The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  Well, it’s mended now.

  I knew that something was going on, and within weeks everyone knew of it, too. When the king took to his bed with his fever, the young couple gave up all attempts to conceal their love affair. Anyone with eyes could see that the king’s niece was wholly in love with the queen’s brother Charles.

  Another Howard, of course, and a favorite: a member of the Privy Council and high in the family command. What did he think he would gain from such a betrothal? The Howards are ambitious, but even he must have considered that he might be overreaching himself. Good God, did he think he might get Scotland by this girl? Did he fancy himself as King Consort? And she? Why would she not see her own danger? And what is it about these Howards that is a magnet for the Tudors? You would think it was some kind of alchemy, like jam for wasps.

  But I should have warned her that she would be discovered. It was a certainty. We live in a house of glass, as if the Venetian glass blowers of Murano had devised a special torment for us. In this court there is not a secret that can be kept; there is not a curtain that can conceal; there is not a wall that is not transparent. Everything is always discovered. Sooner or later, everyone knows everything. And as soon as it is known, everything splinters into a million jagged shards.

  I went to my lord duke and found his barge ready to sail and he himself on the pier. “May I see you?”

  “Trouble?” he asked. “I have to catch the tide.”

  “It is Lady Margaret Douglas,” I say shortly. “She is in love with Charles Howard.”

  “I know,” he says. “Are they married?”

  Even I am shocked. “He is a dead man if they are.”

  The thought of the queen’s brother, his own nephew, dead for treason does not disturb him. But then, it is a familiar thought. “Unless the king, in honeymoon mood, is minded to forgive young love.”

  “He might,” I concede.

  “If Katherine were to put it to him?”

  “He has refused her nothing so far, but all she has asked for has been jewels and ribbons,” I say. “Should she ask him if another member of her family can marry another of his? Won’t he suspect?”

  “Suspect what?” he asks blandly.

  I look around us. The boatmen are too far away to hear; the servants are all in Norfolk livery. Even so, I step closer. “The king will suspect that we are planning to take the throne,” I say. “Look what happened to Henry Fitzroy when he was married to our Mary. Look what happened to our Thomas Howard when he was married to Lady Margaret. When these Tudor-Howard marriages take place, a death follows thereafter.”

  “But if he was in a generous mood…” the duke starts.

  “You have planned this.” I suddenly see.

  He smiles. “Surely not, but I can see an advantage if it happens to come about. We hold so much of northern England, it would be such a pleasure to see a Howard on the throne of Scotland. A Howard heir to the Scots throne, a Howard grandson on the English throne. Worth a little risk, don’t you think? Worth a little gamble to see if our girl can pull it off?”

  I am silenced by his ambition. “The king will see this,” is reluctantly forced out of me by my own fear. “He is in love, but he is not blinded with love. And he is a most dangerous enemy, sir. You know this. He is at his worst when he thinks his inheritance is threatened.”

  The duke nods. “Fortunately we have other Howard children if dear Charles is snatched from us; and Lady Margaret is a fool who can be locked up at Syon Abbey for another year or two. At the very worst we do not lose much.”

  “Is Katherine to try to save them?” I ask.

  “Yes. It’s worth a try,” he says carelessly. “It’s a great gamble for a great prize,” and he steps up the gangplank into the waiting barge. I watch them cast off the ropes and I see the barge swing into the current. The rowers’ oars are held upward, like lances, and at the command they lower them in one smooth sweep into the green water. The Norfolk standard at the stern ripples out, and the barge leaps forward as the oars bite. In a moment the duke has gone.

  Katherine, Hampton Court,

  October 1540

  Like a fool I am in the privy garden at half past nine. I cannot trust anybody with the secret that I am meeting Thomas Culpepper, so I send my ladies to my rooms ahead of me as soon as I hear the clock strike ten. Within a minute of their leaving, the door in the wall opens, and he comes in.

  He walks like a young man. He does not drag his fat leg like the king. He walks on the balls of his feet like a dancer, as if he is ready to run or to fight at a moment’s notice. I find I am smiling in silence, and he comes to my side and looks at me, saying nothing. We look at each other for a long time, and for once I am not thinking what I should say, or even how I look. I just drink in the sight of him.

  “Thomas,” I breathe, and his name is so sweet that my voice comes out all dreamy.

  “Your Grace,” he says back.

  Gently he takes my hand and raises it to his lips. At the last moment, as he touches his lips to my fingers, he looks at me with those piercing blue eyes and I can feel my knees go quite weak, just at this slight touch.

  “Are you well?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Oh, yes. Are you?”

  He nods. We stand, as if the music has just stopped in a dance, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes.

  “The king?” I ask. For a moment I had forgotten all about him.

  “Better this morning,” he says. “The physician came and purged him last night, and he labored painfully for some hours, but now he has passed a great motion and is better for it.”

  I turn my head away at the very thought of it, and Thomas gives a little laugh. “I am sorry. I am too accustomed; all of us in his rooms are accustomed to talk in much detail about his health. I did not mean-”

  “No,” I say. “I have to know all about it, too.”

  “I suppose it is natural, once one reaches such a great age…”

  “My grandmama is his age, and she does not talk about purges all the time, nor does she smell of the privy.”

  He laughs again. “Well, I swear that if I ever get to forty, I shall drown myself. I couldn’t bear to grow old and flatulent.”

  I laugh now at the thought of this radiant young man growing old and flatulent. “You will be as fat as the king,” I predict. “And surrounded by adoring great-grandchildren and an old wife.”

  “Oh, I don’t expect to marry.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I can’t imagine it.”

  “Why ever not?”

  He looks at me intently. “I am so much in love. I am too much in love. I can only think of one woman, and she is not free.”

  I am breathless. “Can you? Does she know?”

  He smiles at me. “I don’t know. D’you think I should tell her?”

  The door behind me opens, and Lady Rochford is there. “Your Grace?”

  “Here is Thomas Culpepper come to tell me that the king has been purged and is better for it,” I say brightly, my voice high and thin. I turn back to him; I dare not meet his eyes. “Will you ask His Grace if I may visit him today?”

  He bows without looking at me. “I will ask him at once,” he says, and goes quickly from the garden.

  “What d’you know of Lady Margaret and your brother Charles?” Lady Rochford demands.

  “Nothing,” I lie at once.

  “Has she asked you to speak to the king for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Yes. I am hoping that he will be pleased.”

  She shakes her head. “Take care how you do it,” she warns me. “It may be that he is not pleased.”

  “Why should he not be pleased?” I ask. “I think it is lovely. She is so pretty and a Tudor! It is such a high match for my brother!”

  Lady Rochford looks at me. “The king may think it a high match for your brother, too,” she says. “He may think it too high. You may need to use a