He shrugged. “Whatever does it mean? We write poems about it all day and sing songs about it all night but if there is such a thing in real life I’m damned if I know.
You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That’s three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God’s earth.
They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.
He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?
I have given my word that only death will take me from you.
It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.
The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.
I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at at a man for his help.
I am too dark in my heart tonight.
He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.
The world hasn’t changed that much; men still rule.
I felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition – the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress and us to this savage battle.
Some women attract desire. Others do not.
Tell my daughter Elizabeth – no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.
True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree.
Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.
But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.
She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.
I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.
When it’s done, it’s done. And no one will know until it’s done.
Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.