The Boleyn Inheritance

Anne, Richmond Palace,
August 6, 1540

He is to visit me for dinner. Why, I cannot think. The royal groom of the household came yesterday and told my steward that the king would have the pleasure of dining with me today. I asked those ladies who are still with me if anyone had any news from the court, and one of them said that she had heard that the king was at Oatlands Palace, all but alone, hunting to take his mind off the terrible betrayal of Thomas Cromwell.

One of them asked me if I thought the king was coming to beg my pardon and to ask me to come back to him.

“Is it possible?” I ask her.

“If he was mistaken? If the inquiry was mistaken?” she asks. “Why else would he come and see you, so soon after the end of the marriage? If he still wants to end the marriage, why would he dine with you?”

I go outside to the beautiful gardens and walk a little way, my head buzzing with thoughts. It does not seem possible that he should want to take me back, but there is no doubt that if he has changed his mind he can take me back, just as easily as he could put me aside.

I wonder if it would be possible for me to refuse to go back to him. I would want to return to the court and to be restored to my position, of course. But there is a freedom to being a single woman that I might learn to enjoy. I have never in my life before been Anne of Cleves, Anne by myself, not a sister, not a daughter, not a wife, but Anne: pleasing myself. I swore if I was spared death, then I would live my life, my own life, not a life commanded by others. I order dresses in colors that I think suit me; I don’t have to observe my brother’s code of modesty, nor the court fashions. I order dinner at the time and with the food that I like; I don’t have to sit down in front of two hundred people who watch every single thing I do. When I want to ride out, I can go as far and as fast as I like; I don’t have to consider my brother’s fears or my husband’s competitive spirit. If I call for musicians in the evening, I can dance with my ladies or hear them sing; we don’t always have to follow the king’s tastes. We don’t have to marvel at his compositions. I can pray to a god of my own faith in the words that I choose. I can become myself, I can be: me.

I had thought that my heart would leap at the chance to be queen again. My chance to do my duty by this country, by its people, by the children whom I have come to love, and perhaps even to win my mother’s approval and to fulfill my brother’s ambitions. But I find, to my own amusement, as I examine my thoughts – and at last I have the privacy and peace to examine my thoughts – that it may be a better thing to be a single woman with a good income in one of the finest palaces in England than to be one of Henry’s frightened queens.

The royal guards come first, and then his companions, handsome and overdressed as always. Then he comes in with a touch of awkwardness, limping slightly on his sore leg. I sink down in a low curtsy, and I can smell the familiar stink of his wound as I come up. Never again will I have to wake with that smell on my sheets, I think, as I step forward and he kisses me on the forehead.

He looks me up and down, frankly, as a man appraising a horse. I remember that he told the court that I smell and that my breasts are slack, and I can feel my color rising. “You look well,” he says begrudgingly. I can hear the pique behind his praise. He was hoping I would pine with unrequited love, I am sure.

“I am well,” I say calmly. “Glad to see you.”

He smiles at that. “You must have known I would never treat you unfairly,” he says, happy at the thought of his own generosity. “If you are a good sister to me, then you will see I shall be kind to you.”

I nod and bow.

“Something’s different about you.” He takes a chair and gestures that I may sit on the lower chair beside him. I sit and smooth the embroidered skirt of the blue gown over my knees. “Tell me. I can judge a woman just by the look of her; I know that there is something different about you. What is it?”

“A new hood?” I suggest.

He nods. “It becomes you. It becomes you very well.”

I say nothing. It is French-cut. If the Howard girl has returned to court, he will be accustomed to the very height and folly of fashion. In any case, now that I no longer wear the crown, I can wear what I please. It’s funny, if I was of a mind to laugh, that he should prefer me dressed to my own taste over when I tried to please his. But what he likes in a woman he would not like in a wife. Katherine Howard may discover this.

“I have some news.” He looks around at my small court of companions, his gentlemen standing about. “Leave us.”

