Читать книгу The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory - Страница 11

In the early weeks of the New Year the queen found her youth again, and blossomed like a rose in a warm room, her colour high, her smiles ready. She put aside the hair shirt she usually wore under her gown, and the telltale rough skin at her neck and shoulders disappeared as if smoothed away by joy. She did not tell anyone the cause of these changes; but her maid told another that she had missed one of her courses, and that the soothsayer was right: the queen had taken with child.

Given her past history of not going full term, there was every reason for her to be on her knees, her face turned up to the statue of the Virgin Mary in the little prie dieu in the corner of her privy chamber, and every morning found her there, one hand upon her belly, one hand on her missal, her eyes closed, her expression rapt. Miracles could happen. Perhaps a miracle was happening for the queen.

The maids gossiped that her linen was clean again in February and we began to think that soon she would tell the king. Already he had the look of a man waiting for good news, and he walked past me as if I were invisible. I had to dance before him and attend his wife and endure the smirks of the ladies and know once again that I was nothing more than a Boleyn girl, and not the favourite any more.

‘I can’t stand it,’ I said to Anne. We were sitting by the fireplace in the queen’s apartments. The others were walking with the dogs, but Anne and I had refused to go out. The mist was coming off the river and it was a bitterly cold day. I was shivering inside a fur-lined gown. I had not felt well since Christmas night when Henry had gone past me into her room. He had not sent for me since then.

‘You are taking it hard,’ she observed contentedly. ‘That’s what comes of loving a king.’

‘What else could I do?’ I asked miserably. I moved to the windowseat to get more light on my sewing. I was hemming the queen’s shirts for the poor, and just because they were for old labouring men did not mean that I was allowed sloppy work. She would look at the seams and if she thought they were clumsily executed she would ask me, very pleasantly, to do them again.

‘If she has a child and it’s a son then you might as well have stayed with William Carey and started your own family,’ Anne observed. ‘The king will be at her beck, and your days will be done. You’ll just be one of many.’

‘He loves me,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I’m not one of many.’

I turned my head away and looked out of the window. The mist was curling off the river in great coils, like dust under a bed.

Anne gave a hard little laugh. ‘You’ve always been one of many,’ she said brutally. ‘There are dozens of us Howard girls, all with good breeding, all well taught, all pretty, all young, all fertile. They can throw one after another on the table and see if one is lucky. It’s no real loss to them if one after another is taken up and then thrown aside. There’s always another Howard girl conceived, there’s always another whore in the nursery. You were one of many before you were even born. If he does not cleave to you then you go back to William, they find another Howard girl to tempt him, and the dance starts all over again. Nothing is lost for them.’

‘Something is lost for me!’ I cried out.

She put her head on one side and looked at me, as if she would sift the reality from the impatience of childish passion. ‘Yes. Perhaps. Something is lost for you. Your innocence, your first love, your trust. Perhaps your heart is broken. Perhaps it will never mend. Poor silly Marianne,’ she said softly. ‘To do one man’s bidding to please another man and get nothing for yourself but heartbreak.’

‘So who would come after me?’ I asked her, turning my pain into taunting. ‘Who d’you think the next Howard girl will be that they push into his bed? Let me guess – the other Boleyn girl?’

She flashed me a quick black glance and then her dark eyelashes swept down on her cheeks. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I make my own plans. I don’t risk being taken up and dropped again.’

‘You told me to risk it,’ I reminded her.

‘That was for you,’ she said. ‘I would not live my life as you live yours. You would always do as you were bid, marry where you were told, bed where you were ordered. I am not like you. I make my own way.’

‘I could make my own way,’ I said.

Anne smiled disbelievingly.

‘I’d go back to Hever and live there,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t stay at court. If I am put aside I could go to Hever. At least I will always have that now.’

The door to the queen’s apartment opened and I glanced up as the maids came out, lugging the sheets from the queen’s bed.

‘That’s the second time this week she’s ordered them to be changed,’ one said irritably.

Anne and I exchanged a quick look. ‘Are they stained?’ Anne demanded urgently.

The maid looked at her insolently. ‘The queen’s sheets?’ she asked. ‘You ask me to show you the queen’s own bed linen?’

Anne’s long fingers went to her purse and a piece of silver changed hands. The maid’s smile was triumphant as she pocketed the coin. ‘Not stained at all,’ she said.

Anne subsided and I went to hold the door open for the two women.

‘Thank you,’ the second one said, surprised at my politeness to a servant. She nodded to me. ‘Rank with sweat, poor lady,’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ I asked. I could hardly believe that she was giving me freely a piece of information that a French spy would pay a king’s ransom for, and that every courtier in the land was longing to know. ‘Are you saying the queen is having night sweats? That her change of life is on her?’

‘If not now then very soon,’ the maid said. ‘Poor lady.’

I found my father with George in the great hall, head to head while the servants set the great trestle tables for dinner around them. He beckoned me to him.

‘Father,’ I said, dropping him a curtsey.

He kissed me coolly on the forehead. ‘Daughter,’ he said. ‘Did you want to see me?’

For a chilling moment I wondered if he had forgotten my name. ‘The queen is not with child,’ I told him. ‘She started her course, this day. She missed her other times because of her age.’

‘God be praised!’ George said exultantly. ‘I bet myself a gold crown on this. That is good news.’

‘The best,’ my father said. ‘The best for us, the worst for England. Has she told the king?’

I shook my head. ‘She started to bleed this afternoon, she has not seen him yet.’

My father nodded. ‘So we have the news before him. Anyone else know it?’

I shrugged. ‘The maids who changed her linen, and so anyone who was paying them. Wolsey, I suppose. Perhaps the French might have bought a maid.’

‘Then we have to be fast if we want to be the ones to tell him. Should I?’

George shook his head. ‘Too intimate,’ he said. ‘What about Mary?’

‘It puts her before him at the very moment of his disappointment,’ my father mused. ‘Better not.’

‘Anne then,’ George said. ‘It should be one of us to remind him of Mary.’

‘Anne can do it,’ my father agreed. ‘She could turn a polecat off the scent of a mouse.’

‘She’s in the garden,’ I volunteered. ‘At the archery butts.’

