Читать книгу The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory - Страница 8

‘I am going to France tomorrow and I shall bring your sister Anne home with me,’ my father told me on the stairs of Westminster Palace. ‘She’s to have a place in the court of Queen Mary Tudor as she returns to England.’

‘I thought she’d stay in France,’ I said. ‘I thought she’d marry a French count or somebody.’

He shook his head. ‘We have other plans for her.’

I knew it was pointless to ask what plans they had. I would have to wait and see. My greatest dread was that they would have a better marriage for her than I had made, that I would have to follow the hem of her gown as she swept ahead of me for the rest of my life.

‘Wipe that surly look off your face,’ my father said sharply.

At once I smiled my courtier’s smile. ‘Of course, Father,’ I said obediently.

He nodded and I curtsied low as he left me. I came up from my curtsey and went slowly to my husband’s bedroom. I had a small looking glass on the wall and I stood before it and gazed at my own reflection. ‘It’ll be all right,’ I whispered to myself. ‘I am a Boleyn, that’s not a small thing to be, and my mother was born a Howard, that’s to be one of the greatest families in the country. I’m a Howard girl, a Boleyn girl.’ I bit my lip. ‘But so is she.’

I smiled my empty courtier’s smile and the reflected pretty face smiled back. ‘I am the youngest Boleyn girl, but not the least. I am married to William Carey, a man high in the king’s favour. I am the queen’s favourite and youngest lady in waiting. Nobody can spoil this for me. Not even she can take this from me.’

Anne and Father were delayed by spring storms and I found myself hoping, childishly, that her boat would sink and she would drown. At the thought of her death I felt a confusing pang of genuine distress mixed with elation. There could hardly be a world for me without Anne, there was hardly world enough for us both.

In any case, she arrived safely enough. I saw my father walking with her from the royal landing stage up the gravelled paths to the palace. Even from the first-floor window, looking down I could see the swing of her gown, the stylish cut of her cloak, and a moment of pure envy swept through me as I saw how it swirled around her. I waited till she was out of sight and then I hurried to my seat in the queen’s presence chamber.

I planned that she should first see me very much at home in the queen’s richly tapestried rooms, and that I should rise and greet her, very grown-up and gracious. But when the doors opened and she came in I was overcome by a rush of sudden joy, and I heard myself cry out ‘Anne!’ and ran to her, my skirt swishing. And Anne, who had come in with her head very high, and her arrogant dark look darting everywhere, suddenly stopped being a grand young lady of fifteen years and threw out her arms to me.

‘You’re taller,’ she said breathlessly, her arms tight around me, her cheek pressed to mine.

‘I’ve got such high heels.’ I inhaled the familiar perfume of her. Soap, and rosewater essence from her warm skin, lavender from her clothes.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘Bien sur! How is it? Marriage?’

‘Not too bad. Nice clothes.’

‘And he?’

‘Very grand. Always with the king, high in his favour.’

‘Have you done it?’

‘Yes, ages ago.’

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Very much.’

She pulled back to read my face.

‘Not too much,’ I said, qualifying. ‘He does try to be gentle. He always gives me wine. It’s just all rather awful, really.’

Her scowl melted away and she giggled, her eyes dancing. ‘How is it awful?’

‘He pisses in the pot, right where I can see!’

She collapsed in a wail of laughter. ‘No!’

‘Now, girls,’ my father said, coming up behind Anne. ‘Mary, take Anne and present her to the queen.’

At once I turned and led her through the press of ladies in waiting to where the queen was seated, erect in her chair at the fireside. ‘She’s strict,’ I warned Anne. ‘It’s not like France.’

Katherine of Aragon took the measure of Anne with one of her clear blue-eyed sweeps and I felt a pang of fear that she would prefer my sister to me.

Anne swept the queen an immaculate French curtsey, and came up as if she owned the palace. She spoke in a voice rippling with that seductive accent, her every gesture was that of the French court. I noted with glee the queen’s frosty response to Anne’s stylish manner. I drew her to a windowseat.

‘She hates the French,’ I said. ‘She’ll never have you around her if you keep that up.’

Anne shrugged. ‘They’re the most fashionable. Whether she likes them or not. What else?’

‘Spanish?’ I suggested. ‘If you have to pretend to be something else.’

Anne let out a snort of laughter. ‘And wear those hoods! She looks as if someone stuck a roof on her head.’

‘Ssshhh,’ I said reprovingly. ‘She’s a beautiful woman. The finest queen in Europe.’

‘She’s an old woman,’ Anne said cruelly. ‘Dressed like an old woman in the ugliest clothes in Europe, from the stupidest nation in Europe. We have no time for the Spanish.’

‘Who’s we?’ I asked coldly. ‘Not the English.’

‘Les Français!’ she said irritatingly. ‘Bien sur! I am all but French now.’

‘You’re English born and bred, like George and me,’ I said flatly. ‘And I was brought up at the French court just like you. Why do you always have to pretend to be different?’

‘Because everyone has to do something.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eye, which makes her the centre of attention. I am going to be French.’

‘So you pretend to be something that you’re not,’ I said disapprovingly.

She gleamed at me and her dark eyes measured me in a way that only Anne could do. ‘I pretend no more and no less than you do,’ she said quietly. ‘My little sister, my little golden sister, my milk and honey sister.’

I met her eyes, my lighter gaze into her black, and I knew that I was smiling her smile, that she was a dark mirror to me. ‘Oh that,’ I said, still refusing to acknowledge a hit. ‘Oh that.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult and you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be. What man could resist us?’

I laughed, she could always make me laugh. I looked down from the leaded window and saw the king’s hunt returning to the stable yard.

‘Is that the king on his way?’ Anne asked. ‘Is he as handsome as they say?’

‘He’s wonderful. He really is. He dances and rides, and – oh – I can’t tell you!’

‘Will he come here now?’

‘Probably. He always comes to see her.’

Anne glanced dismissively to where the queen sat sewing with her ladies. ‘Can’t think why.’

‘Because he loves her,’ I said. ‘It’s a wonderful love story. Her married to his brother and his brother dying like that, so young, and then her not knowing what she should do or where she could go, and then him taking her and making her his wife and his queen. It’s a wonderful story and he loves her still.’

Anne raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and glanced around the room. All the ladies in waiting had heard the sound of the returning hunt and had spread the skirts of their gowns and moved in their seats so that they were placed like a little tableau to be viewed from the doorway when the door was flung open and Henry the king stood on the threshold and laughed with the boisterous joy of an indulged young man. ‘I came to surprise you and I catch you all unawares!’

The queen started. ‘How amazed we are!’ she said warmly. ‘And what a delight!’

The king’s companions and friends followed their master into the room. My brother George came in first, checked on the threshold at the sight of Anne, held his pleasure hidden behind his handsome courtier’s face, and bowed low over the queen’s hand. ‘Majesty.’ He breathed on her fingers. ‘I have been in the sun all the morning but I am only dazzled now.’

She smiled her small polite smile as she gazed down at his bent dark curly head. ‘You may greet your sister.’

‘Mary is here?’ George asked indifferently, as if he had not seen us both.

‘Your other sister, Anne,’ the queen corrected him. A small gesture from her hand, heavy with rings, indicated that the two of us should step forward. George swept us a bow without moving from the prime place near the throne.

‘Has she changed much?’ the queen asked.

George smiled. ‘I hope she will change more with a model such as you before her eyes.’

The queen gave a little laugh. ‘Very pretty,’ she said appreciatively, and waved him towards us.

‘Hello, little Miss Beautiful,’ he said to Anne. ‘Hello, Mistress Beautiful,’ to me.

Anne regarded him from under her dark eyelashes. ‘I wish I could hug you,’ she said.

‘We’ll go out, as soon as we can,’ George decreed. ‘You look well, Annamaria.’

‘I am well,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘Never better.’

‘What’s little Mary’s husband like?’ she asked curiously, watching William as he entered and bowed over the queen’s hand.

‘Great-grandson of the third Earl of Somerset, and very high in the king’s favour.’ George volunteered the only matters of interest: his family connections and his closeness to the throne. ‘She’s done well. Did you know you were brought home to be married, Anne?’

‘Father hasn’t said who.’

‘I think you’re to go to Ormonde,’ George said.

‘A countess,’ Anne said with a triumphant smile to me.

‘Only Irish,’ I rejoined at once.

My husband stepped back from the queen’s chair, caught sight of us, and then raised an eyebrow at Anne’s intense provocative stare. The king took his seat beside the queen and looked around the room.

‘My dear Mary Carey’s sister has come to join our company,’ the queen said. ‘This is Anne Boleyn.’

‘George’s sister?’ the king asked.

My brother bowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

The king smiled at Anne. She dropped him a curtsey straight down, like a bucket in a well, head up, and a small challenging smile on her lips. The king was not taken, he liked easy women, he liked smiling women. He did not like women who fixed him with a dark challenging gaze.

‘And are you happy to be with your sister again?’ he asked me.

I dipped a low curtsey and came up a little flushed. ‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ I said sweetly. ‘What girl would not long for the company of a sister like Anne?’

His eyebrows twitched together a little at that. He preferred the open bawdy humour of men to the barbed wit of women. He looked from me to Anne’s slightly quizzical expression and then he got the joke and laughed out loud, and snapped his fingers and held out his hand to me. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘No-one can overshadow the bride in her early years of wedded bliss. And both Carey and I have a preference for fair-haired women.’

Everyone laughed at that, especially Anne who was dark, and the queen whose auburn hair had faded to brown and grey. They would have been fools to do anything but laugh heartily at the king’s pleasantry. And I laughed as well, with more joy in my heart than they had in theirs, I should think.

The musicians played an opening chord, and Henry drew me to him. ‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Carey tells me that he so likes a young bride that he’ll never bed any but twelve-year-old virgins ever again.’

It was hard to keep my chin up and my smile on my face. We turned in the dance and the king smiled down on me.

‘He’s a lucky man,’ he said graciously.

‘He is lucky to have your favour,’ I started, stumbling towards a compliment.

‘Luckier to have yours, I should think!’ he said with a sudden bellow of laughter. Then he swept me into a dance, and I whirled down the line of dancers and saw my brother’s quick glance of approval, and what was sweeter still: Anne’s envious eyes as the King of England danced past her with me in his arms.

Anne slipped into the routine of the English court and waited for her wedding. She still had not met her husband-to-be, and the arguments about the dowry and settlements looked as if they would take forever. Not even the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, who had his finger in this as well as every other pie in the bakehouse of England, could speed the business along. In the meantime she flirted as elegantly as a Frenchwoman, served the king’s sister with a nonchalant grace, and squandered hours every day in gossiping, riding, and playing with George and me. We were alike in tastes and not far apart in age; I was the baby at fourteen to Anne’s fifteen and George’s nineteen years. We were the closest of kin and yet almost strangers. I had been at the French court with Anne while George had been learning his trade as a courtier in England. Now, reunited, we became known around the court as the three Boleyns, the three delightful Boleyns, and the king would often look round when he was in his private rooms and cry out for the three Boleyns and someone would be sent running from one end of the castle to fetch us.

Our first task in life was to enhance the king’s many entertainments: jousting, tennis, riding, hunting, hawking, dancing. He liked to live in a continual roar of excitement and it was our duty to ensure that he was never bored. But sometimes, very rarely, in the quiet time before dinner, or if it rained and he could not hunt, he would find his own way to the queen’s apartments, and she would put down her sewing or her reading and send us away with a word.

