The Boleyn Inheritance

Anne, Cleves Town,
November 1539

I have it! I am to be it! I shall be Queen of England. I have slipped my jesses like a free falcon, and I shall fly away. Amelia has her handkerchief to her eyes because she has a cold and is trying to look as if she has been crying at the news of my going. She is a liar. She will not be at all sad to see me leave. Her life as the only duchess left in Cleves will be better by far than being the younger sister to me. And when I am married – and what a marriage! – her chances of a good alliance are much improved. My mother does not look happy either, but her anxiety is real. She has been strained for months. I wish I could think it is for the loss of me, but it is not. She is worried sick about the cost of this journey and my wedding clothes on my brother’s treasury. She is Lord of the Exchequer as well as housewife to my brother. Even with England waiving the demand for a dowry, this marriage is costing the country more than my mother wants to pay.

“Even if the trumpeters come free, they will have to be fed,” she says irritably, as if trumpeters are an exotic and expensive pet that I, in my vanity, have insisted on, instead of a loan from my sister Sybilla, who wrote to me frankly that it does her no good in Saxony if I set off to one of the greatest kings in Europe in little more than a wagon with a couple of guards.

My brother says very little. This is a great triumph for him and a great step up in the world for his duchy. He is in a league with the other Protestant princes and dukes of Germany, and they hope that this marriage will prompt England to join their alliance. If all the Protestant powers in Europe were united, then they could attack France or the Hapsburg lands and spread the word of reform. They might get as far as Rome itself; they might curb the power of the Pope in his own city. Who knows what glory to God might come, if only I can be a good wife to a husband who has never been pleased before?

“You must do your duty to God as you serve your husband,” my brother says to me pompously.

I wait to see what exactly he means by this. “He takes his religion from his wives,” he says. “When he was married to a princess from Spain, he was named Defender of the Faith by the Pope himself. When he married the Lady Anne Boleyn, she led him away from superstition to the light of reform. With Queen Jane he became Catholic again, and if she had not died he would have reconciled with the Pope, for sure. Now, although he is no friend of the Pope, his country is all but Catholic. He could become a Roman Catholic again in a moment. But if you guide him as you should do, he will declare himself as a Protestant king and leader, and he will join with us.”

“I will try my best,” I say uncertainly. “But I am only twenty-four. He is a man of forty-eight and he has been king since he was a young man. He may not listen to me.”

“I know you will do your duty.” My brother tries to reassure himself; but as the time comes for me to leave, he grows more and more doubtful.

“You cannot fear for her safety?” I hear my mother mutter to him as he sits in the evening over his wine and stares at the fire as if he would foresee the future without me.

“If she behaves herself, she should be safe. But God knows he is a king who has learned that he can do anything he wants in his own lands.”

“You mean to his wives?” she asks in a whisper.

He shrugs uneasily.

“She would never give him cause to doubt her.”

“She has to be warned. He will hold the power of life and death over her. He will be able to do what he likes to her. He will control her utterly.”

I am hidden in the shadows at the back of the room, and this revealing remark from my brother makes me smile. From this one phrase, I finally understand what has been troubling him for all these months. He is going to miss me. He is going to miss me like a master misses a lazy dog when he finally drowns it in a fit of temper. He has become so accustomed to bullying me, and finding fault with me, and troubling me daily in a dozen small ways, that now, when he thinks that another man will have the ordering of me, it plagues him. If he had ever loved me, I would call this jealousy, and it would be easy to understand. But it is not love that he feels for me. It is more like a constant resentment that has become such a habit to him that to have me removed, like an aching tooth, brings him no relief.

“At least she will be of service to us in England,” he says meanly. “She is worse than useless here. She has to bring him to reformed religion. She has to make him declare as a Lutheran. As long as she doesn’t spoil it all.”

“How should she spoil it?” my mother replies. “She has only to have a child by him. There is no great skill in that. Her health is good and her courses regular, and at twenty-four she’s a good age for childbearing.” She considers for a moment. “He should desire her,” she says fairly. “She is well made, and she carries herself well, I have seen to that. He is a man who is given to lust and falling in love on sight. He will probably take great carnal pleasure in her at first, if only because she is new to him, and a virgin.”

My brother leaps up from his chair. “Shame!” he says, his cheeks burning with more than the heat from the fire. Everyone stops talking at the sound of his raised voice, then quickly they turn away, trying not to stare. Quietly, I rise from my stool and get myself to the very back of the room. If his temper is rising, I had better slip away.

“Son, I meant nothing wrong,” Mother says, quick to placate him. “I just meant that she is likely to do her duty and please him…”

“I can’t bear the thought of her-” He breaks off. “I cannot stomach it! She must not seek him out!” he hisses. “You must tell her. She must do nothing unmaidenly. She must do nothing wanton. You must warn her that she must be my sister, your daughter, before she is ever a wife. She must bear herself with coldness, with dignity. She is not to be his whore, she is not to act the part of some shameless, greedy-”

“No, no,” my mother says softly. “No, of course not. She isn’t like that, William, my lord, dear son. You know she has been most strictly raised, in fear of God and to respect her betters.”

“Well, tell her again,” he cries. Nothing will soothe him; I had better get away. He would be beside himself if he knew that I have seen him like this. I put my hand behind me and feel the comforting warmth of the thick tapestry covering the rear wall. I inch along, my dark dress almost invisible in the shadows of the room.