The three of us walked from the great hall into the bright light of the spring sunshine. There was a cold wind blowing through the yellow daffodils that nodded in the sunshine. We could see the little group of courtiers at the archery butts, Anne among them. As we watched she stepped up, sighted the target, drew her bow and we heard the twang of the string and the satisfying thud as the arrow hit the bullseye. There was a scattering of applause. Henry Percy strode up to the target and plucked Anne’s arrow from it and tucked it into his own quiver, as if he would keep it.

Anne was laughing, holding out her hand for her arrow, as she glanced over and saw us. At once, she turned from the company and came towards us.

‘Father.’

‘Anne.’ He kissed her more warmly than he had kissed me.

‘The queen has started her courses,’ George said bluntly. ‘We think that you should tell the king.’

‘Rather than Mary?’

‘It makes her look low,’ my father said. ‘Tattling with chambermaids, watching them empty piss pots.’

For a moment I thought that Anne would remark that she did not want to look low either, but she shrugged her shoulders. She knew that serving the Howard family ambition always had a price attached.

‘And make sure that Mary is back in his eye,’ my father said. ‘When he turns against the queen it must be Mary who picks him up.’

Anne nodded. ‘Of course.’ Only I could have heard the edge in her voice. ‘Mary comes first.’

The king came to the queen’s rooms that evening as usual to sit beside her at the fireside. We three of us watched him, certain that he must tire of this domestic peace. But the queen was skilful in entertaining him. There was always a game of cards or dice going on, she had always read the most recent books and could venture and defend an interesting opinion. There were always other visitors, learned or well-travelled men who would talk with the king, there was always the best music, and Henry loved good music. Thomas More was a favourite of hers and sometimes the three of them would walk on the flat roofs of the castle and look at the night skies. More and the king would speak of interpretations of the Bible and whether there would ever come a time when it would be right to allow an English Bible that common people could read. And there were always pretty women. The queen was wise enough to fill her rooms with the prettiest women in the kingdom.

This evening was no exception, she entertained him as if he were a visiting ambassador that she had to favour. After he had talked with her for a while someone asked if he would sing and he took the floor and sung us one of his own compositions. He asked for a lady to take the soprano part and Anne reluctantly and modestly came forward and said that she would try. Of course she had it note perfect. They sang an encore, well pleased with themselves, and then Henry kissed Anne’s hand and the queen called for wine for our two songsters.

It was nothing more than a touch to his hand and Anne had him a little aside from the rest of the court. Only the queen and us Boleyns knew that the king had been drawn away. The queen called for one of the musicians to play us another air, she had too much sense ever to be caught glaring after her husband as he started another flirtation. She shot one quick look at me to see how I was taking the sight of my sister on the king’s arm and I gave her a bland, innocent smile.

‘You are becoming a fine courtier, my little wife,’ William Carey remarked.

‘I am?’

‘When you first came to court you were a fresh piece of goods, hardly glazed by the French court, but now the gilt seems to be entering your soul. Do you ever do a thing without thinking twice?’

For a moment I would have defended myself but I saw Anne speak a sentence to the king and saw him glance back at the queen. Anne put her hand gently on his sleeve and said another soft word. I turned away from William, quite deaf to him, and instead watched the man I loved. I saw his broad shoulders bend and drop down, as if half his power had gone from him. He looked at the queen as if she had betrayed him, his face vulnerable as a child. Anne turned so he was shielded from the rest of the court and George went forward to ask the queen if we might dance, to keep the attention away from Anne, pouring sorrow into the king’s ear.

I could not bear it, I slipped away from the girls who were clamouring to dance and went to Henry, pushing past Anne to get to him. His face was pale, his eyes tragic. I took his hands and said only: ‘Oh my dear.’

He turned to me at once. ‘Did you know too? Do all her ladies know?’

‘I think so,’ Anne said. ‘We cannot blame her for not wanting to tell you, poor lady, it was her last hope. It was your last chance, sire.’

I felt his fingers grip my hand a little tighter. ‘The soothsayer told me …’

‘I know,’ I said gently. ‘She was probably bribed.’

Anne melted away, and the two of us were alone.

‘And I lay with her and tried so hard, and hoped …’

‘I prayed for you,’ I whispered. ‘For you both. I was so hoping that you would have a son, Henry. Before God, I would rather that she gave you a legitimate son than any other wish in the world.’

‘But she cannot now.’ His mouth shut like a trap. He looked like a spoilt child, who cannot get what he wants.

‘No, not any more,’ I confirmed. ‘It is over.’

Abruptly he dropped my hands and turned away from me. The dancers parted before his rapid advance as he strode through the sets. He went to the queen, who was seated smiling on her court and said, loud enough for everyone to hear: ‘I’m told you are unwell, madam. I could wish you had told me yourself.’

At once she looked to me, her sharp gaze accusing me of betraying her most intimate secret. Minutely I shook my head. She looked for Anne in the dancers and saw her, with George’s hand in hers. Blandly, Anne looked back.

‘I am sorry, Your Majesty,’ the queen said with her immense dignity. ‘I should have chosen a more fitting time to discuss this with you.’

‘You should have chosen a more immediate time,’ he corrected her. ‘But since you are unwell I suggest that you dismiss your court and bide by yourself.’

Those of the queen’s court who grasped at once what was happening whispered quickly to their neighbours. But most of them stood and stared at the king’s sudden storm of bad humour, and at the queen’s white-faced endurance.

Henry turned on his heel, snapped his fingers for his friends: George, Henry, William, Charles, Francis, as if he were calling his dogs, and marched out of the queen’s rooms without another word. I was pleased to see that of all of them, my brother George swept her the deepest bow. She let them go without a word, and rose and went quietly into her own privy chamber.

The musicians who had been fiddling away sounding more and more ragged, found their tune had died and they looked around for orders.

‘Oh go,’ I said in sudden impatience. ‘Can’t you see there’ll be no more dancing and no more singing for tonight? Nobody here needs music. God knows, nobody wants to dance.’

Jane Parker looked at me in surprise. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been glad. The king on bad terms with the queen, and you ready to be picked up like a bruised peach in the gutter.’

‘And I’d have thought you’d have had more sense than to say such a thing,’ Anne said roundly. ‘To speak thus of your sister-in-law to be! You had better take care or you won’t be welcome in this family.’

