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You know the old rhyme: "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded." The story of the fickle Tudor monarch captured my imagination when I was growing up --- I must have read dozens of fictional accounts of the executions of Anne Boleyn (wife number two) and Katherine Howard (wife number five), wondering what I would have done in such a spot and probably, in the process, developing a rather grisly and uncertain view of marriage.
Well, I still love ruffs and 16th-century madrigals, and Elizabeth I, Henry's descendant, remains, in my opinion, the queen to end all queens. And when I come upon a new Tudor novel, like THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE, I still find myself rooting for the doomed wives against Henry --- wanting them to escape their fate, identifying with their terror, savoring the dreadful tension as they draw closer to the end. But I didn't expect much in the way of surprises from this book. After all, we know how it comes out.
Philippa Gregory proves me wrong: She has written an historical thriller with all sorts of marvelous, poignant suspense. Although her novels are consistently well researched and generally anachronism-free, they are not simply dutiful re-creations: She always manages to throw a wild card or two into the mix. THE CONSTANT PRINCESS, for example, is a sympathetic treatment of Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, that emphasizes her Spanish/Moorish heritage. THE VIRGIN'S LOVER (is that an ironic title, or what?) charts Elizabeth I's reckless affair with Robert Dudley (Gregory's Tudor novels were not written in chronological order); THE QUEEN'S FOOL, narrated by a young Jewish woman, offers a positive, revisionist view of the much maligned Mary I, Henry's daughter; and THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL focuses on Anne's sister, Mary, who was the first of her family in King Henry's bed.
In THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE the character who Gregory scoops up from the anonymity of history is Jane Boleyn, widow of Anne's brother, George. She testified against both Boleyns at their trial for treason and so was indirectly responsible for their deaths. Now she is brought back to court to be lady-in-waiting to two more queens: Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard.
Think of this book as a female trio, with three alternating first-person voices in counterpoint, distinct yet somehow complementary. The title indicates that each of them is replaying, in some fashion, the sad, brief life of Anne Boleyn. Anne of Cleves, a princess from a small Flemish duchy that is crucial to England's European alliances, is a stranger in a strange land, vulnerable to the same sort of betrayal as her namesake --- she has no sooner learned to speak English and be a real queen than she is rejected by her aging, increasingly unstable consort.
Katherine Howard is Anne Boleyn's cousin and, similarly, a lady-in-waiting who catches the king's eye and ultimately marries him; a beautiful, boy-crazy teenager, she is as smart about seducing men as she is stupid about everything else ("No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on," Jane comments sardonically. "She is lacking in education and training and even common sense").
And Jane --- an artist of betrayal, a John le Carre character transposed to the 16th century --- is the secret agent of her uncle-by-marriage, Thomas Howard, the Machiavellian Duke of Norfolk. They will stop at nothing to promote the ambitions of their family ("There is always dirty work to be done," Jane says, "and that is our specialty"), even if it means betraying two more queens. Looming over it all is Henry --- not just a fickle fellow with an understandable obsession with producing heirs to the throne, but a sick mind and pitiless dictator, increasingly out of touch with reality. Says Anne, "He is not a safe man."
Historical documents tell us what happens to Anne of Cleves: Although the rhyme calls her "divorced," in fact the marriage was annulled. In the novel there is a dangerous period during which it seems unlikely that she will escape the axe, but she lives on, spending the rest of her days in England. Katherine Howard's story is almost a repeat of Anne Boleyn's. But I didn't know whether opportunistic, damaged Jane (whose husband and sister shared an intimacy that shut her out) would survive the royal machinations --- and I'm not telling, for fear of spoiling the chilling denouement.
THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE is a private view of history, emotionally charged and irresistibly readable. Gregory gets inside the hearts and heads of her characters from the start. The motive power of her book is psychological, never purely circumstantial: She looks inward, then out. Most historical novelists go the other way around (and never find their way much past the quaint language, antiquated clothes and incessant wars). It's like Method acting compared to a more traditional sort of stagecraft. We feel that the three narrators are speaking to us directly --- or, perhaps more accurately, talking to themselves.
But, of the three, Anne is clearly Gregory's heroine. We watch her evolve from an abused sister and reluctant, awkward wife and queen into a genuinely independent woman. There is a bitterly realistic scene in which she and Katherine, then her lady-in-waiting, realize that they are both trapped: "We are two women who have recognized that we cannot control the world. We are players in this game, but we do not choose our own moves. The men will play us for their own desires. All we can do is try to survive whatever happens next." Once Anne is living alone in the castle Henry has given her as compensation, however, she revels in her freedom --- dressing, riding and worshiping God as she likes: "I have never in my life before been Anne of Cleves, Anne by myself, not a sister, not a daughter, not a wife, but Anne: pleasing myself. ... It may be a better thing to be a single woman with a good income...than to be one of Henry's frightened queens."
I'm glad that Gregory resisted the impulse to furnish Anne with a (fictional) romance. In letting her stand alone, she gives THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE a feminist edge (perhaps a bit too contemporary-sounding at times, but completely plausible and quite inspiring). Marriage, or at least love, is still part of most women's destiny, but we also need more autonomous space to figure out who we are and who we hope to become. As we chart our tentative path between wifehood and solitude, Anne of Cleves --- an unlikely role model --- seems to reach out from history to help.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
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