“They’d hardly defend her,” I said. “They hate her.”
“They might defend the idea of queenship,” he said. “They were forced to swear against Queen Katherine, they were forced to swear that they denied the Princess Mary, that they recognized Princess Elizabeth. If the king now sets Anne aside they might feel that he has played them for fools, and they won’t like that. If he returns to the Pope’s view, they might find it a turnaround too quick to swallow.”
“But the queen is dead,” I said, thinking of my old mistress Katherine. “Even if his marriage to Anne is dissolved, he can’t go back to the queen.”
George tutted under his breath at my slowness, but Sir Francis was more patient. “The Pope’s view is still that the marriage with Anne is invalid. And so now Henry is a widower; and free to marry again.”
Instinctively George and Francis and I all looked toward the king. He was rising from his throne on the ice-blue dais. Sir John Seymour and Sir Edward Seymour were either side of him, raising him up. Jane was standing before him, her lips slightly parted on a smile as if she had never seen a more handsome man than this fat invalid.
Anne, skating on the other side of the ice with Henry Norris and Thomas Wyatt, glided over and called casually: “How now, husband? Are you not staying?”
He looked at her. The color was whipped into her cheeks by the cold wind, she was wearing her scarlet riding hat with the long feather, and a strand of hair was tickling her cheek. She looked radiant, undeniably beautiful.
“I am in pain,” he said slowly. “While you have been disporting yourself, I have been suffering. I am going to my rooms to rest.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said instantly, gliding forward. “If I had known I would have stayed at your side, but you told me to go and skate. My poor husband. I shall make you a tisane and sit with you and read to you, if you like.”
He shook his head. “I would rather sleep,” he said. “I would rather have silence than your reading.”
Anne flushed. Henry Norris and Thomas Wyatt looked away, wishing themselves elsewhere. The Seymours kept their faces diplomatically bland.
“I will see you at dinner then,” Anne said, curbing her temper. “And I shall pray that you are rested and free from pain.”
Henry nodded and turned away from her. The Seymours took his arms and helped him over the rich rugs which had been laid on the ice so that he should not slip. Jane, with a meek little smile as if to apologize for being favored, tripped along in his wake.
“And where d’you think you’re going, Mistress Seymour?” Anne’s voice was like a whiplash.
The younger woman turned and curtsied to the queen. “He told me to follow and to read to him,” she said simply, her eyes downcast. “I can’t read Latin very well. But I can read a little French.”
“A little French!” exclaimed my sister, tri-lingual since she was six years old.
“Yes,” Jane said proudly. “Though I don’t understand it all.”
“I wager you understand nothing,” Anne said. “You can go.”
Spring 1536
THE ICE MELTED BUT THE WEATHER HARDLY SEEMED TO WARM. The snowdrops flowered in clumps all around the bowling green, but the green was so waterlogged that we could not play, and the paths themselves were too wet for walking. The king’s leg was not healing, it was an open wound and the different potions and poultices they laid on it seemed only to inflame it the more. He began to fear that he would never dance again, and the news that King Francis of France was in high spirits and good health made him all the more sour.
The season of Lent came and so there was no more dancing and no more feasting. No chance either that Anne might seduce him into her bed and get another baby in her belly. No one, not even the king and the queen, could lie together in Lent and so Anne had to endure the sight of Henry seated on a padded chair, his lame leg resting on a footstool, with Jane reading devotional tracts at his side, in the knowledge that she could not even claim her right as his wife that he should come to her bed.
She was surpassed and overlooked. Every day there were fewer and fewer ladies in her chamber, they were nominated and paid to be ladies in waiting to the queen but they were all in Jane Seymour’s rooms. The only ones who stayed faithful were those who were not welcome anyway: our family, Madge Shelton, Aunt Anne, my daughter Catherine, and me. Some days the only gentlemen in her rooms were George and his circle of friends: Sir Francis Weston, Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton. I was mixing with the very men that my husband had warned me against, but Anne had no other friends. We would play cards, or send for the musicians, or if Sir Thomas Wyatt was visiting we would hold a tournament of poetry, each man writing a line of a love sonnet to the most beautiful queen in the world; but there was something hollow at the heart of it, an empty space where the joy should be. It was all falling away from Anne and she did not know how to recapture it.
In the middle days of March she swallowed her pride and sent me to summon our uncle.
“I cannot come now, I have some business to attend to. You may tell the queen I will come to her this afternoon.”
“I did not think that one could tell a queen to wait,” I observed.
In the afternoon when he came, Anne greeted him without any sign of displeasure and drew him into the bay of a window so that they might talk alone. I was close enough to hear them speak, though neither of them ever raised their voices above a polite hiss.
“I need your help against the Seymours,” she said. “We have to get rid of Jane.”
He shrugged regretfully. “My niece, you have not always been as helpful to me as I might have wished. There was a moment only a little while ago when you accused me to the king himself. If you were no longer queen I do not think you could become a Howard again.”
“I am a Boleyn girl, a Howard girl,” she whispered, her hand on the golden “B” at her throat.