If I lingered I might see her smile at him, in a way that she never smiled at anyone else, not even at her daughter the Princess Mary. And once, when I had entered without realising the king was there, I found him seated at her feet like a lover, with his head tipped back to rest in her lap as she stroked his red-gold curls off his forehead and twisted them round her fingers where they glowed as bright as the rings he had given her when she had been a young princess with hair as bright as his, and he had married her against the advice of everyone.

I tiptoed away without them seeing me. It was so rare that they were alone together that I did not want to be the one to break the spell. I went to find Anne. She was walking in the cold garden with George, a bunch of snowdrops in her hand, her cloak wrapped tight about her.

‘The king is with the queen,’ I said as I joined them. ‘On their own.’

Anne raised an eyebrow. ‘In bed?’ she asked curiously.

I flushed. ‘Of course not, it’s two in the afternoon.’

Anne smiled at me. ‘You must be a happy wife if you think you can’t bed before nightfall.’

George extended his other arm to me. ‘She is a happy wife,’ he said on my behalf. ‘William was telling the king that he had never known a sweeter girl. But what were they doing, Mary?’

‘Just sitting together,’ I said. I had a strong feeling that I did not want to describe the scene to Anne.

‘She won’t get a son that way,’ Anne said crudely.

‘Hush,’ George and I said at once. The three of us drew a little closer and lowered our voices.

‘She must be losing hope of it,’ George said. ‘What is she now? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?’

‘Only thirty-seven,’ I said indignantly.

‘Does she still have her monthly courses?’

‘Oh George!’

‘Yes she does,’ Anne said, matter-of-factly. ‘But little good they do her. It’s her fault. It can’t be laid at the king’s door with his bastard from Bessie Blount learning to ride his pony.’

‘There’s still plenty of time,’ I said defensively.

‘Time for her to die and him to remarry?’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘Yes. And she’s not strong, is she?’

‘Anne!’ For once my recoil from her was genuine. ‘That’s vile.’

George glanced around once more to ensure that there was no-one near us in the garden. A couple of Seymour girls were walking with their mother but we paid no attention to them. Their family were our chief rivals for power and advancement, we liked to pretend not to see them.

‘It’s vile but it’s true,’ he said bluntly. ‘Who’s to be the next king if he doesn’t have a son?’

‘Princess Mary could marry,’ I suggested.

‘A foreign prince brought in to rule England? It’d never hold,’ George said. ‘And we can’t tolerate another war for the throne.’

‘Princess Mary could become queen in her own right and not marry,’ I said wildly. ‘Rule as a queen on her own.’

Anne gave a snort of disbelief, her breath a little cloud on the cold air. ‘Oh aye,’ she said derisively. ‘She could ride astride and learn to joust. A girl can’t rule a country like this, the great lords’d eat her alive.’

The three of us paused before the fountain that stood in the centre of the garden. Anne, with her well-trained grace, sat on the rim of the basin and looked into the water, a few goldfish swam hopefully towards her and she pulled off her embroidered glove and dabbled her long fingers in the water. They came up, little mouths gaping, to nibble at the air. George and I watched her, as she watched her own rippling reflection.

‘Does the king think of this?’ she asked her mirrored image.

‘Constantly,’ George answered. ‘There is nothing in the world more important. I think he would legitimise Bessie Blount’s boy and make him heir if there’s no issue from the queen.’

‘A bastard on the throne?’

‘He wasn’t christened Henry Fitzroy for no reason,’ George replied. ‘He’s acknowledged as the king’s own son. If Henry lives long enough to make the country safe for him, if he can get the Seymours to agree, and us Howards, if Wolsey gets the church behind him and the foreign powers … what should stop him?’

‘One little boy, and he a bastard,’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘One little girl of six, one elderly queen and a king in the prime of his life.’ She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she asked. ‘Something has to happen. What’s it going to be?’

Cardinal Wolsey sent a message to the queen asking us to take part in a masque on Shrove Tuesday which he was to stage at his house, York Place. The queen asked me to read the letter and my voice trembled with excitement over the words: a great masque, a fortress named Chateau Vert, and five ladies to dance with the five knights who would besiege the fort. ‘Oh! Your Majesty …’ I started and then fell silent.

‘Oh! Your Majesty, what?’

‘I was just wondering if I might be allowed to go,’ I said very humbly. ‘To watch the revels.’

‘I think you were wondering a little more than that?’ she asked me with a gleam in her eyes.

‘I was wondering if I might be one of the dancers,’ I confessed. ‘It does sound very wonderful.’

‘Yes, you may be,’ she said. ‘How many ladies does the cardinal command of me?’

‘Five,’ I said quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anne sit back in her seat and close her eyes for just a moment. I knew exactly what she was doing, I could hear her voice in my head as loudly as if she was shouting: ‘Choose me! Choose me! Choose me!’

It worked. ‘Mistress Anne Boleyn,’ the queen said thoughtfully. ‘The Queen Mary of France, the Countess of Devon, Jane Parker, and you, Mary.’

Anne and I exchanged a rapid glance. We would be an oddly assorted quintet: the king’s aunt, his sister Queen Mary, and the heiress Jane Parker who was likely to be our sister-in-law, if her father and ours could agree her dowry, and the two of us.

‘Will we wear green?’ Anne asked.

The queen smiled at her. ‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said. ‘Mary, why don’t you write a note to the cardinal and tell him that we will be delighted to attend, and ask him to send the master of the revels so that we can all choose costumes and plan our dances?’

‘I’ll do it.’ Anne rose from her chair and went to the table where the pen and ink and paper were ready. ‘Mary has such a cramped hand he will think we are writing a refusal.’

The queen laughed. ‘Ah, the French scholar,’ she said gently. ‘You shall write to the cardinal then, Mistress Boleyn, in your beautiful French, or shall you write to him in Latin?’

Anne’s gaze did not waver. ‘Whichever Your Majesty prefers,’ she said steadily. ‘I am reasonably fluent in both.’

‘Tell him that we are all eager to play our part in his Chateau Vert,’ the queen said smoothly. ‘What a shame you can’t write Spanish.’

The arrival of the master of the revels to teach us our steps for the dance was the signal for a savage battle fought with smiles and the sweetest words as to who would play which role in the masque. In the end the queen herself intervened and gave us our parts without allowing any discussion. She gave me the role of Kindness, the king’s sister Queen Mary got the plum part of Beauty, Jane Parker was Constancy – ‘Well she does cling on so,’ Anne whispered to me. Anne herself was Perseverance. ‘Shows what she thinks of you,’ I whispered back. Anne had the grace to giggle.

We were to be attacked by Indian women – in reality the choristers of the royal chapel – before being rescued by the king and his chosen friends. We were warned that the king would be disguised and we should take great care not to penetrate the transparent ruse of a golden mask strapped on a golden head, taller than anyone else in the room.

It was a great romp in the end, far more fun than I had expected, much more of a play-fight than a dance. George flung rose petals at me and I drenched him with a shower of rosewater. The choristers were just little boys and they got over-excited and attacked the knights and were swung off their feet and spun around and dumped, dizzy and giggly, on the ground. When we ladies came out from the castle and danced with the mystery knights it was the tallest knight who came to dance with me, the king himself, and I, still breathless from my battle with George, and with rose petals in my headdress and my hair, and sugared fruit tumbling out of the folds of my gown, found that I was laughing and giving my hand to him, and dancing with him as if he were an ordinary man and I little more than a kitchen maid at a country romp.

When the signal for the unmasking should have come the king cried out: ‘Play on! Let’s dance some more!’ and instead of turning and taking another partner he led me out again, a country dance when we went hand to hand and I could see his eyes gleaming at me through the slits in his golden mask. Reckless and laughing, I smiled back up at him and let that sunny approbation sink into my skin.

‘I envy your husband when your dress comes off tonight, you will shower him with sweets,’ he said in an undertone when the dance brought us side by side as we watched another couple in the centre of the ring.

I could not think of a witty reply, these were not the formal compliments of courtly love. The image of a husband being showered with sweets was too domestic, and too erotic.

‘Surely you should envy nothing,’ I said. ‘Surely everything is all yours.’

‘Why would that be?’ he asked.

‘Because you are king,’ I started, forgetting that he was supposed to be in impenetrable disguise. ‘King of Chateau Vert,’ I recovered. ‘King for a day. It should be King Henry who envies you, for you have won a great siege in one afternoon.’

‘And what d’you think of King Henry?’

I looked up at him, my innocent look. ‘He is the greatest king that this country has ever known. It is an honour to be at his court and a privilege to be near him.’

‘Could you love him as a man?’

I looked down and blushed. ‘I would not dare to think of it. He has never so much as glanced towards me.’

‘Oh he has glanced,’ the king said firmly. ‘You can be sure of that. And if he glanced more than once, Miss Kindness, would you be true to your name and be kind to him?’

‘Your …’ I bit my lip and stopped myself saying: ‘Your Majesty’. I looked around for Anne; more than anything, I wanted her by my side and her wits at my service.

‘You are named Kindness,’ he reminded me.

I smiled at him, peeping up through my golden mask. ‘I am,’ I said. ‘And I suppose I should have to be kind.’

The musicians finished the dance and waited, poised for the king’s orders. ‘Unmask!’ he said and tore his own mask off his face. I saw the king of England, gave a wonderful little gasp and staggered.

‘She’s fainting!’ George cried out, it was beautifully done. I fell into the king’s arms as Anne, fast as a snake, unpinned my mask, and – brilliantly – pulled off my headdress so that my golden hair tumbled down like a stream over the king’s arm.

I opened my eyes, his face was very close. I could smell the perfume on his hair, his breath was on my cheek, I watched his lips, he was close enough to kiss me.

‘You have to be kind to me,’ he reminded me.

‘You are the king …’ I said incredulously.

‘And you have promised to be kind to me.’

‘I didn’t know it was you, Your Majesty.’

He lifted me gently and carried me over to the window. He opened it himself and the cold air blew in. I tossed my head and let my hair ripple in the draught.

‘Did you faint for fright?’ he asked, his voice very low.

I looked down at my hands. ‘For delight,’ I whispered, as sweet as a virgin in confession.

He bent his head and kissed my hands and then rose to his feet. ‘And now we dine!’ he called out.

I looked over to Anne. She was untying her mask and watching me with a long calculating look, the Boleyn look, the Howard look that says: what has happened here, and how may I turn it to my advantage? It was as if under her golden mask was another beautiful mask of skin, and only beneath that was the real woman. As I looked back at her she gave me a small secret smile.

The king gave his arm to the queen, she rose from her chair as gay as if she had been enjoying watching her husband flirt with me; but as he turned to lead her away she paused and her blue eyes looked long and hard at me, as if she were saying goodbye to a friend.

‘I hope you will soon recover from your faintness, Mistress Carey,’ she said gently. ‘Perhaps you should go to your room.’

‘I think she is light-headed from lack of food,’ George interposed quickly. ‘May I bring her in to dine?’

Anne stepped forward. ‘The king frightened her when he unmasked. No-one guessed for a moment that it was you, Your Majesty!’

The king laughed in delight, and the court laughed with him. Only the queen heard how the three of us had turned her order so that despite her declared wishes, I would be brought in to dine. She measured the strength of the three of us. I was no Bessie Blount, who was next to nobody; I was a Boleyn, and the Boleyns worked together.

