Boleyn Traitor, page 12
‘What is it?’ Jane Seymour asks eagerly, thinking there is an exciting find of a treasure; but when she sees Anne’s snarl, she falls back, and I say: ‘Is it the baby?’
Anne melts against me, like a woman of wax. ‘Get me home,’ she whispers. ‘I have such a pain, such a pain!’
Thank God that the barge is waiting at the pier and the tide on the ebb. Elizabeth and I help her to it, ignoring the guard of honour of rowers, and order them to go as fast as they can to Greenwich Palace.
Even rowing hard with the tide, it feels like long hours on the water before we can sweep her through the chambers and straight into her bedroom. People fall back before our silent rush; it is like the king coming home on a table top, all over again. No one dares ask. Perhaps everything will be all right, as it was for the king. Perhaps Anne will rise up in triumph, like him.
In her rooms, we strip off her kirtle, her sleeves, her stomacher, her skirt. Our fingers tremble as we untie gold-tipped aglets on laces of silk. Off comes her outer linen, and then I see the spreading red stain on her underlinen. Jane Seymour flees the room; but has the sense to fetch Anne’s sister Mary and their mother. Elizabeth Boleyn sends for the midwife, and we are as we were at that first time, gathered around the bed, doing nothing but telling each other lies: that this is not a miscarry, that it will all be all right, that it is a little bleed but only to be expected; and then finally – at the end of the long day, when the midwife has come and done her dirty work – that this is death, undeniable death.
We cannot bluster it out. Everyone saw us come home, everyone saw us dash into the queen’s bedroom. Jane Seymour ran out and told them all that since she was a maid – such an innocent maid – she could not wait on the queen who was losing her baby. Everyone knows.
IT TAKES A day and a night until it is all over, and when Anne is in a state of grim despair, they tell us that the king is coming to visit.
Elizabeth Somerset has the sense to make herself scarce. Mary Boleyn, a former fertile mistress, goes out of the room. Nobody wants to see a pregnant woman today; nobody wants to see a former mistress.
We sweep every disagreeable sight out of the room. No food, no drink, no linen, no water bowl for washing. We dress the room as if it were to be the background to a portrait, a masque version of a queen’s bedroom. We make her bed into a bower, as if the king might be coming to make love. She is scented with oil of flowers and rosy-cheeked with rouge, her eyes darkly inviting with drops of belladonna, her hair a perfumed dark heap of curls on the top of her head, her nightgown demurely fastened to the neck, with ribbons that only need one touch to fall open.
They knock on the door and throw it open, and the moment he comes in, the moment I see how he is dragging his sore leg, his face crumpled, his mouth petulant, I know that Anne is lost. Henry has learned to imagine death – as my father thought he could not. Now, everyone else will have to think of it; Henry cannot keep a fear to himself. He is our head, and we are the corps – when he is in pain, we all hurt; when he is afraid, we are all sick with terror. Now he can imagine death, we will have to fear it all the time.
Anne’s eyes fill with real tears – she holds out a trembling hand to him. ‘My lord husband,’ she says, and her voice quavers with genuine grief. ‘An accident. We will have other children. For sure. For sure, we will. And the next will be better, stronger. Better made.’
His friends and companions do not come into the room but stand like a wall of hostile witnesses on the threshold. I see the hard faces of the old lords – among them, Queen Katherine’s friends come to gloat at this new misfortune. Anne ignores them, whispering so that they cannot hear. But she should have said nothing, because the king has come with a speech prepared, and he is not a good company player who can say his lines off a wrong cue. He hates anyone else standing centre-stage. He draws himself up. I see him wince as he puts weight on his bad leg. He holds up his hand to silence her, so he can deliver his speech without interruption.
‘I cannot understand such a thing,’ he says. He knows he has struck the wrong tone, he sounds peevish rather than lordly. He clears his throat and starts again. ‘I cannot understand such a thing. I am so healthy, so full of life. I cannot understand your difficulty.’
‘It was my uncle the Duke of Norfolk,’ Anne says quickly. ‘He came to me in such a rush on the day of your accident! I thought you might have been dead! I feared you were dead!’ Her voice quavers; but still his face does not soften.
