The Other Boleyn Girl

by Philippa Gregory

  “Peace, for God’s sake,” George shouted at her as he fought to avoid her fingernails.

  “Peace!” she screamed at him. “How can I be at peace?”

  “Because you’ve lost,” George said simply. “Nothing to fight for now, Anne. You’ve lost.”

  For a moment she froze quite still, but we were too wary to let her go. She glared into his face as if she were quite demented and then she threw back her head and laughed a wild savage laugh.

  “Peace!” she cried passionately. “My God! I shall die peacefully. They will leave me at Hever until I am peacefully dead. And I will never ever see him again!”

  She gave a great heartbroken wail at that, and the fight went out of her and she slumped down. George released her wrists and caught her to him. She flung her arms around his neck and buried her face against his chest. She was sobbing so hard, so inarticulate with grief that I could not hear what she was saying, then I felt my own tears come as I made out what she was crying, over and over. “Oh God, I loved him, I loved him, he was my only love, my only love.”

  They wasted no time. Anne’s clothes were packed and her horse saddled and George ordered to escort her to Hever that same day. Nobody told Lord Henry Percy that she had gone. He sent a letter to her; and my mother, who was everywhere, opened it and read it calmly before thrusting it on the fire.

  “What did he say?” I asked quietly.

  “Undying love,” my mother said with distaste.

  “Should we not tell him that she’s gone?”

  My mother shrugged. “He’ll know soon enough. His father is seeing him this morning.”

  I nodded. Another letter came at midday, Anne’s name scrawled on the front in an unsteady hand. There was a smudge, perhaps a tearstain. My mother opened it, granite-faced, and it went the way of the first.

  “Lord Henry?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I rose from my place at the fireside and sat in the window seat. “I might go out,” I said.

  She turned her head. “You’ll stay here,” she said sharply.

  The old habit of obedience and deference to her had a strong hold on me. “Of course, my lady mother. But can I not walk in the garden?”

  “No,” she said shortly. “Your father and uncle have ruled that you are to stay indoors, until Northumberland has dealt with Henry Percy.”

  “I’m not likely to stand in the way of that, walking in the garden,” I protested.

  “You might send a message to him.”

  “I would not!” I exclaimed. “Surely to God you can all see that the one thing, the one thing is that I always, always, do as I am told. You made my marriage at the age of twelve, madam. You ended it just two years later when I was only fourteen. I was in the king’s bed before my fifteenth birthday. Surely you can see that I have always done as I have been told by this family? If I could not fight for my own freedom I am hardly likely to fight for my sister’s!”

  She nodded. “Good thing too,” she said. “There is no freedom for women in this world, fight or not as you like. See where Anne has brought herself.”

  “Yes,” I said. “To Hever. Where at least she is free to go out on the land.”

  My mother looked surprised. “You sound envious.”

  “I love it there,” I said. “Sometimes I think I prefer it even to court. But you will break Anne’s heart.”

  “Her heart has to break and her spirit has to break if she is to be any use to her family,” my mother said coldly. “It should have been done in her childhood. I thought they would teach you both the habits of obedience in the French court but it seems they were remiss. So it has to be done now.”

  There was a tap at the door and a man in shabby clothes stood uneasily on the threshold.

  “A letter for Mistress Anne Boleyn,” he said. “For none but her, and the young lord said I was to watch you read it.”

  I hesitated, I glanced across at my mother. She gave me a quick nod of her head and I broke the red seal with the Northumberland crest, and unfolded the stiff paper.

  My wife,

  I will not be forsworn if you will stand by the promises we have made to each other. I will not desert you if you do not desert me. My father is most angry with me, the cardinal too, and I do fear for us. But if we hold to each other then they must let us be together. Send me a note, a word only, that you will stand by me, and I will stand by you.

  Henry.

  “He said there should be a reply,” the man said.

  “Wait outside,” my mother said to the man, and closed the door in his face. She turned to me. “Write a reply.”

  “He’ll know her handwriting,” I said unhelpfully.

  She slid a piece of paper before me, put a pen in my hand and dictated the letter.

  Lord Henry,

  Mary is writing this for me as I am forbidden to put pen to paper to you. It is no use. They will not let us marry and I have to give you up. Do not stand against the cardinal and your father for my sake for I have told them that I surrender. It was only a betrothal de futuro and is not binding on either one of us. I release you from your half-promise and I am released from mine.

  “You will break both their hearts,” I observed, scattering sand on the wet ink.

  “Perhaps,” my mother said coolly. “But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.”

  Winter 1523

  WITH ANNE AWAY I WAS THE ONLY BOLEYN GIRL IN THE WORLD, and when the queen chose to spend the summer with the Princess Mary it was I who rode with Henry at the head of the court on progress. We spent a wonderful summer riding together, hunting, and dancing every night, and when the court returned to Greenwich in November I whispered to him that I had missed my course and I was carrying his child.

  At once, everything changed. I had new rooms and a lady in waiting. Henry bought me a thick fur cloak, I must not for a moment get chilled. Midwives, apothecaries, soothsayers came and went from my rooms, all of them were asked the vital question: “Is it a boy?”

