Boleyn Traitor, page 13
‘What was that?’ I demand flatly.
Anne shakes her head as if to silence me. ‘Nothing. She needed some money, and I lent it her.’
‘How much?’
She laughs. ‘Who are you? My treasurer?’
‘She shouldn’t be borrowing money from you. What’s she done to earn it?’
Anne tosses her head. ‘It’s a loan only. I’ve lent her a hundred pounds.’
I gasp – this is the same as George’s entire yearly wage as a senior courtier. This is a fortune and it will show up in the queen’s accounts, and everyone will wonder what Elizabeth has done, or what Elizabeth knows.
‘What d’you want me to do? Refuse a friend in need?’
‘Yes,’ I say flatly. ‘Why can’t she tell her husband?’
‘It’s a secret.’
‘But she can tell you?’
Anne laughs harshly. ‘She holds a secret of mine as security.’
‘What does she know?’ I demand, myself a trader and a broker of secrets.
Anne makes a little face. ‘She caught me … talking to … someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Mark, beautiful Mark.’ Anne gives a courtier laugh – empty of humour.
‘The lute player?’ I spell it out. ‘The king’s lute player?’
‘There’s only one beautiful Mark. And folly is cheap at a hundred pounds if it buys Elizabeth’s silence. She’ll be silent. She’s no better than me. We are agreed: she’s no worse than me and I no better than her, and all of us are going mad this season. I swear we have spring fever.’
I shake my head. ‘Anne, you can’t live like a lady-in-waiting – and a loose one at that. Elizabeth Somerset allows liberties that a queen cannot.’
Anne shrugs. ‘Nobody knows anything about Elizabeth’s liberties, and nobody knows anything about mine.’
I AM LONGING FOR summer even more than when I was in the cold and dark of the country. If we can get to May Day then we are in the happiest of all seasons at court. From midsummer the king and Anne will go on royal progress, hunting and travelling and living off other people’s money in other people’s houses. Away from court and from the frantic play of the queen’s rooms, he will turn to her again. If we can get through to the summer, we will win him back, and she only has to have one lucky night. Once she is with child we are secure again – a royal family with a prince in the cradle. Then she can flirt with a lute player and nobody will care, and the Spanish party can steal Lady Mary away, and nobody will miss her.
The wound in the king’s leg heals, and under our relentless joyfulness he becomes more cheerful. He comes to Anne’s bed again, and we make jokes about his lustiness, about her fertility. Over and over again, we say how desirable she is, how every man is in love with her. Only a king could win her; only the most handsome prince in the world could hold her. The old Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, has no grudge against Anne now that the old Spanish-born queen is dead. He comes to court, and for the first time, they meet face to face, and he bows to her; she acknowledges him. It is a diplomatic triumph for us and a blow for the Spanish party, who see their own ambassador acknowledge Anne as queen.
George dines with Chapuys, sitting up over their wine late into the night, persuading him that the Boleyns are the ones who govern England. The ambassador’s old allies, the Spanish party, who nag him for a ship for Lady Mary’s escape, are yesterday’s men. He need not trouble with them. We are the greatest advisors – and the ambassador will have to deal with us if he wants English soldiers for Spain’s war against the infidel.
‘And that’s the turn of the tide!’ George says with quiet satisfaction, coming into our rooms after showing Eustace Chapuys to his barge.
‘If Anne can get a boy in her belly this summer, we are safe with no enemies,’ I agree. He takes a chair beside me at the fireside. ‘Lady Mary can run away to Spain, and the only legitimate heirs in England will be Boleyn Tudors.’
He puts a hand over mine. ‘You’ve been invaluable,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t have got Anne out of despair and back on show on my own.’
He has not always thought me invaluable. I don’t melt at his touch. ‘It’s my duty to serve the queen,’ I say steadily.
‘For love?’ he asks me.
I know he is amusing himself, speaking of love to me, who has never had his love, who will never have it. ‘For love of my trade,’ I say. ‘I am a courtier. My father taught me to be a courtier, and your family taught me ambition.’
‘I didn’t marry a courtier, but a wife.’