Our uncle is among the king’s companions listening in the doorway. He will step forward and contradict her if she tries to throw the blame on him again; but I cannot warn her of his darkening expression.
‘And you’ve been attentive, to others …’ Anne says reproachfully. She lowers her voice. ‘You made me doubt your love …’ She shoots a quick look at him under her lowered eyelashes. ‘You have neglected me. You have hurt me. I have been bereft. You have pursued her and set her up as a rival to me – after all you promised …’
This would have worked when Anne was in her prime; but since the king has learned to fear death, he does not care for other people’s fears, not even hers. Now, intent on his own speech, he does not even hear her. He has a question to test her: the worst question.
‘It was a boy?’
It’s too early to know; but it is more tragic for him if it was a boy. So he will think of it as a lost boy – another lost boy.
Anne hides her face in her scented hands like Miseria in a tapestry. The king will surely step forward and take her hands away and kiss her wet cheeks?
But no, this is his tragedy, exclusively his. He will not comfort her – everyone should be comforting him. He is the starring actor in the masque, not a supporting player.
‘I see clearly that God does not wish to give me male children,’ he says loudly.
There is a genuine gasp at these terrible words, and Jane Seymour lets out a little cry of sympathy. George shoots a startled glance at me: what is God telling the king now? That his marriage is barren? That Anne is no more wife than the previous one? That this miscarry proves the marriage is cursed? No better than the last one?
Henry stalks towards the door, and the old lords, Margaret Pole and her sons, Henry and Geoffrey, their cousins the Courtenays, their friends, our enemies, part before him and admit him to their ranks, enfold him with their sympathy, capture him.
Anne says: ‘But, my lord—’
She cannot believe he is just walking out of the bedroom we prepared so carefully. She can see her ladies through the open door rippling down in a wave of curtseys; Jane Seymour’s modest English hood on her fair hair is bowed low.
The king pauses halfway across her privy chamber, surrounded by our enemies, the Spanish party in triumph.
‘I will come to you when you are recovered,’ he says, as if she is unclean, and, limping to demonstrate his own pain, he is gone and they all go with him. The fool, Will Somer, hopping along behind in a wild parody of lameness – as if anyone would dare to laugh.
I close the doors on everyone and turn back to Anne.
‘Get George back here,’ she says through her teeth.
Greenwich Palace, Spring
1536
WE LEARN A hard lesson: Anne’s power over parliament, church, and country, depends on her ruling the king. And she can only rule him if she captures him and holds his whimsical attention, and she has to do this all over again, after disappointing him, and disgusting him. All the Howards, all the Boleyns, all the placemen and women, all the supporters of reform, muster to return Anne to her throne as queen of the court of love, mistress of a hundred broken hearts, the most beautiful and desired woman, ‘The Most Happy’. We have to persuade the king that she is the finest woman in the world, pre-eminent at his court; only then can she rule him, and the country. As soon as she can stand without bleeding, we have her on her feet. As soon as she can walk without fainting, we have her dancing.
The king goes away to Whitehall in London with a few friends – none of them our friends – but he will return, and we prepare dances and disguisings, jousts of poetry and masquing, tournaments of tennis, competitions of archery, balls, theatre, sports, games, every sort of distraction for when he comes.
Not one word does he send to Anne while he is gone; but a purse of gold coins is delivered to Jane Seymour – a prepayment for her maidenhead. She returns it without opening it. This could mean that when she weighed it in her hand, she felt it was too light for a prize so long preserved, or she may really not be for sale. At any rate, the king is making no progress with her, and we hope for a clear run to seduce him back into Anne’s bed.
When the royal barge is sighted coming downriver, it is a confident Anne in a phalanx of Howards who goes down to greet it on the pier, in front of the beautiful palace, wrapped in her finest Russian furs, in a blaze of torches against the cold spring dusk.
