The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  She started to drink wine in the morning. It brought color to her face and a brightness to her eyes, it lifted her from her intense fatigue and nervousness. Once she thrust a bottle at me when I came into her rooms with Uncle following me. “Hide it,” she hissed desperately and turned to him with the back of her hand against her mouth so that he would not smell the drink on her breath.

  “Anne, you have to stop,” I said when he had gone. “Everyone watches you all the time. People are bound to see, and they will tell the king.”

  “I can’t stop,” she said darkly. “I can’t stop anything, not for a moment. I have to go on and on and on, as if I am the happiest woman in the world. I am going to marry the man I love. I am going to be Queen of England. Of course I am happy. Of course I am wonderfully happy. There couldn’t be a happier woman in England than me.”

  George was due to come home in the New Year and Anne and I decided on a private dinner in her grand rooms to welcome him. We spent the day consulting with the cooks and ordering the very best that they had, and then the afternoon lingering in the window seats waiting to see George’s boat coming up the river with the Howard standard flying. I spotted it first, dark against the dusk, and I did not say a word to Anne but slipped from the room and ran down the stairs so that when George disembarked and came up the landing stage I was alone, into his arms, and it was me that he kissed and whispered: “Good God, sister, I am glad to be home.”

  When Anne saw that she had lost the chance of taking first place she did not run after me but waited to greet him in her rooms, before the great arching mantelpiece when he bowed and next kissed her hand and only then folded her into his arms. Then the women were dismissed and we were the three Boleyns together again, as we had always been.

  George had told us all his news over dinner and he wanted to know everything that had happened since he had been away from court. I noticed that Anne was careful what she told him. She did not tell him that she could not go into the City without an armed guard. She did not tell him that in the country she had to ride swiftly through peaceful little villages. She did not tell him that the night after Cardinal Wolsey had died she had designed and danced in a masque entitled “Sending the Cardinal to Hell” which had shocked everyone who saw it by its tasteless triumphing over the king’s dead friend and its outright bawdiness. She did not tell him that Bishop Fisher was still against her and that Bishop Fisher had nearly died of poison. When she did not tell him these things I knew, as I had in truth known before, that she was ashamed of the woman that she was becoming. She did not want George to know how deep this canker of ambition had spread inside her. She did not want him to know that she was not his beloved little sister any more but a woman who had learned to throw everything, even her mortal soul, into the battle to become queen.

  “And what about you?” George asked me. “What’s his name?”

  Anne was blank. “What are you talking about?”

  “Anyone can see—surely I’ve not got it wrong?—Marianne is glowing like a milkmaid in springtime. I would have put a fortune on her being in love.”

  I blushed a deep scarlet.

  “I thought so,” my brother said with deep satisfaction. “Who is it?”

  “Mary has no lover,” Anne said.

  “I suppose she might have her eye on somebody without your permission,” George suggested. “I suppose somebody might have picked her out without applying to you, Mistress Queen.”

  “He’d better not,” she said, without a trace of a smile. “I have plans for Mary.”

  George let out a soundless whistle. “Good God, Annamaria, anyone would think you were anointed already.”

  She rounded on him. “When I am, I will know who my friends are. Mary is my lady in waiting and I keep good order in my household.”

  “Surely she can make her own choice now.”

  Anne shook her head. “Not if she wants my favor.”

  “For God’s sake, Anne! We’re family. You’re where you are because Mary stepped back for you. You can’t turn around now and act like a Princess of the Blood. We put you where you are. You can’t treat us like subjects.”

  “You are subjects,” she said simply. “You, Mary, even Uncle Howard. I had my own aunt sent from court, I had the king’s brother-in-law sent from court. I had the queen herself sent from court. Is there anyone who has any doubt that I can send them into exile if I wish? No. You may have helped me to be where I am—”

  “Helped you! We bloody well pushed you!”

  “But now I am here I will be queen. And you will be my subjects and in my service. I will be the queen and mother to the next King of England. So you had better remember that, George, for I won’t tell you again.”

  Anne rose up from the floor and swept toward the door. She stood before it, waiting for someone to open it for her, and when neither of us sprang up she flung it open herself. She turned on the threshold. “And don’t call me Annamaria any more,” she said. “And don’t call her Marianne. She is Mary, the other Boleyn girl. And I am Anne, Queen Anne to be. There is a world of difference between us two. We don’t share a name. She is next to nobody and I will be queen.”

  She stalked out, not troubling to close the door behind her. We could hear her footsteps going to her bedroom. We sat in silence while we heard her chamber door slam.

  “Good God,” George said, heartfelt. “What a witch.” He got up and closed the door against the cold draught. “How long has she been like this?”

  “Her power has grown steadily. She thinks she is untouchable.”

  “And is she?”

  “He’s deeply in love. I should think she is safe, yes.”

  “And he still hasn’t had her?”

  “No.”

  “Good God, what do they do?”

  “Everything, but the deed. She daren’t allow it.”

  “Must be driving him crazy,” George said with grim satisfaction.

  “Her too,” I said. “Almost every night he is kissing her and touching her and she is all over him with her hair and her mouth.”

  “Does she speak to everyone like this? Like she spoke to me?”

  “Far worse. And it is costing her friends. Charles Brandon is against her now, Uncle Howard is sick of her; they have quarreled outright, at least a couple of times since Christmas. She thinks she is so safe in the king’s love that she needs no other protection.”

  “I won’t tolerate it,” George said. “I’ll tell her.”

  I maintained my look of sisterly concern, but my heart leaped at the thought of a gulf opening up between Anne and George. If I could get George on my side, I would have a real advantage in any fight to regain the ownership of my son.

  “And truly, is there no one that has caught your eye?” he asked.

  “A nobody,” I said. “I would tell no one but you, George—so keep it as a secret.”

  “I swear,” he said, taking both my hands and drawing me closer. “A secret, on my honor. Are you in love?”

  “Oh no,” I said, drawing back at the very thought of it. “Of course not. But he pays me a little attention and it’s nice to have a man make a fuss of you.”

  “I’d have thought the court was full of men making a fuss of you.”

  “Oh they write poetry and they swear they will die of love. But he…he is a little more…real.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A nobody,” I said again. “So I don’t think about him.”

  “Pity you can’t just have him,” George said with brotherly candor.

  I did not reply. I was thinking of William Stafford’s engaging intimate smile. “Yes,” I said very quietly. “A pity, but I can’t.”

  Spring 1532

  GEORGE, IGNORANT OF THE CHANGE OF THE TEMPER OF THE people, invited Anne and me to ride out with him, down the river, to dine at the little ale house and come home again. I waited for Anne to refuse, to tell him that it was no longer safe for her to ride out alone; but she said nothing. She dress