‘Come and dine with us then, Mary,’ she said. The words were inviting but there was no warmth in them at all.

We were to sit where we pleased, the knights of the Chateau Vert and the ladies, all mixed up informally at a round table. Cardinal Wolsey as the host sat opposite the king with the queen at the third point on the table and the rest of us scattered where we chose. George put me next to him and Anne summoned my husband to her side and diverted him, while the king, seated opposite me, stared at me and I, carefully, looked away. On Anne’s right was Henry Percy of Northumberland, on George’s other side was Jane Parker, watching me intently, as if she were trying to discover the trick of being a desirable girl.

I ate only a little, though there were pies and pasties and fine meats and game. I took a little salad, the queen’s favourite dish, and drank wine and water. My father joined the table during the meal and sat beside my mother who whispered quickly in his ear and I saw his glance flick over me, like a horse-trader assessing the value of a filly. Whenever I looked up the king’s eyes were on me, whenever I looked away I was conscious of his stare still on my face.

When we had finished, the cardinal suggested that we go to the hall and listen to some music. Anne was at my side and steered me down the stairs so that when the king arrived the two of us were seated on a bench against the wall. It was easy and natural for him to pause to ask me how I did now. Natural that Anne and I should stand as he came past us, and that he should sit on the vacant bench and invite me to sit beside him. Anne drifted away and chattered to Henry Percy, shielding the king and me from the court, most especially from the smiling gaze of Queen Katherine. My father went up to speak to her while the musicians played. It was all done with complete ease and comfort, and it meant that the king and I were all but concealed in a crowded room with music loud enough to drown our whispered conversation, and every member of the Boleyn family well placed to hide what was going on.

‘You are better now?’ he asked me in an undertone.

‘Never better in all my life, sire.’

‘I am riding out tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Would you care to come with me?’

‘If Her Majesty can spare me,’ I said, determined not to risk the queen’s displeasure.

‘I will ask the queen to release you for the morning. I shall tell her that you need the fresh air.’

I smiled. ‘What a fine physician you would make, Your Majesty. If you can make a diagnosis and provide the cure all in the space of a day.’

‘You must be an obedient patient and do whatever I advise,’ he warned me.

‘I will.’ I looked down at my fingers. I could feel his gaze on me. I was soaring, higher than I could have dreamed.

‘I may order you to bed for days at a time,’ he said, his voice very low.

I snatched a quick look at his intense gaze on my face and felt myself blush and heard myself stammer into silence. The music abruptly stopped. ‘Do play again!’ my mother said. Queen Katherine looked around for the king and saw him seated with me. ‘Shall we dance?’ she asked.

It was a royal command. Anne and Henry Percy took their places in a set, the musicians started to play. I rose to my feet and Henry went to sit beside his wife and watch us. George was my partner.

‘Head up,’ he snapped as he took my hand. ‘You look hangdog.’

‘She’s watching me,’ I whispered back.

‘Course she is. More to the point he’s watching you. And most important of all, Father and Uncle Howard are watching you, and they expect you to carry yourself as a young woman on the rise. Up you go, Mistress Carey, and all of us go up with you.’

I raised my head at that and I smiled at my brother as if I were carefree. I danced as gracefully as I could, I dipped and turned and twirled under his careful hand. And when I looked up at the king and the queen they were both watching me.

They held a family conference at my uncle Howard’s great house in London. We met in his library where the dark bound books muffled the noise from the streets. Two men in our Howard livery were stationed outside the door to prevent any interruptions, and to ensure that no-one stopped and eavesdropped. We were to discuss family business, family secrets. No-one but a Howard could come near.

I was the very cause and subject of the meeting. I was the hub around which these events would turn. I was the Boleyn pawn that must be played to advantage. Everything was concentrated on me. I felt my very wrists throb with a sense of my own importance, and a contradictory flutter of anxiety that I would fail them.

‘Is she fertile?’ Uncle Howard asked my mother.

‘Her courses are regular enough and she’s a healthy girl.’

My uncle nodded. ‘If the king has her, and she conceives his bastard, then we have much to play for.’ I noticed with a sort of terrified concentration that the fur on the hem of his sleeves brushed against the wood of the table, the richness of his coat took on a lustre from the light of the flames of the fire behind him. ‘She can’t sleep in Carey’s bed any more. The marriage has to be put aside while the king favours her.’

I gave a little gasp. I could not think who would say such a thing to my husband. And besides, we had sworn that we would stay together, that marriage was for the making of children, that God had put us together and no man could put us apart.

‘I don’t …’ I started.

Anne tweaked at my gown. ‘Hush,’ she hissed. The seed pearls on her French hood winked at me like bright-eyed conspirators.

‘I’ll speak to Carey,’ my father said.

George took my hand. ‘If you conceive a child the king has to know that it is his and none other’s.’

‘I can’t be his mistress,’ I whispered back.

‘No choice.’ He shook his head.

‘I can’t do it,’ I said out loud. I gripped tightly on my brother’s comforting clasp and looked down the long dark wood table to my uncle, as sharp as a falcon with black eyes that missed nothing. ‘Sir, I am sorry, but I love the queen. She’s a great lady and I can’t betray her. I promised before God to cleave only to my husband, and surely I shouldn’t betray him? I know the king is the king; but you can’t want me to? Surely? Sir, I can’t do it.’

He did not answer me. Such was his power that he did not even consider replying. ‘What am I supposed to do with this delicate conscience?’ he asked the air above the table.

‘Leave it to me,’ Anne said simply. ‘I can explain things to Mary.’

‘You’re a little young for the task of tutor.’

She met his look with her quiet confidence. ‘I was reared in the most fashionable court in the world,’ she said. ‘And I was not idle. I watched everything. I learned all there was to see. I know what is needed here, and I can teach Mary how to behave.’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘You had better not have studied flirtation too closely, Miss Anne.’

Her serenity was that of a nun. ‘Of course not.’

I felt my shoulder lift, as if I would shrug her away. ‘I don’t see why I should do what Anne says.’

I had disappeared, though this whole meeting was supposed to be about me. Anne had stolen their attention. ‘Well, I shall trust you to coach your sister. George, you too. You know how the king is with women, keep Mary in his sight.’

They nodded. There was a brief silence.

‘I’ll speak with Carey’s father,’ my father volunteered. ‘William will be expecting it. He’s no fool.’

My uncle glanced down the table to Anne and George where they stood either side of me, more like jailers than friends. ‘You help your sister,’ he ordered them. ‘Whatever she needs to ensnare the king, you give her. Whatever arts she needs, whatever goods she should have, whatever skills she lacks, you get them for her. We are looking to the two of you to get her into his bed. Don’t forget it. There will be great rewards. But if you fail, there will be nothing for us at all. Remember it.’

My parting with my husband was curiously painful. I walked into our bedroom as my maid was packing my things to take them to the queen’s rooms. He stood amid the chaos of shoes and gowns thrown on the bed, and cloaks tossed over chairs, and jewel boxes everywhere; and his young face showed his shock.

‘I see you are on the rise, madam.’

He was a handsome young man, one that any woman might have favoured. I thought that if we had not been ordered by our families into this marriage and now out of it that we might have liked each other. ‘I am sorry,’ I said awkwardly. ‘You know that I have to do what my uncle and my father tell me.’

‘I know that,’ he said bluntly. ‘I have to do what they all order as well.’

To my relief, Anne appeared in the doorway, her mischievous smile very bright. ‘How now, William Carey? Well met!’ It seemed as if it were her greatest joy to see her brother-in-law amid the mess of my things and the wreckage of his own hopes for a marriage and a son.

‘Anne Boleyn.’ He bowed briefly. ‘Have you come to help your sister onwards and upwards?’

‘Of course.’ She gleamed at him. ‘As we all should do. None of us will suffer if Mary is favoured.’

She held his gaze for one fearless moment, and it was he who turned away to look out of the window. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘The king bids me to go hunting with him.’ He hesitated a moment and then he came across the room to where I stood surrounded by the scatterings of my wardrobe. Gently, he took my hand and kissed it. ‘I am sorry for you. And I am sorry for me. When you are sent back to me, perhaps a month from now, perhaps a year, I will try to remember this day, and you looking like a child, a little lost among all these clothes. I will try to remember that you were innocent of any plotting; that today at least, you were more a girl than a Boleyn.’

The queen observed that I was now a single woman, lodged with Anne as my bedfellow in a little room off her chambers, without comment. Her outward manner to me changed not at all. She remained courteous and quiet-spoken. If she wanted me to do something for her: write a note, sing, take her lap dog from the room, or send a message, she asked me as politely as she had ever done. But she never again asked me to read to her from the Bible, she never asked me to sit at her feet while she sewed, she never blessed me when I went to bed. I was no longer her favourite little maid.

It was a relief to go to bed at night with Anne. We drew the curtains around us so that we were safe to whisper in the shadowy darkness without being overheard and it was like France in the days of our childhood. Sometimes George would leave the king’s rooms and come to find us, and climb onto the high bed, balance his candle perilously on the bedhead, and bring out his pack of cards or his dice and play with us while the other girls in nearby rooms slept, not knowing that a man was hidden in our chamber.

They did not lecture me about the role I was to play. Cunningly, they waited for me to come to them and tell them that it was beyond me.

I said nothing while my clothes were moved from one end of the palace to the other. I said nothing when the whole court packed and moved to the king’s favourite palace, Eltham in Kent, for the spring. I said nothing when my husband rode beside me during the progress and talked to me kindly of the weather and the condition of my horse, which was Jane Parker’s, lent under protest, as her contribution to the family ambition. But when I had George and Anne to myself in the garden at Eltham Palace, I said to George:

‘I don’t think I can do this.’

‘Do what?’ he asked unhelpfully. We were supposed to be walking the queen’s dog, which had been carried on the pommel of the saddle for the day’s ride and was thoroughly jolted and sick-looking. ‘Come on, Flo!’ he said encouragingly. ‘Seek! Seek!’

‘I can’t be with my husband and the king at the same time,’ I said. ‘I can’t laugh with the king when my husband is watching.’

‘Why not?’ Anne rolled a ball along the ground for Flo to chase after. The little dog watched it go without interest. ‘Oh go on, you stupid thing!’ Anne exclaimed.

‘Because I feel all wrong.’

‘D’you know better than your mother?’ Anne asked bluntly.

‘Of course not!’

‘Better than your father? Your uncle?’

I shook my head.

‘They are planning a great future for you,’ Anne said solemnly. ‘Any girl in England would die for your chances. You are on the way to becoming the favourite of the king of England, and you are simpering round the garden wondering if you can laugh at his jokes? You’ve got about as much sense as Flo here.’ She put the tip of her riding boot under Flo’s unwilling arse and pushed her gently along the path. Flo sat down, as stubborn and as unhappy as me.

‘Gently,’ George cautioned her. He took my cold hand and tucked it in the crook of his elbow. ‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ he said. ‘William was riding with you today to show that he gives his consent, not to make you feel guilty. He knows that the king must have his way. We all know that. William’s happy enough about it. There will be favours for him which you will have been the means of his getting. You’re doing your duty by him by advancing his family. He’s grateful to you. You’re not doing anything wrong.’

I hesitated. I looked from George’s brown honest eyes to Anne’s averted face. ‘There’s another thing,’ I said, forced to confess.

