Buch lesen: «The Other Boleyn Girl»

Spring 1522

‘I am going to France tomorrow and I shall bring your sister Anne home with me,’ my father told me on the stairs of Westminster Palace. ‘She’s to have a place in the court of Queen Mary Tudor as she returns to England.’

‘I thought she’d stay in France,’ I said. ‘I thought she’d marry a French count or somebody.’

He shook his head. ‘We have other plans for her.’

I knew it was pointless to ask what plans they had. I would have to wait and see. My greatest dread was that they would have a better marriage for her than I had made, that I would have to follow the hem of her gown as she swept ahead of me for the rest of my life.

‘Wipe that surly look off your face,’ my father said sharply.

At once I smiled my courtier’s smile. ‘Of course, Father,’ I said obediently.

He nodded and I curtsied low as he left me. I came up from my curtsey and went slowly to my husband’s bedroom. I had a small looking glass on the wall and I stood before it and gazed at my own reflection. ‘It’ll be all right,’ I whispered to myself. ‘I am a Boleyn, that’s not a small thing to be, and my mother was born a Howard, that’s to be one of the greatest families in the country. I’m a Howard girl, a Boleyn girl.’ I bit my lip. ‘But so is she.’

I smiled my empty courtier’s smile and the reflected pretty face smiled back. ‘I am the youngest Boleyn girl, but not the least. I am married to William Carey, a man high in the king’s favour. I am the queen’s favourite and youngest lady in waiting. Nobody can spoil this for me. Not even she can take this from me.’

Anne and Father were delayed by spring storms and I found myself hoping, childishly, that her boat would sink and she would drown. At the thought of her death I felt a confusing pang of genuine distress mixed with elation. There could hardly be a world for me without Anne, there was hardly world enough for us both.

In any case, she arrived safely enough. I saw my father walking with her from the royal landing stage up the gravelled paths to the palace. Even from the first-floor window, looking down I could see the swing of her gown, the stylish cut of her cloak, and a moment of pure envy swept through me as I saw how it swirled around her. I waited till she was out of sight and then I hurried to my seat in the queen’s presence chamber.

I planned that she should first see me very much at home in the queen’s richly tapestried rooms, and that I should rise and greet her, very grown-up and gracious. But when the doors opened and she came in I was overcome by a rush of sudden joy, and I heard myself cry out ‘Anne!’ and ran to her, my skirt swishing. And Anne, who had come in with her head very high, and her arrogant dark look darting everywhere, suddenly stopped being a grand young lady of fifteen years and threw out her arms to me.

‘You’re taller,’ she said breathlessly, her arms tight around me, her cheek pressed to mine.

‘I’ve got such high heels.’ I inhaled the familiar perfume of her. Soap, and rosewater essence from her warm skin, lavender from her clothes.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘Bien sur! How is it? Marriage?’

‘Not too bad. Nice clothes.’

‘And he?’

‘Very grand. Always with the king, high in his favour.’

‘Have you done it?’

‘Yes, ages ago.’

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Very much.’

She pulled back to read my face.

‘Not too much,’ I said, qualifying. ‘He does try to be gentle. He always gives me wine. It’s just all rather awful, really.’

Her scowl melted away and she giggled, her eyes dancing. ‘How is it awful?’

‘He pisses in the pot, right where I can see!’

She collapsed in a wail of laughter. ‘No!’

‘Now, girls,’ my father said, coming up behind Anne. ‘Mary, take Anne and present her to the queen.’

At once I turned and led her through the press of ladies in waiting to where the queen was seated, erect in her chair at the fireside. ‘She’s strict,’ I warned Anne. ‘It’s not like France.’

Katherine of Aragon took the measure of Anne with one of her clear blue-eyed sweeps and I felt a pang of fear that she would prefer my sister to me.

Anne swept the queen an immaculate French curtsey, and came up as if she owned the palace. She spoke in a voice rippling with that seductive accent, her every gesture was that of the French court. I noted with glee the queen’s frosty response to Anne’s stylish manner. I drew her to a windowseat.

‘She hates the French,’ I said. ‘She’ll never have you around her if you keep that up.’

Anne shrugged. ‘They’re the most fashionable. Whether she likes them or not. What else?’

‘Spanish?’ I suggested. ‘If you have to pretend to be something else.’

Anne let out a snort of laughter. ‘And wear those hoods! She looks as if someone stuck a roof on her head.’

