The Boleyn Inheritance Read online

  I wish to God I had not spat.

  This is a bad beginning. A bad and undignified beginning. Really, he should not have come on me unprepared and without warning. All very well for them to tell me now that he loves disguising and masquing and pretending to be an ordinary man so that people can discover him with delight. They never told me this before. On the contrary, every day it has been dinned into my head that the English court is formal, that things must be done in a certain way, that I have to learn orders of precedence, that I must never be faulted by calling a junior member of a family to my side before a senior member, that these things matter to the English more than life itself. Every day before I left Cleves, my mother reminded me that the Queen of England must be above reproach, must be a woman of utter royal dignity and coldness, must never be familiar, must never be light, must never be overly friendly. Every day she told me that the life of a Queen of England depends on her unblemished reputation. She threatened me with the same fate as Anne Boleyn if I was loose and warm and amorous like her.

  So why should I ever dream that some fat old drunk would come up and kiss me? How would I ever dream that I am supposed to let an ugly old man kiss me without introduction or warning?

  Still, I wish to God that I had not spat out the foul taste of him.

  Anyway, perhaps it is not so bad. This morning he has sent me a present, a gift of rich sables, very expensive and very high quality. Little Katherine Howard, who is so sweet that she mistook the king for a stranger and greeted him kindly, has had a brooch of gold from him. Sir Anthony Browne brought the gifts this morning with a pretty speech, and he told me that the king has gone ahead to prepare for our official meeting, which will happen at a place called Blackheath, outside the City of London. My ladies say that there will be no surprises between now and then, so I need not be on my guard. They say that this disguising is a favorite game of the king’s and once we are married I must be prepared for him to come wearing a false beard or a big hat and ask me to dance, and we will all pretend not to know him. I smile and say how charming, though in truth I am thinking: how odd, and how childlike, and really, how very vain of him, how foolishly vain to hope that people will fall in love with him on sight as a common man, when he looks as he does now. Perhaps when he was young and handsome he could go about in disguise and people would welcome him for his good looks and charm; but surely, for many years now, many years, people must have only pretended to admire him? But I don’t speak my thoughts. It is better that I say nothing now, having spoiled the game once already.

  The girl who saved the day by greeting him so politely, little Katherine Howard, is one of my new maids-in-waiting. I call her to me in the bustle of departing this morning, and I thank her, as best I can manage in English, for her help.

  She dips a little curtsy, and speaks to me in a rattle of English.

  “She says that she is delighted to serve you,” my translator, Lotte, tells me. “And that she has not been to court before, so she did not recognize the king either.”

  “Why then did she speak to a stranger who had come without invitation?” I ask, puzzled. “Surely, she should have ignored him? Such a rude man, pushing his way in?”

  Lotte turns this into English, and I see the girl look at me as if there is more that divides us than language, as if we are in different worlds, as if I come from the snows and fly on white wings.

  “Was?” I ask in German. I spread out my hands to her and raise my eyebrows. “What?”

  She steps a little closer, she whispers in Lotte’s ear without ever taking her eyes from my face. She is such a pretty little thing, like a doll, and so earnest that I cannot help smiling.

  Lotte turns to me, she is near to laughing. “She says that of course she knew it was the king. Who else would be able to get into the chamber past the guards? Who else is so tall and fat? But the game of the court is to pretend not to know him, and to address him only because he is such a handsome stranger. She says she may be only fourteen, and her grandmother says she is a dolt; but already she knows that every man in England loves to be admired, indeed, the older they are the vainer they get, and, surely, men are not so different in Cleves?”

  I laugh at her, and at myself. “No,” I say. “Tell her that men are not so different in Cleves, but that this woman of Cleves is clearly a fool and I shall be guided by her in future even if she is only fourteen, whatever her grandmother calls her.”

  Katherine, Dartford,

  January 2, 1540

  Utter terror! Oh, God! Horror beyond my worst fears! I shall die of this, I shall. My uncle has come here, all the way from Greenwich, specially to see me, and has summoned me to him. What on God’s earth can he want with me? I am certain that my conversation with the king has come to his ears and he thinks the worst of it and will send me home to my grandmother for unmaidenly behavior. I shall die. If he sends me to Lambeth, I shall die of the humiliation. But if he sends me back to Horsham, I shall be glad to die of boredom. I shall fling myself into the whatever it is called, the river there – the River Horsh, the River Sham – the duckpond if needs be, and drown, and they will be sorry when I am drowned and lost to all of them.

  It must have been like this for my cousin Queen Anne when she knew she was to appear before him accused of adultery and knew he would not take her side. She must have been scared out of her wits, sick with terror, but I swear no worse than I am now. I could die of terror. I may just die of terror before I even see him.

  I am to see him in my Lady Rochford’s own room; the disgrace is obviously so bad that it has to be kept among us Howards, and when I go in, she is in the window seat, so I suppose it is her who has told him all about it. When she smiles at me, I scowl at her for a tale-bearing old tabby and I make a horrid face at her to let her know whom I thank for my doom.

  “Lord uncle, I beg of you not to send me to Horsham,” I say, the moment I am through the door.

  He looks at me with a scowl. “And good day to you, my niece,” he says icily.

  I drop into a curtsy, I could almost fall to my knees. “Please, my lord, don’t send me back to Lambeth either,” I say. “I beg of you. The Lady Anne is not displeased with me, she laughed when I told her-” I break off. I realize, too late, that to tell my uncle that I have told the king’s betrothed wife that although he is fat and old he is also unspeakably vain, is perhaps not the cleverest thing to say. “I didn’t tell her anything,” I correct myself. “But she is pleased with me, and she says she will take my advice even though my grandmother thinks I am a dolt.”

  His sardonic bark of laughter warns me that he agrees with my grandmother’s verdict.

  “Well, not my advice, exactly, sir; but she is pleased with me, and so is the king, for he sent me a gold brooch. Oh, please, uncle, if you let me stay I will never speak out again, I won’t even breathe! Please, I beg of you. I am utterly innocent of everything!”

  He laughs again.

  “I am,” I say. “Please, uncle, don’t turn your face from me, please trust me. I shall be a good girl, I shall make you proud of me, I shall try to be a perfect-”

  “Oh, hush, I am pleased with you,” he says.

  “I will do anything-”

  “I said, I am pleased with you.”

  I look up. “You are?”

  “You seem to have behaved delightfully. The king danced with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And talked with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And seemed much taken with you?”

  I have to think for a minute. I would not have called him exactly “taken.” He was not like a young man whose eyes drift down from my face to peek at my breasts while he is talking to me, or who blushes when I smile at him. And besides, the king almost fell back into me when Lady Anne rebuffed him. He was still shocked. He would have spoken to anyone to hide his hurt and embarrassment.

  “He did talk to me,” I repeat helplessly.

  “I am very pleased that he honored you with