The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  “Well, I never laugh about Thomas,” I say. “I never mention his name. I don’t even say his name in the confessional. I don’t even say his name to myself.”

  “That is wise,” she says. “Keep it a secret. Keep it a complete secret.”

  She is brushing my hair, and she gives a little pause and looks at me in the mirror. “When is your course due?” she asks.

  “I can’t remember.” I never keep count. “Was it last week? Anyway, it hasn’t come.”

  There is a sort of bright alertness in her face. “It has not come?”

  “No. Brush at the back, Jane, Thomas likes it smooth at the back.”

  Her hand moves, but she does not do it very carefully. “Do you feel at all sick?” she asks. “Are your breasts any bigger?”

  “No,” I say. Then I realize what is in her mind. “Oh! Are you thinking I might be with child?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Please God.”

  “But that would be dreadful!” I exclaim. “Because, don’t you see? Don’t you think? Lady Rochford, it might not be the king’s child!”

  She puts down the brush and shakes her head. “It is God’s will,” she says slowly, as if she wants me to learn something. “If you are married to the king and you conceive a child, then that is God’s will. It is God’s will that the king has a child. So it is the king’s child; as far as you are concerned, it is the king’s own child, whatever has happened between you and another.”

  I feel a little muddled by this. “But what if it is Thomas’s child?” At once I have a picture of Thomas’s little son, a brown-haired, blue-eyed rascal like his father, a strong boy from a young father.

  She sees my face, and she guesses what I am thinking. “You are the queen,” she says firmly. “Any child you bear will be the king’s child, as God wishes. You cannot think for one moment anything different.”

  “But-”

  “No,” she says. “And you should tell the king that you have hopes of being with his child.”

  “Is it not too early?”

  “It’s never too early to give him cause for hope,” she says. “The last thing we want is to have him discontented.”

  “I will tell him,” I say. “He is coming to my room tonight. You will have to fetch Thomas to me later. Then I will tell him, too.”

  “No,” she says. “You won’t tell Thomas Culpepper.”

  “But I want to!”

  “It would spoil everything.” She speaks very fast, persuasively. “If he thinks you are with child, he will not lie with you. He will find you disgusting. He wants a mistress, not a mother of his children. You say nothing to Thomas Culpepper, but you can give the king hope. That’s the way to handle this.”

  “He would be pleased…”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “He would be kind, I am sure, but he would not come to your bed again. He would take a mistress. I have seen him talking to Catherine Carey. He would take a mistress until your time was over.”

  “I couldn’t bear that!”

  “So tell him nothing. Tell the king you have hopes, but tell Thomas nothing.”

  “Thank you, Lady Rochford,” I say humbly. If it were not for her advice, I don’t know what I would do.

  That night the king comes to my rooms, and they help him into my bed. I stand by the fire while they labor to heave him in, and they leave him tucked up with the sheets under his chin like an enormous baby.

  “Husband,” I say sweetly.

  “Come to bed, my rose,” he says. “Henry wants his rose.”

  I grit my teeth on the stupidity of his calling himself Henry. “I want to tell you something,” I say. “I have some happy news.”

  He heaves himself up, so that his head with the nightcap askew bobs up a little.

  “Yes?”

  “I have missed my course,” I say. “I may be with child.”

  “Oh, rose! My sweetest rose!”

  “It is early days,” I warn him. “But I thought you would want to know at once.”

  “Before anything else!” he assures me. “Dearest, as soon as you tell me it is true, I shall have you crowned queen.”

  “But Edward will still be your heir?” I query.

  “Yes, yes, but it would be such a weight off my mind if I knew that Edward had a brother. A family cannot be safe with only one son: a dynasty needs boys. One small accident and everything is finished; but if you have two boys, you are safe.”

  “And I will have a grand coronation,” I specify, thinking of the crown and the jewels and the gown and the feasting and the thousands of people who will come out to cheer me, the new Queen of England.

  “You will have the greatest coronation that England has ever seen, for you are the greatest queen,” he promises me. “And as soon as we get back to London I shall declare a day of national celebration for you.”

  “Oh?” This sounds rather wonderful, a day to celebrate my existence! Kitty Howard: voilà indeed! “A whole day for me?”

  “A day when everyone will go to church and say prayers of thanksgiving that God has given you to me.”

  Just church, after all. I give a faint, disappointed smile.

  “And the Master of the Revels will prepare a great feast and celebration at court,” he says. “And everyone will give you presents.”

  I beam. “That sounds lovely,” I say with satisfaction.

  “You are my sweetest rose,” he says. “My rose without a thorn. Come to bed with me now, Katherine.”

  “Yes.” I make sure I do not think of my Thomas as I go to the bloated figure in the big bed. I have a wide, happy smile on my face, and I close my eyes so I need not look at him. I cannot avoid the smell of him or the feel of him, but I can make sure that I do not think of him at all while I do what I have to do, and then lie beside him and wait for the little snuffles of satisfaction to turn to wheezy snores as he goes to sleep.

  Jane Boleyn, Ampthill,

  October 1541

  Her course started something like a week late, but I was not too disheartened. The mere thought of it had been enough to make the king more in love with her than ever, and she had at least agreed that though the sun rises and shines only on Thomas Culpepper, he does not have to be privy to every little secret.

  She has behaved very prettily with the people whom she has met on this progress; even when she has been bored and inattentive, she has kept a pleasant smile on her face, and she has learned to follow a little behind the king and to maintain an appearance of demure obedience. She serves him in bed like a paid whore, and she sits next to him at dinner and never shows by a flicker of expression that he has broken wind. She is a selfish, stupid girl, but she might, given time, make quite a good queen. If she conceives a child and gives England a son, she might live long enough to learn to be a queen that is admired.

  The king, at any rate, is mad about her. His indulgence makes our task of getting Culpepper in and out of her bedchamber so much easier. We had a bad night in Pontefract when he sent Sir Anthony Denny to her room without announcement, and she was locked in with Culpepper. Denny tried the door and went away without saying anything. There was another night when the king stirred in her bed while they were at their business only on the other side of the door, and she had to go flying back in to the old man, still damp with sweat and kisses. If the air had not been heavy with the stink of his wind, he would have smelled the scent of lust for certain. At Grafton Regis the lovers coupled in the jakes – Culpepper crept up the stairs to the stone-walled chamber that overhangs the moat, and she told her ladies that she was sick as a dog and spent the afternoon with him in there, frantically humping while the rest of us made possets. If it were not so dangerous, it would be funny. As it is, it still makes me breathless with a mixture of fear and lust when I hear them together.

  I never laugh. I think of my husband and his sister and any laughter dies in my mouth. I think of his promising to be her man through any trouble. I think of her, desperate to conceive a son, sure t