Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Boleyn Traitor > Status Update

'Of course I am mad. I cannot comprehend that I am here, in my dead husband's bedroom, wrongly accused as he was, threatened with execution as he was, hoping for mercy from a merciless tyrant, as he did. Of course I am mad. Nobody could be at the court of this king unless they were out of their wits. We are all far from our humble beginnings; we are all out of our sphere'

'In her loving heart, of course, she has done nothing. Over and over again, she has looked away from the man she adores; she has avoided his company. She has danced attendance on a man old enough to be her grandfather and never given him the slightest moment of unease. She has lived her life to please him; she has never said a word to contradict him.'

'Like children, they plan nothing, they don't think of tomorrow, never mind the weeks ahead of us on progress, never mind what will happen when we all return to ordinary life in the royal castles and palaces and Culpeper must help the old king into the bed of the girl he loves. They do not speak of the king, not of his illness, not of his lust for Kitty; it is as if they are meeting in another world'

'while I have achieved something no one has done before - ended a royal marriage without a death. Nobody, not Wolsey, not Cromwell - no one has been able to do this before. If I were a man, I would be lord chancellor for this. I have invented a new sort of woman: neither wife nor maid nor widow, I am a femme sole of court life.'

'I realise that this is not a masque that has gone wrong; this has all gone exactly right.The king's first meeting with Cromwell's bride is a disaster; but the Howard girl saves the day. I have just witnessed the first move in the Howards' brilliant bid for the throne, and another Howard girl is in play.'

'The King declares that he will never marry again, that he has lost the love of his life. The part of heartbroken widower is new to him, though this is his third dead wife, and he takes to it as his greatest role. He orders her buried at Windsor and swears that he will lie beside her; they must enter heaven together. He likes her far better dead than he ever did alive.'

'But the advice from the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli is that nothing is given for love: everything is traded for power, and a ruler who wants to command must promise anything and give away the least he can.'

'The queen I served will die named as a witch, a creature of perverse lusts, an adulterous wife, a treasonous queen. My husband is named for terrible crimes with her and has chosen to die with her rather than live with me. At his death, I will lose my fortune and my home. At her death, I will lose my place at court and royal favour. I will be poor; I will be homeless; I will be out of favour.'

'But I am glad of a letter that says nothing - it means he is thinking of his safety, not raging in defence of Anne. The accusation of adultery and treason will fall of its own overweight - it will crash down on those who raised it. The worse they try to paint us, the worse will be their defeat. All we have to do is say nothing.'

''If the marriage was invalid, then she is no wife,' I explain patiently. The duke is deadly at the head of his men, but not the sharpest blade when faced with ideas. 'If she is no wife, there is no adultery. As her uncle, as the head of our house, your task is to wait for them to make fools of themselves, and then take Anne away.''