The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Rochester,

New Year’s Eve 1539

I am the only person to see him come in. I don’t like bullbaiting, or bears, or cockfighting, or anything like that, I think it’s just downright nasty – and so I am standing a little back from the windows. And I am looking around, actually, I am looking at a young man whom I had seen earlier, such a handsome young man with a cheeky smile, when I see the six of them come in, old men, they must all be thirty at the least, and the big old king at the front, and they are all wearing the same sort of cape, like a masquing costume, so I guess at once that it is him, and that he has come in disguise like a knight errant, silly old fool, and that he will greet her and she will pretend not to know him, and then there will be dancing. Really, I am delighted to see him because this makes it a certainty that there will be dancing, and so I am wondering how I can encourage the handsome young man to be near me in the dance.

When he kisses her, it all goes terribly wrong. I can see at once that she has no idea who he is; someone should have warned her. She thinks he is just some drunk old man who has staggered in to kiss her for a wager, and of course she is shocked, and of course quite repelled, because when he is in a cheap cloak and not surrounded by the greatest court in the world, he does not look at all like a king. In truth, when he is in a cheap cloak and with his companions, also dressed poorly, he looks like some common merchant, with a waddling walk and a red nose, who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to go to court and see his betters. He looks like the sort of man my uncle would not acknowledge if he called out in the street. A fat old man, a vulgar old man, like a drunk sheep farmer on market day. His face is terribly bloated, like a great round dish of dripping; his hair is thi

He falls back, she stands on her dignity, rubbing her mouth to take the smell of his breath away, and then – it is so awful I could almost scream with shock – she turns her head and spits out the taste of him. “Leave me,” she says, and turns her back on him.

There is utter, dreadful silence, nobody says a word, and suddenly I know, as if my own cousin A

Jane Boleyn, Rochester,

New Year’s Eve 1539

Lady Browne is ordering the maids to their beds in a bellow as if she were a Yeoman of the Guard. They are overexcited, and Katherine Howard among them is the center of it all, as wild as any of them, a true Queen of the May. How she spoke to the king, how she peeped up at him from under her eyelashes, how she begged him, as a handsome stranger, new to court, to ask the Lady A

Lady Browne is not laughing; her face is like thunder, so I hustle the girls into bed and tell them that they are all very foolish and that they would do better to copy their lady, the Lady A

“Are you troubled, Lady Browne?” I ask considerately.

She hesitates; she is longing to confide in someone, and I am here at her side, and known to be discreet.

“This is a bad business,” she says heavily. “Oh, it all passed off pleasantly enough in the end, with the dancing and the singing, and Lady A

“The king?” I suggest.

She nods and folds her lips over as if she would stop herself saying more.

“I am weary,” I say. “Shall we take a glass of warm ale together before we go to our beds? Sir Anthony is staying here tonight, is he not?”

“God knows he won’t join me in my rooms for hours,” she says unguardedly. “I doubt if any of the king’s circle will sleep tonight.”

“Oh?” I say. I lead the way into the presence chamber. The other ladies have gone to bed, the fire is burning low, but there is a jug of ale set at the fireside and half a dozen tankards. I pour us both a drink. “Trouble?”

She sits in her chair and leans forward to whisper. “My lord husband tells me that the king swears that he will not marry her.”

“No!”

“He does. He does. He swears it. He says that he ca

She takes a long draw on the ale and looks at me over the top of the mug.

“Lady Browne, you must have this wrong…”

“I have it from my husband this very night. The king seized him by the collar, almost by the throat, as soon as we retired, and said that the moment he saw Lady A

“He said that?”

“Those very words.”

“But he seemed so happy as we left?”

“He was as truly happy just as Katherine Howard was truly ignorant of his identity. He is as much a happy bridegroom as she is an i

“He has to; they are betrothed and the contract signed.”

“He does not like her, he says. He ca

I have to get this news to the duke; he has to be warned before the king gets back to London.

“Blaming the men who made the marriage?”

“And those who brought her to him. He is furious.”

“He will blame Thomas Cromwell,” I predict quietly.

“Indeed.”

“But what of the Lady A

“There is some talk of an impediment,” she says. “And that is why Sir Anthony and none of the others will have any sleep tonight. The Cleves lords should have brought a copy of an agreement to say that some old previous contract to marry has been withdrawn. Since they don’t have it, perhaps there may be grounds to argue that the marriage ca

“Not again,” I say, unguarded for a moment. “Not the same objection that he put against Queen Katherine! We will all look like fools!”

She nods. “Yes, the same. But better for her that an impediment is declared now and she is sent safely home, than she stays and marries an enemy. You know the king; he will never forgive her for spitting out his kiss.”

I say nothing. These are dangerous speculations.