The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court,
June 1541

The king, though he looks older and drawn, is at least returned to court and lives like a king instead of a sickly patient once more. His temper is a curse to his servants, and his rages can shake the court. The poison in his leg and in his bowels spills over into his nature. His Privy Council tiptoe in fear of offending him; in the morning he will say one thing, and in the evening be a passionate advocate of the opposite course. He acts as if he cannot remember the morning, and nobody dares to remind him. Whoever disagrees with him is disloyal, and the accusation of treason hangs in the air like the stink from his wound. This is a court of habitual turncoats, but I have never before seen men fling away their opinions with such speed. The king contradicts himself every day, and they fall into agreement with him, whatever he thinks.

His execution of the Countess of Salisbury has shaken us all, even the most hard-hearted. All of us knew her; all of us were proud to be her friend when she was the great friend and ally of Queen Katherine, and the last of our royal family of York. Easy enough to forget her when she fell from favor and was out of sight in the country. Harder to ignore her silent presence when she was in the Tower and everyone knew that she was ill housed, and cold, and underfed, mourning her family, as even her little grandsons disappeared into the locked rooms of the Tower. Unbearable, when the king moves without warning against her, has her dragged from her bed without notice and butchered on the block.

They say she ran from the axe; she did not make a dignified speech and lie down for him. She confessed nothing but insisted on her innocence. She fell on the scaffold and crawled to get away and the axeman had to run after her, raining down blows on her neck. It makes me shudder to hear it; it makes me sick to my soul to hear it. She crawled away from the same block that they brought out for Anne. How many women’s heads will he put on it? Who will be next?

Katherine copes with this new irritable Henry better than one might hope. She has no interest in either religion or power, so he does not speak to her of his policy and she does not know that his morning decisions are overturned by nightfall. Without an idea in her head she never argues with him. He treats her like a little pet, a lapdog, there for his caress, that can be sent away when it annoys him. She responds well to this and has the sense to hide her feelings for Culpepper under a veil of wifely devotion. Besides, what master would bother to ask a lapdog if she dreams of something better?

He pulls her about before the whole court; he is without embarrassment in his treatment of her. When they are at dinner, before everyone, he will reach over and tweak at her breast and watch the color rise to her face. He asks her for a kiss, and when she offers him her cheek, he will suck on her mouth, and we can see his sly hand pat her rump. She never pulls away from him; she never steps back. When I look very carefully I can see her stiffen at his touch, but she never does anything that could enrage him. For a fifteen-year-old girl she does very well. For a girl passionately in love with another man she does very well indeed.

Whatever secret moments she manages to snatch with Culpepper between dinner and dancing, midnight finds her always in her bed, her gorgeous nightgown loosely tied, her white nightcap making her eyes look large and luminous: a sleepy angel, waiting for the king. If he is late coming to her bed, she sometimes falls asleep. She sleeps like a child and has a habit of smoothing her cheek across the pillow as she lies down her head; it is very endearing. He comes in his nightshirt with his thick robe around his broad shoulders, his bad leg heavily bandaged but the stain of the pus seeping through the white dressing. Most nights Thomas Culpepper is at his side, the heavy royal hand leaning heavily on the young man’s shoulder for support. Culpepper and Katherine never exchange so much as one look when he brings her old husband to her bed. He gazes up at the bedhead behind her, where the king’s initials are carved, entwined with hers, and she looks down at the silky embroidered sheets. He takes the king’s cape from his fat shoulders, while a groom of the bedchamber raises the sheets. Two pages haul the king upward to the bed and steady him as he balances on his only good leg. The stench of the suppurating wound fills the bedchamber, and Katherine never flinches. Her smile is steady and welcoming, and the king’s groan as he gets into bed, as they gently thrust his legs under the covers, does not shake her composure. We all leave, reverently stepping backward, and only when we have closed the door on them do I glance across to Thomas Culpepper and see that his young face is twisted with a scowl.

“You want her,” I say quietly to him.

He glances at me with a denial on his lips, but then he shrugs and says nothing.

“She wants you,” I volunteer.

At once he snatches me by the elbow and draws me so that we are in the window bay, almost wrapped up in the thick curtain. “She says this to you? She has told you this in so many words?”

“She has.”

“When has she said such a thing to you? What did she say?”

“She comes out of her bedroom when the king has fallen asleep most nights. I take off her nightcap and brush her hair; sometimes she is almost crying.”

“He hurts her?” he asks, shocked.

