The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Westminster Palace,
June 24, 1540

We are seated in the queen’s room in silence, sewing shirts for the poor. Katherine Howard is missing from her place; she has been staying with her grandmother at Norfolk House, Lambeth, all these weeks. The king visits her almost every evening; he takes his dinner with them as if he were a private man, not king at all. He is rowed across the river in the royal barge; he goes openly, taking no trouble to conceal his identity.

The whole of the city is buzzing with the belief that only six months into the marriage the king has taken a mistress in the Howard girl. The spectacularly ignorant claim that since the king has a lover, therefore the queen must be pregnant, and everything is well in this most blessed world: a Tudor son and heir in the queen’s belly and the king taking his own amusement elsewhere as he always does. Those of us who know better do not even take the pleasure of correcting those who know nothing. We know that Katherine Howard is guarded like a vestal virgin now, against the king’s feeble seductive powers. We know that the queen is still untouched. What we don’t know, what we cannot know, is what is going to happen.

In the absence of the king, the court has become unruly. When Queen Anne and we ladies go to our dinner, the throne is empty at the head of the room, and there is no rule. The hall is avid, like a buzzing hive, seething with gossip and rumor. Everyone wants to be on the winning side, but no one knows which that will turn out to be. There are gaps at the great tables where some of the families have left court altogether, either from fear or from distaste at the new terror. Anyone who is known for Papist sympathies is in danger and has gone to his country estate. Anyone who is in favor of reform fears that the king has turned against it with a Howard girl favorite again and Stephen Gardiner composing the prayers, which are just as they were when they came from Rome, and the reforming Archbishop Cranmer is quite out of fashion. Left behind at court are the opportunist and the reckless. It is as if the whole world is becoming unraveled with the unraveling of order. The queen pushes her food around her plate with her golden fork, her head bowed low so as to avoid the bright, curious stares of the people who have come to see a queen abandoned on her throne, deserted in her palace, who come in their hundreds to see her, avid to see a queen on her last night at court, perhaps her last night on earth.

We return to our rooms as soon as the board is cleared; there are no entertainments for the king after dinner because he is never here. It is almost as if there is no king, and in his absence no queen, and no court. Everything is changed, or waiting fearfully for more change. Nobody knows what will happen, and everyone is alert to any sign of danger.

And there is talk, all the time, of more arrests. Today, I heard that Lord Hungerford has been taken to the Tower, and when they told me of his crimes, it was as if I had walked from the midday sun into an ice house. He is accused of unnatural behavior, as my husband was: sodomy with another man. He is accused of forcing his daughter, as my husband George was accused of incest with his sister Anne. He is accused of treason and foretelling the king’s death, just like George and Anne, charged together. Perhaps his wife will be invited to witness against him, just as they asked me to do. I shiver at the thought of this; it takes me all my willpower to sit quietly in the queen’s room and make my stitches neat on the hems. I can hear a drumming in my ears; I can feel the blood heating my cheeks as if I am ill with a fever. It is happening again. King Henry is turning on his friends again.

This is a bloodletting again, a scatter of charges against those the king wants out of his sight. Last time Henry sought vengeance, the long days of his hatred took my husband, four others, and the Queen of England. Who can doubt but that Henry is about to do it again? But who can know whom he will take?

The only sound in the queen’s rooms is the little patter of a dozen needles piercing rough cloth, and the whisper of the thread being pulled through. All the laughter and music and gaming that used to fill the arched room has been silenced. None of us dares to speak. The queen was always guarded, careful in her speech. Now, in these fearful days, she is more than discreet, she is struck dumb, in a state of silent terror.

I have seen a queen in fear of her life before; I know what it is like to be at the queen’s court when we are all waiting for something to happen. I know how the queen’s ladies glance furtively, when they know in their hearts that the queen will be taken away, and who knows where else the blame will fall?

There are several empty seats in the queen’s rooms. Katherine Howard has gone, and the rooms are a quieter, duller place without her. Lady Lisle is partly in hiding, partly seeking out the few friends who dare to acknowledge her, sick with crying. Lady Southampton has made an excuse to go away. I think that she fears her husband will be caught in the trap that is being set to catch the queen. Southampton was another friend of the queen’s when she first came to England. Anne Bassett has managed to be ill since the arrest of her father and has gone to her kinswoman. Catherine Carey has been taken from court, without a word of notice, by her mother, who knows all about the fall of queens. Mary Norris has been summoned away by her mother, who will also find these events too familiar. All of those who promised the queen their unending, undying friendship are now terrified that she will claim it and they will go down with her fall. All her ladies are afraid that they may be caught in the trap that is being primed to catch the queen.

