The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Hampton Court,
April 1541

I am much reassured by all that I am learning, and I wish I had thought to ask before. I had always believed that my cousin Queen Anne had been caught with a lover and beheaded for that. Now I find that it was far more complicated than that; she was at the center of a treasonous plot, too long ago for me to understand. I was afraid in case she and I were treading the same road to the same destination; I was afraid that I had inherited her wickedness. But it turns out that there was a great plot, and even my lady Rochford and her husband were tied up in it somehow. It will have been about religion, I daresay, for Anne was a furious Sacramentary, I think, whereas now everyone with any sense is for the old ways. So I think as long as I am very clever and very discreet that I can at least be friends with Thomas Culpepper. I can see him often; he can be my companion and my comforter, and nobody need know or think anything of it. And while he is a loyal servant of the king and I am a good wife, then no harm will be done.

Cleverly, I call my cousin Catherine Carey to my side and tell her to sort embroidery silks into shades of color for me, as if I am about to start sewing. If she had been longer at court, she would know at once that this is a ruse since I have not touched a needle since I became queen, but she brings a stool and sits at my feet and puts one pink silk beside another, and we look at them together.

“Has your mother ever told you what happened to her sister, Queen Anne?” I ask quietly.

She looks up at me. She has hazel eyes, not as dark as the Boleyn shade. “Oh, I was there,” she says simply.

“You were there!” I exclaim. “But I didn’t know anything about it!”

She smiles. “You were in the country, weren’t you? We are about the same age. But I was a child at court. My mother was lady-in-waiting to her sister Anne Boleyn, and I was maid-in-waiting.”

“So what happened?” I am almost choking with curiosity. “Lady Rochford will never tell me a thing! And she gets so cross when I ask.”

“It is a bad story and not worth the telling,” she says.

“Not you as well! I will be told, Catherine. She is my aunt, too, you know. I have a right to know.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you. But it still won’t make it a good story. The queen was accused of adultery with her own brother, my uncle.” Catherine speaks quietly, as if it is an everyday event. “Also with other men. She was found guilty; he was found guilty; the men were found guilty. The queen and her brother George were both sentenced to death. I went into the Tower with her. I was her maid in the Tower. I was with her when they came for her and she went out to die.”

I look at this girl, this cousin of mine, my own age, my own family. “You were in the Tower?” I whisper.

She nods. “As soon as it was over my stepfather came and took me away. My mother swore we would never go back to court.” She smiles and shrugs. “But here I am,” she says cheerfully. “As my stepfather says: where else can a girl go?”

“You were in the Tower?” I cannot get rid of the thought of it.

“I heard them build her scaffold,” she says seriously. “I prayed with her. I saw her go out for the last time. It was terrible. It was truly terrible. I don’t like to think of it, even now.” She turns her face away and briefly closes her eyes. “It was terrible,” she repeats. “It is a terrible death to die.”

“She was guilty of treason,” I whisper.

“She was found guilty by the king’s court of treason,” she corrects me, but I don’t quite see the difference.

“So she was guilty.”

She looks at me again. “Well, anyway, it is a long time ago, and whether she was guilty or not, she was executed at the king’s command, and she died in her faith, and she is dead now.”

“Then she must have been guilty of treason. The king would not execute an innocent woman.”

She bows her head to hide her face. “As you say, the king is not capable of making a mistake.”

“Do you think she was innocent?” I whisper.

“I know she was not a witch; I know she was not guilty of treason; I am sure she was innocent of adultery with all those men,” she says firmly. “But I do not argue with the king. His Grace must know best.”

“Was she very afraid?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

There seems nothing more to say. Lady Rochford comes into the room and takes in the sight of the two of us, head to head. “What are you doing, Catherine?” she asks irritably.

Catherine looks up. “Sorting embroidery silks for Her Grace.”

Lady Rochford gives me a long, hard look. She knows I am hardly likely to start sewing if there is no one watching. “Put them in the box carefully when you have finished,” she says, and goes out again.

“But she was not charged,” I whisper, nodding to the door where her ladyship has gone. “And your mother was not charged. Just George.”

