man whom you hardly know.