‘What is it?’ George asked. Anne’s eyes followed Flo but I knew that her attention was turned on me.

‘I don’t know how to do it,’ I said quietly. ‘You know, William did it once a week or so, and that in the dark, and quickly done, and I never much liked it. I don’t know what it is I am supposed to do.’

George gave a little gulp of laughter and put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to laugh. But you have it all wrong. He doesn’t want a woman who knows what to do. There are dozens of them in every bath house in the City. He wants you. It’s you he likes. And he’ll like it if you are a little shy and a little uncertain. That’s all right.’

‘Hulloah!’ came a shout from behind us. ‘The Three Boleyns!’

We turned and there was the king on the upper terrace, still dressed in his travelling cloak with his hat rakishly set on his head.

‘Here we go.’ George swept a low bow. Anne and I sank down into our curtseys together.

‘Are you not tired from your ride?’ the king asked. The question was general but he was looking at me.

‘Not at all.’

‘That’s a pretty little mare you were riding, but too short in the back. I shall give you a new horse,’ he said.

‘Your Majesty is very kind,’ I said. ‘She’s a borrowed horse. I should be glad to have a horse of my own.’

‘You shall pick out your choice in the stables,’ he said. ‘Come, we can go and look now.’

He held out his arm to me and I put my fingers gently on the rich cloth of his sleeve.

‘I can hardly feel you.’ He put his hand on my own and pressed it tighter. ‘There. I want to know that I have you, Mistress Carey.’ His eyes were very blue and bright, he took in the top of my French hood and then my golden-brown hair, smoothed back under the hood, and then my face. ‘I do want to know that I have you.’

I felt my mouth go dry and I smiled, despite the breathless feeling that was something between fear and desire. ‘I am happy to be with you.’

‘Are you?’ he asked, suddenly intent. ‘Are you really? I want no false coin from you. There are many who would urge you to be with me. I want you to come of your own free will.’

‘Oh Your Majesty! As if I did not dance with you at Cardinal Wolsey’s revels without even knowing that it was you!’

He was pleased with the recollection. ‘Oh yes! And you all but fainted when I unmasked and you discovered me. Who did you think it was?’

‘I didn’t think. I know it was foolish of me. I thought you were perhaps a stranger in court, a new and handsome stranger, and I was so pleased to be dancing with you.’

He laughed. ‘Oh Mistress Carey, such a sweet face and such naughty thoughts! You hoped that a handsome stranger had come to court and chose to dance with you?’

‘I don’t mean to be naughty.’ I was afraid for a moment that it was too sugary even for his taste. ‘I just forgot how I should behave when you asked me to dance. I am sure I would never do anything wrong. There was just a moment when I –’

‘When you?’

‘When I forgot,’ I said softly.

We reached the stone archway which led into the stables. The king paused in the shelter of the arch and turned me towards him. I could feel myself alive in every part of my body, from my riding boots, slippery on the cobblestones, to my upward glance at his face.

‘Would you forget again?’

I hesitated, and then Anne stepped forward and said lightly: ‘What horse does Your Majesty have in mind for my sister? I think you’ll find she’s a good horsewoman.’

He led the way into the stables, releasing me for a moment. George and he looked at one horse and then another. Anne came to my side.

‘You have to keep him coming forward,’ she said. ‘Keep him coming forward but never let him think that you come forward yourself. He wants to feel that he is pursuing you, not that you are entrapping him. When he gives you the choice of coming forward or running away, like then – you must always run away.’

The king turned and smiled at me as George told a stable boy to lead a handsome bay horse from the stall. ‘But don’t run too fast,’ my sister warned. ‘Remember he has to catch you.’

I danced with the king that evening before the whole of the court, and the next day I rode my new horse at his side when we went hunting. The queen, seated at the high table, watched us dance together, and when we rode out she waved farewell to him from the great door of the palace. Everyone knew that he was courting me, everyone knew that I would consent when I was ordered to do so. The only person who did not know this was the king. He thought that the pace of the courtship was determined by his desire.

The first rent day came a few weeks later in April when my father was appointed treasurer of the king’s household, a post which brought him access to the king’s daily wealth which he could peculate as he thought best. My father met me as we went in to dinner, and took me from the queen’s train for a quiet word as Her Majesty went to her place at the top table.

‘Your uncle and I are pleased with you,’ he said briefly. ‘Be guided by your brother and sister, they tell me that you are doing well.’

I bobbed a little curtsey.

‘This is just the start for us,’ he reminded me. ‘You’ve got to have him and hold him, remember.’

I flinched a little from the words of the wedding mass. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I don’t forget.’

‘Has he done anything yet?’

I glanced towards the great hall where the king and the queen were taking their place. The trumpeters were in position to announce the arrival of the procession of servers from the kitchen.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Just eyes and words.’

‘And you reply?’

‘With smiles.’ I did not tell my father that I was half-delirious with pleasure at being courted by the most powerful man in the kingdom. It was not hard to follow my sister’s advice and smile and smile at him. It was not hard to blush and feel that I wanted to run away and at the same time wanted to draw closer.

My father nodded. ‘Good enough. You may go to your place.’

I curtsied again and hurried into the hall just ahead of the servers. The queen looked at me a little sharply, as if she might reprimand me, but then she glanced sideways and caught sight of her husband’s face. His expression was fixed, his gaze locked onto me, as I made my way up the hall and took my place among the ladies in waiting. It was an odd expression, intent, as if for a moment he could see nothing and hear nothing, as if the whole of the great hall had melted away for him and all he could see was me in my blue gown with my blue hood and my fair hair smoothed away off my face, and a smile trembling on my lips as I felt his desire. The queen took in the heat of his look, pressed her lips together, smiled her thin smile, and looked away.

He came to her rooms that evening. ‘Shall we have some music?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, Mistress Carey can sing for us,’ she said pleasantly, gesturing me forward.

‘Her sister Anne has the sweeter voice,’ the king countermanded. Anne threw me a swift triumphant glance.

‘Will you sing us one of your French songs, Miss Anne?’ the king asked.

Anne swept one of her graceful curtsies. ‘Your Majesty has only to command,’ she said, the hint of the French accent strong in her voice.

The queen watched this exchange, I could see that she was wondering if the king’s fancy was moving to another Boleyn girl. But he had outwitted her. Anne sat on a stool in the middle of the room, her lute on her lap, her voice sweet – as he said, sweeter than mine. The queen sat in her usual chair, with padded embroidered arms and a cushioned back which she never leaned against. The king did not take the matching chair beside hers, he strolled over to me and took Anne’s vacated space, and glanced at the sewing in my hands.

‘Very fine work,’ he remarked.

‘Shirts for the poor,’ I said. ‘The queen is good to the poor.’

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘How quickly your needle goes in and out, I should make such a knot of it. How tiny and deft your fingers are.’

His head was bent towards my hands, I found I was looking at the base of his neck and thinking that I should like to touch the thick curling hair.

‘Your hands must be half the size of mine,’ he said idly. ‘Stretch them out and show me.’

I stabbed the needle into the shirts for the poor people and stretched out my hand to show him, palm up, towards him. His gaze never left my face as he put his hand out too, palm to palm towards mine yet not touching. I could feel the warmth of his hand against my hand, but I could not take my eyes from his face. His moustache curled a little around his lips, I wondered if the hair would be soft, like my husband’s dark sparse curls, or wiry like spun gold. It looked as if it might be strong and scratchy, his kiss might buff my face to redness, everyone would know we had been kissing. Beneath the little curls of hair his lips were sensual, I could not take my eyes from them, I could not help but think about the touch of them, the taste of them.

Slowly, he brought his hand closer to mine, like dancers closing in a pavane. The heel of his hand touched the heel of mine and I felt the touch like a bite. I jumped a little and I saw his lips curve as he saw that his touch was a shock to me. My cool palm and fingers extended along his, my fingers stopping short of his at the top joints. I felt the sensation of his warm skin, a callus on one finger from archery, the hard palms of a man who rides and plays tennis and hunts and can hold a lance and a sword all the day. I dragged my gaze from his lips and took in his whole face, the bright alertness of his gaze focused on me like a sun through a burning glass, the desire which radiated from him like heat.

‘Your skin is so soft.’ His voice was as low as a whisper. ‘And your hands are tiny, as I thought.’

The excuse of measuring the span of our fingers had long been exhausted, but we remained still, palm to palm, eyes on each other’s face. Then slowly, irresistibly, his hand cupped around mine and he held it, gently but firmly within his own.

Anne finished one song and started another, without a change of key, without a break in her voice, keeping the spell of the moment.

It was the queen who interrupted. ‘Your Majesty is disturbing Mistress Carey,’ she said, with a little laugh as if the sight of her husband handfast with another woman, twenty-three years her junior, was amusing. ‘Your friend William will not thank you for making his wife idle. She has promised to hem these shirts for the nuns at Whitchurch nunnery and they are not half done.’

He let me go and turned his head to his wife. ‘William will forgive me,’ he said carelessly.

‘I am going to have a game of cards,’ the queen said. ‘Will you play with me, husband?’

For a moment I thought she had done it, drawn him away from me by his long-established affection. But as he rose to his feet to do as she wanted, he glanced back and saw me looking up at him. There was almost no calculation in my look – almost none. I was nothing more than a young woman gazing up at a man, with desire in her eyes.

‘I shall have Mistress Carey as my partner. Shall you send for George and have another Boleyn for your partner? We could have a matched pair.’

‘Jane Parker can play with me,’ the queen said coolly.

‘You did that very well,’ Anne said that night. She was seated by the fire in our bedroom, brushing her long dark hair, her head tipped to the side so that it fell like a scented waterfall over her shoulder. ‘The bit with the hands was very good. What were you doing?’

‘He was measuring his hand span against mine,’ I said. I finished the plait of my fair hair and pulled my nightcap on my head and tied the white ribbon. ‘When our hands touched I felt …’

‘What?’

‘It was like my skin was on fire,’ I whispered. ‘Really. Like his touch could burn me.’

Anne looked at me sceptically. ‘What d’you mean?’

The words spilled out of my mouth. ‘I want him to touch me. I am absolutely dying for him to touch me. I want his kiss.’

Anne was incredulous. ‘You desire him?’

I wrapped my arms around myself and sank onto the stone windowseat. ‘Oh God. Yes. I didn’t realise this was where I was going. Oh yes. Oh yes.’

She grimaced, her mouth pulled down. ‘You’d better not let Father and Mother hear that,’ she warned. ‘They’ve ordered you to play a clever game, not moon around like a lovesick girl at twilight.’

‘But don’t you think he wants me?’

‘Oh, for the moment, yes. But next week? Next year?’

There was a tap on our bedroom door and George put his head around it. ‘Can I come in?’

‘All right,’ Anne said ungraciously. ‘But you can’t stay long. We’re going to bed.’

‘I am too,’ he said. ‘I’ve been drinking with Father. I am going to bed and tomorrow, when I am sober, I shall arise early and hang myself.’

I hardly heard him, I was staring out of the window and thinking of the touch of Henry’s hand against my own.

‘Why?’ Anne asked.

‘My wedding is to be next year. Envy me, why don’t you?’

‘Everyone gets married but me,’ Anne said irritably. ‘The Ormondes have fallen through and they have nothing else for me. Do they want me to be a nun?’

‘Not a bad choice,’ George said. ‘D’you think they’d take me?’