Jane did not back down to Anne. ‘There’s no breaking a betrothal. George and I are as good as wed in church. It’s just a question of settling the day. You can welcome me or you can hate me, Miss Anne. But you can’t forbid me. We are promised before witnesses.’

‘Oh what does it matter!’ I cried out. ‘What does any of it matter?’ I turned and ran to my chamber. Anne slipped in after me.

‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded tersely. ‘Is the king angry with us?’

‘No, though he should be, for we did a nasty piece of work in telling him the queen’s secret.’

‘Oh aye,’ Anne nodded, quite unmoved. ‘But he was not angry with us?’

‘No, he’s hurt.’

Anne went to the door.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to get them to bring the bath here,’ she said. ‘You’re going to wash.’

‘Oh Anne,’ I said irritably. ‘He’s heard the worst news in his life. He’s in the worst of tempers. He’s hardly going to send for me tonight. I can wash tomorrow, if I have to.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m taking no chances,’ she said. ‘You wash tonight.’

She was wrong, but only by a day. The next day the queen sat alone in her room with her ladies and I dined in the privy chamber with my brother, with his friends, and with the king. It was a merry merry evening with music and dancing and gambling. And that night I was in the king’s bed once more.

This time Henry and I were all but inseparable. The court knew that we were lovers, the queen knew, even the common people who came out from London to watch us dine knew. I wore his gold bracelet around my wrist, I rode his hunter to hounds. I had a pair of matched diamonds for my ears, I had three new gowns, one of cloth of gold. And one morning in bed he said to me:

‘Did you never wonder what came of that sketch that I asked the artist at the shipyard to do?’

‘I’d forgotten him,’ I said.

‘Come here and kiss me and I will tell you why I ordered him to draw you,’ Henry said lazily.

He lay back on the pillows of his bed. It was late in the morning but the curtains were still drawn around us, shielding us from the servants coming in to make up the fire, to bring him hot water, to empty the piss pot. I swarmed up the bed towards him, leaning my round breasts against his warm chest, letting my hair tumble forward in a veil of gold and bronze. My mouth came down on his, I inhaled the warm erotic scent of his beard, felt the soft prickle of the hairs around his mouth, pushed deeper against his lips and felt, as much as heard, his little groan of desire as I kissed him hard.

I raised my head and smiled into his eyes. ‘There is your kiss,’ I whispered throatily, feeling my desire rise with his. ‘Why did you order the artist to draw me?’

‘I shall show you,’ he promised. ‘After Mass. We’ll ride down to the river and you shall see my new ship and your likeness at the same time.’

‘Is the ship ready?’ I asked. I was reluctant to move away from him but he pulled back the covers and was ready to rise.

‘Yes. We’ll see her launched next week sometime,’ he said. He drew back the bed curtains a little and shouted for a servant to fetch George. I threw on my gown and my cloak and Henry held my hand to help me down from the bed. He kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ll break my fast with the queen,’ he decided. ‘And then we’ll go out and see the ship.’

It was a lovely morning. I was wearing a new riding habit of yellow velvet, made for me with a bolt of cloth the king had given me. Anne was at my side in one of my old gowns. It gave me a fierce joy to see her wearing my hand-me-downs. But then, in the contradictory way of sisters, I admired what she had done with it. She had ordered it to be shortened and re-cut in the French way and she looked stylish. She wore it with a little French hat made from the material she had saved by cutting the skirt straighter. Henry Percy of Northumberland could not keep his eyes off her, but she flirted with equal charm with all of the king’s companions. There were nine of us riding out. Henry and I side by side in the lead. Anne behind me with Percy and William Norris. George and Jane, a silent ill-matched couple, next, and Francis Weston and William Brereton came behind, laughing and cracking jokes. We were preceded only by a couple of grooms and followed by four mounted soldiers.

We rode by the river. The tide was coming in and the waves splashed on the shore, white-capped. The seagulls, blown inland, cried and wheeled above our heads, their wings as bright as silver in the spring sunshine. The hedgerows were greening with the fresh colour of spring growth, primroses like pale pats of creamy butter in the sunny spots on the banks. The track alongside the river was hard-packed mud and the horses cantered along at a good easy pace. As we rode, the king sang me a lovesong of his own composing, and when I heard it over the second time I sang it with him and he laughed at my attempt at harmony. I did not have Anne’s talent, I knew. But it did not matter. That day nothing mattered, nothing could matter, but that my beloved and I were riding out together in the brightest of sunshine, on a little journey for pleasure, and he was happy, and I was happy in his sight.

We reached the shipyard sooner than I wanted and Henry himself stood beside my horse, lifted me down from the saddle and held me for a swift kiss when my feet were on the ground.

‘Sweetheart,’ he whispered. ‘I have a little surprise for you.’

He turned me around and stepped to one side so that I could see his beautiful new ship. She was almost ready for the sea now, she had the characteristic high poop deck and prow of a fighting ship, built for speed.

‘Look,’ Henry said, seeing me taking in her lines but not the detail. He pointed to her name carved and enamelled in gold in bold curly letters at the ornate prow. It said: ‘Mary Boleyn’.

For a moment I stared, reading the letters of my name but not understanding. He did not laugh at my astounded face, he watched me, seeing my surprise turn to puzzlement and then to dawning understanding.

‘You named her for me?’ I asked. I could hear my voice quaver. It was an honour too great for me. I felt too young, too small a person altogether to have a ship, and such a ship, named for me. And now everyone in the world would know that I was the king’s mistress. There could be no denial.

‘I did, sweetheart.’ He was smiling. He expected me to be delighted.

He tucked my cold hand under his elbow and urged me to the front of the ship. There was a figurehead, looking out with a proud beautiful profile, looking out over the Thames, out to sea, to France. It was me, with my lips slightly parted, slightly smiling, as if I was a woman to want such an adventure. As if I were not the cat’s-paw of the Howard family but a courageous lovely woman in my own right.

‘Me?’ I asked, my voice a thread above the sound of the water splashing at the side of the dry dock.

Henry’s mouth was at my ear, I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.

‘You,’ he said. ‘A beauty, like you. Are you happy, Mary?’

