‘Nothing at all,’ he repeated.
We left her to rest and went out to find the rest of the court who were playing quoits with the king.
‘Who spoke of me?’ George demanded.
‘William,’ I said honestly. ‘He was not spreading scandal. He knew I would be afraid for you.’
He laughed carelessly, but I heard the strain in his voice. ‘I love Francis,’ he confessed. ‘I can’t see a finer man in the world, a braver sweeter better man never lived – and I cannot help but desire him.’
‘You love him like a woman?’ I asked awkwardly.
‘Like a man,’ he corrected me swiftly. ‘A more passionate thing by far.’
‘George, this is a dreadful sin, and he will break your heart. This is a disastrous course. If our uncle knew …’
‘If anyone knew, I’d be ruined outright.’
‘Can you not stop seeing him?’
He turned to me with a crooked smile. ‘Can you stop seeing William Stafford?’
‘It’s not the same!’ I protested. ‘What you’re describing is not the same! Nothing like it. William loves me honourably and truly. And I love him. But this –’
‘You’re not without sin, you’re just lucky,’ George said brutally. ‘It is luck to love someone who is free to love you in return. But I don’t. I just desire him, desire him and desire him; and I wait for it to burn out.’
‘Will it burn out?’ I asked.
‘Bound to,’ he said bitterly. ‘Everything I have ever gained has always turned to ashes after a little while. Why should this be any different?’
‘George,’ I said, and put my hand out to him. ‘Oh my brother …’
He looked at me with those hard hungry Boleyn eyes. ‘What?’
‘This will be your undoing,’ I whispered.
‘Oh probably,’ he said carelessly. ‘But Anne will save me. Anne and my nephew the king.’
Summer 1533
Anne would not release me to go to Hever in the summer when she was expecting her baby in August. The court would not progress around the manor houses of England, nothing would happen as it should. I was in such a bitter rage of disappointment that I could hardly bear to be in the same room as her; but I had to be in the same room as her every day, and listen to her endless, endless speculation of what sort of a king her baby might be. Everyone had to wait on Anne. Everyone had to bow to her. Nothing mattered more than Anne and her belly. She was the focus of everything and she would plan nothing. In such confusion, the court could decide nothing, could go nowhere. Henry could hardly bear to be parted from her, even to go hunting.
At the start of July George and my uncle were sent to France as emissaries to the French king to tell him that the heir to the English throne was about to be born, and to take him some pledges and promises in case the Spanish emperor moved against England at this fresh insult to his aunt. They would go on to a meeting with the Pope in which the deadlock that held England frozen might be broken. I went to Anne to ask her again if she might spare me too, as soon as she went into her confinement.
‘I want to go to Hever,’ I said quietly. ‘I need to see my children.’
She shook her head. She was lying in the bay of the window of her room on a day bed they had pushed into the embrasure for her. All the windows stood open to catch the breeze as it came up the river, but she was still sweating. Her gown was laced firmly, her breasts, pressed by the stomacher, were swollen and uncomfortable. Her back ached, even supported by cushions embroidered with seed pearls.
‘No,’ she said shortly.
She saw that I was about to argue with her. ‘Oh stop it,’ she said irritably. ‘I can order you as a queen to do what I shouldn’t have to even ask as a sister. You ought to want to be with me. I visited you when you were confined.’
‘You stole my lover while I was giving birth to his son!’ I said flatly.
‘I was told to. And you would have done the same if our roles had been turned. I need you, Mary. Don’t go wandering off when you’re needed.’
‘What d’you need me for?’ I demanded.
She lost her flushed colour and went waxy white. ‘What if it kills me?’ she whispered. ‘What if it gets stuck and I die of it?’
‘Oh Anne …’
‘Don’t pet me,’ she said irritably. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. I just want you here to protect me.’
I hesitated. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘If they can get the baby out by killing me, I wouldn’t give you a groat for my life,’ she said brutally. ‘They’d rather have a live Prince of Wales than a live queen. They can get another queen. But princes are rare in this market.’