‘In a nunnery?’ I caught the sense of the talk and turned around to laugh at him. ‘A fine abbess you’d make.’

‘Better than most,’ George said cheerfully. He went to sit on a stool, missed his seat and thudded down on the stone floor.

‘You’re drunk,’ I accused.

‘Aye. And sour with it.’

‘There’s something about my future wife that strikes me as very odd,’ George said. ‘Something a little …’ he searched for the word. ‘Rancid.’

‘Nonsense,’ Anne said. ‘She’s got an excellent dowry and good connections, she’s favourite of the queen and her father is respected and rich. Why worry?’

‘Because she’s got a mouth like a rabbit snare, and eyes that are hot and cold at the same time.’

Anne laughed. ‘Poet.’

‘I know what George means,’ I said. ‘She’s passionate and somehow secretive.’

‘Just discreet,’ Anne said.

George shook his head. ‘Hot and cold at once. All the humours muddled up together. I shall live a dog’s life with her.’

‘Oh marry her and bed her and send her to the country,’ Anne said impatiently. ‘You’re a man, you can do what you like.’

He looked more cheerful at that. ‘I could push her down to Hever,’ he said.

‘Or Rochford Hall. And the king’s bound to give you a new estate on your marriage.’

George raised his stone decanter to his lips. ‘Anyone want some of this?’

‘I will,’ I said, taking the bottle and tasting the tart cold red wine.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Anne said primly. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Mary, drinking in your nightcap.’ She turned back the covers and climbed into bed. She inspected George and me as she folded the sheets around her hips. ‘Both of you are a good deal too easy,’ she ruled.

George pulled a face. ‘Told us,’ he said cheerfully to me.

‘She’s very strict,’ I whispered in mock-respect. ‘You’d never think she spent half her life flirting in the French court.’

‘More Spanish than French, I think,’ George said, wantonly provocative.

‘And unmarried,’ I whispered. ‘A Spanish duenna.’

Anne lay down on the pillow, hunched her shoulders and pulled the covers into place. ‘I’m not listening, so you can save your breath.’

‘Who’d have her?’ George demanded. ‘Who’d want her?’

‘They’ll find her someone,’ I said. ‘Some younger son, or some poor old broken-down squire.’ I gave the flask to George.

‘You’ll see,’ came from the bed. ‘I’ll make a better marriage than either of you. And if they don’t forge me one soon, I’ll do it for myself.’

George passed the stone flask back to me. ‘Drain it,’ he said. ‘I’ve had more than enough.’

I finished the last swig of drink and went round to the other side of the bed. ‘Goodnight,’ I said to George.

‘I’ll sit here awhile beside the fire,’ he said. ‘We are doing well, aren’t we, us Boleyns? Me betrothed, and you on your way to bedding the king, and little Mademoiselle Parfait here free on the market with everything to play for?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We are doing well.’

I thought of the intent blue gaze of the king on my face, the way his eyes travelled from the top of my headdress down to the top of my gown. I turned my face into the pillow so that neither of them could hear me. ‘Henry,’ I whispered. ‘Your Majesty. My love.’

Next day there was to be a joust in the gardens of a house a little distance from Eltham Palace. Fearson House had been built in the last reign by one of the many hard men who had come to their wealth under the king’s father, himself the hardest man of them all. It was a big grand house, free of any castle wall or moat. Sir John Lovick had believed that England was at peace forever and built a house which would not be defended, indeed which could not be defended. His gardens were laid around the house like a chequerboard of green and white: white stones and paths and borders around low knot gardens of green bay. Beyond them lay the park where he ran deer for hunting, and between the park and the gardens was a beautiful lawn kept ready all the year round for the king’s use as a jousting green.

The tent for the queen and her ladies was hung in cherry-red and white silk, the queen was wearing a cherry gown to match and she looked young and rosy in the bright colour. I was in green, the gown I had worn at the Shrove Tuesday masque when the king singled me out from all the others. The colour made my hair glow more golden and my eyes shone. I stood beside the queen’s chair and knew that any man looking from her to me would think that she was a fine woman, but old enough to be my mother, while I was a woman of only fourteen, a woman ready to fall in love, a woman ready to feel desire, a precocious woman, a flowering girl.

The first three jousts were among the lower men of the court, hoping to attract attention by risking their necks. They were skilled enough, there were a couple of exciting passes, and one good moment when the smaller man unhorsed a bigger rival which made the common people cheer. The little man dismounted and took off his helmet to acknowledge the applause. He was handsome, slight and fair-haired. Anne nudged me. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Only one of the Seymour boys.’

The queen turned her head. ‘Mistress Carey, would you go and ask the master of the horse when my husband is riding today and what horse he has chosen?’

I turned to do her bidding, and I saw why she was sending me away. The king was coming slowly across the grass towards our pavilion and she wanted me out of his way. I curtsied and dawdled to the doorway, timing my departure so that he saw me hesitating under the awning. At once he excused himself from a conversation and hurried over. His armour was polished bright as silver, the trimming on it was gold. The leather straps holding his breastplate and armguards were red and smooth as velvet. He looked taller, a commanding hero from long-ago wars. The sun shining on him made the metal burn with light so that I had to step back into the shade and put my hand up to my eyes.

‘Mistress Carey, in Lincoln green.’

‘You are all bright,’ I said.

‘You would be dazzling if you were in the darkest of blacks.’

I said nothing. I just looked at him. If Anne or George had been close by they could have prompted me with some compliment. But I was empty of wit, it was all crowded out by desire. I could say and do nothing but just look at him and know that my face was full of longing. And he said nothing too. We stood, gazes locked, intently interrogating each other’s faces as if we might understand the other’s desire from his eyes.

‘I must see you alone,’ he said finally.

I did not coquet. ‘Your Majesty, I cannot.’

‘You don’t want to?’

‘I dare not.’

He took in a deep breath at that, as if he would sniff out lust itself. ‘You could trust me.’

I tore my eyes from his face and looked away, seeing nothing. ‘I dare not,’ I said again simply.

He reached out and took my hand to his lips and kissed it. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my fingers and, at last, the gentle stroke of the curls of his moustache.

‘Oh, soft.’

He looked up from my hand. ‘Soft?’

‘The touch of your moustache,’ I explained. ‘I have been wondering how it felt.’

‘You have been wondering how my moustache felt?’ he asked.

I could feel my cheeks growing warm. ‘Yes.’

‘If you were kissed by me?’

I dropped my gaze to my feet so that I should not see the brightness of his blue eyes, and gave a little imperceptible nod.

‘You have been wishing to be kissed by me?’

I looked up at that. ‘Your Majesty, I have to go,’ I said desperately. ‘The queen sent me on an errand and she will wonder where I am.’

‘Where did she bid you go?’

‘To your master of horse, to find out what horse you are riding and when you are to ride.’

‘I can tell her that myself. Why should you walk around in the burning sun?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s no trouble to me to go for her.’

He made a little tutting noise. ‘And she has servants enough to run around the jousting green, God knows. She has a full Spanish retinue while I am begrudged my little court.’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anne coming through the hangings of the queen’s room and freeze as she saw the king and me close together.

Gently he released me. ‘I shall go to see her now and answer her questions about my horses. What will you do?’

‘I’ll come in a moment,’ I said. ‘I need to take a little moment before I go back in, I feel all …’ I broke off at the impossibility of describing what I was feeling.

He looked at me tenderly. ‘You’re very young to be playing this game, aren’t you? Boleyn or no Boleyn. They’ll be telling you what to do and putting you in my way, I suppose.’

I would have confessed to the family’s plot to ensnare him but for Anne, waiting in the shadows of the jousting tent. With her watching me, I just shook my head. ‘It’s no game to me.’ I looked away, I let my lip tremble. ‘I promise you, it’s no game to me, Your Majesty.’

His hand came up, he took my chin and turned my face towards him. For one breathless moment I thought with dread and with delight that he was going to kiss me, in front of everyone.

‘Are you afraid of me?’

I shook my head and resisted the temptation to turn my face to his hand. ‘I am afraid of what may happen.’

‘Between us?’ He smiled, the confident smile of a man who knows that the woman he desires is only moments away from his arms. ‘Nothing bad will come to you for loving me, Mary. You can have my word on it, if you like. You will be my mistress, you will be my little queen.’

I gasped at that potent word.

‘Give me your scarf, I want to wear your favour while I joust,’ he said suddenly.

I looked around. ‘I can’t give it to you here.’

‘Send it to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell George to come to you, give it to him. I won’t wear it so it shows. I’ll tuck it into my breastplate. I’ll wear it against my heart.’

I nodded.

‘So you give me your favour?’

‘If you wish,’ I whispered.

‘I wish it so much,’ he said. He bowed and turned towards the entrance of the queen’s tent. My sister Anne had disappeared like a helpful ghost.

I gave them all a few minutes and then I went back into the tent myself. The queen gave me a sharp interrogatory look. I sank into a curtsey. ‘I saw the king coming to answer your questions himself, Your Majesty,’ I said sweetly. ‘So I came back.’

‘You should have sent a servant in the first place,’ the king said abruptly. ‘Mistress Carey should not be running round the jousting ground in this sun. It’s far too hot.’

The queen hesitated for only a moment. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘It was thoughtless of me.’

‘It’s not me you should apologise to,’ he said pointedly.

I thought she would balk at that, and from the tension in Anne’s body at my side I knew that she too was waiting to see what a Princess of Spain and a Queen of England would do next.

‘I am sorry if I inconvenienced you, Mistress Carey,’ the queen said levelly.

I felt no triumph at all. I looked across the richly carpeted tent at a woman old enough to be my mother and felt nothing but pity for the pain I would cause her. For a moment I did not even see the king, I saw only the two of us, bound to be each other’s grief.

‘It is a pleasure to serve you, Queen Katherine,’ I said, and I meant it.

For a moment she looked at me as if she understood some of what was in my mind and then she turned to her husband. ‘And are your horses fit for today?’ she asked. ‘Are you confident, Your Majesty?’

‘It’s me or Suffolk today,’ he said.

‘You will be careful, sire?’ she said softly. ‘There’s no harm in losing to a rider like the duke; and it would be the end of the kingdom if anything happened to you.’

It was a loving thought, but he took it with no grace at all. ‘It would be indeed, since we have no son.’

She flinched and I saw the colour go from her face. ‘There is time,’ she said, her voice so quiet that I could hardly hear it. ‘There is still time …’

‘Not much,’ he said flatly. He turned away from her. ‘I must go and get ready.’

He went past me without a glance, though Anne and I and all the other ladies sank down into a curtsey as he passed by. When I rose up the queen was looking towards me, not as if I were a rival, but as if I were still her favourite little maid in waiting who might bring her some comfort. She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.

George strolled into the room and kneeled before the queen with his easy grace. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘I have come to visit the fairest lady in Kent, in England and the world.’

‘Oh George Boleyn, rise up,’ she said, smiling.

‘I would rather die at your feet,’ he offered.

She gave him a little tap on the hand with her fan. ‘No, but you can give me odds for the king’s joust if you want.’

‘Who would bet against him? He is the finest of horsemen. I will give you a wager of five to two against the second joust. Seymours against Howards. There’s no doubt in my mind of the winner.’

‘You would offer me a bet on the Seymours?’ the queen asked.

