The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Westminster Palace,
June 1540

A note, dropped into my lap by one of the servers at dinner as he leans over to clear the meat platter, bids me go to my lord at once, and as soon as dinner is over, I do as I am told. These days, the queen goes into her bedroom straight after dinner; she will not miss me from the nervous huddle of those of us who are left in her depleted rooms. Katherine Howard is missing from court, gone back to her grandmother’s house at Lambeth. Lady Lisle is under house arrest for her husband’s grave crimes; they say she is quite frantic with distress and fear. She knows he will die. Lady Rutland is quiet and goes to her own rooms at night. She must be fearful, too, but I don’t know what accusation she might face. Anne Bassett has gone to stay with her cousin under the pretense of illness; Catherine Carey has been sent for by her mother, Mary. She asks permission for Catherine to come home as she is unwell. I could laugh at the transparent excuse. Mary Boleyn was always skilled at keeping herself and hers far from trouble. A pity she never exerted herself for her brother. Mary Norris has to help her mother in the country with some special tasks. Henry Norris’s widow saw the scaffold last time the king plotted against his wife. She won’t want to see her daughter climb the steps that her husband trod.

We are all of us guarded in our speech and retiring in our behavior. The bad times have come to King Henry’s court once more, and everyone is afraid, everyone is under suspicion. It is like living in a nightmare: every man, every woman knows that every word they say, every gesture they make, might be used in evidence against them. An enemy might work up an indiscretion into a crime; a friend might trade a confidence for a guarantee of safety. We are a court of cowards and tale bearers. Nobody walks anymore; we all tiptoe. Nobody even breathes; we are all holding our breath. The king has turned suspicious of his friends, and nobody can be sure that they are safe.

I creep to my lord duke’s rooms, walking in the shadows, and I open the door and slip in, in silence. My lord duke is standing by the window, the shutters open to the warm night air, the candles on his desk bobbing their flames in the draft. He looks up and smiles when I enter the room; I could almost think that he is fond of me.

“Ah, Jane, my niece. The queen is to go to Richmond with a much-reduced court. I want you to go with her.”

“Richmond?” I hear the quaver of fear in my own voice, and I take a breath. This means house arrest while they inquire into the allegations against her. But why are they sending me in with her? Am I to be charged, too?

“Yes. You will stay with her and keep a careful note of who comes and goes, and anything she says. In particular, you are to be alert for Ambassador Harst. We think he can do nothing, but you would oblige me by seeing that she has no plans to escape, sends no messages, that sort of thing.”

“Please…” I stop myself, my voice has come out weak. I know this is not the way to deal with him.

“What?” He is still smiling, but his dark eyes are intent.

“I cannot prevent her escaping. I am one woman, alone.”

He shakes his head. “The ports are closed from tonight. Her ambassador has discovered that there is not a horse to buy or hire in the whole of England. Her own stables are barred. Her rooms closed. She won’t be able to escape or send for help. Everyone in her service is her jailer. You just have to watch her.”

“Please let me go and serve Katherine,” I take a breath to say. “She will need advice if she is to be a good queen.”

The duke pauses for thought. “She will,” he says. “She is an idiot, that girl. But she can come to no harm with her grandmother.”

He taps his thumbnail against his tooth, considering.

“She will need to learn to be a queen,” I say.

He hesitates. We two have known Queens of England who were queens indeed. Little Katherine is not fit to touch their shoes, let alone walk in them; years of training would not make her regal. “No, she won’t,” he says. “The king doesn’t want a great queen beside him anymore. He wants a girl to pet, a little filly, a young broodmare for his seed. Katherine need be nothing more than obedient.”

“Then let me say the truth: I don’t want to go to Richmond with Queen Anne. I don’t want to bear witness against this queen.”

His sharp, dark eyes look up quickly at me. “Witness of what?” he demands.

I am too weary to fence. “Witness of whatever you want me to see,” I say. “Whatever the king wants me to say, I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to bear witness against her.”

“Why not?” he asks, as if he did not know.

“I am sick of trials,” I say from the heart. “I am afraid of the king’s desires now. I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know how far he will go. I don’t want to give evidence at a queen’s trial – not ever again.”

“I am sorry,” he says without regret. “But we need someone to swear that she had a conversation with the queen in which the queen made it clear that she was a virgin untouched, absolutely untouched, and moreover quite ignorant of any doings between a man and a maid.”

“She has been in bed with him night after night,” I say impatiently. “We all put her to bed the first night. You were there; the Archbishop of Canterbury was there. She was raised to conceive a son and bear an heir; she was married for that single purpose. She could hardly be ignorant of the doings of a man and a maid. No woman in the world has endured more unsuccessful attempts.”

“That is why we need a lady of unimpeachable reputation to swear it,” he says smoothly. “Such an unlikely lie needs a plausible witness: you.”

“Any of the others can do that for you,” I protest. “Since the conversation never happened, since it is an impossible conversation, surely it does not matter who says that it took place?”

“I should like our name entered as witness,” the duke says. “The king would be pleased to see our service. It would do us good.”

“Is it to prove her a witch?” I ask bluntly. I am too weary of my work and sick of myself to pick my way around my ducal uncle tonight. “Is it, in fact, to prove her a witch and have her sent to her death?”

He draws himself up to his full height and looks down his nose at me. “It is not for us to predict what the king’s commissioners might find,” he says. “They will sift the evidence, and give the verdict. All you will provide is a sworn statement, sworn on your faith before God.”

“I don’t want her death on my conscience.” I can hear the desperation in my voice. “Please. Let someone else swear to it. I don’t want to go with her to Richmond and then swear a lie against her. I don’t want to stand by while they take her to the Tower. I don’t want her to die on the basis of my false evidence. I have been her friend; I don’t want to be her assassin.”

He waits in silence till my torrent of refusals is finished, then he looks at me and smiles again, but now there is no warmth in his face at all. “Certainly,” he says. “You will swear only to the statement that we will have prepared for you, and your betters will decide what is to be done for the queen. You will keep me informed of whom she sees and what she does in the usual way. My man will go with you to Richmond. You will watch her with care. She is not to escape. And when it is over, you will be Katherine’s lady-in-waiting, you will have your place at court, you will be lady-in-waiting to the new Queen of England. That will be your reward. You will be the first lady at the new queen’s court. I promise it. You will be head of her privy chamber.”

He thinks he has bought me with this promise, but I am sick of this life. “I can’t go on doing this,” I say simply. I am thinking of Anne Boleyn, and of my husband, and of the two of them going into the Tower with all the evidence against them, and none of it true. I am thinking of them going to their deaths knowing that their family had borne witness against them, and their uncle passed the death sentence. I am thinking of them, trusting in me, waiting for me to come to give evidence for their defense, confident in my love for them, certain that I would save them. “I cannot go on doing this.”

“I should hope not,” he says primly. “Please God that you will never do it again. In my niece Katherine, the king has at last found a true and honorable wife. She is a rose without a thorn.”

“A what?”

“A rose without a thorn,” the duke repeats. He keeps his face perfectly straight. “That is what we are to call her. That is what he wants us to call her.”