The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa Gregory

woman of some experience, a woman grown; and then we shall see how long he stays with old froggy face when he could come across the room to lie in my bed instead.

      He’s not my first love, it is true; but I never felt anything like this for Henry Manox and if he says I did, then he is a liar. Henry Manox was well-enough for me when I was a girl just living in the country, a child really, learning to play the virginal and knowing nothing of kissing and touching. Why, when he first kissed me I didn’t even like it very much, and begged him to stop, and when he put his hand up my skirt I was so shocked I screamed aloud and cried. I was only eleven years old, I couldn’t be expected to know the pleasures of a woman. But I know all about that now. Three years in the maids’ chamber has taught me every little wile and play that I need. I know what a man wants, and I know how to play him, and I know when to stop too.

      My reputation is my dowry – my grandmother would point out that I have no other, sour old cat – and no-one will ever say that Katherine Howard does not know what is due to her and her family. I am a woman now, not a child. Henry Manox wanted to be my lover when I was a child in the country, when I knew next to nothing, when I had seen nobody, or at any rate nobody that mattered. I would have let him have me too, after he had bribed and bullied me for weeks to do the full deed, but in the end it was he that stopped short for fear of being caught. People would have thought badly of us since he was more than twenty and I was eleven. We were going to wait till I was thirteen. But now I live in Norfolk House in Lambeth, not buried in Sussex, and the king himself could ride past the door any day, the archbishop is our next-door neighbour, my own uncle Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, calls with all his great train, and he once remembered my name. I’m far beyond Henry Manox now. I’m not a country girl who can be bullied into giving him kisses and forced to do more, I am a good deal too high for that now. I know what’s what in the bedroom, I am a Howard girl, I have a wonderful future before me.

      Except – and this is such a tragedy that I really don’t know how to bear it – although I am of an age to go to court, and as a Howard girl my natural place should be in the queen’s chambers, there is no queen! It is a disaster for me. There is no queen at all, Queen Jane died after having her baby, which seems to me to be just laziness really, and so there are no places at court for maids in waiting. This is so terribly unlucky for me, I think no girl has ever been as unlucky as I have been: to have my fourteenth birthday in London, just as the queen has to go and die, and the whole court droop into mourning for years. Sometimes I feel that the whole world conspires against me, as if people want me to live and die an old lady spinster.

      What is the point of being pretty if no nobleman is ever going to know me? How will anyone ever see how charming I can be if nobody ever sees me at all? If it were not for my love, my sweetest handsome love, Francis, Francis, Francis, I should utterly despair, and throw myself into the Thames before I am a day older.

      But thank God, at least I do have Francis to hope for, and the world to play for. And God, if He truly does know everything, can only have made me so exquisite for a great future. He must have a plan for me? Fourteen and perfect? Surely He in His wisdom won’t let me waste away in Lambeth?

       Jane Boleyn, Blickling Hall, Norfolk, November 1539

      It comes at last, as the days grow dark and I am starting to dread another winter in the country: the letter I have wanted. I feel as if I have waited for it for a lifetime. My life can begin again. I can return to the light of good candles, to the heat of sea-coal braziers, to a circle of friends and rivals, to music and good food and dancing. I am summoned to court, thank God, I am summoned back to court and I shall serve the new queen. The duke, my patron and my mentor, has found me a place in the queen’s chamber once again. I shall serve the new Queen of England. I shall serve Queen Anne of England.

      The name rings like a warning tocsin: Queen Anne, Queen Anne again. Surely, the councillors who advised the marriage must have had a moment when they heard the words Queen Anne and felt a shiver of horror? They must have remembered how unlucky the first Anne was for us all? The disgrace she brought to the king, and the ruin of her family, and my own loss? My unbearable loss? But no, I see a dead queen is quickly forgotten. By the time this new Queen Anne arrives, the other Queen Anne, my Queen Anne, my sister, my adored friend, my tormentor, will be nothing more than a rare memory – my memory. Sometimes I feel as if I am the only one in the whole country who remembers. Sometimes I feel as if I am the only one in the world who watches and wonders, the only one cursed with memory.

      I still dream of her often. I dream that she is again young and laughing, careless of anything but her own enjoyment, wearing her hood pushed back from her face to show her dark hair, her sleeves fashionably long, her accent always so exaggeratedly French. The pearl ‘B’ at her throat proclaiming that the Queen of England is a Boleyn, as I am. I dream that we are in a sunlit garden, and George is happy, and I have my hand in his arm, and Anne is smiling at us both. I dream that we are all going to be richer than anyone could ever imagine, we will have houses and castles and lands. Abbeys will fall down to make stone for our houses, crucifixes will be melted for our jewellery. We will take fish from the abbey ponds, our hounds will range all over the church lands. Abbots and priors will give up their houses for us, the very shrines will lose their sanctity and honour us instead. The country will be made over to our glory, our enrichment and amusement. I always wake then, I wake and lie awake shaking. It is such a glorious dream; but I wake quite frozen with terror.

      Enough now of dreaming! Once again I shall be at court. Once again I shall be the closest friend of the queen, a constant companion in her chamber. I shall see everything, know everything. I shall be at the very centre of life again, I shall be the new Queen Anne’s lady in waiting, serving her as loyally and well as I have served the other three of King Henry’s queens. If he can rise up and marry again without fear of ghosts, then so can I.

      And I shall serve my kinsman, my uncle by marriage, the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the greatest man in England after the king himself. A soldier, known for the speed of his marches and the abrupt cruelty of his attacks. A courtier, who never bends with any wind but always constantly serves his king, his own family, and his own interest. A nobleman with so much royal blood in his family that his claim to the throne is as good as any Tudor. He is my kinsman and my patron and my lord. He saved me from a traitor’s death once, he told me what I should do and how to do it. He took me when I faltered and led me from the shadow of the Tower and into safety. Ever since then I am sworn to him for life. He knows I am his. Once again, he has work for me to do, and I shall honour my debt to him.

       Anne, Cleves Town, November 1539

      I have it! I am to be it! I shall be Queen of England. I have slipped my jesses like a free falcon and I shall fly away. Amelia has her handkerchief to her eyes because she has a cold and is trying to look as if she has been crying at the news of my going. She is a liar. She will not be at all sad to see me leave. Her life as the only duchess left in Cleves will be better by far than being the younger sister to me. And when I am married – and what a marriage! – her chances of a good alliance are much improved. My mother does not look happy either, but her anxiety is real. She has been strained for months. I wish I could think it is for the loss of me but it is not. She is worried sick about the cost of this journey and my wedding clothes on my brother’s treasury. She is Lord of the Exchequer as well as housewife to my brother. Even with England waiving the demand for a dowry, this marriage is costing the country more than my mother wants to pay.

      ‘Even if the trumpeters come free, they will have to be fed,’ she says irritably, as if trumpeters are an exotic and expensive pet that I, in my vanity, have insisted on, instead of a loan from my sister Sybilla who wrote to me frankly that it does her no good in Saxony if I set off to one of the greatest kings in Europe in little more than a wagon with a couple of guards.

      My brother says very little. This is a great triumph for him and a great step up in the world for his duchy. He is in a league with the other Protestant princes and dukes of Germany and they hope that this marriage will