Page 44 of Boleyn Traitor
‘Where is he?’ the master of the revels hisses at the master of music, who shrugs. They both look at me, since Mark is the king’s servant, attached to the queen’s household, and my responsibility.
‘Perhaps he’s died of love,’ Mary Shelton says. She turns her laughing face at the queen. ‘It’s all been too much for poor Mark, and now he’s died of love for you.’
Anne laughs as if she is amused. ‘We’ll sing without him, and it shall be his lament,’ she says. ‘Poor Mark, to die of love!’
Jane Seymour and Margaret Shelton, missing their partners George and Norris, have to find other partners for the dance – the fool Will Somer jumps up and does some clowning steps with Margaret. In a parody of courtly love, he kisses her hand and pretends to lift the hem of her gown to kiss her feet. He claps his hand to his heart and then – shockingly – to his groin. We laugh; anything is allowed. It is May Day – the usual rules are broken. Jane Seymour turns her blushing face away.
The king was never going to dance or act; but all this was planned to amuse him, the choreography designed for his gaze; the masque is a celebration of a scholar king – King Arthur the lawgiver. But all the compliments are aimed at a vacant throne, and the golden stool where he rests his foot stands empty. What’s the point of us pretending to be merry when he does not see our pretend joy? We dance and drink and sing until midnight, but we are discordant and out of time without our audience of one.
As soon as the great clock strikes twelve, and May Day is over, Anne gets to her feet, unable to conceal her boredom, and everyone bows, and all of us ladies withdraw with the queen. Three of us help her undress and get ready for bed, prepare her hot posset and turn down the covers of the great bed, although we know that the king is far away tonight, and will not bed her and make a baby onthis most special night of magic and love. Instead, he has chosen to be a good ten miles from his wife – and no way of getting back by barge, as the tide is against us. A big milk moon has drawn a high tide westward up the river, and it feels as if all the waters of England, river and sea, sweet and salt, are in full flood against us.
Anne orders me to be her bedfellow, and she says her prayers and gets into bed. I lie awake beside her, thinking of Henry Norris’ horse and how its big hooves tore up the ground as it refused to go forward but reared and clawed back. How the king disappeared without a word, as if he had been only waiting for it all to be over. And why ride to Westminster on the best night of the year? Why take Henry Norris? Why him and no other favourites? Has he gone to meet Master Cromwell, engaged on private business at his house at Stepney? And where is Mark Smeaton tonight? Is he singing for Thomas Cromwell?
IN THE MORNING,Anne leads the ladies to the chapel as usual, though the king is missing from his place and the royal balcony empty. We trail back to the queen’s rooms with nothing to do. Of course, we have had a court of ladies before – the king has been absent on business – but never before like this: without preparation or announcement.
We talk over the joust and the evening dancing as if it was a pleasure to watch, as if anyone enjoyed it. Nobody mentions the sudden disappearance of the king and his absence this morning. There is no word from George, and Margaret has not heard from Henry Norris. Mark Smeaton does not reappear with a new song and an apology. Anne sets everyone to sewing shirts for the poor and makes Jane Seymour read aloud from an improving book in English – the country girl has no Latin.
We are sitting in busy boredom when there is a rap at the door of the queen’s presence chamber, and then the yeomen of the guard swing open the double doors, and Anne’s chamberlain announces:
‘The king’s council to meet with the queen.’
Anne gasps and rises slowly to her feet, her cheeks flushed, one hand on the back of her chair to keep her steady. She stands tall, her head raised for a crown.
I know at once what she is thinking: perhaps it has come, perhaps it is now: her great moment, the greatest moment of her life. Perhaps the king dropped dead on his ride to London, and the council has come to tell her that she is the mother of the first queen of England and will be queen regent for eighteen years until Elizabeth comes of age. Queen regent, and our time has come at last.
