The Queen of Subtleties

by Suzannah Dunn

  Henry said I was being ridiculous. ‘You are queen,’ he’d say. ‘We’ve put all that behind us.’

  And I’d say, ‘That’s exactly where she is, right behind us. Dogging us, haunting us.’

  It was time for her to be visited by someone: someone who’d make her do as she was told. Who else, but Charlie? It was always Charlie’s job. And just because he was a newlywed, that December, was no reason for him to be excused. On the contrary, it was reason enough for him to be volunteered. Three months bereaved of the ex-starlet, he’d remarried. But—wait—that’s not it, or not all of it: his new bride was his own son’s fourteen-year-old fiancée.

  His typically po-faced response to raised eyebrows was, She’s very mature for her age. Actually, he was right: she was. Where he was wrong was in thinking Kate Willoughby was the one we were all concerned for. She’s canny, clever; very. In many ways, her marrying him was a Godsend. She makes him think, which doesn’t come naturally to him. She’s made something of him, and this late in his life, which is no mean achievement but just one of her many. He’s a better man for having married her, and it’s done her no harm; she flourishes as was always clear that she would.

  Nor was it as if I was touchy about the memory of the ex-starlet. Charlie’s boy was the one I felt for. We all did. He was already unwell by then, but his father’s betrayal and the sudden loss of Kate clearly took their toll. He was around the same age as Fitz, and they seemed to have the same sickness. That same awful, bloodied cough. Henry and I found it excruciating to witness the state of Fitz. No way could we ever have done anything to distress him. Our sole aim was to ensure as much pleasure for him as possible in his remaining years. As it happened, that autumn he’d come home to us from Paris, accompanied by his beloved boyhood friend, Hal; and we’d married him to Maria, my darling cousin and Hal’s little sister. In that way, we layered family around him, and kept alive his prospect of a future. Charlie’s boy, though, had had his family pull away and his future swiped from him.

  Henry called for Charlie and gave him the job.

  ‘Now?’ was all Charlie asked, incredulous. No doubt an entire pre-Christmas drinks season was flashing before his eyes.

  ‘Now,’ Henry confirmed, buoyant, his enthusiasm implying that this was a crucial expedition being entrusted to his trustiest noble.

  And so off Charlie had to go, riding out into December, towards what must have felt like the ends of the earth and a reception that he knew would be, to say the least, chilly. Not something to which Charlie was accustomed: a woman displeased to see him. If you don’t count me, that is.

  We heard nothing of him for almost a week. It was as if he’d been swallowed up somewhere between the beacon of our Christmassy court and that distant, stony castle. Kate looked dazed. Going through the motions. No longer a single girl, but having to go through the most sociable weeks of the year with no husband nor any news of him. By contrast, her ex-, her new stepson, was putting his heart and soul into the season; and, probably, in consequence, a fair bit of his blood into his handkerchief. On the solstice, word came.

  Henry scanned the letter, giving me the gist. ‘She’s locked herself in,’ he said, grimly.

  I had no idea what he meant. ‘In where?’ I visualized a drawbridge, drawn.

  He glanced up at me. ‘Her rooms.’

  I was still confused. ‘Where’s Charlie?’

  Laying the letter in his lap, he said, emphatically, ‘On the other side of the door.’

  I half-laughed. ‘Can’t he break it down?’

  He sighed, irritated. ‘And how would that look?’

  ‘A lot better than standing on the other side of it,’ I snapped back. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘Talking to her.’ Curt; back to the letter.

  ‘Yes, but is she listening to him?’

  Henry said nothing.

  I grabbed the letter. ‘He’s dismissed most of her servants,’ I read. The drawbridge again, this time with Catherine’s servants dejectedly trooping across it.

  Henry wondered aloud, ‘Why do that?’

  ‘Because they bolster her, Henry. Addressing her as queen. Without them, she’s—’ I was going to say ‘nothing’, but clearly that wasn’t true, ‘less.’ I handed him back the letter, and asked, ‘What will you tell him?’

  ‘To keep trying.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I want her out of there.’

  I went to find Kate, to check that she’d also had a letter. She had. She asked me, ‘Will he be back for Christmas, do you think?’

