The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “Setting in,” William said. He had wrapped sacking around his legs and boots and he stood in the little porch outside the door untying it and kicking off the snow. I came slowly down the stairs and smiled at him. He was arrested by the sight of me. “Are you well?”

  “Dreamy,” I said. “I have been watching the snow all the morning.”

  He exchanged one swift meaningful glance with the midwife who was making porridge at the fire, and then he hopped across the kitchen floor in his bare feet and drew me into a chair at the fireside. “Are your pains coming?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Not yet. But I think it will be today.”

  The midwife slopped porridge into a big bowl and passed it to me with a spoon. “Sup up then,” she said encouragingly. “We’ll all need our strength.”

  In the end it was an easy birth. My baby girl came in only four hours of labor and the midwife wrapped her in a warm white sheet and put her to my breast. William, who was at my side for every moment of the four hours, put his hand on her little bloodstained head and blessed her, his mouth trembling with emotion. Then he lay down on the bed beside me. The old woman threw a cover over the three of us and left us warm, wrapped in each other’s arms, fast asleep.

  We did not wake until the baby stirred and cried two hours later and then I put her to my breast and felt the familiar, wonderful sensation of a beloved child feeding. William tucked a shawl around my shoulders and went downstairs to fetch me a cup of mulled ale. It was still snowing, I could see the white flakes against the darker sky from the bed. I snuggled down into the warmth and leaned back against the goosefeather pillows and knew that I was a woman blessed indeed.

  Spring 1535

  Dear Sister,

  The queen our sister commands me to tell you that she is with child once more and that you are to come to court to help her but that your husband must stay at Rochford and the baby with him. She will not see either. Your pension will be restored to you and you may be allowed to see your children at Hever this summer.

  That is the message I have been ordered to give you, and I tell you as well that we need you at Hampton Court. Anne expects her confinement in the autumn of this year. We will go on progress this summer but not very far. She is anxious to have you with her, because she is desperate to keep this child, as you can imagine, and she wants a friend at court as well as me. In truth, at the moment, she is the loneliest woman in the world. The king is quite taken up with Madge who goes everywhere in a new gown for every day of the week. There was a family conference held the other day by our uncle to which neither I nor Father nor Mother was bid. The Sheltons went. I leave you to imagine what Anne and I made of that. Anne is still queen, but she is no longer favorite either with the king or with her own family.

  I warn you of one other thing before you arrive. The city is in an uneasy mood. The oath of succession has driven five good men to the Tower of London and to their deaths and it may drive more. Henry has discovered that his power is without limits and now there is neither Wolsey nor Queen Katherine nor Thomas More to keep him steady. The court itself is a wilder place than when you knew it before. I have been in the forefront of it, and it sickens me. It is like a runaway cart and I cannot see how to leap clear. It is not a happy place that I am bidding you visit. No—that I am begging you to visit.

  As inducement, I can promise you a summer with your children, if Anne is well enough to let you leave her.

  George.

  I took the letter with the heavy Boleyn seal to my husband where he was in the yard, milking a cow with his head pressed against her warm flank and the milk hissing into the bucket.

  “Good news?” he asked, reading my bright face.

  “I am allowed back to court. Anne is with child again and she wants me there.”

  “And your children?”

  “I can see them this summer if she will release me.”

  “Thank God,” he said simply, and he turned his head to the cow’s belly and closed his eyes for a moment and I realized, as I had not fully known before, that he had been suffering for me in the loss of my children.

  “Any forgiveness for me?” he asked after a little while.

  I shook my head. “You’re forbidden. But I suppose you could just come with me.”

  “I’d be sorry to leave the farm again for long.”

  I chuckled. “Have you become a rustic, my love?”

  “Arr,” he said. He rose from the milking stool and patted the cow on the rump. I held open the gate for her and she went out into the field where the spring grass was coming through rich and green. “I’ll come to court with you, whether they say so or not; and when the summer comes, we’ll come back here.”

  “After Hever,” I stipulated.

  He smiled at me and his warm hand closed on mine as it rested on the top of the gate. “After Hever, of course,” he said. “When is the queen’s baby due?”

  “In the autumn. But no one knows.”

  “Pray God this time she can carry it.” He hesitated for a moment and then dipped a ladle into the warm milk. “Taste,” he commanded.

  I did as I was bid and drank a draught of the warm foamy milk.

  “Good?”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you want it in the dairy for churning?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I thought I’d do it myself.”

  “I don’t want you getting too tired.”

  I smiled at his concern. “I can do it.”

  “I’ll carry it in for you,” he said tenderly. And he led the way into the dairy where our baby, named Anne to please her aunt, wrapped tight in her swaddling, was asleep on the bench.

  The royal barge was sent to bring me back to Hampton Court. William, the wet nurse, and myself embarked at Leigh very grand in our court clothes. Our horses were to follow later. The imposing nature of our send-off was rather spoiled by my husband who kept shouting last-minute instructions to Megan’s husband who would care for the farm while we were away.

  “I am sure he would have remembered the shear the sheep,” I remarked mildly when William finally settled down into his seat and stopped hanging over the rail and bawling like a seaman. “When their coats grew very long, he would probably have noticed.”

  He grinned. “I am sorry. Did I disgrace you?”

  “Well, since you are a member of the royal family, I do think you might find a way to behave which is not quite like a drunk farmer on market day.”

  He was quite unrepentant. “Beg your pardon, Lady Stafford,” he said. “I swear, when we get to Hampton Court I shall be discretion itself. Where shall I sleep, for instance? Would a hayloft in your stable be sufficiently humble?”

  “I thought we might take a little house in the town. And I’ll come every day for most of the day.”

  “And you had better come home to sleep at night,” he said emphatically. “Or I shall come up to the palace and fetch you. You’re my wife now, my acknowledged wife. I expect you to act like one.”

  I smiled and turned my head away so that he should not see the amusement in my face. Pointless to remind my straightforward determined husband, that my previous marriage had been a court marriage and I had all but never slept in my husband’s bed, and no one had been in the least surprised.

  “Makes no difference,” he said, with his intuitive knowledge of my thoughts. “No difference at all how your first marriage was. This is my marriage, and I want my wife in my bed.”

  I laughed aloud and snuggled back into his arms. “It’s where I want to be,” I confessed. “Why would I ever want to be anywhere else?”

  The royal barge went smoothly upriver, the rowers keeping to the rhythmic beat of the drum, the tide, rushing inward, carrying us as fast as a cantering horse. The familiar landmarks came into sight, the great square white tower and the yawning mouth of the watergate at the Tower of London. The bridge was a dark shadow across the river like a doorway opening up to the beauty of the waterside palaces and their gardens and all the bu