The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
“Where?” I demanded. “Show me.”
She slapped at her hard boned stomacher in frustration. “In here! In here! I felt it—” She broke off. I saw her face glow in a way I had never seen before. “Again,” she whispered. “A little flutter. It’s my child, it’s quickened. Praise God I am with child, a live child.”
She rose from her chair, her dark hair still tumbled around her shoulders. “Run and tell George.”
Even knowing their intimacy I was surprised. “George?”
“I meant the king.” She corrected herself swiftly. “Fetch the king to me.”
I ran from the room to the king’s apartments. They were dressing him for dinner but there were half a dozen men in the privy chamber with him. I dipped a curtsy at the door and he turned and beamed with pleasure at seeing me. “Why, it’s the other Boleyn girl!” he said. “The sweet-tempered one.”
More than one man sniggered at the jest. “The queen begs to see you at once, sire,” I said. “She has good news for you that cannot keep.”
He raised one of his sandy brows, he was very regal these days. “So she sends you running like a page, to fetch me like a puppy?”
I curtsied again. “Sire, it is news I was happy to run for. And you would come for this whistle, if you knew what it was.”
Someone muttered behind me, and the king threw on his golden coat and smoothed the ermine cuff. “Come then, Lady Mary. You shall lead this eager puppy to the whistle. You could lead me anywhere.”
I rested my hand lightly on top of his outstretched arm, and did not resist as he drew me a little closer. “Your married life seems to suit you, Mary,” he said intimately as we went down the stairs, half of the gentlemen of the chamber following us. “You are as pretty as when you were a girl, when you were my little sweetheart.”
I was always wary when Henry grew intimate. “That’s a long time ago,” I said cautiously. “But Your Grace is twice the prince you were then.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I cursed myself for a fool. I had meant to say that he was more powerful, more handsome now. But, idiot that I was, it sounded as if I was telling him that he was twice as fat as he had been then—which was also appallingly true.
He stopped dead on the third stair from the bottom. I was tempted to fall to my knees. I did not dare look up at him. I knew that in all the world there had never been a more incompetent courtier than I with my desire to turn a pretty phrase and my absolute inability to get it right.
There was a great bellow of sound. I peeped up at him and saw, to my intense relief, that he was shouting with laughter. “Lady Mary, are you run mad?” he demanded.
I was starting to laugh too, out of sheer relief. “I think so, Your Grace,” I said. “All I was trying to say was that then you were a young man and I a girl and now you are a king among princes. But it came out…”
Again his great shout of laughter drowned me out, and the courtiers on the stairs behind us craned their necks and leaned down, wanting to know what was amusing the king, and why I was torn between blushing for shame, and laughing myself.
Henry grabbed me round the waist and hugged me tight. “Mary, I adore you,” he said. “You are the best of the Boleyns, for no one makes me laugh as you do. Take me to my wife before you say something so dreadful that I shall have to have you beheaded.”
I slipped from his grip and led the way to the queen’s rooms, and showed him in, all his gentlemen following. Anne was not in her presence chamber, she was still in her inner room. I tapped on the door, and announced the king. She was still standing with her hair down, her hood in her hand, and that wonderful glow about her.
Henry went in and I shut the door behind him, and stood before it so that no eavesdropper could get close. It was the greatest moment of Anne’s career, I wanted her to savor it. She could tell the king that she was pregnant with a baby and for the first time since Elizabeth she had felt a child quicken in her womb.
William came in at the back of the room and saw me, before the door. He touched a shoulder and an elbow and found his way through the crowd. “Are you on guard?” he asked. “You’ve got your arms akimbo like a fishwife guarding her bucket.”
“She’s telling him that she’s with child. She has the right to do that without some damned Seymour girl popping in.”
George appeared at William’s side. “Telling him?”
“The baby quickened,” I said, smiling up into my brother’s face, anticipating his joy as my own. “She felt it. She sent me for the king at once.”
I was expecting to see his joy but I saw something else; a shadow crossed his face. It was how George looked when he had done something bad. It was George’s guilty look. It flashed through his eyes so fast that I was hardly certain that I had seen it, but for a moment I knew with absolute certainty that his conscience was not clear, and I guessed that Anne had taken him as her companion on her journey to the gates of hell to conceive this child for England.
“Oh God, what is it? What have you two done?”
At once he smiled his shallow courtier’s smile. “Nothing! Nothing. How happy they will be! What a couple of days this has been! Katherine dead and the new prince quickened in the womb. Vivat Boleyns!”
William smiled at him. “Your family always impresses me by its ability to see everything in the light of its own interests,” he said politely.
“You mean rejoicing that the queen is dead?”
“Princess Dowager.” William and I spoke together.
George grinned. “Aye. Her. Of course we celebrate it. Your trouble, William, is that you have no ambition. You don’t see that there is in life only ever one goal.”
“And what is that?” William asked.
“More,” George said simply. “Just more of anything. More of everything.”
