Boleyn Traitor, page 14
I shake my head. ‘No one’s really falling – Mary Shelton’s been replaced as favourite by Jane Seymour, and the Seymours are in high favour – but that’s just bedroom gossip. We’re planning a May Day celebration, and George and Henry Norris are the lead jousters – so the king favours them. And then a progress to Dover and across the narrow seas to honour the Lisles at Calais, so the old royal family are in high regard. No one’s out of favour?’
‘Well, someone’s going to face an inquiry by the lords,’ my father warns me. ‘So it must be either a courtier or a churchman. A commoner would go to the common courts. But Jane, if Master Cromwell asks you anything about anybody, make sure you tell him all you know – he’s certain to know it already. Don’t hold anything back. You don’t want him to doubt you as well as … whoever he is doubting.’
‘I do. I always tell him everything.’
We turn to watch the dancers. The king is seated on his throne, beating time with his hand. Anne is beside him; as we watch, she says something charming – I can tell it is charming by the turn of her head – and the king nods and smilingly replies, then looks across the room to where Jane Seymour is waiting, hesitantly, for her turn to step forward.
‘Pity about the horse,’ my father says.
‘What horse?’
‘Thunder, that big bay of the king’s. The one that fell.’
‘But I saw him get up? He was sound?’
‘He was unhurt, but the king had him beheaded,’ my father says. ‘For treason, I suppose.’ He has to hide a smile. ‘Falling on the king is clearly the act of a traitor. The punishment for traitors is beheading. Ergo, the horse was beheaded. Rather like the beast trials of Prytaneum, Athens.’
I think of the beautiful animal, the bright-coloured coat and the big, dark intelligent eyes. ‘Oh, poor horse, poor beautiful horse!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s not justice!’
‘He is Supreme Head of the Church,’ he reminds me. ‘And king of England. Justice is whatever he says it is.’ He pauses. ‘That’s why I say to report everything to Cromwell.’
AS IF HE knows my father has spoken to me, Master Cromwell summons me to his dark chamber next day. It is modestly furnished, as if the king’s secretary needs nothing more than bare floorboards, a table, and a high-backed chair with a rush seat for him, and a second chair set on the other side. The writing chest that he takes everywhere is locked with the little brass key in the lock. There is a table and chair for a clerk, laid out with all the instruments for spying: knives for cutting letterlocks; a hair-thin wire for lifting a wax seal and replacing it unbroken; badger-hair brushes for dusting sand on invisible sticky letters; candles ready to make lemon-juice words appear on singed paper.
‘What is this?’ I ask, putting my hand on a series of copper wheels, one inside another, each wheel rim engraved with letters.
‘An Italian device,’ he says. He shows me how the inner wheel has a pointer to a letter of the alphabet, geared to the outer wheel so it can be set to show six letters forward or ten letters back, with another cog to alter the selection of letters between paragraphs. ‘It translates in and out of code,’ he says. ‘You just agree with your correspondent what gearing to use and when to change it.’
‘Clever,’ I admire it. ‘It must make a code very fast to write.’
‘My clerks need to work fast. I’ve never known a busier time.’
‘We are busy at court, too,’ I agree, putting down the code wheel. ‘The queen wants to make a special May Day for the king, as he cannot ride this year.’
‘She has told her ladies that he cannot ride?’
‘Everyone knows. Master Cromwell, why did you want to see me?’
‘It’s always a pleasure to see you. And does she speak of his poetry?’
‘We all speak of poetry.’
‘But the queen and her brother, your husband, and your cousin, Mary Shelton, and her friend, Thomas Wyatt – all noted poets, aren’t you? Young Lord Thom Howard, too? You study metre and rhyme and all that sort of thing, criticise each other’s work, write alternate witty lines – I wouldn’t know; I’m not an educated man …’
‘Of course, we discuss each other’s poetry.’
‘The king’s poetry?’
‘We all laugh at an awkward rhyme.’
‘You laugh at the king’s awkward rhymes?’
‘Not especially. We all tease and torment each other.’
