Forty-seven minutes.
Forty-six. I really am amazed at how devoted I am to him, that I should actually watch a clock tick down the time until we are together. This must be a most passionate love, a most devoted love, and I must be a girl of really unusual sensitivity to feel this deeply.
Forty-five; but it’s dreadfully boring, just waiting, now.
I haven’t told him how I feel, of course. I should die of embarrassment if I had to tell him myself. I think I may die anyway, die for love of him. I have told no one but my dearest friend Agnes Restwold, and sworn her to secrecy on pain of death, on pain of a traitor’s death. She says she will be hanged and drawn and quartered before she tells anyone that I am in love. She says she will go to the block like my cousin Queen Anne before she betrays my secret. She says they will have to pull her apart on the rack before she tells. I have told Margaret Morton as well, and she says that death itself would not make her tell, not if they were to fling her in the bear pit. She says they could burn her at the stake before she would tell. This is good because it means that one of them is certain to tell him before he comes to the chamber tonight, and so he will know that I like him.
I have known him for months now, half a lifetime. At first I only watched him but now he smiles and says hello to me. Once he called me by name. He comes with all the other young men of the household to visit us girls in our chamber, and he thinks he is in love with Joan Bulmer, who has eyes like a frog; if she were not so free with her favors, no man would ever look twice at her. But she is free, very free indeed; and so it is me whom he does not look twice at. It isn’t fair. It’s so unfair. She is a good ten years older than me and married, and so she knows how to attract a man, whereas I have much still to learn. Dereham is more than twenty as well. They all think of me as a child; but I am not a child, and I will show them. I am fourteen, I am ready for love. I am ready for a lover, and I am so in love with Francis Dereham that I will die if I don’t see him at once. Four hours and forty minutes.
But now, from today, everything must be different. Now that I am fourteen, everything is certain to change. It has to, I know it will. I shall put on my new French hood, and I shall tell Francis Dereham that I am fourteen and he will see me as I truly am: a woman now, a 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 have 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 who 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 who 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 neighbor, 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 have made me so exquisite only 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 jewelry. 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 honor 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
center 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 honor 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 daily in a dozen small 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 cas
ually 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 draft 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.