The Boleyn Inheritance

I have learned the power of surviving.

It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.

If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace.

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.

In a shipwreck, it is every drowning man for himself.

So let me see? What do I have? Surprise! Surprise!

Life is long, and if a woman survives, she can take her pleasures one way or another.

I will own a cat and not fear being called a witch; I will dance and not fear being named a whore. I shall ride my horse and go where I please. I shall soar like a gyrfalcon. I shall live my own life and please myself. I shall be a free woman. It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.

This child could not command a pet dove." Harsh but true, lol!

Good God, what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard. It is truly amazing.

He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. 'Everyone is always our enemy,' he says. 'But right now, we are winning.

much commented on. I have three new hoods to match, which

She looks down at the ground to hide her smile of pleasure and to affect modesty, but when the dance brings them together and she takes his hand, her eyes come up to him and they gaze at each other with absolute longing.

We are two women who have recognised 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.

I want to teach him his prayers and his letters and his manners. I want him for my own. Not just because he is motherless, but because I am childless and I want someone to love.

When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel.

I can’t think why men would believe that it is a better world where something beautiful is destroyed and something broken left in its place.

If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace

If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.

never see them again. Surely, a couple so young, so

A steady love, a faithful love, a wife’s love is the best.

His little gestures of affection, his hand in the small of her aching back, her head brushing his shoulder. When she was with child, she used to cling to him for comfort, and he was always tender with her.

them till the very last moment, and then what did I do but protect the family from

And those people like my grandmother, who are so free with their insults and their slaps, who say that it is a tremendous honor and a fine step up for a ninny like me, might well consider that a fool can be jumped up, but a fool can also be thrown down; and who is going to catch me then?

For who could resist a woman who could fall from being queen to commoner and yet still carry herself as if greatness was within?