‘Ssshhh,’ I said reprovingly. ‘She’s a beautiful woman. The finest queen in Europe.’

‘She’s an old woman,’ Anne said cruelly. ‘Dressed like an old woman in the ugliest clothes in Europe, from the stupidest nation in Europe. We have no time for the Spanish.’

‘Who’s we?’ I asked coldly. ‘Not the English.’

‘Les Français!’ she said irritatingly. ‘Bien sur! I am all but French now.’

‘You’re English born and bred, like George and me,’ I said flatly. ‘And I was brought up at the French court just like you. Why do you always have to pretend to be different?’

‘Because everyone has to do something.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eye, which makes her the centre of attention. I am going to be French.’

‘So you pretend to be something that you’re not,’ I said disapprovingly.

She gleamed at me and her dark eyes measured me in a way that only Anne could do. ‘I pretend no more and no less than you do,’ she said quietly. ‘My little sister, my little golden sister, my milk and honey sister.’

I met her eyes, my lighter gaze into her black, and I knew that I was smiling her smile, that she was a dark mirror to me. ‘Oh that,’ I said, still refusing to acknowledge a hit. ‘Oh that.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult and you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be. What man could resist us?’

I laughed, she could always make me laugh. I looked down from the leaded window and saw the king’s hunt returning to the stable yard.

‘Is that the king on his way?’ Anne asked. ‘Is he as handsome as they say?’

‘He’s wonderful. He really is. He dances and rides, and – oh – I can’t tell you!’

‘Will he come here now?’

‘Probably. He always comes to see her.’

Anne glanced dismissively to where the queen sat sewing with her ladies. ‘Can’t think why.’

‘Because he loves her,’ I said. ‘It’s a wonderful love story. Her married to his brother and his brother dying like that, so young, and then her not knowing what she should do or where she could go, and then him taking her and making her his wife and his queen. It’s a wonderful story and he loves her still.’

Anne raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and glanced around the room. All the ladies in waiting had heard the sound of the returning hunt and had spread the skirts of their gowns and moved in their seats so that they were placed like a little tableau to be viewed from the doorway when the door was flung open and Henry the king stood on the threshold and laughed with the boisterous joy of an indulged young man. ‘I came to surprise you and I catch you all unawares!’

The queen started. ‘How amazed we are!’ she said warmly. ‘And what a delight!’

The king’s companions and friends followed their master into the room. My brother George came in first, checked on the threshold at the sight of Anne, held his pleasure hidden behind his handsome courtier’s face, and bowed low over the queen’s hand. ‘Majesty.’ He breathed on her fingers. ‘I have been in the sun all the morning but I am only dazzled now.’

She smiled her small polite smile as she gazed down at his bent dark curly head. ‘You may greet your sister.’

‘Mary is here?’ George asked indifferently, as if he had not seen us both.

‘Your other sister, Anne,’ the queen corrected him. A small gesture from her hand, heavy with rings, indicated that the two of us should step forward. George swept us a bow without moving from the prime place near the throne.

‘Has she changed much?’ the queen asked.

George smiled. ‘I hope she will change more with a model such as you before her eyes.’

The queen gave a little laugh. ‘Very pretty,’ she said appreciatively, and waved him towards us.

‘Hello, little Miss Beautiful,’ he said to Anne. ‘Hello, Mistress Beautiful,’ to me.

Anne regarded him from under her dark eyelashes. ‘I wish I could hug you,’ she said.

‘We’ll go out, as soon as we can,’ George decreed. ‘You look well, Annamaria.’

‘I am well,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘Never better.’

‘What’s little Mary’s husband like?’ she asked curiously, watching William as he entered and bowed over the queen’s hand.

‘Great-grandson of the third Earl of Somerset, and very high in the king’s favour.’ George volunteered the only matters of interest: his family connections and his closeness to the throne. ‘She’s done well. Did you know you were brought home to be married, Anne?’

‘Father hasn’t said who.’

‘I think you’re to go to Ormonde,’ George said.

‘A countess,’ Anne said with a triumphant smile to me.

‘Only Irish,’ I rejoined at once.

My husband stepped back from the queen’s chair, caught sight of us, and then raised an eyebrow at Anne’s intense provocative stare. The king took his seat beside the queen and looked around the room.

‘My dear Mary Carey’s sister has come to join our company,’ the queen said. ‘This is Anne Boleyn.’

‘George’s sister?’ the king asked.