I turned to him and his arms came around me and I stood up on tiptoe and buried my face in the warmth of his neck and smelled the sweet scent of his beard and his hair. ‘Oh Henry,’ I whispered. I wanted my face hidden from him, I knew that he would see no pleasure but a terror at rising so high, so publicly.

‘Are you happy?’ he insisted. He turned my face up, with a hand under my chin, so that he could scan me as if I were a manuscript. ‘It is a great honour.’

‘I know.’ My smile trembled on my lips. ‘I thank you.’

‘And you shall launch her,’ he promised me. ‘Next week.’

I hesitated. ‘Not the queen?’

I was fearful of taking her place to launch the newest and greatest ship that he had ever built. But of course it had to be me. How could she launch a ship that bore my name?

He shrugged her away as if they had not been husband and wife for thirteen years. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not the queen. You.’

I found a smile from somewhere and hoped that it was convincing and that it hid my terrified sense that I was going too far, too fast, and that the end of this road was not the sort of carefree joy that we had felt this morning, but something darker and more fearful. For all that we had ridden, singing out of tune together, we were not a lover and his lass. If my name was on this ship, if I launched it next week, then I was a declared rival to the Queen of England. I was an enemy to the Spanish ambassador, to the whole nation of Spain. I was a powerful force in the court, a threat to the Seymour family. The higher I rose in the king’s favour the greater the dangers that opened up around me. But I was a young woman of only fifteen years old. I could not yet revel in ambition.

As if she could read my reluctance, Anne was at my side. ‘You do my sister a great honour, sire,’ she said smoothly. ‘It is a most exquisite ship, as lovely as the woman you named her for. And a strong and powerful ship – like yourself. God bless her and send her against our enemies. Whoever they may be.’

Henry smiled at the compliment. ‘She is bound to be a lucky ship,’ he said. ‘With the face of an angel going before her.’

‘D’you think she’ll have to fight the French this year?’ George asked, taking my hand and giving my fingers a quick hidden pinch to recall me to my work as a courtier.

Henry nodded, looking grim. ‘Without doubt,’ he said. ‘And if the Spanish emperor will move in concert with me, we will follow my plan of our attack in the north of France, as he attacks in the south, then we cannot fail to curb Francis’s arrogance. This summer we will do it, without fail.’

‘If we can trust the Spanish,’ Anne said silkily.

Henry’s face darkened. ‘It is they who have the greatest need of us,’ he said. ‘Charles had better remember that. This is not a matter of family or kinship. If the queen is displeased with me for one reason or another she must remember that she is a queen of England first, and a princess of Spain second. Her first loyalty must be to me.’

Anne nodded. ‘I should hate to be so divided,’ she said. ‘Thank God we Boleyns are English through and through.’

‘For all your French gowns,’ Henry said with a sudden gleam of humour.

Anne smiled back at him. ‘A gown is a gown,’ she said. ‘Like Mary’s gown of yellow velvet. But you of all people would know that underneath there is a true subject with an undivided heart.’

He turned to me at that and smiled at me as I looked up at him. ‘It is my pleasure to reward such a faithful heart,’ he said.

I felt that there were tears in my eyes and I tried to blink them away without him seeing, but one stood on my eyelashes. Henry bent down and kissed it. ‘Sweetest girl,’ he said gently. ‘My little English rose.’

The whole court turned out to launch the ship, the Mary Boleyn, and only the queen pleaded an indisposition and stayed away. The Spanish ambassador was there to watch the vessel slip into the water, and whatever reservations he felt about the name of the ship he kept to himself.

My father was in a silent frenzy of irritation at himself, at me, at the king. The great honour which had been done to me and to my family had turned out to have a price attached. King Henry was a subtle monarch in such matters. When my uncle and father had thanked him for the compliment of using their name he thanked them for the contribution that he was sure they would want to make to the fitting out of such a ship which would so redound to their credit as it carried the Boleyn name across the seas.

‘And so the stakes go up again,’ George said cheerfully as we watched the boat slide over the rollers into the salty river waters of the Thames.

‘How can they get any higher?’ I asked from the corner of my smiling mouth. ‘I have my life on the table.’

The shipyard workers, already half drunk on free ale, waved their caps and cheered. Anne smiled and waved in reply. George grinned at me. The wind stirred the feather in his cap, ruffled his dark curls. ‘Now it’s costing Father money to keep you in the king’s favour. Now it’s not just your heart and happiness on the table, my little sister, it’s the family fortune. We thought we were playing him for a lovesick fool, but it turns out he’s playing us for money lenders. Stakes go up. Father and Uncle will want to see a return for this investment. You see if they don’t.’

I turned away from George and found Anne. She was a little distance from the court, Henry Percy beside her as usual. They were both watching the ship as the barges towed her out into the river and then turned her, and, struggling against the current, brought her back alongside the jetty and started to tie her up so that she could be fitted out as she lay in the water. Anne’s face was bright with the joy that flirtation always brought her.

She turned and smiled at me. ‘Ah, the Queen of the Day,’ she said mockingly.

I made a little grimace. ‘Don’t tease me, Anne. I have had enough from George.’

Henry Percy stepped forward and took my hand and kissed it. As I looked down at the back of his blond head I realised how high my star was rising. This was Henry Percy, son and heir to the Duke of Northumberland. There was no other man in the kingdom who had fairer prospects or a greater fortune. He was the son of the richest man in England, second only to the king, and he was bowing his head to me and kissing my hand.

‘She shall not tease you,’ he promised me, coming up smiling. ‘For I shall take you in to dine. I’m told that the cooks from Greenwich were out here at dawn to get everything ready. The king is going in, shall we follow?’

I hesitated but the queen, who always created a sense of formality, was left behind at Greenwich, lying in a darkened room with a pain in her belly and fear in her heart. There was no-one at the dockside but the feckless idle men and women of the court. No-one cared about precedence, except in the sense that winners must come first. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

Lord Henry Percy offered his other arm to Anne. ‘Shall I have two sisters?’

‘I think you would find the Bible forbids it,’ Anne said provocatively. ‘The Bible orders a man to choose between sisters and to stay with his first choice. Anything else is a cardinal sin.’

Lord Henry Percy laughed. ‘I’m sure I could get an indulgence,’ he said. ‘The Pope would surely grant me a dispensation. With two sisters like this, what man could be made to choose?’

