The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,
Christmas 1540

This is to be Katherine’s Christmas, the happiest Christmas she has ever had. Her household is re-formed around her; she is served by the greatest ladies of the land and befriended by the worst girls who ever romped in a dormitory. She has her lands in her own right; she has retainers by the thousand; she has jewels that would be the envy of the Moors; now she has to have the happiest Christmas of her life, and we are ordered to make it so.

The king is rested and revived, excited at the thought of a dazzling celebration to show the world that he is the ardent husband of a young and pretty wife. The brief scandal of his niece’s love affair is forgotten; she is locked up in Syon Abbey, and her lover is run away. Kitty Howard has blamed everybody but herself for the laxity of her rooms, and all is forgiven. Nothing shall spoil this first Christmas for the newlyweds.

But straightaway there is a little pout on the pretty face. Princess Mary comes to court as she is bidden and bends the knee to her new stepmother, but she does not come up smiling. Princess Mary is clearly not impressed by a girl nine years her junior, and she cannot seem to form her mouth to say the word Mother to a silly, vain child, when that beloved title once belonged to the finest queen in Europe. Princess Mary, who has always been a girl of high scholarly ability and seriousness, a child of the church, a child of Spain, cannot stomach a girl younger than her, perched on her mother’s throne like a tiny cuckoo chick and jumping down to dance the moment anyone asks her. Princess Mary first met Kitty Howard last spring when she was the vainest, silliest girl in service to the queen. How to believe that this little imp is now the queen herself? If it were the Feast of Misrule, Princess Mary would laugh. But this stunted version of royalty is not funny when it is played out every day. She does not laugh.

The court is grown merry, as some say, or wild, as others say. I say that if you put a young fool in command of her own household and bid her to please herself, you will see an explosion of flirtation, adultery, posturing, misbehavior, drunkenness, dishonesty, and downright lechery. And so we see. Princess Mary walks among us like a woman of judgment through a market of fools. She sees nothing that she can like.

The little pout tells the king that his child bride is discontented, and so he takes his daughter to one side and tells her to mind her manners if she wants a place at court at all. Princess Mary, who has endured worse than this, bites her tongue and bides her time. She says nothing against the girl queen; she merely watches her, as a thoughtful young woman would watch a dirty babbling stream. There is something about Mary’s dark gaze that makes Katherine as insubstantial as a little laughing ghost.

Little Kitty Howard, alas, does not improve as a result of great position. But nobody, except her adoring husband, ever thought she would. Her uncle the duke keeps a strict eye on her public behavior, and relies on me to watch her in private. More than once he has summoned her to his rooms for a fierce lecture on propriety and the behavior expected of a queen. She breaks down into the penitent tears that are so easy for her. And he, relieved that – unlike Anne – she does not argue, or throw his own behavior back at him, or cite the polite manners of the French court, or laugh in his face, thinks the deed is done. But the very next week there is a romp in the queen’s rooms when the young courtiers chase the girls all around the queen’s chambers, her own bedroom as well, smacking them with pillows, and the queen is in the midst of it all, screaming and dancing on the bed and awarding points in the joust of the pillows. So what is to be done?

No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on. She is lacking in education and training and even common sense. God knows what the duchess thought she was doing with the young people in her house. She sent Katherine to music lessons – where she was kissed by the music master – but she never taught her to read or write or to reckon accounts. The child has no languages, she cannot read a score – despite the attentions of Henry Manox – she can sing with a thin little voice, she can dance like a whore, she is learning to ride. What else? No, nothing else. That is all.

She has wit enough to please a man, and some of her late-night foolery in Norfolk House has taught her a handful of whorish tricks. Thank God, she sets herself to please the king, and she succeeds beyond belief. He has taken it into his head that she is a perfect girl. In his eyes she has replaced the daughter he never loved, the virgin bride that his brother had first, the wife he was never sure of. For a man who has two daughters of his own, and who has wedded and bedded five women, he certainly has a lot of dreams unfulfilled. Katherine is to be the one who finally makes him happy, and he does everything to convince himself that she is the girl who can do it.

The duke summons me to his rooms every week; he leaves nothing to chance with this Howard girl, having lost control of the previous two Boleyns.

“Is she behaving herself?” he asks curtly.

I nod. “She is wild with the girls of her chamber, but she says nothing and does nothing to which you could seriously object in public.”

He sniffs. “Never mind if I object. Is there anything to which the king could object?”

I pause. Who knows what the king could object to? “She has done nothing to dishonor herself or her high calling,” I say cautiously.

He glares at me under his fierce eyebrows. “Don’t mince words with me,” he says coldly. “I don’t keep you here for you to tell me riddles. Is she doing anything that would cause me concern?”

“She has a fancy for one of the king’s chamber,” I say. “Nothing has happened beyond their making cow’s eyes at each other.”

He scowls. “Has the king seen?”

“No. It’s Thomas Culpepper, one of his favorites. He is blinded by his affection for them both. He orders them to dance together; he says they make a perfect pair.”

“I’ve seen them.” He nods. “It’s bound to happen. Watch her, and make sure she is never alone with him. But a girl of fifteen is going to fall in love, and never with a husband of forty-nine. We will have to watch her for years. Anything else?”

I hesitate. “She is greedy,” I say frankly. “Every time the king comes to dinner she asks him for something. He hates that. Everyone knows he hates that. He doesn’t hate it in her, yet. But how long can she go on asking him for a place for this or that cousin, or this or that friend? Or asking for a gift?”

The duke makes a minute mark on the paper before him. “I agree,” he says. “She shall get the ambassadorship to France for William, and then I shall tell her to ask for no more. Anything else?”

“The girls she has put in her chamber,” I say. “The girls from Norfolk House and Horsham.”

“Yes?”

“They misbehave with her,” I say bluntly. “And I cannot manage them. They are silly girls. There is always an affair going on with one young man or another; there is always one of them sneaking out or trying to sneak him in.”

“Sneak him in?” he demands, suddenly alert.

“Yes,” I say. “No harm can be done to the queen’s reputation when the king sleeps in her bed. But say that he is weary or sick and he misses a night, and her enemies find that a young man is creeping up the back stairs. Who is to say that he is coming to see Agnes Restwold and not the queen herself?”

“She has her enemies,” he says thoughtfully. “There is not a reformist nor a Lutheran in the kingdom who would not be glad to see her disgraced. Already they are whispering against her.”

“You would know more than I.”

“And there are all our enemies. Every family in England would be glad to see her fall and us dragged down with her. It was ever thus. I would have given anything to see Jane Seymour shamed by a scandal. The king always fills his household with the friends of his wives. Now we are in the ascendancy again, and our enemies are gathering.”

“If we did not insist on having everything…”

“I shall have the Lord Lieutenancy of the North, cost me what it will,” he growls irritably.

“Yes, but after that?”

“Do you not see?” He suddenly rounds on me. “The king is a man for favorites and for adversaries. When he has a Spanish wife, we go to war with France. When he is married to a Boleyn, he destroys the monasteries and the Pope with them. When he is married to a Seymour, we Howards have to creep about and snatch up the crumbs under the table. When he has the Cleves woman, we are all in thrall to Thomas Cromwell, who made the match. Now it is our time again. Our girl is on the throne of England; everything that can be lifted is ours to carry away.”

“But if everyone is our enemy?” I suggest. “If our greed makes us enemies of everyone else?”

He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. “Everyone is always our enemy,” he says. “But right now, we are winning.”