The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Hampton Court,
August 1540

Now let me see, what do I have?

I have eight new gowns ready made and another forty (forty! I can’t believe it myself!) in the making, and I am very displeased the dressmakers are so late with them, for it is my intention to wear a different gown to dinner every day of my life from now until the day I die, and to change my gown three times a day. That would be three new gowns a day, which would be hundreds a year, and since I may live till fifty years old that will be… well, I can’t work it out, but it is very many indeed. Thousands.

I have a collar of diamonds with matching cuffs of diamonds and gold and a matching set of earrings.

I have sables, like she had for her present, and they are better than hers, thicker and of a glossier pelt. I asked Lady Rochford, and she definitely confirmed that they are better than hers. So that is one worry gone from my mind.

I have my own barge (think of it!), my own barge with my own motto engraved on it. Yes, I have a motto, too, and it is “No other will but his,” which my uncle devised and my grandmother said was laying it on by the bucket; but the king likes it and says it was just what he was thinking. I didn’t quite understand it at first, but it means that I have no other will than his – that is, the king’s will. Once I understood that, I saw at once why any man would like it, if he were fool enough to believe that anyone would devote her entire body and soul to another.

I have my own rooms here at Hampton Court, and these are the queen’s rooms! Unbelievable! The very rooms where I used to be a maid-in-waiting are now my rooms, and now there are people waiting on me. The very bed where I used to put the queen to sleep and wake her in the morning is now my big bed. And when the court is jousting, the very same curtains that were her curtains around the royal box are now mine, and now they are embroidered with H and K, just as they were once embroidered for her with H and A. Anyway, I have ordered new. It feels like dead men’s shoes to me, and I don’t see why I should put up with it. Henry says I am an extravagant little kitten and that these curtains have been used in the queen’s box since his first wife, and I say that is exactly why I might want a change. So, voilà! I will have new curtains, too.

I have a court of ladies of my choosing; well, some of them I chose. At any rate, I have a court of ladies of my family. My greatest lady is the king’s ward, Lady Margaret Douglas, practically a princess, to wait on me! Not that she does much waiting, I must say. Anybody would think I wasn’t queen the way she looks down her nose. Then I have a handful of duchesses, and my stepmother and my two sisters are my ladies-in-waiting, as well as dozens of other Howard women whom my uncle has placed about me. I never knew I had so many cousins. The rest are my old roommates and girlfriends from Norfolk House days who have popped up to sup from my bowl now that my portion is very rich, and who have to mind me now, though they did not mind me then. But I tell them that they can be my friends but they have to remember I am queen and I have to be on my dignity.

I have two lapdogs that I have called, for a private joke, Henry and Francis – by which I mean my two lapdog lovers from the old days, Henry Manox and Francis Dereham. When I named them, Agnes and Joan screamed with laughter; they were with me at Norfolk House, and they knew exactly who I was thinking of. Even now, every time I call the two dogs to my side, the three of us laugh out loud to think of those two lads chasing me and now I am queen of England. What those men must think, when they remember they had their hands up my skirt and down my stomacher! It is too scandalous to dare to remember. I should think they laugh and laugh; I do at the very memory.

I have a stable full of my own horses and my own favorite mare, who is called Bessy. She is very sweet and steady, and the most adorable boy in the stable keeps her exercised for me so that she doesn’t get fat or naughty. He is called Johnny, and he flushes like a little poppy when he sees me, and when I let him help me down from riding, I rest my hands on his shoulders and watch his face burn.

If I were a vain silly girl (as my uncle persists in thinking), which, thank God, I am not, I should have my head turned by the flattery of the court from everyone from Johnny in the yard to Archbishop Gardiner. Everyone tells me that I am the best wife that the king ever had, and the wonder of it all is that this is almost certainly true. Everyone tells me I am the most beautiful queen in the world – and this is probably true, too – though no great claim when I cast my eye around Christendom. Everyone tells me that the king has never loved anyone as much as he loves me; and this is true, for he tells me so himself. Everyone tells me that all the court is in love with me, and this is certainly true, for I walk everywhere in a small hail of love notes and requests, and promises. The young noblemen whom I used to eye when I was just a maid-in-waiting, and hoped for assignations and flirtation, are now my own court; they have to adore me from a distance, which is really the most delicious thing. Thomas Culpepper is sent to me by the king himself in the morning and the evening to exchange greetings, and I know, I just know that he has fallen completely in love with me. I tease him and laugh at him and see his eyes follow me, and it is all utterly delightful. Everywhere I go, I am attended by the finest young men in the land; they joust for my amusement, they dance with me, they dress up and entertain me, they hunt with me, they sail with me, they walk with me, they play games and sports for my praise. They do everything but sit up on their hind legs and beg for my favor. And the king, bless him, says to me, “Run along, pretty girl, go and dance!” and then sits back and watches me as one handsome – oh, so handsome – young man after another dances with me and the king smiles and smiles like a kindly old uncle, and when I come back and sit at his side, he whispers: “Pretty girl, the fairest girl of the court; they all want you, but you are mine.”

