Page 32 of Boleyn Traitor
‘It was a boy?’
It’s too early to know; but it is more tragic for him if it was a boy. So he will think of it as a lost boy – another lost boy.
Anne hides her face in her scented hands likeMiseriain a tapestry. The king will surely step forward and take her hands away and kiss her wet cheeks?
But no, this is his tragedy, exclusively his. He will not comfort her – everyone should be comforting him. He is the starring actor in the masque, not a supporting player.
‘I see clearly that God does not wish to give me male children,’ he says loudly.
There is a genuine gasp at these terrible words, and Jane Seymour lets out a little cry of sympathy. George shoots a startled glance at me: what is God telling the king now? That his marriage is barren? That Anne is no more wife than the previous one? That this miscarry proves the marriage is cursed? No better than the last one?
Henry stalks towards the door, and the old lords, Margaret Pole and her sons, Henry and Geoffrey, their cousins the Courtenays, their friends, our enemies, part before him and admit him to their ranks, enfold him with their sympathy, capture him.
Anne says: ‘But, my lord—’
She cannot believe he is just walking out of the bedroom we prepared so carefully. She can see her ladies through the open door rippling down in a wave of curtseys; Jane Seymour’s modest English hood on her fair hair is bowed low.
The king pauses halfway across her privy chamber, surrounded by our enemies, the Spanish party in triumph.
‘I will come to you when you are recovered,’ he says, as if she is unclean, and, limping to demonstrate his own pain, he is gone and they all go with him. The fool, Will Somer, hopping along behind in a wild parody of lameness – as if anyone would dare to laugh.
I close the doors on everyone and turn back to Anne.
‘Get George back here,’ she says through her teeth.
Greenwich Palace, Spring
1536
WE LEARN Ahard lesson: Anne’s power over parliament, church, and country, depends on her ruling the king. And she can only rule him if she captures him and holds his whimsical attention, and she has to do this all over again, after disappointing him, and disgusting him. All the Howards, all the Boleyns, all the placemen and women, all the supporters of reform, muster to return Anne to her throne as queen of the court of love, mistress of a hundred broken hearts, the most beautiful and desired woman, ‘The Most Happy’. We have to persuade the king that she is the finest woman in the world, pre-eminent at his court; only then can she rule him, and the country. As soon as she can stand without bleeding, we have her on her feet. As soon as she can walk without fainting, we have her dancing.
The king goes away to Whitehall in London with a few friends – none of them our friends – but he will return, and we prepare dances and disguisings, jousts of poetry and masquing, tournaments of tennis, competitions of archery, balls, theatre, sports, games, every sort of distraction for when he comes.
Not one word does he send to Anne while he is gone; but a purse of gold coins is delivered to Jane Seymour – a prepayment for her maidenhead. She returns it without opening it. This could mean that when she weighed it in her hand, she felt it was too light for a prize so long preserved, or she may really not be for sale. At any rate, the king is making no progress with her, and we hope for a clear run to seduce him back into Anne’s bed.
When the royal barge is sighted coming downriver, it is a confident Anne in a phalanx of Howards who goes down to greet it on the pier, in front of the beautiful palace, wrapped in her finest Russian furs, in a blaze of torches against the cold spring dusk.
George confers with our uncle the Duke of Norfolk, and we all agree that no one will ever mention the miscarry again: our uncle was not the cause of it, and it did not happen. It will be like the one before – quickly forgotten in the storm of amusements that only we can conjure. We unite against the Seymours, who move into Thomas Cromwell’s old rooms adjoining the king’s privy chamber. This is a great favour to the two Seymour brothers, and Anne says that it shows that Cromwell’s influence is waning, if this mediocre family is given his rooms. I think, silently, that it could equally prove to be our influence that is the thinning moon – and Cromwell is obliging the Seymours now, just as he used to oblige the Boleyns.
But if the Seymours thought they had a hiding place for secret assignations with the king, we spoil sport. Anne takes Jane as her bedfellow on most nights, and the young woman remains the most virginal of maids-of-honour. There is no challenge and chase about Jane, no hide and seeking for the king. When he summons her to his side, she sits in dull silence beside him. When he says something witty and flirtatious, she is smilingly blank. The chattering court of gossip cannot see the attraction; but more than one girl tries on a new look of demure modesty, and the ugly English hood comes into fashion as a silent reproach to Anne’s French style.
Thomas Cromwell takes over new rooms, further from the royal bedroom but grander, with a private stair to a room on the groundfloor below, where he transacts his business. The ground-floor room has a grille on the window and a double door to prevent eavesdroppers. All of the letters for the king are delivered first to Master Cromwell’s dark chamber for translating, decoding, and copying.
He comes to play cards with the king in Anne’s rooms one evening and chooses me as his partner. When we put our heads together to count our winnings, he says quietly: ‘I see you keep Mistress Seymour close.’
‘Not as close as I would like,’ I reply. ‘She talks to Sir Nicholas Carew, and he is no friend to the queen.’
‘Oh, does she?’ is all he says.
‘And Gertrude Courtenay,’ I add.
‘I knew you would find her of interest,’ he says, as if pleased with his own foresight. ‘Is she one of the Spanish party or just alongside them? D’you think she advises Gertrude Courtenay as to the mood of the king?’
I make a little face. ‘What would Jane Seymour know of royal moods? The sun always shines on her.’
His dark eyes crinkle with amusement at my irritability. ‘Indeed. D’you think she speaks to the king for Lady Mary?’
I think for a moment. ‘I suppose she might. She’s very tender-hearted.’ By the tone in my voice, he may take that I don’t think tender-heartedness a virtue in a courtier.