‘Have them carry your blessing? Never,’ George said quickly. ‘I would have you bet on my cousin Howard, Your Majesty. Then you can be sure of winning, you can be sure of betting on one of the finest and most loyal families in the country, and you can have tremendous odds as well.’

She laughed at that. ‘You are an exquisite courtier indeed. How much do you want to lose to me?’

‘Shall we say five crowns?’ George asked.

‘Done!’

‘I’ll take a bet,’ Jane Parker said suddenly.

George’s smile vanished. ‘I could not offer you such odds, Mistress Parker,’ he said civilly. ‘For you have all my fortune at your command.’

It was still the language of courtly love, the constant flirtatiousness which went on in the royal circles night and day and sometimes meant everything, but more often than not meant nothing at all.

‘I’d just like to bet a couple of crowns.’ Jane was trying to engage George in the witty flattering conversation that he could do so well. Anne and I watched her critically, not disposed to help her with our brother.

‘If I lose to Her Majesty – and you will see how graciously she will impoverish me – then I will have nothing for any other,’ George said. ‘Indeed, whenever I am with Her Majesty I have nothing for any other. No money, no heart, no eyes.’

‘For shame,’ the queen interrupted. ‘You say this to your betrothed?’

George bowed to her. ‘We are betrothed stars circling a beautiful moon,’ he said. ‘The greatest beauty makes everything else dim.’

‘Oh run away,’ the queen said. ‘Go and twinkle elsewhere, my little star Boleyn.’

George bowed and went to the back of the tent. I drifted after him. ‘Give it me quick,’ he said tersely. ‘He’s riding next.’

I had a yard of white silk trimming the top of my dress, which I took and pulled through the green loops until it was free and then handed it to George. He whisked it into his pocket.

‘Jane sees us,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘No matter. She’s tied to our interest whatever her opinion. I have to go.’

I nodded and went back into the tent as he left. The queen’s eyes rested briefly on the empty loops at the front of my gown, but she said nothing.

‘They’ll start in a moment,’ Jane said. ‘The king’s joust is next.’

I saw him helped into his saddle, two men supporting him as the weight of his armour nearly bore him down. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, the king’s brother-in-law, was arming also, and the two men rode out together and came past the entrance to the queen’s tent. The king dipped his lance in salute to her, and held it down as he rode past the length of the tent. It became a salute to me, the visor of his helmet was up, I could see him smile at me. There was a tiny flutter of white at the shoulder of his breastplate which I knew was the kerchief from my gown. The Duke of Suffolk rode behind him, dipped his lance to the queen and then stiffly nodded his head to me. Anne, standing behind me, gave a little indrawn breath.

‘Suffolk acknowledged you,’ she whispered.

‘I thought so.’

‘He did. He bowed his head. That means the king has spoken to him of you, or spoken to his sister Queen Mary, and she has told Suffolk. He’s serious. He must be serious.’

I glanced sideways. The queen was looking down the list where the king had halted his horse. The big charger was tossing his head and sidling while he waited for the trumpet blast. The king sat easily in the saddle, a little golden circlet round his helmet, his visor down, his lance held before him. The queen leaned forward to see. There was a trumpet blast and the two horses leaped forward as the spurs were driven into their sides. The two armoured men thundered towards each other, divots of earth flying out from the horses’ hooves. The lances were down like arrows flying to a target, the pennants on the end of each lance fluttering as the gap closed between them, then the king took a glancing blow which he caught on his shield, but his thrust at Suffolk slid under the shield and thudded into the breastplate. The shock of the blow threw Suffolk back off his horse and the weight of his armour did the rest, dragging him over the haunches, and he fell with an awful thud to the ground.

His wife leaped to her feet. ‘Charles!’ She whirled out of the queen’s pavilion, lifting her skirts, running like a common woman towards her husband as he lay unmoving on the grass.

‘I’d better go too.’ Anne hurried after her mistress.

I looked down the lists to the king. His squire was stripping him of his heavy armour. As the breastplate came off my white kerchief fluttered to the ground, he did not see it fall. They unstrapped the greaves from his legs and the guards from his arms and he pulled on a coat as he walked briskly up the lists to the ominously still body of his friend. Queen Mary was kneeling beside Suffolk, his head cradled in her arms. His squire was stripping off the heavy armour from his master as he lay there. Mary looked up as her brother came closer and she was smiling.

‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘He just swore an awful oath at Peter for pinching him with a buckle.’

Henry laughed. ‘God be praised!’

Two men carrying a stretcher ran forward. Suffolk sat up. ‘I can walk,’ he said. ‘Be damned if I’m carried from the field before I’m dead.’

‘Here,’ Henry said and heaved him to his feet. Another man came running to the other side and the two of them started to walk him away, his feet dragging and then stumbling to keep pace.

‘Don’t come,’ Henry called to Queen Mary over his shoulder. ‘Let us make him comfortable and then we’ll get a cart or something and he can ride home.’

She stopped where she was bid. The king’s page came running up with my kerchief in his hands, taking it to his master. Queen Mary put out her hand. ‘Don’t bother him now,’ she said sharply.

The lad skidded to a halt, still holding my kerchief. ‘He dropped this, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘Had it in his breastplate.’

She put out an indifferent hand for it and he gave it to her. She was looking after her husband being helped into the house by her brother and Sir John Lovick hurrying ahead of them, opening doors and shouting for servants. Absently she walked back to the queen’s pavilion with my kerchief balled up in her hand. I went forward to take it from her and then I hesitated, not knowing what to say.

‘Is he all right?’ Queen Katherine asked.

Queen Mary found a smile. ‘Yes. His head is clear; and no bones broken. His breastplate is hardly dented.’

‘Shall I have that?’ Queen Katherine asked.

Queen Mary glanced down at my crumpled kerchief. ‘This! The king’s page gave it me. It was in his breastplate.’ She handed it over. She was quite blind and deaf to anything but her husband. ‘I’ll go to him,’ she decided. ‘Anne, you and the rest can go home with the queen after dinner.’

The queen nodded her permission and Queen Mary went quickly from the pavilion towards the house. Queen Katherine watched her go, my kerchief in her hands. Slowly, as I knew she would, she turned it over. The fine silk slipped easily through her fingers. At the fringed hem she saw the bright green of the embroidered silk monogram: MB. Slowly, accusingly, she turned towards me.

‘I think this must be yours,’ she said, her voice low and disdainful. She held it at arm’s length, between finger and thumb, as if it were a dead mouse that she had found at the back of a cupboard.

‘Go on,’ Anne whispered. ‘You’ve got to get it.’ She pushed me in the small of my back and I stepped forward.

The queen dropped it as I reached her, I caught it as it fell. It looked a sorry bit of cloth, something you might wash a floor with.

‘Thank you,’ I said humbly.

At dinner the king hardly looked at me. The accident had thrown him into the melancholy that was such a characteristic of his father, which his courtiers too were learning to fear.

The queen could not have been more pleasant and more entertaining. But no conversation, no charming smiles, no music could lift his spirits. He watched the antics of his Fool without laughing, he listened to the musicians and drank deep. The queen could do nothing to cheer him, because she was partly the cause of his ill-humour. He was looking at her as a woman near her change of life, he saw Death at her shoulder. She might live for a dozen years more, she might live for a score. Death was even now drying up her courses and putting the lines on her face. The queen was heading towards old age and she had made no heirs to follow them. They might joust and sing and dance and play all the day but if the king did not put a boy into Wales as prince then he had failed in his greatest, most fundamental duty to the kingdom. And a bastard on Bessie Blount would not do.

‘I am sure that Charles Brandon will soon be well again,’ the queen volunteered. There were sugared plums on the table and a rich sweet wine. She took a sip but I thought that she had little relish for it while her husband sat beside her with a face so drawn and dark that he could have been his father who had never liked her. ‘You must not feel that you did wrong, Henry. It was a fair joust. And you’ve taken hits from him before, God knows.’

He turned in his chair and looked at her. She looked back at him and I saw the smile drain from her face at the coldness of his stare. She did not ask him what was the matter. She was too old and wise ever to ask an angry man what was troubling him. Instead, she smiled, a dauntless endearing smile, and she raised her glass to him.

‘Your health, Henry,’ she said with her warm accent. ‘Your health and I must thank God that it was not you that was hurt today. Before now, I have been the one running from the pavilion to the lists with my heart half broken with fear; and though I am sorry for your sister Queen Mary, I have to be glad that it was not you that was hurt today.’

‘Now that,’ Anne said in my ear, ‘that is masterly.’

It worked. Henry, seduced by the thought of a woman sick with fear over his well-being, lost his dark sulky look. ‘I would never cause you a moment of uneasiness.’

‘My husband, you have caused me days and nights of them,’ Queen Katherine said, smiling. ‘But as long as you are well and happy, and as long as you come home at the end of it all; why should I complain?’

‘Aha,’ Anne said quietly. ‘And so she gives him permission and your sting is drawn.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I asked.

‘Wake up,’ Anne said brutally. ‘Don’t you see? She’s called him out of his bad temper and she has told him that he can have you, as long as he comes home afterwards.’

I watched him lift his glass in a return toast to her.

‘So what happens next?’ I asked. ‘Since you know everything?’

‘Oh he has you for a while,’ she said negligently. ‘But you won’t come between them. You won’t hold him. She’s old, I grant you. But she can act as if she adores him and he needs that. And when he was little more than a boy she was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. It’ll take a lot to overcome that. I doubt that you’re the woman to do it. You’re pretty enough and half in love with him, which is helpful, but I doubt that a woman such as you could command him.’

‘Who could do it?’ I demanded, stung by her dismissal of me. ‘You, I suppose?’

She looked at the two of them as if she were a siege engineer measuring a wall. There was nothing in her face but curiosity and professional expertise. ‘I might,’ she said. ‘But it would be a difficult project.’

‘It’s me that he wants, not you,’ I reminded her. ‘He asked for my favour. He wore my kerchief under his breastplate.’

‘He dropped it and forgot it,’ Anne pointed out with her usual cruel accuracy. ‘And anyway, what he wants is not the issue. He’s greedy and he’s spoiled. He could be made to want almost anything. But you’ll never be able to do that.’

‘Why should I not do that?’ I demanded passionately. ‘What makes you think that you could hold him and I could not?’

Anne looked at me with her perfectly beautiful face as lovely as if it were carved from ice. ‘Because the woman who manages him will be one who never stops for a moment remembering that she is there for strategy. You are all ready for the pleasures of bed and board. But the woman who manages Henry will know that her pleasure must be in managing his thoughts, every minute of the day. It would not be a marriage of sensual lust at all, though Henry would think that was what he was getting. It would be an affair of unending skill.’

The dinner ended at about five o’clock on the cool April evening and they brought the horses around to the front of the house so that we could say goodbye to our host and mount and ride back to Eltham Palace. As we left the banqueting tables I saw the servants tipping the leftover loaves and meats into great panniers which would be sold at a discount at the kitchen door. There was a trail of extravagance and dishonesty and waste that followed the king round the country like slime behind a snail. The poor people who had come to watch the jousting and stayed on to watch the court dine now gathered at the kitchen door to collect some food from the feast. They would be given the broken meats: the slicings from the loaves, the off-cuts from the meats, the puddings which had been half-eaten. Nothing would be wasted, the poor would take anything. They were as economical as keeping a pig.

