Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

“Sweet,” he says sourly. “We’ll have to watch him. He has a temper. There was some incident, wasn’t there? He raped some game-keeper’s wife?”

I shake my head and turn away. “I hadn’t heard.”

He offers me his arm and together we stroll down the gallery. “Raped her and killed her husband when he tried to defend her. The king issued him a pardon for both offenses.”

I am too old to be shocked. “A favorite indeed,” I say dryly. “What else might the king forgive him?”

“But why would Katherine fancy him, above all the others? There’s no merit in him at all except youth and good looks and arrogance.”

I laugh. “For a girl married to an ugly man old enough to be her grandfather, that is probably enough.”

“Well, she can have him, if she wishes, and I may find another youth to throw in her way as well. I have my eye on a former favorite of hers, just returned from Ireland and still carrying a torch. Can you encourage her while we are on progress, perhaps? She will be less watched, and if she were to conceive this summer she could be crowned before Christmas. I would feel safer if she had the crown on her head and a baby in her belly, especially if the king falls sick again. His doctor says his bowels are bound up tight.”

“I can help the two of them,” I say. “I can make it easy for them to meet. But I can hardly do more than that.”

The duke smiles. “Culpepper is such a blackguard, and she is such a flirt, that I doubt you need do more than that, my dear Lady Rochford.”

He is so warm and so confiding that I dare to put my hand on his arm as he moves to go back to the inner circle. “And my own affairs,” I remind him.

His smile does not waver for a moment. “Ah, your hopes for marriage,” he says. “I am pursuing something. I will tell you later.”

“Who is it?” I ask. Foolish, but I find I have caught my breath, like a girl. If I were to be married soon, it is not impossible but that I could have another child. If I were to be married to some great man, I could lay down the foundation of a great family, build a big house, amass a fortune to hand down to my own heirs. I could do better than the Boleyns did. I could see my family rise. I could leave a fortune, and the shame and distress of my first marriage would be forgotten in the glamour of my second.

“You will have to be patient,” he says. “Let’s get this business with Katherine settled first.”

It is springtime. I have never noticed a season so much in my life before; but this year the sun is so bright and the birdsong so loud that I wake at dawn and I lie awake with every inch of my skin like silk, and my lips moist, and my heart thudding with desire. I want to laugh without cause; I want to give my ladies little gifts to make them happy. I want to dance, I want to run down the long allées of the garden and twirl around at the bottom and fall on the grass and smell the pale scent of the primroses. I want to ride all day and dance all night and gamble the king’s fortune away. I have an enormous appetite; I taste all the dishes that come to the royal table and then I send the best, the very best, to one table or another – but never, never to his.

I have a secret; it is a secret so great that some days I think I can hardly breathe for the way it burns on my tongue, hot for telling. Some days it is like a tickle that makes me want to laugh. Every day, every night and day, it is like the warm, insistent pulse of lust.

One person knows it, only one. He looks at me during Mass when I peer over the balcony of the queen’s box and see him down below. Slowly, slowly his head turns as if he can feel my gaze on him; he looks up, he gives me that smile, the one that starts at his blue eyes and then moves to his kissable mouth, and then he gives me the cheekiest, quickest flash of a wink. Because he knows the secret.

When we are riding, his horse comes alongside mine in the hunt and his bare hand brushes my glove, and it is as if I am scalded by his touch. I dare not even look at him then, he does no more than this, the gentlest touch, just to tell me that he knows the secret; he knows the secret, too.

And when we are dancing and the steps bring us together and we are handclasped and we should, according to the rules of the dance, lock gazes as we go round, then we drop our eyes, or look away, or seem quite indifferent. Because we dare not be too close; I dare not have my face near his; I dare not look at his eyes, his warm mouth, the temptation of his smile.

When he kisses my hand to leave my rooms, he does not touch my fingers with his lips; he breathes on them. It is the most extraordinary sensation, the most overwhelming feeling. All I can feel is the warmth of his breath. In his gentle grasp he must feel my fingers stir like a sweet meadow beneath a breeze, under that slightest touch.

And what is this secret that wakes me at dawn and keeps me quivering like a hare until darkness when my fingers tremble at the warmth of his breath? It is such a secret that I never even name it to myself. It is a secret. It is a secret. I hug it to myself in the darkness of the night when King Henry is at last asleep and I can find a little patch of the bed that is not heated by his bulk nor stinking of his wound, then I form the words in my head but I do not even whisper them to myself: I have a secret.

I pull my pillow down toward me, and I stroke back a lock of hair from my face. I smooth my cheek against the pillow and am ready for sleep. I close my eyes: I have a secret.

My ambassador, Dr. Harst, brings me the most shocking, the most pitiful news that I think I shall ever hear. As he told me I started to shake at the very words. How could the king do such a thing? How could any man do such a thing? The king has executed Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury. The king has ordered the death of an innocent, nearly seventy-year-old woman, for no reason in the world. Or at the very least, if he has a reason, it is the one that governs so many of his actions: nothing but his own insane spite.

Good God, he is becoming a terrifying man. In my little court here at Richmond I hug my cloak around me and tell my ladies that they need not come, that the ambassador and I are going to walk in the garden. I want to make sure that no one can see the fear in my face. Now I know for sure how lucky I have been to escape so lightly, to escape so well. Thank God in his mercy that I was spared. There was every reason to fear the king as a murderous madman. They all warned me, and although I was afraid, I did not know how vicious he could be. This wickedness, this mad malice against a woman old enough to be his own mother, the ward of his grandmother, the dearest friend of his wife, the godmother of his own daughter, a saintly woman, innocent of any crime – this proves to me once and for all that he is a most dangerous man.

That he should have a woman of nearly seventy years old dragged from her bed and beheaded – and for no reason! No reason at all except to break the heart of her son, her family, and those who love them. This king is a monster; for all that he smiles so sweetly on his little bride, for all that he is now so kind and generous to me, let me remember this: Henry of England is a monster and a tyrant, and no one is safe in his realm. There can be no safety in the country when there is a man like this on the throne. He must be mad to behave so. That can be the only answer. He must be mad, and I am living in a country ruled by a mad king and dependent on his favor for my safety.

Dr. Harst lengthens his pace to keep up with me; I am striding along as if I could get away from this kingdom on foot. “You are distressed,” he says.