‘For me too. Is the baby all right? Settled in?’
‘I left her and the nurse sound asleep. And I have good lodgings for them and for us too as soon as you can get away from court.’
‘I’ve done better than that,’ I said delightedly. ‘The king was pleased to see me and he asked for you. You are to come to court tomorrow. We can be here together. He said that we could take Baby Anne to Hever for the summer.’
‘Did Anne ask it for you?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s Anne I have to thank for my exile,’ I said. ‘She wouldn’t even have let me see my children if I had not asked it of the king.’
He gave a low whistle. ‘You must have thanked her kindly for that.’
I shook my head. ‘No point complaining of her very nature.’
‘And how is she?’
‘Sour,’ I whispered very low. ‘Sick. And sad.’
Summer 1535
That night George and I sat in Anne’s room as she prepared for bed. The king had said he would lie with her that night and she had bathed and asked me to brush her hair.
‘You do make sure he is careful, don’t you?’ I asked her anxiously. ‘It’s a sin that he should lie with you at all.’
George gave a short laugh from where he was stretched out on her bed, his boots on her fine covers.
She turned her head under the hairbrush. ‘I’m in little danger of rough wooing.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Some nights he cannot do it. Some nights he cannot get hard at all. It’s disgusting. I have to lie underneath him while he heaves around and sweats and grunts. And then he gets angry, and he is angry with me! As if I had anything to do with it.’
‘Is it drink?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘You know the king. He’s always half-drunk by night.’
‘If you tell him you’re with child …’ I said.
‘I’ll have to tell him in June, won’t I?’ she remarked. ‘As soon as it quickens, I’ll tell him then. He’ll cancel the court’s progress and we can all stay at Hampton Court. George will have to ride out and hunt with him and keep that moon-faced Jane off his neck.’
‘Archangel Gabriel couldn’t keep the women off him,’ George said negligently. ‘You’ve set a pattern, Anne, you’ll live to regret it. They all of them hold him at arm’s length and promise him the earth. It was easier when they were all like pretty Mary here – took a little romp and were paid a couple of manors for it.’
‘I think you got the manors,’ I said sharply. ‘And Father. And William Carey. As I recall, I got a pair of embroidered gloves and a pearl necklace.’
‘And a ship named for you, and a horse,’ Anne said with her accurate envious memory. ‘And gowns without number, and a new bed.’
George laughed. ‘You have an inventory as if you were a groom of the household, Anne.’ He stretched out a hand for her and pulled her to the bed to lie back on the pillow beside him. I looked at the two of them, as intimate as twins, side by side in the big bed of England.
‘I’ll leave you,’ I said shortly.
‘Run off to Sir Nobody,’ Anne threw over her shoulder, and twitched the richly embroidered curtains of the bed so they were both shielded from my sight.
William was waiting for me, in the garden, looking out over the river, his face dark.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘He’s arrested Fisher,’ he said. ‘I never thought he’d dare.’
‘Bishop Fisher?’
‘I thought he had a charmed life. Henry always loved him, and he seemed to be allowed to defend Queen Katherine and emerge unscathed. He’s been her man without swerving. She’ll grieve for him.’
‘But he’ll just be in the Tower for a week or so, won’t he? And then apologise, or whatever?’
‘It depends what they demand of him. He won’t take the oath of succession, I’m sure of that. He can’t say that Elizabeth is to succeed in the place of Mary, he’s written a dozen books and preached a million sermons in defence of the marriage, he can’t disinherit her daughter.’
‘Then he’ll just stay there,’ I said.
‘I suppose so,’ William repeated.
I drew a little closer and put my hand on his arm. ‘Why are you so worried?’ I asked. ‘He’ll have his books and his things, his friends will visit him. He’ll be released at the end of the summer.’
William turned from the river and took my hands in his. ‘I was there when Henry ordered him sent to the Tower,’ he said. ‘He was at Mass while he was doing his business. Think of that, Mary. He was at Mass when he ordered a bishop to the Tower.’