It was these perks that made a place in the king’s household such a joy for his servants. In every place, every servant could perform a little cheat, put a little by. The lowliest server in the kitchen had a little business in crusts of the pastry from the pies, in lard from the basting, in the juices of the gravy. My father was at the top of this heap of off-cuts, now that he was controller of the king’s household: he would watch the slice that everyone took of their bit of business, and he would take a slice of his own. Even the trade of lady in waiting who looks as if she is there to provide company and little services for the queen is well-placed to seduce the king under her mistress’s nose, and cause her the most grief that one woman can cause to another. She too has her price. She too has her secret work which takes place after the main dinner is over and when the company are looking the other way, and which trades in off-cuts of promises and forgotten sweetmeats of love-play.

We rode home as the light faded from the sky and it grew grey and cool. I was glad of my cloak which I tied round me, but I kept my hood pushed back so that I could see the way before me and the darkening skies above me, and the little pinpricks of stars showing in the pale grey sky. We had been riding for half the journey when the king’s horse came alongside mine.

‘Did you enjoy your day?’ he asked.

‘You dropped my kerchief,’ I said sulkily. ‘Your page gave it to Queen Mary and she gave it to Queen Katherine. She knew it at once. She gave it back to me.’

‘And so?’

I should have thought of the small humiliations which Queen Katherine managed, as part of the duty of queenship. She never complained to her husband. She took her troubles to God; and only then in a very low whispered prayer.

‘I felt dreadful,’ I said. ‘I should never have given it to you in the first place.’

‘Well now you have it back,’ he said without sympathy. ‘If it was so precious.’

‘It’s not that it was precious,’ I pursued. ‘It’s that she knew without a doubt that it was mine. She gave it back to me in front of all the ladies. She dropped it to the ground, it would have fallen to the floor if I had not caught it.’

‘So what has changed?’ he demanded, his voice very hard, his face suddenly ugly and unsmiling. ‘So what is the difficulty? She has seen us dancing together and talking together. She has seen me seeking your company, you have been handclasped with me before her very eyes. You didn’t come to me then with your complaints and your nagging.’

‘I’m not nagging!’ I said, stung.

‘Yes you are,’ he said flatly. ‘Without cause, and, may I say, without position. You are not my mistress, madam, nor my wife. I don’t listen to complaints about my behaviour from anyone else. I am the King of England. If you don’t like how I behave then there is always France. You could always go back to the French court.’

‘Your Majesty … I …’

He spurred his horse and it went into a trot and then into a canter. ‘I give you goodnight,’ he said over his shoulder and he rode away from me with his cloak in a flurry and the plume in his hat streaming, and he left me with nothing to say to him, no way to call him back.

I would not speak to Anne that night though she marched me in silence from the queen’s rooms to our own and expected a full account of everything that had been said and done.

‘I won’t say,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Leave me alone.’

Anne took off her hood and started to unplait her hair. I jumped onto the bed, threw off my gown, pulled on my night shift and slipped between the sheets without brushing my hair or even washing my face.

‘You’re surely not going to bed like that,’ Anne said, scandalised.

‘For God’s sake,’ I said into the pillow, ‘leave me alone.’

‘What did he …?’ Anne started as she slid into bed beside me.

‘I won’t say. So don’t ask.’

She nodded, turned and blew out her candle.

The smell of the smoke from the snuffed wick blew towards me. It smelled like the scent of grief. In the darkness, shielded from Anne’s scrutiny, I turned over, lay on my back staring up at the tester above my head and considered what would happen if the king were so angry that he never looked at me again.

My face felt cold. I put my hand to my cheeks and found that they were wet with tears. I rubbed my face on the sheet.

‘What is it now?’ Anne asked sleepily.

‘Nothing.’

‘You lost him,’ Uncle Howard said accusingly. He looked down the long wooden dining table in the great hall at Eltham Palace. Our retainers stood on guard at the doors behind us, there was no-one in the hall but a couple of wolfhounds and a boy asleep in the ashes of the fire. Our men in Howard livery stood at the doors at the far end. The palace, the king’s own palace, had been made secure for the Howards so that we could plot in private.

‘You had him in your hand and you lost him. What did you do wrong?’

I shook my head. It was too secret to spill on the unyielding surface of the high table, to offer up to flint-faced Uncle Howard.

‘I want an answer,’ he said. ‘You lost him. He hasn’t looked at you for a week. What have you done wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I whispered.

‘You must have done something. At the jousting he had your kerchief under his breastplate. You must have done something to upset him after that.’

I shot a reproachful look at my brother George: the only person who could have told Uncle Howard about my scarf. He shrugged and made an apologetic face.

‘The king dropped it and his page gave my scarf to Queen Mary,’ I said, my throat tight with nervousness and distress.

‘So?’ my father said sharply.

‘She gave it to the queen. The queen returned it to me.’ I looked from one stern face to another. ‘They all knew what it meant,’ I said despairingly. ‘When we rode home I told him that I was unhappy at him letting my favour be found.’

Uncle Howard exhaled, my father slapped the table. My mother turned her head away as if she could hardly bear to look at me.

‘For God’s sake.’ Uncle Howard glared at my mother. ‘You assured me that she had been properly brought up. Half her life spent in the French court and she whines at him as if she were a shepherd girl behind a haystack?’

‘How could you?’ my mother asked simply.

I flushed and dropped my head until I could see the reflection of my own unhappy face in the polished surface of the table. ‘I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ George interceded. ‘You’re taking too dark a view. He won’t stay angry for long.’

‘He sulks like a bear,’ my uncle snapped. ‘Don’t you think there are Seymour girls dancing for him at this very moment?’

‘None as pretty as Mary,’ my brother maintained. ‘He’ll forget that she ever said a word out of place. He might even like her for it. It shows she’s not overly groomed. It shows there’s a bit of passion there.’

My father nodded, a little consoled, but my uncle drummed the table with his long fingers. ‘What should we do?’

‘Take her away.’ Anne spoke suddenly. She drew attention at once in the way that a late speaker always does, but the confidence in her voice was riveting.

‘Away?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Send her down to Hever. Tell him that she’s ill. Let him imagine her dying of grief.’

‘And then?’

‘And then he’ll want her back. She’ll be able to command what she likes. All she has to do –’ Anne gleamed her spiteful little smile ‘– All she has to do when she returns is to behave so well that she enchants the most educated, the most witty, the most handsome prince in Christendom. D’you think she can do it?’

There was a cold silence while my mother and my father and my Uncle Howard and even George all inspected me in silence.

‘Neither do I,’ Anne said smugly. ‘But I can coach her well enough to get her into his bed, and whatever happens to her after that is in the hands of God.’

Uncle Howard looked intently at Anne. ‘Can you coach her in how to keep him?’ he asked.

She raised her head and smiled at him, the very picture of confidence. ‘Of course, for a while,’ she said. ‘He’s only a man after all.’

Uncle Howard laughed shortly at the casual dismissal of his sex. ‘You have a care,’ he urged. ‘We men are not where we are today because of some sort of accident. We chose to get into the great places of power, despite the desires of women; and we chose to use those places to make laws which will hold us there forever.’

‘True enough,’ Anne granted. ‘But we’re not talking of high policy. We’re talking of catching the king’s desire. She just has to catch him and hold him for long enough for him to make a son on her, a royal Howard bastard. What more could we ask?’

‘And she can do that?’

‘She can learn,’ Anne said. ‘She’s halfway there. She is his choice, after all.’ The little shrug she gave indicated that she did not think much of the king’s choice.

There was a silence. Uncle Howard’s attention had moved from me and my future as the brood mare for the family. Instead he was looking at Anne as if he had seen her for the first time. ‘Not many maids of your age think as clearly as you.’

She smiled at him. ‘I’m a Howard like you.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t try for him yourself.’

‘I thought of it,’ she said honestly. ‘Any woman in England today would be bound to think of it.’

‘But?’ he prompted her.

‘I’m a Howard,’ she repeated. ‘What matters is that one of us catches the king. It hardly matters which one. If his taste is for Mary and she has his acknowledged son then my family becomes the first in the kingdom. Without rival. And we can do it. We can manage the king.’

Uncle Howard nodded. He knew that the king’s conscience was a domesticated beast, given to easy herding but prone to sudden stubborn stops. ‘It seems we have to thank you,’ he said. ‘You have planned our strategy.’

She acknowledged his thanks, not with a bow, which would have been graceful. Instead, she turned her head like a flower on the stem, a typically arrogant gesture. ‘Of course I long to see my sister as the king’s favourite. These things are my business quite as much as yours.’

He shook his head as my mother made a shushing noise at her overly confident eldest daughter. ‘No, let her speak,’ he said. ‘She’s as sharp as any of us. And I think she’s right. Mary must go to Hever and wait for the king to send for her.’

‘He’ll send,’ Anne said knowledgably. ‘He’ll send.’

I felt like a parcel, like the curtains for a bed, or the plates for the top table, or the pewter for the lower tables in the hall. I was to be packed up and sent to Hever as bait for the king. I was not to see him before I left, I was not to speak to anyone about my going. My mother told the queen that I was overtired and asked for me to be excused from her service for a few days so that I might go home and rest. The queen, poor lady, thought that she had triumphed. She thought that the Boleyns were in retreat.

It was not a long ride, a little more than twenty miles. We stopped to dine at the roadside, eating nothing more than bread and cheese which we had carried with us. My father could have called on the hospitality of any great house along the way, he was well enough known as a courtier high in the favour of the king, and we would have been nobly entertained. But he did not want to break the journey.

The high road was rutted and pitted with potholes, every now and then we saw a broken cart wheel where a traveller had been overturned. But the horses stepped out well enough on the dry ground and every now and then the going was so good that we broke into a canter. The verges on the side of the road were thick with the white of gypsy lace and big-faced white daisies, and lush with the early summer greenness of grass. In the hedges the honeysuckle twisted around the bursting growth of hawthorn and may, at the roots were pools of purple-blue self-heal and the gangly growth of ladies’ smock with dainty flowers of white, veined with purple. Behind the hedges in the thick lush pastures were fat cows with their heads down, munching, and in the higher fields there were flocks of sheep with the occasional idle boy watching over them from the shade of a tree.

The common land outside of the villages was mostly farmed in strips and they made a pretty sight where they were gardened in rows with onions and carrots drawn up like a retinue on parade. In the villages themselves the cottage gardens were tumbling confusions of daffodils and herbs, vegetables and primroses, wild beans shooting and hawthorn hedgerows in flower with a corner set aside for a pig, and a rooster crowing on the dunghill outside the back door. My father rode in a quiet satisfied silence when the road took us onto our own land, downhill, through Edenbridge, and through the wet meadowlands towards Hever. The horses went slower as the going grew heavier on the damp road, but my father was patient now we were nearing our estate.

It had been his father’s house before it was his; but it went no further back in our family than that. My grandfather had been a man of no more than moderate means who had risen by his own skills in Norfolk, apprenticed to a mercer, but eventually became Lord Mayor of London. For all that we clung to our Howard connection it was only a recent one, and only through my mother who had been Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, a great catch for my father. He had taken her to our grand house at Rochford in Essex and then brought her to Hever where she had been appalled at the smallness of the castle, and the cosy poky private rooms.

At once he had set to rebuild it to please her. First he put a ceiling across the great hall, which had been open to the rafters in the old style. In the space he created above the hall he made a set of private rooms for us where we could dine and sit in greater comfort and privacy.

