The Other Boleyn Girl. Philippa Gregory
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and was about to rise from the table, the meeting was over.
‘Wait,’ Anne said desperately. ‘We can achieve this. I swear to you. If you will stand by me then Henry Percy will stand by me, and the cardinal and the king and his father will have to come round to it.’
My uncle did not hesitate for a moment. ‘They won’t. You are a fool. You can’t fight Wolsey. There isn’t a man in the country who is a match for Wolsey. And we won’t risk his enmity. He would put Mary out of the king’s bed and pop a Seymour girl in her place. Everything we are striving to do with Mary will be overset if we support you. This is Mary’s chance, not yours. We won’t have you spoil it. We’ll have you out of the way for the summer at least, perhaps for a year.’
She was stunned into silence. ‘But I love him,’ she said.
There was a silence in the room.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I love him.’
‘That means nothing to me,’ my father said. ‘Your marriage is the business of the family and you will leave that to us. You’ll go to Hever for at least a year’s banishment from court and think yourself lucky. And if you write to him, or reply to him, or see him again, then it will be a nunnery for you. A closed order.’
‘Well, that didn’t go too badly,’ George said with forced cheerfulness. He and Anne and I were walking down to the river to get the boat back to York Place. A servant in Howard livery went before us, pushing beggars and street sellers out of the way, and one came behind to guard us. Anne walked blindly, quite unaware of the eddy of disturbance all down the crowded street.
There were people selling goods from off the backs of carts, bread and fruit and live ducks and hens, fresh up from the country. There were fat London housewives bartering for the goods, quicker-tongued and quicker-witted than the countrymen and -women, who were slow and careful, hoping to get a fair price for their provender. There were pedlars with chapbooks and music sheets in their sacks, cobblers with sets of ready-made shoes trying to persuade people that they would fit all varieties of foot. There were flower sellers and watercress sellers, there were lounging pageboys and chimney sweeps, there were link boys with nothing to do till the dark came, and street sweepers. There were servants idling on their way to and from marketing, and outside every shop there was the wife of the owner, sat plump on her stool, smiling at the passers-by and urging them to step inside and see what was for sale.
George threaded Anne and me through this tapestry of business like a determined bodkin. He was desperate to get Anne home before the storm of her temper broke.
‘Went very well indeed, I’d say,’ he said staunchly.
We reached a pier leading out into the river and the Howard servant hailed a boat. ‘To York Place,’ George said tersely.
The tide was with us and we went quickly upriver, Anne looking blindly at the beach on either side strewn with the dirt of the city.
We landed at the York Place jetty and the Howard servants bowed and took the boat back to the City. George swept Anne and me up to our room and finally got the door closed behind us.
At once Anne whirled round on him and leaped like a wildcat. He grabbed her wrists in his hands and wrestled her away from his face.
‘Went pretty well!’ she shrieked at him. ‘Pretty well! When I have lost the man I love, and my reputation as well? When I am all but ruined and shall be buried in the country until everyone has forgotten about me? Pretty well! When my own father will not stand by me and when my own mother swears that she would rather see me dead? Are you mad, you fool? Are you mad? Or just dumb, blind, God-rotting stupid?’
He held her wrists. She made another slash at his face with her nails. I came from behind and pulled her backwards so that she should not stamp on his feet with her high heels. We reeled, the three of us, like drunkards in a brawl, I was crushed against the foot of the bed as she fought me as well as him, but I clung on around her waist, pulling her backwards as George gripped her hands to save his face. It felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition – the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress, and us to this savage battle.
‘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 windowseat. ‘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