Page 21 of Boleyn Traitor
‘God no!’ I exclaim.
‘Oh – they say he had yours, too!’ Anne laughs at my shocked face. ‘So you needn’t act so Seymour.’
‘So what?’
‘So Seymour – so achingly virtuous-pious-virgin-shocked-modesty-nun-face. It’s a whole new fashion. But it won’t matter who hebedded, as long as I have a boy. If I have a boy, then I’m a queen blessed by God. The most powerful woman in the world.’
‘You can’t lose it.’ I cross myself at the thought. ‘You won’t lose it.’
‘I’m ill-wished,’ she broods darkly. ‘That old witch Katherine and her daughter Mary are praying for me to die in childbed and my baby with me.’
‘They are not,’ I say instantly. I remember the queen’s meticulous devotions, wrestling with her selfish desires and her determined, unflinching love of her enemies, even Anne. ‘She’d never pray for a baby’s death. She just never would.’
‘She is my death, and I am hers,’ Anne says darkly. ‘And God knows I pray for her death every night.’
I look at my sister-in-law with something like despair. I’ve only been away from court for a year, and I thought to come back toAnna Vincit Omnia, but it seems that the stakes are higher, the fears darker, the risks greater... and where will this end?
‘She’s ill you know; she might be dying even now,’ Anne says quietly. For a moment, we are both silent at the thought of the queen we both served, dying in a cold, faraway castle. ‘And if she does not die, I will kill her. I will trap her with my law, name her for treason and behead her.’
At my aghast face, she laughs harshly. ‘Jane, if she will not swear that she was never queen, then she has to die. She has to deny herself or kill herself – I don’t care which. But she can’t live there, refusing to answer if they don’t call her “Queen Katherine”. If she and Mary won’t acknowledge the king as supreme and me as his only queen, then they’re as guilty as Thomas More of treason. As guilty as Bishop Fisher. And see what I did to them! They’ll both have to die – like More and Fisher – under the axe.’
ON MY FIRSTnight home, I don’t dine with the court but privately, with Anne, in her rooms. I don’t sleep with my husband but with her. This makes it clear to me why Ihave returned – and for sure, it’s not for a second honeymoon. I don’t even see George until he comes into her bedroom through the private door, to say goodnight to her as we are getting ready for bed. He looks so different that for a moment I don’t recognise him, and I am startled by this bullet-headed, hard-faced man who comes in as quietly as a servant. His hair is close-cropped to his skull; he has a dark beard around his jaw. He has the face of an older man, a common man. The forelock that he used to toss carelessly from his dark eyes is gone; the clean lines of his face are turned hard.
‘Oh! George! You look so different!’
He passes his hand over his stubbled head. ‘Oh, it’s the new fashion. The king cropped his head and grew his beard. Told us all to do the same.’
‘D’you like it?’ I ask Anne.
She makes a little face. ‘I’m not complaining. D’you remember the fuss the old queen made when the king first grew a beard? I say nothing.’
‘But George – your beautiful hair!’
‘No courtier can have beautiful hair at the court of a balding king.’ George sits on a stool at the fireside and watches Anne drink the midwife’s posset of herbs. He has a jar of honey from the beehives at Hever, and he gives her a spoonful when she forces the hot drink down.
‘Very good,’ George says indulgently. ‘Good girl. Sleep well.’
‘Are you going to bed now?’ she asks.
He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got to go back to the king’s rooms – they’re dancing.’
Anne stirs restlessly. ‘Who’s he dancing with?’
‘Jane Seymour.’
‘Then who’s Mary Shelton dancing with?’
‘Henry Norris.’
They are dancing without me tonight, as they have danced without me for more than a year even though I have come back. Clearly,only Thomas Cromwell wanted me back at court, and only Anne has any need of me.
‘It’s always a circle dance,’ I say. ‘Round and round. Where’s Agnes?’
‘Agnes who?’ George asks, straight-faced, and then he winks at me. ‘Long gone.’
‘So she hardly mattered,’ I say quietly – thinking, you dropped me for someone who hardly mattered. I broke my heart for more than a year over something that hardly mattered to anyone.
‘Norris will be wishing he was dancing with me,’ Anne gleams. ‘He’s still in love with me, he has been for years. He’s not gone mad for Mary Shelton like the rest of the court.’
