The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Whitehall Palace,
January 1540

I am summoned to practice a masque, a tableau to open the tournament. The king is going to come in disguised as a knight from the sea, and we are to be waves or fish or something like that in his train and dance for the queen and the court. His composer has the score of the music, and there are to be six of us. I think we represent the muses, but I am not sure. Now I come to think of it, I don’t even know what a muse is. But I hope that it is the sort of thing that has a costume made from very fine silks.

Anne Bassett is another dancer, and Alison, and Jane, Mary, Catherine Carey, and me. Of the six of us probably Anne is the prettiest girl, she has the fairest blond hair and big blue eyes and she has this trick, which I must learn, of looking down and looking up again as if she had heard something most interesting and indecent. If you tell her the price of a yard of buckram, she will look down and back up, as if you have whispered that you love her. Only if someone else is watching, of course. If we are just on our own, she doesn’t bother with it. It does make her most engaging when she is trying hard. After her, I am certain that I am the prettiest girl. She is the daughter of Lord and Lady Lisle and a great favorite of the king’s, who is very much taken with this up-and-down look and has promised to give her a horse, which I think a pretty good fee for doing nothing more than fluttering eyelashes. Truly, there is a fortune to be made at court if you know how.

I enter the room at a run because I am late, and there is the king himself, with three of his greatest friends – Charles Brandon, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and young Thomas Culpepper – standing with the musicians with the score in his hand.

I curtsy very low at once, and I see that Anne Bassett is there, in the forefront, looking very demure, and with her are the four others, preening themselves like a nest of cygnets and hoping to catch the royal eye.

But it is me whom the king smiles to see. He really does. He turns and says, “Ah! My little friend from Rochester.”

Down I go into my curtsy again and up I come tilted forward so that the men can get a good sight of my low neckline and my breasts, and “Your Grace!” I breathe, as if I can hardly speak for lust.

I can see they all enjoy this, and Thomas Culpepper, who has the most dazzling blue eyes, gives me a naughty wink as one Howard kinsman to another.

“Did you really not know me at Rochester, sweetheart?” the king asks. And he comes across the room and puts his finger under my chin and turns my face up to him as if I were a child, which I don’t like much, but I make myself stand still and say: “Truly, sire, I did not. I would know you again, though.”

“How would you know me again?” he says indulgently, like a kind father at Christmas.

Well, this has me stuck because I don’t know. I don’t have anything to say; I was simply being pleasant. I have to say something, but nothing at all comes to mind. So I look up at him as if my head were full of confessions but I dare say nothing, and to my enormous pleasure I can feel a little heat in my cheeks and I know that I am blushing.

I am blushing for nothing but vanity, of course, and the pleasure of being singled out by the king himself in front of that slut Anne Bassett, but also for the discomfort of having nothing to say and not a thought in my head; but he sees the blush and mistakes it for modesty, and he at once tucks my hand in the crook of his arm and leads me away from the others. I keep my eyes down; I don’t even wink back at Master Culpepper.

“Hush, child,” he says very kindly. “Poor sweet child, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Too kind,” is all I manage to murmur. I can see Anne Bassett looking after us as if she would kill me. “I’m so shy.”

“Sweetest child,” he says more warmly.

“It was when you asked me…”

“When I asked you what?”

I take a little breath. If he were not king, I would know better how to play this. But he is the king, and this makes me uncertain. Besides he is a man old enough to be my grandfather, it seems quite indecent to flirt with him. Then I take a little glance upward at him, and I know I am right. He has got that look on his face. The look that so many men have when they look at me. As if they want to just swallow me up, just capture me, and have me in one gulp.

“When you asked me whether I would know you again,” I say in a thin, little-girl voice. “Because I would.”

“How would you?” He bends down to hear me, and I suddenly realize in a rush of excitement that it does not matter that he is king. He is sweet on me like my lady grandmother’s steward. It is exactly the same soft, doting look in his face. I swear I recognize it. I should do; I have seen it often enough. It is that stupid, wet look that old men have when they see me, rather nasty really. It is how old men look at women young enough to be their daughters and imagine themselves to be as young as their sons. It is how old men look when they lust for a woman who is young enough to be their daughter, and they know they should not.

“Because you are so handsome,” I say, looking directly at him, taking the risk and seeing what will happen. “You are the handsomest man at court, Your Grace.”

He stands quite still, almost like a man who suddenly hears beautiful music. Like a man enchanted. “You think I am the handsomest man at court?” he asks incredulously. “Sweet child, I am old enough to be your father.”

Closer to my grandfather if truth be told, but I gaze up at him. “Are you?” I pipe, as if I don’t know that he is near to fifty and I am not yet fifteen. “But I don’t like boys. They always seem so silly.”

“They trouble you?” he demands instantly.

“Oh, no,” I say. “I have nothing at all to do with them. But I would rather walk and talk with a man who knows something of the world. Who can advise me. Someone I can trust.”

“You shall walk and talk with me this very afternoon,” he promises. “And you shall tell me all your little troubles. And if anyone has troubled you, anyone, no matter how great: he shall answer to me for it.”

I sink into a curtsy. I am so close to him that I almost brush his breeches with my bent head. If that doesn’t cause a little stirring, then I shall be very surprised. I look up at him and I smile up at him and I give a tiny little shake of my head as if in wonderment. I think to myself that this really is awfully good. “Such an honor,” I whisper.