My brother bowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

The king smiled at Anne. She dropped him a curtsey straight down, like a bucket in a well, head up, and a small challenging smile on her lips. The king was not taken, he liked easy women, he liked smiling women. He did not like women who fixed him with a dark challenging gaze.

‘And are you happy to be with your sister again?’ he asked me.

I dipped a low curtsey and came up a little flushed. ‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ I said sweetly. ‘What girl would not long for the company of a sister like Anne?’

His eyebrows twitched together a little at that. He preferred the open bawdy humour of men to the barbed wit of women. He looked from me to Anne’s slightly quizzical expression and then he got the joke and laughed out loud, and snapped his fingers and held out his hand to me. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘No-one can overshadow the bride in her early years of wedded bliss. And both Carey and I have a preference for fair-haired women.’

Everyone laughed at that, especially Anne who was dark, and the queen whose auburn hair had faded to brown and grey. They would have been fools to do anything but laugh heartily at the king’s pleasantry. And I laughed as well, with more joy in my heart than they had in theirs, I should think.

The musicians played an opening chord, and Henry drew me to him. ‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Carey tells me that he so likes a young bride that he’ll never bed any but twelve-year-old virgins ever again.’

It was hard to keep my chin up and my smile on my face. We turned in the dance and the king smiled down on me.

‘He’s a lucky man,’ he said graciously.

‘He is lucky to have your favour,’ I started, stumbling towards a compliment.

‘Luckier to have yours, I should think!’ he said with a sudden bellow of laughter. Then he swept me into a dance, and I whirled down the line of dancers and saw my brother’s quick glance of approval, and what was sweeter still: Anne’s envious eyes as the King of England danced past her with me in his arms.

Anne slipped into the routine of the English court and waited for her wedding. She still had not met her husband-to-be, and the arguments about the dowry and settlements looked as if they would take forever. Not even the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, who had his finger in this as well as every other pie in the bakehouse of England, could speed the business along. In the meantime she flirted as elegantly as a Frenchwoman, served the king’s sister with a nonchalant grace, and squandered hours every day in gossiping, riding, and playing with George and me. We were alike in tastes and not far apart in age; I was the baby at fourteen to Anne’s fifteen and George’s nineteen years. We were the closest of kin and yet almost strangers. I had been at the French court with Anne while George had been learning his trade as a courtier in England. Now, reunited, we became known around the court as the three Boleyns, the three delightful Boleyns, and the king would often look round when he was in his private rooms and cry out for the three Boleyns and someone would be sent running from one end of the castle to fetch us.

Our first task in life was to enhance the king’s many entertainments: jousting, tennis, riding, hunting, hawking, dancing. He liked to live in a continual roar of excitement and it was our duty to ensure that he was never bored. But sometimes, very rarely, in the quiet time before dinner, or if it rained and he could not hunt, he would find his own way to the queen’s apartments, and she would put down her sewing or her reading and send us away with a word.

If I lingered I might see her smile at him, in a way that she never smiled at anyone else, not even at her daughter the Princess Mary. And once, when I had entered without realising the king was there, I found him seated at her feet like a lover, with his head tipped back to rest in her lap as she stroked his red-gold curls off his forehead and twisted them round her fingers where they glowed as bright as the rings he had given her when she had been a young princess with hair as bright as his, and he had married her against the advice of everyone.

I tiptoed away without them seeing me. It was so rare that they were alone together that I did not want to be the one to break the spell. I went to find Anne. She was walking in the cold garden with George, a bunch of snowdrops in her hand, her cloak wrapped tight about her.

‘The king is with the queen,’ I said as I joined them. ‘On their own.’

Anne raised an eyebrow. ‘In bed?’ she asked curiously.

I flushed. ‘Of course not, it’s two in the afternoon.’

Anne smiled at me. ‘You must be a happy wife if you think you can’t bed before nightfall.’

George extended his other arm to me. ‘She is a happy wife,’ he said on my behalf. ‘William was telling the king that he had never known a sweeter girl. But what were they doing, Mary?’

‘Just sitting together,’ I said. I had a strong feeling that I did not want to describe the scene to Anne.

‘She won’t get a son that way,’ Anne said crudely.

‘Hush,’ George and I said at once. The three of us drew a little closer and lowered our voices.

‘She must be losing hope of it,’ George said. ‘What is she now? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?’

‘Only thirty-seven,’ I said indignantly.

‘Does she still have her monthly courses?’

‘Oh George!’