“No,” I say. “She is crying with lust. Night after night she labors over him to give him pleasure, and all she can do for herself is to wind herself up tighter and tighter, like a bowstring ready to snap.”

Culpepper’s face is a picture; if I were not doing my work for my lord duke, I would not be able to contain my laughter. “She cries with lust?”

“She could scream with it,” I say. “Some nights I give her a sleeping powder; other nights she takes mulled wine and spices. But even so, some nights she cannot sleep for hours. She paces round the chamber pulling at the ribbons of her nightgown, saying that she is burning up.”

“She always comes out after the king is asleep?”

“If you were to come back in an hour, she would be coming out then,” I whisper.

He hesitates for a moment. “I dare not,” he says.

“You could see her,” I tempt him. “When she comes from his bed with her desire unslaked, longing for you.”

His face is a portrait of hunger.

“She wants you,” I remind him. “I stroke her hair, and she drops back her head and whispers, ‘Oh, Thomas.’”

“She whispers my name?”

“She is mad for you.”

“If I were to be caught with her, it would be her death, and mine,” he says.

“You could just come to talk to her,” I say. “Soothe her. It would be a service to the king to keep her steady. How long can she go on like this? The king pulling her about every night, stripping her naked, running his eyes and then his hands all over her, touching every inch of her and yet never giving her a moment of peace? She is wound up tight, I tell you, Master Culpepper, tight like a lute string overstrung.”

His throat contracts as he swallows at the picture. “If I could just talk to her…”

“Come back in an hour and I will let you in,” I say. I am almost as breathless as him, as excited by my words as he is. “You can talk to her in her privy chamber; the king will be asleep in the bedroom. I can be here with the two of you, all the time. What complaint could anyone make if I am there, with the two of you, all the time?”

Oddly, he is not reassured by my friendship; he pulls back and stares at me suspiciously. “Why would you so serve me?” he demands. “What benefit for you?”

“I serve the queen,” I say quickly. “I always serve the queen. She wants your friendship; she wants to see you. All I do is make that safe for her.”

He must be mad with love if he thinks that anyone could make their meeting safe. “In an hour,” he says.

I wait by the fire as it dies down. I am doing my duty for the duke, but I find my mind straying all the time to my husband, George, and to Anne. He used to wait for her to come from the king’s bed, just as I am waiting now, just as Culpepper will wait for the queen. I shake my head. I have sworn not to think of them anymore; I have sworn to put the thought of them away from me. I drove myself quite mad thinking about them before; now that they are gone, I need not torment myself about them anymore.

After a little while, the door to the bedchamber opens and Katherine comes out. There are dark shadows under her eyes, and her face is pale. “Lady Rochford,” she says in a little whisper as she sees me. “Do you have my wine ready?”

I am recalled to the present. “It’s ready.” I seat her in the chair nearest the fire.

She puts her bare feet up on the fender. She shudders. “He disgusts me,” she says inconsequentially. “Dear God, I disgust myself.”

“It is your duty.”

“I can’t do it,” she says. She closes her eyes and tips back her head. A tear creeps out from under her closed eyelids and runs down her pale cheek. “Not even for the jewels. I can’t go on doing it.”

I pause for a moment and then I whisper: “You will have a visitor tonight.”

At once she sits up, alert. “Who?”

“Someone you will want to see,” I say. “Someone you have longed for, for months, perhaps even years. Who would you most want to see?”

The color floods into her cheeks. “You cannot mean…” she starts. “Is he coming?”

“Thomas Culpepper.”

She gives a little gasp at his name and she leaps up. “I have to dress,” she says. “You must do my hair.”

“You cannot,” I say. “Let me turn the key in the bedroom door.”

“And lock the king inside?”

“Better that than he wakes and comes out. We can always find an excuse.”

“I want my perfume!”

“Leave it.”

“I can’t see him like this.”

“Shall I stop him at the door and tell him to go away again?”

“No!”

There is a little tap on the door, so soft that I could not have heard it if I had not the ears of a spy. “There he is now.”

“Don’t let him in!” She puts a hand on my arm. “It’s too dangerous. Dear God, I shan’t lead him into danger.”

“He only wants to talk,” I soothe her. “There can be no harm in that.” Quietly, I open the door to him. “It is all right,” I say to the sentry. “The king wants Master Culpepper.” I open the door wide, and Culpepper steps into the room.

At the fireside, Katherine rises to her feet. The glow of the fire illuminates her face, gilds her gown. Her hair, tumbled about her face, glints in the light; her lips part to whisper his name, and her color rises. The ribbons of her gown tremble at her throat where her pulse thuds.

