The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  The door opens and I start up, expecting him; but it is not Cromwell, nor his man, but little Katherine Howard, her face wan and her eyes tragic. She has her traveling cape over her arm, and as soon as I see it I feel a wave of nausea from sheer terror. Little Kitty has been arrested; she, too, has been charged with some crime. Quickly I go to her and take her hands.

  “Kitty? What is it? What is the charge?”

  “I’m safe,” she gasps. “It’s all right. I am safe. I am just to go home to my grandmother, for a while.”

  “But why? What do they say you have done?”

  Her little face is twisted with distress. “I am not to be your maid-in-waiting anymore.”

  “You are not?”

  “No. I have come to say good-bye.”

  “What have you done?” I cry out. Surely this girl, not much more than a child, cannot have committed any crime? The worst thing that Katherine Howard is capable of is vanity and flirtation, and this is not a court that punishes such sins. “I will not let them take you away. I defend you. I know you are good girl. What do they say against you?”

  “I have done nothing,” she says. “But they tell me it is better for me to be away from court while all this is happening.”

  “All what? Oh, Kitty, tell me quickly, what you know?”

  She beckons me, and I bend down so that she can whisper in my ear. “Anne, Your Grace I mean, dearest queen. Thomas Cromwell has been arrested for treason.”

  “Treason? Cromwell?”

  “Ssh. Yes.”

  “What has he done?”

  “He conspired with Lord Lisle and the Papists to put the king under an enchantment.”

  My mind is spinning, and I don’t fully understand what she is saying. “A what? What is that?”

  “Thomas Cromwell made a spell,” she says.

  When she sees I still do not understand the word, she gently takes my face and draws it down so that she can whisper in my ear again. “Thomas Cromwell employed a witch,” she says softly, without any inflection. “Thomas Cromwell hired a witch to destroy His Majesty the king.”

  She leans back to see if I understand her now, and the horror in my face tells her that I do.

  “They know this for true?”

  She nods.

  “Who is the witch?” I breathe. “What has she done?”

  “She has put the king under a spell so he is unmanned,” she says. “She has cursed the king so that he shall not have a son by you.”

  “Who is the witch?” I demand. “Who is Thomas Cromwell’s witch? Who has unmanned the king? Who do they say she is?” Katherine’s little face is pinched with fear. “Anne, Your Grace, my dearest queen, what if they say it is you?”

  I live almost withdrawn from the world, emerging from my rooms only to dine before the court, where I try to appear serene, or, better still, innocent. They are questioning Thomas Cromwell, and the arrests go on; other men are accused of treason against the king, accused of employing a witch to blight his manhood. There is a network of plotters unfolding. Lord Lisle is said to have been the focus in Calais; he aided the Papists and the Pole family who have long wanted to recapture the throne from the Tudors. His second in command at the fortress has fled to Rome to serve under Cardinal Pole, which proves the guilt. They say that Lord Lisle and his party have worked with a witch to make sure that the king should not have a fruitful marriage with me, shall not make another heir to his reformed religion. But at the same time, it is said that Thomas Cromwell was aiding the Lutherans, the reformers, the evangelicals. It is said he brought me in to marry the king and ordered a witch to unman the king so that he could put his own line on the throne. But who is the witch? the court asks itself. Who is the witch who was friends with Lord Lisle, and was brought to England by Thomas Cromwell? Who is the witch? What woman is indicated by both of these nightmares of evil? Ask it again: what woman was brought to England by Thomas Cromwell, but is friends with Lord Lisle?

  Clearly, there is only one woman.

  Only one woman, brought to England by Thomas Cromwell, befriended by Lord Lisle, unmanning the king so that he was impotent on the night of his wedding and every night thereafter.

  No one has named the witch yet; they are gathering evidence.

  Princess Mary’s departure has been brought forward, and I have only a moment with her as we wait for them to bring the horses round from the stables.

  “You know I am innocent of any wrongdoing,” I say to her under cover of the noise of the servants running around and her guards calling for their horses. “Whatever you hear in the future about me, please believe me: I am innocent.”

  “Of course,” she says levelly. She does not look at me. She is Henry’s daughter; she has served a long apprenticeship in learning not to betray herself. “I shall pray for you every day. I shall pray that they all see your innocence as I do.”

  “I am certain that Lord Lisle is innocent, too,” I say.

  “Without doubt,” she replies in the same abrupt way.

  “Can I save him? Can you?”

  “No.”

  “Princess Mary, on your faith, can nothing be done?”

  She risks a sideways glance at me. “Dearest Anne, nothing. There is nothing to do but to keep our own counsel and pray for better times.”

  “Will you tell me something?”

  She looks around and sees that her horses have not yet come. She takes my arm and we walk a little way toward the stable yard as if we are looking to see how long they will be. “What is it?”

  “Who is this Pole family? And why does the king fear the Papists when he defeated them so long ago?”

  “The Poles are the Plantagenet family, of the House of York, some would say the true heirs to the throne of England,” she says. “Lady Margaret Pole was my mother’s truest friend; she was as a mother to me, she is utterly loyal to the throne. The king has her in the Tower now, with all of her family that he could capture. They are accused of treason, but everyone knows they have committed no offense but being of Plantagenet blood. The king is so fearful for his throne that I think he will not allow this family to live. Lady Margaret’s two grandsons, two little boys, are in the Tower also, God help them. She, my dearest Lady Margaret, she will not be allowed to live. Others of the family are in exile; they can never come home.”

  “They are Papists?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says quietly. “They are. One of them, Reginald, is a cardinal. Some would say they are the true kings of the true faith of England. But that would be treason, and you would be put to death for saying it.”

  “And why does the king fear the Papists so much? I thought England was converted to the reformed faith? I thought the Papists were defeated?”

  Princess Mary shakes her head. “No. I should think fewer than half the people welcome the changes, and many wish for the old ways back again. When the king denied the authority of the Pope and destroyed the monasteries, there was a great rising of men in the north of the country, determined to defend the church and the holy houses. They called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and they marched under the banner of the five wounds of Jesus Christ. The king sent the hardest man in the kingdom against them at the head of the army, and he feared them so badly that he called for a parley, spoke with sweet words, and promised them a pardon and a parliament.”

  “Who was that?” Already I know.

  “Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.”

  “And the pardon?”

  “As soon as the army had disbanded, he beheaded the leaders and hanged the followers.” She speaks with as little inflection as if she is complaining that the luggage wagon is badly packed. “He promised a parliament and a pardon on the king’s sacred word. He gave his own word, too, on his honor. It meant nothing.”

  “They are defeated?”

  “Well, he hanged seventy monks from the roof timbers of their own abbey,” she says bitterly. “So they won’t defy him again. But no, I believe the true faith will never be defeated.”