They go out as slowly as they dare. They are all longing to know what will happen next. I am certain that it will not be an invitation to me to return to him. I am certain that it will not be; and yet I am breathless to know.

“Some news that may distress you,” he says to prepare me. At once I think that my mother has died, far away, and without a chance for me to explain how I failed her.

“No need to cry,” he says quickly.

I put my hand to my mouth and nip my knuckles. “I am not crying,” I say steadily.

“That’s good,” he says. “And besides, you must have known it would happen.”

“I didn’t expect it,” I say foolishly. “I didn’t expect it so soon.” Surely they should have sent for me if they knew she was gravely ill?

“Well, it is my duty.”

“Your duty?” I want so much to know if my mother spoke of me in her last days that I hardly hear him.

“I am married,” he says. “Married. I thought I should tell you first, before you hear it from some gossip.”

“I thought it was about my mother.”

“Your mother? No. Why would it be about your mother? Why would I trouble myself about your mother? It is about me.”

“You said bad news.”

“What could be worse for you than to know that I have married another woman?”

Oh, a thousand things, a thousand things, I think, but I don’t say the thought aloud. The relief that my mother is alive rushes through me, and I have to grip the arms of my chair to steady myself and to look as grave and as bereft as I know he will want me to look. “Married,” I say flatly.

“Yes,” he says. “I am sorry for your loss.”

So it is indeed done. He will not return to me. I will never again be Queen of England. I cannot care for little Elizabeth; I cannot love Prince Edward; I cannot please my mother. It is indeed over. I have failed in what I was sent to do, and I am sorry for it. But, dear God, I am safe from him; I shall never be in his bed again. It is indeed utterly finished and over. I have to keep my eyes down and my face still so that he does not see my beam of joy at this freedom.

“To a lady of a most noble house,” he continues. “Of the Norfolk house.”

“Katherine Howard?” I ask, before his boasting makes him look more ridiculous than I already think him.

“Yes,” he says.

“I wish you much happiness,” I say steadily. “She is…” At that precise and dreadful moment I cannot find the English word. I want to say “charming,” but I cannot think of the word. “Young,” I finish lamely.

He shoots me a quick, hard look. “That is no objection to me.”

“None at all,” I say quickly. “I meant to say, charming.”

He thaws. “She is charming,” he agrees, smiling at me. “I know you liked her when she was in your rooms.”

“I did,” I say. “She was always pleasant company. She is a lovely girl.” I nearly say “child” but catch myself in time.

He nods. “She is my rose,” he says. To my horror, his eyes fill with the sentimental tears of an old bully. “She is my rose without a thorn,” he says thickly. “I feel that I have found her at last, the woman I have waited for all my life.”

I sit in silence. This is an idea so bizarre that I cannot find any words, English or German, to reply. He has been waiting all his life? Well, he has not been waiting very patiently. During the time of his long vigil he has seen off three, no, four wives, me among them. And Katherine Howard is very far from a rose without a thorn. She is, if anything, a little daisy: delightful, sweet-faced, but ordinary. She must be the most common commoner ever to sit on a better woman’s throne.

“I hope you will be very happy,” I say again.

He leans toward me. “And I think we will have a child,” he whispers. “Hush. It’s early days yet. But she is so very young, and she comes from fertile stock. She says she thinks it is so.”

I nod. His smug confiding to me, who was bought and put in his bed to endure him laboring hopelessly above me, pushing himself against me, patting my stomach and pulling at my breasts, repels me so much I can hardly congratulate him on achieving with a girl what he failed to do with me.

“So let us dine,” he says, releasing me from my embarrassment, and we rise. He takes my hand as if we were still married and leads me into the great hall of Richmond Palace, which was his father’s favorite new-built palace and is now mine. He seats himself alone, on a throne raised higher than any other, and I am seated not at his side – as I was when I was queen – but down the hall at a little distance, as if to remind the world that everything has changed and that I will never sit at his side as queen again.

I don’t need reminding. I know this.