Kitabı oku: «The Other Boleyn Girl», sayfa 10
Winter 1523
With Anne away I was the only Boleyn girl in the world, and when the queen chose to spend the summer with the Princess Mary it was I who rode with Henry at the head of the court on progress. We spent a wonderful summer riding together, hunting, and dancing every night, and when the court returned to Greenwich in November I whispered to him that I had missed my course and I was carrying his child.
At once, everything changed. I had new rooms and a lady in waiting. Henry bought me a thick fur cloak, I must not for a moment get chilled. Midwives, apothecaries, soothsayers came and went from my rooms, all of them were asked the vital question: ‘Is it a boy?’
Most of them answered yes and were rewarded with a gold coin. The eccentric one or two said ‘no’ and saw the king’s pout of displeasure. My mother loosened the laces of my gown and I could no longer go to the king’s bed at night, I had to lie alone and pray in the darkness that I was carrying his son.
The queen watched my growing body with eyes that were dark with pain. I knew that she had missed her courses too, but there was no question that she might have conceived. She smiled throughout the Christmas feasts and the masques and the dancing, and she gave Henry the lavish presents that he loved. And after the twelfth night masque, when there was a sense that everything should be made clear and clean, she asked him if she might speak with him privately and from somewhere, God knows where, she found the courage to look him in the face and tell him that she had been clean for the whole of the season, and she was a barren woman.
‘Told me herself,’ Henry said indignantly to me that night. I was in his bedroom, wrapped in my fur cloak, a tankard of mulled wine in my hand, my bare feet tucked under me before a roaring fire. ‘Told me without a moment’s shame!’
I said nothing. It was not for me to tell Henry that there was no shame in a woman of nearly forty ceasing her bleeding. Nobody had known better than he that if she could have prayed her way into childbed they would have had half a dozen babies and all of them boys. But he had forgotten that now. What concerned him was that she had refused him what she should have given him, and I saw once again that powerful indignation which swept over him with any disappointment.
‘Poor lady,’ I said.
He shot me a resentful look. ‘Rich lady,’ he corrected me. ‘The wife of one of the wealthiest men in Europe, the Queen of England no less, and nothing to show for it but the birth of one child, and that a girl.’
I nodded. There was no point arguing with Henry.
He leaned over me to put his hand gently on the round hard curve of my belly. ‘And if my boy is in there then he will carry the name of Carey,’ he said. ‘What good is that for England? What good is that for me?’
‘But everyone will know he is yours,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that you can make a child with me.’
‘But I have to have a legitimate son,’ he said earnestly, as if I or the queen or any woman could give him a son by wishing it. ‘I have to have a son, Mary. England has to have an heir from me.’
Spring 1524
Anne wrote to me once a week for all the long months of her exile and I was reminded of the desperate letters I had sent her when I had been banished from court. I remembered too that she had not bothered to reply. Now it was me at court and she was in outer darkness and I took a sister’s triumph in my generosity in replying to her often, and I did not spare her news of my fertility, and Henry’s delight in me.
Our Grandmother Boleyn had been summoned to Hever to be a companion to Anne, and the two of them, the young elegant woman from the French court, and the wise old woman who had seen her husband leap from next to nothing to greatness, quarrelled like cats on a stable roof from morning to night and made each other’s lives a complete misery.
If I cannot return to court, I shall go mad,
Anne wrote.
Grandmother Boleyn cracks hazelnuts in her hands and drops the shells everywhere. They crunch underfoot like snails. She insists that we walk out in the garden together every day, even when it is raining. She thinks that rainwater is good for the skin, and says this is why Englishwomen have such peerless complexions. I look at her weatherbeaten old leather and know that I would rather stay indoors.
She smells quite dreadful and is completely unaware of it. I told them to draw a bath for her the other day and they tell me that she consented to sit on a stool and let them wash her feet. She hums under her breath at the dinner table, she doesn’t even know she is doing it. She believes in keeping an open house in the grand old way and everyone, from the beggars of Tonbridge to the farmers of Edenbridge, is welcome into the hall to watch us eat as if we were the king himself with nothing to do with our money but give it away.
Please, please, tell Uncle and Father that I am ready to return to court, that I will do their bidding, that they need fear nothing from me. I will do anything to get away from here.
I wrote a reply at once.
