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The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory
The acclaimed international bestseller of the Tudor court, during the years of Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn - and the revolutionary sequence of events that followed.This chance for us Howards comes once in a century…1521. Henry VIII rules over a fashionable court alive with pageant and celebration, the lack of a son his only threat. When young Mary Boleyn arrives at court, she becomes his new mistress, an unwitting pawn in the ambitions of the powerful Boleyn and Howard families.As Henry’s interest begins to wane, the Boleyns scheme to put forward Mary’s sister, Anne. Yet Anne Boleyn, newly returned from the French court, won’t agree to be Henry’s mistress – only his wife.Pitting the king’s desperation for an heir against the advice of his powerful advisors, Wolsey and Cromwell, what follows will change the course of a country’s history.
Copyright (#ulink_c0de7249-d414-5019-91df-f90a74d5fde9)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001
This edition published by Harper 2017
Copyright © Philippa Gregory Ltd 2001
Cover design and illustration: Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover images © Hever Castle Ltd, Kent, UK / Bridgeman Images (portrait of Anne Boleyn (1507–36), Second wife of Henry VIII of England, 1534, English School); Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (frame).
Prelim pages, fragment of the letter written by Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII from the Tower of London in 1536, reproduced by permission of the British Library (OTHO.C.X.228)
End of text, reconstruction of a letter written by Mary Boleyn to the Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell in 1534. Lettering © Stephen Raw
Philippa Gregory asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780006514008
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780007370146
Version: 2018-06-21
Dedication (#ubad8924f-2076-5935-a5ed-bb3f0a039684)
For Anthony
Contents
Cover (#uc54621ae-1091-5010-a28a-ad25e913e8fa)
Title Page (#u68b149bb-dabd-59da-b17c-cbfdcd1d4b9a)
Copyright (#uff7d7cc7-7bb5-5542-bd72-1d34d32edd48)
Dedication
Spring 1521 (#u2e27da10-cca8-5651-92ea-6934649bffe9)
Spring 1522 (#u644d0301-e217-5cf1-908c-c6da3373315a)
Summer 1522 (#u68032b26-3a2c-53d1-a107-9d9c08927536)
Winter 1522 (#u8100f1a0-5725-5bc0-bc06-7e2e42404a0d)
Spring 1523 (#uafb2dd4e-4ea0-5ec8-9990-5e4386bb9546)
Summer 1523 (#ue16ec08e-473a-526b-b50e-802e1aeccd79)
Winter 1523 (#u4892b876-1fd3-59ca-b57f-5b4fd7de933c)
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Summer 1524 (#u51752446-b3a2-5e67-8851-8cf81cc443a7)
Winter 1524 (#litres_trial_promo)
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Autumn 1526 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1526 (#litres_trial_promo)
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Summer 1527 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1527 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1527 (#litres_trial_promo)
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Autumn 1528 (#litres_trial_promo)
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Summer 1529 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1529 (#litres_trial_promo)
Christmas 1529 (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer 1530 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1530 (#litres_trial_promo)
Christmas 1530 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1531 (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer 1531 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1531 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1532 (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer 1532 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1532 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1532 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1533 (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer 1533 (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn 1533 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1533 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1534 (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer 1534 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1535 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1535 (#litres_trial_promo)
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Autumn 1535 (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter 1536 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1536 (#litres_trial_promo)
May 1536 (#litres_trial_promo)
Bonus Audio Content (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Discover More of Philippa Gregory’s Tudor Novels (#litres_trial_promo)
Gardens for The Gambia (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Philippa Gregory (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring 1521 (#ulink_4520c4fb-96ed-54f6-a4d1-1cbc1f99d339)
I could hear a roll of muffled drums. But I could see nothing but the lacing on the bodice of the lady standing in front of me, blocking my view of the scaffold. I had been at this court for more than a year and attended hundreds of festivities; but never before one like this.
By stepping to one side a little and craning my neck, I could see the condemned man, accompanied by his priest, walk slowly from the Tower towards the green where the wooden platform was waiting, the block of wood placed centre stage, the executioner dressed all ready for work in his shirtsleeves with a black hood over his head. It looked more like a masque than a real event, and I watched it as if it were a court entertainment. The king, seated on his throne, looked distracted, as if he was running through his speech of forgiveness in his head. Behind him stood my husband of one year, William Carey, my brother, George, and my father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, all looking grave. I wriggled my toes inside my silk slippers and wished the king would hurry up and grant clemency so that we could all go to breakfast. I was only thirteen years old, I was always hungry.