All of us, that is, except those who already know that they are not the victims but the trap itself. The king’s agents at the court of the queen are Lady Rutland, Catherine Edgecombe, and me. When she is arrested, we three will give evidence against her. Thus will we be safe. At least we three will be safe.

I have not yet been told what evidence I shall give, just that I will be required to swear to a written statement. I am beyond caring. I asked the duke my uncle if I might be spared, and he says that on the contrary I should be glad that the king should put his faith in me again. I think I can say or do no more. I shall give myself up to these times; I shall bob along like a bit of driftwood on the tide of the king’s whim. I shall try to keep my own head above the water and pity those who drown beside me. And, if I am honest, I may keep my own head up by pushing another down and snatching at their air. In a shipwreck, it is every drowning man for himself.

There is a thunderous knock at the door, and a girl screams. We all jump to our feet, certain the soldiers are at the door; we are waiting for the word of our arrest. I look quickly at the queen, and she is white, whiter than salt, I have never seen a woman blanch so pale except in death. Her lips are actually blue with fear.

The door opens. It is my uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, looking long-faced and cadaverous with his black hat on his head like a hanging judge.

“Your Grace,” he says, and comes in and bows low to her.

She sways like a silver birch tree. I go to her side and take her arm to keep her steady. I feel her shudder at my touch, and I realize that she thinks I am arresting her, holding her while my uncle pronounces sentence.

“It’s all right,” I whisper; but of course I do not know that it is all right. For all I know there are half a dozen of the royal guard standing out of sight in the corridor.

She holds her head high, and she raises herself up to her full height. “Goot evening,” she says in her funny way. “My lord duke.”

“I am come from the Privy Council,” he says, as smooth as funeral silk. “I regret to say that the plague has broken out in the city.”

She frowns slightly, trying to follow the words; these are not what she was expecting. The ladies stir; we all know there is no plague.

“The king is anxious for your safety,” he says slowly. “He commands you to move to Richmond Palace.”

I feel her sway. “He comes also?”

“No.”

So everyone will know that she has been sent away. If there was plague in the city, then King Henry would be the last man in the world to be boating up and down on the Thames tra-la-la-la-ing with his lute and a new love song all the way to the Lambeth horse ferry. If there were sickness in the evening mists curling off the river, then Henry would be away to the New Forest, or to Essex. He has an utter terror of illness. The prince would be dispatched to Wales; the king would be long gone.

So anyone who knows the king knows that this report of plague is a lie, and that the truth must be that this is the start of the queen’s ordeal. First, house arrest, while the inquiry goes on, then a charge, then a court hearing, then judgment, the sentence, and death. Thus it was for Queen Katherine, for Queen Anne Boleyn, so it will be for Queen Anne of Cleves.

“I will see him before I leave?” she asks, poor little thing, her voice is trembling.

“His Grace bade me come to tell you to leave tomorrow morning. He will visit you, without doubt, at Richmond Palace.”

She staggers, and her legs buckle beneath her; if I were not holding her up, she would fall. The duke nods at me, as if commending a job well done, then he steps back and bows, and takes himself from the room as if he were not Death himself, come for the bride.

I lower the queen into her chair and send one of the girls for a glass of water, and another running to the cellarer for a glass of brandy. When they come back, I make her drink from one glass and then the other, and she lifts up her head and looks at me.

“I must see my ambassador,” she says huskily.

I nod; she can see him if she likes, but there will be nothing he can do to save her. I send one of the pages to find Dr. Harst. He will be dining in the hall; he finds his way in every mealtime to one of the tables at the back. The Duke of Cleves has not paid him enough to set up his own house like a proper ambassador; the poor man has to scrounge like a mouse at the royal board.

He comes in at a run and recoils when he sees her, seated in her chair, doubled over, as if she has been knifed in the heart.

“Leave us,” she says.

I drift to the end of the room, but I don’t go right outside. I stand as if I am guarding the door from the others coming in. I dare not leave her alone, even if I won’t understand what is being said. I cannot risk her giving him her jewels and the two of them slipping away through the private door to the garden and the path to the river, even though I know there are sentries on the piers.

They mutter in their own language, and I see him shake his head. She is crying, trying to tell him something, and he pats her hand, and pats her elbow, and does everything but pat her head like a whipper-in might soothe a fretting bitch. I lean back against the door. This is not the man who can overthrow our plans. This man is not going to rescue her; we need not fear him. This man will still be desperately worrying about what he can do to save her as she climbs the scaffold. If she is counting on him for help, then she is as good as dead already.