Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

He looks her over but does not tell her to rise. He leaves her in her discomfort and turns to me. “I like to watch it because it is all that is left for me,” he says bitterly. “You know nothing, but I was the greatest champion. I took on all comers. Not once, but every time. I jousted in disguise so that no one did me any favors, and even when they rode as hard as they could I still defeated them. I was the greatest champion in England. Nobody could defeat me, I would ride all day, I would break dozens of lances. Do you understand that, you dullard?”

Still shaken, I nod, though in truth, he speaks so fast and so angrily that I can understand hardly any of this. I try to smile, but my lips are trembling.

“No one could beat me,” he insists. “Ever. Not one knight. I was the greatest jouster in England, perhaps in the world. I was unbeatable, and I could ride all day and dance all night, and be up the next day at dawn to go hunting. You know nothing. Nothing. Do I like to joust? – good God, I was the heart of chivalry! I was the darling of the crowd, I was the toast of every tournament! There was none like me! I was the greatest knight since those of the round table! I was a legend.”

“No one who saw you could ever forget it,” Lady Lisle says sweetly, raising her head. “You are the greatest knight that ever entered a ring. Even now I have never seen your equal. There is no equal. None of them in these days can equal you.”

“Hmm,” he says irritably, and falls silent.

There is a long, awkward pause, and there is nobody in the jousting arena to divert us. Everyone is waiting for me to say something pleasant to my husband, who sits in silence, scowling at the herbs on the floor.

“Oh, get up,” he says crossly to Lady Lisle. “Your old knees will lock up if you stay down for much longer.”

“I have letter,” I say quietly, trying to change the subject to something less controversial to him.

He turns and looks at me; he tries to smile, but I can see he is irritated by me, by my accent, by my halting speech.

“You have letter,” he repeats, in harsh mimicry.

“From Princess Elizabeth,” I say.

“Lady,” he replies. “Lady Elizabeth.”

I hesitate. “Lady Elizabeth,” I say obediently. I take out my precious letter and show it to him. “May she come here? May she live with me?”

He twitches the letter from my hand, and I have to stop myself from snatching it back. I want to keep it. It is my first letter from my little stepdaughter. He screws up his eyes to stare at it, then he snaps at his page boy who hands him his spectacles. He puts them on to read, but he shades his face from the crowd so that the common people shall not know that the King of England is losing the sight of his squinty eyes. He scans the letter quickly, then he hands it with the spectacles to his page.

“Is my letter,” I say quietly.

“I shall reply for you.”

“Can she come to me?”

“No.”

“Your Grace, please?”

“No.”

I hesitate, but my stubborn nature, learned under the hard fist of my brother, a bad-tempered, spoiled child just like this king, urges me on.

“So why not?” I demand. “She writes me, she asks me, I wish to see her. So why not?”

He rises to his feet and leans on the back of the chair to look down on me. “She had a mother so unlike you, in every way, that she ought not to ask for your company,” he says flatly. “If she had known her mother, she would never ask to see you. And so I shall tell her.” Then he rises to his feet and stamps down the stairs, out of my box, and across the arena to his own.

I have been expecting this summons to confer with my lord the duke at some stage during the tournament, but he did not send for me. Perhaps he, too, remembers the tournament at May Day and the fall of her handkerchief and the laughter of her friends. Perhaps even he cannot hear the trumpet sound without thinking of her white-faced and desperate on that hot May Day morning. He waits until the tournament is over and life in the palace of Whitehall has returned to normal and then he tells me to come to his rooms.

This is a palace for plotting, all the corridors twist round and about each other; every courtyard has a little garden at the center where one may meet by accident; every apartment has at least two entrances. Not even I know all the secret ways from the bedrooms to hidden water gates. Not even Anne did, not even my husband, George, who stole away so often.

The duke commands me to come to him privately after dinner, and so I slip away from the dining hall and go the long way round in case anyone is watching me before entering his rooms without knocking, in silence.

He is seated at his fireside. I see by the servant clearing the plates that he has dined alone and eaten better than we did in the hall, I imagine. The kitchens are so far from the dining hall in this old-fashioned palace that the food is always cold. Everyone who has private rooms has their food cooked for them in their own chambers. The duke has the best rooms here, as he does almost everywhere. Only Cromwell is better housed than the head of our house. The Howards have always been the first of families, even when their girl is not on the throne. There is always dirty work to be done and that is our speciality. The duke waves the server away and offers me a glass of wine.

“You can sit,” he says.

I know by this honor that the work he has for me will be confidential and perhaps dangerous. I sit and sip my wine.

“And how are matters in the queen’s rooms?” he asks agreeably.

“Well enough,” I reply. “She is learning more of our language every day, and she understands almost everything now, I think. Some of the others underestimate her understanding. They should be warned.”

“I hear the warning,” he nods. “And her temper?”

“Pleasant,” I say. “She shows no signs of missing her home; indeed, she seems to have a great affection and interest in England. She is a good mistress to the younger maids, she watches them and considers them, and she has high standards; she keeps good command in her rooms. She is observant but not overly religious.”

“She prays like a Protestant?”

“No, she follows the king’s order of service,” I say. “She is meticulous in it.”

He nods. “No desire to return to Cleves?”

“None that she has ever mentioned.”

“Odd.”

He waits. This is his way. He stays silent until one feels obliged to comment.

“I think there is bad feeling between her and her brother,” I volunteer at last. “And I think Queen Anne was beloved of her father, who was sick from drink at the end of his life. It sounds as if the brother took his place and his authority.”

He nods. “So no chance of her being willing to step down from the throne and go home?”

I shake my head. “Never. She loves being queen, and she has a fancy to be a mother to the royal children. She would have Prince Edward at her side if she could, and she was bitterly disappointed that she could not see the Prin – the Lady Elizabeth. She hopes to have children of her own, and she wants to gather her stepchildren around her. She is planning her life here, her future. She will not go willingly, if that is in your mind.”

He spreads his hands. “Nothing is in my mind,” he lies.

I wait for him to tell me what he wants next.

“And the girl,” he says. “Our young Katherine. The king has taken a liking to her, hasn’t he?”

“Very much so,” I agree. “And she is as clever with him as a woman twice her age. She is very skilled. She appears completely sweet and very innocent, and yet she displays herself like a Smithfield whore.”