‘He’s always done his business while hearing Mass,’ I said. I was unwilling to recognise my husband’s earnestness. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘These are Henry’s laws,’ my husband said, holding my hands and not releasing me. ‘The Oath of Succession and then the Supremacy Act, and then the Treason Act. These aren’t the laws of the land. These are Henry’s laws that set a trap to catch his enemies, and Fisher and More have fallen into it.’
‘He’s hardly going to behead them …’ I said reasonably. ‘Oh William, really! One is the most revered churchman in the land, and the other was Lord Chancellor. He’d hardly dare behead them.’
‘If he dares to try them for treason then none of us is safe.’
I found I had lowered my voice to match him. ‘Because?’
‘Because he will have found that the Pope does not protect his servants. That English men and women do not rise up against tyranny. That no-one is so well thought of, or so well connected, that they cannot be arrested under a new law of his devising. How long d’you think Queen Katherine will be free once her advisor is imprisoned?’
I pulled my hands away. ‘I won’t listen to this,’ I said. ‘It’s to fear shadows. My Grandfather Howard was in the Tower for treason and came out smiling. Henry wouldn’t execute Thomas More, he loves him. They may be at loggerheads now but More was his greatest friend and joy.’
‘What about your Uncle Buckingham?’
‘That was different,’ I said. ‘He was guilty.’
My husband let me go and turned back to the river. ‘We’ll see,’ was all he said. ‘Pray God you’re right and I am wrong.’
Our prayers were not answered. Henry did the thing that I thought he would never dream of doing. He sent Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More to trial for claiming that Queen Katherine had been truly married to him. He let them lay their lives down to declare that he was not the head of the Church, an English Pope. And those two, men without a stain on their conscience, two of the finest men in England, walked out to the scaffold and laid their heads on the blocks as though they had been the lowest of traitors.
They were very quiet days at court, the days in June when Fisher died, when More died. Everyone felt that the world had grown a little more dangerous. If Bishop Fisher could be beheaded, if Thomas More could walk to the scaffold, then who could call themselves safe?
George and I waited with increasing impatience for Anne’s baby to quicken in the womb so that she could tell the king that she was with child; but mid-June came and still nothing had happened.
‘Could you have mistaken your time?’ I asked her.
‘Is that likely?’ she retorted. ‘Do I think of anything else?’
‘Could it move so slightly that you cannot feel it?’ I asked.
‘You tell me,’ she said. ‘You’re the sow that’s always in farrow. Could it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Yes, you do know,’ she said. Her little pursed mouth was shut in a thin bitter line. ‘We both know. We both know what’s happened. It’s died in there. It’s five months now and I’m no bigger than when I was three months gone. It’s dead inside me.’
I looked at her in horror. ‘You must see a physician.’
She snapped her fingers in my face. ‘I’d as soon see the devil himself. If Henry knows that there is a dead baby inside m
e he’ll never come near me again.’
‘It will make you sick,’ I warned her.
She laughed, a shrill bitter laugh. ‘It will be the death of me, one way or another. For if I let out one word that this is the second baby I’ve failed to carry, then I am thrown aside and ruined. What am I to do?’
‘I’ll go to a midwife myself and ask her if there is something you could take to get rid of it.’
‘You’d better make sure she doesn’t know it’s for me,’ Anne said flatly. ‘If one whisper of this gets out, then I am lost, Mary.’
‘I know,’ I said grimly. ‘I’ll get George to help me.’
That evening, before dinner, the two of us made our way down the river. A private ferryboatman took us, we didn’t want the great family barge. George knew a bath house for whores. There was a woman who lived nearby who was reputed to be able to cast spells, or stop a baby, put a curse on a field of cows, or make river trout come to the line. The bath house overlooked the river, with bay windows leaning out over the water. There was a shielded candle in every window, and women seated half-naked by the light, so that they could be seen from the river. George pulled his hat down over his eyes and I drew the hood of my cape forward. We put the boat in at the landing stage, and I ignored the girls leaning out of the windows above our heads and cooing at George.