George confers with our uncle the Duke of Norfolk, and we all agree that no one will ever mention the miscarry again: our uncle was not the cause of it, and it did not happen. It will be like the one before – quickly forgotten in the storm of amusements that only we can conjure. We unite against the Seymours, who move into Thomas Cromwell’s old rooms adjoining the king’s privy chamber. This is a great favour to the two Seymour brothers, and Anne says that it shows that Cromwell’s influence is waning, if this mediocre family is given his rooms. I think, silently, that it could equally prove to be our influence that is the thinning moon – and Cromwell is obliging the Seymours now, just as he used to oblige the Boleyns.
But if the Seymours thought they had a hiding place for secret assignations with the king, we spoil sport. Anne takes Jane as her bedfellow on most nights, and the young woman remains the most virginal of maids-of-honour. There is no challenge and chase about Jane, no hide and seeking for the king. When he summons her to his side, she sits in dull silence beside him. When he says something witty and flirtatious, she is smilingly blank. The chattering court of gossip cannot see the attraction; but more than one girl tries on a new look of demure modesty, and the ugly English hood comes into fashion as a silent reproach to Anne’s French style.
Thomas Cromwell takes over new rooms, further from the royal bedroom but grander, with a private stair to a room on the ground floor below, where he transacts his business. The ground-floor room has a grille on the window and a double door to prevent eavesdroppers. All of the letters for the king are delivered first to Master Cromwell’s dark chamber for translating, decoding, and copying.
He comes to play cards with the king in Anne’s rooms one evening and chooses me as his partner. When we put our heads together to count our winnings, he says quietly: ‘I see you keep Mistress Seymour close.’
‘Not as close as I would like,’ I reply. ‘She talks to Sir Nicholas Carew, and he is no friend to the queen.’
‘Oh, does she?’ is all he says.
‘And Gertrude Courtenay,’ I add.
‘I knew you would find her of interest,’ he says, as if pleased with his own foresight. ‘Is she one of the Spanish party or just alongside them? D’you think she advises Gertrude Courtenay as to the mood of the king?’
I make a little face. ‘What would Jane Seymour know of royal moods? The sun always shines on her.’
His dark eyes crinkle with amusement at my irritability. ‘Indeed. D’you think she speaks to the king for Lady Mary?’
I think for a moment. ‘I suppose she might. She’s very tenderhearted.’ By the tone in my voice, he may take that I don’t think tender-heartedness a virtue in a courtier.
‘Someone helpfully warned the Spanish party that Lady Mary must swear the oath or face a charge of treason.’ He smiles at me. ‘Lady Mary’s friends are much dismayed. There’s much fluttering in the hen coop, messengers going one to another. I believe they will try to get her out of the country?’
‘How d’you know they are fluttering?’ I ask.
‘They write. They write constantly.’
‘Your room receives all letters? Like the dark chambers of Venice?’ ‘I modelled my room on Venice. Information is the life blood of a powerful state. The Venetian Doge is a most successful tyrant.’
‘Don’t the Spanish party use code?’
He shrugs. ‘I have the code. I have the names of the ship, the plan for escape, and the names of those who warned that she should run away.’
‘You won’t have my name,’ I assert.
He nods. ‘You can be sure, I don’t. Lady Margaret Pole is a very discreet woman – unlike her son Sir Geoffrey: a blabbermouth. She never puts anything in writing. You did good work, Jane. They are desperate, and they will act desperately, and Lady Mary will be saved from sainthood despite herself, and they will talk themselves to the scaffold.’
Greenwich Palace, Spring
1536
ALL OUR FRIENDS and allies conspire to make Anne’s rooms a whirlwind of play, sport, flirtation, music, and gambling. Mary Boleyn – ‘Mistress Stafford now!’ – goes back to rural obscurity – too slow for this whirling parade of provocation. We circle Anne as if she were the only woman left in all the world. Mary Shelton writes little riddles and poems for Anne to recite as her own; her sister, Margaret Shelton, releases her betrothed Henry Norris to kneel at Anne’s feet. Every man who comes through the door of the queen’s rooms is teased and badgered and courted, until he swears that Anne is the most beautiful woman in the world and the only woman he desires. Every dance presents her at her best; every disguising costume is cut to suit her; she wins every bout of archery, she wins at bowls, she wins at cards. She sings the king’s love songs; she challenges the poets Thomas Wyatt and her brother George to admit that the king’s rhymes are best; she partners the king in everything he does. She overwhelms him with the dazzle of her looks and charm. We create a frenzy of desire, and she is at the head of it, always directing it to him.