You will be able to come to court soon, I am sure, because Lord Henry is betrothed against his will to Lady Mary Talbot. He was said to be weeping when he made his promise. He has gone to defend the Scottish border with his own men from Northumberland under his standard. The Percys have to hold Northumberland safe while the English army goes to France again this summer and, with the Spanish as our allies, finish the work they started last summer.
George’s wedding to Jane Parker is to take place this month at last, and I shall ask Mother if you can be present. She will surely not refuse you that.
I am well but very tired. The baby is very heavy and when I try to sleep at night it turns and kicks. Henry is kinder than I have ever known him, and we are both hoping for a boy.
I wish you were here. He is hoping for a boy so much. I am almost afraid as to what will happen if it is a girl. If only there was something one could do to make it be a boy. Don’t tell me about asparagus. I know all about asparagus. They make me eat it at every meal.
The queen watches me all the time. I am too big now for concealment and everyone knows it is the king’s baby. William has not had to endure anyone congratulating him on our first child. Everyone knows, and there is a sort of wall of silence that makes it comfortable for everyone but me. There are times when I feel like a fool: my belly going before me, breathless on the stairs, and a husband who smiles at me as if we were strangers.
And the queen …
I wish to God I did not have to pray in her chapel every morning and night. I wonder what she is praying for, since all hope for her is gone. I wish you were here. I even miss your sharp tongue.
Mary.
George and Jane Parker were finally to marry after countless delays in the little chapel at Greenwich. Anne was to be allowed up from Hever for the day, she could sit in one of the high boxes at the back where no-one would see her, but she was not allowed to attend the wedding feast. Most importantly for us, since the wedding was to take place in the morning, Anne had to ride up the day before and the three of us, George, Anne, and I, had the night together from dinner time till dawn.
We prepared ourselves for a night of talking like midwives settling in for a long labour. George brought wine and ale and small beer, I crept down to the kitchen and filched bread, meat, cheese and fruit from the cooks who were happy to pile a platter for me, thinking that it was my seven-month belly which was making me hungry.
Anne was in her cut-down riding habit. She looked older than her seventeen years and finer, her skin was pale. ‘Walking in the rain with the old witch,’ she said grimly. Her sadness had given her a serenity which had not been there before. It was as if she had learned a hard lesson: that chances in life would not fall into her lap like ripe cherries. And she missed the boy she loved: Henry Percy.
‘I dream of him,’ she said simply. ‘I so wish I didn’t. It’s such a pointless unhappiness. I am so tired of it. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I am so tired of being unhappy.’
I glanced across at George. He was watching Anne, his face full of sympathy.
‘When is his wedding?’ Anne asked bleakly.
‘Next month,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘And then it will be over. Unless she dies, of course.’
‘If she dies he could marry you,’ I said hopefully.
Anne shrugged. ‘You fool,’ she said abruptly. ‘I can hardly wait for him in the hope that Mary Talbot drops dead one day. I’m quite a card to play once I’ve lived this down, aren’t I? Especially if you give birth to a boy. I’ll be aunt to the king’s bastard.’
Without meaning to, I put my hands protectively before my belly as if I did not want my baby to hear that it was only wanted if it was a boy. ‘It’ll carry the name of Carey,’ I reminded her.
‘But what if it is a boy and born healthy and strong and golden-haired?’
‘I shall call him Henry.’ I smiled at the thought of a strong golden-haired baby in my arms. ‘And I don’t doubt but the king will do something very fine for him.’
‘And we all rise,’ George pointed out. ‘As aunts and uncles to the king’s son, perhaps a little dukedom for him, perhaps an earldom. Who knows?’
‘And you, George?’ Anne asked. ‘Are you merry, this merry merry night? I had thought you’d be out roistering and drinking yourself into the gutter, not sitting here with one fat lady and one broken-hearted one.’
George poured some wine and looked darkly into his cup. ‘One fat lady and one broken-hearted one almost exactly suits my mood,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t dance or sing to save my life. She is a most poisonous woman, isn’t she? My beloved? My wife-to-be? Tell me the truth. It’s not just me, is it? There is something about her that makes you shrink from her, isn’t there?’
‘Oh nonsense,’ I said roundly. ‘She’s not poisonous.’