‘Wait here,’ George ordered the boatman, as we went up the slippery wet steps. He took my elbow and guided me across the filth of the cobbled street to the house on the corner. He knocked at the door, and as it silently opened, he stood back and let me go in alone. I hesitated on the doorway, peering into the darkness.
‘Go on,’ George said. An abrupt shove in the small of my back warned me that he was in no mood for delays. ‘Go on. We’ve got to get this for her.’
I nodded and went inside. It was a small room, smoky from the sluggish fire of driftwood burning in the fireplace, furnished with nothing more than a little wooden table and a pair of stools. The woman was seated at the table: an old woman, stoop-backed and grey-haired, a face lined with knowledge, bright blue eyes which saw everything. A little smile revealed a mouthful of blackened teeth.
‘A lady of the court,’ she remarked, taking in my cloak and the hint of my rich gown at the front opening.
I laid a silver coin on the table. ‘That’s for your silence,’ I said flatly.
She laughed. ‘I’ll be not much use to you, if I’m silent.’
‘I need help.’
‘Want someone to love you? Want someone dead?’ Her bright gaze scanned me as if she would take me all in. Her grin beamed out again.
‘Neither,’ I said.
‘Baby trouble then.’
I pulled up a stool and sat down, thinking of the world divided so simply into love, death and childbirth. ‘It’s not for me, it’s for my friend.’
She gave a delighted little giggle. ‘As ever.’
‘She was with child, but she’s now in her fifth month and the baby isn’t growing and isn’t moving.’
At once the old woman was more interested. ‘What does she say?’
‘She thinks it’s dead.’
‘Is she still growing stouter?’
‘No. She’s no bigger than two months ago.’
‘Sick in the mornings, her breasts tender?’
‘Not now.’
She nodded her head. ‘Has she bled?’
‘No.’
‘Sounds like the baby is dead. You’d better take me to her, so that I can be sure.’
‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘She’s very closely guarded.’
She gave a short laugh. ‘You won’t believe the houses that I have got in and out.’
‘You can’t see her.’
‘Then we can take a chance. I can give you a drink, it’ll make her sick as a dog and the baby will come away.’
I nodded eagerly but she held up a hand. ‘But what if she’s mistaken? If it’s a live baby in there? Just resting awhile? Just gone quiet?’
I looked at her, quite baffled. ‘What then?’
‘You’ve killed it,’ she said simply. ‘And that makes you a murderer, and her, and me too. D’you have the stomach for that?’
I shook my head slowly. ‘My God, no,’ I said, thinking of what would happen to me and mine if anyone knew that I had given the queen a potion to make her miscarry a prince.
I rose to my feet and turned away from the table to look out of the window at the cold grey river. I summoned my memory of Anne as I had seen her at the start of this pregnancy, her higher colour, her swelling breasts; and as she was now, pale, drained, dry-looking.
‘Give me the drink. She can be the one to choose whether to take it or no.’
The woman rose from her stool and waddled towards the back of the room. ‘That’ll be three shillings.’
I said nothing to the absurdly high fee but put the silver coins down on the greasy table in silence. She snatched them up with one quick movement. ‘It’s not this you need fear,’ she said suddenly.
I was halfway to the door but I turned back. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s not the drink but the blade you should fear.’
I felt a cold shiver, as if the grey mist from the river had just crept all over the skin of my back. ‘What d’you mean?’
She shook her head, as if she had been asleep for a moment. ‘I? Nothing. If it means something to you, then take it to heart. If it means nothing, it means nothing. Let it go.’
I paused for a moment in case she would say anything more, and when she was silent I opened the door and slipped out.