We did not ride home until it was twilight and the stars were starting to come out in the pale grey sky of spring. I rode beside the king, my hand in his, and we let the horses amble along the riverside tow track. We rode under the archway of the palace and up to the opening front door. Then he pulled up his horse and he lifted me down from the saddle and whispered in my ear: ‘I wish you were queen for all the days, and not just for one day in a pavilion by the river, my love.’

‘He said what?’ my uncle asked.

I stood before him, like a prisoner under question before the court. Behind the table in the Howard rooms were seated Uncle Howard, Duke of Surrey, and my father and George. At the back of the room, behind me, Anne was sitting beside my mother. I, alone before the table, stood like a disgraced child before my elders.

‘He said that he wished I was queen for all the days,’ I said in a small voice, hating Anne for betraying my confidence, hating my father and my uncle for their cold-hearted dissection of lovers’ whispers.

‘What d’you think he meant?’

‘Nothing,’ I said sulkily. ‘It’s just love talk.’

‘We need to see some repayment for all these loans,’ my uncle said irritably. ‘Has he said anything about giving you land? Or something for George? Or us?’

‘Can’t you hint him into it?’ my father suggested. ‘Remind him that George is to be married.’

I looked to George in mute appeal.

‘The thing is that he’s very alert for that sort of thing,’ George pointed out. ‘Everyone does it to him all the time. When he walks from his privy chamber to Mass every morning, his way is lined with people just waiting to ask him for a favour. I should think what he likes about Mary here is that she’s not like that. I don’t think she’s ever asked for anything.’

‘She has diamonds worth a fortune in her ears,’ my mother put in sharply from behind me. Anne nodded.

‘But she didn’t ask for them. He gave them freely. He likes to be generous when it’s unexpected. I think we have to let Mary play this her own way. She has a talent for loving him.’

I bit my lip on that, to stop myself saying a word. I did have a talent for loving him. It was perhaps the only talent I had. And this family, this powerful network of men, were using my talent to love the king as they used George’s talents at swordplay, or my father’s talent for languages, to further the interests of our family.

‘Court moves to London next week,’ my father remarked. ‘The king will see the Spanish ambassador. There’s little chance of him making any greater move towards Mary while he needs the Spanish alliance to fight the French.’

‘Better work for peace then,’ my uncle recommended wolfishly.

‘I do. I am a peacemaker,’ my father replied. ‘Blessed, aren’t I?’

The court in progress was always a mighty sight, part-way between a country fair, a market day, and a joust. It was all arranged by Cardinal Wolsey, everything in the court or the country was done by his command. He had been at the king’s side at the Battle of the Spurs in France, he had been almoner then to the English army and the men had never lain so dry at night nor eaten so well. He had a grasp of detail that made him attentive to how the court would get from one place to another, a grasp of politics that prompted him as to where we should stop and which lord should be honoured with a visit when the king was on his summer progress, and he was wily enough to trouble Henry with none of these things so the young king went from pleasure to pleasure as if the sky itself rained down supplies and servants and organisation.

It was the cardinal who ruled the precedence of the court on the move. Ahead of us went the pages carrying the standards with the pennants of all the lords in the train fluttering above their heads. Next there was a gap to let the dust settle and then came the king, riding his best hunter with his embossed saddle of red leather and all the trappings of kingship. Above his head flew his own personal standard, and at his side were his friends chosen to ride with him that day: my husband William Carey, Cardinal Wolsey, my father, and then trailing along behind them came the rest of the king’s companions, changing their places in the train as they desired, lagging back or spurring forward. Around them, in a loose formation, came the king’s personal guards mounted on horses and holding their lances at the salute. They hardly served to protect him – who would dream of hurting such a king? – but they kept back the press of people who gathered to cheer and gawp whenever we rode through a little town or a village.

Then there was another break before the queen’s train. She was riding the steady old palfrey which she always used. She sat straight in the saddle, her gown awkwardly disposed in great folds of thick fabric, her hat skewered on her head, her eyes squinting against the bright sunshine. She was feeling ill. I knew because I had been at her side when she had mounted her horse in the morning and I had heard the tiny repressed grunt of pain as she settled into the saddle.

Behind the queen’s court came the other members of the household, some of them riding, some of them seated in carts, some of them singing or drinking ale to keep the dust from the road out of their throats. All of us shared a careless sense of a high day and a holiday as the court left Greenwich and headed for London with a new season of parties and entertainments ahead of us, and who knew what might happen in this year?

The queen’s rooms at York Place were small and neat and we took only a few days to get unpacked and have everything to rights. The king visited every morning, as usual, and his court came with him, Lord Henry Percy among them. His lordship and Anne took to sitting in the windowseat together, their heads very close, as they worked on one of Lord Henry’s poems. He swore that he would become a great poet under Anne’s tuition and she swore that he would never learn anything, but that it was all a ruse to waste her time and her learning on such a dolt.

I thought that it was something for a Boleyn girl from a little castle in Kent and a handful of fields in Essex to call the Duke of Northumberland’s son a dolt, but Henry Percy laughed and claimed that she was too stern a teacher and talent, great talent, would out, whatever she might say.

‘The cardinal is asking for you,’ I said to Lord Henry. He rose up, in no particular hurry, kissed Anne’s hand in farewell, and went to find Cardinal Wolsey. Anne gathered up the papers they had been working on and locked them in her writing box.

‘Does he really have no talent as a poet?’ I asked.

She shrugged with a smile. ‘He’s no Wyatt.’

‘Is he a Wyatt in courtship?’

‘He’s not married,’ she said. ‘And so more desirable to a sensible woman.’

‘Too high, even for you.’

‘I don’t see why. If I want him, and he wants me.’

‘You try asking Father to speak to the duke,’ I recommended sarcastically. ‘See what the duke says.’

She turned her head to look out of the window. The long beautiful lawns of York Place stretched down below us, almost hiding the sparkle of the river at the foot of the garden. ‘I won’t ask Father,’ she said. ‘I thought I might settle matters on my own account.’

I was going to laugh then I realised she was serious. ‘Anne, this is not something you can settle for yourself. He’s only a young man, you’re only seventeen, you can’t decide these things for yourselves. His father is certain to have someone in mind for him, and our father and uncle are certain to have plans for you. We’re not private people, we’re the Boleyn girls. We have to be guided, we have to do as we are told. Look at me!’