‘Yes, I know you did,’ I say. ‘And then you dropped me.’
He laughs out loud, it is nothing to him. ‘Ah, Jane! Will you never forgive me for that? You know it was not my wish; you know I didn’t mean to hurt you!’
‘Would you do it again?’
‘Only if I had to,’ he says reasonably. ‘And reluctantly, and with regret!’
‘Then … reluctantly … and with regret … I will never forgive you.’
He smiles. ‘We are to be fellow courtiers but not lovers?’
‘We were never lovers,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t think you know how to love any woman but Anne.’
THE SPRING FEVER of the queen’s rooms continues through early summer, and, though the king is inspired by dancing and drink to go to Anne’s bed most nights, he still moons around after Jane Seymour in the day, preferring her as his partner in every game of courtly love. The Seymour boys coach their sister in the lost art of simpering refusal, and people start to lay odds on how many days they will play this game, until they order her to yield to the king and get into his bed. The Seymours are not a wealthy family; they cannot afford to prolong a courtship where the drama is the refusal of rich gifts. It was a grave error for them to demonstrate her virtue by refusing money: she could have made a good profit from little liberties along the way; but they have staked everything on her maidenhead.
Most of the older men, the king’s friends from his youth, hardly notice the new intense flirting and the playing of dangerous games in the queen’s rooms. They were young men at the court of Katherine, they kept their lusts out of her rooms and safely in the alehouses and stews, where they were notoriously violent and vile. Half of them are too old to stay up late. Nor are they any threat to our reform of the Church and the diminishing of parliament. They don’t understand the shift of power that we have made – they don’t see the benefit to the courtier in making the court into a tyrant.
Some of the old lords see what we are doing and despise us for it. Francis Bryan turns his one eye on our games, and the scar beneath the patch on the other eye wrinkles up as if he is smiling behind his mask.
He greets me first as I am by the door, and beyond me, he sees Elizabeth Somerset playing cards with Jane Ashley for buttons rather than money, and beyond them, the king whispering to Jane Seymour, so close that his lips are against her little ear.
Francis rolls his one eye around the busy noisy rooms and misses nothing. ‘In debt again?’ he whispers, bowing over Elizabeth Somerset’s hand. ‘Who’s going to pay for your new baby’s cradle? The father? But who is he, exactly?’
‘Not in debt at all,’ she says in a peal of pretty laughter, and then – more quietly to him: ‘Francis, be a true knight for me – don’t mention I have no money to my husband?’
‘I never thought he cared about your debts one way or another?’ His mouth twists in a smile that matches his lopsided face. ‘I thought it was your good brother Anthony, who kept you on such a tight rein that you have to play with buttons?’
She flutters her lashes. Even with a big belly, she manages to be inviting. ‘Oh Lord!, I can’t do a thing right!’
‘You’re fortunate,’ he tells her. ‘I never do a right thing, and nobody cares at all. But an attentive brother is in fashion at this court. Does your brother visit you in bed?’
She gives a little trill of laughter. ‘Only to scold me!’ she says and waves him towards Anne.
Sir Francis bows low, kisses Anne’s hand, and presses it to his heart. With one eye on her smiling face, he slides her fingers down his chest, over his embroidered doublet towards his codpiece.
Anne snatches her hand from him. ‘Sir Francis! You’re very wild today. I don’t know where you would take me.’
‘Take you where?’ Sir Francis asks, playing at stupidity.
‘Why, where would you want to take me?’ This is lacking in Anne’s usual subtlety, but she has her eye on the king, who has now taken Jane Seymour’s hand and seems to be imploring her for a favour.
‘No, I don’t like other men’s leavings,’ Francis whispers.
‘The king has not left me!’ She looks murderously across at Jane Seymour. ‘You know very well that is courtly play.’
‘Not him,’ he says triumphantly. ‘I didn’t mean the king’s leavings. I meant Henry Percy’s. Aren’t you Henry Percy of Northumberland’s leavings?’
For a moment, she is stunned into silence at this resurrection of old gossip. ‘What are you saying? Why are you saying—?’
