Page 27 of Boleyn Traitor
1536
IMIGHT HAVE GOTLady Mary safely out of the country and the Spanish party destroyed for their part in her escape, but they freeze into inaction, horrified by the decline of the old queen, in the dark days of the new year. Even I – sister to the woman who so brutally replaced her – am waiting, on edge for the daily arrival of bad news from Kimbolton Castle. I fear she is feeling the cold of the hard winter of the eastern fenlands. She was raised as a princess of Spain in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, she has always felt the cold in England. I think of her, solitary, confined to one tower of an uncomfortable castle, separated from her beloved daughter, nothing to leave her servants after a lifetime of wearing a queen’s jewels, knowing that her very name is denied, no certainty left but her faith. I imagine her shrinking from the cold wind from the east bringing more snow, knowing that none of us who once loved her can visit her, not even on her deathbed.
I cross myself, half-hidden in the corner of the queen’s presence chamber, and I pray for the soul of the woman who Anne and I, and almost everyone here, served as if we truly loved, and then turned against, like traitors. I name her daughter as ‘Princess Mary’ in my prayers, and think of her, waiting for the news of her mother’s death, bitterly aware that she can only say goodbye to her mother, if she takes the oath to deny her. To Princess Mary, swearing an oath that her mother is neither wife nor queen, must be worse than death itself.
Anne bursts into the presence chamber, handfast with the king, looking as radiant as if we have won a great victory in a war. ‘Thank God, thank God, she is gone, and we are safe!’
All Anne’s ladies leap to their feet and mime surprise and joy;I turn from the cold garden, smiling brilliantly to greet the royal couple.
‘And free from the danger of war with Spain!’ the king exclaims. ‘No one’s going to invade us with no cause! And the pope will never publish my excommunication – we have outwitted him!’ He puffs up his broad chest. ‘We were too quick for him! Ha!’
Anne does not blink at the claim that the old queen’s death is a credit to our quick-wittedness. The king’s friends trail in behind the joyful couple, all laughing and talking like a chorus enacting victory in a masque. The Spanish party – the queen’s old courtiers and her closest friends – mouth the words, nodding their heads like puppets in agreement, but they cannot make their lips smile. Gertrude Courtenay is as pale as the pearls she wears for mourning, and her husband, the Marquess of Exeter, is grim.
‘And now we can meet with the pope and with the emperor as friends.’ My uncle, Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, arrives smoothly at the king’s elbow. ‘They have no cause against us. We can make agreements with them, step back into Christendom. We don’t have to dance around the French any more. We can get back to the old ways.’
‘We won’t befriend Spain!’ Anne snaps back. ‘They’ve been our enemy for years. Why should we trust them just because their old queen is dead?’
Her uncle gives her his slow smile, his thin mouth like a trap. ‘For sure, they’d never trust you,’ he says. ‘Already, the gossips are saying that the queen was poisoned and that it was your famous soup.’
The king hears none of this, turning to be congratulated by his friends, but the colour flames into Anne’s cheeks and George silences her, grabbing her arm. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects steadily. ‘There is only one queen. And Spain has no cause against us. They’re not going to listen to gossip against the only queen of England when they need our alliance against France.’
Henry Courtenay and Henry Pole – leaders of the Spanish party – studiously ignore each other.
‘Thank God!’ Thomas Howard turns away from Anne and Georgeto clasp the king’s hand as if to congratulate him. ‘Thank God that the woman who wrongly claimed you is dead.’
The woman who claims him right now narrows her dark eyes at her uncle but says nothing. The realisation that Henry will now be seen by the pope – by the whole Roman Catholic world – as a widower, free to marry again in the true church, gives her pause.
But we have choreographed a joyful masque, and we cannot admit to doubts. We have dancing and drinking, and the king’s friends toast to his freedom, and next day, the king and queen process to church for a thanksgiving mass, with the little Princess Elizabeth dressed in bright yellow, carried before them as the undeniable heiress of their undeniable marriage. Anne wears a flowing dress with her belt tied high and tight to show her three-months pregnancy – as if to declare she is far past the losing time and marching on to certainty.
If this baby is a boy, he will wear the royal christening gown, and this time, there will be no exiled queen to claim that it was her family gown, brought from Spain, and that Anne’s baby is a bastard and unworthy. This baby will have the title Duke of Cornwall and be named Henry, and everyone will forget that there was ever another little Henry Duke of Cornwall who lived only fifty-two days and died in Queen Katherine’s arms. By the time this one is born in midsummer, that first queen will have been forgotten; like a May Day queen – gone by midnight and replaced the next year.
‘WRITE TO MYsister, Mary,’ Anne commands me, as she is resting in the afternoon.
‘Mary? Why?’ I would not have thought Anne would want her sister – a former mistress of the king with two children to her credit in the nursery at Hever – ever at court again.
She gleams. ‘She can see my triumph. She doubted me, and now she will see I am queen – the only queen. And I need her; I need my family around me; I need loyal family around me. I can trust no one but those who depend on me.’
‘Mary doesn’t depend on you,’ I point out. ‘She chose poverty with the farmer rather than depend on you?’
‘Just write and tell her,’ Anne repeats.
‘But will she come? You didn’t part on the best of terms, did you? You called her a whoring slut, didn’t you?’
The great scandal of Mary’s dismissal from court took place while I was away at Morley Hall. Apparently, Mary said she was married for love and showed her broad belly. I don’t know which annoyed Anne the more, since I missed the shouting and the screaming and the tears.
‘She’ll come if I tell her,’ Anne says simply. ‘She has to.’
MARYBOLEYN ARRIVES, sulky as a serf, in time for the great joust – it has no title, but everyone knows it is to celebrate the death of the queen, and those of us who loved her – like Mary and me – hide our secret grief. We waste no time on mutual sympathy: Mary despises me as a woman who has given my life to ambition, and I am comforted when I see that though she chose love, she cannot escape the tyranny of the Boleyns: she still has to serve.
The king rides in the joust himself, revelling in his youth and vitality now that his old wife is dead. You would think he was a dozen years her junior. He plays the part of a young husband to a young pregnant wife.
The tiltyard is Henry’s stage; he designed it as a viewing ground for his performance of himself. Either side of the yard are two matching octagonal towers with open galleries – one for the ladies of the court, one for the noblemen – so that we can sit up high and see every detail of the king’s brilliant horsemanship and his unfailing courage. Opposite the towers are spectator stands for the people of London to admire their king, riding under his own standard, wearing his own colours. Even when the joust is in costume, everyone knows who he is. He was a great jouster when hewas younger, and even now, he does not spare himself. Of course, he almost always wins.
Today is no different. Anne is in the great octagonal tower at the side of the tiltyard, at the forefront of the ladies overlooking the yard, all of us avid with admiration all morning. Mary Boleyn – now Mistress Stafford, as she reminds everyone – stands at the back: returned to court but not to favour. George rides well and wins his round with Anne’s glove on his lance. The king takes one tilt, breaks his lance against his opponent’s chest, and is the victor over a younger man. Everyone says loudly that he rides like a twenty-year-old.
He will rest, as others ride in the next bouts, and then he will ride at the ring at the end of the afternoon, so the huge audience of courtiers and the wealthy merchants and citizens who have come from London can see their king excel.
Anne goes back to the palace to rest for an hour in the cool while the other men are jousting. She takes Mary Shelton with her, and Jane Seymour, the king’s former and current flirt, and leaves us ladies to stay behind to watch the other jousts.