“My mother was newly come to court.” Catherine starts to gather up the silks. “And an old favorite of the king. Lady Rochford was not charged for she gave evidence against her husband and the queen. They would not accuse her; she was their chief witness.”

“What?” I am so astounded I give a little scream, and Catherine glances at the door behind us as if she fears someone hearing us. “She betrayed her own husband and sister-in-law?”

She nods. “It was a long time ago,” she repeats. “My mother says that there is no value in thinking of old scores and old wrongs.”

“How could she?” I am stammering with shock. “How could she do such a thing? Send her husband to his death? Accuse him – of that? How can Lady Rochford be so trusted by my uncle? If she betrayed her own husband and her queen?”

My cousin Catherine rises from the floor and puts the silks in the box, as she was ordered. “My mother commanded me to trust nobody at court,” she observes. “She said, especially Lady Rochford.”

All this leaves me with something to think about. I cannot imagine what it was like, all that long time ago. I cannot imagine what the king must have been like when he was a young man, a healthy young man, perhaps as handsome and desirable as Thomas Culpepper is now. And what must it have been like for Queen Anne my cousin, admired as I am admired, surrounded by courtiers as I am surrounded, confiding in Jane Boleyn, just as I do.

I cannot think what this means. I cannot think what it means to me. As Catherine says, it was a long time ago, and everyone is different now. I cannot be haunted by these old, sad stories. Anne Boleyn has been a shameful secret in our family for so long it hardly matters whether she was innocent or not, since she died a traitor’s death in the end. Surely, it does not matter to me? It is not as if I have to follow her footsteps; it is not as if there is a Boleyn inheritance of the scaffold, and I am her heir. It is not as if any of this makes any difference to me. It is not as if I should learn from her.

I am the queen now, and I shall have to live my life as I please. I shall have to manage as well as I can with a king who is no husband to me at all. He has hardly been out of his rooms for a month, and he will not admit me even when I go to his door for a visit. And since he never sees me, he is never pleased with me, and I have had nothing from him for months: not even a trinket. It is so rude of him and so selfish that I think it would quite serve him right if I were to fall in love with another man.

I would not do so, nor would I take a lover, not for anything. But it would undoubtedly be his fault if I did so. He is a poor husband to me, and it is all very well everyone wanting to know if I am in good health and if there is any sign of an heir, but if he will not let me into his rooms, how am I to get a child?

Tonight I am resolved to be a good wife and try again, and I have sent my page boy with a request that I might dine with the king in his chamber. Thomas Culpepper sends back a message to say that the king is a little better today, and more cheerful. He has risen from his bed and sat in the window to hear the birds in the garden. Thomas comes to my rooms himself to tell me that the king looked down from the window and saw me playing with my little dog and that he smiled at the sight of me.

“Did he?” I ask. I was wearing one of my new gowns; it is a very pale rose pink to celebrate the end of Lent, at last, and I wore it with my Christmas pearls. To be honest, I must have looked quite enchanting, playing in the garden. If I had only known he was watching! “Did you see me?”

He turns his head away as if he does not dare to confess. “If I had been the king I would have run down the stairs to be with you, pain or no pain. If I were your husband, I don’t think I’d ever let you out of my sight.”

Two of my maids-in-waiting come in and glance curiously at us. I know that we are turned toward each other, almost as if we would kiss.

“Tell His Majesty that I shall dine with him this evening, if he will allow it, and I shall do my best to cheer him,” I say clearly, and Thomas bows and goes out.

“Cheer him?” Agnes remarks. “How? Give him a new enema?” They all laugh together as if this is great wit.

“I shall try to cheer him if he is not determined to be miserable,” I say. “And mind your manners.”

Nobody can say that I don’t do every duty as a wife, even if he is disagreeable. And at least tonight I shall see Thomas, who will fetch me to and from the king’s rooms, so we shall have moments together. If we can get somewhere where we cannot be seen, he will kiss me, I know he will, and I melt like sugar in a sauce pot at the thought of it.