The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “Can you move your feet, Henry?”

  We all saw his boots twitch. “Yes.”

  “And all your fingers?”

  I felt his hand grip mine more strongly.

  “Aye.”

  “Does it hurt inside you, my love? Does your belly hurt?”

  He shook his head. “It hurts all over.”

  I looked at the physician.

  “He should be leeched.”

  “When you don’t even know where he is hurt?”

  “He could be bleeding inside.”

  “Let me sleep,” Henry said quietly. “Stay with me, Mary.”

  I turned away from the doctor to look down into the king’s face. He looked so much younger, lying quietly and drowsily, that I could almost believe that he had been the young prince that I had adored. The fatness of his cheeks fell away as he lay on his back, the beautiful line of his brow was unchanged. This man was the only one who could hold the country together. Without him we would all be ruined: not just the Howard family, not just us Boleyns, but every man and woman and child in every parish in the country. No one else would stop the lords snapping at the crown. There were four heirs with good claims to the throne: Princess Mary, my niece Elizabeth, my son Henry, and the bastard Henry Fitzroy. The church was in uproar already, the Spanish emperor or the French king would take a mandate from the Pope to come to restore order and then we would never be rid of them.

  “Will you get better if you sleep?” I asked him.

  He opened his blue eyes and smiled at me. “Oh yes,” he said in his little voice.

  “Will you lie still if we carry you upstairs to your bed?”

  He nodded. “Hold my hand.”

  I turned to the physician. “Should we do that? Get him to bed and let him rest?”

  He looked terrified. The future of England was in his hands. “I think so,” he said uncertainly.

  “Well, he can’t sleep here,” I pointed out.

  George stepped forward and picked out half a dozen of the strongest-looking men, and ranged them around the litter. “You keep hold of his hand, Mary, and keep him still. The rest of you lift when I say the word and go to the stairs. We’ll take a rest on the first landing and then go again. One, two, three, now: lift.”

  They strained to lift him and to hold the litter level. I went alongside, my hand gripped in the king’s. They got into a shuffling stride which kept them all together and we made it up the stairs to the king’s apartments. Someone ran on ahead and threw open the double doors into his presence chamber and then beyond, into the privy chamber. They laid the litter on the bed, the king was badly jolted as they put it down, he groaned in bewildered pain. Then we had the task of getting him off the litter and onto his bed. There was nothing for it but for the men to climb on the bed and take him by his shoulders and feet and heave him up, while the others dragged the litter out from underneath him.

  I saw the physician’s expression at this rough treatment and I realized that if the king was bleeding inside, then we had probably just killed him. He groaned in pain and for a moment I thought it was the death rattle and that we would all be blamed for this. But then he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Katherine?” he asked.

  There was a superstitious hiss from all the men around me. I looked to George. “Out,” he said shortly. “Everyone out.”

  Sir Francis Weston came toward him and whispered quietly in his ear. George listened attentively and touched Sir Francis’s arm in thanks.

  “It is the queen’s orders that His Majesty be left with the physicians and with his dear sister-in-law, Mary, and with me,” George announced. “The rest of you can wait outside.”

  Reluctantly, they left the room. Outside I heard my uncle stating very loudly that if the king were incapacitated then the queen would be Regent for the Princess Elizabeth, and that no one should need reminding that they had all, individually, sworn their loyalty to the Princess Elizabeth, his only chosen and legitimate heir.

  “Katherine?” Henry asked again, looking up at me.

  “No, it’s me, Mary,” I said gently. “Mary Boleyn as was. Mary Stafford now.”

  Shakily he took my hand and raised it to his lips. “My love,” he said softly, and none of us knew which of his many loves he was addressing: the queen who had died still loving him, the queen who was sick with fear in the same palace, or me, the girl he had once loved.

  “D’you want to sleep?” I asked anxiously.

  His blue gaze was hazy, he looked like a drunkard. “Sleep. Yes,” he mumbled.

  “I’ll sit beside you.” George pulled up a chair for me and I sat down without drawing my hand away from the king.

  “Pray to God he wakes up,” George said, looking down at Henry’s waxy face and his fluttering eyelids.

  “Amen,” I said. “Amen.”

  We sat with him till the middle of the afternoon, the physicians at the foot of the bed, George and I at the head, my mother and father forever coming in and out, my uncle away somewhere, plotting.

  Henry was sweating and one of the physicians went to ease the covers back from him, but suddenly checked. On his fat calf where he had been injured jousting long ago was a dark ugly stain of blood and pus. His wound, which had never properly healed, had opened up again.

  “He should be leeched,” the man said. “Get the leeches onto that and let them suck out the poison.”

  “I can’t look,” I confessed shakily to George.

  “Go and sit in the window, and don’t you dare faint,” he said roughly. “I’ll call you when they’ve got them on and you can come back to the bedside.”

  I stayed in the window seat, resolutely not looking back, trying not to hear the clink of the jars as they put the black slugs on the king’s legs and left them to suck away at the torn flesh. Then George called, “Come back and sit beside him, you needn’t see anything.” And I returned to my place at the head of the bed, only going away when the leeches had sucked themselves into little sated balls of black slime and could be taken off the wound.

  In the mid-afternoon, I was holding the king’s hand and stroking it, like one might gentle a sick dog, when he suddenly gripped me, his eyes opened and his gaze was clear. “God’s blood,” he said. “I ache all over.”

  “You had a fall from your horse,” I said, trying to judge if he knew where he was.

  “I remember,” he said. “I don’t remember coming back to the palace.”

  “We carried you in.” George came forward from the windowseat. “Brought you upstairs. You wanted Mary at your side.”

  Henry gave me a mildly surprised smile. “I did?”

  “You weren’t yourself,” I said. “You were wandering. Praise God you’re well again.”

  “I’ll get a message to the queen.” George ordered one of the guards to tell her that the king was awake and well again.

  Henry chuckled. “You must all have been sweating.” He went to move in the bed but he suddenly grimaced with pain. “God’s death! My leg.”

  “Your old wound has opened up,” I said. “They put leeches on it.”

  “Leeches. It needs a poultice. Katherine knows how to make it, ask her…” He bit his lip. “Someone should know how to treat it,” he said. “For God’s sake. Someone should know the recipe.” He was silent for a moment. “Give me wine.”

  A page came running with a cup and George held it to the king’s lips. Henry drained it. His color came back and his attention returned to me. “So who moved first?” he asked curiously. “Seymour or Howard or Percy? Who was going to keep my throne warm for my daughter and call himself Regent for the whole of her minority?”

  George knew Henry too well to be led into a laughing confession. “The whole court has been on its knees,” he said. “No one thought of anything but your health.”

  Henry nodded, believing nothing.

  “I’ll go and tell the court,” George said. “They will hold a thanksgiving Mass. We were most afraid.”