‘Does the queen complain of his infidelity?’
‘You know she does. The love that she feels for him cannot tolerate a rival …’
‘And of his failure to love?’
‘Well … she fears he prefers others …’
‘But in bed? She says he fails her? She calls him incapable?’
‘Of course, he was so badly injured just months ago!’ I exclaim. ‘And the wound on his leg won’t heal …’
‘She’s told you this? She says that he is impotent?’
I feel cornered by my own patron. Everyone knows when the king beds his wife – he comes to her bedroom in a procession, accompanied by half of his friends. The nights when he lies stock-still as a statue are obvious to the lords who fetch him in the morning and find him as they left him, even the serving women changing unspotted sheets know that he has done nothing. No one says anything, it’s treason to suggest the king is not in perfect health and vigour.
I lower my voice. ‘Isn’t every man—’
‘And have you told many people?’
‘No! I only told George. But that was an earlier conversation. Years ago.’
His broad brown face creases with sympathy. ‘Years ago? How long has this been going on?’
‘I don’t remember … before I left court. After … About two years ago.’
‘It must be a great concern for her? How are we to get a prince if the king is unmanned?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Exactly.’
‘Does she do nothing to help him? To assist him?’
I think of George telling me that he got the king drunk, so Anne could mount him before he lost the will, that she must do anything: French practices, nakedness. ‘She does everything a good wife should do.’
‘Kissing, kissing with tongues, that sort of thing?’
I blush. ‘Whatever is needed.’
‘Sortilèges. French practices?’
‘Nothing forbidden,’ I tell him firmly.
‘No potions or herbs? No spells?’
‘She drinks a posset,’ I say unwillingly. ‘The midwife gave it her … After the last … the last time.’
‘The last dead-birth?’
I nod.
‘And that was the second?’ he confirms, softly as a midwife himself, as gentle as the egg woman in the hen coop.
‘We denied the first.’
‘And the ladies all know the king is unmanned?’
‘No, of course not – these are private matters between husband and wife … except that we all spend all our lives trying to encourage him,’ I say in a little rush of resentment. ‘It’s hardly a secret. You know – you do it yourself?’
‘I?’ His blackcurrant eyes widen in astonishment that he might be thought part of the court’s ceaseless encouragement of the king’s potency.
‘When we tell the king how much we admire him, how beautiful Anne is, how everyone is in love with her, how he is the only man who can hold her?’ I challenge him. ‘When everyone talks all the time about his strength and his manliness? His good looks?’
‘You say this and don’t mean it?’ He looks astounded.
I ignore his false face. ‘We all speak to encourage love.’
‘She has created a court of constant love affairs to inspire him to love? To incite him? To arouse him? She creates sinful excitement with other men for this purpose? The masque is now The Most Desiring?’
‘No! The Most Desirable …’
‘But some of these love affairs are real,’ he pursues.
‘Of course they are. The game of courtly love often overflows into real love. Lord Thom and Margaret Douglas are courting, and Anne Parr and William Herbert, and Henry Norris and Margaret Shelton …’
‘I’m just a simple man. I don’t understand this game of courtly love.’
I smile at him, suddenly confident. ‘Master Secretary, you understand perfectly well. This has been the entertainment of every royal court since Eleanor of Aquitaine.’
‘Eleanor of Aquitaine? The adulteress?’
‘Well, yes. But that’s not the point.’
‘The point is that the court makes a game of adultery around the queen, to encourage the king in his love for her? Because everyone knows that he needs encouragement?’ My friend Thomas Cromwell smiles kindly at me. ‘Don’t worry, Lady Rochford. All this, I know already. I use you as my touchstone for truth, not as a witness to be recorded.’
He rises to his feet, and I understand that our meeting is over.
‘I thought you were preparing for a trial,’ I remark.
He shakes his head and opens the inner door for me and bows as I pass into the gap between two doors, and open the outer door into the shadowy stone hall. The double doors mean that no one can eavesdrop.
‘But what was that about Lady Margaret Douglas?’ he asks me very quietly.