It is like my dreams. I have never been happier in my life. I did not know I could be so happy. It is like the childhood I never had, to be surrounded by handsome playmates, my old friends from the days at Lambeth, with all the money in the world to spend, a circle of young men all desperate for my attention, and watched overall by a tender, loving man like a kindly father who never lets anyone say an unkind word to me and plans amusements and gifts for me every day of my life. I must be the happiest girl in England. I tell the king this, and he smiles and chucks me under the chin and tells me that I deserve it, for without doubt, I am the best girl in England.

And it is true: I earn this pleasure, I am not idle; I have my duties to do, and I do them as well as I can. All the work of the queen’s rooms I leave to others of course, my lord Chamberlain deals with all the requests for help and justice and petitions – I should not be bothered with such things, and anyway, I never know what I am supposed to do with all the paupers and homeless nuns and distressed priests. Lady Rochford takes care of the running of my rooms and making sure that everything is done as well as Queen Anne had it done; but the servicing of the king falls to me alone. He is old, and his appetite in the bedroom is strong, but the execution is not easy for him because of his great age and because he is so very fat. I have to use all my little tricks to help him along, poor old soul. I let him watch me slip off my nightgown. I make sure the candles stay lit. I sigh in his ear as if I am swooning with desire, a thing that all men love to believe. I whisper to him that all the young men of the court are nothing compared to him, that I despise their silly, youthful faces and light desires, that I want a man, a real man. When he has taken too much to drink or is too weary to get himself above me, I even do a trick that my dearest Francis taught me, and sit astride him. He loves that; he has had only whores do that for him before; it is a forbidden pleasure that God doesn’t allow for some reason. So it thrills him that a pretty wife with her hair let down over her shoulders should rear above him and torment him like a Smithfield harlot. I don’t complain of having to do this; actually it is far nicer for me than being crushed beneath him with the smell of his breath and the stench of his rotting leg making me sick as I moan with pretend pleasure.

This is not easy. Being the wife of a king is not all dancing and parties in the rose garden. I work as hard as any dairymaid, but I work at night in secret, and nobody must ever know what it costs me. Nobody must ever know that I am so disgusted that I could vomit; nobody must ever know that it almost breaks my heart that the things I learned to do for love are now done to excite a man who would be better off saying his prayers and going to sleep. Nobody knows how hard I earn my sables and my pearls. And I can never tell them. It can never be said. It is a deep, deep secret.

When he has finished at last, and is snoring, that is oddly the only time of the day that I feel dissatisfied with my great good fortune. Often then I get up, feeling restless and stirred up. Am I going to spend every night of my womanhood seducing a man old enough to be my father? Almost my grandfather? I am just fifteen years old; am I never going to taste a sweet kiss again from a clean mouth, or feel the smoothness of young skin, or have a hard, muscled chest bearing down on me? Shall I spend the rest of my life jigging up and down on something helpless and limp and then crying out with pretended delight when it slowly, flaccidly stirs beneath me? When he farts in his sleep, a great royal trumpet that adds to the miasma under the bedclothes, I get up in a bad temper and go out to my private chamber.

And always, like my good angel, Lady Rochford is there, waiting for me. She understands how it is. She knows what I have to do and how, some nights, it leaves me feeling irritable and sore. She has a cup of hot mead and some little cakes ready for me; she seats me in a chair by the fire and puts the warm cup in my hand, then brushes my hair slowly and sweetly until the anger passes and I am calm again.

“When you get a son, you will be free of him,” she whispers so quietly that I can hardly hear her. “When you are sure you have conceived a child, he will leave you alone. No more false alarms. When you tell him you are with child, you must be certain, and then you will have nearly a year at peace. And after you have had a second son your place will be assured and you can take your own pleasures and he will not know and not mind.”

“I shall never have pleasure again,” I say miserably. “My life is over before it has even begun. I am only fifteen, and I am tired of everything.”

Her hands caress my shoulders. “Oh, you will,” she says certainly. “Life is long, and if a woman survives, she can take her pleasures one way or another.”