The Other Boleyn Girl. Philippa Gregory
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a proud beautiful profile, looking out over the Thames, out to sea, to France. It was me, with my lips slightly parted, slightly smiling, as if I was a woman to want such an adventure. As if I were not the cat’s-paw of the Howard family but a courageous lovely woman in my own right.
‘Me?’ I asked, my voice a thread above the sound of the water splashing at the side of the dry dock.
Henry’s mouth was at my ear, I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.
‘You,’ he said. ‘A beauty, like you. Are you happy, Mary?’
I turned to him and his arms came around me and I stood up on tiptoe and buried my face in the warmth of his neck and smelled the sweet scent of his beard and his hair. ‘Oh Henry,’ I whispered. I wanted my face hidden from him, I knew that he would see no pleasure but a terror at rising so high, so publicly.
‘Are you happy?’ he insisted. He turned my face up, with a hand under my chin, so that he could scan me as if I were a manuscript. ‘It is a great honour.’
‘I know.’ My smile trembled on my lips. ‘I thank you.’
‘And you shall launch her,’ he promised me. ‘Next week.’
I hesitated. ‘Not the queen?’
I was fearful of taking her place to launch the newest and greatest ship that he had ever built. But of course it had to be me. How could she launch a ship that bore my name?
He shrugged her away as if they had not been husband and wife for thirteen years. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not the queen. You.’
I found a smile from somewhere and hoped that it was convincing and that it hid my terrified sense that I was going too far, too fast, and that the end of this road was not the sort of carefree joy that we had felt this morning, but something darker and more fearful. For all that we had ridden, singing out of tune together, we were not a lover and his lass. If my name was on this ship, if I launched it next week, then I was a declared rival to the Queen of England. I was an enemy to the Spanish ambassador, to the whole nation of Spain. I was a powerful force in the court, a threat to the Seymour family. The higher I rose in the king’s favour the greater the dangers that opened up around me. But I was a young woman of only fifteen years old. I could not yet revel in ambition.
As if she could read my reluctance, Anne was at my side. ‘You do my sister a great honour, sire,’ she said smoothly. ‘It is a most exquisite ship, as lovely as the woman you named her for. And a strong and powerful ship – like yourself. God bless her and send her against our enemies. Whoever they may be.’
Henry smiled at the compliment. ‘She is bound to be a lucky ship,’ he said. ‘With the face of an angel going before her.’
‘D’you think she’ll have to fight the French this year?’ George asked, taking my hand and giving my fingers a quick hidden pinch to recall me to my work as a courtier.
Henry nodded, looking grim. ‘Without doubt,’ he said. ‘And if the Spanish emperor will move in concert with me, we will follow my plan of our attack in the north of France, as he attacks in the south, then we cannot fail to curb Francis’s arrogance. This summer we will do it, without fail.’
‘If we can trust the Spanish,’ Anne said silkily.
Henry’s face darkened. ‘It is they who have the greatest need of us,’ he said. ‘Charles had better remember that. This is not a matter of family or kinship. If the queen is displeased with me for one reason or another she must remember that she is a queen of England first, and a princess of Spain second. Her first loyalty must be to me.’
Anne nodded. ‘I should hate to be so divided,’ she said. ‘Thank God we Boleyns are English through and through.’
‘For all your French gowns,’ Henry said with a sudden gleam of humour.
Anne smiled back at him. ‘A gown is a gown,’ she said. ‘Like Mary’s gown of yellow velvet. But you of all people would know that underneath there is a true subject with an undivided heart.’
He turned to me at that and smiled at me as I looked up at him. ‘It is my pleasure to reward such a faithful heart,’ he said.
I felt that there were tears in my eyes and I tried to blink them away without him seeing, but one stood on my eyelashes. Henry bent down and kissed it. ‘Sweetest girl,’ he said gently. ‘My little English rose.’
The whole court turned out to launch the ship, the Mary Boleyn, and only the queen pleaded an indisposition and stayed away. The Spanish ambassador was there to watch the vessel slip into the water, and whatever reservations he felt about the name of the ship he kept to himself.
My father was in a silent frenzy of irritation at himself, at me, at the king. The great honour which had been done to me and to my family had turned out to have a price attached. King Henry was a subtle monarch in such matters. When my uncle and father had thanked him for the compliment of using their name he thanked them for the contribution that he was sure they would want to make to the fitting out of such a ship which would so redound to their credit as it carried the Boleyn name across the seas.
‘And so the stakes go up again,’ George said cheerfully as we watched the boat slide over the rollers into the salty river waters of the Thames.
‘How can they get any higher?’ I asked from the corner of my smiling mouth. ‘I have my life on the table.’
The shipyard workers, already half drunk on free ale, waved their caps and cheered. Anne smiled and waved in reply. George grinned at me. The wind stirred the feather in his cap, ruffled his dark curls. ‘Now it’s costing Father money to keep you in the king’s favour. Now it’s not just your heart and happiness on the table, my little sister, it’s the family fortune. We thought we were playing him for a lovesick fool, but it turns out he’s playing us for money lenders. Stakes go up. Father and Uncle will want to see a return for this investment. You see if they don’t.’
I turned away from George and found Anne. She was a little distance from the court, Henry Percy beside her as usual. They were both watching the ship as the barges towed her out into the river and then turned her, and, struggling against the current, brought her back alongside the jetty and started to tie her up so that she could be fitted out as she lay in the water. Anne’s face was bright with the joy that flirtation always brought her.
She turned and smiled at me. ‘Ah, the Queen of the Day,’ she said mockingly.
I made a little grimace. ‘Don’t tease me, Anne. I have had enough from George.’
Henry Percy stepped forward and took my hand and kissed it. As I looked down at the back of his blond head I realised how high my star was rising. This was Henry Percy, son and heir to the Duke of Northumberland. There was no other man in the kingdom who had fairer prospects or a greater fortune. He was the son of the richest man in England, second only to the king, and he was bowing his head to me and kissing my hand.
‘She shall not tease you,’ he promised me, coming up smiling. ‘For I shall take you in to dine. I’m told that the cooks from Greenwich were out here at dawn to get everything ready. The king is going in, shall we follow?’
I hesitated but the queen, who always created a sense of formality, was left behind at Greenwich, lying in a darkened room with a pain in her belly and fear in her heart. There was no-one at the dockside but the feckless idle men and women of the court. No-one cared about precedence, except in the sense that winners must come first. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
Lord Henry Percy offered his other arm to Anne. ‘Shall I have two sisters?’
‘I think you would find the Bible forbids it,’ Anne said provocatively. ‘The Bible orders a man to choose between sisters and to stay with his first choice. Anything else is a cardinal sin.’
Lord Henry Percy laughed.