The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Hampton Court,
March 1541

Let me see, what do I have?

My winter gowns are all completed, though I have some more for spring in the making, but they are of no use, for the season of Lent is coming and I cannot wear them.

I have my Christmas and New Year gifts from the king; that is, among other things that I have already forgotten or given away to my women, I have two pendants made of twenty-six table diamonds and twenty-seven ordinary diamonds, so heavy that I can hardly hold up my head when they are round my neck. I have a rope of pearls with two hundred pearls as big as strawberries. I have the lovely horse from my dear Anne. I call her Anne now, and she still calls me Kitty when we are alone. But the jewels make no difference for those, too, have to be put aside for Lent.

I have a choir of new singers and musicians, but they cannot play merry music for me to dance when Lent comes. Also, I will not be allowed to eat anything worth having during Lent. I may not play cards or hunt; I may not dance or play games. It is too cold to go out on the river, and even if it were not, it will be Lent soon. I will not even play jokes with my ladies or run around the apartments or play catch or bowls or bat and ball as soon as it is dreary, dreary Lent.

And the king, for some reason, is making Lent come early this year. Out of sheer ill humor he has taken to his rooms since February, and now he doesn’t even come out to dine, and never sees me, and is never kind to me, and has not given me anything or called me pretty rose since Twelfth Night. They say he is ill, but since he is always lame and always costive and since his leg constantly rots from the wound, I can’t see what difference it makes. And besides, he is so cross with everyone, and there is no pleasing him. He has all but closed up the court, and everyone tiptoes around as if they were frightened to breathe. Indeed, half the families have gone home to their houses since the king is not here, and no business is being done by the Privy Council. The king won’t see anyone, so a lot of the young men have gone away, and there is no amusement at all.

“He’s missing Queen Anne,” Agnes Restwold says, because she is a spiteful cat.

“He is not,” I say flatly. “Why should he? He put her aside by his own choice.”

“He is,” she insists. “For see? As soon as she went away he went quiet, and then he became ill, and now see, he has withdrawn from court to think about what he can do, how he might get her back.”

“It’s a lie,” I say. It is a terrible thing to say to me. Who should know better than me that you can love someone and then wake up and scarcely be troubled with them? I thought that was just me and my shallow heart, as my grandmother says. But what if the king has a shallow heart, too? What if he thought – actually as I did, as obviously everyone did – that she had never looked better or appeared better? Everything about her that had been so foreign and stupid was somehow smoothed away and she was – I don’t know the word – gracious. She was like a real queen, and I was, like I always am, the prettiest girl in the room. I always am the prettiest girl in the room. But I am only that. I am never more than that. What if he now wants a woman with grace?

“Agnes, you do wrong to presume on your long friendship with Her Grace to distress her,” Lady Rochford says. I adore how she can say things like that. The words are as good as a play, and her tone is like a shower of February rain down your neck. “This is idle gossip about the king’s ill health, for which we should be praying.”

“I do pray,” I say quickly, for everyone says I go into chapel and spend all my time craning my head over the edge of the queen’s box to see Thomas Culpepper, who glances up at me and smiles. His smile is the best thing in church; it lights up the chapel like a miracle. “I do pray. And when it is Lent, God knows, I will have nothing to do but pray.”

Lady Rochford nods. “Indeed, we shall all pray for the king’s health.”

“But why? Is he so very ill?” I ask her quietly, so that Agnes and the rest of them can’t hear. Sometimes I wish, indeed, that I had never allowed them all to join me. They were good enough for the maids’ chamber at Lambeth, but really, I don’t think they always behave as proper ladies at the queen’s court. I am sure Queen Anne never had a rowdy ladies’ room like mine. Her ladies were better behaved by far. We would never have dared to speak to her as my ladies speak to me.

“The wound on his leg has closed up again,” Lady Rochford says. “Surely you were listening when the physician explained it?”

“I didn’t understand,” I say. “I started listening, but then I didn’t understand. I just stopped hearing the words.”

She frowns. “Years ago, the king took a dreadful injury in his leg. The wound has never healed. You know that much, at least.”

“Yes,” I say sulkily. “Everyone knows that much.”

“The wound has gone bad and has to be drained; every day the pus from the flesh has to be drained away.”

“I know that,” I say. “Don’t talk about it.”

“Well, the wound has closed,” she says.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It has healed? He is better.”

“The wound closes over the top, but it is still bad underneath,” she explains. “The poison cannot get away; it mounts to his belly, to his heart.”

“No!” I am quite shocked.

“Last time this happened we feared that we might lose him,” she says most seriously. “His face went black as a poisoned corpse; he lay like a dead man until they opened the wound again and drained off the poison.”

“How do they open it?” I ask. “You know, this is really disgusting.”

“They cut into it and then they hold it open,” she says. “They wedge it open with little chips of gold. They have to push the chips into the wound to keep it raw, otherwise it will close over. He has to bear the pain of an open wound all the time, and they will have to do it again. Cut into his leg and then cut again.”

