Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

On Tuesday, one of my ladies gazing out of the window remarks: “Here is the ambassador, running up the garden from a riverboat. What can have happened?”

I rise to my feet. Dr. Harst never visits me without first sending notice that he is coming. Something must have happened at court. My first thought is for Elizabeth or Mary; my first fear is that something has happened to them. If only Mary has not been driven by her father to defy him! “Stay here,” I say shortly to my women, and I throw a shawl around my shoulders and go down to greet him.

He is entering the hall as I come down the stairs and at once I know that something serious has happened.

“What is it?” I ask him in German.

He shakes his head at me, and I have to wait until the servants have come, served him with wine and biscuits, and I can send them all from the room. “What is it?”

“I came at once, without the full story, because I want you to be forewarned,” he says.

“Forewarned of what? It is not the Princess Mary?”

“No. It is the queen.”

“She is with child?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know exactly. But she has been confined to her chambers since yesterday. And the king will not see her.”

“She is ill? He is terrified of taking the plague.”

“No. There are no physicians called.”

“She is not accused of plotting against him?” I name the greatest fear.

“I will tell you all I know, and it is mostly gathered from the servant we have in the king’s rooms. The king and queen attended Mass on the Sunday, and the priest gave thanks for the king’s marriage, as you know.”

“I know.”

“Sunday evening the king was quiet and dined alone, as if he was sinking into his old illness. He didn’t go to her rooms. Monday he locked himself in his rooms, and the queen was locked in hers. Today Archbishop Cranmer went in to talk with her and came out in silence.”

I look at him. “She was locked in? And the king locked himself away?”

Silently he nods.

“What d’you think it means?”

“I think the queen has been accused. But we cannot yet know the accusation. What we must consider is whether she will implicate you.”

“Me?”

“If she is accused of a Papist plot or of bewitching the king into impotence, people will remember that you were accused of a Papist plot and that he was impotent with you. People will remember your friendship with her. People will remember that you danced with her at court at Christmas and he was ill by Lent, as soon as you left. People may think that the two of you have made a plot against him. They may even say the two of you have ill wished him.”

I put out my hand as if I would stop him. “No, no.”

“I know it is not true. But we have to consider the worst that could be said. And try to guard against it. Shall I write to your brother?”

“He won’t help me,” I say sullenly. “I am alone.”

“Then we must prepare,” he says. “You have good horses in your stables?”

I nod.

“Then give me some money, and I shall have other horses ready all the way down the road to Dover,” he says decisively. “The moment I think that it is going against you, we can leave the country.”

“He will close the ports,” I warn. “He did the last time.”

“We won’t be trapped again. I shall hire a fishing boat to serve us,” he says. “We know now what he can do. We know what lengths he will go to. We will get away before they have even decided to arrest you.”

I look at the closed door. “There will be someone in my service who will know that you have come to warn me,” I say. “Just as we have a man in his service, he will have put a spy here. I am watched.”

“I know the man,” Dr. Harst says with quiet pleasure. “And he will report my visit today, but he will say nothing more. He is my man now. I think we are safe.”

“Safe as mice under the scaffold,” I say bitterly.

He nods. “As long as the axe falls on others.”

I shudder. “Who deserves it? Not me, but not little Kitty Howard either! What did she and I ever do but marry where we were bid?”

“As long as you escape it, my job is done,” he says. “The queen must look to her own friends for help.”

Now, let me see, what do I have now?

Surprise, surprise! I have no friends and I thought I had dozens.

I have no lovers, and I thought I was pestered by them.

I don’t even have a family; as it turns out, they are all gone.

I have no husband, for he won’t see me; and I don’t even have a confessor, for the archbishop himself has become my inquisitor. Everyone is so mean to me, and it is so unfair. I don’t know what to think or say. They came to me when I was dancing with my ladies and said that it was the king’s orders that I was not to leave my rooms.

For a moment – I am such a fool, grandmother was right when she said that there never was a greater fool than me – I thought it was a masque and that someone would come in costume and capture me, and then someone would come in costume and rescue me, and there would be a joust or a mock battle on the river or something amusing. The whole country had said prayers on the Sunday to thank God for me, so I was expecting some kind of celebration on the day after. So I waited in my room, behind the locked doors, looking forward to a knight errant coming, perhaps even a tower coming to my window, or a mock siege, perhaps a cavalcade riding into the garden, and I said to my ladies: “Here’s a good joke, I expect!” But we waited all day in my room, and even though I rushed and changed my dress to be ready, no one came. I called for music and to make merry, and then Archbishop Cranmer came and said that the time for dancing was over.

Oh, he can be so unkind! He looks so serious, as if there is something very wrong. And then he asks me about Francis Dereham! Francis Dereham of all people, only in my service at the request of my own respectable grandmother! As if it is my fault! And all because some pathetic tittle-tattle talebearer has told the archbishop that there was a flirtation at Lambeth, as though anyone should care about that now! And I must say, if I were archbishop, I would try to be a better person than one who listens to such gossip.

So I say that all this is most untrue, and if I can see the king, I will easily persuade him not to hear a word against me. And then my lord Cranmer gives me a real fright, for he says in a most awful voice: “That, Madam, is why you will not see His Grace until your name has been utterly cleared. We will inquire into every circumstance until we have utterly scotched every slur against you.”

Well, I don’t reply because I know that my slur cannot be utterly scotched, or anything like it; but surely, all that at Lambeth was a matter between a maid and a young man, and now that I am married to the king, who should trouble themselves about what happened all that long time ago? Why, it is a lifetime ago, it is all of two years ago! Who should care one way or another now?

Perhaps it will all blow over in the morning. The king has his funny whims sometimes; he takes against one man or another and has them beheaded, and often he is sorry afterward. He took against poor Queen Anne of Cleves, and she got away with Richmond Palace and being his best sister. So we go to bed quite cheerful, and I ask Lady Rochford what she thinks, and she looks rather queer and says that she thinks I may get through it if I keep my nerve and deny everything. This is rather cold comfort from her, who saw her own husband go to the gallows denying everything. But I don’t tell her so, for fear of making her angry.

Katherine Tylney sleeps with me, and she laughs as she gets into bed and says that she bets I wish she were Tom Culpepper. I say nothing, for I do wish it. I wish it so much that I could cry for him. Long after she is snoring I lie awake and wish that everything had been different for me, and Tom had come to the house at Lambeth and perhaps fought with Francis and perhaps killed him, and then taken me away and married me. If he had come for me, then I would never have been queen and never had my necklace of table diamonds. But I should have slept the whole night in his arms, and sometimes that seems a better choice. It seems a better choice tonight, for sure.