The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  “I know,” he says, and under the caressing, flirtatious tone there is real regret. I can hear it. “I know. But I have to see you tonight; I have to touch you.”

  I really don’t dare to reply to this, it is too passionate; and though there are only the ladies of my chamber around us, I know that my desire for him must just blaze out of my face.

  “Ask Lady Rochford,” I whisper. “She will find a way.” Aloud, I say: “Anyway, I cannot give you my favor. I shall have to ask the king who he favors.”

  “You can keep your favor if you will only give me a smile as I ride out,” he says. “They say the Scots are formidable fighters, big men with strong horses. Say you will be watching me and hoping that I don’t fall beneath a Scots lance.”

  This is so poignant I could almost cry. “I always watch you; you know I do. I have always watched you joust, and I have always prayed for your safety.”

  “And I watch you,” he says, so quietly that I can hardly hear him. “I watch you with such desire, Katherine, my love.”

  I can see that they are all looking at me. I rise, a little unsteadily, to my feet, and he gets to his. “You can ride with me tomorrow,” I say, as if I don’t much care either way. “We are going hunting in the morning before Mass.”

  He bows and steps back, and as he turns away I give a little gasp of shock, for there in the doorway, like a ghost, so like a ghost that for a moment I almost think he is a ghost – is Francis Dereham. My Francis, my first love, turned up on my doorstep in a smart cloak and a good jacket and a handsome hat, as if he were doing very well indeed, and as handsome as he was all those days ago when we played at husband and wife in my bed at Lambeth.

  “Mr. Dereham,” I say very clearly, so that he shall make no mistake that we are not on first-name terms anymore.

  He understands it well enough, for he drops to one knee. “Your Grace,” he says. He has a letter in his hand, and he holds it out. “Your respected grandmother, the duchess, bid me to come to you and bring you this letter.”

  I nod to my page, and I let Francis see that I don’t bestir myself to go three paces for my own letters. The lad takes it from Francis and hands it to me, for I am far too important to lean. Without looking toward him I can see Thomas Culpepper, as stiff as a heron, standing by and glaring at Francis.

  I open the duchess’s letter. It is a terrible scrawl, for she can hardly write, and since I can barely read we are very poor correspondents. I look for Lady Rochford, and she is at my side in a moment. “What does she say?” I pass it over.

  She reads it quickly and since I am watching her face and not the page I see an expression flicker across her eyes. It is as if she is playing cards and she has just seen a very good suit come up in her partner’s hand; she is almost amused.

  “She writes to remind you of this gentleman, Francis Dereham, who served in her household when you were there.”

  I have to admire the mask of her face, which is now absolutely without expression, given that she knows what Francis was to me and I to him, for I told her all about him when I was nothing more than a maid-in-waiting and she a far grander lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. And, now I come to think of it, since half my ladies-in-waiting were my friends and companions in those days, too, they all know that Francis and I, facing each other so politely, used to be naked bedmates on every night he could sneak into the girls’ bedchamber. Agnes Restwold gives a smothered little giggle, and I shoot her a look that tells her to keep her stupid mouth shut. Joan Bulmer, who had him before I did, is utterly transfixed.

  “Oh, yes,” I say, taking my cue from Lady Rochford, and I turn and smile at Francis as if we were long-standing acquaintances. I can feel Thomas Culpepper’s eyes flicking on me and around at the others, and I think that I’m going to have to explain this to him later, and he won’t like it.

  “She recommends him to your service and asks you to take him as a private secretary.”

  “Yes,” I say; I can’t think what to do. “Of course.”

  I turn to Francis. “My lady grandmother recommends you to me.” I really cannot think why she would interest herself in putting him into my household. And I can’t understand why she would put him in a position so close to me, when she herself boxed my ears and called me a lustful slut for letting him into the bedchamber when I was a girl in her household. “You are indebted to her.”

  “I am,” he says.

  I lean toward Lady Rochford. “Appoint him,” she says briefly in my ear. “Your grandmother says so.”

  “So to oblige my grandmother, I am pleased to welcome you to my court,” I finish.

  He rises to his feet. He is such a handsome young man. I really cannot blame myself for loving him when I was a girl. He turns his head and smiles at me as if he were shy of me now. “I thank you, Your Grace,” he says. “I will serve you loyally. Heart and soul.”

  I give him my hand to kiss and when he comes close I can smell the scent of his skin, that familiar, sexy smell that I once knew so well. That was the scent of my first lover; he meant everything to me. Why, I kept his shirt under my pillow so that I could bury my face in it when I went to sleep and dream of him. I adored Francis Dereham then; I only wish to God I didn’t have to meet him again now.

  He bends over my hand, and his lips on my fingertips are as soft and as yielding as I remember them on my mouth. I lean forward. “You will have to be very discreet in my service,” I say. “I am the queen now, and there must be no gossip about me – not about now, and not about the old days.”

  “I am yours heart and soul,” he says, and I feel that disloyal, betraying, irresistible flicker of desire. He loves me still, he must love me still, otherwise why would he come to serve me? And though we parted on bad terms, I remember his touch and the utter breathtaking excitement of his kisses, and the slide of his naked thigh between mine when he first came to my bed, and the insistent pressing of his lust, which was never resisted.

  “Take heed what words you speak,” I say, and he smiles at me as if he knows as well as I do what I am thinking.

  “Take heed what you remember,” he says.

  Jane Boleyn, Pontefract Castle,

  August 1541

  The two young men, and half a dozen others, each of them with good reason to believe that he is the queen’s favorite, circle her every day and the court has all the tension of a whorehouse before a brawl. The queen, excited by the attention she gets at every corner, at every hunt and breakfast and masque, is like a child who has stayed up too late; she is feverish with arousal. On the one hand she has Thomas Culpepper, holding her when she dismounts from her horse, at her side for dancing, whispering in her ear when she plays cards, first to greet her in the morning and last to leave her rooms at night. On the other she has young Dereham, appointed to wait for her orders, at her right hand with his little writing desk, as if she ever dictated a letter to anyone, constantly whispering to her, stepping forward to advise, ever present where he need not be. And then, how many others? A dozen? Twenty? Not even Anne Boleyn at her most capricious had so many young men circling her, like dogs slavering at a butcher’s door. But Anne, even at her most flirtatious, never appeared to be a girl who might bestow her favors for a smile, who might be seduced by a song, by a poem, by a word. The whole court begins to see that the queen’s joy, which has made the king so happy, is not that of an innocent girl whom he so fondly believes adores only him, it is that of a flirt who revels in constant male attention.

  Of course there is trouble; there is almost a fight. One of the senior men at court tells Dereham that he should have risen from the dinner table and gone, since he is not of the queen’s council and only they are sitting over their wine. Dereham, loose-mouthed, says that he was in the queen’s council long before the rest of us knew her, and will be familiar with her long after the rest of us are dismissed. Of course: uproar. The terror is that it might get to the king’s ears, and so Dereham is summoned to the queen’s rooms and she sees him, with me standing b