How It All Goes Down
Summer 1524
- Mary must go into seclusion for the entire month of June, when she is to give birth.
- Anne visits, and together they pray that Mary will have a boy.
- It's a girl.
- Everyone is angry with Mary, except for Mary herself. She loves her daughter.
- Weirdly, Mary names the baby Catherine, in honor of the queen, the wife of the man whose baby she just had.
- Mary has an unexpected visitor: her husband, William Carey. Remember him? Even Mary barely remembers him.
- Carey tells Mary that if she wants to say he's impotent, and that they never consummated their marriage—so that it may be annulled—he wouldn't be upset with her.
- Why? Because as the husband of the queen's mistress, Carey would monetarily benefit from that arrangement.
- The king is like a father, and everyone is his child begging him for a raise in allowance.
- Because she just had a baby, Mary gets to sit out the court's midsummer travel.
- Instead, Mary stays with Anne on the farm in Hever.
- Mary wishes she could live on the farm and raise her daughter by herself, away from the scheming of the court.
- That is, obviously, never going to happen.
- The king expects Mary to return in the fall, without her child, who will be raised by a nanny.