All through the cold dark days of January, Anne and I sat together, read together, played cards together and listened to her musicians. George was forever with Anne, as attentive as a devoted husband, forever fetching her drinks and cushions for her back, and she bloomed under his attention. She took a fancy to Catherine and would have her with us too, and I watched Catherine carefully copying the manners of the ladies of the court until she could deal a card pack, or pick up a lute, with the same grace.
“She’ll be a true Boleyn girl,” Anne said approvingly of her. “Thank God she has my nose and not yours.”
“I do thank God for it every night,” I said, though sarcasm was always lost on Anne.
“We could look for a good match for her,” Anne said. “As my niece she should do very well. The king himself will take an interest.”
“I don’t want her married yet, nor against her choice,” I said.
Anne laughed. “She’s a Boleyn girl, she has to marry to suit the family.”
“She’s my girl,” I said. “And I won’t have her sold off to the highest bidder. You can get Elizabeth betrothed in the cradle, that’s your right. She’ll be a princess some day. But my children can be children before they are wed.”
Anne nodded, letting it go. “Your son is still mine though,” she said, evening the score.
I gritted my teeth. “I never forget it,” I said quietly.
The weather held very fair. Every morning there was a white ground frost and the scent of the deer was strong for the hounds as they streamed across the park and out into the countryside. The going was hard for the horses. Henry changed his mount two or three times a day, steaming with the heat of his thick winter cape, waiting impatiently for the groom to come running up with the strong big hunter dancing at the end of the reins. He rode like a young man because he felt like a young man again, one who could sire a son on a pretty wife. Katherine was dead and he could forget that she had ever been. Anne was carrying his child and it restored his faith in himself. God was smiling on Henry, as he trusted that God must do. The country was at peace and there was no threat of a Spanish invasion now that the queen was dead. The proof of the decision
Anne was contented. Never before had she felt the world coming to her fingertips. Katherine had been her rival, the shadow queen who had always darkened her own steps to the throne, and now Katherine was dead. Katherine’s daughter had threatened the right of Anne’s children to rule and now Katherine’s daughter had been forced to concede that she would take second place, and Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was promised the loyalty of every man, woman and child in the country—and those that refused to promise were either in the Tower or dead on the block. And best of all, Anne had a baby strong and growing inside her.
Henry announced that there was to be a jousting tournament and every man who called himself a man should take his armor and his horse and enter the lists. Henry himself would be riding, his renewed sense of youth and confidence prompted him to take a challenge again. William, complaining mightily of the expense, borrowed his armor from another impoverished knight and rode, taking immense care of his horse, on the first day of the tournament. He kept his seat but the other man was easily declared victor.
“God help me, I have married a coward,” I said when he came to find me in the ladies’ tent, Anne seated at the front under the awning and the rest of us, well-wrapped in furs, were standing behind her.
“God bless you, that you have,” he said. “I brought my hunter out of it without a scratch on him, and I’d rather have that than any reputation for heroism.”
“You are a commoner,” I said, smiling at him.
He slid his arm around my waist and drew me to him for a quick hidden kiss. “I have the most vulgar of tastes,” he whispered to me. “For I love my wife, and I love a bit of peace and quiet, and I love my farm and no dinner is better for me than a slice of bacon and a bite of bread.”
I nestled closer to him. “D’you want to go home?”
“When you can come too,” he said peaceably. “When her baby is born and she lets us go.”
Henry rode on the first day of the tournament and won through to the second day. Anne would have been there to watch him but she was sickly in the morning and said that she would come down at noon. She ordered me to sit with her and many of her ladies. The others rode out to the lists, all dressed in their brightest colors, and the gentlemen, some already in armor, riding with them.
“George will take care of the Seymour thing,” Anne said, watching from the window.
“And the king will be thinking of nothing but the joust,” I said reassuringly. “He loves to win more than anything else.”
We spent the morning at peace in her room. She had her altar cloth spread out for sewing again, and I was tackling one large boring patch of grass while she was doing the cloak of Our Lady at the other end. Between us was a long stretch of revelations: saints going to heaven and devils tumbling down to hell. Then I heard a sudden noise outside the window. A rider, galloping swiftly into court.
“What is it?” Anne lifted her head from her sewing.
I kneeled up on the window seat to look down. “Someone riding like a madman into the stable yard. I wonder what…”
I bit the next words out of my mouth. Racing out of the stable yard was the royal litter drawn by two stout horses.
“What is it?” Anne asked behind me.
“Nothing,” I said, thinking of her baby. “Nothing.”
She rose from her chair and looked over my shoulder, but already the royal litter was out of sight.
“Someone riding into the stables,” I said. “Perhaps the king’s horse has cast a shoe. You know how he hates to be unhorsed, even for a moment.”
She nodded but she stayed, leaning on my shoulder, looking out at the road. “There’s Uncle Howard.”
His standard before him, a small party of his men with him, our uncle rode up the track to the palace, and into the stable yard.
