The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Westminster Palace,
July 7, 1540

We come into the city of London by royal barge from Richmond; it is all done very fine for us, the king is sparing no trouble to make sure we are comfortable. There are three of us, Lady Rutland, Catherine Edgecombe, and myself: three little Judases come to do our duty. With us, as escort, is Lord Southampton, who must feel he has some ground to regain with the king since he welcomed Anne of Cleves into England and said that she was pretty and merry and queenly. With him are Lord Audley and the Duke of Suffolk, eager to play their parts and curry favor. They will give their evidence against her to the inquiry after we have given ours.

Catherine Edgecombe is nervous. She says she does not know what she is to say, she is afraid of one of the churchmen cross-questioning her and trapping her into saying the wrong thing; heavens, even the truth might slip out if she were to be harried – how dreadful would that be! But I am as much at ease as a bitter old fishwife gutting mackerel. “You won’t even see them,” I predict. “You won’t be cross-questioned. Who would challenge your lies? It’s not as if there will be anyone wanting the truth; it’s not as if there will be anyone speaking in her defense. I imagine you won’t even have to speak. It will all be drawn up for us, we’ll just have to sign it.”

“But what if it says… what if they name her as a…” She breaks off and looks downriver. She is too afraid even to say the word witch.

“Why would you even read it?” I ask. “What does it matter what it says above your signature? You agreed to sign it, didn’t you? You didn’t agree to read it.”

“But I would not have her harmed by my evidence,” she says, the ninny.

I raise my eyebrows, but I say nothing. I don’t need to. We all know that we have set out in the king’s barge, on a lovely summer day, to be rowed up the river to destroy a young woman who has done nothing wrong.

“Did you just sign something? When you? Before?” she asks tentatively.

“No,” I say. There is a salt taste of bile in my mouth so strong that I want to spit over the side into the green, swift water. “No. It was not done as well as this for Anne and my husband. See how we are improving in these ceremonies? Then, I had to go into court before them all and swear on the Bible and give my evidence. I had to face the court and say what I had to say against my own husband and his sister. I had to face him and say it.”

She gives a little shudder. “That must have been dreadful.”

“It was,” I say shortly.

“You must have feared the worst.”

“I knew that my life would be saved,” I say crudely. “And I imagine that is why you are here today, as I am, as is Lady Rutland. If Anne of Cleves is found guilty and dies, then at least we will not die with her.”

“But what will they say she has done?” Catherine asks.

“Oh, it will be us who say.” I give a harsh laugh. “It will be us who accuse her. It will be us who make the accusation and swear to the evidence. It will be us who will say what she has done. They will just say that she will have to die for it. And we will find out her crime soon enough.”

Thank God, thank God, I have to sign nothing that blames her for the king’s impotence. I don’t have to give evidence that she cast a spell on him or bewitched him, or lay with half a dozen men, or gave birth in secret to a monster. This time, I have to say nothing like that. We all sign the same statement, which says only that she told us that she lay down with him every night as a maid and rose every morning as a maid, and that from what she said to us it was clear that she is such a fool that she never knew that there was anything wrong. We are supposed to have advised her that to be a wife required more than a kiss good night and a blessing in the morning; we are supposed to have said that she wouldn’t get a son this way; and she is supposed to have said that she was content to know no more. All this chatter is supposed to have taken place in her room between the four of us, conducted in fluent English without a moment’s hesitation and no interpreter.

I seek out the duke before the barge takes us back to Richmond.

“They do realize that she doesn’t talk like this?” I say. “The conversation that we have all sworn took place could never have happened? Anyone who has been in the queen’s rooms would know this at once for a lie. In real life we muddle along with the few words that she knows, and we repeat things half a dozen times before we all understand each other. And anyone who knows her would know that she would never ever speak of this with all of us together. She is far too modest.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says grandly. “They needed a statement to say that she is a virgin, as she ever was. Nothing more.”

For the first time in weeks, I think that they might spare her. “Is he just putting her aside?” I ask. I hardly dare to hope. “Is he not accusing her of unmanning him?”

“He will be rid of her,” he says. “Your statement today will serve to show her as a most deceptive and cunning witch.”

I gasp. “How have I incriminated her as a witch?”

“You have written that she knows he is unmanned, and even in her chamber with her own women she has pretended that she knows nothing about what passes between a man and wife. As you say yourself, who could believe her claim? Whoever speaks like that? What woman put into a king’s bed would know so little? What woman in the world is that ignorant? Clearly she must be lying, so clearly she is hiding a conspiracy. Clearly she is a witch.”

“But… but… I thought this statement was supposed to show her as innocent?” I stammer. “A virgin with no knowledge?”

“Exactly,” he says. The duke allows himself a dark gleam of a smile. “That is the beauty of it. You, all three of you highly regarded ladies of her chamber, have sworn to a statement that shows her either as innocent as the Virgin Mary, or as deeply cunning as the witch Hecate. It can be used either way, exactly as the king requires. You have done a good day’s work, Jane Boleyn. I am pleased with you.”

I go to the barge saying nothing more; there is nothing I can say. He guided me once before and perhaps I should have listened to my husband, George, and not to his uncle. If George were here with me now, perhaps he would advise me to go quietly to the queen and tell her to run away. Perhaps he would say that love and loyalty are more important than making one’s way at court. Perhaps he would say that it is more important to keep faith with those whom one loves than please the king. But George is not with me now. He will never now tell me that he believes in love. I have to live without him; for the rest of my life I will have to live without him.

We go back to Richmond. The tide is with us, and I wish the barge would go more slowly and not rush us home to the palace where she will be watching for the barge and looking so very pale.

“What have we done?” asks Catherine Edgecombe dolefully. She is looking toward the beautiful towers of Richmond Palace, knowing that we will have to face Queen Anne, that her honest gaze will go from one of us to the other, and that she will know that we have been gone all day on our jaunt to London to give evidence against her.

“We have done what we had to do. We may have saved her life,” I say stubbornly.

“Like you saved your sister-in-law? Like you saved your husband?” she asks me, sharp with malice.

I turn my head away from her. “I never speak of it,” I say. “I never even think of it.”