‘Haven’t you heard? Percy’s wife has announced their marriage is invalid! Such a scandal! And worse, she is saying it’s invalid because he was married: wedded, and bedded by you. She’s left him. She says he’s your husband and you can have him back?’
Thank God no one is close enough to hear him but me. Anne’s dark eyes turn to points of black ice; but she never falters. She does not even shrink from him; her head is still cocked encouragingly towards him, her smile pinned in place. If the king were to look away from Jane, he would see Anne being courted by his old friend Sir Francis Bryan, in the very posture and place of courtly love.
‘Years ago,’ Anne says slowly in a low hiss, her smile never wavering. ‘That was years ago, as you well know. And Henry Percy denied it on oath. Nobody even dared to ask me then. Nobody would have dreamed of asking me then. Not then, and not now. Then, it was a lie, a stupid lie. But now, it is treason, and whoever says it is a traitor. One more word, Sir Francis, and you’re a dead man.’
‘Poisoned soup?’ he asks, smiling. ‘Like you sent to Bishop Fisher? Or the headsman that you sent to Sir Thomas More?’ He steps back before she can answer, bows as low as he should, hand on heart, and goes to the king, leans over his shoulder, whispers a bawdy joke, sets him in a roar, and melts into the crowd in the hot rooms.
Anne, left alone on her golden chair, throws back her head and laughs at nothing; only I see the shudder that runs down her spine. She looks blankly at me, as if she cannot believe what just happened. She beckons to Mark Smeaton. ‘Play! Why aren’t you playing?’ she snaps.
‘A song to stir the heart?’ he asks, looking at her meaningfully, but she is looking past him, for George, who comes in, throwing a remark over his shoulder to someone else, as if he is casually passing through the room.
‘Sir Francis has gone mad,’ she whispers.
George does not hear her, he is hiding his own fury. ‘I’ve not got the Order of the Garter!’ he spits. ‘Nicholas Carew has the place I was promised. I’m passed over again. They didn’t vote for me. I’m not to be a Knight of the Garter this year. Again!’
‘Carew? I won’t have Carew preferred over you. This is to insult me and all of us. This is a vote for the Spanish party hidden under his name. I won’t have it. I’ll order him to step back – he’s our kinsman. I’ll tell our uncle the duke to make him step back.’
I am thinking furiously. ‘Is this a move against us or just a jostling among the noblemen? Who voted for Carew and against George?’
‘Hush,’ George whispers to his sister. He takes my hand from his arm and raises it to his mouth in a pretty gesture of a kiss, but his lips don’t touch my fingers: it’s all show. ‘Carew was nominated by King Francis of France, the man I thought was my friend. Someone must have told him I met with the Spanish ambassador.’ He manages a wry smile to his sister. ‘The Knights of the Garter choose their own; it’s not in the gift of a woman. Not even you. I want to be known as a true knight, not as my sister’s pet. I’ll get it next year – I swear. I should’ve had it this year – but for sure I’ll get it next.’
‘The French king nominated Carew rather than you?’ I go to the essential question. ‘But why? He can’t doubt that we’re ruling the country? The monasteries are coming down, one by one; we’re reforming the Church. Lady Mary will take the oath or go into exile. Why would France support Carew – of the Spanish party? Why now, when they are losing and we’re winning?’
Both Boleyns look at me as if I am intruding on a private grief. ‘I’ll get it next year,’ George repeats.
‘That’s not the point!’ I say impatiently. ‘Who is telling the French king that it is safe to overlook you this year? And why are they saying that? And how has Henry Percy’s wife learned defiance? Why now?’
The double doors open, and Sir Nicholas Carew, the new Knight of the Garter, comes in, bows to the king, puts a hand over his heart in his bow to Anne, and nods at George. ‘Better luck next time,’ he says cheerfully.
‘À Carew!’ the king shouts, and everyone obediently choruses ‘À Carew!’