The Duke of Buckinghamshire, far away on the scaffold, put off his thick coat. He was close enough kin for me to call him uncle. He had come to my wedding and given me a gilt bracelet. My father told me that he had offended the king a dozen ways: he had royal blood in his veins and he kept too large a retinue of armed men for the comfort of a king not yet wholly secure on his throne; worst of all he was supposed to have said that the king had no son and heir now, could get no son and heir, and that he would likely die without a son to succeed him to the throne.
Such a thought must not be said out loud. The king, the court, the whole country knew that a boy must be born to the queen, and born soon. To suggest otherwise was to take the first step on the path that led to the wooden steps of the scaffold which the duke, my uncle, now climbed, firmly and without fear. A good courtier never refers to any unpalatable truths. The life of a court should always be merry.
Uncle Stafford came to the front of the stage to say his final words. I was too far from him to hear, and in any case I was watching the king, waiting for his cue to step forward and offer the royal pardon. This man standing on the scaffold, in the sunlight of the early morning, had been the king’s partner at tennis, his rival on the jousting field, his friend at a hundred bouts of drinking and gambling, they had been comrades since the king was a boy. The king was teaching him a lesson, a powerful public lesson, and then he would forgive him and we could all go to breakfast.
The little faraway figure turned to his confessor. He bowed his head for a blessing and kissed the rosary. He knelt before the block and clasped it in both hands. I wondered what it must be like, to put one’s cheek to the smooth waxed wood, to smell the warm wind coming off the river, to hear, overhead, the cry of seagulls. Even knowing as he did that this was a masque and not the real thing, it must be odd for Uncle to put his head down and know that the executioner was standing behind.
The executioner raised his axe. I looked towards the king. He was leaving his intervention very late. I glanced back at the stage. My uncle, head down, flung wide his arms, a sign of his consent, the signal that the axe could fall. I looked back to the king, he must rise to his feet now. But he still sat, his handsome face grim. And while I was still looking towards him there was another roll of drums, suddenly silenced, and then the thud of the axe, first once, then again and a third time: a sound as domestic as chopping wood. Disbelievingly, I saw the head of my uncle bounce into the straw and a scarlet gush of blood from the strangely stumpy neck. The black-hooded axeman put the great stained axe to one side and lifted the head by the thick curly hair, so that we could all see the strange mask-like thing: black with the blindfold from forehead to nose, and the teeth bared in a last defiant grin.
The king rose slowly from his seat and I thought, childishly, ‘Dear God, how awfully embarrassing this is going to be. He has left it too late. It has all gone wrong. He forgot to speak in time.’
But I was wrong. He did not leave it too late, he did not forget. He wanted my uncle to die before the court so that everybody might know that there was only one king, and that was Henry. There could be only one king, and that was Henry. And there would be a son born to this king – and even to suggest otherwise meant a shameful death.
The court returned quietly to Westminster Palace in three barges, rowed up the river. The men on the riverbank pulled off their hats and kneeled as the royal barge went swiftly past with a flurry of pennants and a glimpse of rich cloth. I was in the second barge with the ladies of the court, the queen’s barge. My mother was seated near me. In a rare moment of interest she glanced at me and remarked, ‘You’re very pale, Mary, are you feeling sick?’
‘I didn’t think he would be executed,’ I said. ‘I thought the king would forgive him.’
My mother leaned forward so that her mouth was at my ear and no-one could have heard us over the creaking of the boat and the beat of the rowers’ drum. ‘Then you are a fool,’ she said shortly. ‘And a fool to remark it. Watch and learn, Mary. There is no room for mistakes at court.’
Spring 1522 (#ulink_810960d0-89f7-58dd-8f78-2895f6f588c7)
‘I am going to France tomorrow and I shall bring your sister Anne home with me,’ my father told me on the stairs of Westminster Palace. ‘She’s to have a place in the court of Queen Mary Tudor as she returns to England.’