Anne resumed her seat. In a little while we heard the palace door bang and heard his feet and those of his men loud on the stairs. Anne raised her head, looked inquiringly as he came into her room. He bowed. There was something in that bow, lower than he usually offered to her, which warned me. Anne rose to her feet, her sewing tumbling off her lap to the floor, her hand to her mouth, her other hand on her loosely laced stomacher.
“Uncle?”
“I regret to inform you that His Majesty has fallen from his horse.”
“He’s hurt?”
“Gravely hurt.”
Anne blanched white, and swayed on her feet.
“We need to prepare,” my uncle said firmly.
I thrust Anne into a chair and looked up at him. “Prepare for what?”
“If he is dead then we need to secure London and the North. Anne must write. She’ll have to be Regent until we can establish a council. I shall represent her.”
“Dead?” Anne repeated.
“If he is dead then we have to hold the country together,” my uncle repeated. “It’s a long time until that baby in your belly is a man. We have to make plans. We have to be ready to defend the country. If Henry is dead…”
“Dead?” she asked again.
Uncle Howard looked at me. “Your sister will tell you. There’s no time to lose. We have to secure the kingdom.”
Anne’s face was blank with shock, as insensate as her husband. She could not imagine a world without him. She was quite incapable of doing my uncle’s bidding, or securing the kingdom without the king to rule it.
“I’ll do it,” I said quickly. “I’ll draw it up and sign it. You can’t ask her, Uncle Howard. She shouldn’t be worried, she has the baby to keep safe. Our handwriting is alike, we’ve passed for each other before. I can write for her, and sign for her too.”
He brightened at that. One Boleyn girl was always much the same as another to him. He pulled a stool over to the writing desk. “Start,” he said tersely. “‘Be ye well assured…’”
Anne lay back in her chair, her hand on her belly, the other at her mouth, staring out of the window. The longer she had to wait, the worse the king must be. A man jolted by a fall is brought quickly home. A man near death is carried more carefully. As Anne waited, looking down to the entrance to the stable yard, I realized that all our safety, all our security was falling apart. If the king died we were all ruined. The country could be pulled apart by every one of the lords fighting on his own account. It would be as it was before Henry’s father had pulled it all together: York against Lancaster, and every man for his own. It would be a wild country with every county owning its own master, and no one able to kneel to the true king.
Anne looked back into the room and saw my aghast face, bent over her claim to the regency for the duration of the youth of her child, Elizabeth.
“Dead?” she asked me.
I rose from the table and took her cold hands in my own.
“Please God, no,” I said.
They brought him in, walking so slowly that the litter might have been a bier. George at his head, William and the rest of the gaily dressed jousting party straggling along behind, in frightened silence.
Anne let out a moan and slid to the floor, her gown billowing around her. One of the maids caught her, and we carried her into her bedroom, laid her on the bed and sent a page running for hippocras wine and a physician. I unlaced her and felt her belly, whispering a silent prayer that the baby was still safe inside.
My mother arrived with the wine and took one look as Anne, white-faced, was struggling to sit up.
“Lie quietly,” she said sharply. “D’you want to spoil everything?”
“Henry?” Anne said.
“He’s awake,” my mother lied. “He took a bad fall but he’s all right.”
From the corner of my eye I saw my uncle cross himself and whisper a word of prayer. I had never before seen that
“Come and finish the regency letter,” my uncle said in an undertone. “That’s more important than anything else.”
I took a lingering look at Anne and then went back out to the presence chamber and took up the pen again. We wrote three letters, to the City, to the North, and to parliament, and I signed all three as Anne, Queen of England, while the physician arrived and then a couple of apothecaries. Keeping my head down, in a world falling apart, I was tempting fate to sign myself Queen of England.
The door opened and George came in, looking stunned. “How is Anne?” he asked.
“Faint,” I said. “The king?”
“Wandering,” he whispered. “He doesn’t know where he is. He’s asking for Katherine.”
“Katherine?” my uncle repeated as quickly as a swordsman draws a blade. “He’s asking for her?”
“He doesn’t know where he is. He thinks he’s just been unhorsed at a joust years ago.”
“You both go to him,” my uncle said to me. “And keep him quiet. He’s not to mention her name. We can’t have him calling for her on his deathbed, he’ll dethrone Elizabeth for Princess Mary if this gets out.”
George nodded and led me to the great hall. They had not carried the king upstairs, they were afraid that they would stumble with him. He was a great weight, and he would not lie still. They had laid the litter on two of the tables pushed together, and he was tossing and turning on it, moving restlessly around. George led me through the circle of frightened men and the king saw me. His blue eyes slowly narrowed as he recognized my face.
“I took a fall, Mary.” His voice was pitiful, like a young boy’s.
“Poor boy.” I drew close to him and took his hand and held it to my heart. “Does it hurt?”
“All over,” he said, closing his eyes.
The physician came behind me and whispered. “Ask him if he can move his feet and his fingers, if he can feel all his parts.”