  Most of them answered yes and were rewarded with a gold coin. The eccentric one or two said “no” and saw the king’s pout of displeasure. My mother loosened the laces of my gown and I could no longer go to the king’s bed at night, I had to lie alone and pray in the darkness that I was carrying his son.

  The queen watched my growing body with eyes that were dark with pain. I knew that she had missed her courses too, but there was no question that she might have conceived. She smiled throughout the Christmas feasts and the masques and the dancing, and she gave Henry the lavish presents that he loved. And after the twelfth night masque, when there was a sense that everything should be made clear and clean, she asked him if she might speak with him privately and from somewhere, God knows where, she found the courage to look him in the face and tell him that she had been clean for the whole of the season, and she was a barren woman.

  “Told me herself,” Henry said indignantly to me that night. I was in his bedroom, wrapped in my fur cloak, a tankard of mulled wine in my hand, my bare feet tucked under me before a roaring fire. “Told me without a moment’s shame!”

  I said nothing. It was not for me to tell Henry that there was no shame in a woman of nearly forty ceasing her bleeding. Nobody had known better than he that if she could have prayed her way into childbed they would have had half a dozen babies and all of them boys. But he had forgotten that now. What concerned him was that she had refused him what she should have given him, and I saw once again that powerful indignation which swept over him with any disappointment.

  “Poor lady,” I said.

  He shot me a resentful look. “Rich lady,” he corrected me. “The wife of one of the wealthiest men in Europe, the Queen of England no less, and nothing to show for it but the birth of one child, and that a girl.”

  I nodded. There was no point arguing with Henry.

  He leaned over me to put his hand gently on the round hard cu
rve of my belly. “And if my boy is in there then he will carry the name of Carey,” he said. “What good is that for England? What good is that for me?”

  “But everyone will know he is yours,” I said. “Everyone knows that you can make a child with me.”

  “But I have to have a legitimate son,” he said earnestly, as if I or the queen or any woman could give him a son by wishing it. “I have to have a son, Mary. England has to have an heir from me.”

  Spring 1524

  ANNE WROTE TO ME ONCE A WEEK FOR ALL THE LONG MONTHS of her exile and I was reminded of the desperate letters I had sent her when I had been banished from court. I remembered too that she had not bothered to reply. Now it was me at court and she was in outer darkness and I took a sister’s triumph in my generosity in replying to her often, and I did not spare her news of my fertility, and Henry’s delight in me.

  Our Grandmother Boleyn had been summoned to Hever to be a companion to Anne, and the two of them, the young elegant woman from the French court, and the wise old woman who had seen her husband leap from next to nothing to greatness, quarreled like cats on a stable roof from morning to night and made each other’s lives a complete misery.

  If I cannot return to court, I shall go mad,

  Anne wrote.

  Grandmother Boleyn cracks hazelnuts in her hands and drops the shells everywhere. They crunch underfoot like snails. She insists that we walk out in the garden together every day, even when it is raining. She thinks that rainwater is good for the skin, and says this is why Englishwomen have such peerless complexions. I look at her weatherbeaten old leather and know that I would rather stay indoors.

  She smells quite dreadful and is completely unaware of it. I told them to draw a bath for her the other day and they tell me that she consented to sit on a stool and let them wash her feet. She hums under her breath at the dinner table, she doesn’t even know she is doing it. She believes in keeping an open house in the grand old way and everyone, from the beggars of Tonbridge to the farmers of Edenbridge, is welcome into the hall to watch us eat as if we were the king himself with nothing to do with our money but give it away.

  Please, please, tell Uncle and Father that I am ready to return to court, that I will do their bidding, that they need fear nothing from me. I will do anything to get away from here.

  I wrote a reply at once.

  You will be able to come to court soon, I am sure, because Lord Henry is betrothed against his will to Lady Mary Talbot. He was said to be weeping when he made his promise. He has gone to defend the Scottish border with his own men from Northumberland under his standard. The Percys have to hold Northumberland safe while the English army goes to France again this summer and, with the Spanish as our allies, finish the work they started last summer.

  George’s wedding to Jane Parker is to take place this month at last, and I shall ask Mother if you can be present. She will surely not refuse you that.

  I am well but very tired. The baby is very heavy and when I try to sleep at night it turns and kicks. Henry is kinder than I have ever known him, and we are both hoping for a boy.

  I wish you were here. He is hoping for a boy so much. I am almost afraid as to what will happen if it is a girl. If only there was something one could do to make it be a boy. Don’t tell me about asparagus. I know all about asparagus. They make me eat it at every meal.

  The queen watches me all the time. I am too big now for concealment and everyone knows it is the king’s baby. William has not had to endure anyone congratulating him on our first child. Everyone knows, and there is a sort of wall of silence that makes it comfortable for everyone but me. There are times when I feel like a fool: my belly going before me, breathless on the stairs, and a husband who smiles at me as if we were strangers.

  And the queen…

  I wish to God I did not have to pray in her chapel every morning and night. I wonder what she is praying for, since all hope for her is gone. I wish you were here. I even miss your sharp tongue.

  Mary.

