Page 20 of Boleyn Traitor
‘The gown’s calledDemeter, then. And I amCeresinside it. Does that satisfy you?’
I giggle, and she finally smiles.
‘Anyway, welcome back,’ she says.
She may not have missed me, but she needs me. She is surrounded by kinswomen and companions but no friends. I can tell at a glance that the new favourite flirt must be our kinswoman Mary Shelton – the second Shelton girl to come to court. She leads the ladies in the dance, and beside her is an empty place for her partner, the lord of the harvest. Who else would play lord of the harvest but the king? He’s not going to sit beside a pregnant wife for the next seven months. Mary Shelton has the long Boleyn face, but her grey eyes are sparkling with excitement, and she is always smiling. She’s a younger, merrier version of Anne. If Anne had ever been carefree, this is what she would have looked like.
One glance at Mary, and at the beautiful sleeves laced onto her ordinary gown, tells me everything: that our family has put one of our own in the king’s path, so that the place of the Boleyn wife will be held by a Boleyn mistress for the duration of the pregnancy. Someone has managed to persuade Anne that she cannot demand the king’s fidelity for the next seven months. Someone chose Mary Shelton as a girl whose loyalty to family means she will step forward and then step back again, and someone has persuaded Anne to turn a blind eye. It can only have been my husband. Only George could have persuaded Anne to tolerate Mary Shelton, her own cousin, as the new favourite, and only George could have persuaded Annethat it is better to be a ruling queen in power for life, than a mistress beloved for months and then forgotten.
I smile at Mary Shelton so she knows this is well understood by me: she is the new herald of the king’s supremacy, and there will be no milk in her sheets or pinching. I look at her bright, flushed face and think it a shame that all this liveliness and prettiness should be devoted to a man who will use her only to boast of his virility.
‘Do I have to learn the steps?’ I ask Anne.
She nods. ‘They saved a place for you. Edward Seymour’s your partner.’
‘Who is George’s partner?’ I ask. My voice sounds strained, I assume he has taken a mistress.
‘He sits out with me.’
Margery Horsman points out where I am to stand, and I take my place in the rows of young women and look around. Nan Zouche and Jane Ashley smile at me; Margaret Shelton gives me the confident wave of a kinswoman; Lady Anne Cobham curtseys; Jane Seymour, who was a maid with me in Queen Katherine’s rooms, is too shy to greet me – Lord knows why Anne has brought her back to court. Anne Parr, my old schoolfellow, gives me a wry smile; her younger sister Kateryn is beside her, visiting court. Elizabeth Somerset introduces a young kinswoman. The Queen of England needs a defensive camp of women around her, whatever name she goes by:DemeterorCeres, Katherine or Anne.
I learn the choreography of the dance, and we run through it three times. Then Anne says: ‘That’s fine, that’s fine – you can do it again tomorrow,’ as if she is bored of watching from her ceremonial throne. ‘I’m going to rest; you can sew. Margery, read to the maids from the gospels, and the rest of you, listen.’
There is a muffled murmur of dissent from the maids – something I have never heard before in a queen’s rooms – but Anne ignores them and nods to me to follow her to her privy chamber.
‘They complain at sewing?’ I demand. ‘We sewed every day for Queen Katherine, and we went to chapel three times a day as well!’
‘They’re so idle.’ She shrugs. ‘They only come to court to catch husbands, not to serve as we did. That Mary Shelton writes poetry to Thomas Wyatt and love notes to Francis Weston, but since she’s writing songs with the king himself, I can’t reprimand her! Scribbles in her prayer book and passes it over in the very chapel! Anyway, how did you like the country? I take it you don’t prefer it, like my sister? You’ll have heard: she’s gone to live with a farmer and won’t be coming back?’
‘Yes, I heard.’ I don’t tell her who told me.
‘She came to court with a great belly on her, quite shameless! I told her – we have to be above question. I can’t have the king doubt the virtue of any Boleyn. You’ll have to be without fault, Jane.’
‘I will be,’ I promise. ‘Nobody shall say anything against me or you, or any of us. Is he happy now that you have a baby on the way?’
She makes a face. ‘We had a good summer on progress,’ she says. ‘Sometimes we were merry, and he forgot I was his wife and queen, and we were lovers like the old days. But the moment we were back in Westminster, and I told him I was with child, I was transfigured into the Virgin Mary.’
I giggle; I can’t stop myself. For a moment, Anne bristles, but then she laughs with me. ‘I know! I know. Now I am carrying the heir to the throne, I am blessed among women. I have to be as holy as Our Lady.’
‘And what’s his part? John the Baptist?’
‘St Peter,’ she says gloomily. ‘Rock of the church. First pope ever. Infallible as the pope. As powerful as an emperor since now he commands both the Church and the people. Of course, he’s rich beyond his dreams thanks to me – he needs no other taxes but what I have won him from the Church, he’ll never need parliament’s agreement ever again. He can fine every religious house that he says is failing, he can close them down and take everything if they refuse to pay. Heaven grant that he never works out what power I have given him! But see what an inheritance I have provided formy son? He will be the world’s first reformed prince, a truly godly English pope, owning the wealth of the king and the wealth of the Church.’ She grins at me. ‘And his mother a saint.’
‘“The Most Happy”.’
‘If I birth a son, I rule the king, and the king rules everything,’ she says grimly. ‘See? Everything I have done, everything I have planned, and in the end it all comes down to a labour, like a peasant woman under a hedge. If I can get a boy, then I’ll have made a godly country with a tyrant king who is in my thrall. No woman in the world will have held more power.’
‘Well, why shouldn’t you have a boy? As you say, any peasant woman in a field can do it. Why not you?’
‘The king thinks princes are given by God,’ she says restlessly. ‘Since God didn’t bless his marriage with Katherine, they had no living sons. He’s got the idea of a God-given son stuck in his head. You tell me what fool put it in there?’
‘Wasn’t it George’s chaplain? The Greek scholar?’
She laughs, a harsh laugh with no humour. ‘No! It was me. I told George’s chaplain, and he told the king. Of the many moves I made against Katherine, it was the most brilliant: I said that she could never give him a son because she was no wife. It turned him against her more than anything else could have done. And –voila! The lesson comes back to haunt me. Who will the king blame if I lose this baby? Or if it’s another useless girl?’
‘Well, he can’t say your marriage was invalid!’ I protest. ‘You weren’t married to his brother and she was!’
‘He bedded my sister,’ she points out. ‘Some say he lay with my mother.’