‘Congratulations on your well-deserved honour, Cousin!’ Anne says pointedly, and she rises from her chair and goes to the king, her hands outstretched, ignoring Jane, who leaps out of her way like a startled deer. ‘My lord husband, we must be merry and dance after dinner to celebrate my dear cousin’s well-earned honour.’
Nicholas Carew’s broad smile shows that he knows that Anne is choking on jealousy as bitter as poisoned soup. He bows as if grateful for her praise. ‘I’m so proud,’ he says to the king. ‘I’m so honoured.’
‘None more deserving,’ says the king, though George is standing right beside his sister.
I am thinking furiously, while my hands are clasped in delight, and I am smiling at Nicholas Carew. Something’s gone very wrong here: we’ve lost ground with our king, and even with the French king – what has he heard from his spies that I don’t know? Poor miserable Mary Talbot left Henry Percy’s house four years ago, why is she raking up his marriage to Anne now? Everything on the surface looks as if it is flowing our way, but something is wrong. Somehow the tide has turned, and it is against us.
I AM SURPRISED TO see my father enter with the other lords for dinner in the great hall. He is amiable with them, a lord among his equals, friendly with everyone – a true courtier. I wonder if he has found the time to ask Will Somer if his fool’s mind can imagine death.
He comes over to me when they are clearing the tables away for dancing, and I kneel for his blessing.
‘I didn’t know you were coming to court again so soon,’ I say as I rise, and he kisses me.
‘Your mother needed some things from the London merchants. All well? In good spirits?’
He has never before come to court to enquire after me. ‘Have you heard anything?’
‘No, no, all’s well,’ he says. He tucks my hand in his arm and leads me away from a noisy dance. The music drowns out our conversation.
‘Father, is everything all right?’
‘Indeed, I hope so! You’re obedient to the head of your house, the Duke of Norfolk?’
‘I don’t see him very often. He and the queen are barely speaking – since her illness.’
‘Better not get involved in these family quarrels,’ my father silences me, as if he does not want to know; but usually he is a man who wants to know everything.
‘I’m not involved,’ I say calmly. ‘Father, have you heard anything? Is someone acting against us? Have you heard that the Boleyns are losing influence?’
‘I’ve heard nothing. Are you losing influence?’
‘George didn’t get the Garter again, for the second year, though he was promised it for sure,’ I admit. ‘And Henry Percy’s wife is making wild accusations …’
‘Your patron, your advisor, is Thomas Cromwell?’ he interrupts. ‘You report to him? You confide in him?’
I nod cautiously.
‘And he’s still at one with the Boleyns? For the reform of the Church, for the destruction of the corrupt abbeys?’
‘Yes – except Anne thinks the king should bring Master Cromwell under greater control – the abbeys should reform, not close; others should open as schools and centres for charity. She thinks that Master Cromwell is greedy and corrupt …’
‘No – you be advised by him.’ My father shakes his head. ‘Nobody wants to give away Church wealth to the poor – certainly not the king. The wealth of the lords, of the king himself, is not to be decided by ladies.’
‘But the reform of the Church came from the ladies!’ I exclaim. ‘All the new learning started in the queen’s rooms …’
‘Learning, yes, but now that great wealth is involved, it is of interest to the men. Faith can be the work of ladies, but wealth is the business of men. And nothing happens in this kingdom unless Thomas Cromwell agrees it. Even I am here on a commission from him.’
‘What sort of commission?’
‘As a judge on first evidence. A new inquiry.’
‘Inquiry into what?’
My father glances around; but there is no one near in earshot. ‘That’s the thing. I’ve not been told. I’ve just been summoned to hear the first evidence, to see if there’s a case to answer.’
I pause, thinking. ‘Master Secretary is preparing another treason trial?’
He nods. ‘For sure, but I don’t know who is the accused.’
‘Oh, Father, he’s not going to act against Princess Mary, is he? Not now? Anne is demanding that she swear the oath. But they can’t try a princess for treason?’
‘Lady Mary,’ he corrects me. ‘No, the king would never use us lords against her; she’s too well-loved. And Carew is one of her greatest advocates, and he just got the Garter. It has to be someone else. Someone whose star is falling.’ He looks at me expectantly.