‘Yes, look at you!’ She rounded on me with a sudden flare of her dark energy. ‘Married when you were still a child and now the king’s mistress. Half as clever as me! Half as educated! But you are the centre of the court and I am nothing. I have to be your lady in waiting. I cannot serve you, Mary. It’s an insult to me.’

‘I never asked you to …’ I stammered.

‘Who insists that you bathe and wash your hair?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘You do. But I …’

‘Who helps you choose your clothes and prompts you with the king? Who has rescued you a thousand times when you’ve been too stupid and tongue-tied to know how to play him?’

‘You. But Anne …’

‘And what is there in this for me? I have no husband who can be given land to show the king’s favour. I have no husband to win high office because my sister is the king’s mistress. I get nothing from this. However high you rise I still get nothing. I have to have a place of my own.’

‘You should have a place of your own,’ I said weakly. ‘I don’t deny it. All I was saying was that I don’t think you can be a duchess.’

‘And you should decide?’ she spat at me. ‘You who are nothing but the king’s diversion from the important business of making a son if he can and making war if he can raise an army?’

‘I don’t say I should decide,’ I whispered. ‘I just said that I don’t think they’ll let you do it.’

‘When it’s done, it’s done,’ she said with a toss of her head. ‘And no-one will know until it’s done.’

Suddenly, like a striking snake, she reached out and grabbed my hand in a fierce grip. At once she twisted it behind my back and held me so that I could move neither forward nor backwards but only cry out in pain: ‘Anne! Don’t! You’re really hurting!’

‘Well, hear this,’ she hissed in my ear. ‘Hear this, Mary. I am playing my own game and I don’t want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know everything too late.’

‘You’re going to make him love you?’

Abruptly she released me and I gripped my elbow and my arm where the bones ached.

‘I’m going to make him marry me,’ she said flatly. ‘And if you so much as breathe a word to anyone, then I will kill you.’

After that I watched Anne with more care. I saw how she played him. Having advanced through all the cold months of the New Year at Greenwich, now, with the coming of the sun and our arrival in York Place, she suddenly retreated. And the more she withdrew from him the more he came on. When he came into a room she looked up and threw him a smile which went like an arrow to the centre of the target. She filled her look with invitation, with desire. But then she looked away and she would not look at him again for the whole of the visit.

He was in the train of Cardinal Wolsey and was supposed to wait on His Grace while the cardinal visited the king or the queen. In practice there was nothing for the young lord to do but to lounge around the queen’s apartments and flirt with anyone who would talk to him. It was clear that he only had eyes for Anne and she walked past him, danced with anyone who asked her but him, dropped her glove and let him return it to her, sat near him but did not speak to him, returned his poems and told him that she could help him no longer.

She went into the most unswerving of retreats, having been unswervingly in advance, and the young man did not begin to know what he could do to recapture her.

He came to me. ‘Mistress Carey, have I offended your sister in some way?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘She used to smile on me so charmingly and now she treats me very coldly.’

I thought for a moment, I was so slow at these things. On the one hand was the true answer: that she was playing him like a complete angler with a fish on the line. But I knew Anne would not want me to say that. On the other hand was the answer Anne would want me to give. I looked into Henry Percy’s anxious baby face for a moment of genuine compassion. Then I gave him the Boleyn smile and the Howard answer. ‘Indeed, my lord, I think she is afraid to be too kind.’

I saw the hope leap up in his trusting, boyish face. ‘Too kind?’

‘She was very kind to you, was she not, my lord?’

He nodded. ‘Oh yes. I’m her slave.’

‘I think she feared that she might come to like you too much.’

He leaned forward as if to snatch the words from my mouth. ‘Too much?’

‘Too much for her own peace of mind,’ I said very softly.

He leaped up and took two strides away from me and then came back again. ‘She might desire me?’

I smiled and turned my head a little so that he could not see my weariness at this deceit. He was not to be put off. He dropped to his knees before me and peered up into my face.

‘Tell me, Mistress Carey,’ he begged. ‘I have not slept for nights. I have not eaten for days. I am a soul in torment. Tell me if you think that she loves me, if you think that she might love me. Tell me, for pity’s sake.’

‘I cannot say.’ Indeed, I could not. The lies would have stuck in my throat. ‘You must ask her yourself.’

He sprang up, like a hare out of bracken with the beagle hounds behind it. ‘I will! I will! Where is she?’

‘Playing at bowls in the garden.’

He needed nothing more, he tore open the door and ran out of the room. I heard the heels of his boots ring down the stone stairs to the door to the garden. Jane Parker, who had been seated across the room from us, looked up.

‘Have you made another conquest?’ she asked, getting the wrong idea as usual.

I gave her a smile as poisonous as her own. ‘Some women attract desire. Others do not,’ I said simply.

He found her at the bowling green, losing daintily and deliberately to Sir Thomas Wyatt.

‘I shall write you a sonnet,’ Wyatt promised. ‘For handing me victory with such grace.’

‘No, no, it was a fair battle,’ Anne protested.

‘If there had been money on it I think I would be getting out my purse,’ he said. ‘You Boleyns only lose when there is nothing to gain by winning.’

Anne smiled. ‘Next time you shall put your fortune on it,’ she promised him. ‘See – I have lulled you into a sense of safety.’

‘I have no fortune to offer but my heart.’

‘Will you walk with me?’ Henry Percy interrupted, his voice coming out far louder than he intended.

Anne gave a little start as if she had not noticed him there. ‘Oh! Lord Henry.’

‘The lady is playing bowls,’ Sir Thomas said.

Anne smiled at them both. ‘I have been so roundly defeated that I will take a walk and plan my strategy,’ she said and put her hand on Lord Henry Percy’s arm.

He led her away from the bowling green, down the winding path that led to a seat beneath a yew tree.

‘Miss Anne,’ he began.

‘Is it too damp to sit?’

At once he swung his rich cloak from his shoulder and spread it out for her on a stone bench.

‘Miss Anne …’

‘No, I am too chilled,’ she decided and rose up from the seat.

‘Miss Anne!’ he exclaimed, a little more crossly.

