The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

His eyebrows twitched together a little at that. He preferred the open bawdy humor of men to the barbed wit of women. He looked from me to Anne’s slightly quizzical expression and then he got the joke and laughed out loud, and snapped his fingers and held out his hand to me. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “No one can overshadow the bride in her early years of wedded bliss. And both Carey and I have a preference for fair-haired women.”

  Everyone laughed at that, especially Anne who was dark, and the queen whose auburn hair had faded to brown and grey. They would have been fools to do anything but laugh heartily at the king’s pleasantry. And I laughed as well, with more joy in my heart than they had in theirs, I should think.

  The musicians played an opening chord, and Henry drew me to him. “You’re a very pretty girl,” he said approvingly. “Carey tells me that he so likes a young bride that he’ll never bed any but twelve-year-old virgins ever again.”

  It was hard to keep my chin up and my smile on my face. We turned in the dance and the king smiled down on me.

  “He’s a lucky man,” he said graciously.

  “He is lucky to have your favor,” I started, stumbling toward a compliment.

  “Luckier to have yours, I should think!” he said with a sudden bellow of laughter. Then he swept me into a dance, and I whirled down the line of dancers and saw my brother’s quick glance of approval, and what was sweeter still: Anne’s envious eyes as the King of England danced past her with me in his arms.

  Anne slipped into the routine of the English court and waited for her wedding. She still had not met her husband-to-be, and the arguments about the dowry and settlements looked as if they would take forever. Not even the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, who had his finger in this as well as every other pie in the bakehouse of England, could speed the business along. In the meantime she flirted as elegantly as a Frenchwoman, served the king’s sister with a nonchalant grace, and squandered hours every day in gossiping, riding, and playing with George and me. We were alike in tastes and not far apart in age; I was the baby at fourteen to Anne’s fifteen and George’s nineteen years. We were the closest of kin and yet almost strangers. I had been at the French court with Anne while George had been learning his trade as a courtier in England. Now, reunited, we became known around the court as the three Boleyns, the three delightful Boleyns, and the king would often look round when he was in his private rooms and cry out for the three Boleyns and someone would be sent running from one end of the castle to fetch us.

  Our first task in life was to enhance the king’s many entertainments: jousting, tennis, riding, hunting, hawking, dancing. He liked to live in a continual roar of excitement and it was our duty to ensure that he was never bored. But sometimes, very rarely, in the quiet time before dinner, or if it rained and he could not hunt, he would find his own way to the queen’s apartments, and she would put down her sewing or her reading and send us away with a word.

  If I lingered I might see her smile at him, in a way that she never smiled at anyone else, not even at her daughter the Princess Mary. And once, when I had entered without realizing the king was there, I found him seated at her feet like a lover, with his head tipped back to rest in her lap as she stroked his red-gold curls off his forehead and twisted them round her fingers where they glowed as bright as the rings he had given her when she had been a young princess with hair as bright as his, and he had married her against the advice of everyone.

  I tiptoed away without them seeing me. It was so rare that they were alone together that I did not want to be the one to break the spell. I went to find Anne. She was walking in the cold garden with George, a bunch of snowdrops in her hand, her cloak wrapped tight about her.

  “The king is with the queen,” I said as I joined them. “On their own.”

  Anne raised an eyebrow. “In bed?” she asked curiously.

  I flushed. “Of course not, it’s two in the afternoon.”

  Anne smiled at me. “You must be a happy wife if you think you can’t bed before nightfall.”

  George extended his other arm to me. “She is a happy wife,” he said on my behalf. “William was telling the king that he had never known a sweeter girl. But what were they doing, Mary?”

  “Just sitting together,” I said. I had a strong feeling that I did not want to describe the scene to Anne.

  “She won’t get a son that way,” Anne said crudely.

  “Hush,” George and I said at once. The three of us drew a little closer and lowered our voices.

  “She must be losing hope of it,” George said. “What is she now? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?”

  “Only thirty-seven,” I said indignantly.

  “Does she still have her monthly courses?”

  “Oh George!”

  “Yes she does,” Anne said, matter-of-factly. “But little good they do her. It’s her fault. It can’t be laid at the king’s door with his bastard from Bessie Blount learning to ride his pony.”

  “There’s still plenty of time,” I said defensively.

  “Time for her to die and him to remarry?” Anne said thoughtfully. “Yes. And she’s not strong, is she?”

  “Anne!” For once my recoil from her was genuine. “That’s vile.”

  George glanced around once more to ensure that there was no one near us in the garden. A couple of Seymour girls were walking with their mother but we paid no attention to them. Their family were our chief rivals for power and advancement, we liked to pretend not to see them.

  “It’s vile but it’s true,” he said bluntly. “Who’s to be the next king if he doesn’t have a son?”

  “Princess Mary could marry,” I suggested.

  “A foreign prince brought in to rule England? It’d never hold,” George said. “And we can’t tolerate another war for the throne.”

  “Princess Mary could become queen in her own right and not marry,” I said wildly. “Rule as a queen on her own.”

  Anne gave a snort of disbelief, her breath a little cloud on the cold air. “Oh aye,” she said derisively. “She could ride astride and learn to joust. A girl can’t rule a country like this, the great lords’d eat her alive.”

  The three of us paused before the fountain that stood in the center of the garden. Anne, with her well-trained grace, sat on the rim of the basin and looked into the water, a few goldfish swam hopefully toward her and she pulled off her embroidered glove and dabbled her long fingers in the water. They came up, little mouths gaping, to nibble at the air. George and I watched her, as she watched her own rippling reflection.

  “Does the king think of this?” she asked her mirrored image.

  “Constantly,” George answered. “There is nothing in the world more important. I think he would legitimize Bessie Blount’s boy and make him heir if there’s no issue from the queen.”

  “A bastard on the throne?”

  “He wasn’t christened Henry Fitzroy for no reason,” George replied. “He’s acknowledged as the king’s own son. If Henry lives long enough to make the country safe for him, if he can get the Seymours to agree, and us Howards, if Wolsey gets the church behind him and the foreign powers…what should stop him?”

  “One little boy, and he a bastard,” Anne said thoughtfully. “One little girl of six, one elderly queen and a king in the prime of his life.” She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. “What’s going to happen?” she asked. “Something has to happen. What’s it going to be?”

  Cardinal Wolsey sent a message to the queen asking us to take part in a masque on Shrove Tuesday which he was to stage at his house, York Place. The queen asked me to read the letter and my voice trembled with excitement over the words: a great masque, a fortress named Chateau Vert, and five ladies to dance with the five knights who would besiege the fort. “Oh! Your Majesty…” I started and then fell silent.

  “Oh! Your Majesty, what?”

  “I was just wondering if I might be allowed to go,” I said very humbly. “