The usual subtlety of courtly love gets swept away as the court becomes more urgent, more bawdy. All the songs are love songs; all the love is heated. There are no steady friendships even between women. Everything is passionate; everything is quick and furtive. Hands roam freely. A woman’s fingers touch her own lips, stroke along the line of the gown at her neck as if she has to be caressed, even by herself. Men adjust a woman’s veil, touch her necklace, stray behind her ear. A kiss of courtesy on a cheek becomes lingering; a man feels a woman yield to his slightest touch. Courtships speed up – Anne Parr and William Herbert are openly besotted; Margaret Douglas and her young lover Lord Thom are always sneaking off together.
Even noble wives like me are fair game to the young men of court, who slide a hand up to touch the underside of my breast when they should be holding me by the waist to dance. I allow it. I am caught up in the frenzy of the court for love; we are all in season, we are all in heat.
Anne pushes her French hood further and further back on her head so her dark hair frames her face. When she gets up from her throne to dance, she whisks her skirts and shows the embroidered clocks on her stockings. When she leans forward to curtsey to the king, he can see the creamy curves of the top of her breasts. Everything which should be concealed can be glimpsed if you are quick enough – and everyone is quick to stare, and everyone is quick to show.
Only the king refuses to be swept along. He rollicks in the heated swirl of the queen’s rooms, every evening, watches every woman with sideways secret glances; but he goes to his own rooms at night and sleeps alone. He has no desire for Anne though night succeeds night – and the wine flows into everyone’s glass, and the music plays faster and faster, and we are like the girl in the story condemned to dance until death. We feel as if we are dancing for our lives in the scarlet shoes of whores. None of us are safe in our places, with our fortunes, until the king comes back to the queen’s bed and gives her another boy. We have to whirl through this life of frantic extravagance and enjoyment until Anne is finally satisfied and the mother of a prince.
I brush her dark hair before the mirror, and I do not tell her that I can see a hair – just one – silver-white, in the sleek ebony mane.
‘He’s a man of contradictions,’ she says, her eyes closed, nodding her head against the rhythmic sweep of the brush. ‘A king who must have an heir but cannot bed his queen. His mother died after childbirth, as if to teach him that lust is fatal. He was raised by his grandmother, who declared herself celibate. Then he was married to a woman as cold as holy water, who gave him one girl and more than a dozen dead-borns. He thinks that lust for a wife leads only to death.’
‘Conceiving a prince is an act blessed from God. It’s not carnal lust; it doesn’t lead to death …’
‘But he’s never managed it, has he? He lay in the old queen’s bed, and he lay in my bed, and all he ever gets are girls and dead babies. It was me who told him that his marriage was sinful and that was why he had nothing but death from the old queen. The little coffins were the proof. Now someone – Charles Brandon or the Courtenays or the Poles or Nicholas Carew or some Papist – has told him that our marriage is sinful, too. You heard him! God told him that’s why I lost the babies.’
‘Just one,’ I remind her. ‘We only admit to one. But you’re wrong. The Spanish party aren’t plotting against you; they’re in a panic about Lady Mary. Someone has told them she is in danger.’
‘What if they think that the easiest way to save her, is to destroy me?’
I am horror-struck. I turn my face from her gaze in the mirror, until I can find a false smile. ‘No, no – they wouldn’t dare do that. They’ll send for a Spanish ship and take her away. I am sure that’s what they’ll do. They don’t have the power to attack you.’
‘They’ll send for Italian poison and do away with me.’
THE KING GIVES George more lands and makes an inventory of everything that he has given us so far – as if to confirm our wealth before he adds more. I walk into Anne’s bedroom, unannounced, to tell her the good news of George’s new fortune, and she and Elizabeth Somerset spring apart as if I have caught them in a secret act. I am so accustomed to glimpsing couples hiding in shadows that for a moment my heart sinks, thinking that they are kissing or touching in some new love-play, and then Elizabeth tucks a purse into the top of her stomacher and flicks out of the room without another word.