‘She sets my teeth on edge and she always has,’ Anne said bluntly. ‘If ever there’s tittle-tattle or dangerous scandal, or someone telling tales of someone else, she’s always there. She hears everything and she watches everyone, and she’s always thinking the worst of everyone.’
‘I knew it,’ George said glumly. ‘God! What a wife to have!’
‘She may give you a surprise on your wedding night,’ Anne said slyly, drinking her wine.
‘What?’ George said quickly.
Anne raised an eyebrow over the cup. ‘She’s very well-informed for a virgin,’ she said. ‘Very knowledgeable about matters for married women. Married women and whores.’
George’s jaw dropped. ‘Never tell me she’s not a virgin!’ he exclaimed. ‘I could surely get out of it if she was not a virgin!’
Anne shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen a man do anything that was not from politeness,’ she said. ‘Who would, for God’s sake? But she watches and listens, and she doesn’t care what she asks or what she sees. I heard her whispering with one of the Seymour girls about someone who had lain with the king – not you –’ she said quickly to me ‘– there was very worldly talk about kissing with an open mouth, letting one’s tongue lick and suchlike, whether one should lie on a king or underneath him, and where one’s hands should go, and what could be done to give him such pleasure as he might never forget it.’
‘And she knows these French practices?’ George asked, astounded.
‘She talked as if she did,’ Anne said, smiling at his amazement.
‘Well, by God!’ said George, pouring himself another glass of wine and waving the bottle at me. ‘Perhaps I will be a happier husband than I thought. Where your hands should go, eh? And where should they go, Mistress Annamaria? Since you seem to have heard this conversation as well as my lovely wife-to-be?’
‘Oh don’t ask me,’ Anne said. ‘I’m a virgin. Ask anyone. Ask Mother or Father or my uncle. Ask Cardinal Wolsey, he made it official. I’m a virgin. I am an attested official sworn-to-it virgin. Wolsey, the Archbishop of York himself, says I am a virgin. You can’t be more of a virgin than me.’
‘I shall tell you all about them,’ George said more cheerfully. ‘I shall write to you at Hever, Anne, and you can read my letter aloud to Grandmother Boleyn.’
George was pale as a bride on his wedding morning. Only Anne and I knew it was not from heavy drinking the night before. He did not smile as Jane Parker approached the altar, but she was beaming broad enough for them both.
With my hands clasped over my belly I thought it was a long time since I had stood before the altar and promised to forsake all others and cleave to William Carey. He glanced across at me with a slight smile, as if he too was thinking that we had not foreseen this when we had been handclasped, and hopeful, only four years ago.
King Henry was at the front of the church, watching my brother take his bride, and I thought that my family were doing well out of my heavy belly. The king had come late to my wedding, and more to oblige his friend William than to honour the Boleyns. But he was at the forefront of the well-wishers when this pair turned from the altar and came down the aisle of the church, and the king and I together led the guests into the wedding feast. My mother smiled on me as if I were her only daughter, as Anne left quietly by the side door of the chapel and took her horse and rode home to Hever accompanied only by serving men.
I thought of her riding to Hever alone, seeing the castle from the lodge gate, as pretty as a toy in the moonlight. I thought of the way the track curved through the trees and came to the drawbridge. I thought of the rattle of the drawbridge coming down and the hollow sound that the hoof beats made as the horse stepped delicately on the timbers. I thought of the dank smell of the moat and then the waft of meat cooking on a spit as one entered the courtyard. I thought of the moon shining into the courtyard and the haphazard line of the gable ends against the night sky, and I wished with all my contrary heart that I was squire of Hever and not the pretend queen of a masquing court. I wished with all my heart that I might have been carrying a legitimate son in my belly and that I could have leaned out of the window and looked out over my land, just a little manor farm perhaps, and known that it would be all his by right one day.
But instead I was the lucky Boleyn, the Boleyn blessed by fortune and the king’s favour. A Boleyn who could not imagine the boundaries of her son’s land, who could not dream how far he might rise.
Summer 1524
I withdrew from the court for the whole of the month of June to prepare for my lying in. I had a darkened room hung with thick tapestries, I should see no light nor breathe fresh air until I emerged six long weeks after the birth of my baby. Altogether I would be walled up for two and a half months. I was attended by my mother and by two midwives, a couple of serving maids and a lady’s maid supported them. Outside the chamber, taking turn and turn about night and day, were two apothecaries waiting to be called.