Anne paused and turned her seductive smile on him.

‘Your lordship?’

‘I have to know why have you grown so cold to me?’

For a moment she hesitated, then she dropped the coquettish play and turned a face to him which was grave and lovely.

‘I did not mean to be cold,’ she said slowly. ‘I meant to be careful.’

‘Of what?’ he exclaimed. ‘I have been in torment!’

‘I did not mean to torment you. I meant to draw back a little. Nothing more than that.’

‘Why?’ he whispered.

She looked down the garden to the river. ‘I thought it better for me, perhaps better for us both,’ she said quietly. ‘We might become too close in friendship for my comfort.’

He took a swift step from her and then back to her side. ‘I would never cause you a moment’s uneasiness,’ he assured her. ‘If you wanted me to promise you that we would be friends and that no breath of scandal would ever come to you, I would have promised that.’

She turned her dark luminous eyes on him. ‘Could you promise that no-one would ever say that we were in love?’

Mutely, he shook his head. Of course he could not promise what a scandal-mad court might or might not say.

‘Could you promise that we would never fall in love?’

He hesitated. ‘Of course I love you, Mistress Anne,’ he said. ‘In the courtly way. In the polite way.’

She smiled as if she were pleased to hear it. ‘I know it is nothing more than a May game. For me, also. But it’s a dangerous game when played between a handsome man and a maid, when there are many people very quick to say that we are made for each other, that we are perfectly matched.’

‘Do they say that?’

‘When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.’

‘What else do they say?’ He was quite entranced by this portrait.

‘They say that you love me. They say that I love you. They say that we have both been head over heels in love while we thought we were doing nothing but playing.’

‘My God,’ he said at the revelation. ‘My God, it is so!’

‘Oh my lord! What are you saying?’

‘I am saying that I have been a fool. I have been in love with you for months and all the time I thought I was amusing myself and you were teasing me, and that it all meant nothing.’

Her gaze warmed him. ‘It was not nothing to me,’ she whispered.

Her dark eyes held him, the boy was transfixed. ‘Anne,’ he whispered. ‘My love.’

Her lips curved into a kissable, irresistible smile. ‘Henry,’ she breathed. ‘My Henry.’

He took a small step towards her, put his hands on her tightly laced waist. He drew her close to him and Anne yielded, took one seductive step closer. His head came down as her face tipped up and his mouth found hers for their first kiss.

‘Oh, say it,’ Anne whispered. ‘Say it now, this moment, say it, Henry.’

‘Marry me,’ he said.

‘And so it was done,’ Anne reported blithely in our bedroom that night. She had ordered the bath tub to be brought in and we had gone into the hot water, one after another, and scrubbed each other’s backs and washed each other’s hair. Anne, as fanatical as a French courtesan about cleanliness, was ten times more rigorous than usual. She inspected my fingernails and toenails as if I were a dirty schoolboy, she handed me an ivory earscoop to clean out my ears as if I were her child, she pulled the lice comb through every lock of my head, reckless of my whimpers of pain.

‘And so? What is done?’ I asked sulkily, dripping on the floor and wrapping myself in a sheet. Four maids came in and started to bale out the water into buckets so that the great wooden bath could be carried away. The sheets they used to line the bath were heavy and sodden, it all seemed like a great deal of effort for very little gain. ‘For all I have heard is more flirtation.’

‘He’s asked me,’ Anne said. She waited till the door was shut behind the servants and then wrapped the sheet more tightly around her breasts and seated herself before the mirror.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Who is it now?’ I called in exasperation.

‘It’s me,’ George replied.

‘We’re bathing,’ I said.

‘Oh let him come in.’ Anne started to comb through her black hair. ‘He can pull out these tangles.’

George lounged into the room and raised a dark eyebrow at the mess of water on the floor and wet sheets, at the two of us, half naked, and Anne with a thick mane of wet hair thrown over her shoulder.

‘Is this a masque? Are you mermaids?’

‘Anne insisted that we should bathe. Again.’

Anne offered him her comb and he took it.

‘Comb my hair,’ she said with her sly sideways smile. ‘Mary always pulls.’ Obediently, he stood behind her and started to comb through her dark hair, a strand at a time. He combed her carefully, as he would handle his mare’s mane. Anne closed her eyes and luxuriated in his grooming.

‘Any lice?’ she asked, suddenly alert.

‘None yet,’ he reassured her, as intimate as a Venetian hairdresser.

‘So what’s done?’ I demanded, returning to Anne’s announcement.

‘I have him,’ she said frankly. ‘Henry Percy. He has told me he loves me, he has told me that he wants to marry me. I want you and George to witness our betrothal, he can give me a ring, and then it’s done and unbreakable, as good as a marriage in a church before a priest. And I shall be a duchess.’

‘Good God.’ George froze, the comb held in the air. ‘Anne! Are you sure?’

‘Am I likely to bodge this?’ she asked tersely.

‘No,’ he allowed. ‘But still. The Duchess of Northumberland! My God, Anne, you will own most of the north of England.’

She nodded, smiling at herself in the mirror.

‘Good God, we will be the greatest family in the country! We’ll be one of the greatest in Europe. With Mary in the king’s bed and you the wife of his greatest subject, we will put the Howards so high they can never fall.’ He broke off for a moment as he thought through to the next step.

‘My God, if Mary was to fall pregnant to the king and to have a boy, then with Northumberland behind him he could take the throne as his own. I could be uncle to the King of England.’

‘Yes,’ Anne said silkily. ‘That was what I thought.’

I said nothing, watching my sister’s face.

‘The Howard family on the throne,’ George murmured, half to himself. ‘Northumberland and Howards in alliance. It’s done, isn’t it? When those two come together. They would only come together through a marriage and an heir for both of them to strive for. Mary could bear the heir, and Anne could weld the Percys to his future.’

‘You thought I’d never achieve it,’ Anne said, pointing a finger at me.

I nodded. ‘I thought you were aiming too high.’

‘You’ll know another time,’ she warned me. ‘Where I aim, I will hit.’

‘I’ll know another time,’ I concurred.

‘But what about him?’ George warned her. ‘What if they disinherit him? Fine place you’ll be in then, married to the boy who used to be heir to a dukedom, but now disgraced and owning nothing.’

