The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  William pushed me unceremoniously into one of the alcoves of the wall and thrust his way through the people who were gathering around to see Anne’s body wrapped in linen and laid in a box. He scooped Catherine up as if she were no more than a baby and he brought her back through the chattering shocked crowd toward me.

  “It’s done,” he said tersely to us both. “Now walk.”

  Like a man in a rage he forced us before him, through the gate and out into the City. Blindly, we found our way back to our lodgings, through the crowds which were seething around the Tower and shouting the news to one another that the whore had been beheaded, that the poor lady had been martyred, that the wife had been sacrificed, all the different versions that Anne had carried in one ill-lived life.

  Catherine stumbled as her legs gave way and William picked her up and carried her in his arms like a swaddled infant. I saw her head loll against his shoulder and realized that she was half asleep. She had stayed awake for days with my sister as they had waited for the clemency which had been inviolably promised. Even now as I stumbled on the cobbles of the road into the City I realized that it was hard for me to know that the clemency had never come and that the man I had loved as the most golden prince in Christendom had turned into a monster who had broken his word and executed his wife because he could not bear the thought of her living without him and despising him. He had taken George, my beloved George, from me. And he had taken my other self: Anne.

  Catherine slept for all that day and all that night, and when she awoke, William had the horses ready and she was on her horse before she could protest. We rode to the river and took a ship downriver to Leigh. She ate while we were on board. Henry beside her. I had my baby on my hip, watching my two older children, thanking God that we were out of the city and that, if we were lucky and kept our wits about us, we might escape notice in the new reign.

  Jane Seymour had chosen her wedding clothes on the day that they executed my sister. I did not even blame her for that. Anne, or I, would have done the same thing. When Henry changed his mind he always changed it fast, and it was a wise woman who went with him and did not oppose him. Even more so now that he had divorced one faultless wife and beheaded another. Now he knew his power.

  Jane would be the new queen and her children, when she had them, would be the next princes or princesses. Or she might wait, as the other queens had waited, every month, desperate to know that she had conceived, knowing each month that it did not happen that Henry’s love wore a little thinner, that his patience grew a little shorter. Or Anne’s curse of death in childbed, and death to her son, might come true. I did not envy Jane Seymour. I had seen two queens married to King Henry and neither of them had much joy of it.

  And as for us Boleyns, my father was right, all we could do now was survive. My uncle had lost a good hand with the death of Anne. He had thrown her onto the gaming table just as he had thrown me or Madge. Whether a girl was fit for seduction or a sop for the king’s rage, or even to aim at the highest place in the land, he would always have another Howard girl at the ready. He would play again. But we Boleyns were destroyed. We had lost our most famous girl, Queen Anne, and we had lost George, our heir. And Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was a nobody, worth even less than the despised Princess Mary. She would never be called princess again. She would never sit on the throne.

  “I’m glad of it,” I said simply to William as the children slept, rocked by the movement of the boat on the ebbing tide. “I want to live in the country with you. I want to bring up our children to love each other and fear God. I want to find some peace now, I have had enough of playing the great game at court. I have seen the price that has to be paid and it is too high. I just want you. I just want to live at Rochford and love you.”

  He put his arm around me and held me close to him against the cold wind that blew steadily off the sea. “It’s agreed,” he said. “Your part in this is done, please God.” He looked forward to where my two children were in the prow of the boat, looking downriver to the sea, swaying with the rhythmic beat of the oars. “But those two? They’ll be sailing upriver again, back to court and power, sometime in their lives.”

  I shook my head in protest.

  “They’re half Boleyn and half Tudor,” he said. “My God, what a combination. And their cousin Elizabeth the same. Nobody can say what they will do.”

  Author’s Note

  Mary and William Stafford did live a long and happy life at Rochford. When her parents died (in 1538 and 1539), Mary inherited the whole of the Boleyn family holdings in Essex, and she and William became wealthy landowners.

  She died in 1543 and her son, Henry Carey, rose to become a major advisor and courtier at the court of his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, the greatest queen England ever had. She made him Viscount Hunsdon. Mary’s daughter Catherine married Sir Francis Knollys and founded a great Elizabethan dynasty.

  I am indebted to Retha M. Warnicke, whose book The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn has been a most helpful source for this story. I have followed Warnicke’s original and provocative thesis that the homosexual ring around Anne, including her brother George, and her last miscarriage created a climate in which the king could accuse her of witchcraft and perverse sexual practices.

  I am very grateful to the following authors, whose books helped me to trace the otherwise untold story of Mary Boleyn, or provided background for the period:

  Bindoff, S. T. Pelican History of England: Tudor England. Penguin, 1993.

  Bruce, Marie Louise. Anne Boleyn. Collins, 1972.

  Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage and Death, Ritual Religions and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. OUP, 1977.

  Darby, H. C. A New Historical Geography of England before 1600. CUP, 1976.

  Elton, G.R. England under the Tudors. Methuen, 1955.

  Fletcher, Anthony. Tudor Rebellions. Longman, 1968.

  Guy, John. Tudor England. OUP, 1988.

  Haynes, Alan. Sex in Elizabethan England. Sutton, 1997.

  Loades, David. The Tudor Court. Batsford, 1986.

  ———. Henry VIII and his Queens. Sutton, 2000.

  Mackie, J. D. Oxford History of England, The Earlier Tudors. OUP, 1952.

  Plowden, Alison. Tudor Women, Queens and Commoners. Sutton, 1998.

  Randell, Keith. Henry VIII and the Reformation in England. Hodder, 1993.

  Scarisbrick, J. J. Yale English Monarchs: Henry VIII. YUP, 1997.

  Smith, Baldwin Lacey. A Tudor Tragedy, the Life and Times of Catherine Howard. Cape, 1961.

  Starkey, David. The Reign of Henry VIII, Personalities and Politics. G. Philip, 1985.

  ———. Henry VIII: A European Court in England. Collins and Brown, 1991.

  Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. Pimlico, 1943.

  Turner, Robert. Elizabethan Magic. Element, 1989.

  Warnicke, Retha M. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn. CUP, 1991.

  Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Pimlico, 1997.

  Touchstone

  Reading Group Guide

  The Other Boleyn Girl

  DISCUSSION POINTS

  Why does Philippa Gregory choose Mary to narrate the story? Keeping in mind the relationship between the observer and those observed, is Mary a good, trustworthy, narrator? As Mary ages, how is her loss of innocence reflected in her telling of the story?

  Look at the exchange between Mary and her mother at the end of the first chapter. How does the author foreshadow what is to come? How do the events of the first chapter frame the entire story?

  Discuss the Boleyn family’s scheming and jockeying for favor in the court. In light of these politics, discuss the significance of Mary’s explanation that she had “a talent for loving [the king]” (page 119). Is this simply a girl’s fantasy? Why does Mary call herself and George “a pair of pleasant snakes” (page 131)?

  On page 29, Mary professes her love and admiration for Queen Katherine and feels she can’t betray her. In what ways are her honorable i