‘Can Anne be with me?’ I asked my mother as I eyed the darkened room.
She frowned. ‘Her father has ordered that she must stay at Hever.’
‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘It’ll be such a long time and I’d like her company.’
‘She can visit,’ my mother ruled. ‘But we can’t have her present at the birth of the king’s son.’
‘Or daughter,’ I reminded her.
She made the sign of the cross over my belly. ‘Please God it is a boy,’ she whispered.
I said nothing more, content to have carried my way by getting Anne to visit me. She came for a day and stayed for two. She had been bored at Hever, infuriated by our Grandmother Boleyn, desperate to get away, even to a darkened room and a sister biding her time by sewing little nightshirts for a royal bastard.
‘Have you been over to Home Farm?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve ridden past it.’
‘I wondered how they were getting on with their strawberry crop?’
She shrugged.
‘And the Peters’ farm? Did you go over for the sheep shearing?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘D’you know what hay crop we got this year?’
‘No.’
‘Anne, what on earth do you do all day?’
‘I read,’ she said. ‘I practise my music. I have been composing some songs. I ride every day. I walk in the garden. What else is there to do in the country?’
‘I go round and see the farms,’ I remarked.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘They’re always the same. The grass grows.’
‘What d’you read?’
‘Theology,’ she said shortly. ‘Have you heard of Martin Luther?’
‘Of course I’ve heard of him,’ I said, stung. ‘Enough to know that he’s a heretic and his books are forbidden.’
Anne gave her small secretive smile. ‘He’s not necessarily a heretic,’ she said. ‘It’s a matter of opinion. I have been reading his books and others who think like he does.’
‘You’d better keep it quiet,’ I said. ‘If Father and Mother find you’ve been reading banned books they’ll send you to France again, anywhere to get you out of the way.’
She shrugged. ‘No-one pays any attention to me, I’m quite eclipsed by your glory. There is only one way to come to the attention of this family and that is to climb into the king’s bed. You have to be a whore to be beloved by this family.’
I folded my hands over my swollen belly and smiled at her, quite unmoved by her malice. ‘There’s no need to pinch me because my stars have led me here. There was no need for you to set yourself at Henry Percy and onwards to disgrace.’
For a moment the mask of her beautiful face dropped and I saw the longing in her eyes. ‘Have you heard from him?’
I shook my head. ‘If he wrote to me they’d not let me have the letter,’ I said. ‘I think he’s still fighting against the Scots.’
She pressed her lips together to keep back a little moan. ‘Oh God, what if he is hurt or killed?’
I felt my baby stir and I put my warm hands on my loose stomacher. ‘Anne, he should be nothing to you.’
Her eyelashes flickered down over the heat in her gaze. ‘He is nothing to me,’ she replied.
‘He’s a married man now,’ I said firmly. ‘You will have to forget him if you ever want to get back to court.’
She pointed at my belly. ‘That is the problem for me,’ she said baldly. ‘All anyone can think of in this family is that you might be carrying the king’s son. I have written to Father half a dozen times and he has had his clerk reply to me once. He doesn’t think about me. He doesn’t care about me. All anyone cares about is you and your fat belly.’
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ I said. I was trying to sound serene but I was afraid. If Henry had got a girl on me and she was strong and lovely then he should be happy enough to show the world that he was potent. But this was no ordinary man. He wanted to show the world that he could make a healthy baby. He wanted to show the world that he could make a boy.
She was a girl. Despite all those months of hoping and whispered prayers and even special Masses said in Hever and Rochford church, she was a girl.
But she was my little girl. She was an exquisite little bundle with hands so tiny that they were like the palms of a little frog, with eyes so dark a blue that they were like the sky above Hever at midnight. She had a dusting of black hair on the crown of her head, as unlike Henry’s ruddy gold as anything one could imagine. But she had his kissable rosebud mouth. When she yawned she looked like a very king, bored with insufficient praise. When she cried, she squeezed real tears onto her outraged pink cheeks, like a monarch denied his rights. When I fed her, holding her in my arms and marvelling at the insistent powerful sucking on my breast, she swelled like a lamb and slept as if she were a drunkard lolling beside a tankard of mead.