‘I won’t be able to stop them,’ I said feebly.
She gleamed at me under her eyelids. ‘I know you’re a broken reed. But at least you could tell George and he would work on the king to make them save me.’
Her bleak view of the world made me pause. But then I thought of my own children. ‘After your baby is born, and you are well – then I go to Hever,’ I stipulated.
‘After the baby is born you can go to hell if you like,’ she said levelly.
Then there was nothing to do but wait. But in the hot days when it seemed as if nothing was happening, the most appalling news arrived from Rome. The Pope had finally ruled against Henry. Astoundingly: the king was to be excommunicated.
‘What?’ Anne demanded.
Lady Rochford, George’s newly ennobled wife Jane Parker, had brought the news. Like a buzzard to carrion, she was always first. ‘Excommunicated.’ Even she looked stunned. ‘Every Englishman loyal to the Pope should disobey the king,’ she said. ‘Spain can invade. It would be a holy war.’
Anne was whiter than the pearls at her neck.
‘Go out,’ I said suddenly. ‘How dare you come in here and upset the queen?’
‘Some will say that she is not the queen.’ Jane went for the door. ‘Won’t the king put her aside now?’
‘Go!’ I said fiercely, and ran to Anne. She had her hand on her belly as if she would shield the baby from the disastrous news. I pinched her cheeks, and watched her eyelids flutter.
‘He’ll stand by me,’ she whispered. ‘Cranmer himself married us. Crowned me. They can’t say it is all to be put aside.’
‘No,’ I said as staunchly as I could, thinking that yes, perhaps they could put it all aside, for who could deny the Pope when he held the keys of heaven in his hand? The king must surrender. And the first thing he would have to surrender would be Anne.
‘Oh God, I wish George was here,’ Anne said with a little wail of despair. ‘I wish he was home.’
Two days later, George came home from France with a brief panicstricken letter from our uncle, demanding to know what should be done next in the negotiations to resolve a crisis which had suddenly become a disaster. The king sent George straight back to France again with orders for my uncle to break off the talks and come home. We would all wait and see what would happen.
The days grew hotter, they drew up plans for the defence of England against a Spanish invasion, the priests preached calm from the pulpits but wondered which side they should be on. Many churches simply bolted their doors in the crisis and no-one could confess or pray, bury their dead or christen their babies. Uncle Howard begged the king to let him go back to France and implore Francis to persuade the Pope to lift the excommunication. I never before saw him look so terrified. But George, the steadiest of us all, turned all his attention to Anne.
It was as if he thought that the king’s immortal soul and the future of England were too great for him. The one place where he could be effective was to keep the baby growing in Anne’s belly. ‘This is our guarantee,’ he said quietly to me. ‘Nothing secures our safety more than a boy baby.’
He spent every morning with Anne, sitting with her on the day bed in the window embrasure. When Henry came into the room George would wander away, but when Henry was gone again, Anne would lean back on the pillows and
look for our brother. She never showed Henry the strain she suffered. She remained for him the fascinating woman she had always been. She would show him her temper if he crossed her, quick enough. But she never showed him her fear. She never showed her fear to anyone but to George and me. Henry had her sweetness and her charm and her flirtatiousness. Even eight months with child Anne could flick her eyes sideways in a way which would make a man catch his breath. I used to watch her talking with Henry, and see that every gesture, every inch of her was devoted to delighting him.
No wonder that when he left the room to go hunting she leaned back on the pillows and summoned me to take off her hood and stroke her forehead. ‘I’m so hot.’
Henry did not go hunting alone, of course. Anne might be fascinating but not even she could hold him when she was eight months pregnant and forbidden to go to his bed. Henry was flirting openly with Lady Margaret Steyne and it was not long before Anne knew of it.
When he visited her one afternoon he got a sharp welcome.