She shook her head. ‘They won’t do that. He’s too precious to them. But you have to take my part, George; and Father and Uncle Howard. His father has to see that we are good enough. Then they’ll let the betrothal stand.’

‘I’ll do all I can but the Percys are a proud lot, Anne. They meant him for Mary Talbot until Wolsey came out against the match. They won’t want you instead of her.’

‘Is it just his wealth that you want?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the title too,’ Anne said crudely.

‘I mean, really. What d’you feel for him?’

For a moment I thought she was going to turn aside the question with another hard joke which would make his boyish adoration of her seem like nothing. But then she tossed her head and the clean hair flew through George’s hands like a dark river.

‘Oh, I know I’m a fool! I know he is nothing more than a boy, and a silly boy at that, but when he is with me I feel like a girl myself. I feel as if we are two youngsters, in love and with nothing to fear. He makes me feel reckless! He makes me feel enchanted! He makes me feel in love!’

It was as if the Howard spell of coldness had been broken, smashed like a mirror, and everything was real and bright. I laughed with her and snatched up her hands and looked into her face. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ I demanded. ‘Falling in love? Isn’t it the most wonderful, wonderful thing?’

She pulled her hands away. ‘Oh, go away, Mary. You are such a child. But yes! Wonderful? Yes! Now don’t simper over me, I can’t stand it.’

George took a hank of her dark hair and twisted it onto the top of her head and admired her face in the mirror. ‘Anne Boleyn in love,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Who’d have believed it?’

‘It’d never have happened if he hadn’t been the greatest man in the kingdom after the king,’ she reminded him. ‘I don’t forget what’s due to me and my family.’

He nodded. ‘I know that, Annamaria. We all knew that you would aim very high. But a Percy! It’s higher than I imagined.’

She leaned forward as if to interrogate her reflection. She cupped her face in her hands. ‘This is my first love. My first and ever love.’

‘Please God that you are lucky and that it is your last love as well as your first,’ George said, suddenly sober.

Her dark eyes met his in the mirror. ‘Please God,’ she said. ‘I want nothing more in my life but Henry Percy. With that I would be content. Oh – George, I cannot tell you. If I can have and hold Henry Percy I will be so very content.’

Henry Percy came, at Anne’s bidding, to the queen’s rooms at noon the next day. She had chosen her time with care. The ladies had all gone to Mass, and we had the rooms to ourselves. Henry Percy came in and looked around, surprised at the silence and emptiness. Anne went up to him and took both his hands in hers. I thought for a moment that he looked, not so much courted as hunted.

‘My love,’ Anne said, and at the sound of her voice the boy’s face warmed; his courage came back to him.

‘Anne,’ he said softly.

His hand fumbled in the pocket of his padded breeches, he drew a ring out of an inner pocket. From my station in the windowseat I could see the wink of a red ruby – the symbol of a virtuous woman.

‘For you,’ he said softly.

Anne took his hand. ‘Do you want to plight our troth now, before witnesses?’ she asked.

He gulped a little. ‘Yes, I do.’

She glowed at him. ‘Do it then.’

He glanced at George and me as if he thought one of us might stop him.

George and I smiled encouragingly, the Boleyn smile: a pair of pleasant snakes.

‘I, Henry Percy, take thee, Anne Boleyn, to be my lawful wedded wife,’ he said, taking Anne by the hand.

‘I, Anne Boleyn, take thee, Henry Percy, to be my lawful wedded husband,’ she said, her voice steadier than his.

He found the third finger of her left hand. ‘With this ring I promise myself to you,’ he said quietly, and slipped it on her finger. It was too loose. She clenched a fist to hold it on.

‘With this ring, I take you,’ she replied.

He bent his head, he kissed her. When she turned her face to me her eyes were hazy with desire.

‘Leave us,’ she said in a low voice.

We gave them two hours, and then we heard, down the stone corridors, the queen and her ladies coming back from Mass. We knocked loudly on the door in the rhythm that meant ‘Boleyn!’ and we knew that Anne, even in a sated sleep, would hear it and jump up. But when we opened the door and went in, she and Henry Percy were composing a madrigal. She was playing the lute and he was singing the words they had written together. Their heads were very close so that they might both see the hand-written music on the stand, but excepting that intimacy, they were as they had been any day these last three months.

Anne smiled at me as George and I came into the room, followed by the queen’s ladies.

‘We have written such a pretty air, it has taken us all the morning,’ Anne said sweetly.

‘And what is it called?’ George asked.

‘“Merrily, merrily”,’ Anne replied. ‘It’s called “Merrily Merrily and Onward We Go”.’

That night it was Anne who left our bedchamber. She threw a dark cloak over her gown and went to the door as the palace tower bell rang for midnight.

‘Where are you going at this time of night?’ I demanded, scandalised.

Her pale face looked out at me from under the dark hood. ‘To my husband,’ she said simply.

‘Anne, you cannot,’ I said, aghast. ‘You will get caught and you will be ruined.’

‘We are betrothed in the sight of God and before witnesses. That’s as good as a marriage, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said unwillingly.

‘A marriage could be overthrown for non-consummation, couldn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’m making it fast,’ she said. ‘Not even the Percy family will be able to wriggle out of it when Henry and I tell them that we are wedded and bedded.’

I kneeled up in the bed, imploring her to stay. ‘But Anne, if someone sees you!’

‘They won’t,’ she said.

‘When the Percys know that you and he have been slipping out at midnight!’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t see the how or where makes much difference. As long as it is done.’

‘If it should come to nothing –’ I broke off at the blaze of her eyes. In one stride she was across the room and she had her hands at the neck of my nightdress, twisting it against my throat. ‘That is why I am doing this,’ she hissed. ‘Fool that you are. So that it does not come to nothing. So that no-one can ever say that it was nothing. So that it is signed and sealed. Wedded and bedded. Done without possibility of denial. Now you sleep. I shall be back in the early hours. Long before dawn. But I shall go now.’

I nodded and said not a word until her hand was on the ring of the door latch. ‘But Anne, do you love him?’ I asked curiously.

The curve of her hood hid all but the corner of her smile. ‘I am a fool to own it, but I am in a fever for his touch.’

Then she opened the door, and was gone.