My father and I turned in at the gates of the park, the gatekeeper and his wife tumbling out to make their bow as we went by. We rode past them with a wave, and up the dirt road to the first river, which was spanned by a little wooden bridge. My horse did not like the look of this, she jibbed at it as soon as she heard the echo of her hoofbeats on the hollow wood.

‘Fool,’ my father said briefly, leaving me to wonder whether he meant me or the horse, and put his own hunter before mine and led the way across. My horse followed behind, very docile when she could see that there was no danger, and so I rode up to the drawbridge of our castle behind my father and waited while the men came out of the guard room to take our horses and lead them away to the stables at the back. My legs felt weak after the long ride when they lifted me down from the saddle but I followed my father across the drawbridge and into the shadow of the gatehouse, under the forbidding thick teeth of the portcullis and into the welcoming little castle yard.

The front door stood open, the yeoman of the ewry and the chief household men came out and bowed to my father, half a dozen servants behind them. My father ran his eyes over them: some were in full livery, some were not, two of the servant girls were hastily untying the hessian aprons they wore over their best aprons underneath, and disclosing some very dirty linen as they did so; the spit boy, peeping out from the corner of the yard, was filthy with deeply engrained dirt and half-naked in his rags. My father took in the general sense of disorder and carelessness and nodded at his people.

‘Very well,’ he said guardedly. ‘This is my daughter Mary. Mistress Mary Carey. You have prepared rooms for us?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’ The groom of the bedchambers bowed. ‘Everything is ready. Mistress Carey’s room is ready.’

‘And dinner?’ my father demanded.

‘At once.’

‘We’ll eat in the private rooms. I’ll have dinner tomorrow in the great hall and people can come and see me. Tell them I will dine in public tomorrow. But this evening I won’t be disturbed.’

One of the girls came forward and dipped a curtsey to me. ‘Shall I show you your room, Mistress Carey?’ she asked.

I followed her at my father’s nod. We went through the broad front door and turned left along a narrow hall. At the end a tiny spiral stone staircase led us upwards to a pretty room with a small bed hung with curtains of pale blue silk. The windows looked out over the moat and the park beyond. A door out of the room would lead me into a small gallery with a stone fireplace which was my mother’s favourite sitting room.

‘D’you want to wash?’ the girl asked awkwardly. She gestured towards a jug and ewer filled with cold water. ‘I could get you some hot water?’

I stripped off my riding gloves and handed them to her. ‘Yes,’ I said. For a moment I thought of the palace at Eltham and the constant sycophantic service. ‘Get me some hot water and see that they bring my clothes up. I want to change out of this riding dress.’

She bowed and left the room by the little stone staircase. As she went I could hear her muttering to herself: ‘Hot water. Clothes,’ so as not to forget. I went to the windowseat, kneeled up and looked out of the little window through the leaded panes.

I had spent the day trying not to think of Henry and the court I was leaving behind me, but now at this comfortless homecoming I realised that I had not just lost the love of the king, I had lost the luxuries which had become essential to me. I did not want to be Miss Boleyn of Hever again. I did not want to be the daughter of a small castle in Kent. I had been the most favoured young woman in the whole of England. I had gone far beyond Hever and I did not want to come back.

My father stayed no more than three days, long enough to see his land agent and those tenants who urgently wanted to speak to him, time enough to solve a dispute about a boundary post and to order his favourite mare put to the stallion, and then he was ready to leave again. I stood on the drawbridge to bid him farewell and I knew that I must look sorrowful indeed since even he noticed as he swung himself up into the saddle.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded, bracingly. ‘Not missing court, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said shortly. There was no point telling my father that indeed I missed the court, but that I missed most, unbearably, the sight of Henry.

‘No-one to blame but yourself,’ my father said robustly. ‘We have to trust to your brother and sister to set it right for you. If not, then God knows what will become of you. I’ll have to get Carey to take you back, and we’ll have to hope that he forgives you.’

He laughed aloud at the shocked look on my face.

I drew closer to my father’s horse and put my hand on his gauntlet where it rested on the reins. ‘If the king asks for me would you tell him that I am very sorry if I offended him?’

He shook his head. ‘We play this Anne’s way,’ he said. ‘She seems to think she knows how to manage him. You have to do as you are bid, Mary. You bodged it once, you have to work under orders now.’

‘Why should Anne be the one who says how things are done?’ I demanded. ‘Why d’you always listen to Anne?’

My father took his hand from under my grip. ‘Because she’s got a head on her shoulders and she knows her own value,’ he said bluntly. ‘Whereas you have behaved like a girl of fourteen in love for the first time.’

‘But I am a girl of fourteen in love for the first time!’ I exclaimed.

‘Exactly,’ he said unforgivingly. ‘That’s why we listen to Anne.’

He did not trouble to say goodbye to me, but turned his horse away, trotted over the drawbridge and then down the track towards the gates.

I raised my hand to wave in case he looked back; but he did not. He rode straight-backed, looking forward. He rode like a Howard. We never look back. We have no time for regrets or second thoughts. If a plan goes awry we make another, if one weapon breaks in our hands we find a second. If the steps fall down before us we overleap them and go up. It is always onwards and upwards for the Howards; and my father was on his way back to court and to the company of the king without a backwards glance for me.

By the end of the first week I had taken a turn around every walk that there was in the garden and explored the park in every direction from my starting point at the drawbridge. I had started a tapestry for the altar of St Peter’s church at Hever and completed a square foot of sky which was very boring indeed, being nothing but blue. I had written three letters to Anne and George and sent them off by messenger to the court at Eltham. Three times he had gone for me and come back with no reply except their good wishes.

By the end of the second week I was ordering my horse out of the stables in the morning and going for long rides on my own, I was too irritable even for the company of a silent servant. I tried to keep my temper hidden. I thanked the maid for any little service she did for me, I sat to eat my dinner and bowed my head when the priest said grace as if I did not want to leap up and scream with frustration that I was trapped in Hever while the court was on the move from Eltham to Windsor and I not with them. I did everything I could to contain the fury that I was so far from court, and so terribly left out of everything.

By the third week I had slid into a resigned despair. I heard nothing from anyone and I concluded that Henry did not want to send for me to return, that my husband was proving intractable and did not want a wife carrying the disgrace of being the king’s flirtation – but not his mistress. Such a woman could not add to a man’s prestige. Such a woman was best left in the country. I wrote to Anne and to George twice in the second week but still they did not reply. But then, on Tuesday of the third week, I received a scrawled note from George.

Don’t despair – I wager you are thinking yourself quite abandoned by us all. He speaks of you constantly and I remind him of your many charms. I should think he will send for you within the month. Make sure that you are looking well!

Geo.

Anne bids me tell you that she will write in a little while.

George’s letter was the only moment of relief during my long wait. As I entered my second month of waiting, the month of May, always the happiest month at court as the season for picnics and journeyings started again, it seemed to me that my days were very long.

I had no-one to talk to, I had no company to speak of at all. My maid chattered to me while she dressed me. At breakfast I dined alone at the top table and spoke only to claimants who came to the house with business for my father to transact. I walked in the garden for a little while. I read some books.

In the long afternoons I had my hunter brought round and I rode in wider and wider sweeps of the countryside. I began to learn the lanes and byways that stretched around my home and even started to recognise some of our tenants on their little farms. I learned their names and started to rein in my horse when I saw a man working in the fields and ask him what he was growing, and how he was doing. This was the best time for the farmers. The hay was cut and drying in windrows, waiting to be pitchforked into great stacks and thatched to keep dry for winter feed. The wheat and barley and rye were standing tall in the fields and growing in height and plumpness. The calves were growing fat on their mothers’ milk and the profits from this year’s wool sales were being counted in every farmhouse and cottage in the county.

It was a time for leisure, a brief respite in the hard work of the year, and the farmers held little dances on the village green, and races and sports before the main work of harvesting.

I, who had first ridden into the Boleyn estate looking around me and recognising nothing, now knew the country all around the estate wall, the farmers and the crops they were growing. When they came to me at dinner time and complained that such a man was not properly farming his strip which he held by agreement with his village, I knew straightaway what they were speaking of because I had ridden that way the day before and seen the land left to grow weeds and nettles, the only wasted lot among the well-tended common fields. It was easy for me, as I ate my dinner, to warn the tenant that his land would be taken from him if he did not use it for growing a crop. I knew the farmers who were growing hops and the ones who were growing vines. I made an agreement with one farmer that if he should get a good crop of grapes then I would ask my father to send to London for a Frenchman to come on a visit to Hever Castle and teach the art of winemaking.

It was no hardship to ride around every day. I loved being outside, hearing the birds singing as I rode through the woods, smelling the flowering honeysuckle as it cascaded through the hedges on either side of the track. I loved my mare Jesmond, which the king had given me: her eagerness to canter, the alert flicker of her ears, her whinny when she saw me come into the stable yard, a carrot in my hand. I loved the lushness of the meadows by the river, the way they shimmered white and yellow with flowers, and the blaze of red poppies in the wheatfields. I loved the weald and the buzzards circling in the sky in great lazy loops, even higher than larks, before turning on their broad wings and wheeling away.

It was all makeweight, it was all a way of filling the time since I could not be with Henry and could not be at court. But I had a growing sense that if I were never to go to court again, then I could at least be a good and fair landlord. The more enterprising young farmers outside Edenbridge could see that there was a market for lucerne. But they knew no-one who grew it, nor where they could get the seeds. I wrote for them to a farmer on my father’s estate in Essex, and got them both seeds and advice. They planted a field while I was there, and promised to plant another when they saw how the crop liked the soil. And I thought, even though I was no more than a young woman, I had done a wonderful thing. Without me they would not have gone further than slapping their hands on the table at the Hollybush and swearing that a man could make some money from the new crops. With my help they were able to try it out, and if they made a fortune then there would be two more men rising up in the world, and if my grandfather’s story were anything to go by, then no-one could tell how high they might aspire.

They were glad of it. When I rode out to the field to see how the ploughing was going they came across, kicking the mud off their boots, to explain how they were casting their seed. They wanted a lord who took an interest. In the absence of anyone else: they had me. And they knew well enough that if I took an interest in the crop I might be persuaded to take a share. I might have some money tucked away that I might invest, and then we could all grow prosperous together.

I laughed at that, looking down from my horse into their brown weatherbeaten faces. ‘I have no money.’

‘You’re a great lady at court,’ one of them protested. His gaze took in the neat tassels on my leather boots, the inlaid saddle, the richness of my dress and the golden brooch in my hat. ‘There’s more on your back today than I earn in a year.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And that’s where it stays. On my back.’

‘But your father must give you money, or your husband,’ the other man said persuasively. ‘Better to gamble it on your own fields than on the turn of a card.’

‘I’m a lady. It’s none of it mine. Look at you. You’re doing well enough – is your wife a rich woman?’

He chuckled sheepishly at that. ‘She’s my wife. She does as well as I do. But she doesn’t own anything of her own.’

‘It’s the same for me,’ I said. ‘I do as my father does, as my husband does. I dress as is proper for their wife or their daughter. But I don’t own anything on my own account. In that sense I am as poor as your wife.’

‘But you are a Howard and I am a nobody,’ he observed.

‘I’m a Howard woman. That means I might be one of the greatest in the land or a nobody like you. It all depends.’

‘On what?’ he asked, intrigued.

I thought of the sudden darkening of Henry’s face when I displeased him. ‘On my luck.’