A man is waiting outside – Dr Richard Sampson: Anne’s expert on church law. This is the advisor who produced all the church law to end the king’s marriage to Queen Katherine. Master Cromwell does not acknowledge him; I assume he is to be invisible.
‘She’s courting Lord Thom, my uncle’s young half-brother,’ I say quietly, one eye on Dr Sampson, wondering what he is doing here. ‘He gave her a cramp ring.’
‘Does she suffer much from cramps?’
‘Not now,’ I say. ‘Not now she’s got a cramp ring.’
He gives a little chuckle at that. ‘Anyway, nothing out of the ordinary for you ladies?’ he confirms.
I shake my head. ‘Just courtly love.’
‘Tell me if it goes further,’ he says casually. ‘She’s half-sister to the King of Scotland. He won’t want her marrying a Howard. Whatever you Howards would like.’
He turns to Dr Sampson, who bows to me in silence, with a smile, and walks past me into Master Cromwell’s private room to sit on the same chair where I was seated, and, no doubt, offer Master Cromwell information that he knows already.
WE HAVE TO plan a merry May Day for the king even though he cannot ride as his leg wound is still too bad. We declare loudly that Anne has begged him not to ride, she is so fearful for his safety – but the truth is far worse.
‘He’s afraid,’ George says quietly, as if fear is a shameful thing, looking over the raked sand of the tiltyard. ‘He dreams of being crushed under his horse, and he wakes up screaming. He keeps remembering it. It’s as if he has realised, for the first time, that he is mortal. He’s afraid that he’s going to die.’
‘We’ll create a joust of poetry and music and let him win,’ Anne says, gesturing at the space, as if she can fill it with dancers and musicians and drown out the terrible shriek of metal as the heavy horse went down on the steel-clad man. ‘Something to make him feel young and strong again, the finest of everyone at court.’
‘A joust without jousting?’ he asks.
‘Why not?’ she says grimly. ‘Isn’t everything just for show now?’
We plan minutely, choreographing every move. There will be jousting at the centre of it all, but only the young men will ride. George and Henry Norris are principal challengers, and they will wear green for Tudor and green for spring, entering the arena one after another with their ladies’ favours on their lances. Each jouster will recite a poem or sing a song on the theme of love on a May Day morning, and the king, seated in his viewing balcony with his lame leg hidden, propped on a stool, will reply with a poem of his own, as if he has composed it in that moment. Thomas Wyatt will be at hand to prompt him so that he looks as if he is composing poetry on the spot.
It will be a joust of wit and poetry – and the king’s cleverness will defeat everyone else. The horse-riding will be the least important part, and when it is over, there will be a celebration dinner with more poetry and songs and dancing. But the dances will be for show, like the jousting; neither Anne nor the king will dance. There will be no tall king coming in disguise to surprise us this year; he cannot stand without pain, and his limping pace makes him furious, like a wounded bear at a baiting.
The maids are sewing ribbons on their headbands, with Anne irritably watching from her great chair at the centre of the queen’s presence chamber, when George comes lounging into the room with Henry Norris. He bows generally to us all and then goes to Anne and kisses her hand. Anne waves Henry into a stool at her side and spreads embroidery threads on her knees so that he can sort them. He bends his dark handsome head into her lap, so close that he could be kissing her knees.
‘Where’s Mark?’ George asks, looking round. ‘I wanted him to play while I sing my song at the joust.’
‘I’ll play for you,’ Mary Shelton offers at once.
‘No, it’s in the jousting area,’ George says.
‘Oh! Can’t I go disguised as your squire?’
They both look at Anne, who must say at once that this is not allowed. A lady cannot cavort in squire’s clothes in the tiltyard before anyone who has paid for a seat.
‘I’ll come, too!’ Anne says immediately. ‘What a picture we’ll make! George, you shall dress me in your livery, and we can both be masked …’
I gently lean to whisper. ‘Better not,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ she demands. ‘I’d look wonderful as a page boy.’
I shake my head. ‘Too wonderful.’