“I saw her when that painter was here,” he says, his voice thick. “Preening in her vanity, setting herself out. Laced… laced… tight. Her breasts… on show… trying to appear desirable. She is capable of sin, Mother. She is disposed to… She is disposed to… Her temperament is naturally filled with…” He cannot say it.

“No, no,” Mother says gently. “She only wants to be a credit to us.”

“Lust.”

The word has become detached, it drops into the silence of the room as if it might belong to anybody, as if it might belong to my brother and not to me.

I am at the doorway now, my hand gently lifting the latch, my other finger muffling its click. Three of the women of the court casually rise and stand before me to mask my retreat from the two at the fireside. The door swings open on oiled hinges and makes no sound. The cold draft makes the candles at the fireside bob, but my brother and my mother are facing each other, rapt in the horror of that word, and do not turn around.

“Are you sure?” I hear her ask him.

I close the door before I hear him reply, and I go quickly and quietly to our chamber where the maids are sitting up by the fireside with my sister and playing cards. They scramble them off the table when I tear open the door and stride in, and then they laugh when they see it is me in their relief that they have not been caught out gambling: a forbidden pleasure for spinsters in my brother’s lands.

“I’m going to bed, I have a headache, I’m not to be disturbed,” I announce abruptly.

Amelia nods. “You can try,” she says knowingly. “What have you done now?”

“Nothing,” I say. “As always, nothing.”

I go through quickly to our privy chamber and fling my clothes into the chest at the foot of the bed and jump into bed in my shift, drawing the curtains around the bed, pulling the covers up. I shiver in the coldness of the linen, and wait for the order that I know will come.

In only a few moments, Amelia opens the door. “You’re to go to Mother’s rooms,” she says triumphantly.

“Tell her I’m ill. You should have said I’ve gone to bed.”

“I told her. She said you have to get up and put on a cloak and go. What have you done now?”

I scowl at her bright face. “Nothing.” I rise unwillingly from the bed. “Nothing. As always, I have done nothing.” I pull my cloak from the hook behind the door and tie the ribbons from chin to knee.

“Did you answer him back?” Amelia demands gleefully. “Why do you always argue with him?”

I go out without replying, through the silenced chamber and down the steps to my mother’s rooms in the same tower on the floor below us.

At first it looks as if she is alone, but then I see the half-closed door to her privy chamber and I don’t need to hear him, and I don’t need to see him. I just know that he is there, watching.

She has her back to me at first, and when she turns I see she has the birch stick in her hand and her face is stern.

“I have done nothing,” I say at once.

She sighs irritably. “Child, is that any way to come into a room?”

I lower my head. “My lady mother,” I say quietly.

“I am displeased with you,” she says.

I look up. “I am sorry for that. How have I offended?”

“You have been called to a holy duty; you must lead your husband to the reformed church.”

I nod.

“You have been called to a position of great honor and great dignity, and you must forge your behavior to deserve it.”

Inarguable. I lower my head again.

“You have an unruly spirit,” she goes on.

True indeed.

“You lack the proper traits of a woman: submission, obedience, love of duty.”

True again.

“And I fear that you have a wanton streak in you,” she says, very low.

“Mother, that I have not,” I say as quietly as her. “That is not true.”

“You do. The King of England will not tolerate a wanton wife. The Queen of England must be a woman without a stain on her character. She must be above reproach.”

“My lady mother, I-”

“Anne, think of this!” she says, and for once I hear a real ring of earnestness in her voice. “Think of this! He had the Lady Anne Boleyn executed for infidelity, accusing her of sin with half the court, her own brother among her lovers. He made her queen, and then he unmade her again with no cause or evidence but his own will. He accused her of incest, witchcraft, crimes most foul. He is a man most anxious for his reputation, madly anxious. The next Queen of England must never be doubted. We cannot guarantee your safety if there is one word said against you!”

“My lady-”

“Kiss the rod,” she says before I can argue.

I touch my lips to the stick as she holds it out to me. Behind her privy chamber door I can hear him slightly, very slightly, sigh.

“Hold the seat of the chair,” she orders.

I bend over and grip both sides of the chair. Delicately, like a lady lifting a handkerchief, she takes the hem of my cloak and raises it over my hips and then my night shift. My buttocks are naked; if my brother chooses to look through the half-open door, he can see me, displayed like a girl in a bawdy house. There is a whistle of the rod through the air and then the sudden whiplash of pain across my thighs. I cry out, and then bite my lip. I am desperate to know how many cuts I will have to take. I grit my teeth together and wait for the next. The hiss through the air and then the slice of pain, like a sword cut in a dishonorable duel. Two. The sound of the next comes too fast for me to make ready, and I cry out again, my tears suddenly coming hot and fast like blood.

“Stand up, Anne,” she says coolly, and pulls down my shift and my cloak.

The tears are pouring down my face; I can hear myself sobbing like a child.

“Go to your room and read the Bible,” she says. “Think especially on your royal calling. Caesar’s wife, Anne. Caesar’s wife.”

I have to curtsy to her. The awkward movement causes a wave of new pain, and I whimper like a whipped puppy. I go to the door and open it. The wind blows the door from my hand, and, in the gust, the inner door to her privy chamber flies open without warning. In the shadow stands my brother, his face strained as if it were him beneath the whip of the birch, his lips pressed tightly together as if to stop himself from calling out. For one awful moment our eyes meet and he looks at me, his face filled with a desperate need. I drop my eyes; I turn from him as if I have not seen him, as if I am blind to him. Whatever he wants of me, I know that I don’t want to hear it. I stumble from the room, my shift sticking to the blood on the backs of my thighs. I am desperate to get away from them both.