‘I wonder you dare show your face to me,’ she greeted him in a hiss as he sat down beside her. Henry glanced around the room and the gentlemen of the court at once moved a little further away and pretended to be deaf while the ladies turned their heads to give the royal couple the illusion of privacy.
‘Madam?’
‘I hear you’ve bedded some slut,’ Anne said.
Henry looked around and saw Lady Margaret. A glance at William Brereton prompted that most experienced of courtiers to offer Lady Margaret his arm. He swept her out of the room for a walk by the river. Anne watched them go with a glare which would have frightened a lesser man.
‘Madam?’ Henry inquired.
‘I won’t have it,’ she warned him. ‘I won’t tolerate it. She must leave court.’
Henry shook his head and rose to his feet. ‘You forget to whom you speak,’ he pronounced. ‘And ill temper is not suitable to your condition. I shall bid you good day, madam.’
‘You forget to whom you speak!’ Anne retorted. ‘I am your wife and the queen and I will not be overlooked and insulted in my own court. That woman is to leave.’
‘No-one orders me!’
‘No-one insults me!’
‘How have you been insulted? The lady has never paid you anything but the greatest of attention and politeness, and I remain your most obedient husband. What is the matter with you?’
‘I won’t have her at court! I shall not be so treated.’
‘Madam,’ Henry said, at his most chilling. ‘A better lady than you was treated far worse and never complained to me. As you well know.’
For a moment, absorbed in her own temper, she did not catch the reference. And when she did she flung herself out of her chair to her feet. ‘You cite her to me!’ she screamed at him. ‘You dare compare me to that woman who was never your wife?’
‘She was a Princess of the Blood,’ he shouted back. ‘And she would never, never have reproached me. She knew that a wife’s whole duty is to mind her husband’s comfort.’
Anne slapped her hand on the curve of her belly. ‘Did she give you a son?’ she demanded.
There was a silence. ‘No,’ Henry said heavily.
‘Then princess or not, she was no use. And she was not your wife.’
He nodded. Henry, and indeed all of us, sometimes had trouble remembering that most debatable fact.
‘You are not to distress yourself,’ he said.
‘Then do not you distress me,’ she answered smartly.
Reluctantly, I drew closer. ‘Anne, you should sit down,’ I said as quietly as I could. Henry turned to me with relief. ‘Yes, Lady Carey, keep her quiet. I am just going.’ He gave a little bow to Anne and left the room abruptly. Half the gentlemen swirled out with him, half of them were caught unawares and stayed. Anne looked at me.
‘What did you interrupt for?’
‘You can’t risk the baby.’
‘Oh! The baby! All anyone thinks about is the baby!’
George drew close to me and took Anne’s hand. ‘Of course. All our futures depend on it. Yours as well, Anne. Be still now, Mary’s right.’
‘We should have fought it out to the end,’ she said resentfully. ‘I should not have let him go until he promised to send her from court. You should not have interrupted us.’
‘You can’t fight it through to the end,’ George pointed out to her. ‘You can’t end up in bed till you’ve been birthed and churched. You have to wait, Anne. And you know that he’ll have someone else while he’s waiting.’
‘But what if she keeps him?’ Anne wailed, her glance sliding past me, knowing full well that she had taken him from me when I was in childbirth.
‘She can’t,’ George said simply. ‘You’re his wife. He can’t divorce you, can he? He’s only just got rid of t’other one. And if you have his son he’d have no reason to. Your winning card is in your belly, Anne. Hold it close and play it right.’
She leaned back against the chair. ‘Send for some musicians,’ she said. ‘They can dance.’
George snapped his fingers and a pageboy jumped forward.
Anne turned to me. ‘And you tell Lady Margaret Steyne that I don’t want her in my sight,’ she said.
The court took to the river that summer. We had never been near to the Thames in the summer months before, and the master of the revels devised water battles and water masques and water entertainments for Henry and his new queen. One night they had a battle of fire at twilight on the water and Anne watched it from a little tented palace on the bank. The queen’s men won and then there was dancing on a little stage built out over the river. I danced with half a dozen men and then I looked around for my husband.
