The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Greenwich Palace,
January 6, 1540

I am to help the queen to dress for her wedding, and I have to get up extremely early to get everything ready. I would rather not get up early, but it is nice to be singled out from the other girls who sleep so late and are so lazy. Really it’s very bad of them to lie in bed so late when some of us are up and working for Lady Anne. Truly, everyone but me is completely idle.

I lay out her dress as she is washing in her closet. Catherine Carey helps me spread out the skirt and the underskirts on the closed chest as Mary Norris goes for her jewels. The skirt is enormous, like a great fat spinning top, I would rather die than marry in a dress like this; the greatest beauty in the world could not help but look like a pudding, waddling out to be eaten. It is hardly worth being queen if you have to go around like a tent, I think. The cloth is extremely fine – cloth of gold – and it is heavy with the most wonderful pearls, and she has a coronet to wear. Mary has put it out before the mirror, and if no one else was here I would try it on, but already, though it is so early, there are half a dozen of us, servants and maids and ladies-in-waiting, and so I have to give it a little polish and leave it alone. It is very finely wrought; she brought it from Cleves with her, and she told me that the spiky bits are supposed to be rosemary, which her own sister wore as a fresh herb in her hair at her wedding. I say it looks like a crown of thorns, and her lady secretary gives me a sharp look and doesn’t translate my remark. Just as well, really.

She will wear her hair loose, and when she comes out of the bathroom she sits before her silver looking glass, and Catherine brushes her hair with long, smooth strokes, like you would a horse’s tail. She is fair-haired, to be just to her she is quite golden-haired, and wrapped in a bath sheet and glowing from her wash, she looks well this morning. She is a little pale, but she smiles at all of us, and she seems happy enough. If I were her, I would be dancing for joy to be Queen of England. But I suppose she is not the dancing sort.

Off she goes for the wedding, and we all fall in behind her in strict order of importance, which means that I am so far back it is hardly worth my while being there, nobody will be able to see me, even though I am wearing my new gown that is trimmed with silver thread, the most costly thing I have ever owned. It is a very pale gray-blue, and suits my eyes. I never looked better; but it is not my wedding, and nobody pays any attention to me at all.

Archbishop Cranmer is to marry them: drone, drone, drone, like an old bee. He asks them if there is any reason why they cannot be married, and if we, the congregation, know of any impediment and we all say very cheerfully, “No, we don’t,” and I suppose only I am fool enough to wonder what would happen if someone said, “Stop the wedding, for the king has had three wives already, and none of them died of old age!” but of course, nobody does.

If she had any sense, she should be alarmed. It is hardly a very reassuring record. He is a great man of course, and his will is the will of God, of course; but he has had three wives and all of them dead. It’s not much of a prospect for a bride, when I come to think about it. But I don’t think she thinks like that. Probably nobody thinks like this unless they are as stupid as me.

They are married and go off to hear Mass in the king’s private closet, and the rest of us wait around with nothing to do, which is, I find, one of the main activities at court. There is a very handsome young man whose name happens to be John Beresby, and he manages to work his way through the people so that he is standing behind me.

“I am dazzled,” he says.

“I don’t know what by,” I say pertly. “It is hardly daybreak, it is so early.”

“Not by the sun, but by the greater light of your beauty.”

“Oh, that,” I say, and give him a little smile.

“You are new to court?”

“Yes, I am Katherine Howard.”

“I am John Beresby.”

“I know.”

“You know? You have asked someone my name?”

“Not at all,” I say. Though it is a lie. I noticed him that first day at Rochester, and I asked Lady Rochford who he was.

“You have asked after me,” he says delightedly.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say crushingly.

“Tell me that I may at least dance with you later, at the wedding feast.”

“Perhaps,” I say.

“I shall take that as a promise,” he whispers, and then the door opens and the king comes out with Lady Anne and we all curtsy very low because she is queen now, and a married woman, and I can’t help but think that though that is very nice for her, it would have been much better if she had worn a gown with a long train.