  All I could do was shrug.

  Christmas Day came and went: no Charlie. Actually, I’d forgotten about him; but then I remembered, spotting Kate sitting with some other girls in a corner of the Presence Chamber, glasses in hands, listening to Mark Smeaton’s virginals-playing. I wondered if there was mulled wine for Charlie in that servant-depleted castle.

  Three days later, we received another missive. Not only had there been no mulled wine for Charlie, but there’d been trouble. The dismissed servants had trooped across that drawbridge and, inevitably, into the nearest village, where they’d told their tale of woe. Which then spread, as tales of woe do, to other villages. By dusk on Christmas Day, scores of villagers had gathered at the moat to protect the woman they thought of as their queen, perhaps still knew as their queen. (Who—up there—would have told them differently? Priests were supposed to; but priests, of course, tell people whatever they choose to tell them.) And there they remained.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ I protested to Henry: Charlie, trapped between vigilante villagers and a locked door. I might not have liked Charlie, but nor did I relish the prospect of half of Bedfordshire threatening a lone nobleman. Not just any nobleman, but the Duke of Suffolk. And, anyway, their brute loyalty annoyed me. That they imagined her a sick woman, wronged and harried. That there could be no such feeling for me, who was flush with success and love and pregnancy.

  Henry merely laughed, although not particularly happily. ‘Poor Charlie,’ he said, and paused before adding, ‘I think he should just come home.’

  And finally, on the thirty-first, he did. Those smooth looks of his, ruffled. His eyes as shadowed as those of his son.

  For Charlie, it’d been a rough Christmas, but now it was all over. Whereas for me and Henry, as ever, it continued. The Spaniard wouldn’t last all that much longer, but then there was that daughter of hers. Mary was every inch her mother’s daughter: intent on carrying the dispute into the next generation. Believe me: I’d tried, with Mary. I’d tried being nice, when I married her father and was crowned. I’d sent her a long letter: only accept the situation, I said, only accept me, and bygones can be bygones. A clean slate seemed the only way forward, to me. And it seemed, if I might say so, a generous offer. Not so, apparently, to Mary’s mind. Her reported response was, shall we say, robust.

  So, we’d switched tactics. To tough. Henry informed her that unless she accepted the situation, she wouldn’t be allowed to see her mother, and she wouldn’t have her father’s love. Back came a typically tight-lipped response: although it pained her more than she could ever say, she regretted that she had no choice.

  Henry’s response was mixed. On the one hand, I could see, even though he tried to hide it, he was shocked. He was naive, believing anyone and everyone would come around. Even her. On the other hand, he was learning, and I suspect he’d half-expected this high-handed brush-off. Certainly it was no news to him that she was as stubborn as her mother. Not that it made it any easier for him to read that letter. Which, incidentally, he didn’t let me read for myself.

  I needed to act quickly. I insisted he take her at her word. Send her to Hatfield, I said, to take second place to Elizabeth, and don’t—don’t, whatever you do—see her. Don’t give in. Don’t pander to these histrionics. I told him: she says she’s made her choice; now let her feel the consequences. Let her see how she likes it. Then we’ll see. He said nothing. Dead-eyed. Flinching from me. As if it were my fault. Listen, I
said: she can’t be any daughter of yours unless she accepts the life you now have. The family you now have, was what I meant. Unless she accepts your authority, I added: a deft but belated switch into a language he’d understand. And he did suddenly sit a bit taller. If you meet her halfway on this, I said, you’re making a bed to lie in. A rod for your own back. All those tired words, but all of them true.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he allowed, in the end, as if he were granting me something. When all I’d been doing was thinking of him.

  I’d concentrated on sounding as if I were reasoning my way through a problem, but actually I could have killed her. I’m practical, remember, and her death was beginning to seem the most practical solution. It was her own fault: she was leaving me precious few options.

  Around this time, after one of his rides out to Hatfield, Henry didn’t come to me on his return. When word reached me that he was back, I had to go as far as his bathroom to find him. Harry Norris was attending him; he rose from the low tiled wall on which he’d been hunkered. Behind him, Henry was in the sunken bath. And he was oddly blank-faced. Panic flushed me.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded, from the doorway. ‘What’s wrong with Elizabeth?’

