The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “Walk with me in the gardens before dinner,” my husband said quietly in my ear.

  At once I was alert. “Why?”

  He laughed at me. “Oh, you Howards! Because I like your company, because I ask it of you. Because we are man and wife and we may live as man and wife any day now.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I don’t forget it.”

  “Perhaps you will learn to anticipate it with pleasure?”

  “Perhaps,” I said sweetly.

  He looked out over the river where the afternoon sun was sparkling on the water. The boats of the noblemen all manned by their liveried rowers were drawn up under the starter’s orders. They made a colorful sight with the oars held high like trumpets, waiting for the command to start. They all looked toward the king, who took a scarlet silk kerchief and gave it to Anne. She stepped up to the edge of the royal barge and held it high over her head. For a moment she held the pose, well aware that all eyes were on her. From where I was sitting with William we could see her in profile, her head flung back, her hood well back from her face, her pale skin flushing with pleasure, her dark green gown tight around her breasts and slim waist. She was the very essence of desire. She dropped the red kerchief and the boats leaped forward under the thrust of the oars. She did not go back to her seat at the king’s side, she had a moment where she forgot to play the queen. She leaned over the rail so that she could see as the Howard boat pulled ahead of the Seymours.

  “Come on, Howards!” she suddenly shouted. “Come on!”

  As if they heard her call above all the other shouting from the riverbank the rowers quickened their stroke and the boat surged forward, paused, and surged forward again to a quicker tempo than the Seymours’. I was on my feet now, everybody was cheering, the royal barge dipped precariously as the whole court forgot its dignity and crowded onto one side and yelled for their favorite house. The king himself, laughing like a boy again with his arm around Anne’s waist, was watching, careful not to shout for one lord or another, but clearly willing the Howards to win since that would delight the girl in his arms.

  They went faster, the oars a blur of splashing water and light, and at the line they were unquestionably half a length before the Seymours. There was a great drum roll and a blast of trumpets to tell the Seymours that it was all over for them, that we had won the boat race, that we had won the race to be the first family in the kingdom, and that it was our girl in the arms of the king with her eye on the throne of England.

  Cardinal Wolsey came home, not in triumph with an annulment in his pocket, but in disgrace, and found that he could not even talk to Henry alone. The man who had managed every single thing from the amount of wine served at banquets to the terms of the peace with France and Spain found that he had to make his report before Anne and Henry, side by side, as if they were joint monarchs. The girl he had scolded for unchastity and for aiming too high sat at the right hand of the King of England and looked at him with narrowed eyes as if she were not very impressed with what he had to say.

  The cardinal was too old and wily a courtier to let any surprize show on his face. He bowed very pleasantly to Anne and made his report. Anne smiled very equably and listened, leaned forward, whispered a little poison in Henry’s ear, and listened some more.

  “Idiot!” she stormed in our little room. I was sitting on the bed, my feet drawn out of the way. She was on her track running from window to bedpost like one of the lions in the Tower, I thought idly that she would leave a mark on the polished floorboards and we could show it to those who like relics and signs. We could call it “Anne’s Martyrdom to Time.”

  “He’s a fool, and we have got nowhere!”

  “What does he say?”

  “That it is a serious matter to put aside the aunt of the man who holds the Pope and half of Europe in his grasp, and that, God willing, Charles of Spain will be defeated by Italy and France together when they go to war, and that England should promise support but not risk a man nor loose an arrow.”

  “We wait?”

  She threw her hands above her head and screamed. “We wait? No! You can wait! The cardinal can wait! Henry can wait! But I have to dance on the spot, I have to be seen to make progress while actually making none. I have to retain the illusion of things happening, I have to make Henry feel more and more intensely loved, I have to give him the belief that things are getting better and better because he is a king and all his life everyone has told him that he shall have the very best. He has been promised cream and gold and honey, I cannot give him ‘wait.’ How am I to keep going? How am I to do it?”

  I wished that George was here. “You’ll manage,” I said. “You’ll go on as you have been going. You’ve done wonderfully well, Anne.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I will be old and exhausted before this is done.”

  Gently I took her and turned her toward her grand Venetian glass mirror. “Look,” I said.

  Anne could always be comforted by the sight of her own beauty. She paused and took a breath.

  “And you’re brilliant as well,” I reminded her. “He is always saying that you have the sharpest mind in the kingdom and if you were a man he would have you for cardinal.”

  She smiled a little sharp feral smile. “That must please Wolsey.”

  I smiled back, my face next to hers in the mirror, the two of us, as ever, a contrast in looks, in coloring, in expression. “I’m sure,” I said. “But there’s nothing Wolsey can do.”

  “He doesn’t even see the king without an appointment now,” she gloated. “I’ve seen to that. They don’t wander off together for their friendly little talks as they used to. Nothing is decided without me being there. He cannot come to the palace for a meeting with the king without notifying the king and notifying me. He is pushed out of power and I am inside it.”

  “You’ve done wonderfully well,” I said, the words sickening me as they soothed her. “And you have years and years ahead of you, Anne.”

  Winter 1527

  WILLIAM AND I SLIPPED INTO A COMFORTABLE ROUTINE WHICH was almost domestic, though it revolved around the wishes of the king and of Anne. I still slept in her bed at night and to all intents and purposes lived with her in the rooms that we shared. To the outer world we were both still the queen’s ladies in waiting, no more and no less than the others.

  But from morning to night Anne was with the king, as close to his side as a newly wed bride, as a chief counselor, as a best friend. She would return to our chamber only to change her gown or lie on the bed and snatch a rest while he was at Mass, or when he wanted to ride out with his gentlemen. Then she would lie in silence, like one who has dropped dead of exhaustion. Her gaze would be blank on the canopy of the bed, her eyes wide open, seeing nothing. She would breathe slowly and steadily as if she were sick. She would not speak at all.

  When she was in this state I learned to leave her alone. She had to find some way to rest from the unending public performance. She had to be unstoppably charming, not just to the king but to everyone who might glance in her direction. One moment of looking less than radiant and a rumor storm would swirl around the court and engulf her, and engulf us all with her.

  When she rose up from her bed and went to the king, William and I would spend time together. We met almost as strangers and he courted me. It was the oddest, simplest and sweetest thing that an estranged husband has ever done for an errant wife. He sent me little posies of flowers, sometimes sprigs of holly leaves and the rose-pink berries of yew. He sent me a little gilt bracelet. He wrote me the prettiest poems praising my gray eyes and my fair hair and asking for my favor as if I were his lady love. When I sent for my horse to ride out with Anne I would find a note tucked into my stirrup leather. When I pulled back my sheets to get into bed with Anne at night I would find a sweetmeat wrapped in gilt paper. He showered me with little gifts and little notes and whenever we were together at a court banquet or at the archery butts, or watching the players on the tennis court, he would lean toward me and