She shrugs her arm from my hand. ‘Oh, very well.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘But if I’m not going, then Mary’s certainly not dressing up as a squire and showing off. You’ll have to get one of the king’s musicians or one of the choristers. There are enough wanton boys to choose from, God knows.’
George frowns at her bad temper and looks to me for help.
I shrug. Now the old queen is dead and the Spanish party silent, Anne has no enemies to plot against. Time hangs heavy in this fairytale life.
‘I’ll find one,’ George says agreeably. ‘D’you have a favourite? I know they are all in love with you.’
‘There’s a pretty lad called Peter Last,’ Anne volunteers. ‘He blushes like a rose when he sees me.’
‘Then the Last shall be First,’ George says pleasantly. ‘I’ll write a love song to you, and he can sing it.’
‘Won’t you write a song for me?’ Elizabeth Somerset asks. George turns and whispers something in her ear and she giggles and draws him away.
As if she cannot bear a moment of George’s attention on another woman, Anne rounds on Henry Norris: ‘And what are you doing here, sitting mumchance?’ she demands. ‘You should be cooing like a dove to your betrothed, not getting my embroidery threads in a tangle? When are you going to marry poor Margaret?’
‘I’ll marry in my own good time.’ Henry leans a little closer over the silk threads spread out on her knee, and touches one and then another, resting his finger on each one, so that she feels the warmth of his finger through her gown on her thigh. ‘Besides, you have set me a quest to find the perfect rose – and I think it’s here – not in the silks but in the blush in your lips.’
‘I don’t believe you have any honourable intention towards Margaret at all,’ she scolds him, her mood sweetened by the flattery. ‘Why d’you haunt my rooms all day? Like a lovesick ghost!’
‘Because I am a ghost that has died of love!’ he says extravagantly. He takes up a red thread and winds it around her finger above her wedding ring. ‘It’s only you, for me,’ he says. ‘No one else.’
Caught up in the flirtation, she slides her wedding ring off her finger, leaving the scarlet embroidery silk in its place and holds it out for him to admire. ‘If anything were to happen to the king, I think you’d have me,’ she whispers.
For a brief moment only, they are caught up in the game; then she realises what she has said. Awkwardly, she rips the thread from her finger and crams her wedding ring back on.
Henry Norris makes a muttered exclamation. ‘I’d never lift my head so far … I’d rather it was off!’
Anne brushes the silks from her lap and jumps up. ‘Good God! You would undo me … I’ll see your head is off!’
George glances up from whispering with Elizabeth and sees my anguished glare at him. ‘What’s this?’ he asks, coming closer, seeing the tangle of silks on the floor, Norris on his feet, Anne white.
‘May Day madness,’ I say, laughing my courtier laugh a tinkle as sweet as a warning bell.
Norris rounds on George; he is quite furious. ‘I failed a riddle,’ he said. ‘I did not know the key to your sister’s riddle. But it was not a riddle that Her Majesty should have told.’
‘She’s a very witty queen.’ George struggles to understand the sudden switch from daring flirtation to what feels like panic. He offers Anne his hand as if to pull her out of danger, and she takes it and they walk away from the silks on the floor, their steps matching, moving as one being with two heads.
Henry Norris looks blankly at me, as if I can explain what just happened.
‘Nothing,’ I say again. ‘That was nothing.’
‘That was madness,’ he says. ‘Anyone could’ve heard her – she accused me!’
‘Nobody heard,’ I say. ‘And it was nothing.’
‘Half a dozen heard,’ he said. ‘And every man and woman at this court is a spy for someone. Someone’s bound to tell the king. I’ll go to the queen’s almoner now and swear it was nothing.’
‘It was nothing. And there are no spies here.’
I HURRY TO CATCH my spymaster on the stair on his way to the hall for dinner. We stand as close as lovers to whisper in the bay of the oriel window.
‘Henry Norris misspoke,’ I say. ‘A joke about him loving the queen more than Margaret Shelton. But he went to swear to the queen’s almoner that it meant nothing, so I thought I should tell you.’