  Henry pursed his lips. ‘Nothing’s wrong with Elizabeth.’ There was a nastiness in how he said it: viciously dismissive; a put-down, a slap down. Declining to meet my eyes, he moved away in the water: an infuriating swanning.

  Which didn’t stop me. ‘You’re sure? Henry? You wouldn’t just not tell me?’

  He had his back to me. ‘Nothing’s wrong with Elizabeth.’

  Ah: Mary. Of course: Mary. I’d forgotten her. ‘Something wrong with Mary, then,’ I ventured.

  He glanced back at me, but only to shake his head and mutter, ‘Nothing that’s not normally wrong with Mary.’ Reluctant to let me in on it.

  I made my way across the steam-slick tiles to the top of the bath’s steps. ‘I told you: don’t let Mary muck you about.’

  His gaze slunk up to mine, eyes dense with distrust. ‘She didn’t. I didn’t.’ Then, hands in his hair, slicking it back from his damp forehead, he came clean: ‘I…saw her.’ The eyes changed, a little. ‘She’d been watching me, Anne.’ Pleading: that was what it was, in his eyes. ‘From a balcony in the yard. Watching me getting ready to go. She was kneeling. Stayed there, on her knees. Head bowed. And I had to turn from her and go.’

  ‘And did you?’ I whirled to Harry. ‘Did he?’

  Harry simultaneously froze and nodded.

  If Henry hadn’t been out there in the water, I’d have slapped him. Stupid man. Typical man. Is it so very hard to kneel, to bow a silly little head? To hold the pose for a few moments while it had the desired effect? And Henry, of course, had fallen for it.

  Nothing, nothing, can convey how furious I felt, not at that one coy display—she could kneel all she liked—but at the whole, relentless situation. I should have been getting on with relaxing into my second pregnancy, but instead I was…clenched. Imagine having found your soulmate—the luck of it, the joy of it—and, against gargantuan odds, having married him. Then comes a stunning baby, plus a second on the way. Imagine being at the same time at the very top, doing the job you always knew you’d do better than anyone else. Now imagine a mad old woman claiming that none of it was ever yours to have: it’s all hers. And, unbelievably, she has the ear of the people, and their hearts; she has them under a spell that you, for all your cleverness, can’t break.

  It was so nearly there, that perfect life of mine; so nearly. Yet ‘nearly there’ meant it wasn’t there. I felt cheated of the life I could be having, if it weren’t for the Spaniard and her daughter. Thumping like a heartbeat in me was, If not for them, if not for them. I was feeling bereft of that life I could have had. It should never have happened like this: my prince coming to me with an old bride and a charmless child dragging behind him. If only he’d never married her. If only he hadn’t been so keen to prove himself, to make the grand gesture, at seventeen, by marrying her.

  Sometimes I got so low that I’d have to remind myself: the Spaniard and her daughter were just people. Bodies. If the worst came to the worst, two bodies wouldn’t be so hard to get out of the way.

  Lucy Cornwallis

  SPRING 1536

  This is mine; or for now, it is. A step that I like to sit on, in a passageway no one seems to know. One of the forgotten corners of Whitehall. Funny, that: the busier the palace, the more chance of finding backwaters like this. If I lean forwards, I can glimpse the Thames. It looks still but of course it’s slipping by, soundless, on its way down to Greenwich. Often carrying the king’s barge. Even in my occasional few minutes, here, on my even rarer leanings-forward, I’ve seen the blur of colours that’s his barge. Now that we’re all here at Whitehall, the whole royal household, the king seems always to be down at Greenwich. With box-loads of my confectionery. The orders are passed down to me, A banquet for ten, please, Mrs Cornwallis, packed for the barge.

  Banquet for twelve.

  Eight.

  Small banquets, these, but almost daily. It’s hard to keep up. Eventually, in my innocence, I asked Richard, ‘What’s all this, with Greenwich?’

  He told me: the king has Jane Seymour at Greenwich. He made Cromwell give up his apartment for her and her family.

  Her family? I didn’t understand.