I held her in my arms constantly. There was a wet nurse to attend her, but I argued that my breasts hurt so much that I must let her suckle, and I cunningly kept her to myself. I fell in love with her. I fell completely and utterly in love with her and I could not for a moment imagine that anything would have been any better if she had been a boy.
Even Henry melted at the sight of her when he visited me in the shadowy peace of the birthing room. He picked her up from her cradle and marvelled at the tiny perfection of her face, her hands, her little feet under the heavy embroidered gown. ‘We’ll call her Elizabeth,’ he said, rocking her gently.
‘May I choose her name?’ I asked, greatly daring.
‘You don’t like Elizabeth?’
‘I had another name in mind.’
He shrugged. It was a girl’s name. It did not matter much. ‘As you wish. Call her what you like. She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’
He brought me a purse of gold and a necklace with diamonds. And he brought me some books, a critique of his own work of theology, some heavy works that Cardinal Wolsey had recommended. I thanked him for them and put them to one side, and thought that I would send them to Anne and ask her to write me a synopsis so that I might bluff my way through a conversation.
We started his visit formally enough, seated on chairs either side of the fireplace, but he took me to the bed and lay beside me and kissed me gently and sweetly. After a little while he wanted to have me and I had to remind him that I was not yet churched. I was not clean. Timidly I touched at his waistcoat and with a sigh he took my hand and pressed it against his hardness. I wished that someone would tell me what he wanted of me. But then he himself guided my touch, and whispered in my ear what he wanted to do, and then after a little while of his movement and my blundering caresses he gave a sigh and lay still.
‘Is it enough for you?’ I asked timidly.
He turned and gave me his sweet smile. ‘My love, it is a great pleasure for me to have you, even like this, after this long time. When you go to be churched don’t confess it – the sin is all mine. But you would tempt a saint.’
‘And you do love her?’ I pressed him.
He gave an indulgent, lazy chuckle. ‘Why yes. She’s as lovely as her mother.’
He rose up after a few moments and straightened his clothes. He gave me his delicious roguish grin that still delighted me, though half my mind was on the baby in her cradle, and the other half on the ache in my milk-heavy breasts.
‘You shall have rooms nearer to mine when you are churched,’ he promised me. ‘I want you by me all the time.’
I smiled. It was a delicious moment. The King of England wanted me with him, constantly at his side.
‘I want a boy off you,’ he said bluntly.
My father was angry with me that the baby was a girl – or so my mother said – reporting from an outside world which seemed very remote. My uncle was disappointed but determined not to show it. I nodded as if I cared but I felt only a total delight that she had opened her eyes this morning and looked at me with a sort of bright intensity that made me certain that she had seen me and known me for her mother. Neither my father nor my uncle could be admitted into the birthing room, and the king did not repeat his single visit. There was a sense of this place being a refuge for us, a secret room where men and their plans and their treacheries would not come.
George came, breaking the conventions with his usual comfortable grace. ‘Nothing too awful going on in here, is there?’ he asked, putting his handsome head around the door.
‘Nothing,’ I said, welcoming him with a smile and my cheek to kiss. He bent over me and kissed me deeply on the mouth. ‘Oh how delicious, my sister, a young mother, a dozen forbidden pleasures all at once. Kiss me again – kiss me like you kiss Henry.’
‘Go away,’ I said, pushing him off. ‘Look at the baby.’
He peered at her as she lay sleeping in my arms. ‘Nice hair,’ he said. ‘What shall you call her?’
I glanced at the shut door. I knew I could trust George. ‘I want to call her Catherine.’
‘Rather odd.’
‘I don’t see why. I am her lady in waiting.’
‘But it’s her husband’s baby.’
I giggled, it was impossible for me not to revel in my sense of joy. ‘Oh George, I know. But I have admired her from the moment I entered her service. And I want to show her that I respect her – whatever else has happened.’
Still he looked doubtful. ‘D’you think she’ll understand? Won’t she think it’s some kind of mockery?’
I was so shocked that I gripped Catherine a little. ‘She cannot imagine that I would triumph over her.’
‘Here, why are you crying?’ George asked. ‘There’s no reason to cry, Mary. Don’t cry, you’ll curdle the milk or something.’
‘I’m not crying,’ I said, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. ‘I’m not meaning to cry.’