‘Yes she does,’ Anne said, matter-of-factly. ‘But little good they do her. It’s her fault. It can’t be laid at the king’s door with his bastard from Bessie Blount learning to ride his pony.’

‘There’s still plenty of time,’ I said defensively.

‘Time for her to die and him to remarry?’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘Yes. And she’s not strong, is she?’

‘Anne!’ For once my recoil from her was genuine. ‘That’s vile.’

George glanced around once more to ensure that there was no-one near us in the garden. A couple of Seymour girls were walking with their mother but we paid no attention to them. Their family were our chief rivals for power and advancement, we liked to pretend not to see them.

‘It’s vile but it’s true,’ he said bluntly. ‘Who’s to be the next king if he doesn’t have a son?’

‘Princess Mary could marry,’ I suggested.

‘A foreign prince brought in to rule England? It’d never hold,’ George said. ‘And we can’t tolerate another war for the throne.’

‘Princess Mary could become queen in her own right and not marry,’ I said wildly. ‘Rule as a queen on her own.’

Anne gave a snort of disbelief, her breath a little cloud on the cold air. ‘Oh aye,’ she said derisively. ‘She could ride astride and learn to joust. A girl can’t rule a country like this, the great lords’d eat her alive.’

The three of us paused before the fountain that stood in the centre of the garden. Anne, with her well-trained grace, sat on the rim of the basin and looked into the water, a few goldfish swam hopefully towards her and she pulled off her embroidered glove and dabbled her long fingers in the water. They came up, little mouths gaping, to nibble at the air. George and I watched her, as she watched her own rippling reflection.

‘Does the king think of this?’ she asked her mirrored image.

‘Constantly,’ George answered. ‘There is nothing in the world more important. I think he would legitimise Bessie Blount’s boy and make him heir if there’s no issue from the queen.’

‘A bastard on the throne?’

‘He wasn’t christened Henry Fitzroy for no reason,’ George replied. ‘He’s acknowledged as the king’s own son. If Henry lives long enough to make the country safe for him, if he can get the Seymours to agree, and us Howards, if Wolsey gets the church behind him and the foreign powers … what should stop him?’

‘One little boy, and he a bastard,’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘One little girl of six, one elderly queen and a king in the prime of his life.’ She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she asked. ‘Something has to happen. What’s it going to be?’

Cardinal Wolsey sent a message to the queen asking us to take part in a masque on Shrove Tuesday which he was to stage at his house, York Place. The queen asked me to read the letter and my voice trembled with excitement over the words: a great masque, a fortress named Chateau Vert, and five ladies to dance with the five knights who would besiege the fort. ‘Oh! Your Majesty …’ I started and then fell silent.

‘Oh! Your Majesty, what?’

‘I was just wondering if I might be allowed to go,’ I said very humbly. ‘To watch the revels.’

‘I think you were wondering a little more than that?’ she asked me with a gleam in her eyes.

‘I was wondering if I might be one of the dancers,’ I confessed. ‘It does sound very wonderful.’

‘Yes, you may be,’ she said. ‘How many ladies does the cardinal command of me?’

‘Five,’ I said quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anne sit back in her seat and close her eyes for just a moment. I knew exactly what she was doing, I could hear her voice in my head as loudly as if she was shouting: ‘Choose me! Choose me! Choose me!’

It worked. ‘Mistress Anne Boleyn,’ the queen said thoughtfully. ‘The Queen Mary of France, the Countess of Devon, Jane Parker, and you, Mary.’

Anne and I exchanged a rapid glance. We would be an oddly assorted quintet: the king’s aunt, his sister Queen Mary, and the heiress Jane Parker who was likely to be our sister-in-law, if her father and ours could agree her dowry, and the two of us.

‘Will we wear green?’ Anne asked.

The queen smiled at her. ‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said. ‘Mary, why don’t you write a note to the cardinal and tell him that we will be delighted to attend, and ask him to send the master of the revels so that we can all choose costumes and plan our dances?’

‘I’ll do it.’ Anne rose from her chair and went to the table where the pen and ink and paper were ready. ‘Mary has such a cramped hand he will think we are writing a refusal.’

The queen laughed. ‘Ah, the French scholar,’ she said gently. ‘You shall write to the cardinal then, Mistress Boleyn, in your beautiful French, or shall you write to him in Latin?’

Anne’s gaze did not waver. ‘Whichever Your Majesty prefers,’ she said steadily. ‘I am reasonably fluent in both.’