He was watching me, he was always watching me for the moment when we could slip away together. One discreet tilt of his head, one secret smile and we were gone into the shadows for a kiss and a hidden touch and sometimes, when it was dark and when we could not resist each other, we would take our pleasure, hidden in the darkness by the river with the sound of faraway music to disguise my moan of pleasure.
I was a clandestine lover and it was that which made me alert for George. He too would take part in the first half-dozen dances and establish his presence at the centre of things. Then he too would step back, back, back from the circle of light into the obscurity of the garden. Then I would see that Sir Francis was missing too and know that he had taken my brother off somewhere, perhaps to his room, perhaps to the stews of the City for some wild doings, perhaps gambling, or riding in the moonlight, or for some rough embracing. George might reappear in five minutes, or he might be gone all night. Anne, who thought he was roistering as he always had done, accused him of flirting with the maids around the court and George laughed and disclaimed as he always had done. Only I knew that a more powerful and more dangerous desire had my brother in its grasp.
In August Anne announced that she would retire for her confinement and when Henry came to visit her in the morning, after hearing Mass, he found that the rooms were in chaos with furniture being moved in and out, and all the ladies in a great toil of activity.
Anne sat on a chair among all the confusion and ordered what she wanted. When she saw Henry come in she inclined her head but did not rise to curtsey to him. He did not care, he was besotted with his pregnant queen, he dropped like a boy to kneel beside her, to put his hands on her great round belly and look up into her face.
‘We need a christening gown for our son,’ she said without preamble. ‘Does she have it?’
‘She’ meant only one thing in the royal vocabulary. ‘She’ was always the queen that had disappeared, the queen that no-one ever mentioned, the queen that everyone tried not to remember, sitting in that chair, preparing for her own confinement in that room, and forever turning to Henry with her sweet deferential smile.
‘It’s her own,’ he said. ‘Brought from Spain.’
‘Was Mary christened in it?’ Anne demanded, already knowing the answer.
&nbs
p; Henry frowned at the effort of recovering a memory. ‘Oh yes, a great long white gown, richly embroidered. But it was Katherine’s own.’
‘Does she have it still?’
‘We can order a new gown,’ Henry said pacifically. ‘You could draw it yourself, and the nuns could sew it for you.’
A toss of Anne’s head indicated that this would not do. ‘My baby is to have the royal gown,’ she said. ‘I want him christened in the gown that all the princes have worn.’
‘We don’t have a royal gown …’ he said hesitantly.
‘I’ll warrant!’ she snapped. ‘Because she has it.’
Henry knew when he was beaten. He bent his head and kissed her hand, clenched on the arm of the chair. ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ he urged her. ‘Not so near your time. I’ll send to her for it. I swear I will. Our little Edward Henry shall have everything you might want.’
She nodded, she found her sweet smile, she touched the nape of his neck with her fingertips as he bowed to her.
The midwife came to them and swept a curtsey. ‘Your room is ready now,’ she said.
Anne turned to Henry. ‘You’ll visit me every day,’ she said. It sounded more like an order than a request.
‘Twice a day,’ he promised. ‘The time will pass, sweetheart, and you must rest for the coming of our son.’
He kissed her hand again and left her, and I drew close as the two of us went to the threshold of her bedchamber. Her great bed had been moved in, and the walls hung with thick tapestries to exclude any noise or sunshine or fresh air. They had put rushes down on the floor with rosemary for scent, and lavender for relief. They had moved all the other furniture out of the room except for one chair and table for the midwife. Anne was expected to stay in bed for one whole month. They had lit a fire although it was midsummer and the room was stifling. They had lit candles so that she could read or sew, and they had put the cradle ready at the foot of the bed.
Anne recoiled on the threshold of the darkened stuffy room. ‘I can’t go in there, it’s like a prison.’
‘It’s only for a month,’ I said. ‘Perhaps less.’
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