‘Well, stop,’ he urged me. ‘Stop it, Mary. Mother will come in and everyone will blame me for upsetting you. And they’ll say that I shouldn’t be here in the first place. Why don’t you wait till you come out and then you can see the queen and ask her yourself if she would like the compliment? That’s all I’d suggest.’
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling immediately more cheerful. ‘I could do that, and then I might explain.’
‘But don’t cry,’ he reminded me. ‘She’s a queen, she won’t like tears. I bet you’ve never seen her cry, for all you’ve been with her day and night for four years.’
I thought for a moment. ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘D’you know, in these four years, I have never ever seen her cry.’
‘You never will,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘She’s not a woman who crumbles into distress. She’s a woman of most powerful will.’
My only other visitor was my husband, William Carey. He arrived, gracefully enough, bearing a bowl of early strawberries which he had ordered to be brought up from Hever.
‘A taste of home,’ he said kindly.
‘Thank you.’
He glanced into the cradle. ‘They tell me it’s a girl and she is well and strong?’
‘She is,’ I said, a little chilled by the indifference of his tone.
‘And what name are you calling her? Other than mine? I assume she is to carry my name, she isn’t to be Fitzroy or some other acknowledgement that she is a royal bastard?’
I bit my tongue and bowed my head. ‘I am sorry if you are offended, husband,’ I said meekly.
He nodded. ‘So what name?’
‘She is to be Carey. I thought Catherine Carey.’
‘As you wish, madam. I have been granted five good stewardships of land, and a knighthood. I am Sir William now, and you are Lady Carey. I have more than doubled my income. Did he tell you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I am in the highest of favour. If you had obliged us with a boy I might have looked for an estate in Ireland or France. I might have been Lord Carey. Who knows how high a boy bastard might have taken us?’
I did not reply. William’s tone was mild; but the words had a cutting ring to them. I did not think he was truly asking me to celebrate his good fortune in being England’s most famous cuckold.
‘You know, I had thought to be a great man at the king’s court,’ he said bitterly. ‘When I knew he liked my company, when my star was rising. I hoped to be something like your father, a statesman who might see the whole picture of the scene, who might play his part in arguing at the great courts of Europe, dealing one with the other and always taking his own country’s interest as his byword. But no, here I am, rewarded ten times over for doing nothing but looking the other way while the king takes my wife to his bed.’
I kept my silence, and my eyes down. When I looked up he was smiling at me, his ironical half-sad crooked smile. ‘Ah, little wife,’ he said gently. ‘We did not have much time together, did we? We did not bed very well nor very often. We did not learn tenderness or even desire. We only had a little time.’
‘I am sorry for that too,’ I said softly.
‘Sorry that we did not bed?’
‘My lord?’ I said, genuinely confused by the sudden sharpness in his tone.
‘It has been suggested, very politely by your kinsmen, that perhaps I had dreamed it all and we did not bed at all. Is that your wish? That I deny ever having had you?’
I was startled. ‘No! You know it is not my wishes that are consulted in these matters.’
‘And they have not told you to tell the king that I was impotent on our wedding night and every night thereafter?’
I shook my head. ‘Why would I say such a thing?’
He smiled. ‘To get our marriage set aside,’ he suggested. ‘So that you are an unmarried woman. And the next baby is Fitzroy and perhaps Henry can be prevailed on to make him legitimate, the son and heir to the throne. Then you are the mother of the next King of England.’
There was a silence. I found I was staring blankly at him. ‘They never want me to do that?’ I whispered.
‘Oh you Boleyns,’ he said gently. ‘What happens to you, Mary, if they have our marriage set aside and push you forward? It overthrows the state of marriage and it names you, without contradiction, as a whore, a pretty little whore.’
I felt my cheeks blaze but I kept my mouth shut. He looked at me for a moment and I saw the anger drain from his face and be replaced with a sort of weary compassion. ‘Say what you have to say,’ he recommended me. ‘Whatever they order you. If they press you to say that on our bedding night I juggled with silver pomanders all night and never lay between your legs, you can say that, swear it if you have to – and you will have to. You are going to face the enmity of Queen Katherine herself, and the hatred of all of Spain. I shall spare you mine. Poor silly little girl. If it had been a boy in that cradle I think they would have pushed you into perjury the moment you were churched, to get rid of me, and to lure Henry on.’
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