Culpepper walks toward her like a man in a dream. He stretches out a hand to her, and she takes it and puts his palm at once to her cheek. He holds a handful of her hair, and his other hand blindly finds her waist; they slide toward each other as if they have been waiting for months to touch like this; indeed they have. Her hands go to his shoulders, he draws her closer, without a word being said, she gives him her mouth, and he bows his head and takes her.

I turn the key on the outer door so the sentry cannot come in. Then I go back to the bedroom door and I stand with my back to it, my ears pricked for any noise from the king. I can hear the stertorous sound of his wheezy breath, and a loud wet belch. In the fire-light before me, Thomas Culpepper slides his hand inside the throat of her gown; I see her head drop back, resistless, as he touches her breast. She lets him caress her, and she runs her fingers through his curly brown hair, pulling his face down to her bared neck.

I cannot tear my gaze away. It is as I always imagined it when I used to think of George with his mistress. A pleasure like a knife, desire as pain. He sits on the high-backed chair and draws her to him. I can see little more than the back of the chair and their silhouettes, dark against the glow of the fire. It is like a dance of desire as he takes her hips and pulls her astride him. I see her fumble with his hose as he pulls at the ribbons at the front of her gown. They are about to do it as I watch them. They are shameless: me in the same room, and her husband behind the door. They are so wanton and so helpless with their desire that they are about to do it here and now, in front of me.

I hardly dare breathe; I must see everything. The sleeping king’s heavy breathing is matched by their quiet panting; they are moving together, then I see the gleam of her pale thigh as she pulls her nightgown aside, and I hear him groan and I know that she has straddled him and taken him in. I hear a little sigh of desire, and it is me, aroused with stolen lust. The chair creaks as she clings to the back and rocks forward and back on him; her breath is coming fast. He is thrusting up inside her; I hear her start to moan as her pleasure mounts, and I am afraid that they will wake the king. But nothing could stop them, not even if he were to wake and shout, not even if he were to try the door and come out; they are tied together by lust, and they cannot break free. I feel my own legs weaken with mirrored desire as Katherine’s little cries mount, and I slide down to the floor, to my knees, watching them but seeing George’s desirous face, and his mistress astride him, until Katherine suddenly lets out a gasp and falls to Thomas’s shoulder, at the same moment he groans and grips her, then they both subside.

It feels like a long time before she gives a little murmur and stirs. Culpepper lets her go, and she rises from the seat, dropping the hem of her nightgown and smiling back at him as she goes to the fire. He rises from the chair and ties his laces again, then he reaches for her, wraps his arms around her from behind, nuzzles at her neck, her hair. Like a young girl in love for the first time, she turns in his arms and gives him her mouth. She kisses him as if she adores him; she kisses him as if this is a love that will last forever.

In the morning I go to find my lord duke. The court is preparing to go hunting, and the queen is being lifted into the saddle by one of the king’s friends. The king himself, hauled to the back of his hunter, is in a merry mood, laughing at Culpepper’s new bridle of red leather and calling up his hounds. The duke is not riding today; he stands at the doorway, watching the horses and the hounds in the cool of the morning. I pause beside him as I go to my horse.

“It is done,” I say. “Last night.”

He nods as if I am telling him of the cost of the blacksmith. “Culpepper?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Will she have him again?”

“As often as she can. She is besotted.”

“Keep her discreet,” he says. “And tell me the moment she is with child.”

I nod. “And my own affair?” I ask boldly.

“Your affair?” he repeats, pretending he has forgotten.

“My marriage,” I say. “I… I need to be married.”

He raises his eyebrow. “Better to be married than to burn, my dear Lady Rochford?” he asks. “But your marriage to George did not prevent you from burning up.”

“That was not my fault,” I say quickly. “It was her.”

He smiles; he does not have to ask whose shadow fell on my marriage and set the fire that burned us all up.

“What news of my new marriage?” I press him.

“I am exchanging letters now,” he says. “When you tell me that the queen is with child, I shall confirm it.”

“And the nobleman?” I ask urgently. “Who is he?”

“Monsignor le Compte?” he asks. “Wait and see, my dear Lady Rochford. But believe me, he is wealthy, and he is young, handsome, and – let me think – no more than three, perhaps four, steps from the throne of France. Will that satisfy you?”

“Completely.” I can hardly speak for excitement. “I shall not fail you, my lord.”