The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa Gregory
power of the Pope in his own city. Who knows what glory to God might come, if only I can be a good wife to a husband who has never been pleased before?
‘You must do your duty to God as you serve your husband,’ my brother says to me pompously.
I wait to see what exactly he means by this. ‘He takes his religion from his wives,’ he says. ‘When he was married to a princess from Spain he was named Defender of the Faith by the Pope himself. When he married the Lady Anne Boleyn she led him away from superstition to the light of reform. With Queen Jane he became Catholic again and if she had not died he would have reconciled with the Pope, for sure. Now, although he is no friend of the Pope, his country is all but Catholic. He could become a Roman Catholic again in a moment. But if you guide him as you should do, he will declare himself as a Protestant king and leader, and he will join with us.’
‘I will try my best,’ I say uncertainly. ‘But I am only twenty-four. He is a man of forty-eight and he has been king since he was a young man. He may not listen to me.’
‘I know you will do your duty,’ my brother tries to reassure himself; but as the time comes for me to leave, he grows more and more doubtful.
‘You cannot fear for her safety?’ I hear my mother mutter to him as he sits in the evening over his wine and stares at the fire as if he would foresee the future without me.
‘If she behaves herself she should be safe. But God knows he is a king who has learned that he can do anything he wants in his own lands.’
‘You mean to his wives?’ she asks in a whisper.
He shrugs uneasily.
‘She would never give him cause to doubt her.’
‘She has to be warned. He will hold the power of life and death over her. He will be able to do what he likes to her. He will control her utterly.’
I am hidden in the shadows at the back of the room, and this revealing remark from my brother makes me smile. From this one phrase, I finally understand what has been troubling him for all these months. He is going to miss me. He is going to miss me like a master misses a lazy dog when he finally drowns it in a fit of temper. He has become so accustomed to bullying me, and finding fault with me, and troubling me in a dozen small daily ways, that now, when he thinks that another man will have the ordering of me, it plagues him. If he had ever loved me, I would call this jealousy; and it would be easy to understand. But it is not love that he feels for me. It is more like a constant resentment that has become such a habit to him that to have me removed, like an aching tooth, brings him no relief.
‘At least she will be of service to us in England,’ he says meanly. ‘She is worse than useless here. She has to bring him to reformed religion. She has to make him declare as a Lutheran. As long as she doesn’t spoil it all.’
‘How should she spoil it?’ my mother replies. ‘She has only to have a child by him. There is no great skill in that. Her health is good and her courses regular, and at twenty-four she’s a good age for childbearing.’ She considers for a moment. ‘He should desire her,’ she says fairly. ‘She is well-made, and she carries herself well, I have seen to that. He is a man who is given to lust and falling in love on sight. He will probably take great carnal pleasure in her at first, if only because she is new to him, and a virgin.’
My brother leaps up from his chair. ‘Shame!’ he says, his cheeks burning with more than the heat from the fire. Everyone stops talking at the sound of his raised voice, then quickly they turn away, trying not to stare. Quietly, I rise from my stool and get myself to the very back of the room. If his temper is rising, I had better slip away.
‘Son, I meant nothing wrong,’ Mother says, quick to placate him. ‘I just meant that she is likely to do her duty and please him …’
‘I can’t bear the thought of her …’ He breaks off. ‘I cannot stomach it! She must not seek him out!’ he hisses. ‘You must tell her. She must do nothing unmaidenly. She must do nothing wanton. You must warn her that she must be my sister, your daughter, before she is ever a wife. She must bear herself with coldness, with dignity. She is not to be his whore, she is not to act the part of some shameless, greedy …’
‘No, no,’ my mother says softly. ‘No, of course not. She isn’t like that, William, my lord, dear son. You know she has been most strictly raised, in fear of God and to respect her betters.’
‘Well, tell her again,’ he cries. Nothing will soothe him, I had better get away. He would be beside himself if he knew that I have seen him like this. I put my hand behind me and feel the comforting warmth of the thick tapestry covering the rear wall. I inch along, my dark dress almost invisible in the shadows of the room.
‘I saw her when that painter was here,’ he says, his voice thick. ‘Preening in her vanity, setting herself out. Laced … laced … tight. Her breasts … on show … trying to appear desirable. She is capable of sin, Mother. She is disposed to … She is disposed to … Her temperament is naturally filled with …’ He cannot say it.
‘No, no,’ Mother says gently. ‘She only wants to be a credit to us.’
‘… Lust.’
The word has become detached, it drops into the silence of the room as if it might belong to anybody, as if it might belong to my brother and not to me.
I am at the doorway now, my hand gently lifting the latch, my other finger muffling its click. Three of the women of the court casually rise and stand before me to mask my retreat from the two at the fireside. The door swings open on oiled hinges and makes no sound. The cold draught makes the candles at the fireside bob, but my brother and my mother are facing each other, rapt in the horror of that word, and do not turn around.
‘Are you sure?’ I hear her ask him.
I close the door before I hear him reply, and I go quickly and quietly to our chamber where the maids are sitting up by the fireside with my sister and playing cards. They scramble them off the table when I tear open the door and stride in, and then they laugh when they see it is me in their relief that they have not been caught out gambling: a forbidden pleasure for spinsters in my brother’s lands.
‘I’m going to bed, I have a headache, I’m not to be disturbed,’ I announce abruptly.
Amelia nods. ‘You can try,’ she says knowingly. ‘What have you done now?’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘As always, nothing.’
I go through quickly to our privy chamber and fling my clothes into the chest at the foot of the bed and jump into bed in my shift, drawing the curtains around the bed, pulling the covers up. I shiver in the coldness of the linen, and wait for the order that I know will come.
In only a few moments, Amelia opens the door. ‘You’re to go to Mother’s rooms,’ she says triumphantly.
‘Tell her I’m ill. You should have said I’ve gone to bed.’
‘I told her. She said you have to get up and put on a cloak and go. What have you done now?’
I scowl at her bright face. ‘Nothing.’ I rise unwillingly from the bed. ‘Nothing. As always, I have done nothing.’ I pull my cloak from the hook behind the door and tie the ribbons from chin to knee.
‘Did you answer him back?’ Amelia demands gleefully. ‘Why do you always argue with him?’
I go out without replying, through the silenced chamber and down the steps to my mother’s rooms in the same tower on the floor below us.
At first it looks as if she is alone, but then I see the half-closed door to her privy chamber and I don’t need to hear him, and I don’t need to see him. I just know that he is there, watching.
She has her back to me at first, and when she turns I see she has the birch stick in her hand and her face is stern.
‘I have done nothing,’ I say at once.
She sighs irritably.