The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “No,” I said unwillingly.

  She looked at me for a moment. “One might better ask how you manage to look so plump and pleased with yourself when according to reason you should be struggling on a small pension and wasting away.”

  I could not hold back a choke of laughter at her gloomy vision of me. “I manage,” I said shortly. “But I should like to see my children at Hever now, if you would let me go for a visit.”

  “Oh go,” she said, weary of the request. “But be back at Greenwich in time for Christmas.”

  I went to the door quickly, before she could change her mind. “And tell Henry that he is to go to a tutor, he must be educated properly,” she said. “He can go later this year.”

  I stopped, my hand on the door frame. “My boy?” I whispered.

  “My boy,” she corrected me. “He can’t play for all his childhood, you know.”

  “I thought…”

  “I have arranged for him to study with Sir Francis Weston’s son and William Brereton’s. They’re learning well, I’m told. It’s time he was with boys of his own age.”

  “I don’t want him with them,” I said instantly. “Not the sons of those two.”

  She raised one dark eyebrow. “They are gentlemen of my court,” she reminded me. “Their sons will be courtiers too, they might be his courtiers one day. He should be with them. It is my decision.”

  I wanted to scream at her but I pinched my fingertips and I kept my voice soft and sweet. “Anne. He’s only a little boy still. He is happy with his sister at Hever. If you want him educated I will stay there, I will educate him…”

  “You!” she laughed. “As well ask the ducks on the moat to teach him to quack. No, Mary. I have decided. And the king agrees with me.”

  “Anne…”

  She leaned back and looked at me through slitted eyes. “I take it that you do want to see him at all this year? You don’t want me to send him to his tutor at once?”

  “No!”

  “Then go, sister. For I have taken my decision and you weary me.”

  William watched me as I stormed up and down the confines of our narrow lodging-house room. “I’ll kill her,” I swore.

  He had his back to the door, he checked that the casement window was shut against eavesdroppers.

  “I’ll kill her! To put my boy, my precious boy, with the sons of those sodomites! To prepare him for a life at court! To order the Princess Mary to wait on Elizabeth and send my boy into exile in the same breath! She is mad to do this! She is insane with ambition. And my boy…my boy…”

  My throat was too tight for words. My knees gave way beneath me, I laid my face on the covers of our bed and sobbed into them.

  William did not move from his post at the door, he let me weep. He waited until I raised my head and wiped my wet cheeks with my fingers. Only then did he step forward and kneel on the floor near me so that I crawled, hands and knees, beaten down by my distress, into his arms. Then he held me gently and rocked me as if I were a baby myself.

  “We’ll get him back,” he whispered into my hair. “We’ll have a wonderful time with him, we’ll send him off to his tutors, and then we’ll get him back. I promise it. We’ll fetch him back, sweetheart.”

  Winter 1533

  FOR HER NEW YEAR’S PRESENT TO THE KING ANNE COMMISSIONED a most extravagant gift. The goldsmiths brought it to the great hall and spent the morning setting it up. When they came to the queen’s apartments to tell her that she might come and see it Anne beckoned to George and to me and said we might come too.

  We ran down the stairs to the great hall, Anne ahead of us, so that she could fling open the doors and see our faces. It was a most astounding sight: a fountain made of gold inlaid with diamonds and rubies. At the foot of the fountain were three naked women, also wrought of gold, and from their teats spouted springs of more water.

  “My God,” said George, truly awed. “How much did it cost you?”

  “Don’t ask,” Anne said. “It is very grand, isn’t it?”

  “Grand.” I didn’t add: “But vilely ugly,” though I could tell from George’s stunned expression that he thought the same.

  “I thought the ripple of the water would be soothing. Henry can have it in his presence chamber,” Anne said. She went closer to the edifice and touched it. “They have wrought it very fine.”

  “Fertile women gushing water,” I said, looking at the three gleaming statues.

  Anne smiled at me. “An omen,” she said. “A reminder. A wish.”

  “Pray God a prediction,” George said grimly. “Any signs yet?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But it’s bound to happen soon.”

  “Amen,” George and I said together, devout as Lutherans. “Amen.”

  Our prayers were answered. Anne missed her time in January and then in February again. When the asparagus shoots showed in spring the queen ate them at every meal for they were known to make a boy. People started to wonder. No one knew for sure. Anne went around with a half-smile on her face and reveled in being the very center of attention once again.

  Spring 1534

  THE COURT’S PLANS FOR A SUMMER PROGRESS WERE DELAYED again while Anne, at the very center of the whirlpool of gossip, was well-pleased to sit serenely with her hand on her belly and let them all wonder. The place was alive with gossip. George, my mother, and I were pestered for news from the courtiers who wanted to know if she were indeed with child, and when she might be brought to bed. No one liked to be close to the plague-ridden streets of London in the hot weather; but the thought of the queen’s confinement and the opportunities for advancement that a solitary king might provide were a powerful draw.

  We were to be at Hampton Court for the summer, as far as anyone knew, and a proposed trip to France to cement the treaty with Francis was postponed.

  Our uncle called a family meeting in May but he did not summon Anne, she was far beyond his ordering now. However, driven by curiosity, she timed her arrival at his rooms to the very second, so that we were all seated and waiting when she entered the room. She hesitated in the doorway, perfectly poised, Uncle rose from his seat at the head of the table to fetch a chair for her, but the moment his place was vacant she walked grandly and slowly to the head of the table and seated herself without a word of thanks. I giggled, a tiny suppressed sound, and Anne flashed me a smile. There was nothing she loved more than the exercise of her power that had been bought at so high a price.

  “I asked the family to meet together to discover what are your plans, Your Majesty,” my uncle said smoothly. “It would help me to know if you are indeed with child, and when you expect to be confined.”

  Anne raised a dark eyebrow as if his question was an impertinence. “You ask that of me?”

  “I was going to ask your sister or your mother, but since you are here I might as well ask you directly,” he said. He was not in the least overawed by Anne. He had served more frightening monarchs: Henry’s father and Henry himself. He had faced cavalry charges. Not even Anne at her most regal would frighten him.

  “In September,” she said shortly.

  “If it is another girl he will show his disappointment this time,” my uncle observed. “He has had trouble enough making Elizabeth his heir over Mary. The Tower is filled with men who refuse to deny Mary. And Thomas More and Fisher are certain to join them. If you had a boy then nobody would deny his rights.”

  “It will be a boy,” Anne said positively.

  Uncle smiled at her. “So we all hope. The king will take a woman when you are in your final months.” Although Anne raised her head to speak he would not be interrupted. “He always does, Anne. You must be calmer about these things, not rail at him.”

  “I shall not tolerate it,” she said flatly.

  “You will have to,” he said, as uncompromising as she was.

  “He never looked away from me in all the years of our courtship,” she said. “Not once.”

  George raised an eyebrow to me. I s