The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  My lord the Duke of Norfolk is returned from his mission to France and closets himself with the king for hours. He is in the highest of favor, anyone can see that he has brought the king good news from Paris. If I could not see the rise of our family in the swagger of our men, in our ally Archbishop Gardiner’s added air of authority, in the appearance of rosaries and crucifixes at belts and throats, I would see it in the decline of the party of reform: Thomas Cromwell’s ill-concealed bad temper, the quiet thoughtfulness of Archbishop Cranmer, the way they seek to see the king and cannot get an interview with him. If I read the signs correctly, then our party, the Howards and the Papists, are in the ascendant once more. We have our faith, we have our traditions, and we have the girl who is taking the king’s eye. Thomas Cromwell has sucked the church dry, he has no more wealth to offer the king, and his girl, the queen, may learn English but cannot learn how to flirt. If I were an undecided courtier, I would find a way to befriend the Duke of Norfolk and join his side.

  He summons me to his rooms. I go to him down the familiar corridors, the smell of lavender and rosemary around my feet from the strewing herbs, the light from the river falling through the great windows ahead of me, and it is as if their ghosts are running just ahead of me, down the paneled gallery, as if her skirt has just flicked out of sight around the corner, as if I can hear my husband’s easy laughter still on the sunlit air. If I went a little faster, I would catch them – and so even now, it is just as it always was. I always felt that if only I could go a little faster, I would catch them and learn the secrets they shared.

  I hurry despite myself, but when I round the corner, the paneled corridor is empty but for the Howard guards at the door, and they have seen no ghosts. I have lost the two of them, as I always did. They are too fast for me in death as they were in life. They didn’t wait for me; they never wanted me with them. The guards knock and swing open the door for me, and I go in.

  “How is the queen?” the duke asks abruptly from his seat behind a table, and I have to remember that it is a new queen and not our beloved, infuriating Anne.

  “She is in good spirits and good looks,” I say. But she will never be the beauty that our girl was.

  “Has he had her?”

  This is crude, but I assume he is tired from his journey and has no time for the courtesies.

  “He has not. As far as I can tell, he is still incapable.”

  There is a long pause while he rises from his chair and goes to the window to look out. I think of when we stood here before, when he asked me about Anne and George, when he looked out of the window to see them walking on the graveled paths down to the river. I wonder if he can see them still, even now, as I can. He asked me then if I envied her, if I would be prepared to act against her. He said I might save my husband by putting her at risk. He asked me if I loved George more than her. He asked me if I would mind very much if she were dead.

  His next question breaks into the memories that I wish I could forget. “Do you think he might have been…” He pauses. “Ill wished?”

  Ill wished? I can hardly believe what I am hearing. Is the duke seriously suggesting that the king is impotent with his wife as a result of a curse, or a spell, or an ill wishing? Of course the law of the land says that impotence in a healthy man can be caused only by the action of a witch; but in real life everyone knows that illness or old age can render a man feeble, and the king is grossly fat, almost paralyzed with pain, and sick as a dog in both body and soul. Ill wishing? The last time the king claimed to be a victim of ill wishing, the woman he accused was my sister-in-law Anne, who went to the block, guilty of witchcraft, the evidence being the king’s impotence with her and her lust with other men.

  “You cannot think that the queen-” I break off. “No one could think that this queen… that yet another queen…” The suggestion is so preposterous and so fraught with danger I cannot even put it into words. “The country would not stand… nobody would believe it… not again-” I break off. “He can’t go on doing this…”

  “I am thinking nothing. But if he is unmanned, then someone must be ill wishing him. Who could it be, if not her?”

  I am silent. If the duke is collecting evidence of the queen ill wishing her husband, then she is a dead woman.

  “He has no desire for the queen at the moment,” I begin. “But surely it is nothing worse than that? Desire may come. After all, he is not a young man; he is not a well man.”

  He nods. I am trying to judge what he wants to hear. “And he has desire for others,” I go on.

  “Ah, this proves the accusation,” he says slickly. “It could be that he has been ill wished only when he lies with the queen, so that he cannot be a man with her, so he cannot give England a son and heir.”

  “If you say so,” I agree. Pointless to say that it is far more likely that since he is old and often ill, he has not the lust that he used to have; and only a little slut like Katherine Howard with her tricks and her charm can arouse him.

  “So who would ill wish him?” he persists.

  I shrug. Whoever I name should say their farewells, for if charged with witchcraft against the king, then they are dead. There can be no proof of innocence and no plea of not guilty; under the new laws any treasonous intent, any thought is a crime as grave as the deed itself. King Henry has passed a law against his people thinking, and his people dare not think that he is wrong. “I don’t know who would do such wickedness,” I say firmly. “I cannot imagine.”

  “Does the queen entertain Lutherans?”

  “No, never.” This is true; she is most careful to conform to English ways and takes Mass according to the rules of Archbishop Cranmer, as if she were another Jane Seymour, born to serve.

  “Does she see Papists?”

  I am astounded by this question. This is a girl from Cleves, the heartland of reform. She was raised to think of Papists as Satan on earth. “Of course not! She was born and bred a Protestant; she was brought here by the Protestant set. How would she entertain Papists?”

  “Is Lady Lisle intimate with her?”

  My swift glance to his face tells him of my shock.

  “We have to be ready; we have to be prepared. Our enemies are everywhere,” he cautions me.

  “The king himself appointed Lady Lisle to her household and Anne Bassett, her daughter, is one of his own favorites,” I say. “I have no evidence against Lady Lisle.” Because there is none, and there could never be any.

  “Or Lady Southampton?”

  “Lady Southampton?” I repeat incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “I know of nothing against Lady Southampton either,” I say.

  He nods. We both know that evidence, especially of witchcraft and ill wishing, is not hard to create. It is a whisper, and then an accusation, and then a shower of lies, and then a show trial and a sentence. It was done before to rid the king of a wife he did not want, a woman who could be sent to the block without her family lifting a finger to save her.

  He nods, and I wait for long moments in silent dread, thinking that he may order me to frame evidence that will be the death of an innocent woman, thinking what I can say if he makes such a terrible demand of me. Hoping that I can find the courage to refuse him, knowing that I will not. But he says nothing, so I curtsy to him and move toward the door; perhaps he has finished with me.

  “He will find evidence of a plot,” he predicts as my hand is on the brass latch. “He will find evidence against her, you know.”

  At once I freeze. “God help her.”

  “He will find evidence that either the Papists or the Lutherans have set a witch in his household to unman him.”

  I try to keep my face expressionless, but this is such a disaster for the queen, perhaps such danger for me, that I can feel my panic rising at my uncle’s calm words.

  “Better for us if he names Lutherans as the traitors,” he reminds me. “And not our party.”

  “Yes,” I agree.

  “Or if he d