“Then he will be well again?” I ask brightly; I really want her to stop telling me these things.

“No,” she says. “Then he will be as he was, lame and in pain, and being poisoned by it. The pain makes him angry, and, worse than that, it makes him feel old and weary. The lameness means he cannot be the man he was. You helped him to feel young again, but now the wound reminds him that he is an old man.”

“He can’t really have thought he was young. He can’t have thought he was young and handsome. Not even he can have thought that.”

She looks at me seriously. “Oh, Katherine, he did think he was young and in love. He has to be made to think that again.”

“But what can I do?” I can feel myself pouting. “I cannot put ideas in his head. Besides, he does not come to my bed while he is ill.”

“You will have to go to him,” she says. “Go to him and make something up that will make him feel young and in love again. Make him feel like a young man, filled with lust.”

I frown. “I don’t know how.”

“What would you do if he were a young man?”

“I could tell him that one of the young men of the court is in love with me,” I suggest. “I could make him jealous. There are young men here,” I am thinking of Thomas Culpepper,“that I know I could really, truly desire.”

“Never,” she says urgently. “Never do that. You don’t know how dangerous it is to do that.”

“Yes, but you said-”

“Can you not think of a way that would make him feel in love again without putting your neck on the block?” she demands irritably.

“Really!” I exclaim. “I only thought-”

“Think again,” she says, quite rudely.

I say nothing. I am not thinking; I am purposely not speaking to show her that she has been rude, and I will not have it.

“Tell him that you are afraid he wants to go back to the Duchess of Cleves,” she says.

This is so surprising that I forget to sulk, and I look at her in astonishment. “But that is just what Agnes was saying, and you told her not to distress me.”

“Exactly,” she says. “That is why it is such a clever lie. Because it is all but true. Half the court is saying it behind their hands; Agnes Restwold says it to your face. If you ever thought for a moment about anything but yourself and your looks and your jewels, you would indeed be anxious and distressed. And, best of all, if you go to him and you behave anxiously and distressed, then he will feel that two women have been fighting over him and will regain confidence in his own charm again. If you do it well, it might get him back into your bed before Lent.”

I hesitate. “I want him to be happy, of course,” I say carefully. “But if he does not come to my bed before Lent, then it does not much matter…”

“It does matter. This is not about your pleasure or even his,” she says gravely. “He has to get a son on you. You seem to keep forgetting it is not about dancing or music or even jewels or land. You do not earn your place as queen by being the woman he dotes on; you earn your place as queen by being the mother of his son. Until you give him a son, I don’t think he will even have you crowned.”

“I must be crowned,” I protest.

“Then you must get him into your bed to give you a child,” she says. “Anything else is too dangerous even to think about.”

“I’ll go.” I sigh a great hard-done-by sigh, so she can see that I am not frightened by her threats, but on the contrary I am wearily going to do my duty. “I’ll go and tell him I am unhappy.”

By luck, when I get there, the outer presence chamber is unusually empty, so many people have gone home. So Thomas Culpepper is almost alone, playing at dice, right hand against left, in the window seat.

“Are you winning?” I ask him, trying to speak lightly.

He leaps to his feet as he sees me, and bows.

“I always win, Your Grace,” he says. His smile makes my heart skip a beat. It really does, it truly does; when he tosses his head like that and smiles, I can hear my heart go thud-thud.

“That is not a great skill if you are playing alone,” I say aloud; and to myself I say, And that’s not very witty.

“I win at dice and I win at cards, but I am hopeless at love,” he says very quietly.

I glance behind me; Katherine Tylney has stopped to talk to the Duke of Hertford’s kinsman and is not listening, for once. Catherine Carey is at a discreet distance, looking out of the window.

“You are in love?” I ask.

“You must know it,” he says in a whisper.

I hardly dare think. He must mean me; he must be about to declare his love for me. But I swear if he is talking about someone else I shall just die. I can’t bear him to want someone else. But I keep my voice light.

“Why should I know it?”

“You must know who I love,” he says. “You, of all people in the world.”

This conversation is so delicious I can feel my toes curling up inside my new slippers. I feel hot; I am certain I am blushing and he will be able to see.

“Must I?”

“The king will see you now,” announces the idiot Dr. Butt, and I jump and start away from Thomas Culpepper, for I had utterly forgotten that I was there to see the king and to make him love me again. “I’ll come in a minute,” I say over my shoulder.

Thomas gives a little snort of laughter, and I have to clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself giggling, too. “No, you must go,” he reminds me quietly. “You can’t keep the king waiting. I’ll be here when you come out.”

“Of course I am going at once,” I say, remembering that I have to seem upset at the king’s neglect, and I turn away from him in a hurry and dash into the king’s room, where he is lying on his bed like a great ship stranded in dry dock, his leg stuck up into the air on embroidered cushions and his big round face all wan and self-pitiful. I walk slowly toward his big bed and try to look anxious for his love.