Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

Little Kitty Howard, alas, does not improve as a result of great position. But nobody, except her adoring husband, ever thought she would. Her uncle the duke keeps a strict eye on her public behavior, and relies on me to watch her in private. More than once he has summoned her to his rooms for a fierce lecture on propriety and the behavior expected of a queen. She breaks down into the penitent tears that are so easy for her. And he, relieved that – unlike Anne – she does not argue, or throw his own behavior back at him, or cite the polite manners of the French court, or laugh in his face, thinks the deed is done. But the very next week there is a romp in the queen’s rooms when the young courtiers chase the girls all around the queen’s chambers, her own bedroom as well, smacking them with pillows, and the queen is in the midst of it all, screaming and dancing on the bed and awarding points in the joust of the pillows. So what is to be done?

No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on. She is lacking in education and training and even common sense. God knows what the duchess thought she was doing with the young people in her house. She sent Katherine to music lessons – where she was kissed by the music master – but she never taught her to read or write or to reckon accounts. The child has no languages, she cannot read a score – despite the attentions of Henry Manox – she can sing with a thin little voice, she can dance like a whore, she is learning to ride. What else? No, nothing else. That is all.

She has wit enough to please a man, and some of her late-night foolery in Norfolk House has taught her a handful of whorish tricks. Thank God, she sets herself to please the king, and she succeeds beyond belief. He has taken it into his head that she is a perfect girl. In his eyes she has replaced the daughter he never loved, the virgin bride that his brother had first, the wife he was never sure of. For a man who has two daughters of his own, and who has wedded and bedded five women, he certainly has a lot of dreams unfulfilled. Katherine is to be the one who finally makes him happy, and he does everything to convince himself that she is the girl who can do it.

The duke summons me to his rooms every week; he leaves nothing to chance with this Howard girl, having lost control of the previous two Boleyns.

“Is she behaving herself?” he asks curtly.

I nod. “She is wild with the girls of her chamber, but she says nothing and does nothing to which you could seriously object in public.”

He sniffs. “Never mind if I object. Is there anything to which the king could object?”

I pause. Who knows what the king could object to? “She has done nothing to dishonor herself or her high calling,” I say cautiously.

He glares at me under his fierce eyebrows. “Don’t mince words with me,” he says coldly. “I don’t keep you here for you to tell me riddles. Is she doing anything that would cause me concern?”

“She has a fancy for one of the king’s chamber,” I say. “Nothing has happened beyond their making cow’s eyes at each other.”

He scowls. “Has the king seen?”

“No. It’s Thomas Culpepper, one of his favorites. He is blinded by his affection for them both. He orders them to dance together; he says they make a perfect pair.”

“I’ve seen them.” He nods. “It’s bound to happen. Watch her, and make sure she is never alone with him. But a girl of fifteen is going to fall in love, and never with a husband of forty-nine. We will have to watch her for years. Anything else?”

I hesitate. “She is greedy,” I say frankly. “Every time the king comes to dinner she asks him for something. He hates that. Everyone knows he hates that. He doesn’t hate it in her, yet. But how long can she go on asking him for a place for this or that cousin, or this or that friend? Or asking for a gift?”

The duke makes a minute mark on the paper before him. “I agree,” he says. “She shall get the ambassadorship to France for William, and then I shall tell her to ask for no more. Anything else?”

“The girls she has put in her chamber,” I say. “The girls from Norfolk House and Horsham.”

“Yes?”

“They misbehave with her,” I say bluntly. “And I cannot manage them. They are silly girls. There is always an affair going on with one young man or another; there is always one of them sneaking out or trying to sneak him in.”

“Sneak him in?” he demands, suddenly alert.

“Yes,” I say. “No harm can be done to the queen’s reputation when the king sleeps in her bed. But say that he is weary or sick and he misses a night, and her enemies find that a young man is creeping up the back stairs. Who is to say that he is coming to see Agnes Restwold and not the queen herself?”

“She has her enemies,” he says thoughtfully. “There is not a reformist nor a Lutheran in the kingdom who would not be glad to see her disgraced. Already they are whispering against her.”

“You would know more than I.”

“And there are all our enemies. Every family in England would be glad to see her fall and us dragged down with her. It was ever thus. I would have given anything to see Jane Seymour shamed by a scandal. The king always fills his household with the friends of his wives. Now we are in the ascendancy again, and our enemies are gathering.”

“If we did not insist on having everything…”

“I shall have the Lord Lieutenancy of the North, cost me what it will,” he growls irritably.

“Yes, but after that?”

“Do you not see?” He suddenly rounds on me. “The king is a man for favorites and for adversaries. When he has a Spanish wife, we go to war with France. When he is married to a Boleyn, he destroys the monasteries and the Pope with them. When he is married to a Seymour, we Howards have to creep about and snatch up the crumbs under the table. When he has the Cleves woman, we are all in thrall to Thomas Cromwell, who made the match. Now it is our time again. Our girl is on the throne of England; everything that can be lifted is ours to carry away.”

“But if everyone is our enemy?” I suggest. “If our greed makes us enemies of everyone else?”

He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. “Everyone is always our enemy,” he says. “But right now, we are winning.”

“If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.” This has become my motto, and as the barge comes upriver from Richmond, with the men on the wherries and the fishermen in their little boats doffing their caps when they see my standard and shouting out, “God bless Queen Anne!” and sometimes other less polite encouragements, such as “I’d have kept yer, dearie!” and “Try a Thames-man, why don’t yer?” and worse than that, I smile and wave, repeating to myself again: “If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.”

The king cannot behave with grace; his selfishness and folly in this matter are too plain for everyone to see. The ambassadors of Spain and France must have laughed until they were sick over the excess of his wild vanity. Little Kitty Howard (Queen Katherine, I must, I will, remember to call her queen) cannot be expected to behave with grace. I might as well ask a puppy to be graceful. If he does not put her aside within the year, if she does not die in childbirth, then she may learn the grace of a queen… perhaps. But she doesn’t have it now. In truth, she wasn’t even a very good maid-in-waiting. Her manners were not fit for the queen’s rooms then; how will she ever suit the throne?

It has to be me who shows a little grace, if the three of us are not to become a laughingstock of the entire country. I will have to enter my old rooms at this, my favorite palace, as an honored guest. I will have to bend the knee to the girl who now sits in my chair, I will have to address her as Queen Katherine without laughing, or crying, either. I will have to be, as the king has said I may be, his sister and his dearest friend.