  Visits are chaperoned, Richard said. ‘Which is how you know this is serious. This is no mistress.’

  Again, I didn’t understand, I needed to ask, So, what is she, then? But already he was protesting, ‘Have you seen Jane Seymour? I know, I know, I know what you’re going to say, “looks aren’t everything”, and I quite agree, or half-agree—but fish-face Seymour! I mean, it has to be said, the queen’s no beauty but—’ But suddenly he was asking, ‘What?’

  Which made me jump. ‘What?’ I fired back.

  ‘You look…Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m…tired. This—’ I slammed down my spatula, disgusted with it, helpless. Everything is trickier to do, lately. Impossible to do. I’m losing my touch.

  He headed over to me, and there was a cautiousness in his approach that made me wary. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said.

  ‘But it won’t—’ Look! ‘—stick.’

  ‘It’s sticking, Lucy,’ he said, easily. ‘Look,’ he soothed. ‘Look, look,’ and in his hands it was fine.

  I looked away, across the muddle of the kitchen. ‘It’s not easy, all this.’

  ‘It’s Lent.’ There was an exasperated smile in his voice. ‘It’s our quietest time of year. Go.’ A watchful, indulgent smile. ‘Out. Take some time to yourself. You’re…tired.’

  And that was the day I found this step of mine. Yesterday, I ventured further, went to see the queen’s Privy Cook; found my way to the twin Privy Kitchens and went into the queen’s. I walked in there, directly beneath her apartment. He was busy admonishing some boy, ‘…and I don’t want to have to tell you twice.’ I interrupted, and, predictably, he was surprised to see me. I’d come, I explained, to ask if the queen would like any confectionery. Seeing as the two households—king’s and queen’s—seem to be separate, now. Not that I said so. Nor did I spell it out: I’m getting my orders from the king’s kitchen, but not the queen’s. He frowned at the floor, as if he were thinking; but when he looked up, he seemed to have forgotten what I’d asked.

  ‘So, does she?’ I prompted. ‘Does she need any confectionery?’ I decided to say it: ‘Because at the moment, it’s all going to Greenwich.’

  ‘Well.’ He looked worried. ‘She’s not very sweet-toothed, is she?’

  How would I know? He’s her chief cook.

  He sighed. ‘Maybe something for the ladies.’

  ‘Anything in particular?’ Any feasts or banquets planned? I doubted it, but I had to ask; I had to.

  He shook his head. ‘Just…whatever you usually do.’

  The other day, Mark and I were talking about it, the situation with Anne Boleyn, and
suddenly Mark asked me whether he should tell her.

  ‘Tell her what?’ I asked.

  He was bashful. ‘You know: how I feel about her.’ He bit his lip.

  Openly declare his support? The prospect horrified me. No, not a good idea. That’s what I’d have said, but his lip sprang back, toothmarked, and he was saying, half-smiling, ‘Who knows, though, how you tell a queen you’re desperately in love with her. It’s not something I’ve had any practice at.’

  My instinct—unacted upon—was to laugh: what was this latest funny little turn of Mark’s? Desperately in love with Anne Boleyn? I was about to say, Oh yeah? Since when? But in the same instant I realized: since always.

  It’s her.

  She’s the one.

  Not me.

  Slammed up against the realization, my heart came to a brief dead stop. The physical shock of it banging shut nearly made me cry out. My face must have been smacked with dismay. And there was Mark, looking at me. Sitting beside me, opened up to me and unsuspecting. Asking for my advice. I saw it, then; I saw it all: to him, I was a confidante. That’s what I’d been, for him, this past year. That’s all I’d been. And here he was, waiting for advice, wide-eyed and trusting.

  His face, those eyes: I kept on looking at him as if looking away would cause him to disappear. Would I never touch that skin, that hair? No, never; I’d never touch him, now. Not so much as a touch. None of it would happen: everything I’d dreamt of. Nothing would ever happen. It was me who was going to disappear as soon as I looked away. And even though it hadn’t yet happened, I knew how that would feel. It was close by, that feeling; I could sense the breath of it, the brush of it. It was waiting until I was alone. Biding its time. It could afford to. It had singled me out and was about to claim me for the rest of my life.