“There are many Howard girls,” he said easily. “My wife the duchess keeps house with half a dozen of them at Lambeth, cousins of yours, all as pretty as you, as Mary, as Madge. All as high-spirited, as hot-blooded. When he is weary of a milksop there will be a Howard girl to warm his bed, there always will be another one.”
“But I am the queen! Not another girl in waiting.”
He nodded. “I will make you an offer. If George gets the Order of the Garter in April then I will stand by you. See if you can achieve that for the family and we will see what the family can do for you.”
She hesitated. “I can ask it for him.”
“Do that,” my uncle counseled. “If you can bring some good to the family then we can make a new contract with you, defend you against your enemies. But this time you must remember, Anne, who your master is.”
She bit the inside of her lip against defiance, she curtsied to him, and she kept her head down.
On 23 April the king gave the Order of the Garter to Sir Nicholas Carew, a friend of the Seymours, nominated by them. My brother George was overlooked. That night at the feast given to celebrate the new awards, my uncle and Sir John Seymour were seated side by side to share a trencher of good meats, and got on together wonderfully well.
Next day Jane Seymour was sitting with us in the queen’s apartments for once, and so the queen’s rooms were abuzz with the full complement of the court. The musicians had been called, there was to be dancing. The king was not expected, Anne had challenged him to a game of cards and he had replied coolly that he was much engaged with business.
“What’s he doing?” she asked George when he came to her with the king’s refusal.
“I don’t know. He’s seeing the bishops. And he’s seeing most of the lords one by one.”
“About me?”
Carefully, neither of them looked toward Jane who was the center of attention in the queen’s own rooms.
“I don’t know,” George said miserably. “I suppose I’d be the last to know. But he did ask what men visit you daily.”
Anne looked
quite blank. “Well, they all do,” she said. “I am the queen.”
“Certain names have been mentioned,” George said. “Henry and Francis among them.”
Anne laughed. “Henry Norris haunts the court for the benefit of Madge.” She turned around and saw him leaning over Madge’s shoulder ready to turn the page for her as she sang. “Sir Henry! Come here, if you please!”
With a word to Madge he came across to the queen and dropped with mock gallantry to one knee. “I obey!” he said.
“It is time you were married, Sir Henry,” Anne said with pretended severity. “I cannot have you hanging about my rooms bringing me into disrepute. You must make Madge an offer, I won’t have my ladies other than perfectly behaved.”
He laughed outright, as well he might at the thought of Madge being perfectly behaved.
“She is my shield. My heart yearns elsewhere.”
Anne shook her head. “I don’t want pretty speeches,” she said. “You must make a proposal of marriage to Madge and have done.”
“She is the moon but you are the sun,” Henry replied.
I rolled my eyes at George.
“Don’t you sometimes want to kick him?” he whispered loudly.
“The man’s an idiot,” I said. “And this will get us nowhere.”
“I cannot offer Mistress Shelton a whole heart and so I will offer her none,” Henry said, rescuing himself from a whole tangle of politesse. “My heart belongs to the queen of all the hearts of England.”
“Thank you,” Anne said shortly. “You can go back to turning pages for the moon.”
Norris laughed, got to his feet and kissed her hand. “But I cannot afford gossip in my rooms,” Anne warned. “The king has turned severe since his fall.”
Norris kissed her hand again. “You shall never have grounds for complaint of me,” he promised her. “I would lay down my life for you.”
He minced back to Madge who looked up and met my eye. I made a grimace at her and she grinned back. Nothing would ever make that girl behave like a lady.
George leaned over Anne’s shoulder. “You can’t scotch rumors one by one. You have to live as though none of them matter at all.”
“I will scotch every single one,” she swore. “And you find who the king is meeting, and what they are saying about me.”
George could not discover what was happening. He sent me to my father who only looked away and told me to ask my uncle for news. I found my uncle in the stable yard, looking over a new mare he was thinking of buying. The April sunshine was hot in the sheltered yard. I waited in the shade of the gateway until he was done, then I drew close to him.
“Uncle, the king seems much engaged with Master Cromwell, and with the Master Treasurer, and with you. The queen is wondering what business is taking so much time.”
For once he did not turn from me with his bitter smile. He looked me straight in the face and his dark eyes were filled with something I had never seen in him before: pity.
“I should get your son home from his tutors,” he advised quietly. “He is taught with Henry Norris’s boy at the Cistercians, is he not?”
“Yes,” I said, confused at the change of tack.
“I should have nothing to do with Norris, or Brereton, or Weston, or Wyatt, if I were you. And if they sent any letters to you, or love poems or nonsense or tokens, I should burn them.”
“I am a married woman, and I love my husband,” I said, bewildered.
“That is your safeguard,” he agreed. “Now go. What I know could not help you, and it burdens me alone. Go, Mary. But if I were you I would get both my children into my keeping. And I would leave court.”
I did not go to George and Anne who were anxiously waiting for me, I went straight to the king’s rooms to find my husband. He was waiting in the presence chamber, the king was in his private rooms with the inner core of advisors that had kept him busy indoors for all these spring days. As soon as William saw me enter he came across the room and led me into the corridor.
“Bad news?”
“No news at all, it is like a riddle.”
“Whose riddle is it?”
