The Boleyn Inheritance

Katherine, Norfolk House, Lambeth,
December 1539

And what shall I get for Christmas? I know I am to have an embroidered purse from my friend Agnes Restwold, a hand-copied page from a prayer book from Mary Lascelles (I’m so thrilled at the prospect of this I can hardly breathe), and two handkerchiefs from my grandmother. So far, so very dull indeed. But my dearest Francis is going to give me a shift of the best embroidered linen, and I have woven him, with my own hands, and it has taken me days, an armband of my favorite colors. I am very pleased that he should love me so, and of course I love him, too, but he has not bought me a ring as he promised, and he is sticking to his plan to go to Ireland to seek his fortune in the very next month, and then I shall be left all alone, and what is the point of that?

The court is at Greenwich for Christmas. I hoped it would be at Whitehall, and then I might at least have gone to see the king eat his dinner. My uncle the duke is there, but he does not summon us; and although my grandmother went to dine, she did not take me with her. Sometimes I think that nothing will ever happen for me. Nothing will ever happen at all, and I will live and die an old spinster in my grandmother’s service. I shall be fifteen next birthday, and clearly no one has given a single thought to my future. Who ever cares for me? My mother is dead, and my father barely remembers my name. It is terribly sad. Mary Lumleigh is to be married next year; they are drawing up the contract now, and she makes much of herself and queens it over me, as though I cared for her and for her pimply betrothed. I should not want such a match if it were offered to me with a fortune attached, and so I told her, and so we have quarreled and the lace collar she was going to give me for Christmas will be given to someone else, and I do not care about that either.

The queen should be in London by now, but she has been so stupidly slow that she is delayed, so all my hopes of her great entry into London and a wonderful wedding have been put off, too. It is as if the very fates themselves work to make me unhappy. I am doomed. All I want is a little dancing! Anyone would think that a girl of nearly fifteen, or at any rate fifteen next year, could go dancing once before she dies!

Of course we will have dancing here for Christmas, but that is not what I mean at all. What is the pleasure in dancing when everyone who sees you has seen you every day for a year before? What’s the pleasure in a feast when every boy in the room is as familiar as the tapestries on the walls? Where’s the joy in having a man’s eyes on you when he is your own man, your own husband, and he would come to your bed whether you dance prettily or not? I try a special turn and curtsy that I have been practicing, and it does me no good at all. Nobody seems to notice except my grandmother, who sees everything, and she calls me out of the line and puts her finger under my chin and says: “Child, there is no need to twinkle around like some slut of an Italian. We all watch you anyway.” By which I am supposed to understand that I should dance not like a lady, like an elegant young lady, with some style; but like a child.

I curtsy and say nothing. There is no point in arguing with my lady grandmother, she has such a temper she can send me from the room in a moment if I so much as open my mouth. I really do think I am very cruelly treated.

“And what’s this I hear about you and young Master Dereham?” she suddenly asks. “I thought I had warned you once already?”

“I don’t know what you hear, Grandmother,” I say cleverly.

Too clever for her, because she raps my hand with her fan.

“Don’t forget who you are, Katherine Howard,” she says sharply. “When your uncle sends for you to wait on the queen, I take it you will not want to refuse because of some greensick flirtation?”

“Wait on the queen?” I go at once to the most important thing.

“Perhaps,” she says maddeningly. “Perhaps she will have need of a maid-in-waiting if the girl has been gently raised and is not known to be an utter slut.”

I cannot speak, I am so desperate. “Grandmother… I…”

“Never mind,” she says and waves me away back to the dancers. I clutch at her sleeve and beg to know more, but she laughs and sends me to dance. As she is watching me, I hop about like a little wooden doll; I am so correct in the steps and so polite in my deportment that you would think I had a crown on my head myself. I dance like a nun, I dance like a vestal virgin, and when I look up to see if she is impressed by my modesty she is laughing at me.

So that night, when Francis comes to the chamber door, I meet him on the threshold. “You can’t come in,” I say bluntly. “My lady grandmother knows all about us. She warned me for my reputation.”

He looks shocked. “But my love-”

“I can’t risk it,” I insist. “She knows far more than we thought. God knows what she has heard or who has told her.”

“We would not deny each other,” he says.

“No,” I say uncertainly.

“If she asks you, you must tell her that we are married in the eyes of God.”

“Yes, but-”

“And I shall come to you as your husband now.”

“You can’t.” Nothing in this world is going to prevent me from being the new queen’s maid-in-waiting. Not even my undying love for Francis.

He puts his hand around my waist and nibbles at the nape of my neck. “I shall be going to Ireland within days,” he whispers softly. “You will not send me away with my heart breaking.”

I hesitate. It would be very sad for his heart to break, but I have to be maid-in-waiting to the new queen; there is nothing more important than that.

“I don’t want your heart to break,” I say. “But I have to take a post in the queen’s household, and who knows what might happen?”

He lets me go abruptly. “Oh, so you think you’re going to go to court?” he asks crossly. “And flirt with some great lord? Or one of your noble cousins or someone? A Culpepper or a Mowbray or a Neville or someone?”

“I don’t know,” I say. It is really marvelous how dignified I can be. You would think I was my grandmother. “I cannot discuss my plans with you now.”

“Kitty!” he cries, torn between anger and lust. “You are my wife; you are my promised wife! You are my own beloved!”

“I must ask you to withdraw,” I say very grandly, and I close the door in his face and run and take a flying leap onto my bed.

“What now?” asks Agnes. At the far end of the dormitory they have drawn the curtains around the bed; some boy and some loose girl are lovemaking, and I can hear his eager panting and her sighing.

“Can’t you be quiet?” I shout down the long room. “It’s really shocking. It is offensive to a young maid such as me. It’s shocking. It really shouldn’t be allowed.”