Page 33 of Boleyn Traitor
‘Someone helpfully warned the Spanish party that Lady Mary must swear the oath or face a charge of treason.’ He smiles at me. ‘Lady Mary’s friends are much dismayed. There’s much fluttering in the hen coop, messengers going one to another. I believe they will try to get her out of the country?’
‘How d’you know they are fluttering?’ I ask.
‘They write. They write constantly.’
‘Your room receives all letters? Like the dark chambers of Venice?’
‘I modelled my room on Venice. Information is the life blood of a powerful state. The Venetian Doge is a most successful tyrant.’
‘Don’t the Spanish party use code?’
He shrugs. ‘I have the code. I have the names of the ship, the plan for escape, and the names of those who warned that she should run away.’
‘You won’t have my name,’ I assert.
He nods. ‘You can be sure, I don’t. Lady Margaret Pole is a very discreet woman – unlike her son Sir Geoffrey: a blabbermouth. She never puts anything in writing. You did good work, Jane. They are desperate, and they will act desperately, and Lady Mary will be saved from sainthood despite herself, and they will talk themselves to the scaffold.’
Greenwich Palace, Spring
1536
ALL OUR FRIENDSand allies conspire to make Anne’s rooms a whirlwind of play, sport, flirtation, music, and gambling. Mary Boleyn – ‘Mistress Stafford now!’ – goes back to rural obscurity – too slow for this whirling parade of provocation. We circle Anne as if she were the only woman left in all the world. Mary Shelton writes little riddles and poems for Anne to recite as her own; her sister, Margaret Shelton, releases her betrothed Henry Norris to kneel at Anne’s feet. Every man who comes through the door of the queen’s rooms is teased and badgered and courted, until he swears that Anne is the most beautiful woman in the world and the only woman he desires. Every dance presents her at her best; every disguising costume is cut to suit her; she wins every bout of archery, she wins at bowls, she wins at cards. She sings the king’s love songs; she challenges the poets Thomas Wyatt and her brother George to admit that the king’s rhymes are best; she partners the king in everything he does. She overwhelms him with the dazzle ofher looks and charm. We create a frenzy of desire, and she is at the head of it, always directing it to him.
The usual subtlety of courtly love gets swept away as the court becomes more urgent, more bawdy. All the songs are love songs; all the love is heated. There are no steady friendships even between women. Everything is passionate; everything is quick and furtive. Hands roam freely. A woman’s fingers touch her own lips, stroke along the line of the gown at her neck as if she has to be caressed, even by herself. Men adjust a woman’s veil, touch her necklace, stray behind her ear. A kiss of courtesy on a cheek becomes lingering; a man feels a woman yield to his slightest touch. Courtships speed up – Anne Parr and William Herbert are openly besotted; Margaret Douglas and her young lover Lord Thom are always sneaking off together.
Even noble wives like me are fair game to the young men of court, who slide a hand up to touch the underside of my breast when they should be holding me by the waist to dance. I allow it. I am caught up in the frenzy of the court for love; we are all in season, we are all in heat.
Anne pushes her French hood further and further back on her head so her dark hair frames her face. When she gets up from her throne to dance, she whisks her skirts and shows the embroidered clocks on her stockings. When she leans forward to curtsey to the king, he can see the creamy curves of the top of her breasts. Everything which should be concealed can be glimpsed if you are quick enough – and everyone is quick to stare, and everyone is quick to show.
Only the king refuses to be swept along. He rollicks in the heated swirl of the queen’s rooms, every evening, watches every woman with sideways secret glances; but he goes to his own rooms at night and sleeps alone. He has no desire for Anne though night succeeds night – and the wine flows into everyone’s glass, and the music plays faster and faster, and we are like the girl in the story condemned to dance until death. We feel as if we are dancing for our lives in the scarlet shoes of whores. None of us are safe in our places, withour fortunes, until the king comes back to the queen’s bed and gives her another boy. We have to whirl through this life of frantic extravagance and enjoyment until Anne is finally satisfied and the mother of a prince.
I brush her dark hair before the mirror, and I do not tell her that I can see a hair – just one – silver-white, in the sleek ebony mane.
‘He’s a man of contradictions,’ she says, her eyes closed, nodding her head against the rhythmic sweep of the brush. ‘A king who must have an heir but cannot bed his queen. His mother died after childbirth, as if to teach him that lust is fatal. He was raised by his grandmother, who declared herself celibate. Then he was married to a woman as cold as holy water, who gave him one girl and more than a dozen dead-borns. He thinks that lust for a wife leads only to death.’
‘Conceiving a prince is an act blessed from God. It’s not carnal lust; it doesn’t lead to death...’
‘But he’s never managed it, has he? He lay in the old queen’s bed, and he lay in my bed, and all he ever gets are girls and dead babies. It was me who told him that his marriage was sinful and that was why he had nothing but death from the old queen. The little coffins were the proof. Now someone – Charles Brandon or the Courtenays or the Poles or Nicholas Carew or some Papist – has told him that our marriage is sinful, too. You heard him! God told him that’s why I lost the babies.’
‘Just one,’ I remind her. ‘We only admit to one. But you’re wrong. The Spanish party aren’t plotting against you; they’re in a panic about Lady Mary. Someone has told them she is in danger.’
‘What if they think that the easiest way to save her, is to destroy me?’
I am horror-struck. I turn my face from her gaze in the mirror, until I can find a false smile. ‘No, no – they wouldn’t dare do that. They’ll send for a Spanish ship and take her away. I am sure that’s what they’ll do. They don’t have the power to attack you.’
‘They’ll send for Italian poison and do away with me.’
THE KING GIVESGeorge more lands and makes an inventory of everything that he has given us so far – as if to confirm our wealth before he adds more. I walk into Anne’s bedroom, unannounced, to tell her the good news of George’s new fortune, and she and Elizabeth Somerset spring apart as if I have caught them in a secret act. I am so accustomed to glimpsing couples hiding in shadows that for a moment my heart sinks, thinking that they are kissing or touching in some new love-play, and then Elizabeth tucks a purse into the top of her stomacher and flicks out of the room without another word.
‘What was that?’ I demand flatly.
Anne shakes her head as if to silence me. ‘Nothing. She needed some money, and I lent it her.’
‘How much?’
She laughs. ‘Who are you? My treasurer?’
‘She shouldn’t be borrowing money from you. What’s she done to earn it?’