“My uncle’s. He tells me to have nothing to do with Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston or Thomas Wyatt. When I said I did not, he told me to take Henry away from his tutors and keep my children by me and leave court.”
William thought for a moment. “Where’s the riddle?”
“In what he means.”
He shook his head. “Your uncle would always be a riddle to me,” he said. “I shan’t think what he means, I shall act on his advice. I shall go at once and fetch Henry home to us.”
In two strides he was back in the king’s room, he touched a man on his arm and asked him to excuse him if the king called for him, he would be back within four days. Then he was out in the corridor with me, striding toward the stairs so fast that I had to run to keep up with him.
“Why? What d’you think is going to happen?” I asked, thoroughly frightened.
“I don’t know. All I know is that if your uncle says that our son should not be with Henry Norris’s boy, then I shall get him home. And when I have fetched him here, we are all leaving for Rochford. I don’t wait to be warned twice.”
The big door to the yard was open and he ran outside. I snatched up the hem of my gown and ran after him. He shouted in the stable yard and one of the Howard lads came tumbling out and was sent running to tack up William’s horse.
“I cannot take him from his tutors without Anne’s permission,” I said hastily.
“I’ll just get him,” William said. “We can get permission after—if we need it. Events are going too fast for me. I want us to have your boy safe.” He caught me in his arms and kissed me firmly on the mouth. “Sweetheart, I hate to leave you here, in the middle of it all.”
“But what could happen?”
He kissed me harder. “God knows. But your uncle does not issue warnings lightly. I shall fetch our boy and then we will all get clear of this before it drags us down.”
“I’ll run and fetch your traveling cape.”
“I’ll take one of the grooms’.” He went quickly into the tack room and came out with a common cape of fustian.
“Are you in so much of a hurry you can’t wait for your cape?”
“I’d rather go now,” he said simply, and that stolid certainty made me more afraid than I had ever been before for the safety of my son.
“Have you got money?”
“Enough,” he grinned. “I just won a purse of gold off Sir Edward Seymour. A good cause, isn’t it?”
“How long d’you think you will be?”
He thought for a moment. “Three days, maybe four. No more. I’ll ride without stopping. Can you wait four days for me?”
“Yes.”
“If matters get worse then take Catherine and the baby and go. I will bring Henry to you at Rochford, without fail.”
“Yes.”
One more hard kiss and then William put his foot in the stirrup and leaped up into the saddle. The horse was fresh and eager but he held her to a walk as they went under the archway and out onto the road. I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched him go. In the bright sunlight of the stable yard I shivered as if the only man who could save me was leaving.
Jane Seymour did not reappear in the queen’s apartments and a strange quietness fell over the sunny rooms. The maids still came in and did their work, the fire was lit, the chairs arranged, the tables laid with fruit and water and wine, everything was prepared for company but none came.
Anne and I, my daughter Catherine, Aunt Anne, and Madge Shelton sat uneasily in the big echoing rooms. My mother never came, she had withdrawn from us as completely as if we had never been born. We never saw my father. My uncle looked through us as if we were panes of Venetian glass.
“I feel like a ghost,” Anne said. We were walking by the river, she was leaning on George’s arm. I was walking behind her with Sir Francis Weston, Ma
dge was behind me with Sir William Brereton. I could hardly speak for anxiety. I did not know why my uncle had named these men to me. I did not know what secrets they brought with them. I felt as if there were a conspiracy and at any moment a trap might be sprung and I had walked into it, knowing nothing.
“They are holding some kind of hearing,” George said. “I got that much from a page who went in to pour the wine for them. Secretary Cromwell, our uncle, the Duke of Suffolk, the rest of them.”
Carefully, my brother and sister did not exchange a glance. “They can have nothing against me,” Anne said.
“No,” George said. “But they can trump up charges. Think of what was said against Queen Katherine.”
Anne suddenly rounded on him. “It’s the dead baby,” she said suddenly. “Isn’t it? And the testimony of that foul old midwife with her mad lies.”
George nodded. “Must be. They have nothing else.”
She whirled on her heel and took off toward the palace. “I’ll show them!” she cried.
George and I ran after her. “Show them what?”
“Anne!” I cried. “Don’t be too hasty!”
“I have crept around this palace like a little mouse afraid of my own shadow for three months!” she exclaimed. “You advised me to be sweet. I have been sweet! Now I shall defend myself. They are holding a secret hearing to try me in secret! I shall make them speak out! I shan’t be condemned by a pack of old men who have always hated me. I shall show them!”
She ran across the grass to the doorway into the palace. George and I froze for a moment, and then we turned to the others. “Do go on walking,” I said wildly.
“We will go to the queen,” George said.
Francis put out a quick instinctive hand to keep George with him.
“It’s all right,” George reassured him. “But I’d better go with her.”
George and I ran across the grass and followed Anne into the palace. She was not outside the king’s presence chamber and the soldier on the door said she had not been admitted. We drew a blank and waited, wondering where she had gone, when we heard her steps running on the stairs. She had the Princess Elizabeth in her arms, gurgling and laughing at being snatched up from her nursery, watching the flicker of light as Anne ran with her.