  George and Jane Parker were finally to marry after countless delays in the little chapel at Greenwich. Anne was to be allowed up from Hever for the day, she could sit in one of the high boxes at the back where no one would see her, but she was not allowed to attend the wedding feast. Most importantly for us, since the wedding was to take place in the morning, Anne had to ride up the day before and the three of us, George, Anne, and I, had the night together from dinner time till dawn.

  We prepared ourselves for a night of talking like midwives settling in for a long labor. George brought wine and ale and small beer, I crept down to the kitchen and filched bread, meat, cheese and fruit from the cooks who were happy to pile a platter for me, thinking that it was my seven-month belly which was making me hungry.

  Anne was in her cut-down riding habit. She looked older than her seventeen years and finer, her skin was pale. “Walking in the rain with the old witch,” she said grimly. Her sadness had given her a serenity which had not been there before. It was as if she had learned a hard lesson: that chances in life would not fall into her lap like ripe cherries. And she missed the boy she loved: Henry Percy.

  “I dream of him,” she said simply. “I so wish I didn’t. It’s such a pointless unhappiness. I am so tired of it. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I am so tired of being unhappy.”

  I glanced across at George. He was watching Anne, his face full of sympathy.

  “When is his wedding?” Anne asked bleakly.

  “Next month,” he said.

  She nodded. “And then it will be over. Unless she dies, of course.”

  “If she dies he could marry you,” I said hopefully.

  Anne shrugged. “You fool,” she said abruptly. “I can hardly wait for him in the hope that Mary Talbot drops dead one day. I’m quite a card to play once I’ve lived this down, aren’t I? Especially if you give birth to a boy. I’ll be aunt to the king’s bastard.”

  Without meaning to, I put my hands protectively before my belly as if I did not want my baby to hear that it was only wanted if it was a boy. “It’ll carry the name of Carey,” I reminded her.

  “But what if it is a boy and born healthy and strong and golden-haired?”

  “I shall call him Henry.” I smiled at the thought of a strong golden-haired baby in my arms. “And I don’t doubt but the king will do something very fine for him.”

  “And we all rise,” George pointed out. “As aunts and uncles to the king’s son, perhaps a little dukedom for him, perhaps an earldom. Who knows?”

  “And you, George?” Anne asked. “Are you merry, this merry merry night? I had thought you’d be out roistering and drinking yourself into the gutter, not sitting here with one fat lady and one broken-hearted one.”

  George poured some wine and looked darkly into his cup. “One fat lady and one broken-hearted one almost exactly suits my mood,” he said. “I couldn’t dance or sing to save my life. She is a most poisonous woman, isn’t she? My beloved? My wife-to-be? Tell me the truth. It’s not just me, is it? There is something about her that makes you shrink from her, isn’t there?”

  “Oh nonsense,” I said roundly. “She’s not poisonous.”

  “She sets my teeth on edge and she always has,” Anne said bluntly. “If ever there’s tittle-tattle or dangerous scandal, or someone telling tales of someone else, she’s always there. She hears everything and she watches everyone, and she’s always thinking the worst of everyone.”

  “I knew it,” George said glumly. “God! What a wife to have!”

  “She may give you a surprise on your wedding night,” Anne said slyly, drinking her wine.

  “What?” George said quickly.

  Anne raised an eyebrow over the cup. “She’s very well-informed for a virgin,” she said. “Very knowledgeable about matters for married women. Married women and whores.”

  George’s jaw dropped. “Never tell me she’s not a virgin!” he exclaimed. “I could surely get out of it if she was not a virgin!”
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  Anne shook her head. “I’ve never seen a man do anything that was not from politeness,” she said. “Who would, for God’s sake? But she watches and listens, and she doesn’t care what she asks or what she sees. I heard her whispering with one of the Seymour girls about someone who had lain with the king—not you—” she said quickly to me “—there was very worldly talk about kissing with an open mouth, letting one’s tongue lick and suchlike, whether one should lie on a king or underneath him, and where one’s hands should go, and what could be done to give him such pleasure as he might never forget it.”

  “And she knows these French practices?” George asked, astounded.

  “She talked as if she did,” Anne said, smiling at his amazement.

  “Well, by God!” said George, pouring himself another glass of wine and waving the bottle at me. “Perhaps I will be a happier husband than I thought. Where your hands should go, eh? And where should they go, Mistress Annamaria? Since you seem to have heard this conversation as well as my lovely wife-to-be?”

  “Oh don’t ask me,” Anne said. “I’m a virgin. Ask anyone. Ask Mother or Father or my uncle. Ask Cardinal Wolsey, he made it official. I’m a virgin. I am an attested official sworn-to-it virgin. Wolsey, the Archbishop of York himself, says I am a virgin. You can’t be more of a virgin than me.”

  “I shall tell you all about them,” George said more cheerfully. “I shall write to you at Hever, Anne, and you can read my letter aloud to Grandmother Boleyn.”

  George was pale as a bride on his wedding morning. Only Anne and I knew it was not from heavy drinking the night before. He did not smile as Jane Parker approached the altar, but she was beaming broad enough for them both.