But her uncle the Duke of Norfolk is looking dark-faced and grim, not folding his thin lips over his excitement, as he did before when he thought the king was lying dead and his niece was carrying the next heir to the throne. Then, he was at her side for every step; now, he looks across a wide expanse of wooden floor, and says coldly: ‘We would speak with you, alone, Your Grace.’
Anne’s eyes narrow, trying to read his impassive face; but she makes a little gesture with her hand, and all of us ladies, even me, have to sweep from her presence chamber into the gallery outside, and there, stationed at the door, to make sure we don’t listen, are two yeomen of the guards, who close the double doors and stand before them, their pikes crossed.
We have to wait, standing about, one or two with sewing still in their hands. Jane Seymour takes a seat by the window. She closes the book as if she knows she will not read any more today and folds her hands, her head bent as if she is praying. Something about her snags my attention; she is oddly serene, when the rest of us are flustered.
We wait. Nobody even wonders aloud what is happening inside Anne’s presence chamber. Nobody even whispers, we are all straining to hear through the thick doors. There is the rumble of angry male voices, again and again, as if they are asking questions, and we can’t hear more than her short retort. It sounds like an argument – but the council cannot argue with a crowned queen. One thing is for sure: they are not begging her to accept a regency.
Then there is a quick tap on the door, and the yeomen fling thedoors open, and Anne is standing before them, her face quite blank, her eyes quite black, the lords half a pace behind her.
‘Her Grace’s cloak,’ my uncle the Duke of Norfolk snaps at me, and I run through the presence chamber to her bedroom to fetch it, as if I were a chamberer.
By the time I am back with it, they are gone: my uncle Thomas Howard; John de Vere; William Sandys, lord chamberlain of the household; and Anne, my sister – gone with three men who hate her. But where have they gone?
‘To the barge,’ Margery Horsman says to me.
I turn from her and run down the little stone stair to the garden and the pier, and she trots beside me, as if she is helping; but really to see what is going to happen next.
By the time we arrive at the pier, they have handed Anne into the royal barge; she is sitting in state, on the throne at the back, her uncle beside her, and the other two men are ashore, waiting for the cloak. They take it from me on the riverbank; I make a little gesture to the frozen figure on the chair.
‘Don’t I go with her?’ I ask John de Vere. ‘What about her ladies?’
‘You don’t want to go with her!’ he says, laughing as if this is a great joke. He takes the cloak from me, strides up the gangplank, and they run it on board and cast off.
Margery and I stand on the pier and watch the oarsmen take up the rhythm of the drumbeats and row to the middle of the river, where the flow of the stream catches it, and the barge picks up speed and goes rapidly upstream on the incoming tide. Anne hasn’t moved an inch; and though they have her cape, she has not put it on.
I am the chief lady-in-waiting; but I have no idea what I should do. George is at Whitehall Palace with the king; Anne has gone upriver – I assume she is summoned to join them; but nobody knows. I look at Margery Horsman and see a blank fear in her face that I must wipe from my own as we go back inside to the queen’s rooms.
‘Well, you can get on with the shirts for the poor, at any rate,’ I say in a weak attempt at discipline, and I wave the ladies and themaids back into the presence chamber, but one by one, they put down their work and slip away, and I know they are going to tell their patron or their mother or their spymaster that the lord chamberlain has taken the queen upriver to London, without a companion and with nothing but her cloak. Jane Seymour did not even wait for me to come back from the riverbank – she was gone from her seat in the window when I returned from the pier.
I leave the younger maids sewing with Margery Horsman, and I go through the bedroom door to the king’s side to see if George has returned. Our room is empty; the bed has not been slept in. It doesn’t even look like our room, where we have lived, husband and wife, for eleven years. It looks like a stranger’s room, readied for strangers, with a chill tidiness about it, as if the room itself is waiting for someone who will not come, someone who will never come again.
I go down the gallery to the Howard rooms and tap on the door. The usual manservant answers, and he knows perfectly well who I am; but today he pretends not to know me and does not admit me.
