The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 prompt England to join their alliance. If all the Protestant powers in Europe were united then they could attack France or the Hapsburg lands and spread the word of reform. They might get as far as Rome itself, they might curb the 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, СКАЧАТЬ