George was waiting, arms folded. When I came out he tucked his hand under my elbow in silence and we hurried down the slippery green steps to the gently rocking boat. In silence we made the longer journey home, the boatman rowing against the current. When he put us off at the palace landing stage I said urgently to George, ‘Two things you should know: one is that if the baby is not dead then this drink will kill it, and we’ll have that on our consciences.’
‘Is there any way we can tell if it’s a boy, before she drinks?’
I could have cursed him for the single track of his mind. ‘Nobody ever knows that.’
He nodded. ‘The other thing?’
‘The other thing the old woman said is that we should not fear the drink but fear the blade.’
‘What sort of blade?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Sword blade? Razor blade? Executioner’s axe?’
I shrugged.
‘We’re Boleyns,’ he said simply. ‘When you spend your life in the shadow of the throne you’re always afraid of blades. Let’s get through tonight. Let’s get that drink down her and see what happens.’
Anne went down to dinner like a queen, pale-faced, drawn, but with her head high and a smile on her lips. She sat next to Henry, her throne only a little less grand than his, and she chattered to him, and flattered him and enchanted him as she still could do. Whenever the stream of wit paused for even a moment his eyes strayed across the room and rested on the ladies in waiting at their table, perhaps looking towards Madge Shelton, perhaps to Jane Seymour, once even a thoughtful warm smile at me. Anne affected to see nothing, she plied him with questions about his hunting, she praised his health. She picked the nicest morsels from the dishes on the high table and put them on his already loaded plate. She was very much Anne, Anne in every turn of her head and her flickering flirtatious glance from under her eyelashes, but there was something about her determined charm that reminded me of the woman who had sat in that chair before and tried not to see that her husband’s attention was drifting elsewhere.
After dinner the king said that he would do some business, so we all knew that he would be carousing with his closest friends. ‘I’d better be with him,’ George said. ‘You’ll see she takes it, and stay with her?’
‘I’ll sleep in her room tonight,’ I said. ‘The woman said that she’d be sick as a dog.’
He nodded, tightening his lips, and then he turned and went after the king.
Anne told her ladies that she had a headache and that she would sleep early. We left them in the presence chamber, sewing shirts for the poor. They were very diligent as we said goodnight but I knew that once the door was shut behind us there would be the usual endless stream of gossip.
Anne got into her nightdress, and handed me her lice comb. ‘You might as well do something useful while we’re waiting,’ she said ungraciously.
I put the bottle on the table.
‘Pour it for me.’
There was something about the dark glass with the glass stopper that repelled me. ‘No. This has to be your doing, and your doing alone.’
She shrugged like a gambler raising stakes with empty pockets, and poured the drink into a golden cup. She raised it to me as a mock-toast, and threw her head back and drank it. I saw her neck convulse as she forced the three gulps of it down. Then she slammed down the cup and smiled at me, a savage defiant smile. ‘Done,’ she said. ‘Pray God it works easily.’
We waited, I combed her hair, and then a little later she said: ‘We might as well go to sleep. Nothing’s happening.’ And we curled up in bed, as we had slept together in the old days, and we woke just after dawn and she had no pain.
‘It hasn’t worked,’ she said.
I had a small foolish hope that the baby had clung on, that it was a living baby, perhaps a little one, perhaps frail, but clinging on and staying alive, despite the poison.
‘I’ll go to my bed if you don’t want me,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Run off to Sir Nobody and have a sweaty little thump, why don’t you?’
I did not reply at once. I knew the tone of envy in my sister’s voice and it was the sweetest sound in the world to me. ‘But you are queen.’
‘Yes. And you are Lady Nobody.’
I smiled. ‘That was my choice,’ I said, and slipped through the door before she could get the last word.
All day nothing happened. George and I watched Anne as if she were our own child, but although she was pale and complained of the heat of the bright June sun, nothing happened. The king spent the morning at business, seeing petitioners who were in a hurry to catch him, before the court was travelling.
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